With a Vengeance

by Freydís Moon

Kye swallowed. “And you are?” “Not God.” “Explain.” But they didn’t need an explanation. They knew exactly what he meant. The answer was like tar in their veins. “What are you?” He finished wrapping their arm and brought their hand to his mouth, skimming his lips across their knuckles. “Something worse.”

“You,” he said. Fire snapped and sizzled in that single, heavy word. “Give me all the faith God ignored and I’ll give you everything.”

“Then tell me what I need to do.” “Pray.” His raspy voice came from every corner of the room, landed like a whisper on their ear, boomed ferociously in their skull.

“I’ll devour you,” he whispered, teasing their face with his fangs. He rubbed their cunt faster, fingers framing their clit, circling and pinching. “Every time you move, you’ll think of me. Every time you come, every time you touch yourself, every time you imagine making love, it’ll be me bending you over, and eating your cunt, and fucking you raw—

He shifted to stand behind them and gripped the counter on either side of their hips. His mouth dusted the curve where their neck met their shoulder.

Something that mimicked compassion. “You want pain, don’t you? To get outside yourself? Give up control?” He teased the tendon in their throat with his teeth. “Let me break you,” he whispered.

“Break me how?” “I’ll hurt you in the exact way you’d like to be hurt. I’m in here. . .” He tapped their temple. “And here.” Then their sternum. “I’ll know when you’re done.”

“What’s it like making a deal with someone?” “Hard to explain. It was easy with you. I asked for something you didn’t have a problem giving.” They snorted out a laugh. “What, sex?” “No, worship.” He furrowed his brow. “You’re the one who chose hedonism, baby. I would’ve been happy with a bedtime prayer.”

“I want to be praised; you want to be punished. Nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Worship isn’t universal, you know. Sacrifice is prayer.” He dragged his claws over their hips. “Giving yourself to another, making an offering, becoming an altar. It’s all devotion.”

Cheap red wine soaked their gums. They swallowed lifeforce, and grace, and bullshit. “Amen,” Kye said. Ritual is an ancient thing. I doubt they like the term ritual. I doubt they like the truth. Period.

“Don’t you fucking get that yet? You decided on me; I decided on you. If someone betrays you, they betray me. If someone hurts you, I hurt them. The end.”

“I love how easy you are for me.”