The way his tongue laves up the side of my throat, his teeth biting down on my collarbone, his hands moving all over, mapping my flesh. His fingers plucking my nipple, the palm of his other colliding with the side of my breast in a quick sharp slap. It makes me gasp, the feel of his hard cock working furiously inside of me.
I grind down on him, my clit rubbing over his pubic bone, making me moan. Our foreheads meet as if guided by the same unseen hand, a crash not of bodies, but of wills becoming one, and he’s moving faster. My arousal trailing down my inner thigh, and I’m suddenly very aware of the wound there. The way it feels like it’s moving, crawling, coming alive.
My gaze drops down, trying desperately to see between our grinding bodies, and even though I can’t, even though Billy doesn’t stop as my temple comes to the point of his chin, my hair in his mouth. He keeps fucking me, a guttural sound of pleasure strangled in his throat, he grips me tighter, pressure on my left breast like he’s trying to pop open my flesh. I moan at the ache, liking it and loathing it as I keep feeling movement on my thigh.
It makes me want to scream, stress of the unknown making me feel hotter, sickness churning my belly, but then Billy’s biting into the side of my neck, causing me to throw my head back. His teeth so tight on my skin I fear he’s going to cut straight through, and then he’s licking over the pulsing pain, sucking it harder, leaving yet another mark on my body, branding me with only him.
He fucks me faster, my head banging back into the wooden spokes, strands of my own hair sticking across my lips, and just when I think I can’t take anymore, my spine slamming relentlessly into the wood, he’s coming inside of me. His hand cracking across my breast again, searing it with a handprint as he grips hold of it.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck,fuck,” he pants, his tongue lazy as he sweeps it across my mouth, over my lips, wetting my cheek, my chin, leaving a trail of saliva like the inked web woven down his ribs.
His hips continue to piston, the hand holding me up, tight on my arse cheek, pinches harder, his other hand leaving my breast, coming to my clit, his thumb just stroking over it, once, twice, and the pressure inside my head explodes.
My legs squeeze his sides, blood oozing between us, and I knock my head back, thrashing as I come. His thumb still stroking, feeling like a hot poker, too much, too much, and then a breath exhales out of me, my nostrils flaring wide as I breathe hard, my legs limp, my arms burning where they’re pulled so taut.
But I can hear it now, something that seemingly has been going on the entire time.
Chanting.
“In agony you are tested.”
It grows louder, my ears buzzing with it. And it makes me think of everything that means. It’s true in so many ways, more than just here, more than just this.
I thought this was going to be the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Survive the unknown. Try and prove myself to a group of people who already deem me unworthy to be with Billy. But it’s like clarity lifts the veil.
I’ve been tested my entire life.
And slowly, the pain in my shoulder seems to dissolve, like it wasn’t even really there to begin with. And Billy, he’s holding me up, resting against me, his bright blue eyes on mine, a refuge in the dark.
My safe place.
My heart.
My life.
“See now the binding wrought through trial. Pain has become covenant. Fear has become devotion. You endure, and in your survival, you are sanctified.” Gore’s voice booms over the top of the congregation, the chanting coming to an immediate end.
My hands are gently let free, a red-robed figure untying each hand, letting my arms down softly by my sides. And it strikes me again how kind that is, my arms fizzing with pins and needles, they could slash the ties and let my arms thud down painfully, but they don’t, and it’s just so… unexpected.
Billy withdraws himself from me, carefully lowering my legs, getting my feet on the ground, the remnants of my dress and bra sliding down my arms, free of my hands, into a bundle of black fabric on the floor.
“Kneel,” Gore instructs, the two of us going down onto the ground at his feet, both of us breathless.
My body feels itchy, sticky strings of webbing and the creeping of spindly legs working its way over me. Billy’s handcomes to mine, weaving our fingers together between us, knuckles brushing the stone beneath.
The chamber is still, dust motes drifting in the candlelight, still flickering red across the crowd. There is a hush, everyone quiet, waiting, listening.
Dolly reappears at Gore’s side, placing the candelabra from before down beside the box that the spiders came from. She lifts a long smooth piece of black leather from the table’s surface instead and hands it to Gore. Billy lifts our joint hands in the air, his elbow bent, allowing Gore to bind them together. Gore then takes a lit red candle between his tattooed fingers, holding it above us. He tilts it downwards, and slowly, the wax drips, hissing as it meets our skin. Sealing us together like the paper of an envelope containing our most coveted secrets.
“The wax binds what the world would melt away. It does not choose its shape; it only remembers what the flame has given.”
The congregation flares back to life, all of them echoing the same word, “Solet.”
Billy whispers the translation, “As it is done.”
I look up, threads of silk hanging from the wooden wheel towering over us like strands of an unfinished prayer, and I feel the sting of tears in my eyes, an emotion I don’t understand bringing them forth.
As Gore speaks, a silky black spider descends between us, delicate as breath, landing on Billy, weaving a single strand from his shoulder to mine before repeating the action, starting to build a web between us.
