Chapter 28
BILLY
The doors close behind us with a heavy thud, muffling the sounds of the partying Obsidian members as their night continues without us.
Incense clings to my skin like smoke from a ritual fire as we slip away. My shirt open, slacks low, Penelope’s hand in mine, cold, trembling, but unmistakably certain, and that’s the only warmth I need as we disappear down the torch-lit corridor.
The walls here know too many secrets. They’ve swallowed vows and screams in equal measure.
But tonight, they hold only us.
The train of Nellie’s dress trails behind her like a spilled shadow. The black silk sways with each step she takes, brushing the floor with reverence, as though the fabric itself knows she is no longer just a woman, she’s ascended into something more.
Anointed.
Claimed.
Bound to me in every way that matters.
Paired.
“You’re walking too fast,” she whisper-laughs, her giggle breathless in a way that has nothing to do with the distance.
I glance back at her, at the flush rising on her chest, working its way like reddened fingers clawing their way towards her throat, at the hunger blooming slow and dangerous in her eyes.
“I’ve waited long enough,” I murmur, dragging her along behind me faster.
We round a corner where the noise fades completely, swallowed by thick stone and eerie silence. The door I was aiming for waits ahead, carved obsidian, etched with symbols that glimmer like trapped starlight when the torches flicker.
No one will follow us here.
They wouldn’t dare.
This room is only for the night of a Pairing, for the couple, nobody enters this room unless they are already Paired, and only then to set it up for the next Pairing ceremony.
I push the door open and pull her inside, not knowing what to expect.
The room is dim, lit only by a ring of black candles, their flames flickering.
The walls are curtained, draped in heavy, rich fabrics.
Windows, if there are any, covered, there are mirrors, huge floor-to-ceiling length, baroque gold to go with the deep reds of soft furniture pieces dotted around the space.
Benches and chaise longues, armchairs, stools.
And a rack in the far corner filled with paddles and whips, chains and cuffs, shackles and ropes.
Shadows pool across the floor, velvet-soft, reaching for her as though welcoming their new mistress.
Nellie steps into them without fear, her fingers still tangled in mine, her pulse jumping beneath the fragile skin of her wrist. She turns to me, my feet still just on the outside of the circle, and she breathes in this deep breath, like it’s the first one she’s taken in a long, long time.
It’s as though she can breathe. Finally.
I’m on her in an instant, my mouth attacking hers, tongue plunging between her lips like it’s tasting her for the first time.
Her hands grip my shoulders, shoving my open shirt down my arms, peeling it off, over my hands.
Her teeth clash with my own, as she pushes her hands down the back of my slacks, fingers gripping my buttocks with bruising attention.
“Billy,” she breathes, kissing the word into my mouth like my name holds the highest sort of power.
I grip her dress between my fists, tearing the delicate black silk straight down the middle, her perky tits spilling free. My eyes are on her brand, pausing our kiss long enough for her to draw back, glance down to her chest to see my thumb roving over the top of it.
“You don’t understand what this means to me,” I confess, my eyes rolling up, unto her pretty ash-brown ones, the shade of the room making them appear black.
“It means to you, what it means to me,” she says slowly, lifting her chin, her palms sliding up my back, her hands turning for her fingers to grip tight to my back.
She swallows, trying to drag me closer, our fronts colliding, but I hold my stance, keeping the distance between us.
“What? What does it mean to you, Little Lamb?” I sweep hair back from her cheek, tucking it behind her ear, the large black headband she wears pinning it back.
She looks down, shyness painting a blush in her cheeks.
“Nells,” I prompt, huffing a short laugh through my nose. “Don’t make me force it out of you.” I lift a brow as she lifts her chin, peering up at me with the entire night sky in her eyes.
She lifts a brow too, matching my expression, and then it softens, her gaze drooping before she lifts those fluttering lashes back up to me.
“What does it mean, Nellie?” I ask again, my hands combing back through her hair, tangling in the lengthy ends, pulling gently, forcing her head back to meet my gaze.
She stops trembling for the first time tonight, blood still on her hands, her cheek, her throat, chest, all of it dry and flaking.
I want to ask her how she feels. That I’m sorry about what she had to do.
But in this moment, I say nothing, waiting.
I don’t think I need to do any of those things.
Everything I want to tell her she already knows.
Deep down. She knows. In the same way that I know too.
All of the unspoken things between us, I feel them in my bones.
“Everything,” she finally says, a strong whisper, an unwavering answer.
My hands are shoving down her dress, the delicate fabric tearing further, edges fraying as I ram it down over her hips, the material pooling around her feet on the floor. Her hands are attacking my trouser button, the metal teeth of the zipper jerking as she yanks it down, pushing the fabric down.
My hands in her hair, I raise them up, high over her head, fingers still knotted in the ends of her long dark strands, I twist her hair, using it to turn her around, her back to me.
And then I’m digging my knee into the centre of her spine, manoeuvring her down onto all fours, gripping her hair like reins as I drop into a kneel between her thighs.
I enter her without any repositioning, yanking on her hair, her neck arching far back, her eyes lifted as high as they can to try and see me.
“Fuck, you’re beautiful,” I tell her, fucking into her in a long slow thrust. “You’re so tight, so fucking wet, Little Lamb.
” She groans, the sound muffled with the curve in her throat.
“I’m going to fuck you until you’re full of me.
My seed.” My hips slap against her arse with every word.
“I’m going to put my baby in you on this night, Nellie. ”
Her nails claw at the worn rug beneath us, the scratching a sound I feel like it were on the inside of my skull. She writhes beneath me, my hand still in her hair, arching her neck far back, her breathing harder with the angle.
“I’m going to breed you and breed you and breed you.
” It’s a chant, the way I say it, my cock weeping precum as I penetrate the tight walls of her pussy.
“Put my baby in you,” I tell her, coiling her hair around my fist, bringing my chest flush with her back.
My teeth nip her lobe, lips to her ear. “And then, when you’ve had our first, I’m going to fill you up again.
Keep you pregnant, keep you big and round with my babes, make sure you’re always carrying a piece of me, growing in you.
Branding your insides like I branded your outsides. ”
“Oh my god, Billy,” Penelope cries, her head trying to drop forward, her elbows shaking where I press myself down harder on her spine, let her feel my weight whilst still wrenching back her head.
“No god is going to save you, baby girl.” I bite her neck, fuck myself into her deeper, harder, firmer, my balls tight.
I change the angle of my hips, thrusting upwards, and that’s when she drops onto her forearms, my weight falling with her. Her cheek flush with the antique rug, I release her hair, dropping my mouth to her face and bite into her cheek.
She squirms beneath me, my cock hitting that spot high inside of her, working my tip against her front wall, “Come for me, Nellie,” I command her.
Her breath hot against my skin where I kiss the corner of her mouth, bite her lip until it beads ruby and lick it up with the flat of my tongue. I drag the blood across her cheek, up to her temple, sucking on the top of her cheekbone.
I fuck her harder, thrusting my hips, her arousal seeping out around my cock, spilling down my balls as she grows wetter and wetter.
“Billy.”
“Nells.”
Keeping one palm flat to the floor, I grab her tits with the other, plucking her hard nipples, pulling on them and twisting, before the flat of my hand is slapping the side of one, the loud sound of it making me grit my teeth to stop myself from scoring my teeth marks into her skin.
But then she’s chanting my name as I slap over her clit, “Billy, Billy, Billy.”
Rubbing the swollen slick bud harder and harder with the tips of my fingers.
I pull all the way out of her, nothing but my tip nestled inside, just as her walls tighten further around me, strangling my cock, and then I’m slamming my way home.
Thrusting deep inside of her, my teeth sinking into her nape, the dull points punching their way through flesh.
She screams as she comes, my hand squeezing the swaying weight of her tit as I keep fucking her.
“Take my seed, Little Lamb,” I’m breathless as I say it, my eyes seeing stars, sweat beading at my temples. “Take my cum, let it fill you up.” My hips keep thrusting, “Let me take root inside you.”
“Yes, Billy,” she shouts, her words quick, sharp, high-pitched and dizzy, full of pleasure. “Please, Billy,” she begs. “Fill me up.”
That’s what does it.
Undoes me.
And I’m coming, forcing myself deep inside her, her walls tightening further, trying to suck me deep and push me out all at once.
“Fuck.” My breath stirs her hair.
My mouth sloppy as I kiss her, then lave my tongue all over her face, every part I can reach. Tasting blood, sweat, her skin, her scent, all of it sending me flying to new heights.
“Billy.”
There it is again.
My name.
The way she says it, holding it high. She doesn’t realise just how much power it holds over me.
“I love you,” she pants, “I love you, Billy.”
I don’t say it back, instead, flipping her over, crawling over top of her and punching my cock back inside her wet, warm cunt.
My cum seeping out around my length as I push in, and then she’s arching her back.
Her hair a frizzing halo around her head, her tits presented to me like the most delicate offering.
I suck on her nipples, pulling the flesh deep into my mouth and then I’m drawing back, her mouth open, I spit onto her tongue, holding her eye as she makes a show of swallowing me down.
And then I kiss her lips, her tongue in my mouth, and I know that this is it.
The moment that the most precious thing in my life has just become the most dangerous.