Chapter 17
Chapter
Seventeen
Hot blood splatters over my face. Theodora gapes, choking out more blood, and releases my neck to reach for the wound. I shove her off me with a cry, yank the bolt out of her neck, and stab her again through the eye.
As I sit there panting in the snow—bloody, pained, victorious—I realize how quiet it is around me. There’s no sound other than the gurgles of Louis’s mother slowly dying. I turn to see Krampus standing, just as blood soaked as I am, over Louis’s father.
The once-proud man is on his back, bloody gouges torn through his face and chest, gasping for air as he stares up at the monster towering over him.
“You… cannot do this,” Louis’s father gasps out, the words bubbling from bloody lips. “You… are… bound to our family.”
“I am bound to our pact,” Krampus snarls, his tail flicking.
“A pact that your forefather made. We had a deal: I would reward goodness, not cowardice. Your family could have changed the world with the gifts I granted you. Instead, you cheated my game and used your wealth in pursuit of worse sins. For generations, you have made a mockery of me. Glut yourself on wealth and pride.”
He reaches down, wraps his metal chain tight around one of the man’s arms. Louis’s father fights, but there is not much strength left in him.
“No more,” Krampus snarls. “Your greed ends here.”
He pulls hard, twists, muscles straining. With a roar of effort, he yanks the chain and rips the arm off the man’s body.
I squeeze my eyes shut and turn away, unable to stomach the screaming and the blood. I listen with a grimace to the clink of chain links and the subsequent shrieking as Krampus repeats the process with another arm.
The screams have gone silent by the time Krampus gets to Karl Kohler’s legs, but he finishes his bloody work nonetheless. By the time silence falls, Krampus stands, blood-soaked with his chest heaving, over a corpse in pieces.
Between the two of us, we’ve turned the white snow into a battlefield of red.
When it’s over, I struggle to my feet and yank what remains of the crossbow bolt out of my arm.
Thankfully it went straight through the muscle, so while it hurts like hell, I can still use my arm.
I lift my eyes to Krampus, who is staring at the body I left in the snow.
His gaze snaps to mine. The look on his face is unreadable.
My own emotions are difficult for me to decipher, too. I’ve done a lot of terrible things in my life, but I’ve never killed someone before.
I’m a murderer.
It was self-defense, I tell myself. She was a horrible person. She deserved it.
None of that logic stops my hands from shaking.
I squeeze my eyes shut, trying to get a hold of myself.
When I open them again, Krampus is in front of me.
He presses a handful of snow against the wound in my arm.
I hiss at the shocking cold but don’t try to pull away.
Part of me enjoys the pain. It chases away the confusing tangle of my feelings, and the thought running around and around in my head: murderer, murderer, murderer.
The pain leaves no room to think or feel anything else.
I slowly lift my head to look at Krampus.
“Punish me,” I whisper.
Absolve me.
Krampus doesn’t look at me. He’s focused on brushing the snow off my wound and replacing it with a bloody strip of cloth he winds around my bicep.
“We aren’t done,” he says.
That’s right. Louis is still out there, because he ran, like he always does.
I study Krampus as he avoids my gaze. There’s tension in his shoulders, and he’s breathing hard. Mouth slightly open, chest rising and falling. When his red eyes finally shift to me, I see the hunger in his gaze. Killing Louis’s father wasn’t enough; he still craves more. He craves me.
It makes me shiver to be looked at like that. Scented. Hunted. The feeling that fills my chest is somewhere between terror and excitement, a dark thrill that ripples through my senses.
“You need it,” I say, and it comes out soft and sultry. An invitation.
I need it too. I want him to chase away the dark thoughts that are threatening to overtake me. I deserve to be punished.
Krampus licks his lips, wordless.
I slowly reach up to shrug off my coat. My back still stings from the first whipping, but… “I can handle more.”
It’s an understatement. I crave it, perhaps just as much as Krampus does. I welcome the pain.
But he holds out a hand. “No.”
I pause, my coat halfway off my shoulders. “No?”
He approaches me, step by slow step, his tail flicking behind me. “There are other methods of punishment.”
Instinct urges me to shrink back, but I hold my chin high instead, facing him head-on. “Like what?”
Instead of answering, he grabs me around the waist and lifts me up.
I gasp as my feet leave the ground, wriggling helplessly in his grasp.
One of his huge hands spans my waist, and he carries me with ease, past the bodies of Louis’s parents and back into the cabin. Away from where our final victim ran.
The warmth is a shock to my system.
“Where— What—” I can’t seem to form a complete sentence.
He sits in one of the armchairs, his huge form barely fitting between the armrests. Then he arranges me on his lap, face down, bent over his knees. My dress rides up around my thighs.
It’s so unexpected that it takes me a moment to realize his intent. My God. He’s going to spank me.
The thought sends a bolt of heat straight through me. I suck in a sharp breath, and his huge palm cracks against my ass with a resounding slap.
“Oh,” I gasp. Like the first strike with the rod, I feel more surprise than pain at first, adrenaline flooding my body and making every nerve tingle. I squirm on his lap, but one of his huge hands presses on my back and holds me effortlessly in place. Stretched out and helpless.
He smacks my ass again, and I whimper. Wet warmth gathers at the corners of my eyes—and the apex of my thighs.
“Please,” I whisper.
He pauses. “Please what?” His voice is a low growl.
I reach back with one shaking hand and pull my dress up to my waist, exposing my lacy panties and the flesh of my ass to him.
Krampus growls under his breath, the sound vibrating through his body.
He shifts me on his lap, and through his loincloth, I feel the press of his length against my stomach. Fuck, he’s huge, and hard as a rock.
Swallowing, I give in to temptation and reach for him, but he grabs my hand. His fingers easily encircle both of my wrists as he pins them behind my back and holds me in place.
“This is about punishment,” he says, “not pleasure.”
I lick my lips, daring. “I think we both know it can be both.”
He grabs my thong and yanks it down. I gasp at the feeling of cool air against my bare and aching core. There’s a pause, and I am certain he’s noticed the wet spot on my panties, the shameful need.
Then he spanks me again. The slap of his huge palm against my naked ass makes me cry out. Then he does it again, and again, and again, each strike slightly harder than the last. Soon, I am gasping and teary-eyed and writhing. Wetter than I have ever been in my life.
“More,” I sob out. “More, more.”
He obliges. Between each slap of flesh, I hear his breath coming in short, hard bursts that tell me he is as affected by this as I am.
The sharp sting of his slaps becomes a throbbing ache, my raw skin becoming more and more sensitive.
But even as my pain crescendos, so too does my pleasure.
I am drowning in twined sensations, raw and whimpering, vision going white around the edges.
Then, without warning, he stops. There is only the sound of my frantic panting. My body teeters on the verge of some precipice, stuck there. It is almost a worse agony, to be denied what I so crave.
“Touch me,” I beg.
With incredible gentleness, he yanks my thong back up. Then he grabs my dress and smooths it over my ass, covering me. I hiss at the rub of fabric against raw skin—and whimper in disappointment as I realize that’s all he intends to do to me.
“As I said, there are other methods of punishment.”
He lifts me up, oh so gently, and sets me on my feet in front of him. I stand between his parted knees. He’s so tall that we are face-to-face with me standing and him sitting.
My face is flushed and tear-stained, my need surely written all over my expression. My lower lip trembles.
“I need,” I pant. “I need…”
He reaches out to me. The huge hand that just wrung such pain and pleasure from my body now caresses my face.
“I know exactly what you need, little sinner,” he says. “But our work is not yet done.” His hand slides down to grip my throat. “And neither is your punishment.”
Then he stands, pushes me aside with one massive hand, and strides off. I have no choice but to follow, my legs wobbly beneath me and my core throbbing, wondering how much more of this punishment I can endure… and wondering if, in the end, that’s all this is: the payment for my sins.