Page 12 of Hell and Its Pleasures

“Touch yourself,” he ordered. His tone took on that commanding cadence, reminding me of his sermons, which always sat halfway between moralising and worshipping, an attempt to impart both the wisdom of the holy text’s teachings and God’s love. I felt compelled to move and rocked back onto my haunches. Exposed like that, with my ankles straining against the breaches gathered at my ankles, my whole body shivered.

But I was too slow for the bishop. His face twisted and he slapped forward with his cane, slicing its blunt edge across my chest diagonally. Fire seared down my body and I cried out. Pain had me whimpering, and still my cock wept with precum. The bishop’s cane lowered, the wooden bottom grazing over my skin until it dropped low enough that he could lightly slap the underside of my cock. It jumped with each touch of the cane, and I balled my hands into the dust by my shins, trying in vain to find purchase in the loose and shifting particles; trying to ground myself so I wasn’t aroused so terribly by my own bishop.

You know as well as I do that I was never going to succeed.

I grunted. Suddenly, the light and the heat burned overwhelmingly, and I had to squeeze my eyes shut. Vulnerability crept over my skin like a shiver.

“Ah, ah,” the bishop said. “Open your eyes.”

I hesitated. Everything felt hot and upsetting and—too much for me. The feeling wasn’t quite regret, but latent embarrassment still clung to me, heavy and tar-like, impossible to shake away. What I wanted butting up against my old-ingrained fear. . .it felt somehow easier to embrace Asmodeus, inhuman in its appearance and so utterly opposite of thechurch’s values, than to do this before Bishop Jonah—or something that looked like him. This felt like a complete admission, a confession before the church, and something that would follow me. I could not excuse pleasuring myself before a man who had chastised me my whole life.

Bishop Jonah’s voice cooed, “Give in to this, Alessandro. You are already here, in Hell. You have already given up your immortal soul. You cannot pretend to fear God’s wrath now, and shame will hardly save you from the lustful creatures in this realm. So. . .”

He paused, long enough for the tension to spark in my stomach. Expectation tugged me forward.

“Why don’t you just give in?”

I exhaled heavily. Erratic breathing. A heart rate so loud and fast I could hear it echo inside my ribcage. I fought to open my eyes, and in that time, the bishop moved so close I could feel his warm breath curl over my neck.

He whispered, “Open your eyes, Alessandro. Look at your bishop and do what you are told.”

The throbbing at my crotch became so much to bear that I thrust up towards nothing, hoping to make friction with only the air. The bishop chuckled and that voice lulled me. I opened my eyes.

Blinking away my bleariness, I was greeted with the sight of the bishop pleasuring himself, hand moving up and down over the cock that peeked through his cassock. The blushed tip blinked at me between forefinger and thumb and the movement was hypnotic. My groin pulsed and with my gaze locked on his movements, on that cock of his straining and weeping and the little shivers of pleasure that kept jolting through his body, I moved my own hand and squeezed the base of my cock.

“Oh, fuck,” I muttered.

I squeezed. The blood that had gathered there, and thelong stretch of time without touch, meant this simple action sent stars spinning behind my eyes. The bishop walked forward and spat—not on my face, but onto my cock, wetting it with his saliva. Each touch pushed the shame and fear further out of my mind, and I could thrust up into the palm of my hand, gliding against the skin as precum and saliva commingled.

“Ah, that’s it,” the bishop murmured. He stepped back and took in the sight of me fully. Meeting his eyes was difficult. I kept shuddering, closing my eyes for seconds at a time to regain some semblance of control, but at some point when the shock of the exposure and the vulnerability ebbed away, I could look more wholly. At that point, the expression on his face compelled me to stare. I watched the way he watched me; the way the speeds of his hand increased to match mine, the way his eyes clouded with distant pleasure, lust pushing him to look everywhere, to watch me fuck into my own hand with interest. And suddenly, we were staring at each other’s eyes.

My cheeks burned. The feeling in my chest was an amalgamation, rolling between pleasure and fear; this vicious feeling that called forth all the shades of my youth. Every time he had yelled at me. Every time he had called me impure.

You stupid boy. . .a thief at heart. And here you are, thieving my time. My good will! The church’s!

Or the voice of him, in confession, asking,Alessandro, is that all you have to tell me?

No. It wasn’t. We both knew it back then and we both knew it in that moment.

I grunted and twitched, leaning back on one hand to thrust up with a renewed desperation. “I am a slut,” I whispered.

“Louder,” came the resounding command.

“I am a slut!”

My voice echoed back to me.

“A sodomist. I want it. . .crave it. . .”

“Cravewhat?”

“To be used.”

My hand moved faster. Heat pooled and the pressure built, a coalescing of my body and its desires and its pleasure, until each touch felt clarifying: every stroke pushed me closer to the edge.

“Filthy,” he said. “A disgrace.”

“Yes.”

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