Page 16 of Fear No Hell

Calliope

His screams of pain are divine.

I shiver in delight as I take in Arthur’s wretched, thrashing form, each shift of his body eliciting another scream of pain and jingle of chain until it’s a constant melody of agony.

Deep cuts run across his flesh; the broken skin curls away from the structures beneath, leaving thick, fat muscle glistening under the ragged edges.

Underneath it all is dull, white bone, mostly intact except for the chips and gouges from my aggressive slashes, visible only in brief glimpses through the blood streaming down the length of his body until it drips to the floor.

Beneath him, a tacky scarlet pool has formed, disturbed only by the near-constant fall of the droplets that have finished their journey.

The sound of it is pure magic, the type of epic story I could only hope to inspire in all my years as a muse.

What makes it incredible is I’m not inspiring this tale. I’m the one writing it. It’s a heady feeling, this experience of a narrative told in blood and screams and the cracking of bones, and, for a brief second, I wonder if this is how the authors I inspired felt.

But Arthur ruined inspiration for me with his actions. His cruelty.

Time loses all meaning when I’m in the basement.

It’s like the minute I step onto the cement floor and close in on the pathetic man hanging in the corner all reason abandons me, and I’m solely instinct.

All red-hued rage, murderous impulses, and intense mind-melting arousal.

It should probably concern me more than it does that I’m getting off on violence and bloodshed, but the pulses of dark pleasure racing through me whenever I’m down here are too intense for me to care.

Shockingly, even in my madness, I know to avoid the feeding tube port, which Sam installed over the holidays.

He took so much time to put it in, all so he could get Arthur the nutrients he needs to stay alive for as long as I need him to.

No matter how deep I go, I don't want to do anything that may impact the hard work Sam has put in to make this possible.

The only thing that can jolt me out of this state is Sam, his presence usually more than enough to pull me back from the intoxicating headspace I occupy while I’m down here.

Only rarely am I so far gone I don’t recognize him and turn on him.

When that happens, he leans casually against the washing machine and speaks to me, his voice calm, those caramel eyes warm on my face as he tells me about his day.

It never fails to work, dragging me back from the darkness I can sense growing deep inside me with each and every minute.

Unfortunately, Sam doesn’t only bring out the good in me.

He stokes the arousal too, which only gets worse as we grow closer.

He’s brilliant and funny, kind and sweet.

So handsome it hurts to look at him sometimes.

Despite his intelligence, he has never once stopped me to take advantage of the inspiration I so regularly convey with my speech alone.

He doesn't even seem to respond to my inspiration at all, something that both bewilders and attracts me.

All things considered, it would be hard for me not to desire him, regardless of whatever is happening to me.

A scuff of shoes on the floor behind me has me whirling to find Sam, leaning against the laundry machine, a small smile on his face as he watches me.

He’s in his scrubs, which he hates wearing at home, meaning he sprinted out of the hospital the second he could without changing into his normal clothes.

My mouth waters at the sight of him. Even in the drab green fabric, he still looks good enough to eat.

At the thought, a firework of desire goes off in my chest, and my mouth parts on something that wants to be a moan when it grows up. The gums around my canines itch irritatingly.

Sam raises his eyebrows at me in question.

The frustrating tightness in my mouth, the darkness crawling over my skin, and everything that isn’t Sam fall away with the gesture. “When did you get home?” I greet him happily.

“A few minutes ago.” He uncrosses his legs and pushes away from the dryer, rising to his full height.

“And you were watching me the whole time?” I raise an eyebrow teasingly as if being this close to him isn’t ratcheting the arousal inside of me up to a burning inferno.

“I called your name a few times. You weren’t responding, so I figured I might as well spend the time watching you.” He freezes the instant the words emerge, his gaze darting to mine before flicking away.

“What was that?” I stride forward and, without thinking, cup his cheek. His skin, slightly scratchy with stubble from the day, is soft against my palm, his face perfectly fitted to my hand.

The second I touch him, his attention is locked back on me as it if never left, intense and unflinching. Time stretches as he stares down at me without answering my question.

“What was that?” I repeat, my fingers moving lightly across his cheekbone.

“What was what?” He’s hoarse as his head tilts sideways until his cheek isn’t just cupped in my hand, it’s resting against it. Like he doesn’t want to stop touching me.

Like he trusts me.

My breath catches in my chest, my question forgotten as he nuzzles my palm like a puppy seeking attention from its owner.

He would be such a sweet pet. A visual of him on his knees in front of me flashes through my mind, clear as day.

Uncontrollable desire floods through me on its heels, and the ache ripples through my core and I clench around air, wishing that he was filling me instead. A broken noise escapes me.

Sam’s eyes go pitch black at the sound, all color in them vanishing, and something about that is odd, doesn’t quite make sense, but I can’t work out what it is. Not with him whispering my name in a hiss that sets me ablaze, his hands still clasped respectfully at his sides.

“Sam,” I murmur, drawing him down to me. Into me. I want him. Wait, no, this is more than that now.

I need him.

I need him so badly. His touch, his kiss, the feeling of him fucking me hard and fast, coming deep inside me with an agonized groan.

Thoughts that would normally send me into a panicked spiral are becoming a bucket list of things I need right now.

“Come here, pet.” The pet name is a sigh against his lips, now only centimeters away from mine.

His body is wrapped around mine, one arm clasped around my waist, one hand nestled in my hair, although I have no idea when they got there. “Sweetness,” he whimpers, pushing into me further until I can feel his hard length pressing against my stomach.

I’m seconds away from leaning forward and tasting my darling pet for the first time when a wail sounds from behind us.

I snarl at the unexpected noise, but the damage is done. The spell weaving its way around Sam and I is broken, leaving us wrapped around each other with only the barest knowledge of how we got there.

The blackness that overtook Sam’s eyes vanishes as he blinks, his hazel irises reappearing like they were never gone.

“Lila?” The word lilts up in an ask, but the question itself never appears as he takes in the now-screaming, very conscious man in the corner.

“Holy shit,” he mutters, hands dropping away from my body as he steps out and around me. “So you did a number on him, huh?”

I grimace. I don’t really remember what exactly I did, even with the proof of it dancing in the chains in front of us.

“Did you mean to kill him tonight?” Sam glances back at me, a question on his face.

“No.”

“Do you want me to try and save him?”

I nod instinctively before remembering he likes me to respond verbally on things like this. “Yes. Please do what you can.”

Sam squeezes my hand in reassurance—another first touch for us tonight—and bustles over to his makeshift surgical table, dropping seamlessly into his doctor persona, even though I can clearly see how hard his cock still is from earlier.

As he seizes the duct tape from the table, mumbles from under his breath make their way to me.

I distinctly hear the words, “traumatic chest injury” and “potential clavicle fracture,” before he slaps a fresh expanse of tape over Arthur’s mouth and walks to the sink by the laundry machines to wash his hands.

Although Arthur’s screaming broke the trance we were in, watching Sam work is bringing me right back to the same aroused place.

He’s competent and confident, quietly attending to each spot of damage without any fuss beyond a murmur here and there.

With every pass of his long fingers over the wounds I caused, my skin prickles in the same spot as if he’s touching me instead.

Gods, I want him to touch me.

I tremble as he examines a cut across Arthur’s hip before moving down his legs.

My knees almost buckle when he prods at a wide gash extending the full circumference of his inner thigh.

My fingertips itch to touch him when he hums in consideration of one of Arthur's leg bones—the one Sam set that first morning I got here—visible once more through the torn skin of Arthur’s knee.

I never could have guessed how sexy competency could be.

I get it now.

“Femoral nick,” Sam mumbles, reaching for a syringe and a bottle filled with what I now know is saline, the fluid he uses to clean any wounds I’ve inflicted.

Behind his glasses, his eyes narrow in focus as he irrigates the cuts and investigates them to make sure there aren’t any obvious contaminants.

His hand wraps around Arthur’s undamaged thigh to keep him from swinging; a hungry moan slips out of me as I feel the ghost of his touch around my own leg.

Sam’s head swings around at the sound, his brow furrowed. “Lila?”

The second he says my nickname—the one only Sam calls me, the one only Sam will ever call me—I feel the powerful pull of magic from deep in my chest. For the first time in my very long life, the power feels velvety and sexual, intensifying the ache between my legs a thousandfold.

I moan again. My hands curl by my hips, the muscles in my arm flexing with the effort it takes to keep myself from slipping it along my pussy, dipping my fingers into my wetness and working my clit until I come with Sam’s gaze on me.

The familiar panic surrounding sex is buried away deeply under layers of lust and adoration for this man.

“Lila?” Sam steps away from Arthur, a small frown turning down the corners of his mouth as his jaw tightens. “Are you okay?”

I don’t hear anything past my name in his mouth, the sound its own sort of magic. Power tears forcefully out of me in response, throbbing in time with the desire pulsing through me. A sharp crack emanates from the other side of the basement followed by a second of uncertain stillness.

I can’t look away from Sam, can’t stop thinking about what his hands on me would feel like.

His mouth opens as the window at the far end of the room explodes inward, glass shrapnel flying everywhere.

Sam shouts, and then he’s leaping for me, wrapping me in his arms and dropping with me to the floor, his body draped over my back to protect me from the shards of glass blasting into the basement.