Chapter 11: Desyre Ended

Mother’s tone sliced through the dungeon air like frost. “Marcus, keep her coming. Push her over the edge again and again until the counter-spell is finished. Two rules only: she stays a virgin, and you leave no permanent marks.”

Marcus smiled and answered with a single, obedient “Yes, Mistress,” already shrugging out of his undertaker’s coat. He hung it on the Saint Andrew’s cross and rolled back his sleeves with the leisurely care of a man preparing a delicate instrument.

Mother did not look at either of us. She peeled her dress away in one fluid motion, letting the fabric puddle at her feet. She stood tall in nothing but sheer black thigh-highs and heels, breasts high and full, nipples dark and stiff, the trimmed strip of hair between her thighs already glistening.

Mother kicked off her heels and peeled away the stockings, then walked naked to the altar table at the far end of the dungeon, and lit the black candles one by one. She opened the grimoire and began to chant in a low, rhythmic tongue. The air thickened with smoke and ozone.

Marcus stepped behind me, and I stopped being able to think in sentences.

I will not pretend I can tell it in order. Time came apart in that crimson room. There was the heat of his hands, unhurried and exact, and my own voice breaking in sounds I did not recognize as mine. There was the sting of leather and palm, bright and clean, that seemed to wake every nerve and hand it straight to the fire already burning under my skin. There was the cold bite of the clamps and the weight of the silver chain, and the way each small shock pulled another wave up out of me before the last one had finished breaking.