Chapter 7 #3
I look around, trying to see anything that might save me. A detail of something, a hint of information, a whisper, a sneeze. The surrounding men are perfectly still, as still as the columns and statues that encircle us all.
I am put in mind of so many things all at once. Ancient druids. Modern board rooms. Power plants. War councils. All places powerful men gather to bend energy and reality to their will.
There is music playing, a soft Gregorian chant. My mother’s mother used to listen to those for fun when she was in a somber mood. She said it made her feel better, and more at peace.
Peace is the last thing I feel in this moment.
The concept of being prey has always been foreign to me. It is something men have projected onto me from time to time, but I have never claimed it. In this moment, I feel it more intensely and deeply than I ever have before.
Each of these men is here to see something terrible happen to me, to take something that is uniquely and only mine away from me. They will be satisfied when it happens. They will celebrate and enjoy it. It will likely make their soft cocks harden with sadistic joy.
Nobody has said a fucking word, but I know all of this to be true.
Aiden leads me to the altar.
I pull away, or try to, but his grip is like steel and no amount of scrambling will save me.
I know I look undignified, but I don’t care.
Something very bad is about to happen to me, and every ancient ancestral urge I have is telling me to get away.
Do not let the big man take you to the stone.
Do not let yourself be given to the dark this way.
I bite his hand hard enough to draw blood. It is the only red thing in this entire place. It should shine bright against black and white, but the effect of moonlight is to turn the blood black as well.
I have a sudden flash of a mental image of being covered in streams of this black ichor. In this place, even the life-giving essence is corrupted. There is a light murmur from the surrounding men. It sounds like excitement.
“Lie down on the altar,” Aiden says, barely acknowledging my savage bite. “You can lie down, or you can be held down and bound. The choice is yours.”
Just hearing the word choice is perverse right now.
I don’t choose to be here at all. If I had a choice, I would be at home in my pink pajamas with bats on them, eating cereal for dinner because vegetables and meat feels way too heavy for my stomach.
Or I would be on a beach on the other side of the world, where the sun is shining and nobody has any concept of the horrors being perpetrated here.
“Lie. Down.”
He repeats the words and this time there are no softeners, there is just the order.
He continues to seep blood from his hand.
I imagine it hurts like hell. He should probably get a tetanus shot.
Or at least a bandage. But this place is a place of pain, blood, and loss, and I think I just did him a favor by shedding it first.
I turn to sit on the altar. I have to put my back to it, and then swivel, because this damn dress is hobbling me.
It is cool and heavy and again, old. Older than me by many thousands of years.
I know that I am not the first to be placed here, and I am far from the last. I am joining a long lineage of sacrifices.
The moment I am securely on the altar, I am flipped face down. Cool stone presses against my belly, cheek, and thighs.
Crack!
I hear something loud. Then I feel pain.
It takes a fraction of a second to realize I have been given a stroke of the cane.
I look to the side and see Aiden over me, his powerful body arched in preparation to bring down another searing stroke of a punishment tool so notorious it makes grown men shiver.
Crack!
The sound fills the grove, followed by my pained cry. Nothing else is said. Nobody else moves. My wail is the only sound that follows that harsh stroke.
I realize that it doesn’t fucking matter where I am.
This stone, this room, these onlookers, they are the least of my worries.
It is my own flesh that is going to be used against me.
The jaws of the wolf still close around the neck of the lamb whether he slaughters her authentically in the sacrificial chamber, or in the middle of a supermarket aisle.
Aiden holds me face down and continues to cane me seven more times, laying lines one over the other up and down the length of my ass until I am gasping and begging for mercy. Each one of those fiery strokes makes my entire body flood with the chemistry of sacrifice and punishment.
I wanted to call it fake to diminish it, but what I am feeling is more real than anything I have ever felt in my entire existence. This is pure primal public punishment. And it is only just beginning.
He lets me lie there, whimpering to myself as my ass burns on like a fire that burned bright and is stoked to continue to smolder for the rest of the evening.
“She’s feisty,” he finally announces to the assembled men. There is a brief ripple of agreement.
“But we have always broken that which needs to be broken,” he says. “And this woman is no exception.”
Another murmur.
“We lost Theodore. None of you were able to come to his funeral, and for that I must make apologies. At the time, we had no knowledge of the true reason for his demise, how he strayed so far from the path of our protection. We had to imagine the worst. But this is what we found. A woman. A temptress. A creature who speaks with serpents and corrupts the minds of men who otherwise would be good and steadfast.”
Something in my stomach curdles at hearing those words. I don’t think Aiden believes a single fucking one of them. He’s invoking ancient stories, deep mythology, and more in order to rationalize this treatment of me. He is making an example of me. This is a show of strength.
“But,” he says. “The serpent was part of the garden, then, and now. And the woman was also part of it. We cannot and should not destroy what cannot be controlled. It is a call to learn to contain it. It is our weakness. Our failure. Our forgetfulness. Smugness. Pride, that allows these things to cause chaos.”
He’s giving some half-esoteric speech, but I think what he is doing in this moment is making an argument for me to continue to live. He is telling those around us that even though I am at fault for Teddy’s death, I will not be destroyed for it.
I would breathe a sigh of relief, but for the fact that I am well aware Aiden is capable of making life feel worse than death.
I was better off with Leo.
Aiden
She is beautiful. And she is about to be entirely exposed.
I cut the back of her dress all the way up to between her thighs with a sharp blade. The fabric, under tension, splits easily and evenly with a satisfying, smooth sound.
I sheathe the blade, then I take both sides of the fabric in my hands, and I pull. Hard. I rip the dress to the waist, and expose her pretty, punished rear to all with eyes to see.
The lines of the cane are exquisitely red on her skin.
She shrieked like she was being killed, but though I made a great show of her punishment, the truth is I was holding back.
As tough as my little captive likes to pretend she is with her tattoos and her attitude, she is actually quite sensitive to pain of this nature.
A cane can be an ugly thing. It can leave welts, break the skin, turn flesh into a bloody mess. She has some deep red marks, but nothing more, and I feel a deep pride seeing that my artistry and skill remains intact.
I have never felt prouder of anyone than I do of this woman in this moment. She responds so naturally and so beautifully. She gives every second her full attention. She is alive in ways many people never are. She is a challenge to control, and it is my joy to dominate her completely.
Now, with the gown gone, we can see the cute tattoos she has elected to adorn her body with.
There are only two, a little duck on the back of her neck, just under the hairline, and a small family of ducks depicted swimming across her lower back.
Most tattoos placed there are referred to as tramp stamps, but that is far too wholesome to be called trampy in any way.
She picked this motif, and I wonder if she knows the deeper meaning of it. The duck represents the Otherworld, a messenger. It also represents fertility. What a perfect symbol for her to have elected to display on her flesh.
I do not believe the universe makes mistakes. I think it quite often enacts harsh cruelty, but not by mistake. I run my fingers over her seared cheeks and trace the ducks lightly for a moment, giving her some small respite.
These men around us represent some of the most powerful families in business, legitimate and less so. These are the wolves of the world, some of them anyway. The ones closest to me. The ones who must be convinced that the Levin family is still capable of handling business.
Ella is my demonstration piece tonight.
I spread her legs, one on each side of the stone. This exposes her slit, her womanly chalice already swollen and dripping with arousal. She cannot help that, either. It is all part of her delicious and delicate responsiveness.
Then I too, mount the altar. I remain fully clothed, but free my cock. Reaching down, I grip her hips and pull them up to me. The sweet slit of her weeping sex is ready for me. Her body knows how to take this. Ancient instincts tell her how to submit the way a wounded animal does.
I plunge myself deep inside her in one hard stroke, causing her to gasp and make a high-pitched wail of shock. She is hot and she is wet, her molten sex gripping me tightly as I take full command of the chalice between her thighs.
She is mine. Instantly. Irrevocably. In this moment, though we are surrounded by ritual and men in masks, there is truly nothing besides her and me in all the world. I emit a growl as I press her down to the stone and make her take every rough, dominating, punishing thrust I have to give her.
In old times, blood would be shed. What was plunged into the body of a sacrifice would be steel.
My cock stands instead of a blade, and her willing pussy becomes the alchemical recipient of all the grief, rage, and pain that has been welling inside me since the moment I discovered my brother’s loss.
Ella
I didn’t think this sex would feel any different than any other I’ve ever had. Being fucked is just about having a cock inside me, so how could the sensation really change all that much?
I am learning that it can, and does.
The eyes of the watchers are on me, but that knowledge only seems to heighten the sensations.
Shame is a powerful aphrodisiac. Their faces are hidden, but I am entirely on display as I am taken apart thrust by thrust. There are still tears in my eyes from the caning, trickling slowly down my cheeks even as my body melts into the pleasure that comes from being roughly claimed.
I had no idea that a ritual like this could be so powerful.
I am being turned into an object, sacrificed to these men and their organization.
Aiden pulls free, turns me over onto my back, and starts to fuck me again.
This time I can look up into his magnetic, beautiful face as he grips my thighs and spreads them around his powerful waist, thrusting deep inside me.
I lose track of time in how long he fucks me.
His stamina is impressive, as is the way he makes me feel.
I arch and writhe on his cock, my nipples hard, my breasts bare and vulnerable.
Time melts around us as we lose our anchor to the modern day and are transported to a dozen places in the deep past all at once.
I am experiencing the exquisite anguish of being roughly claimed on this rock as so many have before me, the deep friction of a throbbing cock in my tender pussy driving me against the unyielding stone that at first took some of the striped pain of the cane strokes away, but now seems to magnify them every time I am jolted against it.
“I am going to breed you tonight,” he tells me. “You are going to bear a baby for me. Your womb will replace what we have lost. You will be a vessel for my will, and for my life.”
I feel excitement sparking deep inside me as he makes those pronouncements. My pussy is so fucking wet, and every part of my body is tingling, all the way down to my fingertips and toes. When he reaches up and grips my hair, I feel every part of me slide into a deep submissive state.
He is going to breed me. He is going to use my pussy to make his baby.
There is nothing I can do about it, except relish the moment as I accept my most basic fundamental use.
This man is a ruthless monster with more understanding of the arcane in his little finger than most will have in their entire lives.
He commands vast empires, and now I join the number of things that belong to him.
An object, a possession, a willing bare cunt ripe to be filled with his cum…