23. I Feel
23
I FEEL
KRYPT
Remiel stares at where I’m standing, but he doesn’t see me. Even if I wasn’t concealed by shadows, his eyes would not register me. He’s purging himself of his demons, half dead with the effort of it. Now, it’s my turn to scare him back to life. Living for real this time.
I step from the shadows and approach him, removing the cello and the bow from his fingers. He doesn’t move or acknowledge me, but when I crouch in front of him, his eyes meet mine. I’ve never seen them so empty.
“Life hurts, hero,” I tell him, absolutely hating him in Kyd’s clothing. “Going to live it or give it up?”
He stares, blank-faced and void.
I grab his wrist and haul him to his feet, and he lets me steer him to the edge of the cavernous room. The asylum has many old stories, and this chamber is one of them. Tiered, circular seating lines the circumference, but it’s dark and unseen for now. I push his back to a gate, and when he still doesn’t respond, I tether him to it with a set of shackles. His wrists bound to it beside his head. He still doesn’t react.
But when I strap a metal collar around his neck and latch it to the bars of the gate, his eyes shoot up to meet mine.
“What’re you doing?” he asks, voice timid and pathetic.
I hold up a knife, letting it glint in the moonlight so he knows it’s coming. “It’s in your bloodline, right? The curse?” I cut open the hoodie, slicing through that disgusting glowing unicorn. I rip it open and cut it off his arms, watching his skin pebble with goosebumps. All his abs flex, coated in sweat and grime that darkens his skin and makes it glisten.
“Only the men,” he answers, watching me with indifference.
The shirt falls to the floor in tatters, and my name on his collarbone sates me slightly. Remiel swallows against the rigid collar, watching my eyes while I undo his pants and force them down his legs.
“And you are a man. A Sauder man.” I grip his soft cock for the first time, liking the weight and warmth of it. His breath shudders and his chest heaves, but he says nothing. “A Sauder man with the Sauder curse.”
“Yes,” he whispers.
“Want to surrender to it, Remiel? Or do you want to fight it?”
The metal manacles rattle against the gate, and Remiel looks at me with false hope in his eyes. “It can’t be fought. It’s… like you said. It’s in my blood.”
I press the tip of my blade to the hollow of his throat, just below the collar. “This room used to be a viewing room. When the asylum was new and they were experimenting with medical procedures, they’d bring insane patients here, believing that their sicknesses were possessions. Schizophrenics were possessed by demons, so doctors brought in exorcists to purge them.”
His blue eyes meet mine, glossy with tears that won’t fall. “I didn’t take you for a history buff.”
It almost makes me want to laugh that he’s so delirious. He’s naked, chained, and has a dagger pressed to his skin, but my interest in history is more pressing.
I hum to agree with him. “But those who were truly mad were considered tainted. Their blood was poisoned. Guess what they did to them, Remiel?”
He wets his lips and sucks his teeth. “Bled them.”
“Bled them,” I repeat, moving the dagger down his sternum. When I pass his navel and shuck it up to the base of his cock, he looks straight at the monsters in my eyes and hardens against the blade.
“Are you going to bleed me of my bloodline? Drain me until I’m no longer a Sauder?”
I grip his jaw and press the knife tip against the base of his cock. “You are no longer a Sauder. That happened the night you became mine.” I squeeze his cheeks and pop his lips open, letting my spit drop into his mouth. “You already contain so much of my DNA, and ownership is nine-tenths of the law, so by that standard, you’re fucking mine, Remiel. I took your identity the first night you walked through the front door of Vile House, and you haven’t been a Sauder since.”
He swallows, wetting his lips again. “Then why am I still cursed?”
I slide my hand up his face and weave my fingers into his dirty hair. It’s limp and greasy, darker than usual, but still silky and thick. I give it a tug, tipping his head back until the metal digs into his Adam’s apple.
“Because of me,” I admit to him. “I drove you mad, didn’t I? When I wouldn’t tell you how I felt. When I didn’t answer your question. When I forced you through the maze of a long-forgotten ward of this asylum. It’s all me.”
“On purpose?” he asks, panting harder. Dick harder.
I release his hair and pet his cheek. “Not on purpose,” I admit to another fault. “But this, right here, what we do tonight, will very much be on purpose. And when you walk out of here, alive and mine, your blood will be purified and you’ll give your life to me for real. Your whole life, and so fucking help me, Remiel, if you try to end it early again, you will not like who I turn into.”
“Krypt,” he whispers, but I don’t know what it means. It’s a plea and a promise, tainted by a lie and wrapped in fear. “It’s not all you. It’s me. I’m the broken one.”
I push the other side of the gate open, stepping through it until I’m at Remiel’s back. Admiring him from behind, I can’t help but grope his ass through the bars, smacking him red and strengthening my claim over him. When we leave here, he’ll be marked so thoroughly by me he won’t even know who the fuck he is anymore. He’ll be able to build a new identity under my possessive watch.
Because I need him to want to live.
I grab the cart with my supplies, pushing it back to the front of the gate. While Remiel panics, looking at everything on the cart, I dip through the gate and fill the space with ignorant screeches as I drag a metal fire pit across the stone surface. Hot coals and glowing embers already smoulder within it, and I add a few pieces of wood to bring the fire back to life. It warms the space and casts a flickering orange light to see by. It licks in Remiel’s blue irises. I’ve been planning this for three days, and now I’m ready to purify him as much as I tarnish him.
He’s scared. Of the fire and the instruments I shove into the coals. Of the tattoo machine and the pot of black ink. Of the swath of fabric, neatly holding blades ranging from surgical precision to serrated hunting knives.
His dick flags a little, losing interest as anticipation wins out. “What are you going to—” He presses his lips together. He doesn’t want to know what I’m going to do to him. Instead, he meets my eyes and says, “Fix me.”
I offer him a real smile. “You’re already fixed, Remiel. Now you just need the reminder.” I jostle the handles sticking out of the fire, making sure each tool is properly heated. I’ll let them sit a bit, starting with a different tool. “Look at me.”
He rips his eyes from the fire and looks at me.
“You are important to me.”
A tear falls down his cheek.
“Being important to me is not an easy thing to be. It’s going to hurt. It’s going to hurt so much more than it feels good.”
He nods, swallowing and crying. His breath puffs out his nostrils in harsh pants.
I pick up the tattoo gun and dip it in ink. Art isn’t my forte, but calligraphy and letters are. I’ve practiced with the tattoo gun, but Remiel’s skin is the only living thing I’ve inked. I trust myself enough not to need a stencil tonight, because every mark I make on his body is meant to be harsh. Every single scar he gets from this night will remind him who the fuck he belongs to and what the fuck he has to live for.
Me. Him. Us. Whatever the combination of us creates. A sick bargain that’s become a way of life.
“I don’t need your permission, Remiel. But do you give it to me?” I hold the tattoo gun and motion to the cart with every tool on it. I’m asking, and that has to count as growth because I’ve never asked for permission before.
“Will it hurt?”
“Very much.”
“I…” He meets my eyes. “I trust you.”
“You shouldn’t.”
I push the metal collar up to his chin and tip his head back until it hurts. He winces, but the first prick of the needles against his throat shuts him up, only drawing forth hisses. He bites back questions about what I’m tattooing, and I’m so focused on the work that I barely notice his cock hardening against my thigh right away. I smile to myself.
“That pill went down this throat,” I explain, dipping the gun. “This part of your body is forever tainted. Every time I look at the way you swallow or the bob of your throat, I’ll shatter. Because it broke me, Remiel.”
“I’m s-sorry,” he cries.
“Shh.” I keep him still until the word is done. Single letters from the top of his throat to the hollow at the bottom. Dark and black and bold, uneven and unmatched.
I set the machine down and pick up a blade from the middle of the cloth. It isn’t surgical, so it’ll leave a rough scar, but I want it to. Beneath the bottom letter of his new throat tattoo, I dig the tip of the knife in.
“It travelled down here.” I slice Xs into his skin, small and straight down his sternum. “Down your esophagus and into your stomach, and I’ll never forget the look in your eyes as it travelled through you. Because I saw it.”
“Saw what?” he asks, voice pained. He’s sweating a bit now, too.
“You knew. Ghost told me you thought it was a sedative, but I saw it in your eyes, Remiel. You knew it wasn’t.”
He sobs softly, his memories hurting more than my carving. “I didn’t know for sure, but I knew there was a chance.”
When I reach the bottom of his ribcage, my column of Xs complete, I move the blade down to the area beneath his navel. I look at his face, so anguished, and then I slice from hip to hip. “They pumped it out of your stomach and had to give you medications to counteract the ones shutting you down.”
He twitches and screams in pain but never takes his eyes off mine. I kneel in front of him and watch the wound leak blood down his pubic bone and over the base of his cock. It passes his dick, and a few drips leak down his balls and thighs.
I press on the cut and lean forward to lick the blood off his cock. I haven’t tasted his cum yet, but the rust of his blood and the hardness of him against my tongue make me thicken in my pants.
“I’ll bleed every last drop of your blood until you believe the curse is gone. I’ll drink it all, consume it, and take the curse for myself.” His cock bobs in front of my face, twitching on its own and leaking clear fluid from the tip. I lick that too, letting it light a fire inside me. I bury my face against his groin and drink him in, licking and sucking until my face is covered in his blood.
When I look up at him, he’s flushed and sweaty, but terrified and turned on, too. I suck his dick into my mouth, spreading precum and blood along his shaft. The feeling of a dick in my mouth is new, but to consume him is my nature. I might be in charge of him, but I want to worship him.
“Krypt,” he groans.
I stand again, setting the knife down. The cut isn’t deep, it’s just a bleeder, so I’ll leave it open for now. The ones on his sternum are leaking a little but mostly drying. The collar around his neck bothers me. I don’t want it rubbing against my letters there, so I unclasp it and drop it to the floor. His head hangs forward as he pants shallowly.
“This next one is going to hurt, hero. Bite down on this.” I hold up a strap of leather, but Remiel doesn’t bite it. “Remiel.”
He looks at my eyes. My lips. My eyes. My lips.
“Ask for it,” I dare him.
Sweat drips down his temples, and his tongue runs over his bottom lip. “Please.”
“Please, what?”
He leans forward, making the manacles rattle. “Please… please kiss me.”
To kiss is to consume. It’s a claim. A chance to steal oxygen and mingle exhales. The only times I’ve pressed my lips to his have been to devour brutally. He’s already brutal tonight, so I lean in slowly, teasing my lips against his. I close my eyes and feel his tongue sweep out, dampening his lips in preparation for mine.
Without seeing him, I feel everything about him. The slight tremble running through him. The sweat on his skin. The thump of his heart under my palm. The shallow pants that leave his lips and the restraint as he prevents them from turning harsher. I’m a twenty-eight-year-old man, and Remiel Sauder is the first person I’ve kissed.
I bump my nose to his, letting out my own shaky exhale. When he whimpers quietly, his body begging and his dick hard against my own, I part my lips and lean into him. The kiss starts open-mouthed, slow and hesitant. I barely move my lips, but Remiel moves his, making mine follow. He does it again, opening and closing slowly, kissing me with no tongue but every emotion ranging from lust to fear to shame and pain.
I feel it throughout my body. The kiss travels, tingling my temples and filling my blood with a slow-burning flame. It hardens my cock but softens my heart, slowing time and defying my instincts.
I groan, but it’s not a savage sound. It’s relief and longing, surprise and mercy. From a kiss with no tongue. A kiss with impact. A kiss that scares me and tastes like blood. Because I feel it everywhere. I feel.
“I trust you, Krypt,” Remiel whispers against my mouth.
I want to remind him he shouldn’t, but I can’t. I’ve made myself everything to him, ensured it, even, and his trust means more to me than I’ll ever be capable of conveying. “This is going to hurt, hero.”
“I know.”
He doesn’t know. He might mean everything with me is going to hurt, or he might mean the end of this kiss is going to hurt. Either way, he’s right. I press my mouth to his one more time, savouring the taste of his docile need, and then I pull back. Tonight will be brutal; tomorrow, we’ll attempt something softer.
“Are you ready, Remiel?”
“Yes.” He looks at me with wet eyes, dazed from gentle intimacy.
I unclasp the hook of his right arm, sliding it along the bars until his arm is outstretched beside him. Hooking it back, I run my fingers over the scar left by his mother. The suicide mark he bears but did not draw. I’m going to cover it.
“Pills and hanging,” I list the two ways his brother and father killed themselves, looking at his neck. “Your throat and your neck are now mine. Wrists are next.” His other brother cut himself and bled out right on the plot he was meant to be buried in.
“What? You’re… covering all the ways I could kill myself?”
I step over to the fire, moving the handle of a poker around. “Bite this.” I hold up the leather again.
He shakes his head, but he does it. His eyes widen in extreme fear when I pull the tool from the fire. It’s large and glowing red. Without giving him a chance to protest, I line it up with the inner length of his forearm, spanning from wrist to halfway to his elbow, meet his eyes, and press the hot metal against his skin.
Remiel cries out, muscles flexing, veins bulging, and hand fisting. His eyes leak tears as he squeezes them closed, and drool drips down his chin and around the leather. The brand hisses against his flesh, the smell of burnt skin ripe in the air. When I pull it away, the first few layers of his skin come with it, and I throw it back into the fire.
Remiel’s eyes won’t focus, the pain too intense.
“Look at me, Remiel.”
He’s hyperventilating through his nose, barely able to keep his head up. He looks at me, lashes wet and stuck together, his jaw locked.
“I enjoy the way you hurt, hero. Do you like pain?”
He shakes his head weakly before it slumps forward. I remove the leather from his mouth and lift his chin for him. “It’s not pain,” he rasps. “It’s fear.”
“I know what turns you on,” I tell him. “Pain does nothing?”
He shakes his head again, and I notice his cock has once again softened. “Pain feels negative. Fear feels like…”
“Living,” I finish. “One more time. Open your mouth.”
He begs me not to, but I shove the leather between his teeth, and he clamps down all on his own. He’s crying harder now, and when I pull his other arm taut, pressing the second brand there and pulling it away, he hyperventilates so hard he passes out. His head hangs, chin resting against the Xs on his chest, his slobber dripping into the fresh wounds. I toss the brand aside and make sure the last one is nice and hot.
I wish I really could bleed him. Maybe it’d be enough to make him believe the curse was gone, but I don’t trust whatever dark magic I possess to bring him back to life, and losing him isn’t an option for me anymore. Instead, I’ll have to bleed him in increments, cut him whenever he gets close to poisoning himself, and burn the rest of the curse from him. His wrists will be in so much pain, and over the next few days, they’ll blister and peel. When they heal, they’ll leave a raised scar with my name, and if he ever thinks about cutting his wrists, he’ll have to slice right through my brand. I hope it’s enough to make him hesitate, to pause long enough to think. To stop. To remember the life he’s learning to live.
“Remiel,” I say, tapping his cheeks. “Remiel.”
He jolts, his eyes wide with pain and his forehead coated in sweat. The leather falls from his mouth, and he groans in agony.
“You’re almost done, hero. One more burn.”
“No,” he begs. “No more burning. No. Please.”
“One more burn,” I repeat. My hand rests on his chest, pressing my warmth into his heart. I look at his wet, scared eyes and tell him something personal. “You called yourself sick, and until you said it, I’d considered the word… an insult. But if you’re sick, Remiel, if whatever pumps through your heart and coats your brain is a sickness, it’s a fucking blessing. Not an insult.” I pick up the leather strap and hold it in front of his mouth. “I want you, too, Remiel. I pick you, too.”
He chokes out a weak sob, still drooling.
“And I want your sickness to meet mine, and whenever we get too tainted and Moros can’t handle us anymore, I want to die sick with you.”
When his lips part on another cry, I shove the leather between his teeth, grab the last brand, and press it to the skin of his left pec.
SICK
Remiel taught me to relish the word instead of fear it.
He screams through the gag and drops almost to his knees, hanging by his wrists. While the tool is still hot and coated in his burning skin, I free his weak arm, press the handle to his palm, and pull off my shirt. “Right here, Remiel.” I point to my heart.
Even though he’s crazy and delusional, or maybe because of it, his fingers wrap around the handle and his eyes meet mine. He can barely hold it up, but he stands, forcing himself to his feet. The leather falls from between his teeth. He breathes hard, and his eyes focus on my chest.
“Sick,” he whispers.
I help him press the brand to my skin, and the pain of it connects our damned souls for all of eternity.