Page 6 of Kings Fear No One
It was a joke. Something dumb we laughed about before getting shitfaced and going home with a different club girl.
I was always in control. I was always in the driver’s seat.
Not once did it ever occur to me that it could be different. That there’d come a time I didn’t get any say.
Mandy bleats like a fucking goat when she comes. She rifles her fingers through my unkempt hair, then sags against the cushions of her recliner. Her eyelids grow heavy and her eyes hazy.
“You are the best, boy,” she purrs, petting me like a dog. With affection that makes my skin crawl. “You like the taste of me, don’t you?”
My glare would give me away to a sane person. Somebody not delusional.
Turns out, Mandy and the saints like her are as delusional as the new believers who still have hope—the difference is that the believers tell themselves help is on the way.
Mandy tells herself I’m enjoying this; that she doesn’t repulse me on every fucking level.
I give the slightest nod in answer. Because if I didn’t, I’d be on the receiving end of a whip. She keeps hers on her end table, within reach. Brody didn’t say it, but he’s out in the hall. It wouldn’t end in my favor even if I did defy her.
It never has in the past.
She strokes my hair again. “Good boy. Have another taste.”
Plugging her pussy with two of her fingers, she gathers some of her juices from her orgasm and then slips them past my lips. Her eyes glint as she watches me. She’s waiting for me to play along.
I suck on her fingers and will myself to ignore the tart taste of her.
The only pussy I’ve ever almost retched at tasting.
When she’s satisfied with my performance, she sits up straighter and calls for Brody.
I’m collected and escorted back toward the rear exit of the house. Brody’s decided he needs to flex even more of his authority by gripping my arm. The urge to crack my elbow into his face and flip him on his ass rises up inside me.
The ceremony room stops me. I catch a glimpse of the inside where saints and believers are setting up for another ceremony, and my stomach roils.
“That for tonight?”
Brody jerks me along faster. “What do you think? She’s arriving. You know what you have to do.”
I suspected.
It’s different hearing it confirmed. Knowing I’m about to be forced to participate in more fucked up depravity I never wanted…
The ceremony begins at sundown. The saints are already seated in the first few pews when the believers are shoved and prodded into the room by the likes of Brody and a few other designated henchmen. None of us fight them. They’re well-fed and armed. We’re malnourished and barely functioning.
I drop into a seat toward the back, right next to the skeletal woman from my cabin. She hasn’t stopped sniveling since this morning, wiggling her toes every so often; apparently she still can’t feel them.
Xavier, one of the other armed guards, mutters something in Brody’s ear, then points in my direction. Brody nods and comes over to collect me.
“Get up,” he says. “We need you up front. You’ll be performing your marital duty.”
I stand up only after he jams the barrel of his assault rifle into my stomach. I’ve barely squeezed into the only open space up front when the double doors fly open.
The Leader strides through in his billowing white robe. His sheets of hair sway around his face like white-blond curtains. A few saints follow, their own like-new robes fluttering. The two in the back enter clutching a squirming, shrieking woman.
The new believer.
My stomach muscles clench. I track every movement of hers down the aisle toward the altar up front.
She’s a mess. Clothes torn and streaked with dirt. Her hair’s a knotted cloud, like a fist’s been gripped up in it and disheveled whatever style it had been in. She’s got a bruise on her cheek, a plum shade against her brown complexion. Tears brim in her wide, expressive eyes that match the panicked expression etched onto her face.
