Page 63 of Judas

Bounding into their living room, Eliza stared across the space at the only man she could ever love. His head was bowed reverently as he carefully sliced mushrooms to add to the risottohe was preparing for dinner. For a long pause, she just admired him standing there. He was beautiful beyond words. Inside and out. Her heart gave an enthusiastic flutter as she gazed at him. Then another body part gavea flutter too because the things that man could do to her body…

Shaking off the rising hormones, Eliza walked across the space and sat on a bar stool across the counter from him. He looked up at her and smiled.

“My Eliza, are you ready for dinner?”

She smiled back and said nothing. She simply slid a positive pregnancy test across the counter.

He looked at the test and a million thoughts raced through his mind. Joy. Fear. Elation. Anxiety. In the onslaught of questions and emotions, his hand slipped and the knife sliced through his flesh.

He cried out at the pain, “Khara!”

Eliza gasped and came to stand next to him as he ran the bleeding finger under cold water. She’d hoped he’dbe as excited as she was. They’d talked about the possibility of having children someday, but always in the capacity of adoption. Judas wasn’t even sure it was possible for a thousands year old immortal being to have children, but it was in their plan somehow. Now, seeing the blank look on his face and the uncharacteristic slip of his knife, Eliza wasn’t so sure.

As she came to his side and her whole body pressed against him, Judas quickly forgot all his questions. Suddenly, he could think of nothing, not even his bleeding wound, but the fact that her body had a tiny piece of them both growing inside her. He was filled with a warmth he had never experienced before.

Looking down at her worried eyes, Judas placed his not-bleeding hand against her stomach. She flushed at his touch and their eyes met.

“Is there really a baby in there?” he asked.

Eliza nodded.

A jubilant smile overtook his face and he leaned down to place his mouth against hers. Desire and love swirled inside him and the way he wanted her on a normal daily basis exploded into something even more ferocious. He needed to have her right here, right now. He wanted to worship this new body that was creating a new life within it.

Breaking the kiss, Judas reached to shut off the water, sure his cut had healed itself completely by this point. As he moved to touch her, Eliza cried out.

“Judas! You’re still bleeding!” She grabbed paper towels and began to wrap them around his wound, soaking up the blood.

Desire moved to the back of his mind, as Judas turned his main focus to the cut on his hand. She was right. The cut was still wide open and pouring blood. It looked like it might even need stitches. Leaning toward it, Judas stared in awe.

He swallowed hard as he turned to Eliza, “I… I’m not healing.”

Her eyebrows furrowedand concern took over her entire face as a million what ifs passed through her mind, “Judas, I don’t understand.”

He wasn’t sure, but for the briefest of moments, he thought he felt the familiar clasp of a long lost friend’s hand on his shoulder. The phantom touch didn’t answer his questions, but it allowed a glowing feeling of possibility to take root in his mind.

Judas swallowed hard, staring at the beautiful woman before him. The woman he feared losing since the moment he met her. The woman that he wasn’t sure he would be able to live without someday when she was old and gray and too elderly to carry on in life. This woman that he craved growing old with. And, now, this child. This growing life that he would undoubtedly love more than any life he could ever have. This child that he would also outlive.

Judas swallowed back his tears of gratitude, “I think it might be the answer to my prayers.”

Without another word and with his wounded flesh ignored and forgotten, Judas swept Eliza into his arms and placed her on the counter before him. He spent the rest of the evening making her body shake with pleasure until they were both spent.

Until their dinner was burnt embers on the stovetop.

Until the certainty of forever became the possibility of a life well spent.

Epilogue

Mary, or Mistress Maggie, as her employees and the world’s elite called her, spent the last several centuries wandering from country to country offering her services to the very wealthy. She learned a long time ago that rich men had very singular desires and were willing to pay obscene amounts of money to fulfill them. She lived well and got to degrade powerful men in the process. She considered it a win-win.

Helmut Von Albrecht was born into wealth but pretended to have built his business empire from the ground up. Having his hands in multiple industries, he fancied himself an innovator, but really he just had more money than any one person ever should and bought other people’s ideas out from under them. On paper, he looked like a thriving success. In reality, he was a fragile man-child with mommy issues who paid Mary to tell him what a piece of shit he was.

Standing over him, Mary looked down her long leather pantsuit, twisting the toe of her black leather stiletto harder on the sensitive skin of his scrotum as he squirmed under her gaze.

“And what does a nasty little bootlicker like you say? Hmm?” she demanded in her sing-song cadence of an adult talking to a small child.

Helmut grimaced up at his mistress, “Thank you, madam.”

“And will my dirty, nasty little pig disobey me again?” she arched an eyebrow.

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