Page 6 of Altar of Flesh

I vomited. Head back, throat being used—the vomit had nowhere to go. Both imps moaned at the sudden new warmth, and my mouth flooded with new saliva. Throat obstructed, neck choked, and every thrust like a ruthless use of a toy, it was only a few seconds before my vision began to explode with stars.

Panic had me thrashing. I rocked my head from side to side as if trying to shake them loose. Pathetic. They could have used me all they liked, and I would have been powerless to stop it—because that was all I was in the end. A slut to be used. Had I forgotten that so soon?

The panic gave way to a kind of splintered consciousness, a flashing of thought and feeling and fear and pleasure. I came weakly, coerced by the sucking pressure of the imp at my cock, and as that orgasm throbbed through me, so did my vision pulse away until darkness came.

I fell unconscious.

4

CHAPTER FOUR

Iheard the chanting of learned men, as familiar to me as my own skin, and when I woke, I was not in Hell but in the chapel of the abbey, on my knees in prayer.

Unpleasant and excessive incense had become a haze in the air. Inhaling it triggered a bodily response in me. I shivered, fearful that what had happened to me in Hell was little more than a dream.

“No,” I mumbled.

“Shh.” A biting twist of a sound. I looked up and saw Don Santi, one of my fellow dons, glaring at me. He shook his head in disapproval of my disrespect, but beside me, a comforting hand reached out and pressed against my back.

“Do not worry about him,” a young man said. “He is simply jealous.”

“What?” I half turned my head. Confusion bludgeoned me, for it was none other than Oliviero, looking much as he had the last time I had seen him. He smiled at me and rubbed my back comfortingly, and the motion was somewhat more intimate than I recalled him ever being with me. My mind, already so thoroughly dirtied and impure, and my body, whichuntil moments earlier had been being ravished by a quartet of imps, wondered how Oliviero might fare in Hell. If he would be like me, a slut on his knees, begging to be used. And as these thoughts coalesced, Olivero moved his hands. They slid delicately from my back to the front of my chest. He pressed his body close, intimate, breath huffing in my ear and warming my neck. When his tongue licked up the exposed skin there, I shivered and made a noise of protest.

“Hush,” he told me. More confidence lay in that single word than I had ever heard in our years together. “I know you want me to. I know you always have. I suspected the rumours about your inclinations were true early on, and every stolen glance, every time you pulled your gaze away from me with fretful speed—it felt good, Alessandro, to be the object of your desire.”

I breathed out hard. “I don’t?—”

“You don’t need to pretend with me,” he said. The foggy wall of incense cleared, and the pew we were in widened. All other people vanished as if wicked away by the smoke. It was just the two of us in this small chapel, both of us clad in simple black cassocks. Even as he thumbed at my chest over this fabric, it felt more sinful than anything I had done in Hell. I rocked forward, hands coming to rest on the pew in front of me, and Oliviero’s hands lowered as he himself sank onto the ground.

I turned to face him. He genuflected, threw the sign of the cross quickly about himself, as if I was the altar. My body grew hot with the thought—that to these demons, to anyone who wanted, I would make an altar of my flesh, where every act of coupling and deviance transformed into worship.

Then, he pushed himself up and against my lips.

The kiss was gentle at first. Our lips landed clumsily on one another. I got the sense that Oliviero had never kissed anyone, or at least had never had the practice, and the sense of his innocence shivered through me even though he was twenty-something. My stomach trembled.More, I thought.More.He heard me, somehow, because he moved his body closer and his mouth wider. His tongue felt warm as it licked at mine, the pressure soft, both of us breathing in deeply through our noses, sucking incense and each other’s scents into our lungs. Oliviero’s hands ghosted along my jaw, tentative touches. He kept pulling away and laughing breathlessly, the sound boyish and giddy.

“Turn the other cheek,” he breathed, lips spreading into a smile against my face as I craned away from him, laughing with him at the absurd and ill-placed reference. But I was not thinking of scripture, then. Not when his lips pressed against my neck, not when he gripped at the pleats of my cassock with such intensity I thought he might tear the thing off me. Oliviero’s arms wrapped around me, and I—hesitated.

He pulled away. His face closed off and grew impenetrable. “What is it?” he asked without concern.

It was as if a part of me was fighting the fantasy. I don’t know—I had had Bishop Jonah’s cock down my throat, knowing distantly it was demonic fancy. I knew again that this was not the young man I had left at the abbey, sun blooming across his pale skin. Part of me found this to be a regression, a return to something I had thought I’d overcome. All the lust that had fermented inside me over years and years had been extracted by the first nameless demons I had met in Hell. So what was Malphas doing by sending me back here? What delicious new torture did it intend me to endure?

Oliviero’s face swam into view, a thing of beauty. With heavy, lust-filled eyes, both his hands pressed into my cheek. He leaned forward again to kiss me firmly. The firm press of his stubble bit into my skin. Then he pushed more firmly into me, and I felt the swell of him beneath his cassock. He pressed it against my own firm member, and he looked up shyly, both hands still cupping my cheeks.

“Alessandro,” he whispered. “Does it matter why this is happening? Don’t you want me? Don’t you want to taste me?”

I grabbed him, crushing his lips against mine. He moaned, chest expanding and shivering. I ran my fingers through his hair and let them tangle in the golden nest. I drank him like communion wine, each swallow a covenant made. Every wound I had ever endured, every heartbreak, every night I had laid awake cursing my own nature, begging God to let me die peacefully in my sleep—I forgot all those moments. I forgot everything except pleasure and the pursuit of it. This wasn’t real; this was a demon’s trick, a memory that had never happened. I embraced it as if it were a gift.

I pulled back from Oliviero, hands cupping his face. Something about his youthfulness roused a different part of me. I felt perhaps as the demons felt towards me: an urge to have him, to use him, to love him. My usual desire to sink onto my knees faded. I wantedhimdown there, craning up at me.

“Pray,” I told him, and he knew what to do. He sank onto his knees with grace, his hands clasped and mouth moving. He took my order seriously, though I did not catch what prayer he spoke. Fragments of Latin slipped off his tongue. His voice, musical and full, was a whisper that was echoed by the stone surrounding us. I slipped my fingers into his hair and looked up to the vaulted ceiling, where stone angels and saints murmured back to us. I saw their carved lips moving in time with Oliviero and felt no fear at the sight.

He began to speak louder. His prayer crystallised.

“Sancte Michael Archangele,”he said, eyes pressed together, and I laughed. Laughed at the choice this version of Oliviero had made—a prayer to defend holy servants in battle, to protect against the Devil. “Defende nos in proelio, contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto praesidium.”

Defend us in battle; be our defence against the wickedness and snares of the Devil.

“Oliviero,” I murmured. He did not stop. At that moment, Oliviero was exactly as I remembered him. Devout to the point of deafness, I knew I was not there for him. So I watched him. I allowed myself the indulgent appraisal. His hair curled over his forehead. His lips were pinkish and lightly chapped; I ran my thumb over them.

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