16. Liliana
H e leaves me there. Hanging, strung up like a piece of meat.
My back is agony. It feels like he’s torn every inch of flesh from my bones. My jaw aches from the way my mouth has been forced open. But none of that compares to the awful thing inside me. The way it keeps building and building, and worse, the way my body responds. The way it desperately chases each new wave like my very existence is dependent on it.
I need to come.
I want to come so badly.
And yet every time I get close, it stops. The vibrations cease. Everything stills.
My face is strewn with tears, saliva drools down my chin. I’m a wreck. A complete mess. And that’s exactly how he wanted me.
No doubt he’s imagining strolling back in and me begging to suck his cock. Well, I won’t do that. I’ll chew my own tongue off before I ever utter those words.
When the door finally does open, it isn’t Magnus stood there. It’s a stranger. He blinks in surprise and then quickly recovers as if this is all perfectly normal. From the clothes he’s wearing, I guess he’s some sort of servant, or butler.
In silence, he unties the bindings and catches my pathetic body.
I half fear he’ll remove the toy but mercifully, he doesn’t seem to be aware of it, or at least isn’t paying it any attention. With fumbling hands, he undoes the buckle behind my head and that awful gag is yanked out. My jaw protests as I force it to move, hot pain shoots through my teeth as if they’ve all been chiselled down to nothing.
He carries me out, lays me back in my cell and then places a tray of food on the floor by my face.
I’m too hungry, and too exhausted to care what anyone thinks, and I crawl closer, eating it right off the plate like an animal. With shaky hands, I raise the cup and gulp back all the water. It tastes like heaven. It tastes like the most incredible drink I’ve ever had.
When it’s all gone, he scoops down to remove the tray and I can’t hold back the words.
“Why are you helping him?”
He turns, meeting my eyes for the first time. “It is my duty to serve.” he says stiffly. As if he too has been tortured, broken, remoulded into a brainwashed shell with no moral compass. “God has ordained it.”
“What God?” I spit back. “He’s a monster. He’s a psychopathic piece of shit and you’re no better than he is by helping him.”
He tuts, shaking his head like I’ve just blasphemed and shuts the door. As soon as the darkness envelopes me, I bury my fingers inside myself, pulling out the toy and I toss it as hard as I can against the wall. My back protests at all the movement but it’s worth it.
And yet that humming, that vibration continues.
It reverberates in the silence of the room.
I throw my hands up, trying to block it out but it makes no difference. It continues on, jarring my senses, slowly making me feel like I’m going mad.
All I can feel is his hands still on me. His stench still on me. I can smell it, thick, heavy, some stupidly expensive aftershave that makes my head feel dizzy and intoxicated.
I fall into a daze. Neither awake nor asleep. My head feels like I’m on a carousel and I’m spinning around and around. There’s a laughter ringing in my ears. His laughter. He’s taunting me even now. I roll over, I try to get away from the images, but I must be hallucinating because it feels like I’m floating, like I’m no longer in this cell at all.
I gasp out, I kick, I thrash and that searing pain slices down my back making it feel like he burnt off all my flesh with fire instead of simply whipping it.
I expect him to come back, my ears are pricked, poised, ready to hear those awful footsteps but they don’t come. Instead, it’s like a phantom is in my head, like he’s possessed my mind. Every time I blink, I can see his face, every time I breath in, I can taste him.
I wretch, trying to throw up the contents of my stomach, but my body refuses to cooperate.
Maybe I am mad. Maybe they put something in my food. Drugged me, even, but there’s little I can do about it now.
So I lay there, face down in the dirt, with the icy stone-cold feeling almost therapeutic and for the first time, I truly give in. I fall apart. I weep every last tear and I let myself feel every moment of my terror, every moment of my fear.
I let it all out, telling myself that it’s okay, that in the darkness it’s safe to give in, but by the time he comes back I’ll need to be strong again. I’ll need to pretend. I’ll need to put that stoic mask back on and prove that I’m not as easily broken as all that.