- Chapter 7 -

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I sucked in my breath as the cane lashed me, three times in rapid succession. My heart began to pound, I squeezed my eyes shut tight, and when I released my breath at last it came out in a snarl. Mr. Hearst moved, just to the side. I could feel his gaze on my face even though I refused to look at him.

"Do you remember our bargain, Miss Samara?" he said. "For as hard as you struck me, I would strike you twice as hard?"

"Yes," I replied from between gritted teeth. My damned pride. My damned challenging nature. Of course I had remembered. I had not cared until now.

"You have three very beautiful marks across your flesh," he said. "Slightly raised, a lovely crimson." The knowledge that he was examining me made my humiliation deepen deliciously. "Let's add another three, shall we?"

Bastard, bastard, bastard! I wanted to be angry. I wanted to scream the word at him with every lash. But I held it in. I held it in through the next three lashes with the desperate desire that one of them would hit hard enough to bring all the fight out of me. Some strange part of me desperately desired destruction: to be taken out of my pride, utterly removed from any semblance of decorum.

Instead I stewed in humiliation. I entertained thoughts of tying him down and whipping him mercilessly. I loved every second, even as I struggled.

"So silent, Miss Samara," he said musingly. "You are much more stoic than I anticipated." There was a light touch on my flesh, a caress over the raised welts he had produced. It was gentle, appreciative. It was followed up by another three lashes of startling strength. I leaned hard on the desk and stomped my feet, pressing my lips against my clenched hands and releasing a scream into my tightly closed mouth. I could starkly feel where every lash had been laid, every throbbing line of flesh and its surrounding burn. The more the pain heightened the more my pent-up desire grew. I wanted to rip off the clothes he had refused to remove. I wanted to tear into him tooth and nail.

Yet still I tried to drown my arousal. I tried to stifle anything beyond the merest idiom of emotion towards him.

"Samara." His voice drew out my name, whispered it, as if he was savoring it in his mouth. Those fingers toyed with my garters, slipped beneath them, stroked over my skin with an intimacy I had never experienced. "Do you like this?"

"Yes." It was but a breath, an admission I could hardly make. The last man who had dared touch me so intimately...

I had chopped through his chest and watched him bleed out over my wedding dress.

But I was not afraid this time. I was not confused and scared and taken advantage of this time. This utter stranger, Damian Hearst, had slipped thosebeautiful fingers of his right through my walls as if it were nothing. And still my voices were silenced.

The next lashing came in four strokes. The forth caught me off guard, for I had sighed when the third struck, and it brought out of me a yelp that was followed by cursing. I cursed him, his house, his hands, his servants, and everything he touched. All the while I snarled like a vicious thing, a cat with her tail pulled, spitting and hissing.

And he laughed. He laughed like it was the most magnificent thing he had ever heard.

I heard the cane tap upon the ground, and in the same moment he seized hold of me, pulled me up and turned me, so that my stinging backside pressed against the desk. He held my chin in his hands, his expression suddenly urgent, desperate.

"I'll pay extra," he said softly. "If you'll let me take you."

I was more than happy to rip the clothes off his back if he would do the same for me. The buttons on his shirt popped and pinged against the bookshelves as I tore at it. He forced me to be patient, first trying to unlace my corset slowly, and then, when it defied him, yanking my shirt down to bare my breasts and run his hands over my collarbones and-

He stopped.

He was staring.

I plummeted back to reality. My scars...

I immediately wormed away from him, pulling up my shirt to cover myself and scrambling to collect my skirts from the ground. He was still staring, in utter silence, and it was beginning to frighten me.

"What's wrong with you?" I muttered irritably. "Is it that shocking..."

When I looked at him, ready to lay into him angrily for making me feel so insecure about those ugly marks, I found him frozen in the last expression I would have expected.

Terror. Utter, and abject terror.

I secured my skirts, slowly backing for the door.

"Where did you get those?" he said, approaching me slowly, eyes wide. "How did that happen?"

I shook my head. "It doesn't matter."

"Oh yes. It matters. You're not leaving. Tell me."

But leaving was exactly what I was doing. I fled from the house before he could catch me, dodging a fellow with long red hair in the hall, out into the dark streets. My boots splashed through puddles and sloshed mud onto my skirts, but still I ran, until I was breathless, until my heart ached. I ran until every breath was panting and I had to stop, bent double on a street corner in the pouring rain, beneath the pale yellow glow of a lamppost.

Should never have let him speak-don't let him-stay away-Exorkistís-stupid girl-silence the Sacrifice-should have killed him when we had the chance-

The voices became an unbearable chorus that I could not silence. Languages I knew and those I didn't, endless babbling dissolving into screams of rage. I could not even hear my own ragged breathing over their noise, their fury.

A/N: Love and Exorcisms has been nominated for @TheFictionAwards! The more nominations I get, the more likely this book is to proceed to the voting stage! If you've been enjoying this story, please nominate it here (https://www

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A/N: Love and Exorcisms has been nominated for @TheFictionAwards! The more nominations I get, the more likely this book is to proceed to the voting stage! If you've been enjoying this story, please nominate it here (https://www.wattpad.com/567243462-the-fiction-awards-2018-nominations-open) by leaving an INLINE COMMENT under the PARANORMAL category with the BOOK NAME and my USERNAME. I cannot thank you all enough for your support ♡  Nominations can be made until May 20th, and then voting begins!

I have a busy week ahead, so the next update will have to wait until Friday ♡ Thank you so much for reading!

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