In The Flesh

In The Flesh Part 12

The fight or flight instinct had been short circuited, and I could do nothing but kneel over Annie's sleeping form while the scent of roses grew stronger and stronger and the impotent terror inside me remained trapped like ice just beneath my sternum. I don't know how long I stayed that way. Time never ran the same when He took control, but it was the feel of His hand tightening against my throat that brought everything back into sharp focus, along with the shocking awareness that I could no longer breathe. Panic rose up my spine as the pressure increased around my neck, a caress just tight enough to constrict the flow of oxygen. The world around me shimmered and effervesced as I struggled not to lose consciousness.

"If you relax it won't hurt, and you might actually enjoy it." I couldn't tell if His voice was coming from in the room next to me or if it were in my head, but the cascade of goose bumps over my body left me in no doubt that it was His voice, and His hand at my throat. "You strike me as a woman who might just enjoy a little pain with her pleasure, Susan." His chuckle was like soft fur against naked flesh. "Oh don't worry, my darling. You're safe with me now, and I protect my own."

It was a total surprised to find I had unbuttoned my blouse and reached behind to unhook my bra, my hands moving of their own volition, my whole body desperate to be exposed to Him, desperate to feel His touch, even as the danger I was in spiked my pulse and flooded my body with adrenaline with which I could do nothing, trapped as I was.

"I promise I'll keep you safe from harm," came the velvety purr next to my ear. "I do not, however, promise that I won't make you pay for running away from me." Then he brushed my left nipple with invisible fingers, and suddenly Michael's love bite, just above the areola, burned like a branding iron fresh from the flames, and I screamed.

I must have lost consciousness, because when I came back to myself, my breast still stinging like fire, I was stumbling through the brambles and ivy of the garden, as though someone were pushing and shoving and herding me against my will. But then that was exactly what was happening, wasn't it? I was moving in jerky, shambling steps like a marionette with an amateur puppeteer at the strings. To my horror, I had no control of any part of my body, least of all the arousal that should have been the last thing I felt at that moment. The small part of me that was still me, hiding in some tiny place in my brain, pushed and cursed and shoved her way to the forefront, reminding me that I was still there, that I couldn't afford for one minute to lose control. I couldn't afford to let fear, or worse yet, lust, take over. In spite of the shit situation in which I clearly found myself, it was still a shock when I became aware of the heat of His body – the body that wasn't real, I struggled to remind myself -- pressed tightly against my back, pushing me forward.

He spoke next to my ear. 'Surely you didn't think Michael's mark could protect you, did you?' The soft breeze of his voice lifted a wispy strand of my hair, and I shuddered. 'He can't even protect himself without the help of that bitch, who owns him now.' As His words turned bitter, I tasted them like bile at the back of my throat, along with cold terror from the realization that what I both most feared and most longed for was as much inside me as it was out. Frantically I sought the tiny part of me I could still access, and found it there, holding strong. That should have come as no surprise. After all, what would be the point? Where would His victory be if He drove me from myself, drove me from my own sanity before I gave Him what He wanted?

The next moment, I was being shoved at the foot of Michael's statue. As He released His marionette-like control, I lost my footing and banged my cheekbone hard against the edge of the plinth before catching my balance as the world around me erupted in an explosion of stars and pain that seemed somehow both closer than my own flesh, and yet distant, as though it didn't matter, as though it no longer truly belonged to me.