Sinners' Kingdom #1: The Book of Lust (Complete)

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Author's Note: Thank you for 50k+ reads! I was confused because it felt like only a little while ago that we passed 25k, and then I realized it really was only a couple of weeks ago. How fast we're growing! I appreciate all of the votes, comments, and adds very much.

Now please enjoy this latest chapter!

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My wrist burned, the mark of our contract bond searing the underside like an iron stamp. I pulled away, instinctively knowing it was from touching Lust skin to skin, but he held me fast as he pulled me out of the water and retreated back to the grassy bank. I stopped struggling once I regained my senses. The sooner we got out of the water, the sooner he would let me down, and filled with this deadened, heavy weight of all my distrust and resentment against him, for him to let go of me was all I wanted from the Prince of Lust.

Besides, what good would it do to struggle against him now? Would I win? Not in a million years.

Luckily, he didn't seem like he knew what I'd really been up to. He was acting too cheerful for that, unless he was just happy about having stopped me. Or he was playing it off like nothing had happened.

It was the former, apparently.

"You're more than clean enough already, my Sable, and you must be hungry." His voice filled with glowing, incandescent pleasure. "This island will be friendlier to us than the mountains. See how much fruit this place bears. I didn't have to go far at all. Like this. How appetizing it looks, I wish you could see it."

He placed me on my feet, though he didn't let go of my hand, and the gentle twisting of his grip suggested he was... bending over? I didn't realize why until he placed something heavy and strangely shaped in my palm, curling my fingers around it so I could acquaint myself with the texture. He must have picked something up from the grass. Had he dropped whatever he had carried before following me into the water? There better not be any bugs on this.

"Peculiar fruits," he said with the same elegant cheer, and he urged my wooden fingers to move with gentle nudges, dragging them over the... thing's surface, to better explore it. "I've seen similar fruits before, just not so vibrantly colored and grown in the most interesting shapes. Do you feel it, love?"

... I for sure felt it. This was not a fruit. Couldn't be. The texture was fine, almost smooth with tiny little natural divots and lines like one would find on any ordinary fruits and vegetables from the wild, but the shape made no sense. It wasn't just smooth or spiky or long or round. It was — spiraling, I thought, made up of two thick strands, a double helix curving around each other with a sort of... frame, I think? Four straight legs surrounded the shape, like it was housing it. Then there was a... spiky cap at the top? Something? Maybe I was just really bad at this, because I wasn't someone who could go blind and suddenly become a professional at feeling my way around the world, but this felt like someone's interpretative art school project, not a naturally grown fruit.

Unless... ?

Ugh. Focus! I shook off the last traces of my morbid, soul-crushing despair. That could wait until I was alone again, and I would plan my emergency exit from this contract better next time. What had I been thinking in the first place? What if the contract had forced me to abort the attempt halfway, and then punished me for it? Maybe making it even harder for me to — self-terminate, next time?

I might not have much time left, but I could do far better than this sloppy job. When I did it, it would be clean, foolproof, with no way for the contract or Lust to intervene: that was my promise to myself.

But for now, I cooperated, pretending nothing was wrong since Lust had clearly missed my full intent when he snatched me from the water. He didn't know what really went on in my head yet. I would have another chance in the future.