Page 58 of Liar's Heart
Her impudence earns her my palm cracked across the swell of her ass. Just for that, I temporarily deny her request. Taking each of her cheeks in hand, I spread them wide and expose her fully to me, groaning at the sight. “Even if Daddy wants this hole too?” I tease and gently stroke a finger around the tight ridge of the hole I’ve yet to fully claim.
I feel her muscles tense under my hands, and she lets out a little mewl. “Don't worry, baby,” I soothe. “Your pussy will get what she wants.” Saliva pools in my mouth. I lean forward and spit onto her hole. Merrick's breath hitches when I run my fingers through it, spreading the fluid around and coating my finger before I gently slide it through the tight ring of muscle. I only give her up to the first knuckle, but that won't appease her for long. Too bad I don't care. “Eventually.”
My tongue joins my finger, licking and massaging the pleated skin until it relaxes just enough for me to wedge the tip of my tongue past the entrance. Only when her body softens more and opens for me do I remove my finger, giving me the space to properly fuck her with my tongue.
Squeezing and sliding past those sensitive nerves while she whines beneath me, I go until she's dropped her hand off her cunt to fist the sheets in front of her, chanting, “Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes.”
The words come out in cursive, slurring with pleasure. I don’t stop until I'm so hard it hurts… until I'll lose it if I don't feel her wrapped around menow.
Merrick cries at the loss of my mouth but recovers when I flip her onto her back. Covering her body with mine, I shift my weight to one forearm and reach for her with my free hand. Cupping her at the apex of her thighs, I hold it tight and look deep into her midnight eyes. “This exquisite cunt,” I say. “Men have killed for the chance to touch it. I've killed for the right to own it. I'll die before I let anyone else taste the only piece of heaven my damned soul will ever know.”
I let go of her mound to take her face in my hand, pulling her right to the precipice of kissing before I give her my most crucial truth, spoken just above her parted lips. “You’re worth every drop of blood on my hands. You’re wortheverything.”
Before I can close the final inch between us, Merrick beats me to it, wrapping her arms around me as our mouths collide. Her lips don't leave mine as I line us up, or when I slowly sink into the warm, heavenly embrace of her body. Not as I begin to move above her, or when her thighs begin to shake around my waist. She wails into my mouth when her orgasm finally peaks and spills. And when I try to slide out of her and paint her belly with my release, she slams her mouth back onto mine, locking her legs around me and pulling me tight to her as I pour my most primal claim deep inside her.
Rolling onto my side, I take her with me and keep hercradled in my arms. It isn't long before her ragged breaths even out into the soft cadence of slumber, but, like the last night we spent here together, I'm slower to drift off. Stroking her back and hair, I feel her heart pull to mine. And, like that last night, I think the same words, this time offered up as a prayer of gratitude to whatever devil guards my back.She’s here. She’s mine.
And I'll never let her go.
Torture can be an incrediblyintimate affair. The two of you learn things about each other very few are ever privy to. How patient you are. The end of every last one of their limits. What it's like for both of you to be stripped to your truest, most animalistic form. The people I’ve tortured know far more about me than anyone I’ve ever slept with, save for two notable exceptions. The first never shied away from my darkness, even if he was my light. The second? My demons are on the edge of their seats, waiting for the show he's about to put on for us.
Tartarus is a place built for pain, and the confessional Alec is in has an observation room for spectators to watch in comfort. One-way glass takes up most of one wall, providing an unobstructed view from the armchair I’ve claimed. Ender knows I’m close, that he isn’t alone, but Alec can’t see or hear me. Not that he can see a whole lot currently from the heavy metal chair he’s bound in. The back of it comes up high enough that his head’s been strapped down to it, making it impossible to turn it. It doesn’t stop him from straining his neck, trying to keep his eyes on the wolf in the room as myhusband inspects the tools he requested the Furies lay out for him.
Ender finishes checking over his tools and slowly circles to stand in front of Alec, looking him up and down. Stripped down to only his underwear, my father-in-law looks so much smaller than the monster I’m familiar with. More fragile too. In my experience, men like him don’t think twice about doling out pain to others, but they can’t handle a fraction of it themselves. I’ve seen grown men who think breaking a woman's jaw because their limp dicks couldn't tough it out long enough to not embarrass themselves is a fun time burst into tears when I walk into their cell without so much as saying a word before. But Alec is still composed. Good. I was hoping he wouldn’t go down easily.
Microphones in the confessional connect to speakers here, so even though his voice is quiet, I hear Ender loud and clear when he says, “Do you remember the first time you put a knife in my hands?”
Alec's eyes haven't left Ender since he entered his limited field of vision. I can tell that much, even with only being able to see part of his face. But I can't make out his expression when he replies, “Yes.”
“How old was I?” Ender asks.
Alec hesitates for a moment, then says, “I don’t remember.”
A tendon in my husband’s neck strains, but the rest of him is unmoved. “Eight. I was eight. You brought me down to the basement, to a room kind of like this one—a room I didn’t even know existed. There was a man… Is this ringing any bells? You said you remember. There was a man in that room stripped down to his boxers and trussed up exactly like this.” Ender’s hands sweep up and down, gesturing at the chair. “You took my hand and pressed a knife into my palm. Closed my fingers around the handle and showed me how to hold it. Or you talked me through it because I couldn’t peel my eyes away from the man in front of me long enough to even look at the knife. I asked who he was, and you said…” He trails off, waiting for Alec to finish the sentence.
“It doesn’t matter who he is. It matters that he’s paid for.”
Ender nods. “And I had no clue what that meant or how it added up to him being in our house like that and us standing in front of him with a knife. No clue at all. You told me that in Greek mythology, there’s a demigod named Charon whose job is to pilot a boat up and down the river that leads to the underworld. That the souls of the dead couldn't make it to the underworld to rest unless they crossed the river, so Charon would take them on his boat to the gates. But the souls had to pay in order to get on the boat.” He reaches into his pocket and produces an obol, holding it up, pinched between his fingers. “You showed me one of these and said that people paid Charon in coins to take souls to the underworld. That you and Charon had the same job and people called you by his name, too, but that you didn't have a boat. I didn't understand what you meant by that, so you said you'd show me. Do you remember, Dad?”
I've never heard Ender refer to Alec as his dad. Not once. It's always his first name or “my father,” but never something as familiar or casual as “dad.” I don’t know when he stopped or if he ever addressed him so affectionately, but from the way Ender’s voice breaks as he says it, I know for certain that this one will be the last.
Alec says, “I do. That was the day you grew into your last name.”
Ender slides his hands into his pockets, and I know it's so Alec won't see him clenching his fists. “That was the day my childhood ended,” he grits out. “I watched a man die for the first time.”
Calmly, like this isn't the first time he's made this argument, Alec says, “You had to start sometime. The earlier Iexposed you to it, the easier it’d be for you to accept. It was for your own good, son.”
Ender shakes his head, jaw tight. “It was foryourown good. Yours. Everything has always been about you. Your title, your legacy, your heir. Everyone else was just collateral damage on your way to greatness. Everyone I have ever loved, you’ve destroyed one way or another.” He looks down at his shoes, gathering himself before he says, “Tell me about Thomas.”
“He was a nobody. And more useful to me dead.”
Ender raises his head, and I watch storms gather in his eyes. “He wasn’t a nobody. Not to Mom. Not to me.”
Alec scoffs. “You didn’t even know he existed until a few hours ago.”
“You’re wrong.” My husband is vibrating with rage, the words forced through clenched teeth. “I didn’t know who he was, and I didn’t know he was real, but in my heart of hearts, I knew there was no way I came from you. I used to think Mom’s goodness somehow overtook your evil in me, but that wasn’t all of it, was it? The things you told Merrick about him are all pieces of my real father you’ve tried to cut out of me. Sometimes literally. But it never worked. I’m too much like him. With a wife I respect and love above anything. Who somehow found it within herself to love me back. Together, the two of us are going to do what Thomas dreamed of. What you killed him to try to stop.”
“My greatest failure,” Alec spits at him. “I should’ve killed all three of you.”
