Page 96 of That Sik Luv

My focus has been on helping to ensure her growth; her beautiful bloom. But she’s turning it on me, finding a mission to heal me in ways I didn’t intend.

“Why can’t I touch you?” she cries out. “Why can’t I just hold you again? Like you allowed in the woods? Like you do when you’re asleep?”

I allowed her to hold me in the forest because she proved something to me that day. She broke by finally letting go and fighting for herself. I’ve never seen her so beautiful, throwing that knife at my head. Magnificent and fearless. She was sensational once she left everything to pure hatred and determination.

But holding me while I’m asleep? She must be pushing her luck because I remember a few early mornings I woke with my cock deeply planted inside her, my hands around her neck, and a hint of fear in her blue eyes, not even remembering how we got there.

“It’s not who I am anymore,” I reply with indifference. “Maybe never who I was.”

“But you’ve never been given the chance to see. You’ve never seen what love is supposed to be—”

I push past her, exiting the shower with water still dripping from my hair and body as she tries to reach for me again. I grab a towel from the hanger, wrapping it around my hips, and leave the room that was closing in on me. She turns off the shower, grabs herself a towel, and follows me on my ass to the bedroom.

“I just want to touch you without having to hit you,” she cries out behind me. “I want to feel your skin and memorize every inch of you. I want to get you hard without needing to hurt you to do it. I want to feel your lo—”

I turn to face her and she gasps in surprise. I grip her wet hanging hair in my fist behind her neck, pulling her head back as my towel-covered hips press hers into the wall behind us.

“Don’t,” I say sternly. “If you need me to prove my devotion to you with a soft and gentle touch, then you’re going to have a lot of sad, sleepless nights ahead of you.” I scoff, releasing her hair. “Wasted tears for a man who doesn’t exist.”

“Tell me what they took from you,” she says in a cracked tone, trying her best not to cry. But the disgusting wetness is already covering her face, and not in the fearful way that I love. “Explain to me why it hurts.”

I think about her use of words. She’s right in that he has conditioned me to deny a certain type of touch. It physically pains me to feel those caresses against my skin. The softness makes my skin crawl with an itch that demands a deep and brutal scratch to ensure it never returns. I only ever see one face when it happens.

But if there’s one thing I’ve realized about Briony, it’s that she’s entirely too perceptive. Her need for details is maddening, especially when she’s seen firsthand how the bishop treats his favorites.

“You want details? You need me to pull the veil off your delusional world, where these things don’t happen the way they truthfully do?”

The corners of her eyes wrinkle as she stares back at me, worried she’s pushed too far. She has.

“Do you want to know how he forced me on my knees for him in that church basement, a place where the cries of a young boy were suppressed, as he forced himself into my mouth?” My voice raises as I continue. “Do you want to know how he bent me over the deacon’s desk in the altar room, fucking me while reciting scripture, as if raping a young boy in the church was the holiest of traditions?”

Her hands come up to her face, and she sobs.

“Is that what you need to hear?” I release her hair and grip her upper arms, forcing her back against the wall, making the painting nearby bounce against it.

I’ve replaced sadness with fear, and it only drives me to bring out more. To erase the pity with terror.

My fingers press deeply into her shoulders, indenting her skin as I shake her little body against the wall while I talk.

“Do you want to know how he told me how much he loved me each and every time after he came?” I punch the wall above her head, making her flinch. “How the Holy Spirit was a gift from God himself that I needed to accept in order to avoid the eternal damnation I was destined for?” My voice lowers to a steady tone. “How his soft, caressing palm would rub my cock until it hardened, before scolding me for selflessly enjoying what was supposed to be a sacrament to the Lord Himself? That because of that, I’d fall into the never-ending cycle of needing more private, one-on-one purification classes?”

She grips at the towel covering her chest, as if the pain of the details she incessantly begged me for were cracking it in half.

“Do you feel better now? Huh?” I slam her back against the wall and another fearful sob leaves her. “Feel better you got it out of me? All the gory details you desire to make sense of me?”

She shakes her head no.

“Maybe now you can put your little fucking pieces together as to why I can recite the Holy Scripture and the pathetic blasphemy that fills it. That I searched that entire book tirelessly for an understanding of why my life became what it was when others didn’t have my fate. That every passage in that book of lies can be misinterpreted by whoever seeks to use its power. Especially against the weak and weary.”

She tries to wipe her eyes, but I swat her arms away.

“I’m not just a non-believer for no reason. I believed once. I feared my predetermined damnation and let it drive the abuse. I had hope that my God would save me from all of my despair as promised. That there was a legitimate answer as to why my life wasn’t like Saint’s.”

Her eyes stay sealed to mine, holding on to every word that pours from my heartless soul.

“But one day, I prayed to my God and Savior, asking him to take away the pain I’d been born into. I’d realized in the silence that followed that there wasn’t a reason for it at all. That my life came about by random circumstance, and I’d fallen into the cracks of an institution that capitalized on it. I’d realized I couldn’t wait for Him or anyone else to come and save me. I had to save myself. So I fucking did!”

The visions of the past are returning, clouding my vision. My heart rate spikes and the red encapsulates me.

---