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“You really shouldn’t have run away like that, Sweetheart.” Smelling salts burned the hairs in Rook’s nose, fighting off the Bliss that still coursed through her veins. Her vision swam, but she could make out the familiar surroundings of John’s bunker. He had caught her.
The devil in question circled around into her field of view, his baby blues piercing through the fog of her mind. “I’m working so hard to heal you, to save you, but you keep resisting. You shouldn’t be so ungrateful, not when I’m doing everything for you.” His hands cupped her face on either side and she could see that he genuinely believed his words. Something was seriously unhinged in the man. Rook tried to flinch away but, unsurprisingly, she was strapped to the table again.
“I don’t need anything from you. Just fucking let me go.” Rasping pleas burned her dry throat; she must have been out for a day or so. She had been so close to getting out of Holland Valley, but it seemed that Hope County wasn't going to let her go. It had picked her right back up and thrown her right back in. “Please, let me go.” Tears started to bubble up at the corners of her eyes.
John shushed her, brushing away her tears with his thumb. “Let you go where? This is your home, where you belong, with me.” Hands dropped from her face to smooth over her bare skin, bringing the realization to her blissed mind that she was completely bare. His touch traced down the valley between her breasts, past his inscribed condemnation, his eyes following their movement, unblinking. The intensity of his stare sent unwelcome warmth down her spine to pool between her thighs. “I guess you just need a better reminder.”
Fingers brushed gently over the soft hair on her stomach before lifting away. John turned to his workbench, unseen from his subject. “Your sin will serve as my inspiration.”
“My sin?” She choked out.
“Disobedience,” his mouth suddenly at her ear. “You have a place where you are expected to be.” Lips and teeth tugged at her earlobe, moaning against her, like a small taste of her were enough to drive him wild. The hand that reached around her ribcage was damp, pressing firmly into her skin before disappearing again. Craning her neck, she glimpsed to see a dark smudge where her captor’s hand had been. He was gone again, back at his workbench. Latex gloves snapped against his skin out of sight. “From now on, Dear Deputy, you’ll be close enough that I can care for you at any time.” A distinctive small clatter of metal-on-metal signaled that John had selected his teaching implements, placing them on the small tray table at her side. Her arms were shifted and restrained above her head, the bliss in her system keeping her from struggling.
“Fuck you, Seed.”
His response was to press a gentle kiss to her cheek. “Soon, Sweetheart. But first,” the chosen instrument, a small scalpel, glinted in the fluorescent lights of the bunker as he waved it in front of her. With her new position, she couldn’t move her head to track the blade out of view, but she could feel John hovering over the location of the smudge. “Let me hear your confession.”
The scalpel slipped along her rib cage, painful enough to steal the air from her lungs, but not enough to make her cry for it. Rook could feel him carefully tracing the blade across her sensitive ribs, the warm sting of an open incision following his movements. After a few moments, the shallow cuts became hypnotizing instead of painful, her eyelids already heavy from the Bliss. “Don’t get too comfortable on me, Dear.” His soft chuckle was an echo as fireflies twinkled behind her eyelids. John must have been drawing with the surgical blade, changing the scalpel a few times, for almost an hour, all the while humming American standards. Her drugged mind almost started humming along as he started a rendition of “It Had to Be You”--Vera Lynn’s presence never left him--when he finally stopped the dance across her skin.
“I wandered around and finally found the somebody who could make me be true.”
The sound that clawed out of her throat couldn’t be described as a scream. It was so much more than that. Her body writhed atop the cold metal table as her shrieking howl plowed through the still air of the bunker. The feeling of a large chunk of her skin being pulled away was unlike anything she had experienced before.
“Shh love. It’s okay. You can take it.” He never stopped pulling at her flesh even as he gently hushed her. Sensitive nerve endings in the thin skin of her rib cage ripped open as the fibers of subcutaneous tissue were pulled away. Indecipherable pleas and confessions tumbled from her lips as he started peeling a large chunk from another section of her skin. The pain pushed away any fog from the remaining Bliss.
“And even be glad, just to be sad, thinking of you.”
The Deputy made promise after promise to her captor, begging for him to stop: she wouldn’t run away again; she would atone; she would love him; she would let him do anything he wanted.
“Sweetheart, you can’t make this pain stop. You need to embrace it. Endure it. This pain will set you free.”
“Please stop, John. Please” Her words came out exhausted and hoarse, her tears long gone, as he hushed her again and continued his tune.
“ For nobody else, gave me a thrill. Despite all your faults, I love you still.”
Finally, the scalpel and tweezers were set aside. Rook’s chest heaved against her restraints, waiting for him to release her. Instead, John exhibited the spoils of his work. Cradling the bloody strips of raw flesh in his hand, he brought them close to her face, making her retch.
“It had to be you, wonderful you. It had to be you.”
He said nothing, just giving her a beaming smile before he danced out of sight and went back to his tools. The sound of a staple gun firing into wood informed her that the strips now decorated the wooden backboard of his workbench. She wondered whether he arranged them in the same pattern as they fell on her skin.
“It had to be you, sweetheart. You’re just so perfect.” Drawers slid out and in on their rollers as John collected supplies. A satisfied “ah” hit Rook’s ears as his footsteps quickly clipped back near her. “Take a look.” He leaned over the table, pressing his cheek against hers as he made sure the small handheld mirror properly reflected his new masterpiece into her eyes. “What do you think of your mark, dear?”
A handprint.
John’s handprint was etched into her skin. Permanently.
Tiny droplets of blood pricked along the freshly exposed flesh intermingled with clear lymph where soft peach skin had previously laid. “What have you done?” Tears she thought had dried up began to pour out of her again.
Another soft kiss grazed her cheek as he pulled away from her. “I want you to know that I will always be with you. I’ll always be here for you. We’ll walk through Eden’s Gate together.” Antiseptic stung the exposed flesh, then he started dabbing ointment on to her skin before covering it with plastic cling film and medical tape. “You have endured your pain so well, love. You still have much to confess to, and more atonement is required, but I believe you deserve a reward.” Unbuckling the restraints, he pulled her close, ignoring her initial squirms. John rained kisses on her head, into her hair, across her temple and her face, rubbing circles along her back.
When Rook stopped her half-hearted resistance, he gently laid her back on the table, taking care to cradle her head on its decent. His thin lips meandered across her body, his hands gently massaging her skin, staying clear of her injury. Her nipples kept most of his attention. John swirled his tongue around them, coaxing moans and contented sighs from her sob-ravaged throat. After so much pain and defeat, she needed to feel some form of love she understood.
“The Father said that you were meant to be a part of our family. You were meant to be a part of my family.” Licks and delicate nips peppered her inner thighs as he slowly brought his mouth down between her thighs. “Let me show you the kind of love I can give you, constantly, when you say yes .”
John’s silver tongue slipped along her folds, teasing at her entrance. Wet licks and kisses made her eyes roll back, and her hands weave into his dark brown hair, the rebel in her messing up his perfectly coiffed tresses. John loved the sound of his own voice, and if Rook was being honest, she did too, as he showered her with praise.
“You taste so sweet, Love.”
“You’re so perfect.”
“I could do this every morning, noon, and night.”
His attention had her squirming, almost forgetting the pain that radiated from her side. For every way that he had marked her--bites, ink, scars--the clearest indication that he owned her body was how well he knew it. He slipped a finger inside, massaging the place that made her toes curl. “You like that, don’t you?” The pale cornflower of his eyes traveled across the plains of her torso to meet her own, genuine and needy. John Seed, seen by all as a sociopath, was truly and deeply desperate for her approval. And she couldn’t deny him anymore
“Yes.”
A light flickered from within as he returned his tongue to her clit, spurred on by his success. “Say it again, Sweetheart,” his tenor came up from between her thighs. And she responded as he wished, murmuring as his tongue lapped up every drop that escaped her, plunging another finger in. Soon, she was keening, her climax the only objective of the hyperfocused Seed brother.
“That’s right, love. Come for me.”
Yet again, she couldn’t deny him. Her body shivered, thighs squeezing against him as every nerve ending in her body sparked. John continued the push and pull of his fingers, coaxing as much pleasure as he could from her. “So good for me, Deputy.” His motions inside her eased for a moment, but then his mouth returned, insistent on making her crest again.
Oversensitive, she whimpered, hips bucking and attempting to inch away, but his hand kept a bruising grip on her hips, scooping her up even closer. “No, Sweetheart,” his words vibrated against her core, “let me give you more. Let me hear that beautiful voice.”
She responded with his favorite phrase on loop, plummeting into the sensations he gave her. Withdrawing his fingers, he wrapped both of his arms around her thighs, yanking her to the very end of the table, as he buried his mouth into her center. He devoured her until she quaked around him, releasing again. His lips glistened when he finally came up for air, her slick dribbling down into his dark beard. “You sing so well for me, I should record us so the whole county can appreciate it.”
John flipped her onto her stomach and pulled her down to dangle off the table. Before she had time to process the change in position, he was thrusting into her to the hilt. His pace was unforgiving, the sound of skin slapping against skin only matched by the rattle of the metal surface rocking on its bolts. “You take me so well. You were made for me.” Soft fingertips traced up and down her back, along the sins that had previously been etched there, a perfect contrast to the vice grip on her hip.
“Fuck,” she couldn’t help swearing as he hit her g-spot over and over like a sledgehammer. Only when she was underneath him did he let her indulge in profanity without comment. When he was inside her, it was no longer a swear, but a blessing.
“Do you believe it now? That you belong to me?” He leaned over to bury his face into her neck, as his touch skimmed down her sides. When his hand was superimposed over the fresh wound, he pressed in, pushing the air from her lungs. Venom radiated from where his hand stung the bandage into raw tissue. Her overstimulated nerve-endings forced sounds from her lips, but the intensity couldn’t be described, so there were no words. “You’ll never forget that you belong to me now. You’re mine .” John’s voice cracked against her, almost inaudible beneath her screams. He stated his claim again and again, rabid with possessiveness. The pain made her squeeze tighter around him than she could have naturally, and soon he spilled into her.
After a few slow rolls of his hips, John pulled out of her and readjusted his clothes. She could feel him--the Seed’s seed--running down her thigh. Rook didn’t move, she couldn’t. Just breathing took all of her focus. She could hear him move around the room, the sound of rustling cabinets and running water. Soon, a glass of water and paper cup were placed on the table by her face. “Take some antibiotics. Don’t want it getting infected.”
Rook lifted her chin as far as she could to watch him, completely lost to the machinations of the man beside her. An inked hand patted her head, soothing over her disheveled locks. “Don’t worry, Deputy. I’m not leaving just yet. I’ll always be with you.”