Page 67 of Of Angels & Absolution

It’s not just people I know who will see me. It’s strangers.

Children.

I thought I could be a match for my boys, that if I toughed it out, weathered their anger, let them take their revenge without complaint, that I could be one of them again. I let them beat me at every game, let them blackmail me to keep me close when really I wanted to be there, to be forgiven, to finally hear the truth from their lips. But I haven’t found the truth. All I’ve found is my limit.

I can’t do this. I’m not strong enough. They’ve finally found my breaking point.

I let Heath tie me here, but I can’t let the whole church see me like this. Shame is one thing. Humiliation I can endure. But this…

I can’t do it. Even if it means Heath never forgives me, I’ll have to take that chance. I can’t endure the punishment hechose. If I had known this was the only alternative, I would have let him take the last shred of my innocence, even if it wasn’t in a bed on my wedding night. Even if it was on the floor in the hall like an animal. There are more important things than chastity after all. A sin worse than lust, shame greater than the one I feel for not being able to control my body’s urges and desires.

I thought if I obeyed their orders, that would be my penance. I thought they could absolve me. But this is not absolution.

Heath said people would start to arrive in thirty minutes, which means I have about ten left. I fight down my rising panic and begin to test the knots, tensing and releasing my muscles, slowly loosening them. It feels like it’s been an hour already. My hip bones are grinding against the wooden railing, throbbing with pain. My shoulders ache. My insides feel raw and burned where Heath stabbed the handle of his knife into me, and I’m shaking all over from cold in the drafty church.

Still, the knots are coming loose. I’m going to get away.

And then I hear a door creak open.

In the echoing cavern, I can’t tell where it is. Whereheis.

Was it the first parishioner come to worship?

A priest coming to prepare the mass?

Or is it Saint?

Did Heath go and get him for me, tell him I chose him, that I’m his to take. He won’t do it here, not like this. He’ll untie me, carry me home like he did before. He’ll tuck me into bed, kiss my forehead. He’ll tell me he loves me, that I passed the test, that I was willing to do even this to prove myself. Maybe that was all they needed, to know how far I’ll go, that I was ready to sacrifice it all.

I only get a moment’s warning, a soft footstep in the nave, a slight echo like water dropping in a cave.

A blind flash of the most crippling hope burns through my humiliation. Maybe it’s Father Salvatore, even one of the other priests, here to rescue me.

Then someone is behind me, so close I can feel the air moving against my wet legs, my wet center. I struggle to breathe, fear knifing into me in sharp, clean strikes. I scream behind the gag when a hand lands on my hip. My whole body goes tense, and I forget to work the knots slowly, yanking at them frantically instead.

I hear fabric rustling, and I curse Heath for the blindfold, curse him with all the hatred and vitriol and violence I’ve kept bottled up all this time. I yank harder, a high whining sound escaping me. I hear the unmistakable sound of someone spitting, feel a hot glob of wetness land in the most shameful place, running down my crack, settling into the burning entrance Heath tormented earlier.

And then I feel the hot steel of his cock notched where Heath’s was. I scream behind the gag, trying to jerk my arms free. A big, gloved hand rests on one hip, as if he’s trying to reassure me, and then the pressure starts. It sends a searing pain into me, and tears pour from my eyes, soaking the blindfold. A thumb and finger open me, trying to fit me around him. Heath’s girth stretched me, but I’m also swollen, and I can’t tell if this one is Heath again or someone even bigger.

He has to press so hard my thighs are bruised with the force against the railing. His thumb makes small, comforting strokes on my hip, as if he’s reassuring me. At last, something gives, and he pushes inside my entrance, shallow like Heath was. Pain ripples through my skin, but he’s not done. He presses deeper, opening another inch. I’m so full I think I’m going to tear in two, but he keeps going, a steady, unbearable pressure that sinks him in another inch, then another. It feels like he’s slowlygrinding a foreign object into my body, one that’s unnatural and far too large, like pushing a baby back in.

I feel the moment he meets some blockage inside me, and I think he’s done, he’s reached my depth. He draws back, giving a few slow, powerful thrusts, forcing past the tightness, breaching my depths. Agony crashes in waves over me with each slow drag back and each new, unapologetic intrusion. He’s so deep I think he must have ruptured something inside me. I can feel him all the way up to my aching stomach, my expiring heart, my tear-clogged throat. He’s not just inside me. He invaded me, and now he’s taken every part of me.

A sob wracks my body, but to my horror, I feel the first soft throb of pleasure at being stretched to the limit on his next pass. Suddenly, I imagine the three boys walking in, finding some stranger taking what was theirs. I imagine Heath slicing his jugular, his blood spewing over me like a geyser, and the straining eases when he drives in slow and deep, forcing past what I think I can endure. I imagine the devastation in Saint’s heart when he realized he threw me away and now this will never be his, and my own wetness eases the strokes along with the blood and what’s left of Heath’s release. I imagine Angel, my sweet, gentle Angel, going feral and letting slip the side of him I’ve never seen, the one he keeps for the gang. I hear his breathing deepen into a sigh, and pleasure mingles with the pain when he pushes in slow and deep, filling me so completely I want to scream I can’t take it.

The hand that held me open is now wrapped around his shaft, and I feel it press solidly against my flesh each time he drives in so deep I start to panic that he’s going to puncture my insides. I realize with a slash of crippling fear that there’s more. He’s holding back at least a few inches, wrapping his fist around it so it won’t go deeper than my body allows. A shudder goes through me, and another sob chokes out of me behind the gag.

He keeps going in the same slow, relentless, methodical strokes, claiming me anew with each thrust, taking the very depths of me over and over again, as if reminding me that I will always be his in this primal way, that I can never give this to anyone else. He’s the first and only man who will take this from me, claim it, possess it. It’s his. I can never get it back. He owns this, and he always will.

His hand on my hip drags me back an inch from the railing, and the new angle makes blackness swim in my vision. I choke out a strangled cry, then try to stop myself, scared I’ll drown on my own tears from hanging upside down like this. I try to focus on thoughts instead of the devastation of my utter helplessness.

He increases his speed fractionally, pumping into me with measured strokes, taking me with ritualistic efficiency, as if I am the wine this evening, as if this is the breaking of the bread and not the breaking of a girl. I hang there, unable to stop him from taking the one thing I asked Heath to leave me. He claims it over and over, erasing any hope that I could forget who it belongs to.

Except I don’t know.

I can’t tell if it’s Heath, if he came back knowing I won’t know it’s him. I’ve never done this before, can’t judge how he’d feel inside me. I search for a sensation that might give away the piercing, but I’m stuffed so full that’s all I feel. The stretch, the fullness, the agony and the sliver of pleasure snaking along it.

Heath knows I’m here. He’s the only one.

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