Chapter 18 #2
I stared at the spot on the wall and waited, resting my chin on the table. My breathing shallow, my muscles already tight from not doing this for two weeks. I hadn’t been stretching at my house lately because I was too tired. So I was two weeks out of practice, and it hurt.
God, it hurt more today though. I hadn’t been put in this position since before my lashings.
It burned. It brought tears to my eyes. I wondered sometimes if mother knew that this was how they were going to treat me when she gifted me to Thomas.
She had taught me so much about being a Favorite, but she never told me how to react when they kept breaking the rules and punishing me for it.
If she knew, what kind of person did that make her?
A warmth flooded over my back the second the door opened again.
I didn’t have it in me to react, but my heart tried to do something. It was uncomfortable, but I felt it.
Azrael was back.
I hadn’t felt him in service these last two weeks. I thought it was just one of those times, but maybe he had just been doing an extra special transportation task for Pastor Masters to earn his way back here.
He was the first new member to come down this hall in years. Not even the sons of the Leaders were allowed down here other than Thomas, of course. So, I couldn’t help but wonder what made Azrael so special.
Was he a Leader now?
Was he still transporting for the church?
He shut the door, his steps silent on the carpet. “Hello, little sinner.”
I had never wanted to speak more in my entire life, but it had been so very long, and I was so very tired. If I could speak though, perhaps I would have said something like…
“Hello, Azrael.” I would have said it in a way that made him pause. I didn’t ever want to get married, but I would do anything to make his eyes stay on me and only me for the rest of my days, however short those may be now.
“He put you in here like this?”
I remained quiet, finding comfort in that cold lilt he had to his voice. The hum of insanity, I now called it. That’s what it sounded like. Like he had finally cracked.
When I didn’t respond, he said, “The cameras are playing a prerecorded video of me and a girl in a wig who looks just like you. They can’t see us right now.”
Why? Did he not want them watching? How did he get back here? How did he find a girl that looked like me and what had he done to her? When had he done all of this? How had he gotten the brand-new room first?
“Are you mute?” he asked, his voice traveling around the room like a snake seeking its prey. “I know you react. I’ve seen it.”
That seemed odd because nobody else did.
I saw his vest and pants come into view and I quickly closed my eyes. I couldn’t disrespect him. My lashings were still barely healed.
Suddenly, one of the bright lights in the room flicked off. “Nasty things, aren’t they? Paling the skin and flushing the cheeks. I like to see the blood dripping down my women when I take what I want from them.”
Tears burned my eyes as I tried to remain as still as possible, although at his words, my hands tightened ever so slightly around the edge of the table.
My legs were screaming, my stomach was on fire, but his words sat raw within me.
Was he planning on killing me? Just to take the chance away from Thomas?
Good.
I couldn’t think of a better way to die than Azrael’s hands with his warm eyes lingering on my skin.
“Ah,” he hummed, the sound falling gracefully over my skin, “I saw that. You do hear me.”
I never said I didn’t.
I never said anything.
Ever.
I just listened and obeyed. Obeyed and listened. It was the only thing I had left in this world. My obedience.
“Stand. I don’t like this.”
I wanted to take a second to brace myself for the movement, but that was against the rules, so I pushed myself up immediately, wincing, pressing my lips together against the whimper that threatened to escape.
My eyes fell to the desk as I straightened, my hands shaking as I fought the urge to grab my stomach.
God, it hurt.
I could feel his presence behind me like most claimed they felt God.
“Turn.”
I did, the warmth of his eyes traveling around my body until they rested on my face. He was looking at me, and I wondered, once again, what his eyes might look like. What his smile might be. How tall he was.
He felt tall. When he was standing beside me, he felt very tall. Taller than the world.
“You’re such a doll, little sinner,” he said, that smile touching the lilt in his voice, causing a shiver to run down my spine.
It was the first time anyone had called me such a thing, and a small part of me felt something at his words. I couldn’t put a name to it, but it felt…not good, but something heavier. What was a word heavier than ‘good’?
“You’re such a doll, little sinner.” A doll, that’s what I was. A perfect little puppet.
He was quiet for a few seconds, and I wondered what he was doing. Inspecting the merchandise? That’s what Pastor Masters said the other Leaders did. Making sure that we were good enough for whomever chose us.
“I don’t like what he put you in, far from my taste. Do you ever pick your own clothes?”
I kept my eyes down and my hands folded in front of me. He hadn’t yet pulled out his cock. I wondered why. Most everyone couldn’t wait to start touching themselves in front of me. Perhaps I wasn’t good enough for him.
If that was the case, would I get punished for not helping him orgasm? Or would Thomas be happy that Azrael couldn’t orgasm in front of me?
Was I only pretty enough for old men? I wanted to be pretty enough for him. Pretty enough for him to kill.
The cane suddenly touched the underside of my chin, causing me to flinch. The cool metal gently eased my chin up and I complied, my eyes falling shut as he lifted my head until I was sure he could see my full face.
“Hmm,” he pondered. “It’s supposed to be the opposite. When you lay a doll down, their eyes fall closed, when you pick it up…” His worlds trailed off. “You follow their rules well.”
Their rules. I caught that, Azrael. Is this a test? He must know that I wouldn’t break them. I had been taught each and every one of them very carefully. I knew them all. I would not break them.
“Look at me,” he ordered softly, that cane remaining under my chin.
But I wouldn’t. I would never break that rule.
He waited a moment. “Lift your right arm and wrap your hand around my cane.”
I did as I was told, wrapping my hand tightly around the end of his cane, the wood cool under my grip, smooth.
“So fearless when obedient,” he purred. “This cane has killed people,” he informed me quietly. “It’s sliced deep into the flesh of the innocent and the guilty, I haven’t kept track, I just like to kill. The end of it has been blood soaked, it’s shattered bones. Will you react to that, I wonder.”
A warmth spread through my stomach, but I remained still. He was lying, he had to be. Confessing something like that in church…
But he said he had replaced the camera feed, so I was the only one he had confessed to.
It was a secret just between us.
So…had he done it? Killing was one of the greatest sins there was, but there were so many people in this church that had done so many terrible things. Things we didn’t ever talk about. Things that God had forgiven them for over and over and over again.
He could be a killer. He was in perfect control all the time. He never raised his voice, his tone never shifted except for when it had gained that lilt. I had never witnessed control like that. Never once.
Perhaps he was a killer, and perhaps this cane had sunk deep into flesh and bone. The flesh and bone of many people. Blood coating it, flowing freely across the carpet, soaking my shoes—
“Oh, how interesting,” he went on, that smile ever present.
“Your knuckles turned white. Now I have seen many tapes. Plenty of them. All the ones they didn’t lock away in their secret safes in their private houses.
I studied each and every one I could find, and do you know what I have never seen? Little sinner, I have never seen that.”
The tapes they hadn’t locked away? Which tape had they locked away? Which tapes had they kept all for themselves? The ones where they made me impure? Did they have those at their houses? Why would they ever take them out of the church?
I had never wondered about the tapes. About what happened after Thomas took me back to that house, but now I knew. There were some tapes they kept here, and some they hid away. Their secrets.
“I am very good at seeing things others don’t. People don’t like that. In fact, most hate it, but for me? It’s a kind of…power.”
Why had he watched my tapes? That meant he had seen everything. He had seen all of the outfits they had put me in and all of the positions. He had seen what they had made me do.
I swallowed, feeling that deadened heart within me skip a painful beat. Maybe he liked me more than the others. Maybe that’s why he had studied me.
“However,” he went on, his voice quieting, “I had to see for myself. You have so many rules. Contradicting ones, loud ones, private ones, and I was curious to know which ones you followed and which ones you ignored.”
I never ignored a rule. Never. Not for years. I did the best I could never to break any rules, not unless I had to because they contradicted each other.
“Look at me.”
I remained still.
“Still as a statue, aren’t you?” he mused. “You could make my brothers and sisters run for the hills.”
It was a comment almost to himself, if I had to guess, but my mind had locked onto the information he had allowed me to have.
He had a family? After all this time feeling his eyes on me, hearing his voice, I never once considered that he might have a family.
He didn’t seem like the kind of man to have a family.
“I want you to stick the end of my cane into your mouth.”
Without hesitation, I pushed the cane back gently and started guiding it to my lips—
“Stop,” he ordered.