Page 13 of The Salvation

“Are you done, little dove?”

My breath thins, and my heart shrivels in my chest from the deep gravel of his voice. I nod weakly, every inch of my skin trembling.

“I didn’t hear you,” he warns, leaning closer until his breath hovers just above my lips.

“Y-yes, Master Merikh. I’m done.”But you’re still an asshole. An asshole, I have no choice but to fucking love.

“Good.”

He grips the collar of the dress and tears it off my body. I jerk, sucking in desperate gasps as he reduces it to mere scraps. In seconds, he has me bent over the coffin with my upper half inside the coffin and my lower half outside.

He robs all my breath when he binds my wrists with leather cuffs and chains them to each side of the coffin. Since the coffin is as massive as a bed, it forces my arms into an aching stretch. It shouldn’t surprise me that he has these additions. No, he’s not Mayce, but all my monstrous boys have their kinks...and style.

“Mmm...” I moan as he spreads my legs as far as they can go, stretching my thigh flesh and attaching cuffs and chains to my ankles, mirroring my wrists.

I get one blessed gust of breath before the burning strike comes. Oh, gods! I crane my neck back, knowing that it’s no normal instrument. No normal cat o’ nine tails.

Merikh regards me with a wicked smirk as he fingers the long strips of what one might assume is leather, but the color and texture are wrong. It’s not leather at all. My throat constricts with the deep-seated understanding.

Long twisted scraps of skin, vampire skin. Tiny bones interwoven into the scraps make the flay even more formidable....harsher. Even the handle has been carved of bone.

He locks eyes with me, imprisoning me in his gaze. There’s another layer of vulnerability to this. Beyond the superficial one where he’s dressed in the regal robes of the Lord of the Court of Hollows. Ones, I notice, are splattered with blood.

More than any of the other gods. Merikh already had the power to reduce me to my barest state, stripping me raw until he could inspect my insides. For months, he’s worked to pryme open, examining my scars and their stories, my innermost demons. He’s tested me, knowing he could never break me...

...until now.

The time for testing is over. It’s my time of reckoning. He’s not here to lift me up like Mayce did, like Kyan did, as Drago did. Merikh will drag me under. He will punish me more for the slightest of sins. He will punish me by bringing me into his world without the ease of guiding me into the shallows first. The near-drowning was only the beginning.

I’m being forced out to the deepest and darkest parts of his ocean. Left to tread water. And beg him to save me before I drown.

“Who am I, little dove?” he summons me, demanding with his very voice haunting my spirit.

My breath catches, my pussy spasming from the danger I’m courting. One wrong answer.

Licking my lips, I whisper, “My Master, Merikh, the God of Blood.”

Crack!

I wail from the pain searing my flesh, those little bones landing their imprint on my ass. Merikh lands three more smoldering strikes before repeating the question.

“Ughhhh...” I moan and suck ragged gasps, my eyes watering because I dare not blink too much. Not with his deathly eyes captivating mine.

“Would you like to know, little dove, who once belonged to this skin?” he questions, tracing his fingers along the narrow and corded strips, lingering them upon the bones. “Would you like to know how he was a Founder who predated my time? Or how he pledged his troth to Kronos and gave me no choice but to torture him to a slow and painful death? Because this is what I do to my enemies. And it’s what I will do to anyone who fucking scents you in my goddamn presence!”

“Oh!” I wail when he brings the whip down over and over to inflame my backside. he doesn’t break the skin, which dumbfounds me. When the thunder and lightning raged at the Court of Storms, he’d had no hesitation.

I recognize the intimacy beyond all this. How he wants me to see him beyond those titles, the layers that define him as the one god all the other gods contend with—the one who could be alpha if he chose, but he willingly gave the title to Drago.

“Who am I, Quintessa?”

“Merikh Howle!” I shriek, only for him to slam the skin strips against my buttocks, burning the flesh all the more.

I watch him the whole time—how his muscles abate, the tension loosening from his shoulders as he punishes me. He gets off on my pain, yes. But he gets off more on my surrender, my submission, my sacrifice to him on this platter of a coffin. Because it won’t be one or the other that will ultimately save him.

It will be everything.

He lets the strap swing...right between my legs to strike my folds. I keen high and bite down on the velvet fabric beneath me. My whole body ignites with the fire from his torture. My heartbeat hammers, reverberating through my system and thrumming my nerve endings, all my senses firing.

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