“I can't wait to see you swollen with my kids,” he groaned, palming himself through his slacks, and I swallowed the lump. “Can't wait to see your belly big and round, full of my cum. You'll look so fucking good, my wife, my woman, carrying my seed.”
He reached out, grabbing my chin and forcing me to look at him. His thumb pressed down on my lower lip, pushing it out of my mouth. He leaned in close, his stormy eyes boring into my scared ones.
“Forget him,” he rasped. “Forget his name, forget his face. The only name you need to remember is mine. Zagreus Vitale. Say it.”
He squeezed my chin harder, his grip turning painful. He was not asking – he was commanding.
My lips trembled. Strangely, it was not the fear; it was long gone. What I felt now was more dangerous. A poison that numbed the pain and warmed the parts of me I thought had died.
His hand hovered by my throat, and I… I let my head fall back. Exposing my neck. My surrender wasn’t innocent. It was a deliberate survival instinct.
“Zagreus…” I whispered his name like a sin. Like a spell.
Something primal shifted in him. His lips twitched, and he stared at me before he groaned lowly as he pushed me down, as my back arched over the stone of Adrian’s grave.
The grave was cold, but Zagreus’s mouth was fire.
He kissed me again, like he hated me this time. Bit down hard on my bottom lip, then sucked it like nectar. Hands tore what little fabric remained between us, and I gasped.
I hated how I’d become this.
Not Adrian’s soft-spoken girl. Not the widow. Not the innocent.
Buthis.
Zagreus Vitale’s. The monster who was now my husband.
“Pray to me with that voice,” he growled against my throat, dragging his tongue along the vein. “I’ll answer every prayer, Dolcezza. I’ll give you everything.”
His hand slid between my thighs. Roughly parting them and cupping my womanhood, which I swore was still sore. And my body arched.
After a few strokes, I heard the unzipping of his pants, and before I could process, he plunged into me like vengeance.
Like a storm, I had no choice but to encounter it.
And all while my eyes locked on Adrian’s name. My heart didn’t break. It changed, morphed, and hardened into the same stone.
Because grief wouldn’t give me freedom, Zagreus would.
Because survival didn’t come clean, it came filthy.
He held me down as I shook. As I cried and came and cursed and forgot who I was.
“Pray at my altar, Dolcezza,” he growled, fucking me deeper and choking me as I rocked with his brutal thrusts. “Worship me with your screams.”
I tried to hold back. But the way he plunged deeper with every thrust, my insides clenched shamelessly.
I tried to keep Adrian’s name on my tongue. But Zagreus didn’t fuck like a man.
He fucked like a god starved of worship. Like I was the lamb and the sacrifice, altar, and offering all in one.
And I gave in, body first, mind second, and my soul somewhere far behind.
He licked the sweat from my collarbone, nipping the skin until I gasped. “Is that grief, or pleasure when your cunt clenches when I fuck you?”
My knees scraped the dirt, my nails dug into the grass around the headstone. Adrian was right there. Dead and cold.
But the man above me was alive and warm.
