Page 61 of The Devil's Mercy

Maybe not though.

There was a good chance he’d thrown up earlier, and not because of the bloodshed, but because of how exhausted he was from taking Titus’s cock.

If this were him three months ago, he’d say it was because Aodhan stepped on someone's entrails, and Cal had seen gutsexplode out the torn end. But now lying, even to himself, to make himself feel better, was too cumbersome a task.

He thought they might have gone somewhere after that, but when he heard them calling his name next, he was confused to see they were just in another part of the warehouse.

“Open your eyes, baby,” Titus urged gently. “Aodhan has a gift for you.”

Cal was almost one hundred percent certain he did not want it, but he fought against exhaustion and made himself blink his eyes open anyway.

Only for confusion to grow.

At first, he didn’t know what he was looking at. It took far too long for his brain to process what he was seeing. The room they were standing in must have been a storage room in the back. It was small. There was nothing in there but some cobwebs in the corners of the ceiling and a single square table that was slightly off kilter.

That, and the severed head sitting on the table’s center.

With some poor bastards torn dick shoved in the head’s mouth.

Oh. There was also a pile of parts on the other side of the room.

“She brought her lover with her,” Aodhan began, though he sounded far away. “Don’t worry, it wasn’t one of the orphans. I checked. She doesn’t sleep with them anymore, not since you were arrested.”

Calix brushed Titus’s hands off his shoulders but didn’t speak or make any other moves to distance himself from the towering presence at his back.

“She does still beat them though. Well,” Aodhan snickered, “she did. She won’t be doing that now either.” He clapped, and when Calix turned his head toward the sound, he saw Aodhan had made it with hands that didn’t belong to him.

The doctor was holding two perfectly severed limbs, cut at the forearm. Once he noticed Cal was watching, he grinned and tossed them to the left, into a pile of other parts that had been cut and dissected and left in a careless heap.

“I can’t take credit for the dick though,” Aodhan told him. “She’d already ripped that off the guy by the time I arrived, but I thought it made a good garnish, don’t you agree?”

“You’re enjoying this too much,” Titus drawled, though there was humor in his voice.

“Not really,” he disagreed. “I didn’t get to hurt her nearly as much as I wanted. Not nearly as much as she deserved for what she did to Calix.”

“How long have you known?” Cal sounded different to his own ears, numb.

“Since the beginning,” Titus said.

“The beginning eight years ago,” he swallowed the lump in his throat, “or the beginning four months ago?”

“I found out after the trial. I looked into you after you disappeared.”

“Oh.” So always. He’d always known exactly what Calix had gone through as a teen.

“She used to beat you, touch you until you were hard, then call you disgusting while she forced your dick inside her cunt,” Aodhan growled. “She died after an hour and thirty-seven minutes. I should have made it longer. I lost control when she realized why I was doing it, and she started to make excuses.”

“She waited until I was eighteen,” Calix said. “The sex. She waited until I was legal.”

“Yeah,” Aodhan sneered, “excuses just like that.”

“I don’t like being forcibly fucked because of her,” Cal stated, voice shaking slightly. “That isn’t the reason. I’m messed up but…Not like that. I hated what she did to me. Every time shedid it, I felt like dying. She never made me like it, even if she could manipulate my body and make me—”

“Shh.” Titus wrapped his arms around his chest and pulled him tightly against himself. “You don’t have to explain. We already know. We aren’t judging you.”

“I can get off without the pain,” he rushed to continue anyway. “I don’t need to be held down and made to take it. I was interested in that sort of sex before she ever started touching me. Hell. The only reason she even started was because I got hard after she’d hit me and—”

“Whoa.” Aodhan stepped closer, momentarily blocking his view of the severed head. “We aren’t going to do that, Be’urn. We aren’t going to stand here and let you lie about something this serious.”

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