Again.
Again.
I cannot breathe.
"You begged forgiveness," he says softly, mercilessly, "while he imagined the very things he forbade you to feel."
He bends closer still, breath brushing my ear.
"You called it holy," he whispers.
A pause.
"I call it filth."
His gaze darkens, something molten moving beneath the surface.
"He wanted you silent," he murmurs. "Ashamed. Bent beneath prayer until you forgot the sound of your own wanting."
His presence presses against my very senses.
"I want you crying out," he continues softly, "knowing precisely what I am."
The words strike somewhere deep, somewhere I have kept locked behind obedience and fear.
I feel the cool brush of him against my throat, the awareness of proximity that makes my pulse leap wildly beneath skin.
"He wanted your soul caged in guilt," he whispers again. "I want it spread wide beneath me, singing."
A tremor runs through me before I can stop it.
Heat gathers low in my body, unfamiliar and yet achingly known, answering something in his voice that feels older than reason. My fingers curl against my skirts. He circles me slowly, then comes to stand before me again, close enough that I must tilt my head to meet his eyes.
"He worshipped a god that taught him starvation," he says, and there is contempt in the words now. "I would worship you as flesh was meant to be honored."
His voice drops further, almost reverent.
"On my knees. With blood on my mouth and your name upon my tongue."
My breath shudders. I cannot look away from him. I do not want to.
"You confessed to a man who stripped you bare with his gaze," he says. "Confess to me now."
My heart pounds so hard it hurts.
"Tell me you loved it when I took his sight."
I cannot confess.
But I cannot deny. The truth he asks for presses at my bounds, frightening in its clarity, but I cannot shape it into sound.
He studies my face for a long moment, as though he hears what I cannot say.
Then his hand lifts. Slowly—so slowly I could pull away if I wished—his fingers come to rest against my cheek.
The touch is impossibly gentle. His thumb brushes the faint tenderness along my skin where Mama’s blows struck me, tracing the edge of the bruise with care.
"Perhaps," a shadow passes through his eyes, "I ought to break the hand that dared leave its mark upon you."
