Vow of Obedience ( Cavalieri Della 2)

When he spanks me, I cry out around his cock. The strokes of his hand are firm and fierce and desire races through me as my flesh heats. I deserve every little piece of pain, and I’m bearing it for him. For Geraint, who holds both cruelty and mercy in his hands.

When my ass is on fire, he pulls me up into his arms and takes my face between his hands. “You’re going to do just what daddy says, aren’t you?”

I gaze back at him, letting him see the answer in my eyes. I want only to answer to him, he who gives me what I need and what I crave.

This is true mercy. I need it. And he needs it too.

Geraint

Branwen rubs her middle finger, and then she places her hand over my heart. She’s trying to say something about Trefor, but I can’t feel angry with her now, not when she’s pleading with me with her eyes.

“What is it, baby?”

She gets down on her knees before me again, her hands clasped in prayer. I don’t understand what she’s doing. Then she nods at the floor in front of her and I realize she wants me to come down there with her. She wants me to pray with her.

“Baby, you know I’m not a believer.”

Branwen just waits patiently, her face a pretty oval. Sighing, I get down on my knees in front of her. I press my palms together, something I haven’t done since I was a kid and Trefor and I would go to church twice a week

because that’s what happened at our institution. I would say the words and sing the songs, but I was just going through the motions. Beside me, Trefor would be having a very different experience. I’d sneak looks at him sometimes and see his lips moving silently, wondering what secret world he found behind his closed eyes, feeling jealous he was able to go there and leave me behind.

“One of us has got to pray now,” I prompt her, hoping this will be the time she finally speaks. But she doesn’t. “You want me to do it? I don’t think I even remember the words.”

Branwen just watches me, her palms pressed together. My sweet, naked, little angel who knows I’m lying.

“All right, all right. I remember the prayer. Our father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.” I say it flatly, so she gets that I think this is a waste of time.

Branwen gives me the tiniest of smiles. She’s supposed to bow her head and close her eyes but she doesn’t, and neither do I. We just gaze at each other. The words rise up from a long-ago place, each one leading on to the next in an inexorable chain. “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done. On earth as it is in heaven.”

I can hear Trefor at my side, murmuring the words. His voice as it was when he was a child. I can feel him beside me too, small and serious. My little brother. I could reach out and wrap my arms around him, he seems that vivid.

“Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those—” I take a shaky breath, my throat tight. “As we forgive those who trespass against us.”

Adelmo Lange’s daughter gazes into my eyes, an expression so gentle she’s like the Madonna herself.

“Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

A gaze so sweet, it’s as if she forgives me.

Forgives me.

For letting Trefor die. For leaving him behind all those years ago and never coming back. For being too scared of the pain and loneliness of that institution to face it again, even for the brother who needed me. Who wanted to be just like me, even though it was me who should have tried more to be like him.

My throat feels thick as I say the final lines. “For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.”

And then it’s all out of me in a great rush, the grief and the pain. A stupid campfire ritual with a bottle of whisky wasn’t going to do it. I had to honor my brother in a way he would have wanted, even if it’s not something I believe in.

I can still feel him here beside me, except now, he’s smiling.

There are tears shining in Branwen’s eyes. A lump of something vile and sticky has been dislodged from my chest and it didn’t come from some God or heaven or whatever people want to call it. Branwen did it.

“You’re a fucking witch or something, girl,” I choke out.

I look at her—her sweet body bare and her hands pressed piously together. She hasn’t said one word to me, ever, but whole universes of understanding have flowed between us. I’m not down with that higher power bullshit but damn, if it doesn’t feel like the cosmos has pushed us together for a reason. Because I’ve needed her so much.

It’s been a long time since I kissed a girl. Properly kissed one, with all the feeling that’s meant to go into it. But when I reach for Branwen, that’s the way I do it. Her lips are soft and sweet and open just for me. I kiss her with the hunger of a starving man. A man who hasn’t felt one drop of solace his whole damn life, and she’s a brimming cupful of it.

I pick her up in my arms and lay her out on the bed. She gazes up at me, trusting and oh so sweet, her arms wrapped around me. I’ve never held a woman so tenderly in my life. Never wanted to feel a body pressed so closely against mine because my soul craved it like I’m craving her. I remember my claim on her virginity, that I’d take it so her daddy knows what I did right before I kill him, but her sweet pussy isn’t going to be mine out of revenge. It’s just going to be mine. All of her is going to be mine and the devil take anyone who gets in my way. Not her father, and not her God.