​

Xander

“Love grows. Lust wastes by Enjoyment, and the Reason is, that one springs from an Union of Souls, and the other from an Union of Sense.”
- William Penn

“Stalking me again I see,” Alexandra whispered.

​

I didn’t immediately react to the unexpected question in the inky dark of the night. I sat in an armchair that was wedged in a corner of the spacious bedroom. I had an unobstructed view of the king-sized bed where Alexandra, I thought, had been sleeping peacefully. Hell, after a double shift at the hospital, that should have been a safe assumption. 

I had only been in her room for mere seconds and was soon fighting the clogging, persistent urge to mate. It was even more potent than before. I was granite hard and throbbing with need in my tailored trousers as her feminine scent filled my senses.

​

After our erotic shared dreams, every night since I left her, my desire for her had been escalating. Now with her so close within my reach, my control was virtually nonexistent.

“Are you going to pretend that you didn’t hear me? Or continue this creepy behavior?” 

My lips twitched in reluctant amusement. It wasn’t as if I wasn’t aware that she was sassy, confident, and fearless. However, I was surprised that she was able to sense my presence because I was fairly certain that it was impossible to see me. Her windows were covered with blackout drapes, and there was no light, artificial or otherwise, in the room. Her human eyes should not be able to see me.

​

“As I’m not stalking you, there is no need to answer or discontinue.” My voice came across deep and raspy, primal lust making it almost impossible for me to think straight. The sound of her sultry voice only made me harder.

Alexandra sat up in her bed. She stared directly at me. 

I had to fight to not react to that direct stare. There was no way she could see me, right? Damn, I wasn’t so certain anymore. The gold in her eyes glowed with excitement. 

Her sheets were rumpled untidily around her ankles, a testament to her restless sleep. She wore a white cotton tank top that hugged her unfettered breasts and flat stomach and matching shorts that barely covered her curvy ass. Her breasts were perfectly proportioned and round, high on her chest, with their dark areolas topped with plump taut nipples clearly visible through the thin cotton. God, she was so stunningly beautiful that my stomach flipped, and my cock throbbed with the need to claim her. 

​

“What are you doing then if it’s not stalking me?” she asked impatiently.

  “Protecting you,” I rasped out. How the fuck did this happen? Why did I get this close? I didn’t want to feel like this or have this conversation with her. Pure lust pulsed through me like a drumbeat, insistent and steady. 

Alexandra crept to the edge of her bed, getting closer to me. “Protecting me? Protecting me from what or from whom?”

Did she have no sense of self-preservation? I am a six-foot-six lethal predator, power and strength self-evident in every line of my frame.  She had no way of knowing whether I was trustworthy or not, because, clearly, I was not harmless. I had gained access to her bedroom after circumventing the security of her walled perimeter, passing her security team on the grounds of the house, and breeching her electronic alarm system. Yes, I saved her once, but no one had good intentions when visiting late at night.

She should be terrified or at least uncomfortable with having a man uninvited and unrelated to her in her bedroom. Instead, she was sitting up in her bed, trying to have a normal Q&A conversation in the dead of night.

​

Alexandra

“For me, forgiveness and compassion are always linked: how do we hold people accountable for wrongdoing and yet at the same time remain in touch with their humanity enough to believe in their capacity to be transformed?”
- Bell Hooks
 

Dublin, Ireland... 

​

I quietly spritzed disinfectant infused with an oil polish onto the wooden pews and wiped the chairs down until they gleamed. The cushioned tuffets used for genuflecting were also meticulously dusted. I took pride in my work and considered it an honor that the Mother Mary Catalina had gifted me such a task. 

I was younger than most of the women in the nunnery. Not that I really knew how old I was, no one did, but I’d been here at the church three years now. Nor was I likely to become a nun. Father Jessup told me that becoming a nun was not my destiny, and I believed him. Instead, I studied for a life outside the church.

I smiled secretly as I thought of the whispered words of encouragement I had uttered in Sister Margaret’s mind this morning. Of all the chores around the church, this and gardening were my favorite.

 Ordinarily I would have completed my task by now, but I got a late start because I was enjoying harvesting the tomatoes and cucumbers the gardeners had planted in the vast gardens of the church. If it wasn’t for that slight quirk of fate, I wouldn’t have been anywhere near this part of the church, at least not at this time of day.

It was the time and place where people shared their deepest, darkest secrets. It was where they admitted to committing some of the most atrocious deeds or having some of the most atrocious deeds done to them.

When the first words became clear to me, I should have done the honorable thing and moved away. My hearing, along with some of my other senses, had always been extraordinary, but I usually tried to respect people’s privacy and deliberately not listen to private conversations.

“Father, forgive me for I have sinned,” the man said in a clear emotionless voice. “It has been one week since my last confession.”

I twisted my lips in annoyance because the man didn’t sound contrite or sorry in the least.

“These are my sins: I killed four people this week. Two were innocents and the other two knew what they were signing up for,” the man continued with a bit of belligerence. “I did my usual fornicating, cussing, and lying.  For these and anything I missed, I am sorry.” The man’s voice dripped with irreverence, not at all as contrite as he should be.

I didn’t need to hear Father Jessup’s quiet Latin words of forgiveness to know that, yet again, this man would be forgiven. Yeah, forgiven, given some useless penance, and given the free will to commit the same sins again in the coming week, I thought. 

Even though I accepted that was not what the church intended, it was often the result. Free will was supposed to be God’s gift to humans. This was one of those times that I couldn’t stand by and let this man hurt someone again.

I was so outraged by such blatant abuse of God’s gift that I didn’t even think about breaching his mind. I just did it. Usually, I only used my gift of persuading others to do what I wanted when I was intent on pleasing Father Jessup, Mother Mary Catalina, or my teachers. As an adult who was lacking in so many social skills, crippled with secrets that made my living in the real world impossible, and greatly dependent on the church’s charity, my world was kept harmonious when those around me were pleased. At least I think that I’m an adult, I looked as if I was nineteen or twenty now, but when I first came here, I looked at least sixteen. Without access to my memory, I could only guess my age based on appearance. My knowledge was lacking in so many ways that it was hardly a measure.  

I used my ability to read minds to give the people around me the responses and actions from me that they wanted. I acted according to their wants where I could.  Otherwise, I effortlessly compelled them to change and want what I thought they should want. A little narcissistic? Yeah, I knew that. However, I made myself feel better by knowing that my wants were never selfish. Getting others to do my will was usually a reflex action and not done with any malicious intent to manipulate them. It had simply been an instinct to survive.

Things like compelling Sister Margaret to be more lenient with my time in the garden, or getting cook to give me an extra dessert, or even getting a sneak peek at an upcoming exam in my teachers’ minds, never mind that I could memorize my textbooks verbatim. Yes, I knew that some of it was wrong, but I never hurt anyone.

People’s pain and suffering I could sense and feel when reading their minds, but I learned very early to avoid such dark emotions. Otherwise, I could easily drown in their pain or their destructive feelings. And infusing myself with so much negativity usually drained me that much quicker, and then I had to refuel myself.

And refueling required stealth because if anyone found out, my world as I knew it would implode and I couldn’t remain here. I couldn’t remember what I was before coming here, and given my diet, I was afraid to find out. So, I tried to refuel as infrequently as possible. I was determined not to get completely empty; some instinct told me that it would be very bad if that should happen.

I entered the confessor’s mind without remorse. I gasped as tears filled my eyes and my limbs trembled at the onslaught of the horrors that filled my mind. This man had not just killed his victims; he had tortured them and enjoyed doing it. Those innocents that he mentioned were teenage girls, whose only crime had been to escape their captors. He was a slaver, trading in young girls and boys. The teenage girls that he killed had escaped their slavers, and this man killed them for it.

I shuddered as some transient memory teased me, but I couldn’t quite grasp it. Given my memory loss, I tried surfing the minds of everyone here. So far, Father Jessup only knew that His Excellency wanted me here, and therefore, I would remain until His Excellency said otherwise.  They knew nothing else about me. I was told that I was brought to the church three years ago by someone for my own safety. Nothing else. I had been hiding among the sisters, even wearing the uniform of the novices to fit in. It was beyond frustrating. 

However, it was fortunate that I knew enough to guard the secrets that I had accidentally uncovered, including how to sustain my very unusual diet. Pure instinct guided me. I don’t remember how I knew what to do, but I instinctively knew how to sustain myself.

Most of the confessor’s victims were people like me. A person of color. The confessor didn’t consider them human beings with basic rights.  They were mere commodities to be traded to the highest bidder. This wasn’t even his only crime. He also sold illegal guns and drugs for his employer.

Everything about this man offended me. I wanted him to suffer for his crimes. Sure, God was in the forgiveness business, and as a ward of the Church, I should let Father Jessup’s absolution stand. I was appalled that someone could do something so heinous, so egregious, and yet they were forgiven so easily. That pissed me off, and I couldn’t let that stand. 

I waited outside the church, in the shadows behind the shrubs at the entrance: “Confess your sins to the police. Obey me,” I whispered into his mind. I didn’t have to speak out loud. I spoke telepathically.

The man immediately stopped in his tracks and looked around as though he had been injected by a needle and not a suggestion.

I almost laughed at his comical expression.

“Is that you, Lord?” he asked fearfully.

I didn’t dare blaspheme and claim such a thing. So, I ignored his question and let him draw his own conclusion. “Confess your every deed,” I continued, “the trafficking of humans, drugs, and guns, and also the murder, rape, and theft,” I wove into his mind.

“But I thought I was forgiven.” He was pleading now.

 “A man reaps what he sows. Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction.” I quoted a verse from the book of Galatians in an ominous voice. Yup, I could be dramatic when I needed to be. LOL!  “You may be forgiven, but you must pay for your sins.”