She remembered.
What she’d done.
That she’d nursed at his cock as if his sperm was the very breath she needed to fill her lungs—but she’d done itwillingly.
Not at first. Not when the panic at having her throat invaded had blinded her with panic… But when the first lash hit the back of her throat? Coating her tongue in an explosion of flavor?
She moaned before her breath caught.
Shame washed over her, then.
But there was something else. Some other fog of memory she dredged from the back of her mind.
As a fish pulled from the sea, she recalled a mist of red from flapping, straining gills not meant to endure the surface air. Moisture that beaded across a proud brow and left a waxy sheen on greying skin. A particular tremble in clawed, clutching hands.
Kore knew suffering—she’d been a vessel for the divine all her life.
And so she knew the beast paid a terrible price to come ashore… to do what he did to her. Knew it without considering, for Kore had been paying the price of serving the divine since the Oracle had fallen.
The price of her sins.
She’d been untouched until the Spartan army had called on Delphi for a miracle. Sacred, until she’d been sampled in front of an audience, bent over an auctioneer’s table, and traded for two hundred and sixteen drachmas.
Buttheyhadn’t made her beg.
Apollo’s priest had been kind in his brevity, his identity hidden behind a mask. Tipping her hips back before the thimble of fluid might escape his thin prick.
The slaver had been selfish. Unwashed and cruel, but overcome by her unblemished skin after a few desperate, greedy thrusts. His time inside her was marked by a handful of lusty groans, the clink of silver, and calloused, pawing hands. The only moisture he’d been able to force between her legs, a gob of spittle and a watery dribble of semen.
But this?
Nothing in the scripture could have prepared her forthis.
One hand circling her throat, Kore shivered. Remembering the stretch. The way the beast had opened her throat with such terrifying ease. The sentient way his cock had reached beyond her limits, growing thin and fat in measured pulses. Surging too far. Withdrawing only enough to set an anchor before reaching again.
And…
And the way she’d swallowed and gulped as he poured the sea down her throat.
A shaft of sunlight danced across the beach, peaking through the clouds. The sun bleeding through, as if to summon her back into the light.
Wordless, guttural sobs broke through the film of composure, then, and she scrambled toward the dancing sunlight. Desperate for the kiss of her Lord’s attention. To be saved from this wretched, sodden cave.
She stumbled.
Tripping on wet stone, landing hard on her knees in the shallow, retreating tide, Kore cried out as unfiltered sunlight burned her eyes. Searing pain lanced through her skull, making her whimper as she cowered.
It was accusation.
Punishment for her betrayal.
That, even now, the flesh promised to Apollo was swollen and slick with aching, desperate want of another.
“My Lord,” she rasped, voice mangled by the monster who’d fucked her throat raw. “Please… I… I’m sorry.”
The sunlight only burned hotter.
Apollo’s wrath beat down upon her as she emerged from the dark with a belly full of her carnal betrayal.
