Feature Writer: LoveMenLoveSex
Feature Title: CORRUPTION 1
Published: 14.08.2014
Story Codes: Erotic Horror
Synopsis: The corruption of innocence is the key to Hell
Corruption 1
1686. England.
The crypt of the ruined church was cold, and Eloise felt her nipples harden and ache as she stepped to one side of the stone altar, releasing the clasp of her cloak, and casting it aside. Two of the acolytes approached her; Thomas, a farm-hand from one of the estates, she knew, and Lisette, the scullery maid from the manor’s kitchens. They wore simple, open-fronted robes, and were naked underneath, and she felt a tingling heat trickle deep within her as she lifted and spread her arms, in anticipation of the touch of their hands. The steady torch-light from the flaming branches held in brackets on the walls lit her flesh to gold as they stood before her, the tubs of ointment in their hands. She turned to face the altar.
Standing opposite her, on the other side of the stone table, was Darius, also naked and standing cruciform, his eyes closed. Neither were supposed to look at the other until the ceremony was completed, a bastardisation of the wedding rituals, she supposed, like so many other of the rituals the coven had claimed as traditional. It was nonsense, she thought, but useful nonsense to some.
He was a tall man, broad across the shoulders and deep through the chest, not as hirsute as the previous Hallowed Priest had been, although she was relieved by that, the sheer amount of body hair that had covered that man had been off-putting in some of the rituals. The thick cock that hung between Darius’ legs was impressive when it was erect, and she felt another small shiver of anticipation slip along her nerve endings as the acolytes dipped their hands into the tubs and took their places to either side of her.
The ointment had been warmed and she allowed her lids to close as the hands of the young man and woman spread it thickly over her skin, feeling the tingling of the ingredients against the nerves almost immediately, almost but not quite as sensually powerful as the feel of their fingers, smoothing over her skin, caressing and exciting her.
It was not the flying ointment, which she’d used several times with heart-stopping success, this was a special blend of many of the same herbs, hemlock and wolfsbane, foxglove and belladonna and of course, the poppy, to lift her mind free and enhance the sensations in her body. Tonight she would open the way and give herself over to the Dark Lord, for all the power he could bestow on her.
Four hands rubbed the ointment over her skin, sliding intimately around her breasts, lifting and squeezing them, moving down the gentle curve of her stomach and between the plump cheeks of her round bottom. She inhaled sharply as the fingers spread the slowly-growing fire down her thighs, covering every inch of her sensitive flesh, and began their ascent, feeling the heated exhales on her calves as the acolytes knelt and rubbed it in and over her. She felt a light grip on her ankles and lifted her feet, widening the gap between her legs as the hands moved up, her head tipping back when they reached the bare, shaved mound of her sex, and slipped between the folds of skin, inflaming her as they probed deeper. Fingers slid into her cleft, the ointment pushed far into her, and a burst of heat filled her pelvis, making her shudder. Smaller, slimmer fingers slid up from behind, spreading her bottom and she trembled as they forced their way into her anus, igniting another conflagration there.
She was burning, burning inside and that was as it should be, she thought, pain for power, all power had to be paid for and she would burn gladly for hers.
Opening her eyes slightly, she saw Darius’ body was glistening with the ointment, his cock fully erect and redly throbbing in front of his stomach as the young man behind him spread his buttocks and appeared to ensuring that the ointment was fully inserted, while the young woman in front of him slid her hand up and down his swollen cock and around his sac. His head was tipped back a little, his chest rising and falling quickly, the beat of his pulse visible in the hollow of his throat. It didn’t take much to arouse the man, she knew, and he reveled in the touch of both sexes.
“Tempus est!” the old woman cried out and Eloise turned, her eyes still slitted as the great circle was lit on the stone floor below the altar’s dais.
Around it, at each junction of the smaller circles it contained, a member of the coven stood, their faces and bodies hidden within voluminous black cloaks, their heads bowed. The spell-casting tonight required only the energy of two, and the blood of one, and in the shadows of the crypt’s doorway, she could see two of the initiates, holding an unconscious form between them, all three cloaked and almost invisible in the darkness.
“Lucis eductor Domine inferis tibi sacrifícium offérimus sit tibi,” Darius’ light tenor pierced the silence of the room. “Urimur, et offer pro Domino sanguinem innocentem tenebrarum.”
The torches shuddered together as an unseen breath filled the room, and Eloise felt a deep tremor fill her as she watched the initiates bringing the girl into the room. As they lay her in the circle, she walked to the altar, lifting herself onto its cold, flat surface. Darius turned toward her and walked around the table, stopping at the end, between her legs.
The timing was crucial, she knew. Agnes would have only seconds to spill the blood in the circle when the energy between them peaked. She hoped the old woman knew what an orgasm looked like.
She opened her eyes widely as his hands touched her breasts, squeezing them hard, pinching her nipples between his fingers. Every touch burned more deeply, plucking at her and sending fibrillating tremors through her muscles. The ointment was powerful and she felt a small flash of fear of what it would feel like inside of her, coated thickly as it was along the length of his cock.
He pushed her legs apart, and thrust his fingers into her, and she moaned at the flush of heat that filled her, his thumb flicking at her while the fingers of the other hand pushed deeper and deeper. She was wet, she knew it, but she couldn’t feel it, could only feel how easily he invaded her, how much more she needed.
Around the walls, the torch flames were steady again. Agnes knelt beside the naked young woman lying in the circle, and the adepts began to chant, very softly at first, just a murmur bouncing from the hard stone walls, then more strongly, echo calling echo from the walls and ceiling and floor, from the tunnel and stair to one side. Along the walls, the acolytes and initiates watched in silence, faces hidden within the cowls of their robes.
Darius thrust his cock into the woman lying on the table before him, reveling in feeling of power that suffused him as he filled her tight cunt and a burning fire lit him up from anus to ribs in a curving, coruscating inferno with every sharp, deep penetration into her. He didn’t think the Devil himself would rise and take him with the ritual, and the thought didn’t bother him. He was fucking the Lady Eloise, Duchess of the manor and he couldn’t keep his hands off her big, firm breasts, pulling and pinching at her nipples, her ladyship writhing under him like a cat in heat. The ointment magnified every single sensation and he could feel her muscles, clenching around his cock, sucking and pulling at him until he was driving into her hard, her body shaking with the impact.
Around the circle below them, the chanting was reaching a peak, an emotional furor that was making him throb in time with it, his body aching and glowing with the building crescendo in his groin. He looked down at Eloise’s gleaming face, seeing her mouth open and panting, her hands opening and closing on the edges of the stone table and he smiled, moving his hands to her hips and holding her still as he pumped faster. He was going to come in seconds, he thought, his head tipping back as his balls filled and strained against the thin skin holding his seed.
Eloise arched up, her fingers and toes curling up tightly as the first vibrations shook through her. Her eyes flew open, staring at the man between her legs. Darius’ head was thrown back, the cords of his neck standing out like wire. She cried out, hips bucking furiously against him, wave after wave of white-hot pleasure incinerating her from the inside as he seemed to grow bigger, stretching her out even more. He shouted, his thrusts reduced to fast, sharp jabs, and in the circle Agnes raised the long athame, the firelight flashing from the silver blade as it dropped, plunging into the abdomen of the unconscious woman, dragging it from one side of her torso to the other, blood spilling out and filling the channels cut into the stone floor, racing along them from junction to junction, the candles and bowls of offerings burning at those points extinguished as the rivulets of red touched them.
With that first stab, Darius felt a massive shaft of pain arc through him, from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet, his cock spurting repeatedly, driving hard into Eloise even as his balls emptied. The pain grew, a mesh of agony along the nerve endings in his body as the circle on the crypt’s floor was redrawn in the blood flowing from the dying girl. His heart stuttered in his chest, fighting the pulsing beat that flowed in between his legs and he stared disbelievingly as his skin and muscle, tendon and bone began to twist, and melt, and change.
Lying on the table, Eloise screamed, the cock inside her writhing and twisting against the walls of her body, growing and burning as she was stretched wider and wider. Darius’ face was twisted up in pain, popping and crackling noises coming from him as he lifted his arms and they seem to lengthen, thicken, muscle swelling under the skin, his chest expanding. He looked down at her for a moment and she saw his blue eyes had turned black, the irises so dark that she couldn’t see a pupil at all.
He reached out and gripped her shoulders, lifting her up, impaling her on his iron-hard member. She screamed again as it was forced deeper into her with her own weight, his hips jerking and the burning sensation rippling outwards from her pelvis through her entire body.
“Belial! Et venit!” shrieked Agnes from the circle and the man that had been Darius, farm manager of the Buchannon estates and well-known womanizer, turned slowly to face the room, the limp and twitching body of the woman held against him.
“Yes, I have come,” the voice that issued from the laborer’s throat was deep and guttural, neither timbre nor syntax remaining. “This is wrong. Wrong man. Bring me the priest.”
The hooded figures surrounding the circle stared at the transforming man without moving and his lips drew back from his teeth suddenly, a forked tongue flicking out from between blackened teeth.
“Bring me the priest!” he roared, his hand outstretched toward them. Four of the adepts were flung back against the walls, the sharp cracks as they hit and the boneless way they fell to lie unmoving on the floor leaving none in any doubt of the power of the demon they’d raised.
“NOW!”
Eloise barely registered the scuffle of feet over the stone as the coven fled through the crypt’s doorway. The cock inside her was monstrous, and rough, scraping against her flesh and ripping apart the muscles. She couldn’t breathe from the pain, hardly noticing as she was lowered back to the table, unable to feel the spilling of her blood over her thighs and the table’s surface through the insistent burning of the ointment covering her.
“In pain, yes,” the demon said, leaning over her. “My servant in pain.”
He pulled out and thrust sharply into her, and her eyes rolled back into her skull as she was ripped apart.
xxxxx
All Hallows Convent
The convent stood, as it had for six hundred years, on a knobbled mount, two miles from the village, its weathered stone walls and towers wreathed in vegetation, only the bell tower visible from the valley floor.
In the stone-walled gardens, the women who had vowed their lives to God worked quietly, pruning and weeding and collecting the last of the bountiful harvest from the full beds. In a less than two weeks, the season would turn and the beds would be cleared, turned over and fertilized and rested for the winter, new beds for the winter vegetables prepared and sown.
Patience rocked back on her heels, wiping the perspiration from her brow. Within the walls, the sun was trapped and it was warm and still, like the last gentle breath of summer against her skin. In the basket on the ground beside her, cuttings of the herbs that could heal, provide comfort and ease, lay in bunches. Sister Amelia would transform them in the still room into decoctions and tonics, powders and lotions, for the convent’s apothecary and to take to the village healer.
“Good morrow, Patience.” The warm baritone voice was behind her, and she twisted around, looking up at the priest who stood there. Father Martin was the abbot of the convent and he bent now, crouching beside as he looked over the harvested herbs in the basket.
“Sister Amelia tells me you have a gift with the herbs,” he continued, lifting his gaze to hers. “She also says that you have been most diligent in your studies.”
“Yes, Father,” Patience said, a little uncertainly. The priest was a kind man. His eyes, a deep, periwinkle blue, were always considerate and thoughtful, sometimes merry with laughter, although she’d never heard him laugh out loud. He was a large man, and in the plain black cassock or robes, sometimes intimidating. As a novice, she spent most of her time in study or meditation and prayer and she was still a little nervous of the convent’s rules and conventions, wondering if this life was truly for her.
“I am always pleased to see someone using their mind,” the priest said, getting to his feet and holding out his hand to help her up. “Our minds are the only things that differentiate us from the beasts of the woodland and fields, and that give us our ability to commune with God, child.”
Ducking her head, Patience picked up her basket, unsure of what to say to that. “I enjoy the study, Father,” she ventured, with a swift upward glance at him.
“Do you think this life is for you?”
“I -” she hesitated, turning with him to walk along the path. “I love the peace here,” she said. “I love the prayers and the chance to learn more.”
He smiled down at her. “That is not quite an answer to my question.”
She caught her lip between her teeth. He was right. It wasn’t an answer. She didn’t know the answer to that question yet.
“It takes time to be sure of a commitment like this, child,” Father Martin said when she didn’t respond. “Time and a feeling, inside of your heart. No one would insist you live here if that feeling and your commitment is not fully given.”
He meant to be reassuring, she knew, but in some way it wasn’t. Life outside of the convent was a marriage she didn’t want and drudgery, tied to bearing child after child, to heartache and the loss of what she felt keenly was herself, to becoming her mother.
At the lych gate, Father Martin stopped and she looked up at him as he waited.
“There is real good and real evil in this world,” he said quietly. “Each of us is obligated to choose what we do with our lives, to live them most closely to what we feel God has prepared us for. Do you understand?”
She shook her head.
“You will,” he said, patting her shoulder gently. “It will become clear to you what path you will take.”
“Yes, Father.”
He turned away and walked down the path toward the main building, and Patience sighed with relief, taking the smaller, unpaved path toward the rear of the building. Choices were not always at the discretion of the chooser, she thought. It might be different for a man, who could choose to live his life in any way he thought fit. But it was not the same thing for a woman.
Here, she might not have the things she could barely admit to, those secret desires of her heart, but she would have tranquillity and a life not tied to a single man or place. Although, she considered, lifting the basket higher on her arm, perhaps she was mistaken about that. What was becoming a nun except to tie her to God and to His holy houses?
xxxxx
In the warm, ruddy light of the fire and the candles that dripped their wax over the tables and shelves, Gage leaned back on the settle, shifting his position against the roughly plastered wall behind him and looking around the crowded, lively inn.
“Doesn’t look so bad,” he remarked to the man seated on the other side of the heavy, wooden table, picking up the ceramic jug of ale.
His companion, Webster, looked up from the sheaves of papers spread out over the table in front of him, glancing first at the relaxed sprawl of the tall, powerfully-built man with whom he’d worked for the past four years, then around the low-ceilinged, smoky room. It never failed to amaze him that Gage could fit into any environment, as comfortable and lazily dangerous as one of the big cats from the East, the indolent air the man cultivated masking reflexes as fast and as deadly as those same big cats, and skills and knowledge and intelligence he seemed to enjoy hiding behind a facade of simple soldier. The inn, he noted, watching one of the women who served the clientele lean close to a customer, her buxom assets spilling from her inadequate clothing, the man she served reaching out to pinch and fondle her brazenly, could easily be described as a den of iniquity and he could not bring himself to feel that same comfort in it.
“Our orders were clear,” he said, shifting along the bench uneasily as another one of the inn’s wenches brought a tray of steaming bowls and fragrantly freshly baked loaf and set it on their table, leaning close enough to him for her pale, gold hair to brush against his cheek.
“Your meal, sirs,” she said, pink-cheeked with the warmth of the room.
Gage looked at the discomfort on Webster’s face with amusement. The man, who topped his own height by another two or three inches, was somehow oblivious to the effect he had on the fair sex. Broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped, a slightly lighter build but with a long, thick fall of chestnut hair, soulful hazel eyes and a dimpled chin, Webster’s pious nature couldn’t take advantage of those magnets, more often turning red and excusing himself when their work took them into such a place.
As the girl came around the end of the table to set his food in front of him, he reached out and pulled her onto his lap, wryly aware that a part of his enjoyment of her soft curves was the expression on his companion’s face. He buried his face between her breasts, his hand sliding up her thigh under her skirts, and felt the particular jolt in his groin as she moaned, his fingers finding her moist heat and slipping into her.
“I’m working right now,” she said breathlessly, wriggling and spreading her legs for him to push into her deeper.
He lifted his head, and looked into her face, round and pretty with big brown eyes that looked dazedly at him, nodding. “Maybe later?”
“Oh, yes,” she giggled. “You’ve taken a room, then?”
“Oh, yes,” he mimicked her, pulling his hand out as she wriggled off him and licking his fingers. She tasted of salt and sweetness and musk, and he was hard with the thought of tasting the rest of her.
He slapped her bottom lightly as she turned away, eliciting a small jump and another giggle and turned back to the table, pulling off a hunk of the loaf and dipping it into the thick stew.
“Is it essential that you bed every woman in every town we visit?” Webster asked, his nose wrinkling up.
“No,” Gage told him, tucking his food into one cheek. “Not every one. I leave a few for you, but you seem to enjoy your self-inflicted torture.”
“Hardly torture not to be led around by my manhood.”
“Torture not to exercise it at all,” the dark-haired man said, lifting one eyebrow. “When was the last time you -?”
“None of your business,” Webster told him sharply. “Can we talk about this case?”
Gage shrugged, loading another hunk of bread with the flavorsome stew and sauce.
A shadow fell across the table and the men looked up at a barrel-chested man, shorter than either of them but much broader, beefy arms extending as he leaned on the end of the table.
“And what brings the wolves of the Church to my door?”
Gage’s disbelieving snort went the wrong way and he coughed, the man leaning forward and slapping him hard on the back.
“Donato, what are you doing here?” Webster asked, leaning back as his partner sent a spray of half-masticated food over the floor with the throat-clearing blow.
“Retired here,” Donato said, dropping to the bench beside him and glancing around the room. “But it’s Ryan, here, now.”
“Ryan!?” Gage recovered his air and washed the rest of the mess down with a mouthful of ale. “You retired … here?”
“Everything I ever wanted, right here,” Donato said, gesturing discreetly around the room.
Following his gaze, Gage couldn’t disagree. “Food’s good,” he said. “And you still have an eye for the ladies, I see.”
Donato looked around as Gage stared at the serving girl standing by the next table. “Oh, no, take your pretty eyes off that one, Gage,” the innkeeper said immediately, his voice dropping to an irritable growl.
“What’s wrong with her?” Gage wanted to know, his gaze moving appreciatively from head to foot. A little taller than the others, the woman was slender, her curves not as pronounced, but still enticingly suggested against the close-fitting linen blouse and long skirt. Long red hair, vivid and curly, fell down her back, her skin creamy pale, flushed a little with the warmth of the room. Not his usual type, he admitted to himself, but well worth the look. Her face was heart-shaped, a wide forehead, large eyes and wide, plump mouth. He stared at her lips as she smiled at the man she was serving, a brief and heating image of those lips wrapped around him filling his head like summer lightning, there and gone.
“That,” Donato said, shifting his bulk to block the man’s view. “Is my daughter.”
“Oh.”
“Aye.”
“What do you know about the killings … Ryan?” Webster asked tersely, glancing at the red-haired woman and back to her father. “We’ve been sent to investigate the possible opening of a gate.”
Donato leaned forward, shaking his head. “It’s a bad business. The local lord’s wife ripped to pieces, along with half her retainers. The signs are here, I sent the report to the Monseigneur myself.”
“What signs?” Gage asked, his attention sharpening on the older man.
“Storms and earth movements, blight and animal deaths,” Donato said. “Six people have gone missing, from both the village and the farms in between us and the town. No remains have been found.”
“Have you found the gate?” Webster pushed his plate aside impatiently.
“No,” Donato said abruptly, shaking his head. “Not looking for it either,” he added, looking from one demon hunter to the other. Wolves of the Church, he’d called them, and they were, sniffing out evil and hunting and tracking it and devouring it. He should know, he’d been one himself, years gone by. “I sent the report. I’m retired. I got a family. It’s your problem now.”
“Come on, you must have heard more than that,” Gage said, his wide, mobile mouth curling up at one corner.
“I’m not in it,” the innkeeper told him harshly. He looked down at the table top, aware that he might not be active, but that his life wasn’t the easiest to retire from. “There’re whispers, since her ladyship was killed. Whispers about something not right at the convent.”
“What convent?”
“All Hallows,” Donato said, turning his head to look in the direction of the convent, gesturing vaguely to the east. “Been there six hundred years, same order. Father Martin is very well-thought-of and they help here, all the time, with the sick. Until lately.”
“What are the rumors?”
Donato looked away uncomfortably. “Ah, you know rumors, Gage, lights and strange sounds coming from the buildings. One of the village ladies was up there, said their gardens have died.” He looked at them. “All of them.”
“We can look tonight -”
“We can look in the morning,” Gage cut him off firmly, his eyes on the blonde woman by the long counter. “We’ll see more,” he added reasonably, glancing back at his partner.
Webster’s mouth thinned out but he didn’t respond, turning his attention back to his food.
“Any possessions?”
“None that I’ve seen,” Donato said, with a shrug. “There are a few people in the village who swear black and blue that the Lady Eloise was a witch, and leading a coven, but I could never verify it, and you know what jealousy’s like in the smaller towns.”
The hunter nodded. The burnings and torture of hundreds, possibly thousands of innocents had been driven by small-town petty hatreds and jealousies. What recourse did anyone have against an accusation that could be neither proven nor disproven?
“You have a messenger? Someone you trust?” he asked the burly man beside him.
“Aye, my son,” Donato said. “You need to get a message to Rome, he’ll take it.”
“Angeline’ll take you to your rooms, they’re at the back and there’s a separate stair down to the yard,” Donato said, getting to his feet. “These are good people, for the most part, Gage. Whatever’s going on, it needs to be stopped.”
“At your service,” Gage said with a grin. “Which one’s Angeline?”
Donato smiled humorlessly at him. “The one you felt up when she served you,” he said, his tone dry. “Seems to have taken a liking to you for some reason.”
“It happens,” Gage said modestly, ignoring Webster’s deep exhale from the other side of the table.
“You keep your eyes, an’ everything else, off my daughter, Gage, or I’ll have your guts for garters,” Donato said, waving a warning finger at him. “Not negotiable.”
“Not my type,” Gage assured him.
The innkeeper turned away and crossed the room, stopping to speak to the red-haired. Gage watched with interest as she glanced across at him, turning back to her father and shaking her head.
“You heard him, Gage,” Webster said, watching his partner’s expression. “You would risk the one ally we have here for the sake of a night’s pleasure?”
Gage looked at him. “Depends on the night,” he remarked. “Relax, Web, like I said, she’s not my type.”
“You have no ‘type’,” Webster told him with a sniff. “No morals or principles or discernment of any kind when it comes to women.”
Closing his eyes, the hunter pretended to consider that. He looked across the table. “You know, I think you’re right.”
xxxxx
The candles sputtered, their flames leaping over the rough plaster walls as the wick was slowly drowned in liquid wax. Gage looked down, licking his lips as he savoured the taste in his mouth. The unsteady light lit the skin of the woman under him to a pale gold, the shadows to tints of umber and mauve, and he ducked his head again, spreading her legs as he licked the creases and folds of her sex, his tongue finding and flicking the hard protuberance at the top of them. He held it for a moment with his teeth, biting down very gently and she moaned and lifted her hips up to him, her hands fisting in the coarse linen bedclothes as he pushed his fingers inside, curling them up.
God, he loved women, he thought, only a little incoherently as his tongue lashed her nub and his fingertips found the corresponding roughened patch of skin that amplified her pleasure, deep inside of her. Her helpless moans made his cock strain and twitch, slick already over the head and ready for the moist, soft heat that clenched and sucked on his fingers. He loved their scents, so different woman to woman, yet all with that intoxicating underlying hint of musk when they were aroused and begging him to take them. Soft flesh and sweet tastes, smooth, silky skin and hair and even the roughest farm-maid moved with a grace that fascinated him, in the turn of a wrist, or the long curve of a neck, head tipped back, lips parted and eyes half-closed in mindless pleasure.
He watched their faces, watched their bodies, looking for the tells, for the minute shivers and flutters that told him where to touch and how and with what pressure and for how long. When his cock slid into their delicious infernos of heat and pressure and softly pulsing damp, he saw their eyes fill with emotion, with love and gratitude and acceptance and every time he saw it, he felt himself healed, a little more.
It was no different with the woman under him, he saw. Her legs spread wide and curled around his back, her hips jerked up to him, nails driving into his shoulders as he thrust in and out of her, his weight supported on his hands, the big muscles of shoulder and chest, of back and neck hard and bunched, gleaming with sweat in the fluxing light of the dying candles.
“Harder,” she moaned, and he sucked in a deeper breath, feeling his control like a fine wire, winding tighter and tighter.
“Faster,” she pleaded, and he groaned, a deep rumble in his chest as he felt his balls swell and draw up, the muscles along the back of his thighs shuddering with the strain.
“Oh! Yes! Oooh, yesssssss,” she mewled, her eyes rolling back and every muscle in her body convulsing and throbbing and pulsing around him, sucking him deeper. He looked down at her face, at the slackness of expression, her mouth open and panting as she was lost in the pleasure he’d given, and the fine wire snapped, the line crossed, the building vortex that spun and throbbed through his groin and up his stone-hard length released and out of control.
xxxxx
All Hallows Convent
“Father Martin will see you now, Patience,” Clementine said, pushing the door open and standing aside for the novice to enter.
Patience walked through the doorway nervously, wondering what she’d done to occasion a conversation with the priest. She started as the door shut loudly behind her, her hands gripping each other in the folds of her habit.
“Patience,” Father Martin said, turning from the window to face her.
With the light behind him, she couldn’t see his face clearly, nor make out his features.
“Father,” she acknowledged, bowing her head.
“You have been with us for almost a year now,” he said, taking a step closer to her. “What think you of this life?”
She looked up, a little confused. They had talked a little of this in the garden, not more than a few weeks ago.
“I am enjoying the studies, Father,” she said, wondering if he’d forgotten that conversation. He had seemed a little different, in the last couple of weeks, but she couldn’t be sure. She didn’t spend enough near the priest to have noticed a significant difference.
“I’m glad to hear it,” Father Martin said, his eyes darkening.
She was the one, he thought. The one that would break the chains of the gate completely. Innocent in every way, untouched.
“Sister Felice tells me you are ready for the next stage of your education,” he said, moving around the big, polished desk to lean against its edge. “Take off your clothing, my dear.”
“What?”
“Are you hard of hearing? Or do you choose to deliberate misunderstand me?”
“I’m sorry, Father,” she said, dropping her gaze to the floor.
“Take off your clothing,” he repeated, slowly and clearly. “I will be sure that you are ready for a union with our Lord.”
“Father, I cannot – this is not right -” Patience stammered, taking a step back toward the door uneasily.
“TAKE OFF YOUR CLOTHES! NOW!” the priest roared at her, straightening from the desk and striding toward her. “OR I’LL TAKE IT OFF AND YOU WILL BE PARADED THROUGH THE VILLAGE IN YOUR SKIN!”
Patience cowered in front of him, her fingers plucking uselessly at the coarse grey wool of her habit as she stared at his face.
It was twisted in rage, his eyes no longer a warm, periwinkle blue, but black, his hands closed in fists and raised.
She fumbled with the soft cloth belt that held the habit around her waist, her heart thudding against her ribs, her breath whistling in her throat with fear. The man standing in front of her was not Father Martin. The thought would not let her go.
The belt gave way and she lifted the habit over her head, letting it fall to the floor. The sunlight through the thick glass of the room’s windows shone over the thin, white shift as she tugged at the lacings, her skin flushing with color when the garment fell beside the habit.
“Better,” Father Martin said, his voice quiet.
She could feel his eyes moving over her, raking her skin. Lifting her arms, she covered her bare breasts and the triangle of fine, soft curls at the apex of her thighs.
“No, no,” Father Martin said, reaching out and pulling her arms away from her body. “You will hide nothing from the sight of our Lord. You will do exactly as you are told. You will become His bride.”
THE END OF CHAPTER ONE