Voodoo Queens of New Orleans

Hezekiah stepped around slowly, examining my room with steps that were mute against the old flooring. His eyes narrowed and studied my books, the closet, the TV and everything else. The judgmental state of his gaze made me self-conscious.

“You’re inside,” I tell him. “Now, what is it that you want?”

Hezekiah reaches deep into his pocket and pulls out my pendant—the deep blue gris-gris Mama gifted me the day I arrived, blessed by Legba’s veve stamped on the front. Against my better judgment, I smiled.

“My pendant,” I sighed out in relief. “You kept it?”

“Actually, I lost it at first. When the Coterie came to the Jubilee, the Elders were the first ones out. Not only did I get separated from you, but I got separated from your little necklace, too. I managed to come back inside and find it wedged in a booth downstairs before the flames got too bad.”

My gris-gris dangled between Hezekiah and me. He waited for me to grab it; I was a little scared to but built up the courage to take it from his icy hold.

“Did anyone else make it out?” I asked him, slipping my gris-gris back on with the intention of showing him that the Loa were looking out for me once again.

“The Elders,” he answered, “some Leeches and a few other clans. Boone, too. That’s about it.”

I guess I could have ruled out Rashida being a Skinwalker.

Hezekiah didn’t look sad at the news. Actually, he didn’t care much. I, for one, felt guilty that Mama burned down the Jubilee for me.

“It wasn’t my fault, you know.” I looked away from him. “I didn’t ask Mama to do that.”

“Oh, I know it wasn’t you. You ain’t capable of something like that.”

I didn’t know whether to feel offended or flattered.

“What of Abraham?” I asked. “What has he said?”

He leaned his back against the dresser drawer. I knew he loved the way I couldn’t help but stare at his body teasing me through his open shirt. At least he had the decency to keep his shirt somewhat tucked in.

“I wouldn’t know. I haven’t talked to him since the night we took you.”

“Why?”

Hezekiah shook his head. “Too many questions. Now, I believe you got something of mine?”

His eyebrows raised expectantly. I almost forgot about the locket of his that I had. I walked over to the desk and pulled out the desk drawer, taking his locket and holding it by the clasp. I pivoted towards him and stood deathly still when I saw the way his eyes drank me in. He was staring at my naked legs with no restraint, his eyes dancing over the curves of my thighs; undoubtedly staring at my ass when I was faced the other way moments before.

“Here,” I muttered. Hezekiah grabbed the locket from me and put it in his pocket. I wanted to ask him who the woman in the locket was, but it was clear that he hated when I asked too many questions.

Instead of leaving, Hezekiah continued to stroll around my room at a nail-biting slow pace. I swallowed hard as I followed him; my worst fear was that he would either go downstairs and terrorize the Coterie and all the House members, or Mama would undo the lock on my door somehow and find Hezekiah Mercier with me.

Either option would end in bloodshed.

“You been holed up here long?” he asked me.

“No.” I didn’t want to give too much away. “I won’t be here long.”

“You don’t need to lie to me, Babygirl. Abraham won’t know you’re here.”

Hezekiah looked back at me again, more specifically, my body. “I’d hate for this to be the last time I see you.”

Don’t fall for it, Lisa.

“Me, or what you’re lusting over?” I questioned harshly. He chuckled like a pleasured lion before peeking into my closet.

“What are you doing?” I asked him. He didn’t answer. Instead, he disappeared in a blink of an eye inside my closet. I’d be a fool to go in there and fish him out, so I waited until he emerged. And he did.

With my vibrator in his hand.

“Didn’t expect to find this in there,” he said with a sadistic smile wide enough to showcase his sharp incisors. His thumb played against the power switch, on and off, on and off; he amused himself with the sound of its vibration.

“Mortified” is an insulting understatement.

“Give that back!” I snapped at him. I reached forward, but it was no secret that he was quicker. His hand extended the other direction so fast that I bumped into him. I didn’t expect his body to be so cold, but his stare was colder, having hit him.

“I didn’t let you inside my room so you could sift through my personal belongings,” I said. When we were finally apart, he set the vibrator on the bedside table. The thought of me having a sex toy in my possession still rung around in his mind. I knew it did.

“You’re right. You didn’t.”

“Then why are you here? You got your necklace, didn’t you?”

“I came here to apologize,” he said. And at first, I laughed. But when I saw the graveness of his face, I held in the rest of my laughter.

“You’re serious?”

“Of course, I am. You know with my clan, I ain’t got much of a choice. Especially with Abraham being Vampire Lord and whatnot.”

I didn’t want to believe him, but he was so fucking convincing. He ran a cold hand down his face, scratching his beard with regretful eyes.

“You always have a choice,” I replied, frustrated with his testament. “You chose to kidnap me and leave me at some juke joint with a bunch of vampires that could have easily taken advantage of me or killed me, had they known who I really was.”

“You think I don’t know that?” he questioned. “You obviously don’t understand how vampire clans work. Let me put it this way: me being here with you is decapitation. Easy. Me rescuing you from those cracker vampires? Burned on the stake. Just like that. Shit, I’ve risked a lot for you, Lisa.”

“Why?” I asked, craning my neck to meet his flaming eyes. “Why did you come back for me? Why the hell are you even here?”

I should have been afraid of Hezekiah in that moment. The way he looked down at me screamed instant, painful death. But I kept staring at him because I wanted to know why. When he rubbed the back of his neck, forcing himself not to look at me, I calmed down a little.

“It’s been hard, the past couple of days, cher,” he then said.

I scoffed and started for the desk to put on my glasses. “Why? Your eyes are bright; you’ve been feeding well.”

“That’s not what I meant,” he growled. After I put on my glasses, I could see the frustration on his face clearer, and instantly regretted testing him.

“What did you mean?” I asked softly.

Hezekiah buried his hands in the pockets of his trousers. “I haven’t...I’ve been thinking about you ever since the Jubilee,” he confessed. “Every day. I haven’t been able to get you out of my head and it’s fucking annoying.”

You know that feeling you get when you’re on a rollercoaster—your stomach drops, the wind hits you hard and you can’t seem to breathe against the thumping of your heart? I stood there feeling like I was riding a rollercoaster. Hezekiah walked over to me but couldn’t look me in the eye.

“I ain’t supposed to feel this way,” he said. “Especially about you. I barely even know you,” he laughed dryly before rubbing his eyes in a tired manner. “Goddamnit, you’re driving me crazy.”

I struggled to speak. Really, it was because I didn’t know what to say to him. I stammered out words until they became coherent.

“What have you been thinking about?” I asked him, almost impatiently.

That’s when he looked at me. I couldn’t handle the intensity of his eyes, but they wouldn’t leave me alone.

“You don’t wanna know,” he answered.

“Why not?”

“Lisa—”

“What have you been thinking about, Hezekiah?” I asked again, stern and assertive. His tongue glossed over his fangs before he spoke; my heart clenched in my chest.

“It kind of started off simple,” he began. “I wondered if you were safe and sound with your mama, what you were doing, what you were wearing, shit like that.”

I nodded, not as understanding, but as clearance for him to continue. And he did, but not before walking closer towards me. Instinctively, I backed away until my back was touching the wall. I looked down at my bare feet as he began again, barely a foot of space between us.

“Then it started getting deeper. I started making up scenarios in my head about you.”

“Scenarios,” I exhaled shakily.

He nodded, smirking a bit. “Yeah, scenarios.” His voice lowered to a modest speaking voice. “I...I thought about you wearing this tight little sundress—one to show off all of your curves.”

He touched me before he continued. His fingers lightly grazed my thighs and traveled upwards at a snail’s pace. I sucked in a sharp breath and held it for as long as I could.

“What else?” I asked with the gradual release of my breath.

“I’d run my hands up your dress like this,” he said. “Feeling your thighs all the way up to your panties. You’d think I’d take them off of you, but I wouldn’t.” He bit his lip, as pent up and sexually frustrated as me. “Not yet. I’d...I’d just keep messing with you because I know how wet you already are for me.”

I could barely breathe. I was throbbing between my legs and he hadn’t touched me for long. “What else would you do?” I asked him. Demanded of him.

Suddenly, he pushed his hand between my thighs and cupped my pussy in his palm. I cried out but held the rest of my scream in through gritted teeth. The last thing I wanted was to wake up the house.

“I’d rub you like this, right?” he said; grunted. “I’d rub your pussy through your panties just like this, Babygirl. You’d beg me not to stop and I wouldn’t.”

“No,” I gasped. “Don’t stop.”

And he didn’t. His hand was a force to be reckoned with, mercilessly pleasing the aching between my legs until my back arched against the wall. He pushed his hips against mine as he increased his momentum; his dick was hard, swelling up in his pants and pushing against my mound.

“I wouldn’t stop until you come,” he said to me, eyes levelled with mine, smile wide and devious from the pained and pleasured look on my face. Our lips touched but we didn’t kiss. His mouth breathed into mine and his teeth sunk gently into my bottom lip as I whimpered, rendered helpless as he continued to lightly bite my lip with the cruelest of intentions in mind. My fingers slid up his shoulders. He didn’t stop me. I slipped his shirt off of his torso, gliding my hands all the way down his solid chest, my fingers rolling like waves over the muscles of his stomach. God, I was so close. I knew I was going to come, and Hezekiah knew it, too. His hand moved slower and slower, the burning in my pussy growing and reaching down to my inner thighs and up into my stomach.

Suddenly, Hezekiah removed his hand from between my legs and threw me onto the bed on my chest—the same way he had me at The Shack. My body was shaking, my hands fists over the sheets scrunched in my palms. My shorts were taken off with my thong by Hezekiah’s rough and unforgiving grip and slid down my legs until I kicked them off myself. I just waited for him to fuck me. I didn’t care how dead or alive it would feel, I just wanted his dick inside of me so he could make me come like he said he would.

“You haven’t come yet,” he said. It wasn’t a question, but I shook my head anyway.

“Good. Don’t come until I say you can.”

“Alright,” I panted. I saw his shadow looming over me, his arm reaching over to the bedside table to retrieve my vibrator. Immediately, Hezekiah flicked the vibrator on and pressed the tip against my clit. I moaned into the mattress, sweat beaded on my forehead and dripping down my neck. The moans turned into cries—cries for him to put it all inside my pussy.

“Arch your back, Babygirl,” he ordered, and I did with without a second thought. His hand grabbed my hip, holding me steady.

“That’s it,” he hummed before sliding the vibrator deep inside me. I moaned and gasped into the sheets while he kept steady movements, pushing and pulling the vibrator in and out of me while his fingers stimulated my clit. The way he pushed his freezing body into mine and rocked with my movements made me think that he was really fucking me. No, but this was a tease—he was going to make me come without having put his dick inside me, let alone kiss me. But he knew when I wanted to come.

“Not yet,” he said to me when I was on the verge of climaxing. I never thought a walking corpse could make me the horniest I’ve ever felt in my life. But he did; he was walking, talking sex. And I wanted him over and over again despite the fact that I hadn’t come for him yet.

“Hezekiah, I can’t,” I whined, but he shut my protest up by pushing the vibrator even deeper inside me—so deep, my g-spot felt it. And right when it did, he gave me permission to come. And immediately, my body tensed tight before relaxing into euphoria, my pussy pulsing faster than a rabbit’s foot while my legs quivered. I whimpered once more before sighing and catching my breath as I finished climax; my thighs were damp. I’d never been so wet before.

Hezekiah slowly pulled the vibrator out from inside me while he removed his hips from my ass. Once he turned it off, he tossed it onto the ground. My body was flipped around onto my back; I was too weak to move. Hezekiah stood above me, shirtless, the shadows from my lamp accentuating ever muscle on his body; the sharpness of his cheekbones. I just breathed deeply and stared at him, and he stared at me. I expected him to sink his teeth into me; I knew that he wanted to. That would be his form of climax while making me come was his foreplay. But he didn’t. Instead, he felt my thighs again, groping them, squeezing them and rubbing his thumbs over my hipbones. I writhed my hips to it and gnawed on my lip, sighing with broken breaths. His hands traveled up my hips and to my waist, lifting up my shirt. And it was then that Hezekiah Mercier and I were face to face. I gazed deeply into those eyes—it was like looking into an inferno. He wasn’t going to kiss me like I wanted; if he kissed me, it would lock the chest and dispose of the key. No, no. Instead, he rubbed his lips against mine again, tickling my nose with his. His fangs ran across my mouth; I breathed faster. Closing my eyes, I had a tiny hope in me that he’d plant his lips onto mine, but I knew it was too good to be true. When I opened my eyes, he was gone—escaped out of the window and into the Louisiana night in less than two seconds. After he left, I laid on the bed and stared up at the ceiling. God, I couldn’t stand that blood-sucking bastard.

Yet at the same time, I missed him already.