Gore steps back, just slightly, when she’s fully untied, his deep emerald eyes on mine, waiting. When I nod, he starts hammering the nails back out.
She comes to fully then, her pain snapping her back into consciousness like nothing I’ve ever heard before.
The scream.
It’s a hymn torn apart mid-prayer; a sacred thing stripped of all its holiness. It rises, cracks, and folds in on itself, echoing around the stone room like the Sanctuary itself is weeping.
For a moment, I forget to breathe. The air feels thick, heavy with the weight of her suffering, as if every note of the sound is meant to carve itself into me. My hands clench without command. I tell myself it’s just pain, that pain means she’s alive, physical pain is only temporary. But even that feels like a lie. Because what if it isn’t? What if it’s the sound of her breaking, piece by piece, and she’s already too far gone for me to stop it?
And then she’s free, flopping into my arms, I sweep her battered body up, cradling her to my chest, my eyes going to the brutal bitemark I left in her bicep. It looks like nothing now, in comparison to everything else she’s endured in here tonight, but guilt punches me in the gut just the same as I follow Gore back out into the tunnels.
“I told you,” I murmur, pressing my mouth to her ear, blood-dampened hair between us, sticking to my lips, the taste of iron heavy on the tip of my tongue. “I will always protect you.” It should sound like comfort, but it only sounds like a failure to my own ears.
Because I didn’t keep her safe.
Couldn’t.
But we’ll keep doing this anyway.
This push and pull.
This love and hate.
Because ultimately, it’s all we have left.
Each other.
Until death, Little Lamb, until death.
Chapter 24
PENELOPE
Early morning light slips in through the small stained glass window of our bathroom, casting a hesitant rainbow across the dark floor tiles.
It’s February.
Weeks and weeks have passed since my time in the Sanctuary, but I still clench my teeth as Billy washes my back, catching the torn edge of my last remaining wound, but I don’t say anything as he kisses over it, already knowing he was too rough.
I haven’t seen Milus again.
Though, I haven’t really left our suite either. Other than to visit Doctor Jay, Billy always with me, his blue eyes never leaving the smarmy doctor’s green ones, both of them always watching the other. I think he suspects the doctor knew about my implant, which he did, but I haven’t told Billy that. In fact, I haven’t told anyone anything since my punishment. Haven’t spoken. Like my mouth is just too dry.
Head too tired.
Heart too achy.
It hasn’t stopped Billy though, my silence.
His hardening cock is still inside of me, the foamy warm bathwater lapping gently against our joined bodies as he starts to thrust up into me once more. I close my eyes as his hands come around my waist, fingers tracing upwards until he’s cupping my breasts, pinching my nipples between his thumbs and forefingers. His mouth sucks light kisses up the blade of my shoulder, along and up the side of my neck, his teeth finding my ear and sinking into the lobe like pointy little razors.
His breath gets heavier as he fucks me faster, bubbly water sploshing over the curled sides of the white porcelain tub. He grasps my wrists in one of his, holding them down underwater, his other arm banding tight around my waist.
“I’m gunna fill this tight little cunt with so much cum, you’ll be feeling me drip out of you all day.”
I say nothing, staring at the darkness behind my closed lids, trying to ignore the feelings washing around inside my stomach. I feel disgusting, covered in cuts and slices and healing wounds, the first of the bright red-pink scars showing. I can’t speak to him. Like my tongue is tied in a knot, lodged in the back of my throat like an apple to a roasted pig, choking any words that might want to make an appearance.
There is a monster inside me, this living breathing red cloaked umbra that is chomping down on everything I have. Big sharp puncturing teeth that are devouring anything else I had left. Leaving me with only shade, a slow creeping darkness that’s smothering me, suffocating, its shadow hands coiling like thick smoke around my neck, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing.
