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p; But there was too much. She was numb.

Levi directed her to turn. To put her back to his counterpart in the water. The guards focused on nothing overhead while Raymond gathered up her arms and folded them at the small of her back. He stretched something synthetic against her paired forearms and began to wrap it; some weird, thick ribbon, around and around. Her pulse broke loose and bolted.

She lurched, feet kicking out from under her on the wet floor, spine thrusting back against Raymond as if she’d knock him off balance. He staggered back a step, but Levi was there, catching her wild legs, shushing her like a child who needed a splinter out.

Raymond had bound her arms.

Oh god, oh god. What? What is this?

“Lean back,” he said, hauling her by the shoulders with cupped palms until her weight was on his chest.

He’d placed a roll of something black on the floor, and Levi took it in hand. The second priest arranged her limbs despite her attempts at flailing. Jammed hard fingertips behind her left knee to make it bend when she tried to hold it straight. He had her calf meeting the back of her thigh, and began passing the strip of binding in snug circles to keep her ankle just below her ass.

Buckeye straddled a knife edge of hysteria.

He moved to the right leg and, drunk on some unfortunate cocktail of shock and fear, she did nothing to fight him this time.

Raymond’s voice was just above her ear, so low she might not have heard it but for the warmth of his breath.

“You were my first,” he said.

Her eyes opened wide at this. Levi went about his work, but it was Raymond’s fingers squeezing her waist, the rasp of his shirt at her back. A flutter came between her thighs.

No. No, Buckeye.

Warmth in her cheeks.

His first?

And here she was, more restrained by the minute. She could be his second, too. And this third. His fourth. What, really, was there she could do about it?

Fuck. Fuck!

“Brother.”

Mather’s voice cut through the fog, and Raymond stopped his nuzzling at the rebuke. Nothing slipped by the head priest. Would the man at her back do additional penance now? Was he one who grunted in pain at the jolt of the baton, or did Brother Raymond take it in silence?

Her chest rose and fell. Pussy hummed.

God! Fuck it all! There was a dead girl! Didn’t you see that shit?

When Levi stood, she had no freedom of movement in her limbs. Cold, wet stone was under her ass, even as Raymond kept her from falling backward into the water. She rolled her head back to look up at him. Mouthed the word ‘please’.

What she was asking for wasn’t clear, not even to her, and Raymond chewed his lower lip. His thumb grazed the side curve of her breast. Nothing came from Mather; the priest must not have seen.

Levi rounded to the end of the baptistery and descended the steps, clothed like his peer. He took over Raymond’s hold and moved back, dragging her by the waist without ceremony into the water.

Buckeye gasped.

It was room temperature, but that was cold enough. Her nipples seized up to full hardness in a blink, standing up off her tits as gooseflesh pebbled her skin.

The bindings arrested her instinct to stand, to tread water, anything. She flailed at the hips, her backside spreading in a lewd scrub over the wet fabric at Brother Levi’s waist. If Buckeye wanted to stay above water, she’d have to rely on the priest. Her eyes shot to Mather, horrified.

He gave her a single nod. “Surrender and trust, Servant of the Church.” Stepped back to sit in the chair, palms on his knees, to observe.

Levi carried her like some weird ship’s figurehead nearer the stairs where he’d entered. Raymond had stepped up so the water was only at his knees, and Buckeye’s mouth went dry to see his cock, erect and already out through his fly. He had some small, open metallic container in one hand, and was smearing something viscous over his shaft with the other.