Page 9 of Hell and Its Pleasures

--and fell crashing to my knees as the bishop’s cane knocked my legs out from under me.

The ground rushed up to meet my face. Dust burst into my open mouth and made me choke.

I rolled as I heard him approach. The bishop’s cruel smile shone down on me like the sun. “Little priest. Lamb to the slaughter. You opened the gates so willingly.”

I coughed and tried to sit up, but Bishop Jonah used the end of his cane to shove me back into the dust. Heat pulsed in my spine where the warm earth met my skin, and the force of the bishop’s cane made my breathing shallow.

“You opened the gates.”

“Yes,” I spat. My voice came out weak and wheezing, but I summoned the anger I held deep in my chest; years of repression! Years of self-hating and shame and anger! How much of that could be attributed to this man? How much of it had festered because of the way he looked at me?

“I am here for Asmodeus. I am here to embrace what you have condemned me for. Let me go: you are not a holy man any longer. Hell has claimed you too!”

Surprisingly, his cane moved aside. I rolled out and pushed up to stand, but the Bishop called out:

“You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you? That Asmodeus, Prince of Lust, a King of Hell, would be waiting for you so eagerly? You are just another sack of meat for it to pleasure itself with—surely you can understand that?”

I understood it and felt at once a confusing mix of arousal and hurt. That I was nothing more than something for the demon’s pleasure stirred that low heat in me. But I washuman, and even with logic and reasoning and an intrinsic understanding that I meant nothing to the demon, my gut roiled in protest.

I wanted Asmodeus to want me the same.

“Stop running from me, Alessandro,” the bishop said. And his tone dropped somewhere strange and inviting.

I turned around. “What?”

“You want to find the path to Asmodeus. Without my help, you will be cursed to wander this land forever. You will get nowhere. You will never find him. You will never have that pink hole of yours stretched to gaping again.”

My heart thudded. Heat rushed to me cheeks; I couldn’t meet his eye without seeing a decade of history play out before me. I hated that he could see me and know what I wanted. I hated that he could say those words and my body would react with both fear and a jolting twitch in my cock. I hated—I hated that it wasBishop Jonahsaying this to me.

I asked, “Are you really him? Or are you some demon?”

He did not answer right away. Seconds passed as the soft clop of the cane sounded in the dirt. I trembled. The bishop’s fingers brushed over my cheek. Wrinkled and coarse, he pulled me to face him. His breath curled warm over my face; confusion bloomed in me. How—how couldthat—affect me?

“Oh, Alessandro,” Bishop Jonah purred. “Does it matter?”

My throat closed up and went thick with my fear. What could I say to that? Whether this Bishop Jonah was truly him or not, I had the fear and the cautious respect for him that I’d fostered my entire young adult life. My organs reacted to him the same. My breathing felt erratic. Sweat pricked at my skin. And somehow, caught in the limbo of my fear and my desire, I felt a shudder that dipped low and deep inside me.

Bishop Jonah’s hand moved fast from my cheek to mychin. He gripped me hard, hard enough I could feel the bones being crushed and the meat of my lower cheeks aching.

“Do what I say, and I will tell you how to find the Prince of Lust.”

Tell me why a fierce loyalty illuminated my insides then. I shoved back, slapping the bishop’s hand away. “No,” I said. “I made a promise. I am—I am Asmodeus’ pet.”

“You are warm flesh to fuck into. It would fuck your corpse if it wanted to; you, as a person, cannot mean a thing to it.”

And I remembered Asmodeus telling me, “Plenty of demons in Hell, my pathetic little priest.”

Suddenly I felt like I possessed a sacred duty.

Perhaps lust overrode my defiance, or perhaps I believed entirely in this new religious purpose. And itwasreligious; Asmodeus and the experiences I had with it felt religious to me. I had this understanding that bloomed in my chest that however this played it, it was a test—and I was expected to play a part.

Bishop Jonah—or the demon wearing his face, I still couldn’t be sure—saw the shift in my gaze. His face lifted fractionally, and then a smile burst through that ugly, furious expression. He laughed and laughed and let go of my chin, which ached from the pressure of his grip. Then, before he said anything, before I had a chance to follow any of his instructions, he whacked the cane over both my thighs and sent me dropping onto my knees.

Pain shuddered through my kneecaps and up my thigh, and at the look on my face—defiant, rageful—the bishop struck me across the face with that wooden cane again.

I yelped. My vision blurred with tears and a whited-out shock. The pain felt blistering. My teeth throbbed and went biting down into my tongue. The cheek itself screamed with pain. The bishop leaned down and grabbed my face again.Unkindly, he spat. I closed my eyes but felt the spray of saliva dribbling over the curve of my face. My body shivered, confused with its arousal.

He smiled at me. That smile, I will tell you, shocked me. I realised I had never seen such a look of joy contort the bishop’s face. That it was aimed at me—that it was aimed at me when I was likethis?

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