80. Leandra #2
I come with a scream that tears itself from somewhere deep in my chest. My body arches off the stone, my wrists straining against the ropes, my vision going white. Not the white of the drug, but the white of my own synaesthesia, the colour of pure, unfiltered ecstasy.
The orgasm rolls through me in waves, each one stronger than the last, and I feel the women around me reaching their own peaks, their cries joining mine in a chorus of abandon.
For a long moment, there is nothing but pleasure.
Nothing but the pulse of blood in my ears, the shudder of my own body, and the colours that swirl and dance behind my closed eyes.
And then, slowly, the world begins to return.
The women withdraw, their hands and mouths leaving my body, and I feel the absence like a wound.
I am trembling, my skin slick with sweat, my breaths coming in ragged gasps.
The ropes have left marks on my wrists, red and angry, and I can feel the ache between my thighs, the tender soreness of overstimulation.
Ezekiel steps closer. He looks down at me, and his smile is the smile of a man who has seen everything he wanted to see.
“The first rite is complete,” he says, and his voice is thick with satisfaction. “You have been anointed, Leandra. You have been opened. Now you are ready for what comes next.”
I want to ask him what he means. I want to demand answers, to scream at him.
To tell him that Lazarus will kill him for this, that I will kill him myself, but the drug is still in my veins, and the words will not come.
All I can do is lie there, bound and trembling as the women gather around me once more.
One of them leans down, her veiled face inches from mine.
Through the sheer fabric, I can see her eyes, dark and glittering, pupils still blown wide.
She reaches up and pulls the veil away, and I find myself staring at a face I almost recognize.
Young. Beautiful. Features that remind me of someone I used to know, someone I used to be.
“You are one of us now,” she whispers, and her voice is like honey, sweet and cloying. “The Prophet has chosen you. The Prophet has blessed you. Soon, you will understand. Soon, you will be grateful.”
Grateful.
The word echoes in my mind, bouncing off the walls of my skull like a stone dropped into a well. Grateful for what? For being drugged, stripped, and violated while a madman watched? For being turned into a puppet, a plaything, a sacrifice?
But even as the rage builds inside me, I feel something else stirring beneath it. Something darker. Something that the drug has awakened and that will not be put back to sleep.
Desire.
Not for Ezekiel. Never for him but for the power that crackles in the air around him, the power that the women have tasted and that I have tasted too. The power that comes from surrender, from letting go, from becoming something other than yourself.
I have spent my whole life being used. By my father, who sold me. By Ezekiel, who moulded me. By Konstantine, who saw me as nothing more than a vessel for his dead wife.
But Lazarus…
Lazarus sees me differently. Lazarus loves me. Lazarus has promised me revenge, and I have tasted it already, my father’s skull turned into a drinking cup, his bones ground to dust beneath my feet.
What would it feel like to have that kind of power for myself?
The thought terrifies me. It also excites me in ways I cannot name.
The women are moving again, arranging themselves in a circle around the stone slab. They join hands, their sheer dresses glowing faintly in the darkness and begin to chant, low and rhythmic words in Aramaic.
Ezekiel raises his hands, and the chanting grows louder. The colours around him pulse and swirl, and I feel the drug in my veins respond, sending fresh waves of heat through my body. My hips shift against the stone, my thighs pressing together, seeking friction, seeking relief.
“Behold,” Ezekiel intones, his voice ringing through the chamber. “Behold my Covenant Brides. Behold my vessel of the divine. Behold.”
The women turn toward me as one. Their eyes gleam in the darkness, and I see their mouths curve into identical smiles.
“Behold,” they echo, and the word is a caress, a promise, a threat.
I close my eyes and let the colours take me.
Time loses all meaning.
I drift in and out of awareness, the drug pulling me under and then releasing me, over and over, like waves breaking on a shore. Each time I surface, the scene has shifted slightly. The women have changed positions. The chanting has grown louder or softer. Ezekiel has moved closer or farther away.
But always, always, the touching continues.
Hands on my breasts, my stomach, my thighs. Mouths on my neck, my shoulders, the sensitive hollow behind my knees. Fingers sliding inside me, stretching me, filling me, bringing me to the edge of climax and then pulling back, leaving me gasping and desperate.
I lose count of how many times I come. The orgasms blur together, one bleeding into the next until I cannot tell where pleasure ends and pain begins. My body is no longer my own. It belongs to the drug, to the women, to the ancient stone beneath me and the ancient darkness above.
And through it all, Ezekiel watches like the very devil.
I feel his gaze on me like a brand, burning into my skin. I feel his satisfaction, his anticipation, his certainty that he has won. That I am his creature now, broken and remade in his image.
He is wrong.
Even through the haze of the drug, even through the pleasure that wracks my body, a part of me remains separate. A part of me that watches, waits, and remembers.
The women are touching me once more, their hands slick with oil that smells of myrrh and something else, something that makes my skin tingle and burn. They are anointing me, I realize. Preparing me for whatever comes next.
One of them straddles my face, and I taste her; salt, musk and something sweet, like honey left too long in the sun.
She rocks against my mouth, and I let my tongue do what it has been trained to do, let myself become the vessel they want me to be.
Her thighs tremble on either side of my head, and when she comes, her cry echoes off the ancient walls like a prayer.
Another woman takes her place. And another. And another.
I lose myself in the taste of them, in the feel of their bodies against my mouth, in the colours that swirl and dance behind my closed eyes. Violet, green, orange and gold, all bleeding together into something new, something that has no name.
And then, finally, Ezekiel speaks again.
“Enough.”
The word cuts through the haze, each syllable echoing in my head. The women withdraw, their bodies sliding away from mine and I am left alone on the stone slab. Trembling and slick with sweat, oil, and the evidence of their pleasure.
Ezekiel approaches. He stands over me, and I see his face clearly for the first time; the sharp angles of his cheekbones, the dark glitter of his eyes, the smile that curves his lips like a wound.
He reaches down and traces a finger along my cheekbone, following the line of one of my scars.
His touch is cold, and I flinch away from it, but the ropes hold me in place.
“You are ready now,” he murmurs. “Ready for the final rite. Ready to become what you were always meant to be.”
“And what is that?” I whisper, though I have no idea if I’m even forming coherent words or not.
His smile widens. “A true sacrifice.”
The word hangs in the air between us, heavy and dark. I feel the women tense around me, their colours flickering with something that might be fear or might be anticipation. The drug is still in my veins, still clouding my thoughts but I force myself to focus, to remember.
Ezekiel steps back, raising his hands once more.
The women begin to chant again, their voices rising in a crescendo that fills the chamber, that shakes the very stones.
The colours around them blaze with renewed intensity, and I feel the drug in my veins respond, sending fresh waves of heat through my body.
“Behold our blood sacrifice.” Ezekiel intones. “Behold the Bride who will die so that the Covenant may live.”
Die.
The word echoes through me, and for a moment fear rises up to choke me.
The chanting reaches a fever pitch. The women are swaying now, their bodies moving in unison, their sheer dresses clinging to their sweat-slicked skin. One of them produces a blade, long and curved, its edge gleaming in the candlelight, and I feel my heart stutter in my chest.
This is it.
This is the moment.
But before the blade can fall, before the ritual can reach its bloody conclusion, the great doors of the chapel burst open.
Light floods the chamber, not candlelight, but something brighter, something harsher.