I swallow, turn my gaze up to his.
He studies me for a long minute, the silence heavy around us. The air in this place weighted.
As if reading my mind, he turns back to his collection, chooses the long, wispy cane and picks up the rosary, then walks toward me. He cocks his head to the side and taps my clasped hands with the end of the cane. I hadn’t realized I’d been holding them in prayer.
“Habit,” he says.
I nod, but it’s not so much a question.
He drops the rosary around my neck. The beads feel cold and heavy like each one is a weight.
“You don’t go to church. You haven’t been to a mass in the past half year.”
“How do you know?”
“You think I didn’t have someone watching you?” He walks a circle around me, and I turn my head to the right, then to the left to follow him.
“Why would you do that?”
“Because I knew in time, you’d be mine.” He’s still circling.
“Why?”
“That’s for another time.” He stands before me again. “Does it hurt? Kneeling there?”
I nod.
“Do you like it?”
I shake my head.
“Are you wet?”
I don’t answer that one.
He grins, then begins his circling again.
“If you’re going to punish me with that thing, just do it and get it over with.”
I hear the swish then, and an instant later, I fall onto my hands as a strip of pure agony blazes across the bottoms of my feet. Before I can process, there’s a second strike. Tears spring from my eyes, and for a moment, I can’t breathe.
He crouches behind me. I’m still gasping for breath when he wraps the length of the rosary around his fist and tugs my head backward into his chest.
“You do not give the orders.”
I clutch his forearm, my breathing gasps, chest heaving.
There had been a moment earlier that I’d found him tender, kind even. Almost. When he’d learned I hadn’t eaten, he’d been upset. When he’d cleaned the tattoo, he’d been gentle. When he’d slipped his hand into my nightdress and grazed my breast, I’d leaned into his touch.
“Did you like that?” he asks.
I shake my head. “No!”
He brings the hand holding the cane between my legs and rudely cups me, and I think what I must look like on my knees before the altar, my body jerked backward, knees spread, on display.
“You’re wet through.”
I don’t know if it’s on purpose that he lets the cane rest against my sex.
“But this isn’t about your pleasure, Ivy,” he says, smearing his wet hand over my stomach as he rises.
“Please don’t,” I can’t help but say as I reach back to cover my feet, feel the rising crisscrossed welts there. I was only caned once at school, and it wasn’t anything like this.
“That’s better. I like the please. But put your hands back in prayer and kneel up.”
“Please.” I crane my neck to look back at him.
He raises his eyebrows as if waiting for me to follow his direction.
I do, but I brace myself.
“You’ll feel that with every step tomorrow.”
I keep my gaze forward on the altar, tears blurring it.
“Do you know what my father expected of me?” he starts, circling again.
I shake my head, sniffle. I’m not sure what’s worse, the anticipation of the cane or the cane itself.
He stops in front of me, looks me over, slides the instrument of torture between my legs.
I stiffen.
“More than I could give,” he says, drawing it away. “I spent countless hours where you are now, and I can tell you I did not sob when lines crisscrossed my back. I did not so much as sniffle when the bottoms of my feet burned, the skin opening with each step.”
My mouth falls open. I glance at the photo of the stern-looking man on the altar, then up at him. I try to imagine him as a little boy kneeling here. And I think of my own father who has never in my life raised a hand to me. I think about my mother’s punishments, but they were never calculated. Hers were impulse. The momentary, uncontrolled rage of a dissatisfied woman.
“I’m sorry,” I tell him when he’s in front of me again. “I’ll wear it. Like you said.”
He walks behind me again.
“Please don’t,” I plead. It’s taking everything for me to stay still, kneel up, and not cover myself.
“Lean forward and put your hands on the floor.”
I glance back, then, after a moment, I do as he says. I put my hands on the floor, presenting myself to him. The pain that is surely to come overrides my humiliation.
When he slips the cane between my legs, I cry out, but he doesn’t strike. Just taps for me to spread them wider.
“Like that,” he says when they’re as he wants them. I’m sure he can see all of me. “Don’t move.”