: Chapter 38

I still my body, using every available sense I have.

A bird’s wings flutter from the tree branches above me. I breathe the stark scent of pine with the pungent smell of wet mud beneath my black lace-up boots. My fingertips gently graze the sharp bark of the tree behind me, feeling for its width as my vision stays trained on the area before me, ensuring it’s cleared.

Slowly, I mold along the tree, using soft, light footsteps and a steady flow of motion until my target is in my direct line of sight. I take a steady inhale, exhaling smoothly, calming the nerves that always pool before I strike. Grazing the knives along the straps across my chest, I grip the tips of each blade and am transported into a different place entirely.

There, leaning against the tree, is the outline of the disgusting, child-assaulting demon himself.

Bishop Caldwell.

I spin off the tree, quickly making eye contact with my target, and flick my wrist, sending the blade rotating so swiftly through the air that the sound is practically silenced as it strikes him directly in the left eye. Blood bursts from his head as his mouth drops open, and his stunned body falls back against the tree.

I continue through the trees, not watching as his dead body collides with the forest floor beneath him, running light on my toes, my feet stepping around the rocks and sticks left on the ground that could give away my whereabouts.

Dodging a bullet by diving into a somersault, I come up on my knee with one leg propped out before me, stabilizing myself. I toss the knife up, flipping to grab the handle, and gripping it, I twist my body back, slicing the core of the man approaching me from behind with a semi-circle, back-handed motion.

The man who made Aero’s life the living hell that it was by murdering his mother, the mistress, silencing his secrets the only way he knew how.

The same man that sent his son to live in the dark basement of the church, under the strict eye of the bishop himself. A man so eager to assist in the grooming of another innocent child. The same bishop, whose idea of purifying and cleansing this spawn of Satan, was through excessive attention and a gentle, caressing touch.

The man who turned a blind eye to the cries for help from a small boy, made up of his own genes, being abused by the very institution that promised to protect.

The man who set up his own flesh and blood, accusing a child of a crime so vicious, so vile, that it pained anyone to believe it could be true.

The man who tried to erase the existence of the one stain he never could.

Callum Westwood.

I cut into his abdomen, tearing the blade through the flesh as I swing the knife, spilling his intestines into the dirt where they belong. He groans before collapsing forward; the blood spurting across my face and arm from his large gaping wound as he awkwardly drops to his death behind me.

I grip the sharp edge of the last blade from the strap on my thigh, aiming for the last target who’s straight before me.

His striking blue eyes find mine, and his face softens, sending a twisted feeling to the pit of my gut. I’m not sad for him. I don’t feel sorrow anymore. But I feel this act I’d be gifting him would be too kind. Giving him death gives him freedom, and after all of the lies and deceptions, he deserves none of that.

I hesitate. My wrist pulls back by my ear, but I hold for a second too long.

My only error.

Just as expected, my hesitation gets the better of me and before I can send the final dagger flying into the heart of Saint, someone grips my neck with a firm hand from behind, another wrapping my arm behind my back, twisting it into a painful hold as I’m forced to drop the last remaining blade.

“You messed up,” his grave, familiar tone purrs throughout my core, his hot breath warming my neck. “You hesitated, and now you’re dead.”

This is Aero’s game; always has been. I’m still merely a player.

I feel the rope circle my wrist as he tries to grab for the other. Sending an elbow to his jaw, I feel his teeth knock together before an angry growl reverberates from somewhere deep in his chest.

Thrashing wildly in his hold, I feel his body push into me, forcing my face into the dirt beneath us, my legs splaying out behind me. He’s already hard.

Twisting my other arm back, he ties it to the other wrist. Once my arms are tied behind my back, he sits on my ass before I can roll over to use my legs.

“Not today, darling,” he says confidently. “I’ve learned that lesson.”

I hear the metal loops of the silicone gag clang from behind him as the smell of the leather strap floods my nostrils.

No, not again.

“Open, so I don’t have to break teeth,” he demands.

Bringing the large cock-shaped gag to my mouth, he pushes it towards my lips. I turn my head, refusing it.

“Fuck you,” I spit out.

A light scoff leaves his lips, and I can picture the demented grin planted on his smug face. “You will.”

He presses the four-inch object to my lips again, more forcefully this time, and I part my lips, as the girth fills my mouth, opening my jaw. I instantly gag against the foreign object, my eyes watering as horrid sounds leave my throat.

“Relax for me,” he says, annoyed but still petting the top of my head gently. The move, totally contradictory to his tone of voice. “Breathe, you weak bitch.”

My thighs tighten at his demeaning demands, and I grind my hips into the earth, needing to rub my aching heat against something.

I hate that I love it. I hate how he knows how I’ll respond. He knows how I like to feel used filthy, and fucked like his own personal whore, only to be treated like his noble queen later.

He secures the belt of the gag behind my head while I focus on breathing through my nose as he taught me, saliva already pooling around the fake cock.

“Such a good little slut for me, aren’t you?” he whispers in my ear. “Always bending at the knee for a man.”

He grabs my ankle, bending my knee back. He’s trying to hogtie me again. I quickly send my head back, knocking the back of my skull into his face.

He curses, before aggressively grabbing for my ankle again, but the minor lapse allows me a moment to twist beneath his hold. I wiggle myself out enough to get to my knees, but he reaches for my calf and easily slides me back beneath him.

“Fuck,” he groans, wiping blood from his lower lip where there’s now a cut. “You know I love when you fuck me up, baby.”

He’s just too strong. Too smart. Too quick for me to escape his grasp. He’ll never let me go.

I still, letting out a deep sigh through my nose, trying to calm my racing heart and focus on breathing, as the drool drips down my chin and the silicone cock has me practically choking. He pulls my head back by the strap of the gag, looking down at my face over the top of me.

I know I must look insane. Tears have my face looking like a flushed mess, and saliva spills onto the dried grass and dirt beneath me as my throat tries to expel the object protruding into it.

He gazes down at me, eyes fully dilated, filled with a primal sickness, as blood drips from his nose down his full lips. I feel it spill onto my forehead, and I wince my eyes as a drop of blood hits near my eyebrow.

This look of his, it’s feral and untamed, raw and ruthless. It makes me insatiable for him. My pussy spasms, as wetness pools in my shorts in anticipation of the discipline he’s about to inflict.

We’re toxic. My blood, infected with the same sick love he owns for me. We crave this illness. The pain, the torture, the obsession, the taunting, the teasing, the domination, the submission.

It’s always a war between us. A battle brewing that reeks of passion and underlying lust. Our bodies feel combustible until we can connect and become us again, finding a place only we can own. The fire.

He carries me over his shoulder, walking me back to the cabin. The cabin we’ve been living in together for a week now.

This is what we do. We train. We fight. We fuck.

Dropping me on the edge of the bed, my wrists pull tight against the rope, feeling for an escape.

I silently gag around the silicone cock filling my mouth, touching the back of my throat. My eyes close tightly as tears melt down my cheeks, a silent plea to take it off.

He’s been training me to deep throat in his own sadistic ways, punishing me with the cock gag whenever I lose the game.

He rolls me to my knees, my legs sitting under me, my chest pushed out in defiance.

“It’s time for a real cock to fuck that pretty throat,” he says, gently grabbing my chin and eyeing the mess before him as saliva pools at my breasts, my white tank covered. His hand travels down my chin, gently stroking my throat, where I try to swallow again.

“Isn’t this what you crave? The inability to use your voice? To be silenced by men and used up like the sex toy that you are?”

Dark eyes flash up at mine before he lifts my shirt, allowing my breasts to bounce free from the tank top. Palming both breasts, his hands splay over the soft flesh before his thumb rubs over the hardened point of my left nipple. His jaw flexes.

“I’m piercing these,” he declares, and my forehead wrinkles as his large fingers play with both nipples. He twists them both between his thumb and forefinger, rolling the sensitive flesh, sending electrical shock waves down between my legs. “So beautiful, Briony. How you’ve developed.”

A muffled whine leaves my throat.

“I’ve watched you blossom,” he says, his hands holding the weight of my breasts as he studies them through his disheveled locks hanging partially into his eyes. “Seen you bloom into this woman before me.” A groan leaves his throat. “I couldn’t wait any longer. You turned eighteen. I had to touch you. Had to fuck you,” he says softly, almost to himself as my clit aches at his desire.

Eighteen. Not twenty, like I’d been told. Aero opened Pandora’s box a week ago, gifting me the secrets I’d been told my entire life. What do you do when you see the proof of the fact that your parents aren’t really your parents? My brother wasn’t really my brother. My date of birth and place of birth weren’t even accurate.

They had manipulated everything for a family that couldn’t conceive again. Brian and Cynthia Strait were living their own lie. I was an orphaned child. A child brought into this world as a mistake. A stain, just as Aero was. Two strays left in the dust of an institution where they didn’t belong. One with the hope of a chance under a blanket of lies, the other, not so lucky.

They taught me forgiveness. They taught me truth. Love. Righteousness. Goodness. There is a God. There has to be. I have faith in that fact, and no one can take that away from me. What I fail to have faith in now are humans. Savages of the worst kind that surround us with true masks of deception.

He rips the back of the gag over my head, sending my hair over my face as I gasp for air. Without warning, he clasps a black collar around my neck with an O-ring right at my throat, connected to a chain.

This man has a plethora of toys and restraints behind that locked door of his, built for pleasure and pain. The two core dimensions of emotion that correlate in a beautiful symphony when our music collides.

I stare up at him, defiant, yet obedient. Aero’s bare chest is covered in scars and tattoos of his own defiance. Tilting his head to the side, I watch as his tongue skates across his teeth in excitement and anticipation, looking over his prey he’s sure to conquer.

He opens his jeans, stepping out of the rest of his clothing before fisting the base of his thick, erect cock, palming the length of himself before me.

I watch as he runs his fingers over the tip, flicking the piercing with his thumb, desperately wanting some of that friction against my center that’s dripping for him. Craving the sensation of that piercing dragging along my hungry clit again.

“I’m going to pierce those tits and chain you to my cock.” He smirks proudly at the idea, stroking himself as he braces himself on those thick, sculpted quads. “Watch you crawl on the floor beneath me, led by none other than your new god.” He shakes his dick at me.

“You’re not piercing my nipples,” I retort, finally finding my voice.

Aero grabs the chain connected to the O-ring around my neck and jerks it forward, causing me to gasp.

“I didn’t ask for your opinion,” he snarls. “Now get on your stomach and open my mouth for me.”

“But…” I protest, showcasing my tied hands, hoping for some reprieve.

“The ropes stay,” he answers simply.

I groan. “I hate you.”

“That’s fine,” he says, stepping over the chain with one leg and pulling it behind him with a hand. “As long as you trust me.”

I glare at him as he pops the leash again, pulling my neck toward him.

“You do, right?” he asks softly, dropping his cock with his hand and gently stroking my cheek. “Trust me?”

I swallow, looking up at him. That’s become a simple question for me to answer after the way he revealed everything to me. The hardships of his tortured past, the truth behind the men who’ve tried to bring me down.

I accept this man for who he is.

Who they forced him to become.

“With everything I am,” I answer confidently.