“Goodnight, reptilian bootlicker.”
“Ouch.” I feigned offense with a slow shake of my head.
Inara hopped down from her perch by the window and ran past me into the bedroom, her primordial pouch swinging to-and-fro.
“Chill out,” I said to her. “I wasn’t going to leave you with Glörb.”
After getting ready for bed, I slipped back out to the kitchen to refill my glass of water. I halted in front of the fridge, tilting my head.
Under a possum magnet was a small piece of paper with a phone number on it. Wes’s phone number—the one I’d left behind at the diner. Hudson was in bed and Delilah was still out, so I didn’t have anyone to scold. Or anyone to see me snatch the piece of paper and take it back with me into my bedroom.
The soirée was in two days, and that thought kept me tossing and turning, unable to wind down enough for sleep. Inara had tired of my dysregulated nervous system, politely meowing for me to let her back into the living area.
Alone and lying in the dark with my phone on my chest, I let out a long, slow breath. A familiar urge crawled to me from the shadows of the bedroom, one I’d sworn off too many times to count. The sickness was rooted too deeply. It always came back.
I lifted my phone and navigated to a familiar short erotica website, browsing under theBDSMtag. Because no, of course I couldn’t just watch porn like a normal person. I had to indulge in my deepest shame in a classy, elevated way, to preserve even a shred of my dignity.
I clicked on an intriguing title and scanned the page.
“Horrible,” I said with disdain, a judgment of the writing quality more than the brand of depravity showcased.
I grabbed my vibrator. I was already past the point of no return. For the next ten minutes, the shame would be kept at bay, and then, it would return with a crushing force, as it always did.
It took me a while to find something that worked, and unfortunately, the male lead was tall and muscular and tattooed—not exactly rare in female fantasies—but still. I should’ve looked for something else, but my eyes were already glued to the story, mining it for details that satiated the demons who’d been let out of their cage.
I gasped and clutched my sheets, pleasure melting the world around me until it was the only thing that existed. The low buzz of the vibrator was covered up by the deafening window AC.
The man in the story took the woman forcefully, manhandling her and reminding her she’d signed her body over to him forever. She was his to use, however he wanted, andtonight, he was going to use all her holes as she lay helpless, tied to his bed.
He tortured her nipples with clamps, degraded her, taunted her for being so wet for him. I’d barely made it a quarter of the way through the story before I was coming undone far too soon.
The high came crashing down, and my moment of freedom crashed with it. Tears brimmed my eyes when I realized what I’d done.
I just wanted to be normal.
I wished I got off to men being nice and attentive and loving—that was what I wanted for myself, after all. I wanted to be loved, not used.
But instead, something dark and broken inside me refused to be satisfied with people making love. It wanted pain and force and depravity.
When I was younger, I prayed for God to make me like everyone else, begged for him to remove my sinful thoughts and urges. I wanted to be desireless, pure, andgood. Not rotten to my core.
Now, I prayed to whoever listened to make me normal—not because I thought sex was sinful, but because my particular brand of desire catered to the worst kind of men.
Men who’d hurt me.
Men who’d hurt Lorelei even more.
My release ended the same way it always did, with me curled up in the fetal position, remembering the men I grew up with in a small town in Tennessee. The women they dominated didn’t have a safe word, and they weren’t allowed to have boundaries. These men’s abuse and control had been ordained by God, and there was no higher authority than the authority bestowed upon God’s favored.
And the man who ruled them all…
I swallowed down the lump in my throat. My chest was tight. I didn’t want to think of him, to remember his cruel, pale eyes and self-righteous smile.
Pastor Roy Carter. Head of the church, prophet and visionary, figurehead of our entire town.
Lorelei’s father.
This time, when I entered The Circle’s lobby, two sets of doors were propped open, revealing the breathtaking nave beyond. I could see the dramatic pulpit at the front, a grand altar before wooden pews. There was also ample open space, as if several of the pews had been moved out.
