“… two thousand twenty-four, the Leaders of the Faithful signed the Information Accord …”

The placid female voice piped from some speaker Buckeye couldn’t see, somewhere overhead in the barren cell. The words flowed in a quiet, unnerving drone, as though the woman was reading from a history book. A Covvie version of history as warped as the situation she found herself in now.

Buckeye sat on the floor, her back to the wall opposite the cell door, arms folded around bent knees.

“… the independence of New Covenant in two thousand twenty-six, Father John Roland James called upon the Justice Division to initiate The Purge for the well-being and salvation of all her citizens. The protection of the newly-founded state wa—”

“What? Fuck that shit! Are you kidding me?” The woman in the cell adjacent to Buckeye’s thumped at the transparent dividing wall with an angry heel. Buckeye jumped, but the woman was pacing again. “They wanna bring us here and screw us, and then tell us a buncha horseshit that didn’t even happen?”

“Shut up!” Someone further down the row of cells hollered—and it had to have been a holler, because the dividers were thick. The woman yelling from the next cell sounded muffled as it was.

The pair volleyed a brief round of insults, a vent to fears over which they had no control, but Buckeye quit paying attention. She was busy trying to untangle the knots of reality.

Had that rag been soaked in mint? Like Mather said?

She picked at a hangnail on her thumb, wincing when it went just past ‘too far’.

But then what about August and Wayland spraying their hoods in the truck? Was that the real deal? The Song? Why would those two assholes stand around debating it if it was fake?

There was no way her arousal had been natural. Not crammed in there with a dozen people, stinking and sweating and bound. Arm dead asleep.

“… brief time of upheaval in the mid-twenty-fifties, when popular sentiment called to forgive the Sinners in the Territories …”

Buckeye grimaced and balled her hands into fists.

But if Mather was telling the truth? Was that enough? Just standing there watching people fuck?

But she hadn’t been just standing there. She’d been restrained. And those weren’t just ‘people’ on the red mats. Those were Covvie priests rutting a bunch of VT prisoners.

There was no way it was a good sign that the memory alone made her more aware of the warmth between her legs.

You loved it. When he had his cock in you. Couldn’t get enough.

“… the second bombing of the original wall in twenty-sixty-one led to the construction of …”

Or was Mather lying about the drug to demoralize her? He’d said a lot of quiet things to Vicers all along that row, and she’d heard none but the words directed at her. Maybe he’d told all of them it was a placebo.

She pressed her knees together as though she could somehow create a diamond of truth out of any of this if she did it hard enough.

Her head came to rest on her upper arm, face turned to the row of cells. There were four better-appointed units, now. To reward the four most recent volunteers.

A man in the nearest one had an erection in hand, head thrown back against the divider, stroking, unashamed. Another woman closer to Buckeye huddled against the back of her door and held her knees to her chest. She was rocking, the movement tiny, but consistent.

They’re gonna break us all. Volunteers or not.

“… sending out task forces to investigate reports of illegal communication networks as recently as twenty-eighty-two …”

And if she could do what? Manage to disarm a guard as he came to retrieve her? Somehow evade any other guards and run naked through corridors and a parking garage, and then what? Right out into the middle of Virtue?

She snorted.

Yeah, that would totally work.

Buckeye closed her eyes against the soft lights the guards never shut off. At least the people with simple mattresses had a sheet they could pull over their heads.

‘You did not disappoint me.’

Her teeth ground. She could not make that voice go away. And those eyes were there to pierce and judge, every time she let her lids black out her surroundings. Blue-grey like forty days of rain, those eyes delved to the very marrow of who she was.

‘You will open yourself in any way they ask, Sinner, because you are a servant now.’

With or without the drugs, Buckeye Wheeler was afraid.

* * *

Many hours passed. Buckeye slept. It could have been the next morning, but there was no way for her to tell.

The guards brought food. On one hand, it wasn’t much. Two slices of bread. Half an apple.

On the other hand, compared to what growhouses in the VT produced, the sparse meal tasted like something out of a fairy tale. And the irony of feeding apples to people the Covvies called ‘sinners’ was not lost on Buckeye at all.

It was not quite an hour, at her best guess, after the guards had retrieved the last of the empty food trays, that they began removing Vicers from cells.

But not all at once.

They came for the woman in the furthest of the better-appointed cells from Buckeye first. Some of the others began to sit up, to stretch limbs, in anticipation of another mass herding along to god-knew-what new ordeal, but it didn’t come.

The Vicers waited. Many exchanged looks. Shook heads at each other.

After what felt like twenty or thirty minutes, a second set of guards pulled the woman from the cell adjacent to the first empty one. The wait after this was quick.

Within moments, they watched the furthest cell door swing inward, and the grey-clad men returned with the first woman to leave. They shut her inside and the rest of the Vicers stood or turned their heads to stare.

The woman was wet. Shaking.

Her face and chest were red, and she made eye contact with no one. Her arms clutched around her and she shuffled to her thin mattress. Folded herself down into it and turned her back to her fellow captives. The bones of her spine ran in a visible row down her curled back.

The transition happened again; the men bringing a third Vicer out in exchange for the second, who also returned dripping from head to toe and barely able to stand.

Some of her peers began to put heads together on opposite sides of their dividers. Whatever they said to each other was too far away, too muffled by intervening dividers for Buckeye to hear.

Down the row they went like that, some of the former lustworkers beginning to scuttle away from the door when it opened inside their cell. The guards came in and hauled them out with an indifferent grip, all the same.

They’d taken six when Buckeye heard the locks tumbling.

A familiar-faced guard held the metal door to her cell open with a splayed palm. The slightest angle of a brow dared her to make trouble.

“Get up,” he said.

His partner waited in the corridor. Hand near his baton.

She wanted to fight. To run. To do something brave.

Buckeye wanted to ignore the threat of pain and cursed herself for a weakling when she couldn’t.

Who am I s’posed to be? Maggie Fucking Bone? I’m just a goddamn mail carrier!

It was as though she expected to have to regale people back in The Vice about this entire nightmare, and they’d judge her for a coward when they heard she didn’t put up a fight. But that was the joke, wasn’t it?

The guard in the hall cleared his throat.

She’d never be going back to The Vice.

Buckeye let out a breath and made her way to her feet. Outside her cell, they took her by the upper arms anyway. It was not a good sign that she was getting used to people parading her around naked.

As the two men led her, the path seemed to point again to the room from her previous trials. Where they had turned right before, however, the guards now went left at the far end of the crypt. They came to another wood door, much like the one that had led below to where they’d run her into the ground that first day.

This door opened to more stairs, but these ascended. The guard on her right gave up his grip on her arm. Flipped a light switch inside the stairwell, taking for granted again what came as pure luxury back in The Vice. He turned and fixed her with an eye.

“Behave,” he said. Blunt. None of that formal rhetoric she’d heard from Mather. He started up the steps, and other guard moved his hand to the back of her neck. Gave a small push.

There was nothing to do but follow along between them.

They climbed at least a story and exited from another landing into living architecture the likes of which Buckeye had only seen abandoned.

Stone arched everywhere, soaring overhead. Ornate. In the distance, columns marched. Pews rippled away in rows, dim light calling out only their edges like a drawing. The guards didn’t let her gawk, but shored up their grips again, veering her to the left, away from all the classical marvel.

The time. The effort. These assholes had the resources to keep a pre-Delineation building like this in shape. The means to keep a bunch of Vicers around like pets. Something in her chest hitched at this. No one would be coming for her. No one could.

Several steps led up and behind the altar at the head of the darkened chapel. A trio of folding privacy screens stood behind the place where priests broke their bread and poured their wine for the faithful. She got the feeling the screens didn’t normally live there, but a second pair of guards appeared from behind them escorting another captive and banishing all mundane thought.

Not ‘escorting’. Hauling.

The knuckles of the woman’s toes dragged the floor. The two men held her up by the armpits, but a dark head of wet Vicer hair lolled.

As Buckeye and her own guards passed the trio, the nearest of the other two men bit off a curse. His boot landed only halfway on the next of the steps, and his heel went out from under him. Knee buckled. He lost his grip on the other woman.

Her body crumpled, too heavy for the single remaining guard, and went down in a heap on the steps. She didn’t move. Neck bent at a sickening angle, and the captive did nothing to right it. Her lips parted, blue-tinged, in some silent sigh, and glassy eyes stared in unblinking piety at the cathedral ceiling, forever.

The guards regrouped and gathered what was left. A portion of August’s cargo, useless.

Buckeye came to life, wrenching against the hold on her arms, feet scrabbling on stone.

No. No way! No Goddamn way!

Fingers went pincer tight and a baton jammed in the side of her breast. The guard on her right jerked her near and forced the warning through his teeth: “Don’t be stupid.”

The tender skin on the underside of her arm twisted as Buckeye craned her neck around to see the last of the dead woman, dragged away through the chapel, her pale skin some floating ghost of hope as the guards’ uniforms disappeared into the darkness around her.

Buckeye tripped on a step as the guards hustled her forward through her staring.

They rounded the screens in time to see two priests departing in the opposite direction. She squinted after them, convinced they, too, were soaked up to at least their waists, still in their clerical black. Splashes of water glittered over the stone floor.

A lone light shone from overhead, and at the furthest edge of its pool on the ground stood Elijah Mather. In the shadows to his right was a high-backed wooden chair. Before him, under the focus of the spot, was a long, open rectangle in the floor where water danced in wavelets. A baptistery.

They drowned her. They fucking drowned her.

Mather stood like a marble statue in his white cassock, his eyes following Buckeye as the guards brought her opposite the font. Movement in the darkness at his back materialized into the forms of two more priests: Brother Raymond and a face she remembered attached to the name Levi. He’d met Mather at the door that first day.

“Perhaps this one will deliver results,” Mather said.

The other two rounded the baptistery, taking her arms from the guards with something of a gentler grip. The men in grey took up positions on the near side of the screens, boots in a wide stance, arms folded over their chests. Buckeye began to shiver.

The priests, only in their black shirts and trousers again, no cassocks, guided her near the water’s edge. A squeeze at her upper arm came from Raymond’s side, but she didn’t dare look at him.

“I believe you have a gift,” said Mather. “Perhaps you will be the one.”

Brother Levi shored up his grip on her right arm and Raymond let go to approach one of the short sides of the baptistery. He stepped straight down into it—stairs, she guessed—trousers and all, some dark object in his hand he kept lifted out of the water.

“Obedience is necessary, and that you have come to show us,” said the priest in white, “but we require one who can provide a full surrender into service. Who will place their complete faith into the Church. Into the crook of its shepherds. Brothers Levi and Raymond will help us determine if you are that servant.”

Full surrender. Those empty eyes.

Buckeye swallowed.

At her feet, Raymond stood dead center in the baptistery, its edge hitting him just above the waist. He held a hand up to her. She blinked. Looked at Mather.

“Kneel,” he said.

A subtle pressure came from Levi on her shoulders, and she felt the menace of the guards and their batons behind her without having to turn around and see. Raymond waited, dark eyes guileless, and Buckeye twitched under a flash of memory. Those eyes above her. That jaw slack. Her hips meeting his.

Wrong. This is wrong. They’re gonna kill you, Bucks.

By the time her knees met the floor, her teeth were chattering.

Kill you! Do something! Run!

But there was too much. She was numb.

Levi directed her to turn. To put her back to his counterpart in the water. The guards focused on nothing overhead while Raymond gathered up her arms and folded them at the small of her back. He stretched something synthetic against her paired forearms and began to wrap it; some weird, thick ribbon, around and around. Her pulse broke loose and bolted.

She lurched, feet kicking out from under her on the wet floor, spine thrusting back against Raymond as if she’d knock him off balance. He staggered back a step, but Levi was there, catching her wild legs, shushing her like a child who needed a splinter out.

Raymond had bound her arms.

Oh god, oh god. What? What is this?

“Lean back,” he said, hauling her by the shoulders with cupped palms until her weight was on his chest.

He’d placed a roll of something black on the floor, and Levi took it in hand. The second priest arranged her limbs despite her attempts at flailing. Jammed hard fingertips behind her left knee to make it bend when she tried to hold it straight. He had her calf meeting the back of her thigh, and began passing the strip of binding in snug circles to keep her ankle just below her ass.

Buckeye straddled a knife edge of hysteria.

He moved to the right leg and, drunk on some unfortunate cocktail of shock and fear, she did nothing to fight him this time.

Raymond’s voice was just above her ear, so low she might not have heard it but for the warmth of his breath.

“You were my first,” he said.

Her eyes opened wide at this. Levi went about his work, but it was Raymond’s fingers squeezing her waist, the rasp of his shirt at her back. A flutter came between her thighs.

No. No, Buckeye.

Warmth in her cheeks.

His first?

And here she was, more restrained by the minute. She could be his second, too. And this third. His fourth. What, really, was there she could do about it?

Fuck. Fuck!

“Brother.”

Mather’s voice cut through the fog, and Raymond stopped his nuzzling at the rebuke. Nothing slipped by the head priest. Would the man at her back do additional penance now? Was he one who grunted in pain at the jolt of the baton, or did Brother Raymond take it in silence?

Her chest rose and fell. Pussy hummed.

God! Fuck it all! There was a dead girl! Didn’t you see that shit?

When Levi stood, she had no freedom of movement in her limbs. Cold, wet stone was under her ass, even as Raymond kept her from falling backward into the water. She rolled her head back to look up at him. Mouthed the word ‘please’.

What she was asking for wasn’t clear, not even to her, and Raymond chewed his lower lip. His thumb grazed the side curve of her breast. Nothing came from Mather; the priest must not have seen.

Levi rounded to the end of the baptistery and descended the steps, clothed like his peer. He took over Raymond’s hold and moved back, dragging her by the waist without ceremony into the water.

Buckeye gasped.

It was room temperature, but that was cold enough. Her nipples seized up to full hardness in a blink, standing up off her tits as gooseflesh pebbled her skin.

The bindings arrested her instinct to stand, to tread water, anything. She flailed at the hips, her backside spreading in a lewd scrub over the wet fabric at Brother Levi’s waist. If Buckeye wanted to stay above water, she’d have to rely on the priest. Her eyes shot to Mather, horrified.

He gave her a single nod. “Surrender and trust, Servant of the Church.” Stepped back to sit in the chair, palms on his knees, to observe.

Levi carried her like some weird ship’s figurehead nearer the stairs where he’d entered. Raymond had stepped up so the water was only at his knees, and Buckeye’s mouth went dry to see his cock, erect and already out through his fly. He had some small, open metallic container in one hand, and was smearing something viscous over his shaft with the other.

The sight of the stroking fist made her go still.

She’d known, of course, but …

Raymond met her eyes for an instant before looking to the other priest. Setting the container aside on the floor. Levi carried her to meet him on the steps and, between the two of them, they managed to rotate her body so her back was to Brother Raymond again. Her knees in the water, his arm circling her waist from behind. Levi steadied her shoulders so she didn’t flop face-first into the water.

And then came rooting.

Hot, greased-up flesh pushed down between her clammy cheeks. Rode along her slit, crude and seeking. Her breath labored. Raymond aimed with a fist. One of Levi’s hands moved to her jaw. His thumb brushed her lower lip, and she met green eyes that wanted as bad as any she’d known in a house of Greed.

Fuuuck.

Raymond found the depression where she was slick. Pushed. She sucked in air. He was inside her again, anchored at the base. She had no control of her legs to back him out, to ease the pressure at her deepest point.

And then they were moving.

Her body was parallel to the stairs, and Levi held her up by the shoulders while Raymond locked her to him with a grip at her hips. The pair took the next step down, and then the next, until the men were in to their waists.

Buckeye’s ass and belly were underwater. Her inner muscles clutched at Raymond’s length. An irrational attempt not to fall? A reaction against the pressure? It didn’t matter. The water buoyed her weight. He only had to hold, not to support.

The priest began fucking.

“Ohmygod.” Her eyes rolled back. It was beyond too much.

Fingers tapped her cheek in a light slap. She snapped her attention to Brother Levi, who was shaking his head.

“Profanity,” Mather reminded from his chair.

Jesus, fuck! They don’t let you get away wi—

She squealed when Raymond bottomed out, hard. For only his second time, the priest wasn’t fooling around. He bounced into her with as much force as the water allowed, its interference replacing the usual slap with a floating quality. Whatever he’d smeared over his cock was not washing off; the width of him a continual slick push-pull past her lips.

Levi stepped back, his support going with him, and Buckeye tipped face-first into the moving water. Her back arched in a panic. She whipped her head up into the air with a squawk, hair flapping over her brow in a dripping sheet. Raymond never slowed.

If she used all the muscles along her spine, Buckeye could keep her head above water, which meant she could breathe. It also meant she could see Brother Levi pulling his erection through an open fly. Right about water level.

The percussive sloshing was a blasphemy in the darkened chapel. Some gasping noise like a question rose up out of her throat. Levi traced fingertips under her chin, stepping close and aiming his cock to fill.

T-two? I ca—

He was in her mouth.

Plump, warm flesh slid back over her palate. Male musk painted her tongue, even as hand palmed the top of her head to block a startled retreat.

Both priests moved in her body. Levi now parting her jaw, while Raymond soldiered away at her cunt. There was no arching her back now to raise her head. The thrust of male hips had the surface of the water violent, and Buckeye had to snort whenever it hit her face.

This was it. She had to just be here, now. Helpless. A cut of meat on a spit. A spit that was fucking her. At both ends.

When had the others broken? How had the priests known to stop?

Glassy eyes above a bent neck.

They didn’t. They didn’t stop.

Either they hadn’t known, or …

Buckeye was breaking. She could feel it. But the cracks in her structure ran in a far more terrifying direction.

He won’t stop. Oh god, he won’t stop.

She squeezed and tilted her hips into Raymond’s groin. There was no other way to tell him, but the priest got the message. Hauled her down to his base with more force.

It’s okay. It’s okay. No one can see. Just let him. So good.

Who would see her shame? Raymond? Levi? Mather? She made a guttural noise in her throat. It didn’t matter. She squirmed on the two Covvie pricks that might fuck her to death.

Words. There were words nearby. Someone was talking.

Mather.

“Surrender and trust,” he said again from his chair. “Complete faith.”

Her eyes darted to meet his, grey, but on fire with interest.

That voice. Oh, god.

Raymond and Levi took another step down into the baptistery. The water closed over her head.

There were still cocks, locking her in place. Bouncing her back and forth. Only now, water flooded in behind her teeth. Bubbles leaked from her nose.

Her squeals had that compressed quality from being underwater, and her arms yanked at the bonds, chafing her lower back.

And then it all stopped.

A hand lifted from under her chest. Her face broke the surface, Levi’s cock pulling free for her to suck in air. She filled her lungs, eyes rolling around wild, before she heard Mather again.

“Give yourself over, Servant. Trust.”

It was him. The seated man filling the space with the power of his words. Elijah Mather making her body react.

Brother Levi fed himself back into her mouth. She just had time capture breath through her nose.

There were no more words she could hear. Only her own grunts, vibrating beneath her ribs. A palm cupped the back of her head. She tried to keep her tongue fitted at the entrance of her throat, a barricade to inhaling water against the battering of an insistent prick.

When the seconds stretched, determination broke into panic. She jerked against Raymond’s hips, trying to signal.

Enough.

Fingers splayed between her shoulder blades to keep her down. Possibly Levi’s. Buckeye thrashed, a caught fish on a line. Churned the water. Her lungs burned.

A hand hauled her up. Nothing in her mouth. She gasped relief, the breath a near painful ache to inhale so much at once. It was useless.

Even as she sputtered, Levi plugged her throat again, taking her well below the surface. Fingers caged her ears on both sides, a grip to hold her there for the fucking. Her bound legs parted wide around Raymond’s driving hips.

This was it.

Existence narrowed to a tight cluster of truths and imperatives. Buckeye was a set of open holes to serve these cocks. She needed to breathe, but the priests wanted her to wait.

Complete faith.

They took from her and she served, dogged at first, but then writhing until they let her up. One huge breath and then down. Fucking. Riding the chaos. Black and red patterns gathered behind her eyelids.

Water.

Air.

Water. Air. Water.

She choked. Her pussy throbbed on the frantic cock. There was no escape. None until they allowed it. Buckeye jerked. Thrashed. Screamed bubbles around thrusting girth.

They wouldn’t let her up. Wouldn’t let her anything except surrender.

When it hit, her body danced like lightning. Hips rabid against Raymond, lips and tongue gulping at Levi. Buckeye came, milking the men in her body, even as they lifted her above the surface.

Levi splattered her chin and chest. Raymond drove home, pulsing into her body, well beyond her control.

She was twitching, her bones heavy as they carried her up and out. Laid her on the wet stone, knees under her belly, face down, to work at her bindings.

Her arms came loose first. Buckeye coughed, spit water as she got them under her, the ache in her shoulders throbbing. When the priests freed her legs, she rose up like a dog, head down, lungs heaving. Warmth leaking along her thigh. More water dripped to the floor from her hair.

No one was touching her. Raymond and Levi had left her periphery. She brought a hand up to clear semen from her lower lip.

Some noise happened—a shuffle or scrape over stone—and Buckeye raised her head. Mather was still in his chair, leaning back, his cassock a white mantle over spread knees where his palms rested. An erection tented the fabric.

Buckeye climbed from shaken stupor to something worse. He’d been doing this. He was the one inside her with those words of his. And this was the first visible slip of control she’d ever seen in the man.

One of her knees moved forward, pushing her spine. A palm followed. She was crawling toward manifestation.

When her fingers reached the hem of his robes, Buckeye didn’t stop. She knelt between his feet and began pushing his cassock up over his knees, his thighs. Other than shifting his hands to rest on the arms of the chair, Mather made no move.

His trousers were white, as well, and water from her hair dropped onto them in darkening little pats. A ridge stood out at his groin. Her palms slid to his fly.

“I knew you’d be the one,” he said.

The voice curled in her belly. Intimate. Not a proclamation, at least not yet. Buckeye worked fabric apart. Brought him into the open. The priest sucked air through his teeth when she closed him in her damp fist.

Mather was hot in her hand. Pulsing after she tested him with a squeeze. He was a man. He was a man under here, and he could preach about service and obedience all he wanted.

Buckeye raised her eyes to his. She knew. They both knew.

She dipped her head, never breaking his gaze. Took him into her mouth.

He made some noise that couldn’t even be called a groan when Buckeye closed on him. Some consolidation of breath released up through his throat. Pupils dilated on those blue-grey eyes as she sank down to suck his cock.

It was the height of Covvie hypocrisy. Their head priest in a darkened chapel, some VT sinner on her knees, dripping baptismal water and any number of other fluids, servicing his prick.

The Vices always sell.

But Buckeye was getting nothing for this. Only sounds, tight and controlled from the priest in white, as she bobbed in his lap. Her hands gripped his thighs, her neck doing all the work. She fell into it, letting her lids drift closed, the soft tissues in her mouth suckling, smacking. Obscene.

You’re not dead. You’re not dead.

Mather was breathing through his mouth, now. How long had it been for him? Not ‘never’, surely. A man with his kind of power? She saw his fingers curl into the wooden arm of the chair.

“S-ervice without prompting is re—” His words broke when she drew her teeth along his length. “Rewarded. Brother?”

Distraction had him faltering, but the command was still there. Buckeye heard steps behind her. She moved a hand from his thigh to stroke his shaft. Her lips and tongue kept up their work.

Something was nudging her knees apart. Shoes. Other limbs. A body was wedging in, fabric chafing her calves. Mather’s palm cupped the side of her face, another failure in self-control, just as hot breath fogged between her thighs.

A mouth closed on her pussy.

“Mmph!” Cock muffled her squeal. Levi or Raymond, she didn’t know which, was lapping along her slit, even as Mather throbbed into the roof of her mouth.

She lasted no time at all. The inexperienced fervor between her thighs, a frenzy of lips and tongue over her clit, leapt to join a foreground where her jaw stretched around cock. Where stone bruised her knees and she dragged clergy down by their vices.

Her body seized a second climax from the mire of hopeless fortune. Even as she gushed on the chin of the priest between her thighs, pussy milking at nothing, Mather worked himself home to the root. Male flesh kicked in her mouth, her profanities burbling as nonsense around pulsing meat.

Semen spurted on the back of her tongue. Hot, bitter. Again.

Mather rode roughshod through his orgasm, face a grimace while his base nature coated Buckeye’s throat. She looked up at him, tears streaking from the corners of her eyes, lips stretched in perverse worship.

“Accept this blessing,” he said as he let her up.

The strokes at her pussy slowed. Buckeye raised her head and Mather’s glossy cock slipped out of her mouth. Her lips were swollen, parted when she met his eyes again. She caught just enough breath to speak.

“Thank you, Father.”

He pushed a thumb into her open mouth. Drew it out and up. Painted two lines of seed and saliva on her brow. They intersected in the form of a cross.

* * *

Days bled into weeks.

There was time in the cells, and there was time in service. In between, there were cold showers. The Vicers numbed to their routines. One woman’s cell was now conspicuously, permanently empty.

Buckeye’s world alternated between sleep and black cassocks. Dreamless stupor and time on her knees, her back. Spreading, presenting, receiving. A single partner or complex groups. Writhing collections of limbs, of hot, damp places connecting, working.

Her compliance had earned her a blanket. A mattress.

Mather never involved himself again. At least not in body.

His voice was there. Fading in and out from the edges, along with the white of his robes, encouraging service. Obedience. Thanks. Her eyes and ears would follow whenever he appeared, some sick remaining fragment of her soul hoping he would break again. He would touch her. Force her. Anything,

When the door of her cell swung inward one night—day? Who knew?—Buckeye’s limbs began to gather by rote. To lift her to stand, to follow the guards.

It was not a guard who stepped into the tiny space. And it was not a priest.

She could barely make her throat work.

“August?”

“Goddamn, Bucks.” He shut the door behind him, eyeing her nudity.

She reached back to yank the blanket over her front. A world of Covvie priests and guards accustomed to her nudity was a world apart: August was from the VT. August was real.

“What the fuck are you doing here?” She hadn’t forgotten how to cuss.

Movement from the corner of her eye. She ticked her head to the side to see a familiar form entering another cell, four doors down. Wayland. More of the Vicers woke and stared.

“Came to see you, sweet thang.” He hooked thumbs into his belt, and she wanted to slap the drawl right out of his mouth.

Fucking traitor.

Buckeye smeared her gaze down to his boots and back up to his lying face again. Just that smirk amid blond stubble made weeks of passivity flee like vermin before a light. He’d sold her. Sold all of them into this.

“Fuck you,” she said. “How’d you even get in here?”

His smile only grew. “Now that ain’t no way to treat someone comin’ to offer you a favor.” August glanced at Wayland, who was saying something inaudible to a kneeling VT woman. “ ‘Sides. Vices always sell. You know how it is. Ain’t hardly ever met a guard couldn’t be bribed.”

Buckeye scowled and backed onto the thin mattress until her shoulder blades came against the wall. “So you came all the way to Virtue just to do me a favor.” She squinted at him, cynic blades for eyes.

“Not just,” he said, tugging something out of a back pocket. “You think eleven rentbodies is enough for all the hypocrites in the Church? Preacher Man wants another batch. I’m here for instructions.”

Ideas about Elijah Mather clashed in her head. Rage and climaxes. War and surrender, forever. She wanted it to end. She had just made peace, and now here this asshole was, stirring things up.

“What do you want, August?”

“Like I said, gonna offer you a favor.” Something awful glittered in his eyes. “Or maybe I oughta say ‘a chance’.” He stepped in her direction and held out his hand. A tiny notebook and pencil were level with her face. She blinked at him.

“I don’t really like sellin’ my own people,” he began. She opened her mouth but he flipped the notebook vertical, a gesture for her to stop. “Didn’t say I wouldn’t do it. Payment is payment.” He dipped his chin, acknowledging his flaws. “But I don’t feel great about it.”

“Yeah?” she said. “Then maybe get us the fuck outta here, you backstabber.”

He shook his head. “Now that ain’t gonna happen. Bribe some guards for a little time is one thing. Ain’t gonna be no sneakin’ twelve nekkid people out from under Elijah Mather without gettin’ caught. But maybe if you had anyone back home …” He offered the notebook and pencil. “You might wanna send a message? So they don’t think you just up and died on ‘em.”

Back home.

The idea wiped every thought from Buckeye’s head.

New Covenant wasn’t home. Would anyone in The Vice miss her? She had almost no one left back there.

Almost.

She narrowed her eyes at the offer. “What’ll it cost me?”

August grinned. He took the pencil and paper in his off hand, and fished in his front pocket again. Came out with something balled in a fist. A too-cocky saunter took him to the cell divider, and he leaned on it with a shoulder, weight on one leg and the other ankle crossed over the first, toe of his boot on the floor.

“Found out why you were so worried about payin’ back money.” His smile showed teeth. “Lucky Bucky.”

The nickname raised hair on her arms. Frozen fingers dove beneath her ribs and squeezed. August opened his fist to show a pair of dice on his palm, bones bleached white as Fortune’s promise.

Fuck. No.

“Thought you’d like to play the odds.”

Her pulse lubbed in her throat. Mouth went dry.

Who’s this fuck been talkin’ to?

“See, I figger you roll against me,” he went on, “and if you win, I let you write your little note.”

Her muscles were a mass of knots. Here it comes.

“And if I win …” His focus shifted to Wayland. Buckeye followed the look to see a former lustworker peeling back the halves of the other man’s fly. A similar pad and pencil lay on the ground.

She wanted to scream. Was that all she was goddamn good for? Was there no further purpose for her in this whole fucked up world than to coax men to their sticky ends?

He looked down at her and gave a tilt of his head to his proffered hand. “Watcha say? Feelin’ lucky?”

In her head, she called him every name in the book. Smug prick probably thought he was being reasonable, but it didn’t matter. Her old refrain was rising up to drown all that out.

Come on Bucky, let’s get Lucky.

And sometimes, she had.

Sometimes.

At least take a chance.

Maybe August was lying. Maybe he’d never deliver the message. But what was one more dick? One more and she could get word back home. Keep him from worrying.

Come on, Bucky.

She hated herself. Hated everything.

Buckeye sneered. “Fine.”

“Well then come on over here, Lady Luck.” He offered the hand with the dice again, not moving away from the divider. “Let’s see how you do.”

She flung the blanket back in disgust and stood, ready to be done. Someone who sold their own was worse than any Covvie, no matter how convoluted their ideas.

In two strides she faced him and snatched a die from his hand. His fingers closed around the other.

“Ladies first.”

Let’s get lucky.

She rattled the die in her fist. Dropped it on the floor, glaring at him without looking down at her roll. He dipped his head with interest, craning to see the pips, and hissed through his teeth.

“Ooh, five,” he said, dripping enthusiasm. “Good one, Gambler.”

Buckeye glanced down to confirm, only to see his die tumble down beside the sole of his boot. Half a dozen black eyes stared back at her.

Shit.

August hummed satisfaction. “Tough break.” He was already stowing the pencil and notebook back in his rear pocket. A rough hand came to her shoulder. And pressure. “I’m gonna need to collect on this here win.”

The traitor was already shoving her down, working apart his belt. Her face was hot, as though something like this didn’t already happen nearly every day now.

But this was different. August knew what he was doing. There was something like innocence among the younger priests. Like they had no more control over their bodies than she did, their eyes glazed and overwhelmed when she met them in service. Only Mather managed to keep above it. And August, well … he was no innocent. Not by a mile.

He had his cock in hand, pulling it plump, crowding her against the divider even as she scuffled backward on her knees to avoid him. There was nowhere left to go when the back of her head met transparent wall, and August smeared semi-hard cock along the seam of her mouth.

“Go on.”

She closed her eyes. Let it happen.

Lips parted by rote, closing around meat. Drawing the rush of blood, the swelling of muscle with a busy tongue and suction. Her face close to the scrub of hair at his crotch reminded her what a luxury bathing was in The Vice.

Just get done. Get him off.

But August was not one of the priests, to just stand there and be serviced. His palm was on top of her head, boots spraddled on either side of her hips. He began stuffing his cock into her face like he was trying to hide it from enforcers.

Her eyes were wide above a garbled noise of surprise. Hands and feet scrabbled against floor, thighs, hard plastic wall at her back. A fist was in her hair, and her skull thumped against the dividing wall in a dull rhythm.

“There we go.” His voice floated down, a useless balm that did nothing to smooth the jerk of hips, the onslaught of battering flesh.

She sputtered around him. Her throat made continuous, percussive glottal noises. There was no way. No way to take more, but he had more. Had more and gave it, holding her head from both sides in splayed palms while her face turned red and her nose mashed into his lower belly.

When he pulled back, she heaved for air. Coughed. Had a full mouth again.

Just come. Just fucking come, already.

Delirium took over. Claws hooked into the cliff’s edge of the assault, taking her down. Survival mode.

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

And then everything stopped.

She was panting. Blood pulsed into the ache at the back of her head, which would probably bruise beneath the hair. August came down on a knee, inches from her face, one lazy hand jacking his red prick. She tried to make her eyes focus.

“Double or nothing,” he said, scooping the scattered die near her left leg with his free hand.

Buckeye blinked at him. Swallowed to soothe her throat.

“You win, I let you write this note. You lose”—his eyes ran a hot line down her belly, between her thighs—“I take this pussy.”

Double or nothing.

The words were her drug.

The odds are the same, Bucks. Every time. You know that.

But there was still a chance. She fumbled for a die, refusing to look away as though he might jump on her. Her fingers found it, Squeezed.

Come on, Bucky.

Rolled. Looked.

Four.

Her heart pounded. Not bad, not bad.

August dropped his die. Buckeye about dropped dead.

“Looks like today ain’t your day,” he said, while they both stared at the five. “Now stand your ass back up.” He was already coming to his feet.

No!

“Wait!”

She grabbed up the dice. Thrust her fist in the air for him to take one back.

His grin dripped victory. “Honey, you already lost.”

“One more.” She jabbed the fist at him. “I win, you give me the paper after. You still … get to …” Nodded to his ready prick. Couldn’t bring herself to say it.

The smile grew. He took one of the die. “You win, you can have the paper during,” he amended.

“Fine.”

“I win,” he said, “We’re gonna see how much of this fits in your ass.”

Buckeye growled and looked at the backs of her eyelids. Took a long, slow inhale.

Let’s get lucky.

“Fine.”

His die clacked to the ground, and he put a foot on it, hiding the top face.

She grimaced and let hers tumble out of her palm.

Twin spots, plain as day.

Fuck. Really? Come on. Come ON!

August lifted his boot. His grin wilted.

“Well look at you,” he said, scraping the snake eye he’d rolled out of the way. “Maybe you are lucky.”

Her heart started beating again as he retrieved the stubby pencil and notebook. Handed them down.

“Now get up here.”

Buckeye was lurching to her feet, cracking the tiny book open before he changed his mind. A rude grip spun her by the hips, pressed her into the divider. She took advantage of the hard, vertical surface and, paper and pencil in her face, began to scratch out words.

A boot knocked into her ankle. Pencil skewed down the divider. Buckeye swore and August chuckled.

“Gonna have to be more careful than that.”

Blunt, cockhead rooted for position. Jabbed at an awkward angle past her entrance. She forced herself to write. He forced himself inside.

A hand came to her shoulder for leverage. The other curled around her hip, dug in behind the bone. He didn’t wait. Didn’t build speed. Traitor cock started slamming home, no clever words, no preamble whatsoever.

Her wrist jerked against the divider. The muscle pad of her thumb cramped trying to keep the pencil from weaving all over the paper. Vicers in the other cells would be staring, but Buckeye had to ignore them. Had to pour all her focus into getting this done. Legible.

Hips clapped against her backside. Soft tissues tore and stung. August grunted. Fucked her. Words appeared on the page, blocky and childlike under her death grip on the pencil.

Focus. Do it.

She did. Done. Pencil and paper fell from her hands right after she scrawled her name. The side of her face hit the divider. August speared up and in, lifting her onto her toes. Her tits mashed flat to the plastic and he kept coming, pinning her, using her as though the harder he did it, he was going to win something.

And in a few more violent thrusts, he did.

The traitor roared and his cock was gone. Her cunt was on fire. Hot semen splattered the crack of her ass, oozed down over her pucker. Her slit.

She stood there, splay-legged, forehead resting on the backs of her knuckles, trying to breathe. Trying to fucking live.

“Jesus Christ, woman.” She could hear him getting his britches back together. Gathering notebook and pencil. Dice. “Shoulda had that pussy back on the truck.”

She made a face at the divider. Eyes skimmed away from the woman in the next cell, who was staring up at her, aghast. There was no looking at him.

“You gonna take that message, or not?”

“Yeah, I’ll take it,” he said. “Shit. I keep my word. Your asshole’s still puckered tight, ain’t it?”

“Fuck you.”

He chuckled behind her. “Done did,” he said. She heard the clack of a latch, metal on metal. “Best of luck, Gambler.”

If there had been something to throw, she would have. The door swung shut behind him.

Down the row, Wayland was entering another cell. She curled her lip and shoved herself away from the divider. Flopped down on the mattress and had her back to it all before she could see whether August made any more offers of his own. Dull noises suggested at least one of the traitors did.

Just like that.

She pulled the blanket over her head. Fogged the small space inside with her breath.

Just like that you bet every last hole you have. What are you now?

But what was one more? One more in a sea of eager pricks, for even the tiniest chance the double-crosser would make good on his word and take her message where she wanted?

It didn’t matter. Only a small disruption. Routines and priests and service stretched out ahead of her. Forever.

Buckeye closed her eyes.

* * *

It was the first time she’d felt clothes on her skin since they’d stripped her out of shirt and britches that first day in Virtue. And these weren’t her old VT clothes. This wasn’t her cell, either. Buckeye gaped, clueless, while people moved around her and fussed.

They’d come for her some handful of days after the troubling appearance of August. Just her. No one else.

For a minute, she thought the guards were herding her to the baptistery again. This time, however, they took a circuitous series of stairs and corridors until they’d brought her to some other part of the cathedral. It was still above ground. There had still been windows along the way, and the quality of light told Buckeye it was somewhere near sunset.

The room she stood in now was called a vestry. She’d learned the word from the guards on her way to the stairs in the crypt. ‘They can work on her in the vestry’, the one had said to the other.

‘They’ were women. The only examples she’d seen since her arrival who weren’t Vicers, and weren’t naked. She stared at a wooden cross that hung over one of two doors to the small room, as the two Covvie women adjusted and fluffed, busy as bees.

They wore skirts that came to the floor, and blouses with long sleeves, black like the priests, but she didn’t think they were any sort of clergy themselves. They murmured to each other over this tweak or that. Buckeye had given up asking them questions; whenever she did, they’d demur and look at the ground.

Her nerves jangled and twitched. The routine was broken. No one would tell her anything, but she no longer fought. The time for that was long past.

A mirror was there, in this room she’d determined was for priests to dress for a service. Buckeye watched the women strip away her cocoon of impersonal nudity to reveal a garish, foreign butterfly.

The clothes they’d pulled and stretched onto her body were like some pre-Delineation caricature of promiscuity. Glossy material stretched over her ass in a short, tight skirt. Stockings with honest-to-god garters ran up her legs from under the hem. The top half was the opposite of what the women wore who dressed her: straps instead of sleeves, breasts cupped high and together on a shelf of a brassiere for display. She teetered on heels that only belonged in a house of Vanity back in the The Vice.

The woman behind her was arranging Buckeye’s hair into curls. Her partner focused on Buckeye’s mouth, staining her lips red with a tiny brush. The person taking shape in the mirror was an uncanny doll version of herself. A doll meant for one purpose, but none of the priests had ever asked for anything like this before today.

When the door behind her opened, she jumped. The woman with the brush clucked her tongue, and moved her thumb to clear away a stray smear of paint.

The guards had returned. One of them had something soft clutched in a fist.

“Ten minutes,” he said, stepping behind Buckeye to shoo the other woman to the side. His left arm came around her waist; the right rose to cover her mouth with fabric. Mint rose in her nostrils. Her eyes went wide.

What? Why?

The other guard stood, arms crossed, in front of the back door. She could see him in the mirror, even as she tried not to jerk away from inhaling The Song. There was always the baton, always a worse alternative.

It had been weeks. Hadn’t she obeyed them every time? Surrendered in every way they’d asked?

“Why?” she blurted when the rag came away. It was the only time Buckeye could remember having questioned a guard.

“Insurance,” said the man in grey. And then to the women: “Finish up.”

The one with the lip brush made a face at the mussed cosmetic. “I’ll have to do this all over.”

“Then do it,” said the guard. “Now.”

The Covvie women moved in on her again with a will. In a few short breaths, Buckeye swayed in place and had to sit.

Christ, how much did they give me?

The first buzz woke between her thighs. She lost sight of the women, eyes tracking the subtle movements of the men. Shifts of muscle under their shirts. The dip of an Adam’s apple, the flex of a jaw.

It was too hot in the little room. Her lips parted. The women powdered and curled, but Buckeye imagined guards’ fingers leaving their batons to take down the straps of her too-tight shirt, to shuck down the stockings and cool her with wet, lapping tongues.

The opposite door creaked open and her attention shifted like she was underwater. Two cassocked priests entered, crowding the room to claustrophobic. One was Brother Raymond, and another she remembered as Aaron. They could help her. Help her get these clothes off. They and the guards all coul—

“Good timing,” said the guard in the back. “She’s about to come unglued.”

Like the envelopes in her truck.

Her mouth curled into an unhinged smile. Raymond looked at her like he wanted to clear the room and smear the red paint back to her ear. She squeezed her new cleavage in his direction.

The women stepped back and the priests moved in to haul her up by the arms. She melted between them, ankles unsteady, but more than happy to lean on bodies she knew all too well by now.

They were walking her back through some of the same hallways. The path looked familiar, and Buckeye cooed, The Song rushing in her veins. “May I serve you today, Brothers?”

A muffled voice grew louder as they approached another door.

“You’ll serve our Father,” said Raymond. “Shh.” His words were gentle, and Buckeye simmered. They moved her through the door and into a space she knew, albeit with much less light.

Here was the back of the altar. The water in the baptistery lay still as glass. Mather stood in the pulpit, a thousand eyes fixed on him from pews reaching back and back.

Buckeye stumbled and the priests caught her. The entire congregation turned to the sound. Watched, mesmerized, as the men brought her to the center of the wide crossing that passed in front of the altar. They released her arms and stepped away to the side, out of the light.

She stood there, dumb, weaving on her feet, The Song hovering, ready to crash in like a wave.

And then Mather spoke again.

Buckeye almost fell.

“And this, my faithful, is the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.” His voice carried out over the nave. Over the heads of rapt Covvie worshipers. Straight between Buckeye’s legs. “This is what sin looks like. What the Territories make of a person; the Serpent making promises.”

Arousal seeped from her lips to dampen the underthings the women had hidden under her skirt. She hated Elijah Mather. Needed him.

God, it’s fucking hot up here.

“Though it may cause feelings of shame,” the head priest went on, “I ask you to look at this woman. Her modesty is gone. Burned out.”

She sank to her knees, panting. Lifted her hair off her neck with a forearm. The lights were in her eyes, but she could feel the attention of the crowd.

“Look at the way she chooses to display her body.”

That voice, oh god.

Her knees slid apart. Eyes closed.

“Look at her behavior, even in a House of the Lord.”

It was goddamn propaganda. That’s what this was. That’s what she was.

She wanted to wail, but her pussy throbbed. Her hand left the back of her neck and slid to the hem of her skirt. Fingers slipped over her crotch, so many eyes, appalled. Buckeye exhaled. Tilted her hips.

“This is what their houses of Sin make of people. Do you see? They cannot help themselves when the demons of Hell whisper in their ears. They become mindless. Whores.”

The last word vibrated down her spine like a tuning fork. Buckeye purred and rolled to her hands and knees, her entire focus on the priest.

“Father.”

The word came out throaty and lurid. The slightest flinch came at the corners of Mather’s eyes, but the congregation was too far away to see it. They were not too far to hear her, though, and a murmur rippled back through the pews. Buckeye began to crawl toward the pulpit.

“The excitement of sin can be a lure,” he went on. “I do not doubt some among us even now have stolen their way past the wall. Traveled west in secret, the search for rumors leading them on.”

If she could get to the hem of his cassock. Lay a hand on his shoe, his ankle … The smooth stone under her knees brought to mind all the cocks she’d sucked. Some right here in this room.

I knew you’d be the one.

Mather’s.

“But the truth is here!” He extended a flat palm in her direction. She wanted to lick between the fingers. “This is The Vice. This is what it makes of people. For the sake of your own salvation, be strong. Temptation is an easy path, but those who put their faith in the Lord will not stumble.”

Buckeye was nearly at his feet. She wet her lips with her tongue. Arched her back. Her eyes glittered in the fever of want.

“Elijah.”

When she said his given name, the congregation gasped.

“I need you.” The words were a ragged breath. “Please.”

The priests were hauling her back before her fingers could close on his robes. Her hips rolled, so close to their goal, even as Mather ignored her and continued to terrify the people of New Covenant with his manicured example of debauchery. One of her shoes slid off and lay abandoned on the floor, another broken truth for the believers.

She was squirming like a cat in heat by the time the Brothers returned her to the vestry. The moment they let her loose, Buckeye’s fingers slipped under the skirt. Her head fell back.

Oh god, right now. Yes.

Raymond made a noise of frustration. “He warned us,” the priest said to his partner.

Hands were gathering her arms away, pairing them behind her back. Her eyes came open and she whined, grinding into nothing while Raymond pulled her against his chest. Leaned against the room’s single table and held her close.

“Shh, don’t,” he said at her ear. “Just wait.”

Aaron stood by, looking like a bundle of nerves. Raymond could admonish her to wait all he wanted; hard evidence that he was having his own problems bruised between her cheeks. Buckeye pushed back, shameless, begging to the purple rhythm of The Song.

“You have to calm down,” he said. “We can’t.” But he was shifting his grip on her wrists to a single hand. The other rose to squeeze a breast, to slip two fingers into her mouth. She sucked, greedy, egging him on.

Brother Aaron watched, breathing through his mouth from a few feet away, his erection obvious through his cassock. “How much did they give her?” he said. “Christ.”

“Blasphemy,” Raymond warned, nuzzling her throat.

“Forgive me, Brother.”

The door opened. So did her eyes.

“Get out,” said Mather.

“Yes, Father,” the priests responded in unison.

Raymond untangled himself and Aaron followed his peer out the opposite door, embarrassment coloring their faces.

Buckeye stood, feverish, weight on the shoeless foot, as the highest priest in New Covenant stripped off his shawl and cast it aside over the single chair.

He stepped forward and instinct made her retreat, even when her pussy screamed for the opposite. The edge of the table bumped her cheeks, but Mather came on, crowding her.

His legs tangled with hers. Blue-grey eyes looked down, apathy burned away with lust. His palm rose to the side of her face again, the same as when she’d taken him in her mouth. In some drunken move that made no sense, she slid her arms around his waist. His face tilted down, intimate, as though they might kiss.

“Obedience without question …” he whispered, eyes on her mouth.

She wet her lips. Finished it for him. “… is rewarded.”

He spun her by the shoulders. Splayed a hand on her back. Pushed.

The side of Buckeye’s face kissed the tabletop. Its edge bent her in half at the hips, the joke of a skirt creeping up over her ass. Her breath came quick when she heard the gathering of fabric. The metal warning of a buckle.

Hands tugged down the flimsy underthings. Trousers lay along the backs of her thighs. He settled over her at the waist, fingers smearing into arousal, painting a wet line up between her cheeks. Slicking her other tight hole.

No.

But the hard was cock already in his fist, bumping and aiming after all this time.

“Father!” The protest bubbled up, even through the drug.

Nested at that pink knot of resistance, inevitable, Elijah bent the rest of the way over Buckeye, his weight the price of service on her back.

“You are the perfect servant.”

He pushed inside, closing the circle of damnation.

Buckeye squealed. The burning organ worked up into her bowels, dilating her stubborn ring to its limit, all at once. Her palms tried to wedge under her shoulders, to shove herself up and away, but Mather bottomed out with a grunt, laminating her to the table.

Her body went to war with itself. Even as her legs kicked out like a frog’s, a primitive scrabble to flee pain, her ass lifted to the cup of his hips. The Song made her reckless. She humped against the sear of his cock, loathing and needing at once. Her fingers clawed at the glossy wood, sounds she didn’t recognize coming out of her own throat.

Mather hissed and found her hands. Pinned her wrists above her head.

He began to sodomize her.

A fractured hymn of little cries blistered out over the tabletop, and one of the garters snapped loose against the back of her thigh. The Voice of New Covenant burrowed inside her rectum. Dragged himself out. Rooted again.

Again.

Her mouth was open now, but no more sound came. Only the priest’s breathing at the base of her neck. A part of her drifted free, the pain roaring below her tailbone, somewhere distant and hazy.

Why? Why this? Mather thought he could be better than the rest of the clergy? Some weird idea of chastity?

Or did he just want to see her like this? Degraded like he imagined all VT ‘sinners’. Hurting.

The Song didn’t care.

It knew desperation. Knew where it could find cock. Right at the core of suffering.

Buckeye pushed back, and a new, ragged noise abraded the back of her tongue.

No, don’t!

Mather groaned. Humped. She squeezed around bobbing girth, nerves a crackling hysteria. The drugs in her veins demanded the thing she wanted least in all the world.

She tilted her hips like a whore.

NO!

A voice that was hardly her own came through the crook of her elbow. “Will you do penance, Father? Like the others?”

“Yesss.” He was sheathing, pulling out. Burying himself again, the table bruising her bones as he ground her into it.

Could the Song wear off on someone else?

Her eyes rolled back when he began mumbling in Latin. The syllables came like an ancient stream, overflowing her cup. Between her cheeks, violent, male need destroyed everything that remained of the gambler from The Vice.

Elijah Mather held her. Spread her and fucked her, hidden away in his own cathedral. With every jerk of hips, every blue-white flash of revelation, Buckeye responded in the only litany she knew.

“Thank you, Father.”

“… et dimitte nobis debita …”

“Thank you. Father.”

“… ne nos inducas in tentationem …”

“Father.”

“… libera nos a malo …”

“Father!”

She gave and gave.

Come on Bucky.

A sinner in Virtue.

Let’s get Lucky.

The perfect servant.

There was no going home.

Not ever.