The Gift She Gives Ch. 13

Quickly, he turned towards the door of the room while Vesper shouted his name and yanked it open. Standing outside, his hand raised halfway up the door, palm open towards the room in which Mr. Hughes stood, was Derrick. Son of a bitch. How could he not have known?

"Mr. Hughes." Derrick immediately stood straight and gave his employer an awkward smile.

"That man worked for me for eight years, Luce. I hope you at least buried his body." Mr. Hughes said in a voice laced with ice as he took a step towards the man he was speaking to, knowing the demon stepped back to keep space between them.

Now that Mr. Hughes was paying attention to it, he could tell that the man posing as his employee was not human. His ears burned with anger as he thought about what had happened to the real Derrick. Son of a bitch.

The mouth quirked up on one side as the shape of the face before him began to change slowly, and the skin darkened and the body swelled with more defined muscle.

"It's a wonder he let you leave, Archimendes." The silky baritone of the former angel made his skin crawl and Mr. Hughes clenched his hands in fists on either side of his body.

"You are not welcome here. You will not use me to get to Him, do you understand? I will not allow it." Mr. Hughes growled, shutting Vesper into the room before she could try to come out and join them in the hall.

"How can you stay bound to him like this? He cast you aside. He forces you to fuck and dominate. He punishes you every day for His sins. You owe Him nothing."

"I owe Him everything."

"Not her, you don't. He didn't provide her to you." The smirk on the demon's face was more than he could handle and Mr. Hughes reached out and grabbed the man by the neck and pushed him up against the wall.

"She is good. You stay away from her." He seethed as the demon wrapped his hands around Mr. Hughes' forearms and looked down at him.

"You've let me touch her, remember, it was very pleasant. To hear her cry out like that, I can see why she affects you so much." The words only made him more infuriated and Mr. Hughes jerked his arms, making the demon fall to the floor near the front door.

"I may not be able to kill you, but I will sense your presence should you come again. Get away from here and do not come back. I am not the only nonhuman who cares about her, and even those of the darkness will side with her." Mr. Hughes opened the door.

"I don't need to be here to watch you agonize over her, Fezekial won't be the only angel to want her. You'll see." Mr. Hughes heard Lucifer's chuckle as he got up and straightened his shirt before walking out of the door.

Son of a bitch. Mr. Hughes slammed the door and felt the room shake a little. Closing his eyes, he focused on his breathing. He knew that the demon was retreating because the heat that had permeated the room just a moment ago was beginning to subside. Walking over to the door of his office, he opened it and quickly realized that Vesper was no longer inside. Frowning, worried, he walked into the dining room and saw Shi sitting at the table as she went over some order forms.

"Have you seen Vesper?" He asked, approaching her hastily.

"She just went outside." She looked at him, her eyes a little wide, she must have heard the conversation between him and the devil, but had no intention of mentioning it.

"Outside?" Mr. Hughes frowned.

He made his way out the door to the patio and looked around, not seeing her at first. Calling her name, he stepped down onto the grass. Where could she be? Her area was clearly marked in the lawn and he could not see her within it. He frowned harder, maybe she had gone back in through another door. He was turning towards the conservatory door when he heard her call his name.

Mr. Hughes turned towards the woods and watched as she emerged from between a group of trees. He stayed completely still as she made her way over to him, a smile on her face as she did so. When she was five feet away, she stopped, and then took a hesitant step towards him, and then returned to her previous position. Had she just tested to see if she still felt pain in his presence?

"That was him, wasn't it? The de-the one who created me?"

"He didn't create you, he stole you."

"Well, anyway, that was him." Vesper sighed and looked around her, "Is he gone?"

"Yes. I will know if he comes back."

"Was he always Derrick?"

"While you were here, yes. The real Derrick, I am assuming he killed just after your arrival. After you had healed his broken arm."

She looked sad, but she would be, death affected her more than it did him, she hadn't spent her whole existence as an instrument of it. "He killed him so that he could get close to me?"

"Yes."

"I think this is something I would have preferred you keep a secret from me." She muttered, her eyes lowering to his shoes for a moment.

"You were in the forest, why would you put yourself through that pain again?" He asked, not wanting her to dwell on something that she couldn't deal with, or fix.

"I wasn't in pain." Vesper looked up at him, her eyes hooked to his gray ones, "I started thinking that maybe he had something to do with my not being able to physically leave here. I was able to go anywhere I wanted before I came here. I thought that maybe it wasn't the spa I was being rooted to, but that he wanted me close to you."

"And?"

"And he left, and I was right."

"You were right?" He frowned.

"I can leave the spa, Mr. Hughes. I'm not tied here anymore."

You can leave the spa." His heart shattered into a million little pieces.

"Yes."

"Vesper." Please, God, don't leave me, he thought, I'll never get through it.

"Ms. Carson can build me a little house on the other side of the woods now, in that little meadow area that you told me about. With a picket fence and everything. Will you take me to it so we can find a good spot?"

He felt his eyes fill with tears and he couldn't believe how he was instantly taken with sobs. Her face looked stricken as he squatted down in his spot and covered his face with his hands. Mr. Hughes wanted nothing more than to touch her, but he knew that would cause her pain.

"You thought I would leave here? You thought I would leave you?" Her voice was whisper soft and he could tell she was smiling a little.

"You have no reason to stay."

"You're wrong, you big, stupid angel. I have every reason to stay. I learned a long time ago that the world was a big scary place. My place is here, with you."

"With me?"

"Yes. Maybe a little bit of space, but not a lot, will help us figure all of this out."

"I hope so, Vesper." Mr. Hughes said as he stood back up and began to follow her into the woods, he really hoped she was right.

~*~*~*~

The trees in the woods were always sparse along the edge, but as they moved through the center of the small forest, they became a little more dense and it was easy to get lost in the brush. Vesper walked alongside Mr. Hughes, though with some space between them, through the beautiful, vegetated center and couldn't help but glance over at him repeatedly as they made their way through to the meadow he had once spoken about.

He had cried. She had watched as he broke down weeping, his face contorted with what she knew to be relief after she had told him that she wasn't leaving, even though she knew that she could. He had cried, over her. It had been so difficult not to reach forward and touch him at that moment, and maybe she should have. Maybe she should just take the chance that it wouldn't kill her if she actually touched his skin. But what if doing so changed things? It was obvious that they hadn't been fully in control of how they had acted, but how much of what they had done to each other had been coerced by the-the, gosh, she couldn't even think his name, and how much was actually their own reaction to their situation? She wanted to know for sure before she did anything more. She wanted to know that this man was worth her life, if that's what he took from her.

Thinking about all of the times that Derrick had been around them, secretly plotting for them to fight, to get angry so quickly, it made her shiver a little. Why would he do this? Why would he try to put Mr. Hughes and her in the middle of some age old conflict between heaven and hell? What had Mr. Hughes done to deserve to be put in that position? Was it just because he was a fallen angel that he had been allowed to come to earth? Was it that? Was it jealousy? She bit her lip as she walked around a particularly tall bush near the northern edge of the woods. Was he jealous because he didn't get the same treatment from his god?

"When I think about all of the things you have done to me while I've been here, I still feel mad about it, Arc." She said casually while the stepped out of the trees finally and into a wide, grass covered meadow. It was beautiful, just as he had said.

"I do, too, Vesper. I am incredibly mad at myself for what I have done, and what you did, I'm still not all right with it. But I'm not feeling that...rage anymore." Mr. Hughes nodded.

"We've spent so much time hurting each other. I don't know if we can fix it all." Vesper shook her head as she looked around her. This area was really beautiful, and because of the trees, you couldn't even see the spa.

"I would need to have a road cut through the trees to get back here, but we could situate it to an area that wouldn't interrupt any views, and where you would still have some privacy." He said, looking around him.

Vesper grinned, "I was just thinking that I wouldn't want to be so easily seen from the spa. That place, the clients, I don't really want to be around them if I don't have to be."

"You let Fezekial kiss you. I think that's what bothers me the most. Our anger might have been being...enhanced by Luce, but it doesn't change the fact that I had to watch you kiss an angel, that I watched you helplessly as he kissed your pussy." Mr. Hughes' statement made her frown and look at him, he was right, she had let it happen.

"There is no good excuse for that, so I won't try to offer you one. All I can do is hope that you will forgive me. Just as I am trying to forgive the fact that even though that man is gone, you will still feel compelled to have sex with other people." Vesper walked further to the west, she liked the way the line of trees sloped up a little in this area.

"If I could stop, I would. I swear it." Mr. Hughes said a little more hoarsely, the conversation about his compulsions was going in circles, he didn't know what to do about it.

"I know you would. I do, but it still really really hurts me." Vesper bit her lip as she looked out at the land around them. Closing her eyes, she breathed in the earthy scents around her and let out a long sigh.

"Vesper." He whispered hoarsely, she knew he didn't want to argue, they were well past that.

"I know we've started over once before, but maybe we should start again. Maybe for us, it's gonna take three tries to get it right." She turned fully to her fallen angel and focused on his grey eyes, not dark and stormy, nor light and frightened, just open and pewter and hopeful.

"If we don't work out, you will leave?" He asked and she knew just doing so was painful for him, but she nodded anyway.

"I will leave."

"And if we do work out, how does that look for us?"

"Well, if we work out, if we truly want to be together, then I touch you." Vesper gave him the slightest of smiles as his face paled by several degrees and he frowned at her.