I hear him walk away, watch as he slips into a pew, setting the cane against it in the aisle. I dare a glance and find him sitting back watching me.
We stay like that for a long time, and as cold as the stone is beneath my hands and knees, sweat drips off my forehead as I wait for him to make his next move. I swear an eternity passes before he does. Before he finally rises, and I breathe a sigh of relief when he comes to me without the cane. When he kneels behind me and puts one hand on my hip and slides the other one up along my back, exerting pressure as he reaches the space between my shoulder blades, then closes his hand over the back of my neck. It’s still tender from the tattoo. His fingers weave into my hair to curve around my skull, and I know what he wants, so I lower myself to my forearms and rest my forehead on the cold stone, and when I hear him unzip his trousers, I claw my fingers into the narrow crevices between the large stones and brace myself.
He takes hold of both hips and splays me open, fingers digging into skin.
I close my eyes when I feel him at my entrance, and I’m hungry for it. I feel that hunger slide down the inside of my thigh, and I know he sees it and feels it, and when he enters me, it’s in one fell swoop. I can’t help my cry. It takes all I have to keep my forehead on the ground as he takes me, keeping his hands firmly on my hips, not touching me where I need him to touch me. I know this is my punishment. His pleasure. He will use me for his pleasure tonight. And I’ll take it.
And when our breathing is ragged and his thrusts frantic, and I feel him thicken even more inside me, I feel his fist at the back of my neck as he winds that rosary around it and draws me up, the sensation different like this.
With one hand, he chokes me with that rosary while with the other, he digs his fingers into my hip, those fingers so close to my clit, so close to my throbbing, wanting clit. And when he comes, he wraps that arm around my middle and holds me so tight that for a moment, I can’t breathe. As he empties inside me, I can’t breathe.
When he’s finished, when he’s loosened the choking rosary, when his arm isn’t a steel bar crushing my ribs, he takes the shell of my ear between sharp teeth, and I still want. Even as I feel him draw out of me. Even as I feel his come slide down the insides of my legs, I still want.
And when he finally speaks, when he finally moves his hand and cups my sex to press his thumb against my hardened clit, I come. Just like that, I come. Even as he warns me not to disobey him again. I come as his seed spills out of me onto the church floor. I come as the hand that wielded that cane cups my sex and reminds me of what he told me last night.
That I belong to him.
21
Santiago
Ivy is quiet as she follows me back down the corridor inside the house. She's stepping gingerly, feeling every bit of her punishment, but no complaints leave her lips.
A strange sense of turmoil roils in my gut. I am overly aware of the pain she must feel. How many times have I walked these halls with that same tenderness burning the soles of my feet? I imagined it would bring me satisfaction to watch her suffer in a way that I understand so intimately. But her lack of tears and silent resolve has brought me little of what I seem to need from her.
I want to bury myself in her again and again. Feel her warmth and her body clenching around me. The possibilities in which I could take her seem endless. Eternity doesn't seem long enough to explore them.
But she won't be here for eternity, I remind myself as I lead her back to her room and seal us inside. She stands on the center of the rug, watching me with uncertainty that makes her seem smaller yet.
A pliable little doll.
My jaw sets as I study her, considering how long it will take for her to break. How long until she is so miserable looking at me every day, feeling my hands upon her skin, that she decides to put an end to it?
Or will I be the one to break first?
Perhaps, that would be easiest. Maybe it's what I should have done all along. I could wrap my hands around her throat and squeeze until the light dims from her eyes. There would be no question then. It would be done. And this strange new torment inside me would die with her.