Willing Sneak Peek
Copyright © 2022 by Izzy Sweet and Sean Moriarty
All rights reserved. This work or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Published by Izzy Sweet and Sean Moriarty
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2022 Izzy Sweet & Sean Moriarty
Chapter One
Asher
The Future
New Elysium
Thump.
Squelch.
Thump.
The sound is as rhythmic as a heartbeat, providing the harmony of this moment as the sun rises in the east.
Thump.
Squelch.
Thump.
Lifting my free hand up, I slam my fist against the door frame of the townhouse and listen to it shudder.
Answer the door, Chloe.
I know you can hear me.
Let me in.
Beyond this flimsy barrier, I know she’s in there, listening to the thudding of my fist.
I can hear her breath cracking, breaking, as she whispers little invocations to ward herself from my evil.
Thump.
Squelch.
Thump.
Each sound matches the beating of the heart that calls to me from inside her chest. Rhythmic, slightly elevated, but steady and strong.
But it’s not just her blood that calls to me, beckoning me with the wicked harmony of a siren’s song…
It’s the scent of her coming to age three hours ago.
The scent is as intoxicating as it is damning.
She’s ready for me now.
Chloe’s body is ready for what her Order calls the Profane Gift.
Damn the Order of Saint Benedict. May they rot in their eternal salvation.
Thump.
Squelch.
Thump.
This is fucking madness. She knows she’s mine. There is no other way for this to end.
“Chloe,” I say with a low thrum in my voice, speaking the words out loud now. “Open the door, let me come in.”
Silence.
Silence so thick it reminds me of the catacombs in the undergrounds of Paris.
“Please…” a gurgled plea comes from the body I’ve been slapping against the side of this shitty brick home. “Stop…”
Thump.
The man groans and quiets.
His pallid skin is shining brighter now. I can see the lifeforce leaving his body as we both wait for Chloe to accept the gift I’ve brought for her ascension.
What a poor fucking gift it will be if it dies before she turns.
This time the thump is harder against the brick.
“Open the door, Chloe.” I try to withhold the snarl in my voice, but I can tell I fail by the way her heartbeat picks up.
She’s in a bathroom in the middle of the house. There’s a dripping faucet that wasn’t completely shut off echoing in the same room.
That’s an old trick.
The Order knows many ways to confound one of my kind, but they never work exactly right when a fated enters the equation. Dripping water is supposed to help conceal the heartbeat of a human, especially if one of the Order is continually blessing the water.
That is not the case here.
Chloe is the only one in the house, huddled in the corner of her bathroom shower, curtains drawn as if to ward me from seeing her.
I feel the heat slowly building between the blades of my shoulders.
The sun will be fully up soon, and I’ll be forced to leave her.
The slam of the body into the brick is much louder than before.
“Hear me,” I murmur low and soft to Chloe. “Hear my words. I know you can hear me this way. My strengths, my gifts flow through our connection when we’re this close. Did the Order tell you that? Did they warn you of this temptation?”
There’s a rustling and the sound of hands moving against skin. She’s covering her ears now. She’s fighting the pull she feels to our destiny. I like the thought of my delicate little Chloe being such a fighter, but not right fucking now.
“You hear me,” I continue to speak in soft, soothing tones. “You hear me, and you hear the heartbeat of the gift I’ve brought to you.”
The invocations to her Order’s patron Saint Benedict grow louder. She hears the heartbeat as well as I do, it calls to the thirst inside of her body. Each thud of the valves opening calls to her like a loud drumbeat.
“Open. The. Door.” I punctuate each word with a slam of the man’s body against the brick wall.
Each time I thump the body against the wall, I hear her shuddering inside that tiny bathtub. The palms of her hands pressed tightly against her ears to block out the sounds of my gift.
She’s being unreasonable right now. Entirely stubborn and bullheaded. I like strong women, but not when the sun is about to come up and ruin this whole experience.
“I’ve waited twenty years, Chloe,” I say before slamming the soon-to-be lifeless body against the wall.
The snap of a collarbone causes Chloe to shrink in further on herself.
We’re not close enough for me to feel her emotions, but I know she’s fighting her true self. Her indoctrination has been thoroughly drilled into that beautiful mind. The Order truly destroys all free thought and will. It forces lies and death among the most pure, the most devout.
Lies. Every single one of those damnable scriptures they preach and pound into their disciples… all of them are lies.
Thump.
Squelch.
Thump.
Splatter.
“Fuck.” I snarl so deeply I can feel my chest rumble.
The brains oozing down the side of the wall make the whole fucking gift useless.
Blood.
She needs the blood of a living being if she wants a smoother transition.
I may be a murderer, but I do have a heart for making things easy…
Dropping the body to the front stoop, I sigh loudly. The heat between my shoulders has become almost oppressive. I can feel the sun rising far enough in the eastern sky that it promises pain and weakness if I don’t get out of here soon.
Any other time, I’d laugh at fate’s sense of humor…
I’ve finally located my beloved but there’s no time to properly welcome my future bride into my world.
Taking a deep breath, I sift through the layers of paint, mortar, drywall, carpeting, and tile. I smell her scent beneath the masking perfume she wears. It’s intoxicating, maddening, and divine. She is purity. Her scent is so heady and sensual… even the smell of blood pales in comparison.
I’m almost drunk just from the smell of her, and this is with her hiding inside a house.
I fear she’ll break the very essence of my being when we finally stand before each other.
“Open. The. Door!” I shout.
I know she can hear my whispers, but time is fleeting so quickly from the night skies…
“No,” a tiny voice whispers back through all the layers.
Her small, delicate voice pierces my very heart with pain.
In all my years of a being alive and undead, I’ve never felt the ache so badly until now. Nine hundred and eighty-seven years, and one word all but shatters me.
“Open the door,” I rasp to her as I feel my body weakening from the first rays of sunlight breaking over the horizon.
It doesn’t matter if the rays are physically touching me or not—the sun breaks my kind all the same.
The sun doesn’t kill us like the myths love to tell, but it does severely weaken us until we’re nearly human. It also hurts us and causes pain, like a needle stabbing directly into every nerve and pore. Most of us have grown accustomed to such misery for short periods of time, but if I’m not careful and able to get into some type of shelter, I’ll be worthless when it comes to protecting her.
“You,” Chloe whispers over the dripping water of her sink, “can’t come in unless I invite you.”
One of the few myths about my kind that’s actually true.
“Chloe,” I say, slamming my fist into the door. “Open this door! I can’t protect you if you keep me out here all day!”
“No,” she whispers, and I hear her sniffling. The taste of salt stains the air. “Never.”
Tears.
She’s shedding tears because of me, and because of her programming.
Damn all of the Order.
Punching a fist into the wall beside her door, I look at the damage it causes both to the brick and my hand.
Blood weeps from my knuckles.
If this was but a half hour earlier, it wouldn’t have made a mark on my skin.
I can’t stay any longer…
No matter how much it kills me to leave her like this.
“Chloe,” I growl, “it took twenty years to track you down to this city, to this home. I have your scent. No matter where you go, I will find you.”
Looking at the gift I brought her, I kick the lifeless corpse. What a waste of a perfectly good blood bag.
“Don’t leave here until I come back after nightfall,” I demand.
“Fuck off,” she growls at me.
If I wasn’t so fucking pissed at having to leave her, I’d laugh at her little act of defiance.
Chapter Two
Asher
The Past
20 years ago…
New Philadelphia
The steady thrum of my captive’s heartbeat throbs in my ears as I lay back on my bed. The harmonic drip, drip, drip of her blood into my mouth feeling utterly decadent.
I’ll catch hell with Gregory in the morning when he discovers how much work he’ll have cleaning my bedroom, but it’s worth it.
I should have probably looked for a mute to become my butler, but I honestly wasn’t thinking at the time.
I could have done what most of my kind do and gone with a female ghoul to serve my needs, but they’ve always seemed ghastly to me. That and the last time I was at Raph’s house he had a ghoul strip dancing in the corner of his living room. I won’t soon forget her twirling around a pole and her hand disconnecting from her arm.
She fell yet the hand remained on the pole, just hanging on like nothing had happened.
I slowly tilt my head side to side, letting the blood drip onto my cheeks.
Smiling up at the young woman spinning above my head, I peer into her eyes. They’re losing all that fight that’s so fierce and futile. She’s still trying to plead with me, but the ball gag I have crammed in her mouth keeps her quiet, allowing me to enjoy my meal.
Her heartbeat is slowing though, and the blood that remains in her body isn’t going to last forever.
That saddens me.
All too often they just bleed out and I’m left with a throbbing erection. Feeding does that, and it’s infinitely frustrating. I could fuck her even though she’s human, and I do that frequently, but it just doesn’t quite scratch the itch.
Sighing, I lay with my mouth open, letting the blood do its job. It gives me another twenty or thirty days to skulk around this shitty city I’m in. I hate little cities like this. The atmosphere here is far too small town for me. I was once a human living in a small village, it sucked.
The door opens to my room, and I hear the heavy thuds of motorcycle boots clomping across the bedroom carpeting.
“Asher.” Raphael sighs.
Licking my lips for a moment to clear the blood off them, I say, “I’m eating.”
“You’re playing with your food.”
“Not true.” I lift my hand up to increase the spin of the woman’s body.
Raphael growls. “The Order took a coven out.”
“Where?”
“Boston,” he says angrily.
“Jeremiah’s Coven?”
“Yes.”
It doesn’t come as a surprise. Jeremiah’s coven has been in Boston for over ten years. They’re staunch supporters of Malice’s. Well, I should say were, I guess.
Malice, the problem child of the undead world. He wants to go back to the way things were long before the Order gained a tight hold on the various churches around the world. He wants strongholds in every country. He wants us to proudly stand tall to all those who want to destroy us.
Yet the fucker lives in hiding. Somewhere in Africa, if reports are right. He’s pissed off too many of our kind.
“And you’d like for me to send a retaliatory strike against the Order, further inciting the war?” I say as I spin the body suspended above me in the opposite direction.
“I’d like you to do something beyond laying there and feeding like a fat fucking lion in some zoo,” Raphael shouts at me.
I wince at the volume of his voice, the anger of his words practically burning my skin.
He’s right, of course, but I’m getting tired of all the bloodshed caused by fighting these fucking parasitical fanatics. There are just too many of them. Humans breed like fucking bunnies while vampires can take centuries before we find our soulmarked, if we ever find them.
Reaching up to stop the girl from spinning, I snap her neck. “Send a strike team to Corpus Christi, remove three priests and bring them back.”
“What will that do for us?” he asks.
I sit up from the bed, shouting at him. “It’ll do what I fucking want!”
The force in my words make him take a step back. As his fucking sire he should know to watch his tone. Perhaps he’s forgotten not to poke the fucking bear.
Standing up from the bed, I yell, “Bring me three priests and three nuns. I don’t give a fuck if they’re Order of Saint Benedict or not. We’ll make the nuns ghouls and unleash them on their Sunday fucking mass.”
Shaking his head, Raphael starts to laugh. “What do you really want to do?”
“Exactly as I just—”
Head swimming with disorientation, the entire right side of my body goes numb and weak, as if I’m having some sort of aneurysm.
“Raph?” I look at him in confusion.
Raphael rushes over to me as I feel myself falling to the floor. “Asher!”
***
Looking up into a bright light, I’m momentarily blinded by the painful sting of illumination. It physically hurts to look upon it, yet I’m unable to turn away or close my eyes.
I want to turn my head so badly from the pain, but I have no control over my body. I can do nothing but writhe mentally, stuck inside a prison of some sorts.
A crying scream that’s not my own suddenly erupts from my throat and a face covered in a medical mask comes into view.
She’s here. My soulmarked.
My fated.
I sense it instantly, the connection crashing into me like two worlds colliding together.
I’m inside her somehow, I quickly realize.
Seeing the world through her newborn eyes.
My thoughts surge through a rush of emotions. Fear, anger, desire, and loathing. Wonderment, joy, and sadness. Each one slams into my consciousness before it’s rapidly replaced by the next.
In the end I have to settle for being restlessly tense.
If I could move, I’d feel much better about things, but I can do nothing but bear witness.
The face above me shifts to another. It takes a moment for my fated’s eyes to adjust to the movement, but I can make out the smile of a lightly freckled woman.
I can’t feel my own body, and I can’t feel the tiny being I’m inside of, but I still have access to my mind and senses.
Forcing my power into my fated’s eyes, the world shifts from black and white to technicolor, making it much easier for me to see what’s going on.
The woman holding me has a smattering of freckles across her nose and cheeks, and dark blonde hair falls down her shoulders. Her strained smile is full of love, but her lips and damp skin are paler than they should be.
She’s bleeding from somewhere…
I can smell it.
A soft, feminine voice speaks from somewhere close by. “Marcy, do you remember what we talked about?”
The freckled woman glances up. “I… I don’t know.”
Voice becoming firm, the woman asks, “Why not? You know the importance.”
The view through my dear fated’s eyes shifts as her mother clutches her tighter to her chest.
Able to look up now, I see a nurse peering down at us with a frown.
Hanging from the nurse’s neck is a silver chain with a pendant. Engraved into the pendant is a circle around a cross that bears a nail at each end. To the unknowing, the nails represent the three nails that were used to crucify Christ. The fourth nail being the one that held the announcement above his head.
To those who know better, it’s also how the Order prefers to murder my kind. A stake through each hand, one through the ankles, and one through the heart. Normally that alone wouldn’t kill us, if given enough time to heal…
It’s when they light us on fire and behead us that snuffs out our existence.
The nurse persists as she moves in to scoop the newborn baby up. “Marcy, you must understand… If she’s lucky, they will kill her if they catch her. If she’s not lucky, they will do much, much worse.”
If I could reach through the baby’s body and snap the frigid cunt’s neck, I’d do it. I’d fucking dine on the whore’s neck for an eternity. No, better yet, I’d force her to drink my blood and make her a ghoul. Then I’d set her loose inside a catholic school with instructions to murder as many as she could.
“But she’s all… she’s all I have left of Robert,” this woman who birthed my fated says.
“Yes, but your dear, departed husband would want you to do what’s best for her, wouldn’t he?” the nurse insists.
The woman holding my soulmarked begins to shake and tremble, clutching her as tightly as she can. But her grasp is weakening and the smell of blood in the room is growing stronger.
This Marcy is bleeding out!
Without help, she likely only has five to ten minutes to live.
“We’ll keep her safe, Marcy, and when it’s truly safe, you can come see her and reconnect. She’ll know all about you,” the nurse says as she starts to pull my fated from the woman’s arms.
The newborn looks up to her mother, and I can see tears spilling down her cheeks.
“Chloe Marie Bonham,” her mother whispers. “Her name is Chloe.”
“That is a good name, she’ll be strong,” the nurse says as she lifts the child up.
Being tucked into the nurse’s arms makes me want to vomit up everything I’ve ever drank.
We’re shifted to see the woman, whose body is growing paler by the second under the bright medical lights.
“Do you, Marcy Bonham, give Chloe Marie Bonham to the Order of Saint Benedict? Do you place your child under our protection?” the nurse asks the woman who gave life to the one that will complete my fate.
Marcy’s answer comes out with a labored breath. “Yes.” Her arms raise towards the child, her chest heaving mightily to drag in air. “Hold… her…one…”
“We’re done here,” the nurse says coldly.
The nurse and whoever else is in the room step away from Marcy, allowing her to fully bleed out in her bed.
***
She’s here.
My fated has finally been found after so many lonely years… Nine hundred and eighty-seven years to be exact.
So many long nights spent wasting away as I hungered for my mate. So many years of walking alone…
“She’s here, Raphael,” I sputter out to my best friend.
“Who?” Raphael asks.
Turning to look into his eyes, I growl, “Chloe Marie Bonham, my soulmarked.”
“In the city?!” he practically yells as he yanks me to my feet.
“No. No, I can’t… If she was close, I’d be able to tell. But she’s in North America, I think.”
“I’ll send out word to our network,” he says as he pulls away from me.
“Try Canada. The nurse who helped her had a Canadian accent. But her mother had a southern accent, almost like she was from Texas…” I stop and think for a moment. “Maybe, I don’t know.”
“I’ll make sure they know.” Raphael races from the room, the door practically flying off the hinges as he rushes out.
Getting my legs firmly under me, I move toward the door myself, but at a much slower pace. The hunger is back now, stronger than ever before.
I can feel my stomach literally devouring itself.
I’ve been told this would happen. The linking of two can paralyze most vampires, even one as strong as I am.
My hands cradle my stomach as visions of Marcy bleeding out flood through my mind. Each drop of blood both nauseates me and drives my hunger even closer to the edge of blood-lusting madness.
“Fuck!” I scream.
My fingernails rip out, turning into razor-sharp claws, and my fangs fully explode from my gums.
Blood dripping from my mouth, I slash out with my hand at the dim light in the hallway, causing showers of sparks to explode in my vision.
I reel in the inner demon that begs to lay waste to the city surrounding me. I know if I do not stop myself now, I’ll drain so many bodies it will be impossible to hide our presence.
We may be out in the world, but we don’t ever advertise our location.
“Gregory!” I bellow out to the house. “Bring me a body! Now!”
“Yes, my liege.” Gregory moves silently to my side, his arm wrapping around my waist. “Let’s get you to the study.”
“She’s alive, Gregory. She’s finally been born,” I whisper.
“Praise be to our Blood Fathers,” he says reverently as he sits me gently down on a thickly padded leather chair.
“Please be quick,” I growl. “I do not know how long I can contain this.”
Chapter Three
Chloe
Present
New Elysium
Soft lips press against my neck, lingering over my pulse. Placing a kiss that’s both sweet and somehow deeply disturbing at the same time.
“Chloe,” a seductive voice whispers into my ear, tugging me slowly into consciousness. “Wake up, beautiful. Wake up and see me.”
The nightmare always begins the same.
And yet it always catches me by surprise. As if somehow, someway, I’ve forgotten about the other terrible dreams.
One moment I’m encased in darkness. At rest. At true peace. Sleeping in the warm comfort of my bed. Blissfully free of the perils that haunt my every waking moment.
And the next…
He’s above me.
The shadow that has been stalking me since I’ve taken my first breath.
That’s all he is at first—a dark, blurry shadow above me with the form and shape of a man.
But even here, in this strange dream space, I know he’s not a man.
No, he’s something more. Something that feels too big and too deep for my fuzzy thoughts to comprehend.
The weight of him… Not just of his body, but of him… His will. His desire. His hunger… is a palpable thing.
I can feel it pressing down on me and wrapping around me like tendrils.
Sucking me into his madness.
A madness that revolves completely around me.
It doesn’t alarm or frighten me at first.
Not like it should.
No, I find it comforting.
After all…
“It’s only a dream,” his enchanting voice reminds me before he places another lingering kiss against my neck.
Here, where only the two of us seem to exist, there is no worry about the purity of my soul, or the fear of burning in eternal damnation.
It’s a relief as he presses me down into a soft mattress.
As if I’ve been holding my breath and waiting for this moment. All my life I’ve been holding my breath and waiting for this. For him.
He is completion.
My body loosens and my limbs spread open as if commanded. His shadowy form settles between my legs, and I can feel the solidness of his shape as he presses against my thighs.
I can feel the warmth of something hard as he pushes his hips against my hips.
“Yes, that’s it, angel. Open for me. Accept me.”
Yet another kiss is pressed against my neck.
But this time there’s the tiniest pinch of pain, as if I was nipped.
An electric tingle zips down my spine, and I instinctually gasp and arch up. Clutching at him.
He groans a deep, throaty sound of pleasure as my nails sink into his dark, shadowy skin, and kisses the same spot on my neck. “Do you know how long I’ve waited for this? How long I’ve ached for you?”
I don’t know what it is about the spot, but as soon as I feel another pinprick of pain my entire body lights up with crackling sensation. My very blood somehow becoming electrified with pulsing energy.
A pulsing energy that seems to pool and gather force between my thighs. Filling me with a sudden, intense need of… something.
Something I don’t quite understand.
Before my fuzzy, muddled thoughts can work it out, he’s kissing me again and again.
Nipping and sucking at my neck.
His mouth pulling at me with a strange, unexpected urgency that doesn’t make any sense.
We have so much time…
We have an eternity.
What’s the rush?
My skin vibrates as he suddenly growls, and the sounds slipping out of him become gruff and animalistic.
“Chloe, stop resisting me,” he demands.
His body rocks into mine and the energy inside me moves with him like waves rolling through an ocean. Lessening as his hips pull away, but so strong when he pushes back against me I’m sinking into a mindless oblivion.
Just as I’m being completely swallowed up by the darkness, the pain in my neck increases tenfold.
Pleasure crashes into me, overwhelmingly strong, and I can barely breathe from the intensity of it.
All I can do is try to survive it.
In the back of my head, I know something about this isn’t right. Something about this isn’t natural.
But the second I part my lips to protest, my world is turned upside down again.
A warm, velvety hardness slides inside me, spreading me open. Filling me where I’ve always been empty. Using my own slippery wetness as guidance.
Crying out, my nails bite into the skin of his shoulders, and he groans a long, toe-curling groan before moving against me once more. His body rocking me past the shock and thrusting me back to the edge of oblivion.
I try to let go. I try to slip back into the nothingness.
I want to give up the weight of this mortal coil I’ve been carrying.
To finally be free of every burden…
But there’s this tugging on my neck. A hard, persistent tugging that’s making me feel like he’s trying to suck my soul through my flesh.
It’s so distracting, I start to push at his shoulders to get him to stop whatever it is he’s doing.
Growling like a beast that doesn’t want to give up its kill, he thrusts into me harder, and the tugging on my neck becomes nearly unbearable.
Desperate to be free of the distraction, I pull my neck away, tipping my head in the opposite direction, only to be stopped by a shadowy hand wrapping around my throat.
“Be still, Chloe. Stop. Fighting. Me,” he commands.
His words, needle-like, stab into my brain while his fingers squeeze and cut off my air.
Against my will, my body reacts to his command. Every muscle becoming weak and loosened until I’m utterly limp beneath him.
Fingers loosening, he murmurs, “Good, angel,” attempting to convey softness.
But his voice is too raw and gruff to achieve it.
If anything, those two words alone bother me so much I start to question what is happening.
Good angel? What am I now? An innocent child?
And who is he to boss me around? Why should I listen to him?
Pulling back his hips suddenly, he slams into me deep and grinds against my clit.
I find myself seeing stars as he moans against my ear. “It’s time you’ve given up this futile battle, for both of our sakes.”
Slowly, he slides out of me, granting me a heartbeat to take a breath.
Then he slams deep again.
More stars explode in front of my eyes, and when I try to blink them away, I notice the shadowy darkness cloaking his body is fading.
The black melting into flesh so pale and lacking in color it’s nearly as white as my sheets.
Again, the word unnatural springs to my mind, filling me with more unease.
“We are meant to be, fate has decided it,” he pants into my ear as the thrusting of his hips becomes harder and more determined. “Not even your God can change this.”
Panic and a sense of impending doom war with the crackling waves rolling through my body. My hands push at his shoulders as the walls of my sex pulse and squeeze around his hard length.
My mind is unwilling to submit, but my body is hungry and desperate for the release only he can give.
Growling at the push of my hands, he begins to pound into me faster and faster. “Tell me where you are, Chloe.”
The words he seeks leap to my lips, and one manages to slip out on a moan as a spike of intense pleasure momentarily robs me of my senses. “New—”
“New what?” he grunts, his thrusts momentarily slowing. “New Orleans? New York?”
Realizing my mistake, I quickly clamp my lips together to keep the full answer from escaping.
Irritated, he draws my name out in warning, “Chloe…”
The urge to please him, to give him what he wants, presses down on me so hard all I want and desire is to be free of it.
I almost give in. After all, what’s the harm? Don’t I want this when I’m awake? When it’s real?
But then I feel that pain in my neck again.
The pain of him biting me.
Oh God, he’s biting me…
“Chloe, tell me where you are.”
His words slam into me. Too powerful and too wrong.
I push harder on his shoulders, trying to get him off my neck. I still don’t fully understand what is happening, but I don’t want him doing whatever it is he’s doing.
Growling another animalistic sound, he finally pulls away from my throat and lifts his head.
His shadowy face stares down at me as his body crashes into my body.
The speed and strength behind his pounding hips too powerful to be human.
“Tell me where you are, Chloe,” he commands with a touch of desperation.
Shaking my head, I resist the temptation to give into his demand. Resist the temptation to explode from the pleasure he’s forcing on me with his deep thrusts.
Only I have the power to end this for us… I somehow remember that now. I have the power to end our suffering and misery.
But even if I can’t remember why, I know I can’t…
I can’t.
“You can,” he declares, and I don’t know if I spoke out loud or if he’s reading my thoughts, but both frighten me.
This entire situation scares the shit out of me, to be honest.
Thrashing my head from side to side, I try to dislodge him from my mind, and fight off all the pressure building in my core.
Something is going to give soon, and I don’t know how much longer I can hold out.
I don’t know how much longer I can resist breaking.
As if he can sense my strength slipping, he drops his head and drives into me so furiously I fear my bones might snap.
But there’s no pain.
There should be pain… I know, logically, there should be pain, but there’s only more pleasure.
More sensation.
So much sensation I’m freaking choking and drowning in it.
“Tell me where you are, Chloe,” he grunts, each word strained with exertion.
I thrash my head some more in a last-ditch effort to fight off what is coming.
It works for a few seconds, but then he grabs my chin and forces me to look up at him.
At first, all I see is shadow.
Dark mist in the shape of what should be the face of a man.
But then the shadow begins to melt away, dripping into nothingness.
Green eyes meet mine and the shock of it shatters the last of my resistance.
Almost at once, everything that’s been building up inside me explodes.
“Tell me, Chloe. Goddammit, tell me!” he roars.
But it’s too late.
Just as my body shatters into a million pieces so does the dream.
His face… A face that has no right to be so beautiful or breathtaking… fades away, replaced by the flat white of my bedroom ceiling.
Reality comes crashing back in, and the weight of his will instantly disappears, no longer pressing down on me with suffocating heaviness.
There’s no immediate relief, however.
The dream may be gone, but I’m still caught in the grip of a powerful orgasm.
Writhing and jerking helplessly against my bed, I have no choice but to ride out the waves of sensation. My core, stretched and full just a second ago, desperately squeezing and pulsing around cold emptiness.
Trapped in unwanted throes, it feels like an eternity passes before the heat in my veins finally cools enough for me to think clearly and get a grip.
Panting against my bed, soaking wet from sweat and… other things… things I’d rather not admit, an icy cold fist wraps around my heart when I realize what just happened.
He came for me again.
And I almost told him where I am.
A sudden burst of adrenaline surges through me and I sit upright in fear. My eyes immediately search my room, sliding over everything. The foot of my bed. The soft yellow of my walls. The pile of dirty clothes I left on the floor. My overflowing hamper, and the small altar in the corner dedicated to Saint Benedict.
I even bend over the side of my bed and check underneath it. Making sure he’s not here right now, hiding like the boogie man.
There’s nothing there though. Only some dust bunnies big enough to gnaw on my toes.
Thankfully, I’m alone and everything is as it should be.
Collapsing back against the bed, I give myself a moment to finally catch my breath and stare up at the ceiling. Trying to get my racing heart under control, I watch the first rays of the sun peek over the tops of my curtains, slowly brightening the room.
It must be dawn, or close to it. If it was any earlier…
Shoving that thought away, I sit up again and grab the small bottle of holy water I keep on my nightstand. Popping the stopper, I start to splash the holy water all over my body, like Father McCall taught me, while the prayer of protection pours from my lips.
“Saint Benedict, I implore thy loving heart to pray for me before the throne of God. Protect me from the dangers that which daily surround me. Shield me from the evil connected to my unclean body…”
I nearly choke on the last two words.
Unclean body.
I’ve never felt more unclean in my life.
Despite my earlier terror, the last twinges of the orgasm still tingle through my body. From my head, to my core, down to my toes, I’m still slightly buzzing and tingling.
And there’s a warmth.
A soft, fuzzy warmth washing over me like a reward for my release.
Maybe I’m already damned, I fear for a breathless moment.
But no… I can’t be.
I did not give in. I didn’t. I fought it with everything I had.
I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t go seeking it. I didn’t want it.
It was forced upon me.
Still… Even knowing he forced me, I feel guilty and afraid.
I didn’t fight hard enough. I felt things I knew I shouldn’t be feeling.
I was too weak.
For women like me, lust is the greatest sin. The sin that will ultimately be my ruin if I give into it. Others in the world may commit lustful acts and revel in all kinds of wickedness and debauchery.
But never me.
No, thanks to the mark upon my thigh—the little red mark in the unnatural shape of a figure eight—I can never allow myself to feel any desire or hunger for another’s body.
To do so will cost me everything.
If I give into lust, my soul will die.
I will be an empty husk for eternity.
And there is no coming back from it. Once I take that path, I’m turning away from God. I’m turning my back on paradise. Even if I try to pass beyond the pearly gates, He will not accept me.
I will be forever doomed and damned. Cursed to wander this Earth with paradise just out of reach.
Since the day I had my first period at the ripe old age of sixteen, it’s been drilled into my head that I must not lust. I must not want or hunger. I must not give into desire or other base, human instincts.
Whatever I do, I must not give into the creature that hunts me.
Glancing down at myself, I take in my own body as if it’s betrayed me.
My skin is glistening with moisture and my sleep shirt is damp, the faded blue fabric clinging to my breasts. I could have sworn I had my pink flannel pajama pants on… but I must have kicked them off somehow in my sleep.
With my panties.
From the waist below, I’m utterly bare and exposed. Even my socks are gone…
Squeezing my eyes shut for a moment, I choke back and swallow my mortification.
Then I lower the bottle of holy water and splash what’s left all over my traitorous pussy.
“Help me. Please, please, help me, Saint Benedict. I implore your strength and grace for the welfare of my soul,” I plead, hoping it’s not already too late for me. “Help me, O great Saint Benedict, to live and die as a faithful child of God, to be ever submissive to His holy will, and to attain the eternal happiness of heaven.”
I splash every last drop of holy water on myself, vigorously shaking the bottle until it’s completely empty.
But I still feel unclean.
Jumping up from bed, I dash over to my altar and clumsily grab another bottle. Knocking over my cross in my haste.
Yanking the stopper out, I close my eyes and splash the entire bottle on myself.
Unable to bear the sight of my own nakedness.
And when I reach the bottom, I still feel dirty.
I go through two more bottles, two more bottles I cannot afford to waste, chasing the need to feel clean and whole again.
But the feeling eludes me.
In pure desperation, one more bottle is opened and splashed, leaving me only a single bottle in case of an emergency.
This fourth bottle seems to empty quicker, but like the others, I’m left feeling the same.
Tainted.
Wanton.
Dirty.
Weak.
I almost reach for the last bottle. Almost.
Then I realize I’m literally performing the very definition of insanity.
No matter how much holy water I soak myself with, I will never feel clean again. Not unless I find a way to open up my skull and splash holy water all over my brain.
Because that’s where it all lies, ultimately. That’s where the true sin was committed.
Inside my head.
I let him in, and I may never get him out again.
Even now, panting in front of my altar and dripping with holy water, desperate to be what I was before I went to sleep, his face flashes across my eyes.
The image is a little blurred and faded from the dream, but his beauty is so powerful, so utterly soul-shattering, my knees nearly go weak.
Then I see his body. Muscles straining against alabaster skin as he moves above me. Furiously driving himself into me…
Knees truly going weak now, I reach out and grab onto the edge of the altar to keep myself upright.
He’s not here. He’s hopefully nowhere near me… but for the first time in my life I ache.
I ache with an unbearable longing.
It’s not lust, though. It’s not even desire.
It’s something else completely and more terrifying.
It’s as if I suddenly realize I’m not completely whole.
There’s a part of me out there… this other half walking around I need to complete me. To fill up the emptiness.
And if he was standing before me, if he was truly here, in the flesh… no amount of prayer or holy water could help me resist him.
It would probably take God himself appearing between us to keep me from succumbing to him.
Jolting with that alarming thought, my nails bite into the wood of the altar, digging through the finish, and I shake my head, trying to clear it.
God… I need God. That’s all I need, I remind myself.
His blessing. His salvation.
Nothing else compares. Nothing else can.
Fortifying myself with these truths, truths that have been spoken to me since I was a baby, I lock my knees and release my grip on the altar.
Breath after shuddering breath, I comfort myself with the idea that God’s love and grace is even more powerful than that creature’s allure.
Whatever that… monster could give me would be insignificant in comparison.
After fifty or so breaths, I start to feel better.
Then I remember I never properly finished my prayer.
Straightening a candle I knocked over, I pick up my cross and grip it in my hand. I squeeze the cross so hard all the nicks and scratches that blemish it’s dull, silvery finish from being passed down generation after generation dig into the skin of my palm.
The pain, just like the idea of God’s immense, never-ending, boundless love, helps dampen the empty ache behind my ribs.
But doesn’t completely banish it.
I feel it, burning and throbbing like an old wound that’s been ripped open.
Even when I finally say, “Amen.”