PrimEVAl Sacrifice

by J H Spade

  Marcus does as he is told, surprising me by bowing his head while on one knee. He looks like the type of male that would kneel for no one, king or queen. Why wouldn’t he use the dagger I had given him when he was so close to Eros?

  The vast walls cave in, and I can’t help but scream.

  Because, finally, I ask myself what I have refused to acknowledge. How long could Eros keep me here?

  Ch.__ Dying at Your Touch

  Marcus is still, waiting for his next command.

  “I promised you punishment for your refusal of me,” Eros tells me.

  “Marcus, apologize to My Queen.”

  With the whip around my neck I continue to defy Eros. It infuriates me how he thinks we are all pieces on a game to be moved at his will. A knight against a queen. I would think Marcus would be at a disadvantage if we were playing a game of chess, but I’m no fool.

  I know I can do very little with my mind under Eros’s control. I gain strength the only way I can, from denying Eros his victories, hoping the prisoners I thought were council members, revolt . . . help . . . end this game of his.

  My stomach clenches at the thought of Marcus apologizing for anything. He doesn’t look like someone to have said apologies often, if ever. “There is no need, Marcus hasn’t done anything of his own accord, so he is without blame.”

  “It’s not for his past actions but for . . . this.” Eros clarifies.

  Fast and unpredictable like a turning wind, Marcus plunges the knife I gave him into my heart. My shocked eyes look at him full of the betrayal I feel. I can’t form the condemning words I wish to tell them both as I gag and choke on the mixture of panic and gnawing pain claiming me, breath ripped out from my lungs. The agonized scream that is frozen on my trembling lips comes from someone else in the room.

  Immediately, Eros shifts his gaze to the male responsible.

  “King Logan, will you come forward and try to take the princess from my evil clutches?” Enjoying himself, Eros motions with his hand to have his guards bring the prisoner forward.

  All Eros’s attention is focused on what seems like the better prize—the prisoner who is a king, making me think I’m being used as a web to trap bigger prey.

  The pain has me paralyzed, looking down and wishing I could die, but to my absolute terror, I can’t be free of it or this place. My hands wrap around Marcus’s and the dagger, fighting with him to free it, so I can take Eros with me. Jerking back, my foot slips on a step, but the whip is there at my neck, tightening just so, pulling me forward.

  I fall into Marcus’s waiting arms. I don’t know when he rose from his knee, but he envelopes me and whispers in my ear while Eros’s steps take him father from me and closer to torment the prisoner.

  “Shhh . . . forgive me, but it must be this way.” Marcus says while trapping me to him, “This is not real, and I will have you feel this devastating terror and what will surely befall me afterward to know that I have earned his trust, so when the time arises—all this ghost pain will truly count for something. I can free you from him, but only if he can trust that I will kill you given the chance.” He cradles my head against his chest and kisses my temple while his hand holds the knife steady inside, piercing my heart, and says, “Please trust me.”

  I shake my head against him because what he asks of me seems so impossible at the moment. How can he ask me for my trust while I feel like I’m being split in half at my center?

  “I can’t . . . en . . . dure . . . this,” barely manages to leave my lips. I can feel my hot tears on his mouth as he kisses and licks the salty essence away. I close my eyes after feeling the soft and silky skin of his cheek and chin as he soothes me the only way he knows how.

  His breath hitches before he softly orders, “You can endure anything. With or without me, but you’ll always have me. I’m yours. Lower your mouth and bite my neck.”

  My head shakes, and I refuse, stricken with terror at the idea of dying with his blood in my veins. But Marcus orders more sternly, “Take a chunk out of me for all I care, but pull me in deep . . . as deep as you can, so that I at least have hope you will remember me one day. For now, it will at least help me to know that my blood will give you the strength you need to lessen your pain.”

  When my lids grow heavy and begin to close, I do as he says. Maybe it is his hand that steers my lips to fall over his flesh—which seems to have my name branded on it, or maybe it is of my own free will. All I know is I’m too tired to care. It’s messy as hell because I don’t have those sharp as knives fangs. My teeth are blunt, tearing his skin, but he somehow discovers pleasure in my bite because he moans heated breaths onto my skin. He’s keeping me pressed against him. Because of him, I stand instead of falling before Eros’s throne like some offering.

  Even with a knife through the heart, I’m thankful to all the gods for Marcus.

  Marcus’s blood is as addictive as the most potent of drugs. With it, I feel the psychoactive effects numbing me, blessedly taking me far from here. I distantly hear Eros harassing King Logan for his location, or he promises the king of the lycans he will witness me suffer endless torment tonight.

  Marcus’s wings are cocooning us, so for all they know, there is only an insurmountable amount of pain with no relief to be had on my side of their shield.

  I’m held together by Marcus’s blood and arms, but it doesn’t last long because Eros wants for too much.

  All the pain in this room isn’t enough to rectify the mistakes of mine and Eros’s past.

  Ch__The Twisted Games We Play

  When I come to, Marcus or Eros’s face swims in my vision. I decide I’d rather think it is Marcus from here on. Maybe by fully giving in to my nightmare will I finally wake up.

  Offhandedly, I know there was a drug when I took Marcus’s blood, clouding everything. Truth be told, I’m glad for it, for allowing me an escape from all of this.

  I hear Eros’s voice in the distance; although, I see his lips move to form the words right in front of me, “String up my brother with more chain. The chain is enchanted to hold him, but I know how much he’ll fight to break free.”

  Leaning my head back, my eyes fall from looking up to a face both men and women would kill to possess. I look down at my body and see the knife is no longer imbedded inside of me; although, the blood remains to remind me of the excruciating pain I felt.

  Don’t listen to anything Eros says and does, a warning to myself. I don’t wish to linger on the words because I’d rather give into the illusion Marcus still holds me.

  Even when Marcus tried to slice me in half, as absurd as it sounds, I trusted I was safe in those strong arms.

  It seems possible Eros knows where my mind is drifting off to because I’m abruptly turned to land hard against Eros’s encircling body, feeling him everywhere and facing a beaten Marcus hanging by his wrists just behind an altar made of rocks. Many slabs of massive raw-edged stone lay piled over each other to make an ancient sacrificial altar. I know it is the place Eros has designed for me, where he will want to torture me before all those in the room.

  Instead of dwelling on what will befall me, I look searchingly to Marcus. The bruises and swelling on his face begin healing very slowly, and I can’t stop myself from feeling the terror rising inside me for us both.

  Dread sinks with the heavy weight of a thousand pounds low in my belly because something terrible happened to Marcus, even if I can’t remember what it is or why.

  Everything is distant now. The pain. Theirs and mine. The scream . . . from King Logan of the lycans. The guards struggle to keep both him and Marcus chained.

  But it is all forgotten when I feel hands I know too well on my body, carrying me over to place me with great care at the altar before Marcus. The loose rocks and dust scratch at my knees and palms, drawing more of my blood, and I know it pleases him when he says, “Your blood and tears are my due, payment for what your father did to me.”

  I don’t argue with him and try defending the actions of a
father I never met, and if I did don’t remember because my mother won’t speak of him, or much less try to defend my own actions for leaving him unguarded our last night together in a storm I created to trap him. I pay no attention to the heavy metal chain he means to bind me with, and the condemning rustle it creates when the woven rings slither closer and closer on the rock as Eros readies to trap me. The cold metal sinks brutally heavy around my neck, locking in place when Eros seals a collar over my neck. I ignore it all and concentrate on the amethyst gaze swallowing me deeper into the pits of this inferno I’m already submerged in. Marcus’s gaze begs me not to look away from him no matter what happens next. It tells me, ‘Together. Through it all we suffer together.’

  I nod because I never want to leave from the depths of that gaze. In it, I gain the strength I need to survive the horrors of my nightmare.

  “Tell me what I want to know and everything stops . . . it’s your choice.” Even with Eros’s voice soft, a crooning caress against what once was my favorite place for him to kiss me, I shake with fear, losing my steadfast point of safety which are Marcus’s eyes. Eros continues to suck just below, on the underside of my ear where the sensitive flesh remembers him even if I beg it not to. And yes . . . even now, it hungers for his touch despite the fear and the horror of knowing how easily my captured flesh can betray the wants of all my hopes and dreams.

  I know precisely what will end this nightmare, yet I will never allow myself to give Eros what he wants.

  “I can’t remember his name. All I know is your face.” My eyes look up to see Marcus’s eyes follow his brother’s movements, his jaw ticks alive with a wild pulse like a growing flame as he looks absolutely enraged, fighting even harder than before against the enchanted chains.

  He speaks to Eros, “Let her go, you don’t need her anymore. I’ll go after Logan as soon as I wake and bring you his head on a spike if it is your wish, brother.”

  After hearing the lengths Marcus will go to save me, it is when I feel the bite from scorpions once again. At my ankles, my wrists, which hang heavy with dread at my sides and no longer fight with the collar for my freedom, knowing it may never come. Like a black plague they scurry their way higher and higher on my body, biting my thighs and between my breasts. One climbs even higher still to lie threateningly on my lips, effectively keeping me from opening my mouth to scream. A hysterical laugh rises from deep inside, and it is the only sound I can make. It sounds like a lost cry for help. Maybe, I’ve lost my mind.

  A mad queen for the mad king.

  The horror that has befallen me feels so faraway, removed from me, I don’t have to pretend anymore it isn’t me.

  I fully give myself over to the gift I found in Marcus’s blood. Since the drug in his blood keeps me safely under, making me so detached, I can sense Marcus more than I can sense myself—almost like I’m an outsider looking in. I know Eros is trying to get a rise out of Marcus while the poison from the scorpions are weakening me further now that my strength is gone along with them.

  After a while, my eyelids have gone heavy, and I forget why I must fight when Eros’s breaths brush softly, painting my skin with sin, leaving heat to bloom in my core.

  I don’t know who to blame, my dark master who takes control too easily, or do I blame Marcus’s resolute eyes as they burn everything else away—demanding I gather my strength from him and don’t look away. No, the scorpions and their poison . . . I should blame them. No. No, by default, I should blame myself.

  The fire inside begins fueling everything alive in me, I begin rambling, thinking I can talk myself out of the arms banded solidly around my waist, poised to take everything from me.

  “I’ll give you whatever you want, Master. I just . . . wish for some privacy, please. I promise. I promise to do whatever you wish for as long as you wish it. Just let him . . .,” I plead motioning to Marcus’s lithe body hanging before me, “let them . . . all your prisoners free. You can have me.” The truth is I don’t know if I’m lying to solely see Marcus freed—I just don’t tell Eros it’s Marcus I care about because I don’t want him harmed any further. My interest in Marcus could get him killed. Or, maybe the words run loose from my mouth because I just want some release from all the ache I feel, and I don’t want Marcus to witness my shame. To see me when I’ll fall so low, I’ll begin to beg. I’m too weak. I can’t recognize the truth from the lies anymore.

  To make his point, Eros’s hand reaches around the chains tying me to the rock on each side of my collar, his large palm squeezes my breast painfully, and I moan in need, my breath and his words mixing in the same air, “You can’t offer me what will already be mine Emma. I want his name.” I recognize my reactions to him, the pain he makes my body feel are unnatural and not right, but it’s what he taught me in the past. Another of my reasons to hate him.

  Marcus’s body shifts, his corded muscles bunching, most likely from cutting his wrists on the metal cuffs he is trying to break free from.

  Hysterical, I reply, “There’s no name. I swear it.” How could there be anyone else? I reassuringly tell myself, believing my own lies. All I know to be true is the hand that abruptly comes to a stop mid-thigh from sliding my panties down to land puddled at my knees on the slab, only to be ripped free of my body. I feel the thick bulge behind me in his leather pants. How it promises me retribution when he begins to rub his body possessively against mine. There’s an undeniable pulse in my body that responds to his. I hate it for the need it creates, quickening at the anticipation of what is to come. Slightly, I remember other times like this. I think of the familiar hands I want to take a hold of, so I can press them over my pussy to offer some kind of relief to the nagging rush of the climbing desire. I remember how good they can feel when they slip over my clit and dive in. “They tease me so good. Please touch me . . . where it hurts, a little deeper where I need it most. Please?”

  “Emma, stop!” It is Marcus’s enraged voice that cuts through the fog when I realize I’ve been speaking out loud.

  While my mind tries to wind back to what it was I said that was so wrong, Master’s body pushes me forward, his palms clasp over my wrist, and he strikes with my hands to tear through tight skin into Marcus’s stomach as punishment.

  Shocked at the dark blood that sprays over my face, momentarily bleeding into my lashes and blinding me, I cry out, “No . . . no, not like this please!”

  There’s a loud boom that sounds like, “Fuckkk! I’ll . . . killyoubrother,” from Marcus while his body ripples similar to the chains holding him, fighting to free himself. Sweat breaks out glistening his skin as he writhes in pain.

  I want to cry and scream, but my body has been drained of its own will.

  “No, please,” I choke out again, wishing it will all end, feeling like my heart will explode when Marcus turns his face from me. I can’t see the agony consuming his eyes anymore . . . but it doesn’t matter because I know it’s there. Just like it doesn’t matter what I scream, not in the sense that it will stop his brother from torturing us both.

  Ch__ Flayed Dreams

  Arms hold me prisoner around my waist, drawing me further back and closer to a heat that makes me burn more darkly than a black hole sun when I feel his hands glide up to fasten underneath my arms around the upper rim of my corset, lowering it to free my breasts.

  In spite of it all, heat continues to pulse and climb my body, but I shake my head ‘no’ even if my body doesn’t hate his touch because my blood is boiling in my veins, feeding the evil that clouds his heart and drives him. A burning river of pure need, flowing and connecting us.

  Before I have time to catch my breath, his unyielding force descends on my back, bending me slightly forward into Marcus’s body right at his waist. For whatever his reasons, Eros doesn’t just want Marcus to see my shame . . . he wants him to feel every sick moment of it. Marcus’s body goes absolutely still before me, and I’m afraid he’s gone into shock, so I hold him, try to sooth him when I make shushing sounds.

&nb
sp; It will be all over soon.

  My hair cascades, falling over my shoulders after Eros lays my back bare to him and offers me the only form of modesty after being loosened from the braid while other forms of undressing follow. With each jerk of my clothes, my hands follow, dragging Marcus’s fatigued and fever slackened body with me—almost with a silent command, unintentionally hurting Marcus where my hands are buried still. His blood is spilled on my body and runs to lie below my knees in a crimson puddle, growing larger every second.

  Even drugged, I know what’s about to happen to me. I hold Marcus as still as I possibly can, but he begins fighting me. I don’t really understand why Marcus fights, tugging harder, yelling, causing himself to tear inside, his wounds becoming deeper and deeper.

  My hands slip out of him to hold his waist still, taking a firmer grip because I need him . . . so I can keep pretending and hiding, my cheek—wet with my tears and his blood—pressed against his bloodied torso.

  My lips open on him and my breaths fan his skin before I can say, “It’s okay . . . I’m fine . . .,” but the words sound lost, coming out as shallow as I feel.

  I can tell Eros is angered because, taking a firm grip of my hips and shaking me tightly against him, he says, “He doesn’t care for you, he only cares to fuck you and kill you . . . take you from me in all ways. I will show him this pain, so he leaves you alone. No one will take you from me again. Don’t fucking look at him. Don’t speak to him, and if he stays away and never harms you again . . . I will reward him by making him king of the lycans once I’ve killed Logan. He can take a lycan whore of strong royal blood for a queen, a whole Harem of them since he loves to bed like a beast.”

  Without Eros knowing, I lick my lips to claim the blood, not wanting to waste it . . . to waste the claim I make. I need Marcus to be mine. I don’t understand it and don’t try to because it would be wasted energy that I don’t have to begin with. A moot point in this nightmare. The blood helps me by taking me farther away to someplace where I’m just floating in the clouds of sensation.