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“I know.” Amused, he nipped at her ear. “The fact you were even conceived, given the odds, is miraculous… almost impossible. She would have died in labor as you fought your way out.”

“What?”

“I know all your secrets, Pearl. I know about the Jesuit priest at the Mission Orphanage in California. I know how he hung you by the neck from a tree for three days when you were a little girl because he found you drinking the blood of rats. I know about the exorcisms, the beatings, the rapes. You have told me everything about you. Despite your misgiving at this moment, you adore me. I’m your savior. No soul can hurt you but me, and I always put you back together.”

He was insane, absolutely crazy, and she felt the evil in him with every breath they shared. “You said you wouldn’t hurt me if I was obedient.”

“You enjoy pain, Pearl. You crave the things only I can do to you. How can you fully embrace pleasure otherwise?”

He had just ripped out her insides and swallowed them while she’d screamed for mercy. God might not be real, as he’d never once answered her prayers, but Pearl grasped that the devil existed. He’d found her as the priests said he would, and now he was going to eat up her soul. “I don’t want you to hurt me.”

“No?” A smile made his voice playful. “What is it that you think you want?”

Sobbing she said, “God’s forgiveness.”

“For what, being born? There is no creature more evil than this false God you think to worship over me.”

She knew her prayers and her sins. “I want to go to heaven.”

“I was turned before your Christian God came into being. This religion, like all others, was created by humans so they might rule over other humans. Your Jesus never existed. There was no virgin birth or cantering angels in the skies of Bethlehem. Every last drop of it is a lie.” Turning her body into the crook of his, he promised, “What is real is what is before you. Now, tell me you love me before I grow jealous.”

He was talking her in circles, and Pearl felt he’d done so thousands of times. Her own tongue could not break from the cycle. “I was obedient and still you hurt me. If I tell you I love you, you will hurt me again.”

“True.” The monster seemed appeased, even gratified by her statement. “My Pearl, isn’t honesty a beautiful thing?”

Before she could answer, Darius had her splayed on her belly with supernatural speed. Face pressed to the blankets, she bit back a scream, the feel of something boiling hot penetrating the cavity he’d torn apart. True, the damage had healed, but unlike the first time he’d taken her that night, she was ill prepared for such brutality.

Clawing at the bed, trying to find purchase, she pitched deeper into the mattress with his every thrust.

Struggles and pained grunts only drove him on. He wanted her to fight back.

He wanted to steal.

Going limp did not save her either.

A muscular forearm flexed around her throat, a fist once again knotted in her hair, and he bent her back until her spine screamed. Roaring like the devil he was, Darius slammed his cock into her body, snapping his hips violently against her backside.

He denied her air. Twisted as she was, there was nothing but him to hold on to. She couldn’t even see his eyes, only red velvet bed curtains that blurred as her world tripped between conscious and unconscious. Pain and true suffering.

But in there, under all the malevolence was a twinge and a lesson.

She was only allowed to be limp if he made her limp. She was only allowed to scream if he made her scream.

Pearl was a possession. She was a treasure.

One he could control physically or mentally, the point driven home when the tendrils of his dominion invaded her thoughts and tempted her to revel in the violence.

The instant her cracked psyche gave in, flashing fangs tore through his wrist and the spurting wound was pressed to her slack mouth.

Absolution arrived. She swallowed.

As he fucked her, she drank.

Gurgling around a mouthful, Pearl felt herself dragged to a higher state of being. High on his power, she could feel everything: each shredding thrust of a veined cock moving through skin not quite lubricated enough to facilitate smooth passage. She could feel the microscopic tears healing even as they split open anew. Overwrought nerves throbbed from both pleasure and pain, for he had found a place inside her body where, textured skin ached for punishment.

Under her knees, the bedsheets were slimy with blood, with bits of her that had escaped his feast, and with the very fluid he had accused her of spilling earlier.

She had indeed wet the bed, but it was not with piss.