A Special Gift

by Alice Brown

  “Marshall...” she moaned.

  “Yes, love?”

  “Move!” A one word command, a command that was not to be ignored, but then again, who would want to ignore a command like that anyway?

  He chuckled as he reared back, dragging his dick across numerous nerve endings until only the very tip was submerged. “Your wish is my command, love.” And he plunged back inside of her until he was fully seated.

  She wrapped her pretty, long legs around his waist, locking them at the ankles. This allowed her to move with him. He established a good rhythm, one that would bring both of their releases on shortly. She felt like heaven, all warm and wet and tight. And when she clenched her inner muscles, he thought the life was being squeezed out of his dick.

  His release hit him suddenly. He only had a few precious seconds once his lower spine started tingling to try to bring her along. He reached down and pinched her clit, and she screamed his name as her inner muscles locked down tight. She exploded, and he plunged over the edge with her. They exploded together, each reaching heights they never imagined before. For him, it was a dream come true. He had waited for her for so long. For her, he was her future, her best friend, her lover, her Marshall.

  After he insisted on cleaning her up, she snuggled with him, using his chest as a pillow. She ran her fingers through his light dusting of chest hair. She would need to get up and go home at some point; she had to pick up Ramona from school this afternoon. But she wasn’t thinking about that now. She was thinking about how perfect this man was as he lay under her, and how lucky she was that he was hers. For now, they were going to enjoy each other’s company.

  Chapter Fifteen

  It had started raining by late morning, so when Marshall took Stephanie home, they also stopped by the school to pick up Ramona. It seemed the little girl was adjusting well to her new life. He had been worried she would shy away from men due to what had happened to her but had not seen that behavior at least with Kevin or himself. He was thankful all over again that Stephanie’s astral form had been there for the worst of it, instead of the little girl.

  Stephanie gave Ramona a snack and got her started on her homework, then walked back outside to sit on the front porch swing with Marshall. Slowly gliding the swing and watching the rain, they both enjoyed being able to sit back and relax.

  Several minutes had passed, and he noticed she hadn’t said anything. He glanced over to see her eyes closed and chuckled quietly to himself. He had worn her out pretty well today. He settled her into a more comfortable position against him and got more comfortable himself. He guessed they were going to be there for some time. Stephanie obviously needed the rest, and he found himself happy just watching her.

  She had been asleep about thirty minutes. The rain had stopped, and dusk was just falling. Suddenly her eyes popped open, and he heard her gasp.

  “Oh, God!” she moaned loudly, bringing up her hand to her head trying to ease the sudden, intense pain that was stabbing through her skull.

  “Stephanie, what’s wrong?” Marshall asked, concerned.

  “There is a little boy in trouble,” she answered as she tried to pinpoint the child’s location, but the stabbing pain in her head was distracting her too much. She would need to astral project in order to find the child. All she knew was that a little boy was crying and in pain. That pain was currently manifesting itself in her head.

  Stephanie took a quick second to glance at Marshall, who was still sitting next to her but had lurched forward, every muscle ready to pounce. “I am going to project and go see what is going on. This child is crying out like he is being beaten. Get my body to mom’s office and then get Dad. As soon as I find the boy, I’ll send word back.”

  In her projected form, it was easy for her to track where the sounds were coming from. As she drew nearer, the child’s crying became louder and more painful in her head. She soon found herself in front of a dilapidated two-story frame house. A child was upstairs still crying out and yelling, “Stop, I’m sorry, please stop!”

  She hurled herself through an open window on the second story and came face to face with the problem at hand. A man with a belt in one hand and a bottle of booze in the other was standing over a distraught little boy. Nobody could see her, so she took the time to send her location back through her body. She watched in horror as the man suddenly brought up the belt and began to strike the child across the back. Stephanie immediately placed herself between the child and the weapon, creating an invisible shield to protect both of them. The belt came down but hit the shield, which bounced it back up to slap the man hard across the face. This did nothing but make him angrier.

  “What the hell?” he roared as he threw his bottle of liquor across the room. It hit the wall and shattered. Stephanie kept the shield up, knowing that if she didn’t she could be injured with this man in a fit of rage. Knowing her shield would protect them for a moment, she took the time to get a look at the child huddled below her, scared, crying, and obviously hurt. His face was already showing some bruising where he had been hit. His nose was bleeding, but she was most concerned about the pain the child was showing when he attempted to move. She wondered just how bad his condition was. Did he have broken bones? Internal bleeding? She had questions but no answers, and just watching him made her so angry she wanted to kill the drunk who had clearly been the cause of the boy’s injuries. He was a poor, pathetic excuse for a human being as far as she was concerned.

  The man, in his drunken stupor, attempted to come at the boy two more times. Stephanie’s shields protected them both times. The man was in pain as he had come at the boy with his hands both times, and ended up hitting what felt like a brick wall as his hand struck the shield.

  Stephanie showed herself as her angel form to the young boy. “I am here to help you. He won’t hurt you anymore.”

  The child looked up and bravely tried to blink back tears, as he mistakenly thought that his angel was there to take him to Heaven. “Tell my mom I’m sorry. I didn’t want to die,” he pleaded in a soft voice.

  Stephanie caught on to the mistake. She gave the boy a soft smile. “You are not going to die, sweetie. I am here to help you. Just hang on for just a few minutes, help is on the way.”

  The boy shook his head, thinking he was dreaming. Unfortunately, Stephanie had needed to drop her shield when she showed herself, and had not attempted to raise it again. Truth be told, she wasn’t sure how strong her shield would be with her in another form. The man, now also seeing an angel standing over the child, grabbed a handful of her hair, yanked and spun her around to face him. “Who in the hell are you?” he demanded, his rancid boozy breath hitting her in the face.

  Stephanie knew help was on the way, but she had to keep this drunk from further injuring the child. She also needed to find the boy’s mother. She decided to change forms, even while he had a handful of hair, and took on the image of a hideous beast. Not wanting to scare the little boy, she attempted to go beasty only on her front half, leaving the back half looking like an angel for the sake of the little boy on the floor behind her.

  In a high-pitched beastly voice, she shrieked, “So, you like to beat children up, hey?” He released the death grip he had on her hair immediately and took a step back. He ran his hand over his face a few times in an attempt to dispel the hallucination. What else could cause him to see a hideous beast inside his house? Or…was there something in that bottle that wasn’t supposed to be? Did the old lady get pissed enough that she laced my bottle with something? By God, if she did, I’ll kill the bitch!

  Stephanie could see the pain in his eyes from such a high pitched shrieking voice that she had used just a moment ago. Knowing it bothered him, she continued, “Do you want to beat up on someone? Take your best shot!” Anything to keep his attention away from the child, she would do anything. If that meant letting the man beat on her a bit, so be it; although she was fairly certain she could protect herself with her shields, she wasn’t positive. The man’s eye
s grew wild and he ran his hand through his hair, still trying to assess the situation.

  “Who in the hell are you?” he screamed. “You have no right to break into my home and stop me!”

  “I didn’t break into your home!” she shrieked back. “I was called here to protect this child from you!”

  “He got in the way when I was teaching my old lady a lesson. She didn’t have dinner on the table on time. She knows she has to have dinner on the table at six o’clock. But no, she has to push my buttons and not have it on the table until five after, so I had to let her know who was boss,” he stammered.

  “Well, let me show you who is boss now, jerk!” Stephanie screeched, mad enough to breathe fire, and that is exactly what she did. Taking a deep breath in, she let it out in bluish flames.

  “You don’t deserve to have a wife or son!” The man took a couple of steps backwards, and then a couple more, trying to escape the flames that spewed out of the monster’s mouth every time it opened. Every step he took backward, the monster took a step forward, matching him step for step. All of his attention was in front of him, on the hideous beast blowing flames from its mouth. Not looking behind him, he continued inching closer and closer to the stairs as he retreated. Stephanie was watching where he was headed, and though she normally would have warned someone of impending danger, at this point, she didn’t care. As long as she didn’t touch him, she could not be held responsible. He reached the very edge, still not realizing where he was headed, and then took that final step backward to find nothing but air. He lost his footing, falling all the way down the flight of stairs.

  Stephanie ran over to the top of the stairs to peer down. He lay there unconscious, but alive. She immediately changed over to the angel form fully, but then thought for a moment and then just changed into an image of herself. She quickly made her way back to the child still lying on the floor.

  He appeared to be in a lot of pain, and she was afraid to move him, not knowing if he had internal injuries. She settled for lightly brushing the hair out of his face. “Hey, hang in there, help is almost here. You are going to be okay. What is your name?”

  “Tim,” he replied weakly, barely able to open one eye. The other was completely swollen shut.

  “Tim, I am Stephanie. Do you know where your mom is?”

  “Downstairs. He got her first. He threw a hot pan of food at her face and then started punching and kicking her. I tried to stop him, he was hurting her so bad, but then he started in on me.” His admission came out in a whisper she could barely hear, even with her acute vampire hearing.

  “Okay, I am going to see if I can find your mom and check on her. I’ll be right back, okay?”

  He barely nodded, and Stephanie knew he was close to losing consciousness.

  She became invisible again and flew downstairs search for the mother. If she thought Tim was in bad shape, his mother was many times worse. Her face was a mixture of burns, bruises, and blood. Her left arm hung limply, obviously broken. She seemed to be having trouble breathing, and Stephanie guessed she was suffering from a collapsed lung or rib damage. She showed herself in regular form, and leaned down to the woman to tell her she was there to help her. Stephanie thought the woman tried to smile at her, or maybe she was trying to say something; it was impossible to know for sure due to the injuries on her face. Stephanie needed her dad and Marshall there quickly; they both had medical knowledge far greater than her own. She sent a message back to her mother that she was in desperate need of medical help immediately, taking a quick moment to explain that she had a young boy and a woman who both had been beaten severely. Less than two minutes later, help arrived.

  Marshall walked straight over to the man lying on the floor and handcuffed him immediately. The local police had already been called and were on the way, an ambulance had also been dispatched.

  Kevin and Marshall did what they could in the way of first aid, but both patients were in need of medical treatment only a hospital could provide. In little time, both mother and son were loaded into the ambulance, and the police were hauling the drunken man out of the house.

  Stephanie watched the police escort the man to the waiting squad car. He swayed between two officers, stammering on about a hideous beast in his house. “It talked to me; I didn’t know animals could talk,” he exclaimed to one of the officers. They simply chalked it up to his intoxication. She watched as they shut him in, shaking their heads and rolling their eyes over his story as they climbed into the front.

  Normally, she would have stayed invisible, but since both mother and son could identify her, her father had told her to stay in her human form when the police arrived. Besides, someone was going to need to describe what had happened. When the police asked why Stephanie had been in the house, she told them that she had been walking in the neighborhood and heard a child cry out for help. “I am sorry, officer, but the front door was unlocked, and after witnessing Tim being hit repeatedly with the belt, I had to try to help.” Stephanie gave the officer her best innocent eyes, the ones that never failed to work on her father.

  “What exactly did you do?” he inquired as he filled out his report.

  “I told the man that he could not hurt the little boy anymore and stood over him to protect him. I seriously began to worry the man had lost his mind when he started screaming and pointing his finger at me, all the while walking backwards like he was seeing something that scared him. I was busy checking on Tim when he fell down the stairs.”

  As soon as the cops left, Stephanie left to go home. The cases she was running into lately involving children really tore at her heart. She loved children and couldn’t stand to see them suffer. She left Tim’s house and arrived back home before Kevin and Marshall could ask her what had really happened in that house. She knew they would demand the full story as soon as they arrived home. Besides, it wasn’t like she could lie. Her mother most likely had everything recorded.

  Thirty minutes later she smirked as she heard her father and Marshall at the front door. They hadn’t even waited until their shift was over. She was betting they had left Tim’s house and followed her home.

  As they walked up the sidewalk to the front of the house, Stephanie was sitting on the front porch swing. “I know what you told the cop was only half the truth. I need the entire story,” Kevin stated calmly as he joined her on the swing. Marshall chose to sit on the step.

  Stephanie started from the beginning, telling her father about hearing the little boy crying out for help. “Dad, these are just kids, and they don’t deserve to be abused. As I arrived at the house, the man was beating Tim with a belt on his back, and you saw his face. All I did was create a shield to protect Tim and myself as I hovered over him. When the man realized he couldn’t beat on Tim anymore, he became even more enraged. Not knowing what else to do to protect Tim until you arrived, I showed the man the beast and asked if he wanted to beat me up like he had the child. He started walking backwards to get away from me, and kept going until he reached the top of the stairs and fell down the flight. It probably didn’t help matters when the monster started blowing fire out of its mouth.”

  “Okay, you didn’t push him or touch him in any way?” Kevin inquired of his daughter. He was required to turn in a full report of the case. It was imperative that he know all the facts.

  “No, I didn’t even go near him,” she replied, and then held her hand up. “And before you say anything; yeah, I probably should have warned him about the stairs, and I will fully admit that I intentionally didn’t do so. I was furious that he could do something like that to both the mother and the child, so as far as I was concerned, he had it coming.”

  Stephanie knew her father would need to report the incident. With her being a full time VCTF member, it was important that all facts were clearly stated for the record. “Do you know what started the whole thing?” she asked her father and fiancé.

  “No,” Both Marshall and Kevin replied in unison.

  “That poor excuse o
f a man expects, no, he demands his dinner on the table at six o’clock on the dot. His wife was five minutes late putting dinner on the table, so he threw a hot pan of food at her face and then started beating her, because, he stated, he ‘needed to show her who was boss.’ The little boy got in the middle of it trying to help his mother and ended up getting himself pretty torn up too.”

  Kevin shook his head in disgust. “I will never understand people like that. It seems they are so unhappy with their own lives that they feel like they have to control others. Unfortunately, you can look back, and chances are the man who did the beating tonight was more than likely a victim himself when he was a boy. History tends to repeat itself.”

  “Well, both Tim and his mother will be hospitalized for the next several days. It might be a good idea to see if Inez and Ramona would like to visit these two. It might do them some good to know there are other people out there going through similar situations. Tim and his mother are going to need help making a fresh start when they do recover,” Marshall injected.

  “I could get Ramona up to see Tim tomorrow afternoon after school,” Stephanie said as she smiled at Marshall. “I bet Ramona would like Tim, they look about the same age. It might even help him with his healing.”

  “You might very well be right. I’ll speak to Erica about getting Inez up to see the mother. Did you happen to catch the mother’s name?” Kevin asked his daughter.

  “No, I didn’t, sorry. I don’t think she could speak when I reached her anyway.”

  “I can find out easily enough. I’ll just have your mother pull up the police report.”

  It was getting late, and Stephanie was yearning to hang upside down on her trapeze bar. She hoped for some quiet time in order to reflect and process this new case. Her emotions felt all over the place, and hanging upside down was the one thing she knew for sure would help her.

  *****