Prelude #2
I feel a blush sweep across my cheeks. Impossible. How could he know? But yet I feel in my bones he has visions of me touching myself long after Enzo has fallen asleep. Why can’t I make myself run away?
“Please let me go,” I whisper.
He scrapes the bark of the tree with his razored fingertips. “I’m not keeping you here, Willa. You are. Stay with me forever, and you will have plenty of dresses and mead and pleasure.”
Oh, dear gods.
I am at the tree now, mere inches away from the predator who is making the wet spot between my thighs ache with need. It happens faster than I can comprehend. My back is against the bark, and he is towering over me.
“I cannot stay with you. I don’t know you. Please… release me,” I beg. There’s a fire blazing between us, even amidst the crisp wind that dances around our limbs.
He sniffs my hair, and I shudder as the tip of his nose grazes my cheek.
“Only you can release yourself. You are here because you want to be. For I am your devil.” He brushes his lips over mine.
“Your monster…” I arch my back against the tree as his hands find their way underneath my skirts. “Yours.”
He slips a long, slender finger inside my cunt, thrusting it back and forth until saliva foams at my lips. My cries pierce the night like daggers. I am letting him do this. Me. I’ve not once asked him to stop. Or pushed him away. Dear gods.
“Ahhh, dark one, your body tells me everything your voice cannot. Have you ever felt something so violent and yet so delightful at the same time?” He pinches my swollen clit, sending a sharp pain through my core.
And yet before I can scream out in agony, the pain becomes electric, transformative, making me cum so hard on his hand that I choke on my own tears.
“What have you done to me?” I am hunched over, still riding his unholy hand. He is not a god but a devil. The devil. And he has just made me his whore.
“I always keep my promises, dark one. You are mine. Forever. Your body and soul… your blood… mine.” He flips me around and shoves me forward against the tree. “And you will take both my cocks to prove your loyalty.”
“Wait, no. Please. I cannot. Let me go!” I scream. But it’s no use. I am still trembling from the orgasm he ripped from me.
With one quick jerk, he tears my skirts open and rips my undergarments away from my body. I try to get away, but the tree comes alive. Its branches slither around my wrists and ankles, pinning me as I hug its mangled shaft.
The devil growls into my ear. He pants, his breath hot, as he thrusts his first cock inside my cunt. “Mine.”
Tears stream down my cheeks while my traitorous cunt swells for him. My pleasure ripples through me with such force that if it were not for the tree itself holding me in place, I would surely collapse to the ground.
Another cock teases my back entrance. He digs his nails into my hips. “I am giving you what you dream of, dark one. And it’s pure fucking carnal pleasure. After you cum the hardest you’ve ever cum in your life, I want you to get on your knees and thank me.”
I scrape my cheek against the bark of the tree in a frenzy. The cuts keep me present, a reminder not to slip away into his shadowy nightmare. And yet his thick, spiny cocks have sent me into a tailspin of pleasure that I cannot find my way out of.
“I don’t want you. I will not stay,” I repeat, more as a mantra to myself than to him.
He breaks me open with his darkness. I scream and cannot imagine anyone not hearing me, as it is so loud that a flock of ravens darts out of the treetops. He plunges his second cock deep inside my ass until it is snug, and I’m firmly cradled between both.
He purrs into my ear as he rocks into me. “Mine.”
I fall apart. I come undone. I cum harder than I’ve ever cum before.
I wipe my tears and my bloody cheeks on the jagged bark of my second captor—this venomous tree—and I wish I had never drunk the baneberry mead. It is a poison that should be scourged from this earth.
“Your release binds you to us, dark one. To the Wishing Tree and me.” He pushes me to the ground when the tree’s vines retract.
I can’t catch my breath, my heart racing. “No.”
He yanks my chin up. “Thank me for allowing you to cum.”
I shake my head and grit my teeth. “I said no.”
His eyes darken as he digs his sharp nails into my jaw. “If you do not seal it with your words, then you cannot stay. You will break your oath. You will be cursed.”
Blood trickles down my lips, a bittersweet metallic stain like spoiled berries. I should’ve run. He tricked me. The poisonous mead clouded my judgment. I thought I could handle it… but I was wrong. And now I’m tainted. But I cannot leave my Enzo. I won’t do that to him.
I glare up at the devil. “No. I am not yours. I will never say it. And I will not stay.” Whatever this curse is, I will deal with it. It is mine alone to bear.
He hisses and lurches back. “You traitorous whore… I will never let you go. Not fully. That is your curse. From this day forward, every girl born on these lands shall have a piece of me attached to her. A reminder to all of you that there are consequences to betraying your devil.”
I grab fistfuls of dirt as I cling to the ground, my limbs still shaking from the orgasms he’s forced upon me. “No. Please. Punish me. This is my doing. No one else’s.”
His nostrils flare as he snarls down at me. “It’s too late for that. You’d better run home and fuck the one you’re betrothed to, Willa Harker. For a baby grows in your belly as we speak. I’d hate to think what would happen if anyone suspected it didn’t belong to Enzo Crane.”
I shrink back and hug my arms to my stomach. No. Dear gods, no. I don’t know who’s more of a monster—the devil, his spawn, or me. “Fine. I will stay. Please don’t curse him too.”
He walks in circles around me. “Your betrayal is unacceptable. I cannot trust you… Perhaps in time…”
I watch him slither back toward the tree and notice his long, fleshy tail for the first time. I almost lose my stomach when it wraps around his leg as if it has a mind of its own. “Oh, and Willa, do tell Lucy our deal is off.”
I lunge forward. “Wait!”
In a matter of seconds, the tree swallows him. The night is still and quiet again. It’s as if he were never even here. And yet the fire in my belly and between my legs reminds me that he very much was.
And in nine months’ time, he will return in some way. He will spread his seed like a disease in every woman’s belly, keeping us in darkness forever. All because of me. And Lucy… What was her role in this?
By the time I reach the village square, the night sky has given way to a light blue. The sun will rise soon. I crawl into bed next to my Enzo and weep. He wakes to my cries and holds me.
“What is wrong, mi amor?”
I sniffle against his chest. “Nothing, my love. I drank too much.”
He cradles me to him. “What can I do to make it better?”
I bite my lip. The hatred and rage I have for myself threaten to consume me. “Make love to me, Enzo. Please. I don’t want to wait until we are married. I need the warmth of the sun now.”
But the sun never shone on us again in Evigheden. Not like it did before. Back before I sold my soul to the devil and his Wishing Tree.