by Zoe Blake
Drool dripped. Fists clenched. Pain faded as she grew used to it, but his eyes were on hers. A dull blue, like old paint. Sun-bleached and rotting. His face was tanned, weather worn, wild. The brown of his close-cropped beard run through with strands of amber when he tilted his face and it caught the light.
He was older than her, by twenty years or so, but the body under his clothes was all strength. Battle-hardened and brutal, and the bulge behind the buttons of his pants matched his size.
Tall, powerful, male.
This was going to hurt. A lot.
He leaned forward, the bulk of his shoulders blocking some of the light until he was a dark shadow framed in a yellow haze. “I’m going to fuck this pretty mouth of yours”—his fingers dug in just a little harder and she couldn’t stifle the whimper, a garbled, incomplete plea—“and then I’m going to make you scream before I fuck you into a bloody puddle.”
Those words burrowed deeper than the fingers bruising her.
Those words were promises.
Tears burned the edges of her eyes as he eased off the pressure with his thumb, only to trace the drool over her top lip and then smear it across her cheek. In another life she would have begged, called out for help, run for the door — but she’d tried all those things on other nights.
Begging made them happy.
Calling out made them hurt her worse.
And the door was always, always, locked the moment she was pushed inside.
So, Danielle stayed on her throbbing knees as he sat up in the chair. Swallowed the drool left in her mouth. Traced the sore place he’d left behind with the tip of her tongue, unable to stop prodding even when it stung. Even when she tasted the blood he’d drawn.
Looking up at him, he seemed taller, larger from the perspective, a new flash of memory hit her.
The warmth of a fire. A soothing voice reading a book aloud. Her fingers working at a braid. Her sister’s braid, her father’s voice, the smell of real food cooking.
As quickly as it had come, it was gone, and it left her colder than before. The loss of people she couldn’t even name hollowing out a place inside her chest as if the scraps of her heart were trying to escape with sharpened spoons.
How fucked was it to remember something good while she was naked and kneeling before a goddamned monster? A monster that was going to fuck her. That was a promise made by his presence in this room, in this place. Hell.
His fingers wound around her throat, squeezing, as the other hand popped the buttons on his pants one at a time. When his cock came free, pants adjusted to let it stand tall, Danielle tried to coat her lips and tongue with the drool he’d summoned.
Anything to make it easier.
“Hands behind your back. If you move them you know what’ll happen.” It was a casual command, so little effort behind it because he knew it would be obeyed — and she did obey. Clasping one hand around the opposite wrist, she waited as his fingers wormed their way into her hair, gathering it on either side of her head to keep it out of the way as he pulled her forward.
Drawing the head of his cock between her lips didn’t require a command.
Refusing the urge to bite didn’t require a threat.
Danielle dipped her head down voluntarily, and laved the underside of his shaft with her tongue before she sealed her lips to his flesh. His guttural groan was a triumph, and she ignored the tender space in her mouth so that she could focus on pleasing him.
When they were happy, they weren’t so violent.
Usually.
But something about this man, something in the dull glint of his blue eyes, or the calm tone of his powerful voice, told her that he was going to hurt her no matter how well she sucked his cock. It wouldn’t matter if he came down her throat, wouldn’t matter if she hummed a moan when her lips were pressed to the base of him. There would be pain. But for a single moment she tried to determine if she was still concerned about dying, wondered if her self-preservation had dissolved enough to join the other wraiths who walked these halls waiting for their chance to be free.
It was just a moment though.
His fingers tightened in her hair, the sting of strands ripping free of her scalp preceding his first harsh thrust into her throat. Yanked forward, nose buried into the fabric of his shirt, she pressed ragged nails into her skin to keep her hands still. Swallowing around the girth forced past the point where air could slip by, Danielle tried to accept it. To wait for the moment when his own needs would force him to move, to seek more friction — the moment when she’d be able to breathe.
Throat convulsing, stomach heaving, she finally got a sip of air before she choked on the next thrust. The hot tears in her eyes were a biological response to the gagging, the lack of air, not an emotional one. She’d cried all the tears she could before now. Used all the words she knew to beg and plead, and not a single person had cared.
She was an object. A warm body to be used.
And she still couldn’t remember how the fuck she’d ended up here.
He was bruising her throat, making flashes of light beat behind clenched eyelids to the pounding of her pulse as he deprived her of air. Wet, desperate gasps were all she could catch on the few thrusts that pulled him out of her throat. Just enough to keep her conscious, to keep her mouth and tongue working at him, even if most of it now was automatic convulsions.
The only conscious effort was keeping her lips folded over her teeth as best she could.
Another fruitless attempt to ease the pain she knew was coming.
This? This relentless fucking of her throat, the pounding of his cock between her lips, the harsh grunts above her buzzing ears? It was nothing. It was easy.
If this was all he wanted from her, she’d lick his fucking boots clean in appreciation.
“Take it,” he growled and forced her down once again. Nose buried against fabric she couldn’t smell, because she couldn’t breathe. The urge to pull back, to brace her hands against his knees, to bite down and force her way to air… it was all-consuming. Every neuron in her brain fired at once demanding oxygen.
BREATHE, her body shouted, commanded, and the death grip of her nails on her wrist eased, violence rising in her head like a red haze from a lizard-brain that only knew death or survival.
But he was moving again, a fraction of air making its way to her lungs, just enough to return sanity and allow her to switch the grip behind her back. Opposite hand now, pressing jagged nails into skin to remind her of the things they’d done to teach her not to bite. Not to fight.
Male skin slicked over her tongue, drool pooling to ease his path, welcoming him into her throat before his next long withdrawal spilled it down her chin and graced her with oxygen in the same movement.
His thrusts grew shorter, quicker, and she tried to focus and suck him, moving her tongue with purpose, stroking, urging him to completion as she made herself drunk on the air whistling in and out of her nose.
“Fuck!” The word spat out as he pushed deep, tightening his grip in her hair, cock pulsing in her throat as he came in twitching jerks, only able to taste him when he eased back. Appeased for a moment, hands still wound in her hair but no longer painful.
A fleeting reprieve.
She gentled the movement of her tongue against his softening flesh, swallowed again and again as he pulled his hips back, letting her mouth play with the flared head for a second or two longer — but that was all he gave her.
When he pulled himself free and wrenched her head backwards, she tried to avoid his eyes, but they filled the full frame of her vision and she knew closing her eyelids would only make him angry. Danielle couldn’t have described herself in that moment, couldn’t remember a time before this place where she might have done this for someone who cared about her.
At least she knew how to suck cock.
Like riding a bike… even though she couldn’t quite remember if she’d ever ridden one.
One hand released her hair, a thumb plucking at her lips
again as he smiled. “I’ve missed that,” he hummed, tilting his head a little as he smeared more drool and traces of his seed across her chin. “Tell me, do you scream as well as you whine around a cock in your throat?”
Had she whined?
It had been unconscious if she had, but she knew he didn’t really want an answer.
“Will you scream for me?” His fingers tightened on her chin, and she nodded. No use in lying. “Speak.”
He actually wanted her to answer?
It took a hard swallow to make her voice work, but she finally forced out a whispered, “Yes, sir.”
A groan, his fist ripping her head back further by her hair, the sting spreading fast across her scalp to meet the ache in her neck. Then he leaned forward to hover his face above hers. “Say it again.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Nice,” he growled and then shoved her backward by the grip on her chin. She caught herself on one elbow, but it didn’t last as he grabbed her other arm and dragged her over the floor. Knees, shins, feet scraped against the rough wood, helpless sounds dripping from her bruised lips as she tried not to fight.
Fighting makes it worse.
Fighting makes them hit you first.
She may not have the memories of her life back, but her memories of Eden were complete, and getting kicked in the ribs wasn’t something you forgot easily. Nor was a hard slap, or the impact of a fist into the soft, yielding flesh of an empty belly.
When he dropped her to the floor, she caught herself just enough that her face didn’t hit, and then she stayed still. Listened, eyes studying the grains in the wood, the tiny pale dot that could have been dust or a piece of lint embedded just beneath her.
“You know what I miss most? From before all of this shit?” His tone was disturbingly conversational, even as she heard the rattle of chain being gathered.
This was one of those times he didn’t actually want an answer.
“Coffee. Fuck. Do you remember coffee? Cream and sugar with that bitter aftertaste that you still craved day after fucking day?” The man was musing aloud as she cowered on the floor, painstakingly drawing her limbs in inch-by-inch so as not to draw too much attention. Unable to remember the flavor of coffee, even though she knew what it was. The color of it, the look, like a picture from a book. “I used to drink a few cups before I even got dressed. It made it all more bearable. The every-day shit.”
Heavy boots moved closer and she flinched, one leg jerking upward to protect her belly, chin tucking against her chest. Still just a pathetic mammal at the core, shielding vital points from a predator.
“I used to think about coffee a lot. Coffee, and fucking.” The reinforced toe of his boot pressed against a kidney with a nudge, as if to point out she wasn’t safe.
Like she could have forgotten that.
“At least I can still get one fix, right?” Still so conversational, even as he grabbed her hair in a fist and forced her upright. She yelped as he shoved her into the wall, breasts crushed against it until her ribs felt the weight of his hand pushing between her shoulders. “Don’t move.”
The pressure eased as he moved to her side, wrapping coils of clattering chain around one wrist before securing it and attaching it to the hook high above her head. Danielle was a touch too short for it to be comfortable, and he could have given her another link or two of slack if he’d cared at all, but instead he just repeated the process with her other arm.
On her toes, she already winced at the strain in her calves, the pain of the metal grinding against the bones of her wrists, even though she knew this was nothing.
Knew the second he began gathering her hair up to tie it off that she’d keep her promise to him.
She would scream.
It was the first whisper of leather behind her that made her body jerk. An involuntary reaction, a surge of fear, muscles tensing in preparation, fists clenching.
And then the world distorted with agony, lungs so stunned she made no sound at all as fire ripped across her back and her eyes squeezed so tight she saw flares of purple and green. Another crack of the whip lanced over her shoulder, and she choked on air as she cried out.
“You can do better than that,” he taunted, and then he whipped her again, and again, and again, and somewhere in the midst of mind-consuming anguish she had screamed — was still screaming.
Danielle felt her flesh split, legs giving out so that the crush of chain held her aloft, threatening to break her wrists even as the first warm trail of blood marked its way down her back, finding the groove of her spine.
He barely even paused.
Another wicked slash, another scream that tore her throat, more wet spilling down her back. Only aware of it as the air cooled it on her skin. Everything else was pain, brutal and unforgiving as she went limp, as her ears turned the crack of the whip and her own cries to a buzzing hum.
Black was closing in, blacker than the darkness behind closed eyes, and she leaned into it, pleaded for it in the scraps of thought she was capable. Somewhere she heard the echo of a soothing voice reading aloud, felt the heat of fire instead of the burning lashes, and then she remembered thunder.
But it wasn’t thunder.
The booms that shook the floor, rattled the windows, filled the daylight with black smoke… grew louder, came closer, turned into earthquakes, and screaming, and rubble.
“Ungh!” Her voice was a grunt, guttural and choking, but it wasn’t because of smoke and dust. It was because he was on top of her, inside her, and the pain in her back was all-consuming as he thrust and rocked her against the coarse sheet. She was awake, just enough to feel everything. Including the throbbing ache between her thighs as he forced her wide, knees bent toward her shoulders. A weak cry left her and he growled in satisfaction, fucking her harder, grinding her bloody back into the thin mattress, and colors swarmed on the insides of her eyelids.
“Stay awake, Danielle. It’s so much nicer with you awake.” His head lowered, beard scraping against her cheek, her neck, and then she felt his tongue moving warm and wet over her shoulder. The dark was close, this torture too much for consciousness, but he kept talking, words buzzing against her ear. “You feel good… yeah… scream again…”
Teeth clamped down where her neck curved and she did scream, weak and pathetic, body jerking as his jaw tightened, until the pain blurred with the rest of it, and she felt her mind wobble. There, and then not, and then back for another thrust, and then she was slipping into the dark.
Mouth against hers, tongue invading, teeth nipping her lip sharply — thankfully not enough to pull her out of the slide. Even his words meant nothing in the haze of pain.
“I’m going to keep fucking you until they take you.” A hard drive, fingers digging into the tender flesh behind one knee. “A blood-soaked mess, covered in my seed.”
Okay. No argument as everything dissolved.
Why would she care what he did with her body?
Chapter 3
It was the chill that woke her, the water around her long bereft of its warmth — if it had ever been warm at all. Sometimes the heating vats broke down and there was only frigid water, but at least it was water. Sliding further down the sunken table she dipped her lips into the cool and drank slowly.
Another lesson she’d learned in Eden. Drinking too fast after a baptism only made her choke, vomit, but it felt good to sate the thirst.
“This one is awake.” A male voice that promised more pain if she didn’t behave. There were plenty of things they could do to her without leaving a mark. Carefully, she took in a large mouthful of water just before they started to raise the table, letting it trickle down her throat in small swallows.
Not too much. Not too fast.
It would be worthless if she threw it all up, and then they would be angry because they’d have to clean it up. Everything was simpler if she never made mistakes. Not better, but simpler. The man to her right grabbed her shoulder, roughly rolling her onto her side to run a callus
ed hand across her back. “All good. Mark her down.”
“Got it,” the other man replied, removing the belt across her waist with a flick of his wrist. “Take her to room four.”
That callused hand wrapped around her arm, pulling her upright, and she climbed down from the table without being asked. Dripping with water, she shivered. Pinpricks of pain in her numb feet as she walked stiffly beside the man wearing plain gray clothes.
Out of the baptism baths, into the hall, two doors down. Room four.
The man rapped his knuckles against the wood, his grip adjusting on her arm but not letting go. As if she would run when there was nowhere to run. No real memory of a safe place she might want to run toward.
The door opened and she stared at the hem of the priest’s robe as he spoke. “Thank you, my child, you may go.”
As soon as she was released, Danielle walked into the room and took her place on the chair. Knees together, hands in her lap, head bowed, still shivering. This was the most difficult part of it all. The rules within the insanity. It was almost easier when she performed service, because at least then there was no pretty lie over everything. No formality. Just pain and sex. Just a body. Simple.
“God has chosen you to be baptized and reborn again, my child. What do you say?”
“Thank you, God, for your grace and your love.” It was a memorized script. One she wasn’t even sure the priest in front of her believed, but wrong answers were not allowed.
“How do you give your thanks?” he asked.
“With all of my self, father.” Danielle’s teeth chattered behind lips pressed hard together to keep the sound to herself. Soon she would be on a cot, covered in the thin blanket until they summoned her again. As long as she played her role, she would have a moment to rest.
“And what do you want?”
To burn this place to the ground.
“To serve in whatever way God needs me to serve,” she answered, even though her throat seemed to protest the words and the lie came out tight and strained.
