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It was blinding raw agony, and I dug my hands into the ground so I could take it without screaming.

Green light flared all around us as the storm raged.

I tried to force my breathing to slow down, relax my asshole so I could take him easier, but it was very difficult to with Rhyder’s grunts of frustration, his balls slapping against my ass as he rutted back and forth in me.

The rain pounded down on my back, soaking me through, and I clutched the raised ground, willing my asshole to stop clenching so tightly as the blood ran down my legs.

Suddenly I heard a low noise, my ears picking up on something different.

“Tem-perance”

Was the drug finally wearing off?

My asshole was on fucking fire, and suddenly I felt rough fingers between my legs, my brother even in his bloodwrath snaking a hand up to rub my soaked, bloody clit.

I could have sobbed with relief and joy, his fingers stiff but sure, rubbing my slippery clit, then delving into my cunt.

It felt so dirty to have his fingers this deep inside me even as I pumped blood around him.

The pain from how roughly he was taking my asshole battled with the insistent liquid pleasure of his fingers, and I did come for him, came for him even as he was half-mad, drugged to be a murderer and nothing more, and I didn’t care whose blood he had on his hands, only that they were on me.

My thighs trembled uncontrollably as I finally let myself cry out in the intense aching raw release, shuddering pleasure and pain mixed together, and I must have blacked out, because the next thing I knew was Rhyder’s voice, his regular normal voice, rough with concern, saying, “Temperance! Temperance! Are you all right?”

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” I said, my eyes feeling crusted shut by my tears, waking up groggily, the dark trees spinning around me.

The storm has passed

My brother drew me further into the moonlight and now his fingers roamed over me, low noises of pain wrenched from his throat as he saw the wet splashes of blood on his fingers and smeared all over me.

“No. . .no,” he cried, his voice raw with pain. “Did I do this?”

Rhyder sucked in his breath with a sharp inhale as wiping the blood away only revealed dark marks and bruises on my throat.

“No, no!” he groaned again, his voice almost frantic now. “Icouldn’thave done this. Oh, Temperance, I couldn’t have! Not to you!”

His eyes were dark and shadowed with pain, but free of the terrible red of the bloodwrath.

“Rhyder! Rhyder! You didn’t!” I cried in alarm as he tore his hair, sinking to the ground with his head between my knees. “You barely scratched my neck. I bruise easily, brother. You know that. I am not hurt.”

His hands ran over my face again.

“It was the drug,” I said. “The bloodwrath drug. But when I talked to you, you stopped. You fought it, Rhyder. You didn’t hurt me.”

He pulled me into his lap, his eyes and fingers still anxiously tracing my face.

“Why did you come out, sister?” he groaned. “What if it hadn’t worked? What if the drug had taken me?”

I was still shivering uncontrollably but my body gradually began to warm with the contact with his.

“You would never have killed me, Rhyder,” I said confidently. “And I didn’t want to. But Abel came and told me to go pick some mountain roots and sassafras, that it was needed for medicinal salves.”

Rhyder’s face darkened, looking white with rage, the skin stretched like death across his handsome face, terrible in the moonlight.

“Come, angel,” he said. “You need a warm shower and warm clothes.”

I tried not to limp over as he moved to the hill and unfurled the rope, but it was hard not to.

“Climb on,” he said, and I couldn’t help flinching as I spread my legs to climb on his back.