Chapter 23 #2
“What is wrong with you?” Ray says to me, his eyes wild, mouth parted, panting, and fuck if that doesn’t arouse me like nothing else. “Is this my punishment?”
I give him a faint smile. I can still feel his mustache against my skin.
“If you want it to be,” I say. “I—”
But before I can finish my sentence he reaches forward and grabs my face.
He kisses me.
And I feel the air leave my lungs.
I whimper against him, the feel of his tongue against mine, the opening of himself to me, like a blooming flower, and I realize if this is sinning, then I’ll gladly be called a sinner.
He moans, his sounds a tonic to my soul, and then he’s dropping to his knees in front of me. His movements are unsure and frantic, and my heart is galloping like a stallion and I can’t believe my eyes, can’t believe what’s happening, what’s about to happen.
He reaches up and stares at me with those pretty eyes.
“Please,” he says through a gasp, reaching up for my trousers, and it rattles me to my core.
Please is such a simple word until someone says it on their knees.
It feels like a whole new world has opened up to me.
I help him out, undoing the buttons of my fly, and take my cock out.
The sight of it, long and rigid, thick-veined and molten-hot in my palm, with this man’s handsome face beneath it, makes me feel like I’m going to release right here and now.
Already I can see the pearls of my arousal on the flared tip and I swallow hard, wanting to rub it on his tongue, wanting him to taste it, to taste me.
I don’t know if Ray has any experience with this, with men. I don’t even know if he truly wants this, if he’s giving me what he thinks I want in order to avoid further punishment, but I don’t care.
I don’t care.
“Open up, handsome,” I say to him, making a fist in his soft hair.
Ray’s mouth parts just in time as I shove his head forward. He makes a choking sound, but I keep him in place with a firm grip. His bottom teeth graze over my frenulum, and I hiss at the bracing mix of pleasure and pain, but then he starts to suck and lick and my eyes roll back in my head.
“Fuck, your mouth is hot, so wet,” I swear. “Keep going, don’t you dare stop. Don’t you dare stop.”
I keep Ray’s head moving, and he’s reaching up, grabbing the base of my cock, tugging gently at my sack and I’m dying on my feet. This is heaven and hell all wrapped up into one.
“You’re doing so well, Ray,” I encourage him, my voice hoarse, sounding like it belongs to someone else. Even Marie never did this with me, said it was unclean.
To hell with clean; I aspire to be filthy.
“Yes,” I hiss as he works me deeper into his throat. “Yes, suck me dry until you’re drowning in it.”
His response is muffled, and I stand there, hips thrusting, and I watch as he takes me and I’ve never felt more powerful in all my life. It doesn’t matter what happened in the minutes before this or what happens in the minutes after this, I…
My orgasm takes me by surprise, without warning.
“Jesus!” I swear through a clenched jaw as my balls draw up, thighs so tense that the muscles ache, and I’m letting out a low guttural moan that echoes throughout the house.
I come, pulsing, jerking inside Ray’s mouth, and I open my eyes to watch his Adam’s apple move as he swallows me, the most beautiful sight.
Then, when I’m finally finished, I release my cramped hand from his hair and he wipes his mouth, panting for breath.
And then he looks toward the door.
And with a chilling sensation I realize we aren’t alone.
I follow his line of sight.
Marie is standing by the door, staring at us with an open mouth.
She must have walked in and we had been so lost to our lust that we hadn’t even noticed.
For a moment I think maybe I don’t have to leave her. Maybe we don’t have to get divorced. Maybe we can just become this, three of us learning to share, taking turns.
But then she screams.
Her eyes ablaze with horror and indignation and disgust.
She marches toward us with boiling anger, arms thrown out, yelling at us, calling us immoral, sinners, devils, heathens, as if she hadn’t committed adultery first, as if all those terms don’t apply to her.
By now Ray is on his feet, my cock quickly tucked away in my trousers, and it seems all her fury is directed at me. Her finger is in my face, her eyes wild like an animal in a cage.
“I knew you were like this,” Marie says, seething, breathing hard. “I knew you were one of them. A defective sinner going straight to hell!”
I throw my hands up, trying to stay calm but failing. “You were cheating on me, Marie! I know you were. You can’t hide it, can’t deny it.”
But I don’t dare tell her how I found out.
“I was cheating on you because you’re a sodomite!” she screeches. “Because I knew your true nature, I saw the evil, the darkness that dwells there. I knew I married a man without scruples and I needed my body to be cleansed of you, my soul freed from the mire that is your own!”
I point at Ray, who remains silent and scared. “By fucking another sodomite?” I exclaim.
“You coerced this man,” Marie says, going to Ray and grabbing his bicep. “You forced him to do such a foul, immoral deed. Your true nature is no more than an animal’s, Ichabod. But you won’t get away with this, you’ll pay for this.”
“I’m leaving you,” I grind out at her. “That’s how I’ll pay. I’m divorcing you, you adulteress tramp.”
“You aren’t leaving me!” she screams, and before I know what’s happening, she’s slapping me across the face, the pain like sparks. “You can’t! I won’t allow it!”
I press my palm against my cheek, trying to rein in my temper. I never let it out, I never let it get the best of me, but now she’s provoking me.
Now I’m the animal in the trap.
“I don’t care what you allow,” I tell her, the rage building inside me, my skin feeling too hot, too tight. “I’m divorcing you, and you can’t do a single thing about it.”
“Oh, but I can.” She bares her teeth. “I’m getting you fired!
” she yells, and when she sees the horror in my eyes, she grins.
“Yes, I’m telling the world what I saw here.
Ray will cooperate, won’t you, Ray? The school board will be the first to know, Ichabod.
You’re about to lose everything, everything, your job, your house, your wife, all because you’re a sinner, a bloody sinner, I—”
“You will not!” I scream at her, marching forward and shoving her against her shoulders.
Except I push her harder than I meant to. Marie yelps and goes flying backward, her feet twisting and scrambling in an attempt to keep her footing, but she’s falling back toward the ground.
The back of her head smacks the wooden floor with a sickening crack, having just missed the rug by inches. The sound of that crack shoots right through me, yanks at my heart, at my soul, filling me from top to bottom with ice-cold dread.
Blood starts to pool from under her hair, her eyes are open and focused on the ceiling.
Everything slows down.
I let out a strangled cry.
Run toward her, knees slamming on the floor, pleading for her to be all right.
“No, no, no, no, no,” I cry. “No, Marie. Marie.”
I gingerly touch her face, trying to get her eyes to look at me, and my hands are shaking.
She blinks slowly, her eyes open again, staring at nothing.
The blood spreads.
Ray remains where he is behind me, hyperventilating.
“Marie!” I cry, pressing my trembling fingers to the side of her neck, feeling for a pulse.
There is none.
I stare at her chest, it doesn’t move; her mouth, there is no breath; her eyes are still as death.
“No,” I say again. “You’re not dead. You can’t be dead.”
I look over my shoulder at Ray, who looks close to fainting. “We have to do something. Ray! We have to do something!”
But Ray doesn’t move. He’s in shock.
So am I. I’m in shock, and yet there’s something I can do.
There’s something I can do.
I remember medical school, how the cadavers came to life when I touched them.
I look back at Marie’s lifeless face, and I know she’s dead. She’s dead.
But she doesn’t have to stay dead.
I put my hands on her cheeks and close my eyes, trying to conjure up whatever energy I have left in my weary, war-torn heart, and once I feel it moving through me, I try to push it through my hands into Marie.
Please work, please work.
She twitches under my hands.
I open my eyes to see her open hers.
She stares right at me. Pupils like a black moon.
But there’s no gratitude on her face. No relief to be alive.
There’s nothing but horror and shock, betrayal and a sense of looking beyond the veil, looking at something no one should ever look at.
I brought someone dead back into this world.
Perhaps that’s the biggest sin of all.
Marie opens her mouth in a silent scream, wider, wider, and now she’s shaking, convulsing.
“What is happening to her?” Ray finally whimpers, coming closer. “What are you doing to her?”
“I’m not…,” I begin, trying to hold her down, panic clawing through me that I’ve made a huge mistake in attempting this. “I’m trying to bring her back to life.”
But I shouldn’t have said that. I shouldn’t have said anything.
Because now Ray knows, he really knows what’s wrong with me.
“Let me die,” Marie croaks, the sound coming not from her but from around us, filling the room. “Let me die, Ichabod.”
I remove my hands, static shocking my palms, and I watch as she abruptly goes still.
Dead again.
Dead forever.
Dead because I killed her.
“You’re…,” Ray begins, and I don’t have the strength to look at him. “You’re a demon.”
“I’m not a demon,” I whisper to him, running my fingers down Marie’s lifeless arm. “I’m just damned.”