Page 38 of Currency in Flesh

She looked like the Goddess she was, eyes feral and bright as she looked up at me from between my thighs, but then her tongue swirled over me again and I fell back with a pained sigh. When I felt her pushing into me again, I lifted my hips, wanting to give her all the access she could need. My hands opened and closed into fists at my sides as I tried to fight the rising waves of impending climax. She sucked at my clit and fucked me with her fingers, and it was almost too much to bear.

She made a long, shuddering groan against my pussy, and my toes curled. It was like every high-priced sex toy I’d ever tried, all rolled into one all-encompassing pleasure. I rolled my hips against her and called her name out into the silence and the smoke. Whatever she was doing, it was filling me so completely that it approached pain. Her hand moved in, out, in, out, and I could have sworn each press into me stretched me more. Pulling her mouth from me with a wetpop, she whispered, “Breathe in for me, princess,” and I struggled to take a deep breath. Her mouth was back on me and it was so much, so many places that felt good. I exhaled, and screamed as I thought my pussy was about to tear in two, but then there was nothing but a cascade of pleasure as my body pulled her in and I came and came and came.

“The best girl,” she murmured against my thigh as she guided me through the longest orgasm of my life. “I told you, you have no idea what your body is capable of.”

Those words shook me from my climax-induced haze and I pushed up onto my elbows, wondering what she was talking about. Her hand was lost inside me, buried past her wrist. My thighs, her face, her arms, all of it was smeared with blood. Panicked, I scrambled to sit up, but she stopped me with a hand across my hips.

“It is not yours, pet,” she assured me. And then it settled around me like a low-hanging mist.

The Queen of the Underworld had just fucked me in my husband’s blood.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

Alow groan roused me from the hazy thoughts swirling through my post-climax mind. Lady Cora had laid her head on my thigh and she lifted it slowly to peer over at where Sean was still hanging. “I suppose we should dispose of that, if you are finished?”

“What are you going to do with him?” I asked, shifting my feet and grimacing at the tacky feeling of blood on the soles.

She hummed in thought. “I could just cast him into the true pit. There is no value to him.”

“Can I do one more thing?” I asked, both excited and ashamed of my wickedness.

“Of course, darling. He is yours.”

I sat up and surveyed the extent of the mess. The smooth, reflective marble floor was littered with footprints, splatter, and little puddles and pools of drying blood. They were matte beneath the candles’ low-lit glow. For a moment I felt terrible at the thought of someone having to clean this room, and then I remembered that this room didn’t even technically exist. Lady Cora could eliminate all of it in the blink of an eye. She got toher knees, lifting her arms over her head in a slow stretch, and I was transfixed on her body once again. She smirked at me as she returned her hands to her lap. She knew precisely what she was doing, and I laughed.

It was an easy familiarity, that if I allowed myself to focus on, would scare the living shit out of me. It wasn’t supposed to be like this—sly smiles and intentional flirting, pet names and lying intertwined.

Was it?

I thought back to my arrival, to the things she had said when she told me my fate. She had promised me pain, pleasure, vengeance. She had implied that I was here to serve her, had chained me to my bed to drive my subservience home. Never, had she seemed to want emotional companionship. I had wanted her from the beginning, I could admit that now, but I hadn’t expected this.

I must have been staring into space, because she waved a graceful hand as if to get my attention. “Sorry!” I said with a shake of my head. “Just thinking.” She raised one arched brow, but didn’t reply, getting to her feet when I did. My steps made a sound like the tearing of tissue paper. “This is disgusting.” I turned back toward her and lifted my foot, wiggling my bloody toes at her.

Her lips pressed together as they curled up and she shrugged, like she was sharing a dirty little secret with me. “I did not make the mess.”

Sean was unrecognizable. His face was a collection of lumps and contusions, the skin all shades between red and indigo. I thought his shoulder might be broken, and a strip of blistered flesh running across his stomach. But he still breathed. I didn’t know if he could hear me or see me through his swollen eye sockets, but I bent down to speak to him.

“I’m happy here,” I said, knowing the words were true the moment they left my lips. “So, in the end, you didn’t fuck meover with your stupid plan. You made my life better, though the bar was low.” He flinched and wiggled like a big grub, and I walked to the table. I had one final punishment to give.

The scalpel was cold and surprisingly heavy in my hand, the blade so thin and sharp I imagined it could slice through just about anything. I hummed a song as I strode back to my husband, our wedding song. It was a cover of a popular song that an alternative band had released a handful of years before our wedding. My mother had been so offended when I told her the lyrics. “It’s just a pretty song, mom,” I had assured her. “They’re not even going to be singing the words. It’ll be a lovely violin melody and everyone will love it.” And they had. I walked up the aisle surrounded by stained glass depictions of Jesus and bouquets of flowers I didn’t care about, and didn’t even think about what the song meant.

A sound like running water pulled my attention from my memories, and I looked over to see Sean literally pissing himself. My laugh filled the chamber, reverberating off the walls and echoing around us with joyful mockery. I could see his teeth chattering, urine continuing to trickle from him in a thin stream, and I laughed under my breath, thinking of how we had truly come full-circle.

Tugging Sean’s now cracked and stained belt from its buckle, I slipped open the pocket of his trousers with my thumb and forefinger. He squirmed, moaning indecipherable noises which may have been pleas for mercy. I used the scalpel to cut through his piss-soaked boxers, grimacing when I had to touch the damp fabric, and freed his limp, flaccid cock. Lady Cora clicked her tongue in surprised approval, and I reached in to pull out his balls. Sean’s noises of protest went up in pitch, a thin whine like a dog in a too-small crate.

“You took a lot from me,” I said to him in a level voice. I wasn’t enraged or emotional, speaking in my businesswoman voice from customer service jobs long past. “And now? I amnot sad about it. It ended up being a good choice, keeping yourself from reproducing.” I ran the backside of the pointed blade against his wrinkled, hairy skin. He stilled, like he thought it might help him. I hummed the chorus of our song beside his ear, and realized the moment he got it. His entire body gave up, slumping in defeat against his bindings. I knew there was nothing more I could do to him, he was broken precisely as terribly as I was, and then some. But this? This was for me.

I pinched the skin of his scrotum, stretching it out so that I could see the flicker of candle flame through the pebbled flesh. The scalpel cut through it so cleanly it seemed to simply open beneath the blade, parting with a bright splash of crimson. He barely had it left in him to scream, the noise was weak and sad, and I could hear the wet slap of each veined orb as they hit the marble floor. I smiled a true, happy smile, placing my lips close to the shell of his ear.

“So Heartless.”

I walked away from the man who had filled the last decade of my life with misery, and into the arms of the woman I thought just might fill the rest of it with something better. She kissed my forehead and slipped her arms around my waist. “I’ll dispose of that,” she murmured against my skin. “I will join you in my chambers when I am through. Feel free to use the springs”—she looked me up and down—“to freshen up.”

I didn’t even look over my shoulder as she tossed him in the pit.

Loweringmy body into the steaming pool, I sighed heavily. Blood swirled around me as it lifted from my skin and turned the water a pale shade of pink. I hadn’t realized how much I had exerted myself until I was still. My shoulders andabs were tight and tense, and my biceps felt like I’d been lifting weights for hours rather than torturing my husband to death.

Fuck.When I thought about it, I felt… I’m not sure. I didn’t feel remorseful, but did I feel guilt? I felt corrupt, and I wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

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