Page 90 of Servitude to Serpents

My voice is raw, hoarse as I sob. “I’m sorry. I—”

“What the fuck?” He mumbles to himself, and for a second, I wonder if he’s even talking to me. It’s then that he lifts his head, tears glistening in molten hazel eyes.

“Master…”

He’s…oh God. My heart finds a way to further fragment as he stares down at me. The deity, the infallible man, looks every bit as broken as I feel. My chest lurches, because I can see it…

TheI love you too, but this version is twisted and miserable.

“I didn’t want to leave you; I changed my mind,” I sob. “I changed my mind.” It was too late; those horrifying moments had lasted forever. I couldn’t pull myself up.

He jerks away from me as I sit there, forcing air through comprised lungs. Each breath feels like shards of glass. I watch him through blurry eyes as he snaps. “Always fucking crying! Always so fucking sad. You’re so much like her, I can’t stand it!” He yells, his hands tangling in his wet hair, tugging. “You belong to me! You have no fucking right to leave!”

I want to ask who, to say anything, but I don’t. My body trembles with the pain, and he’s…scaring me. He looks so…wounded. I clench my chest as a bizarre, broken laugh bubbles up his throat.

He’s stopped pacing, bracing himself against the wall by the wardrobe, his muscles heaving and flexing below his tattooed skin. My body fails me as I try to stand, try to go to him. I crumple beside the bed instead. Every muscle and ligament in my body screams for mercy as I crawl to him, sobbing. “You hurt me, and then you left mealone.”

When he turns around, the broken, abused piece of my heart warms,because heloves me.

My master loves me.

Say it.

Tell me and end this.

He clears his throat, a single tear escaping, running down his sculpted cheek, disappearing into his stubble before his eyes are wiped clean. It’s like a switch deep inside him is flicked off. It’s then that my eyes dip, bleak acceptance settling in my gut as his serpent ring glistens. His fist tightens around the cane with so much force, his knuckles go white. He lifts my chin with it, studying my face as he hardens himself, closes himself off to me again. It’s nearly as painful as the words scribbled on my flesh.

My eyes dart nervously to the cane as he lowers it, resting the cool wooden veneer on my hand, the shaking one that’s fanned out on the ground. My stomach rolls. My sobs start anew, because we both know what he’s about to do. The wounded man from moments ago is gone, like he’d never even existed. Maybe he hadn’t. Maybe I never saw anything in his eyes at all. Maybe I’m further gone than I thought.

“OnlyIdecide when your suffering ends. Am I understood?”

“Yes,” I sniffle, closing my eyes and trying to breathe through my stuffy nose.

All I hear next is the whistle of the cane cutting through the air, the sickening crack that fills the room, and my answering scream escaping through barred and gritted teeth.

Chapter thirty-four

To own is to…. Ruin

Warrick

Stuart stands smugly on the other side of the room as we watch the numbers climb on the screen.

Bids.

One thing I’ve learned the hard way throughout my life is pain can be so substantial, it clouds everything. Grief, regret, despair, heartbreak, and agony can swallow you whole, leaving nothing of who you were before.

But nothing,nothingswallows and consumes likelove. Nothing is as unforgiving and ugly.

Except perhaps me.

Unbidden comes the sight of her dangling above the bed, thrashing so hard, she’d added more bruises to her pale flesh. The sounds…Fuck, the sounds.

My hand tightens around the mouse, making it crack along the base, leaving the plastic jagged and sharp. That’s what this feels like, this sickening fucking hole drilled in my chest, one she put there when she had no fucking right. She had noright, forcing me to love her, to adore her small, upturned nose, her wide, hopeful eyes.

She trained me, conditioned me to crave the taste of dream-sickle on her tongue. The way she writhed took up every thought. Like clockwork, I obeyed; not just my body in the way I sought to please her, but she reworked the very fabric of my mind, knitted something together that had never existed there before, leaving me changed, altered, gored.

Weak.

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