Love's Hostage: An Erotic Game of Cops and Robbers

By Lucius Wolfe

A small-time con-man tries to play the hero... and loses everything. Now, horribly disfigured and alone, he must find a new life for himself in the slums that he fought so hard to escape. He finds friends in the darkness. They band together to topple the evil government, but there's one little problem.
He's fallen in love.
With the woman who's sworn to send him straight to hell.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lucius Wolfe
• Release date: May 3, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370133444

Lucius Wolfe

Hello! I've always been rooting for the crazy guy who has trouble with boundaries. So, you can expect that he'll be the hero, or at least, that he gets what he wants. I consider all of my endings to be HEA, but you may disagree. My niches include: -Force/mindbreak/noncon -Violence -Shifter romance -Paranormal -Science-fiction -Transgressive -Slow descent into madness (I'm sure there's a genre for that) My proudest accomplishment is finding a plausible plot twist that led to tentacle porn in one of my books.

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Love's Hostage: An Erotic Game of Cops and Robbers

Copyright © 2017 by Lucius Wolfe.

Published by Oso Fine Books.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the e-mail address below.

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Written and produced in the United States of America.

CHAPTER 1

I stood up slowly, still stunned by the explosion. Everything seemed intact, although the sharp pain in my ankle told me that something was strained or broken. Something warm tickled my neck. I scratched at it and pulled my hand away when I felt something wet. My hand was covered in blood. Terrified, I slowly moved my fingers towards my face, just barely brushing the surface with my fingers. I stopped when I felt bone and frayed flesh where my cheek used to be.

I put my hand down and walked numbly back to where I had left my car. Thankfully, it was still there. I looked down to avoid seeing my reflection in the window. I turned my mirror away, but I saw the briefest flash of bloody meat where my face should have been. I focused on my breathing and started the car. It wasn’t a long drive, and Sarina could fix me up. I lifted off the ground smoothly, transitioning into hyper drive without stalling out. I focused intensely on the road ahead of me, letting the car do the driving. The mission had been a failure; they had known about us and set traps.

My sweet red life was dribbling steadily down my neck and staining the business suit that I had worn. It was now a bloody mess of expensive rags. So much for professionalism. I swore to myself that I would from henceforth carry on all professional business in one of my vast collection of casual flower shirts.

I surprised myself by making it back to the house. I was too weak to open the door to get out of the car. I was just thinking about the irony of dying so close to home when my phone rang. I had left it in the car to keep it from going off at an inopportune time. Sometimes I really just could not figure out the buttons on these older devices. It was Sarina calling me. The BlueTooth that I had installed had been destroyed along with my face, so I had to push the answer button like some sort of Dark Ages peasant.

Jiri? Yo, are you there? She was trying to be quiet by using a whisper louder than normal conversation. Her S’es grated against the ears like static.

Yea, I said weakly, turning my head towards the phone and withdrawing at the pain of the rough fabric on my raw bone.

Did you get it? Where are you right now?

Come outside. I’m in the car. I can’t move…

What?

I put all of the effort I could into saying Come outside! But it only came out as a weak whisper. Then I felt my head fall against the rough fabric again, but this time there was no pain, only darkness.

I woke up sometime later in the familiar chaos of my bedroom. Pictures and documents lay haphazardly on the big desk that dominated most of the room and an illegible scrawl went rampant on the white board behind it. The mess looked like the work of a madman. Was I mad?

As I scanned the room, I felt the pressure of a bandage over my right eye. There was a throbbing pain that spread across most of my face. I gingerly raised my hand up to the right side and sighed with relief when I felt clean bandages beneath it. The memory of feeling the underpinnings of my face flashed into my mind. It was then that I noticed that my hand was also covered in bandages, and there was an IV in my left arm. Heartened by the fact that my wounds were covered, I did a careful inventory of the bandaging on my to try to gauge the damage. Most of my face was covered, minus my left eye and the lower left half of my face. My right side had suffered the brunt of the damage, judging from the bandage ratio.

I sat up, which didn’t feel so bad, then I tried to rearrange my legs, which felt strangely heavy. This turned out to be a mistake. Something had gone horribly wrong with the right leg, and the left leg was also making pangs of protest in solidarity with his brother. I broke into a sweat, biting my lip and cursing my rashness. When the pain died down to a dull roar, I noticed that my mouth was significantly more spacious. My tongue was rolling around like a puppy on freshly-mowed grass. No doubt about it; I’d lost two bottom molars and a top molar from the feel of it, in addition to my BlueTooth.

I sighed and thanked my lucky stars that I had chosen the life of a low-down criminal. We had the drop on all the best and cheapest black-market body parts. Teeth were a dime a dozen, and in recent years they even came with easy do-it-yourself installation bots. Self-anesthesia kits were where they made their real money. But it was still cheaper than seeing a dentist without insurance.

I laid my head back against the headboard and waited for Sarina to come back. I dozed off, only to be awoken again almost immediately.

You’re awake, are you? Sarina looked stoic as always, her time as a nurse serving her well.

I nodded, still not willing to move my delicate mouth.

Yea, I wouldn’t talk, either if I were you. It was… messy. I’m about to change your dressings, so hold still and try not to scream.

Her normally hard eyes softened a little bit, and her harsh, smoke-cured voice carried hints of tenderness, mixed in with the earthy smell of tobacco. I’m sorry; this is really going to hurt a lot. There are some painkillers in your IV drip, but they can only do so much.

Her sympathy warned me more than anything else that this was going to be a very painful process indeed. The cold air stung my wounds, but not as badly as the interstellar-grade antiseptic that she was splashing on the fresh cuts. I screamed inside of my closed mouth, and even the sharp-tongued Sarina didn’t make a comment.

She knew that the high-power antixenobiotics felt like soaking your face in the stomach acid of the Face-melting Toad-donkey of Qarktan. In fact, the cheapest and most effective antixenobiotics were based off of that very fluid, with the face-melting side effects cut down to reasonable damage. There would be some major scarring; there always was. When she finished changing the dressings, I felt like a new man, since the one I used to be had melted under the pine-fresh power of topical antiseptics.

I know you can’t really talk right now, and you should probably rest up between the torture sessions, but by tomorrow I should be able to cut back the dressing changes to every 12 hours, and you should be able to stand a Psyke-chat in between. I gather that the mission didn’t go well, but did you manage to get it?

I looked her in the eye and thought very carefully before shrugging. I thought that I had, but the explosion might have destroyed it. I didn’t want to get her hopes up.

She snorted and shook her head, her long hair tied back in a loose braid. The luscious black hair contrasted sharply with her admittedly porcine features. Her nose was small and upturned and her eyes were equally small and… for lack of a better term, beady. Her bushy eyebrows were only separated by the narrowest isthmus of skin. As always, she was in jeans and a flannel shirt, neither of which flattered her sturdy figure. While I’m being blunt, I would put it on par with a bulldog.

She was never without admirers, however. When we weren’t busy with other things, she occupied her time by glitzing up and getting romanced by a variety of suitors, both rich and poor. There was an inexplicable sexuality that she managed to radiate despite significant aesthetic handicaps. Her dominating personality called to weaker men like a siren’s song.

The house we were staying in right now was actually supplied by her most current beau, as well as the car that I had ruined. She got up to leave. In the tingling haze of residual agony, I caught a glimpse of what other men saw. Had she always sashayed like that, or was I just imagining it?

The day went by in a haze of uneasy sleep and agonizing dressing changes. I didn’t realize at the time how grateful I should have been for the dreamless sleep, however uncomfortable. I was distracted by the afterburn of the antibiotics and the awkwardness of knowing that Sarina had put a catheter in my dick. When she finished taping up my face for the umpteenth time, she reached over to the desk and grabbed some iSelf facilitators.

That’ll be the last of the 4-hour changes. Now, we’ve got 12 hours before we have to do it again. You up for a Psyke chat, since you can’t talk right now?

I nodded, tears rolling down my face and soaking my bandages. Damn, that hurt. I couldn’t help but think about what all the explosions and acid had done to my beautiful, beautiful face. Well, maybe beautiful was pushing it. But I could see the swelling underneath the bandages, and I knew what antixenobiotics did to skin… the frothing, the bubbling, the hideous scarring that was beyond being called ‘keloid.’

It was better than having something nest in your skin, growing quietly, eating away at your flesh so that you don't notice until it’s too late… I mentally shook myself as Sarina attached the Facilitator to my left temple.

I was immediately taken to my iSelf desktop, which looked like someone had vomited up a .pdf dinner. The facilitator reported no serious damage. A few files had been corrupted, but there was no trouble with the hardware that was installed in my tender scalp or with the brain itself. All systems were running smoothly; the fancy antivirus bing-ed quietly as it updated itself. As a crook, I knew exactly what could happen if you were a little lazy with your psyche-net security. I’d taken advantage of it a few times myself…

It was one of the reasons that, despite the inconvenience, I made a point to take my facilitator off whenever I wasn’t actively using it. If I didn’t have the facilitator running, my iSelf didn’t connect with the psyche-net, and no one could access me while I was busy buying gelato.

What’s more, I found the tempting diversion of the psyche-net to be too distracting when I was going about my daily life. Call me old-fashioned, but I didn’t like having to divide my attention between the chatbox in my mind and correcting the gelato-man when he charged me too much. I’d screw up one or the other. The cognitive enhancements that came with a non-facilitated iSelf upgrade were enough to get me by during my daily life, and if they weren’t, I almost always had a facilitator on-hand. Anti-viruses were all well and good, but people like me could find ways around it, and that’s not even considering how much the government knew about us.

That, and so much more, is why I would normally be strictly averse to having a conversation like this on Psyke. However, I knew that Sarina needed to be up-to-date with the situation, and I couldn’t move my mouth. The pain alone would normally be enough to stop me, but I could also feel the creeping growth of hyper-reactive healing sewing my mouth shut. I sighed and clicked on the bright blue icon. The default hologram of an androgynous humanoid figure popped up in front of me. Sarina shared my minimalist mindset when it came to her psyche-net information. It was actually surprising how many men she met, given that most people met strictly through the psyche-net and she didn’t have so much as a real Psyke profile.

Ilovedicks69<3 says: So, did you get it or not? You smug bastard, shrugging at me. If you weren’t in horrible, disfiguring pain, I’d slap you.

~FlamingCockDragon~ says: Whoa, whoa, buttercup. I know I picked it up, but I wasn’t sure if it survived the explosion. I didn’t want to get your hopes up.

Ilovedicks69<3 says: Yea, the burn marks and the horrendous wounds had me thinking explosion. So what happened?

~FlamingCockDragon~ says: I showed up, did a quick security check, disabled some sneaky cameras before I even stepped out of the car… I guess that should have been my warning. But I thought since we were dealing with criminals, there’s no reason they wouldn’t be trying to get the dirt on us…

Ilovedicks69<3 says: Get on with it. It’s in the past; no point regretting it.

~FlamingCockDragon~ says: Long story short, no one was within detectable range, and when I scanned the package, it seemed to be safe. The scanner also indicated that it had what we had ordered inside. So I picked it up, tucked it away and started to escape when the barrels exploded. Luckily, I was far enough away to survive, but you saw what happened.

Ilovedicks69<3 says: Hell, I saw it more than you did, I imagine. If I know you, you probably turned the mirrors away, squeamish bastard that you are. Not that I blame you. Hmm… well, I’ve already got us a new base of operations. As far as the car goes, I hired the mafia's maids to get it done, no questions asked. I hope you know that’s coming out of your cut.

That was Sarina for you, completely unflappable. Her hologram changed positions to a more thoughtful one.

Ilovedicks69<3 says: Do you think they know about us?

~FlamingCockDragon~ says: You mean, the big G? I don’t know. I want to say we’ve been careful covering up our tracks, but…

Ilovedicks69<3 says: But your face is still half-gone.

~FlamingCockDragon~ says: Yes, that.

Ilovedicks69<3 says: Maybe we’re moving too fast. It’s only been a few months since the Wellington Job.

~FlamingCockDragon~ says: Yea, but it’s not like we’re doing any of the actual jobbing right now. We’re just doing regular low-brow criminal activity at this point. It really shouldn’t be putting any antennae up.

Ilovedicks69<3 says: You think so? After all, most people who order that package are generally Up To No Good in a really big way.

~FlamingCockDragon~ says: Shit… you might be right. Maybe it was too convenient that they were selling this particular item at this particular point in time. But… I haven’t talked to anyone since Wellington. Except you, of course. How would they know? You haven’t…

Ilovedicks69<3 says: Jesus, no! You know me better than that. Not only would that put us in danger, it would put my relationships in danger. How stupid do you think I am?

Her icon, picking up the anger in her voice, put its digital hands on its hips. Beyond the translucent screen, I could see her real-life figure tensing up in the chair beside my bed.

~FlamingCockDragon~ says: Alright, alright. I just wanted to make sure. I’m a little paranoid right now.

Her icon put its hands down, and her real-life form relaxed a little bit. Her voice was gentle.

Ilovedicks69<3 says: You’re right. I’m sorry. If it had happened to me, I’d be paranoid, too. She paused. Do you want to keep doing this? I wouldn’t be opposed to dropping it for a year, and then re-evaluating our plan.

~FlamingCockDragon~ says: We can’t abandon our cause!

I panicked just thinking about it.

Ilovedicks69<3 says: Ok, ok. It was just a suggestion. I know how you feel about this, but I… I don’t want to lose you. You’re a dumbass, but you’re my best friend. I know that what we’re doing is right, in its own fucked-up way, and I’ll follow you to the end of it. But if you ever change your mind… I won’t think less of you.

There was a brief pause. I contemplated this new side of Sarina peeking through the half-hearted insults.

Ilovedicks69<3 says: Mostly because it’s impossible to think any less of you than I already do, you idiot. Well, I guess that’s all I’m going to get out of you right now, not that you helped at all. Rest up, ‘cause we’re leaving in a few hours. It’s going to suck moving you, but I think you can handle it.

And with that she signed out, leaving a blank blue screen behind her. I shut down and removed my facilitator, as well, handing it to her to put on the desk. As she left the room and turned the lights off, I considered what life would be like if I just dropped this for a year. What would I do? There were all kinds of small-time scams and cons to keep a distinguished man of my talents busy. Maybe I could find some other, less dangerous calling.

I fell asleep to the idea of holding down some small-town drug turf in a picturesque countryside somewhere in New Italy. Maybe pick up a wife… a blind wife who didn’t ask too many questions.

I woke up to none-too-gentle shaking. I blinked into the bright light, wishing it would stop.

Wake up, Jiri. We’ve got to get going. I’ve packed up all the good stuff, and all that’s left is you.

I looked at my desk. The whiteboard had been erased and the papers were gone. My mouth was dry and cracked, and I really just didn’t feel up to whatever it was that I was trying to do.

She looked at me, her face strangely blurry. Ugh, I might have overdone it on the painkillers… upsy-daisy!

She propped me up and struggled