Chapter 24
PENELOPE
Early morning light slips in through the small stained glass window of our bathroom, casting a hesitant rainbow across the dark floor tiles.
It’s February.
Weeks and weeks have passed since my time in the Sanctuary, but I still clench my teeth as Billy washes my back, catching the torn edge of my last remaining wound, but I don’t say anything as he kisses over it, already knowing he was too rough.
I haven’t seen Milus again.
Though, I haven’t really left our suite either.
Other than to visit Doctor Jay, Billy always with me, his blue eyes never leaving the smarmy doctor’s green ones, both of them always watching the other.
I think he suspects the doctor knew about my implant, which he did, but I haven’t told Billy that.
In fact, I haven’t told anyone anything since my punishment.
Haven’t spoken. Like my mouth is just too dry.
Head too tired.
Heart too achy.
It hasn’t stopped Billy though, my silence.
His hardening cock is still inside of me, the foamy warm bathwater lapping gently against our joined bodies as he starts to thrust up into me once more.
I close my eyes as his hands come around my waist, fingers tracing upwards until he’s cupping my breasts, pinching my nipples between his thumbs and forefingers.
His mouth sucks light kisses up the blade of my shoulder, along and up the side of my neck, his teeth finding my ear and sinking into the lobe like pointy little razors.
His breath gets heavier as he fucks me faster, bubbly water sploshing over the curled sides of the white porcelain tub. He grasps my wrists in one of his, holding them down underwater, his other arm banding tight around my waist.
“I’m gunna fill this tight little cunt with so much cum, you’ll be feeling me drip out of you all day.”
I say nothing, staring at the darkness behind my closed lids, trying to ignore the feelings washing around inside my stomach.
I feel disgusting, covered in cuts and slices and healing wounds, the first of the bright red-pink scars showing.
I can’t speak to him. Like my tongue is tied in a knot, lodged in the back of my throat like an apple to a roasted pig, choking any words that might want to make an appearance.
There is a monster inside me, this living breathing red cloaked umbra that is chomping down on everything I have.
Big sharp puncturing teeth that are devouring anything else I had left.
Leaving me with only shade, a slow creeping darkness that’s smothering me, suffocating, its shadow hands coiling like thick smoke around my neck, squeezing, squeezing, squeezing.
“Come for me, Little lamb,” Billy’s voice breaks through the bleakness, his teeth in my neck, his panting breath hot against my damp cooling skin.
And despite everything, this empty nothingness inside of me, his fingers over my clit, pressing firm and slow, I squeeze my eyes closed, my head knocking back against his, and I come.
He says nothing as he fills me up once more, staying sheathed inside of me as he starts to soak my hair, massage shampoo into my scalp before rinsing it off and repeating the same process with conditioner, his fingers combing through the tangles.
Carefully, he lifts me off of his lap, standing me on my feet as he steps out, grabs a towel from the heated rail, runs it over his head, down his face and chest before wrapping it around his waist. And then he holds one open for me.
After waiting too many long seconds for me to climb over the lip of the bath, Billy reaches out, offering me a hand, waiting, allowing me to decide if I want to take it or not.
But it’s all secondary to what my attention is truly on.
The brown rippling of Billy’s defined abdomen, the perfect inking of webs and spiders down the left side of him, from beneath his pec, down his ribs, the bottom of the piece hidden once more beneath the white towel he wears lowly around his hips.
I’m staring at the branding in his firm chest, the almost fully healed ‘two’, the roman numerals which match the ones burned into my own chest, mine still a little pink, still a little raw around the edges.
And even though it sometimes feels like a tag, like a collar, like a mark of ownership, a chip.
Weirdly, now, it feels so much more like my own, too.
Something special.
Shared.
Sacred.
Just for Billy and I.
It makes me feel such an overwhelming wash of love that I can’t stop the tears from coating my cheeks.
I’m so numb to everything, this feels like some sort of weird finality.
We’re still trying to conceive.
We’re still trying to make this work.
We’re still trying to pretend that we’re fine.
That I’m not some useless broken doll who can’t speak, can’t eat, can’t function without direction.
Something Billy has always done for me anyway.
Control.
It’s imaginary in a place like this.
I fed off of it before, letting Billy think for me, trusting him enough to allow myself to finally relax.
Then he brought me here.
And now, now I don’t know what it means.
I don’t know who I am.
Who we are.
What I’m doing here.
I’m not good enough for Billy.
For his life.
I never really was.
I’ve always known it really.
He has forever been a god in my eyes.
In my heart.
And I, nothing more than a lowly worshipper.
I am nothing.
Unworthy to be his Pair.
Billy lifts me from the tub, wraps me in the towel, staying quiet whilst he dries me, tears continuing to slip down my cheeks.
He dresses me quietly, on his knees, threading underwear up my legs, followed by loose jogging bottoms, a Pair of his slouchy white socks.
When he stands, an oversized sweatshirt rolled up in his hands, he places it over my head, lifting my arms one at a time to run them through the sleeves, the cuffs covering my healing hands, which miraculously don’t have any lasting damage to them, despite the savagery that was done to them.
And when he lays me back down in bed, pulling the sheets up to my chin, my hands folded like a prayer beneath my cheek, he kisses my temple, his lips barely a brush.
“You’re just a strong person looking for someone stronger.
To keep you safe, protect you, let you rest without being left vulnerable.
I am that for you, Little Lamb. Let me be that for you,” he whispers, his voice so un-Billy-like it grips me around the throat like a noose.
“I’m sorry,” he swallows, still leaning over me, his nose in my hair, his lips to my ear.
“I should have prepared you better. I should have explained things. I should have-” he sighs, this stuttering in his breath that only tightens that phantom rope around my neck. “I never should have come for you.”
Regret.
My throat feels like it’s swelling, growing tighter and tighter as I keep my eyes closed, trying not to react, to cry, to die.
But when he finally leaves once more, no more words spoken, the room too big, the fire too hot, but the room too cold, it’s what I think of.
Dying.
And I force myself up into sitting, lifting the gold heart-shaped locket that hangs heavily around my neck up into my fingers.
I bring it closer to my face, analysing it.
How the once carved filigree pattern is no more, having worn away over the thirteen long years I've had it.
Never once taking it off, never once opening it.
Our bloodied fingerprints trapped inside.
Hesitantly, I open it with trembling fingers, the old hinge protesting before giving way, a tiny metallic sigh that feels too close to my own.
Inside are the dried remnants of the promise we made to each other.
But the moment my thumb touches it, the prints dissolving into dust that clings to my skin before falling soundlessly to the crinkled sheets beneath me.
I watch as they disintegrate, helpless, and all I can think is how fitting it is, how the life I once imagined with Billy has frayed the same way, breaking apart under the weight of blood we spilled and vows we never should have made.
I know he will never leave The Obsidian.
I know I can’t, not without destroying him, not without dooming myself.
And as the last of the blood disperses into nothing, I feel something inside of me collapse too, a quiet, hollow breaking that tells me the future I once saw with him has vanished like dust in my palm, leaving me staring into the dark with no path left to follow.
It makes me think of death again.
How that's what we promised each other, even all those years ago we knew that was the only thing we'd ever allow to separate us.
Death.
How maybe, all along, that’s all we were ever meant to do.