Bodhi Read online

  “Again…?” Rick moaned.

  “Eat,” she demanded, eyeing Rick’s plate.

  “Yeah, whatever,” Bryson grumbled, hand on the doorknob.

  “Hey!” she yelled after him.

  “What?” he sneered.

  She’d let that go. Her guilt would let his attitude go.

  She’d only gone to Bodhi two more times since the observation night. Twice. But kids always magnified any supposed parental misstep under a microscope to gain what they thought was leverage.

  And besides, Audrey had intended to visit only during the weekends Dell had the boys, but the pull to be humiliated and abused was only getting stronger. Now she was asking her dad to stay so she could go more often. In just a few short weeks, she’d felt herself slowly slipping from this life and gravitating toward a new one. And she felt powerless to stop it.

  “I love you, baby.”

  “I love you too,” Bryson said on a sigh and then walked out the door.

  She ruffled Rick’s hair and stood.

  “Where’s your breakfast, Mommy?”

  Sweet little Ricki. He noticed things no one else did. He needn’t have worried. She would run through the drive-thru after she dropped him at school, shove disgusting, greasy food into her mouth, and then stand on her feet all day and count other people’s teeth. It would only be a few hours until she could kneel at his feet. Hours until she might be shared and then broken … until she could scrub off the mask of civil obedience and walk into the kingdom of civil disobedience. It was a beautiful order. Submission made everything right. It gave her peace amidst chaos. Helped her not be afraid of what she couldn’t control.

  “Mommy…”

  “Hmmm?” Audrey said and then held up a piece of paper. “What’s this, baby?” She’d managed to read a few lines while daydreaming.

  “I wrote it,” Rick replied. “Why don’t we have a Bible? Why do you send me to Catholic school when we don’t have a Bible?”

  “I can tell you wrote this,” Audrey said with pride and a pat on her son’s wrist. “And we do have one,” she continued, although she wasn’t sure.

  She proceeded to silently read the essay her nine-year-old son had written about a woman who’d bled. A woman who’d been in constant pain for twelve years. Physicians had failed to stop it. This woman had dared to touch the Lord — because the Law stipulated people who bled should remain quarantined — in a crowd of people. And she’d only touched the edge of his cloak, an extension of him, a place where his energy still traveled — and her bleeding ceased in an instant.

  The tale sounded familiar — a Sunday-school story she’d perhaps heard.

  The word blood grabbed her attention. The need and desire the woman had to be clean and no longer suffer riveted her. The love Christ showed her, the honor he assigned her, all had Audrey fighting tears of empathy.

  “Women were demeaned back then,” Rick said.

  Audrey gathered her wits. “Demeaned, huh?”

  “Yeah, not treated right.”

  “What do you think is right, Ricki?”

  “Mom…”

  “Sorry, baby. Rick…”

  “You know, they couldn’t speak out or have a say. It took courage for the woman to be in that crowd when she wasn’t even supposed to be around.”

  “She should’ve been ashamed of her blood?”

  He shrugged. “Something, yeah. How do you think he knew the power went out of him?”

  “What?”

  “The scripture says the crowd was pressing all around him but that he knew who’d touched him. Jesus felt the power go out of him.”

  Audrey smiled, eyes blurring because of the damn tears. “Imagine Jesus is Superman. Imagine the touch of the woman was like a green finger of kryptonite.”

  Rick’s eyes became as wide as shields.

  Audrey nodded. “We’re all energy, Ricki. Bits of matter. Jesus had to give up some of his own power to a woman, and he could feel it leave him. It was something so strong leaving his body and transferring to hers that he knew it in his bones, just the way Superman would know if kryptonite touched him.”

  Audrey paused and gazed at her son. One day, he would become a man and need to find his way in this crazy, beautiful world. “He gave of his energy … and it healed her.”

  “Why are you crying, Mommy?” Rick tilted his head, looking both puzzled and fascinated. “It’s just a story.”

  She cupped his chin. “Nothing is just a story, baby. This is all life.”

  All we had. All we were given.

  She didn’t know if she believed in an afterlife. But she wanted to. Maybe that was why she’d sent both boys to Catholic school. If her children had hope, then perhaps their faith alone might be enough to carry her doubts, and then she could live with them on the other side of the rainbow … forever.

  7

  “No,” she said, or had she only mouthed the word? At this point, she didn’t know. But she was certain she felt her lips move.

  He’d tortured her for what felt like hours — her body upright and chest facing the X of the cross, arms and legs beginning to go numb. She couldn’t feel her hands or feet. And still, he played, seeming to desire bringing her to a new brink.

  “No,” she repeated this time aloud.

  “No?”

  “No, sir.”

  He continued to press two fingers into her tight hole. He fingered it, seeming not to worry about her comfort — which she thought was a royal mindfuck — and then he inserted a third digit after he unzipped his pants. Stretching her open, he finished whatever the butt plug he’d inserted and since removed may have failed to accomplish.

  “No,” she whispered, tears falling down her cheeks.

  Gripping her dirty-blonde locks until her forehead faced the dark ceiling, he pumped his fingers inside her tight ring of muscle. Audrey was aware enough to realize Gavin knew she liked the pain despite her protests and tears. It hadn’t been the first time he’d shoved his fingers inside that hole, but the minute the tip of his dick touched her there, she froze … then glanced around the room — something he’d already taught her not to do. Every fucking eye was on her — her hole, her face, her tears.

  “It’s only us. Feel me.” He slid in, probably only an inch, and she felt like she tore.

  “No,” she pleaded.

  He’d often reserved touching her there during the throes of passion or right before or after an orgasm. They’d barely discussed anal — other than her saying she’d never been able to take a man that way. Gavin would ask her questions. Audrey made polite replies. Today had been the first time he’d asked her to wear a plug.

  “Fuck … you’re still so tight.”

  “No,” she cried.

  Each no, although hushed and not meant for the audience, became more frantic. Her face hurt from crying and pleading in the same way it could ache from rolls of laughter.

  “‘No’ what?” he asked through gritted teeth.

  “No, sir,” she said under her breath. “Not here. Please. Not here.”

  Nothing about this scene was refined, yet it had grace. She knew what that did to him. She wanted to please him.

  “Yes, here,” he said, inching his way into her ass slower than he had ever entered her cunt.

  But still the movement, the centimeters he gained, felt like miles. It was difficult to control her reactions and her breath. She could only choke out her faux refusal, her awkwardness, as he pressed his chest to her naked back.

  “Here,” he hissed, his words oblivious to the entire room. “I will take your virgin little asshole. I own you here, and I’ll fuck you any way I please. Stop being afraid of the pain and trust me to take care of you.”

  Each word caressed her ear and soul, sounding like lyrics to a favorite song — a quiet melody no one but the two of them could hear. Audrey and Gavin were the stars of a show.

  And she knew he needed the show.

  He needed to have this ultimate humiliation followe
d by redemption displayed for all to see. She wouldn’t deny him. This was what she wanted as well: to be pushed outside her comfort zone. She wanted to tear down every wall she’d ever erected. Strike them with a wrecking ball.

  Still, the tears flowed.

  The sobbing coursed through her entire body. She could feel the emotion in her pussy, her veins, through her legs, like the first taste of a strong shot of alcohol.

  And then it became a high.

  And she would ride it all the way to the end.

  She would bleed for him.

  “Push back into me, Audrey.” He moved slowly, gaining more centimeters. “Squeeze me. Milk me. Good girl. Now open your mouth for me,” he said, then put a thin wooden paddle in it — his favorite, the one he’d thoroughly beaten her with prior to fingering her asshole.

  “Bite this and bear down.”

  She obeyed as he filled her with about as much girth as she thought she could take. She hoped it was all of him. She wanted to please him. Her body gave way, sagging, but he held her hips, and the binds kept her weight. He wasn’t thrusting … not yet.

  She cried, whimpered, wished to cover her nudity, and then she relaxed into the vulnerability — the purity of the moment.

  She was clean.

  Gavin was inside the dirtiest of places, and she was clean.

  Free.

  She had no shame.

  Nothing to hide.

  She bucked against him and sniffled. Stopped crying.

  As he began to reach around and rub her clit, she heard him release a fantastic sigh.

  “Hurt for me, baby girl,” he whispered. As he massaged her into a frenzy, she bucked against him again and again. “Hurt for me.”

  “Mmm…” She nodded, and he removed the paddle from her mouth. “Please.”

  “Ask me to fuck you.”

  “Fuck me, sir. Fuck my ass. Please. I’m yours.”

  The beast within him charged, raged. The buckles about her wrists and ankles rattled, her skin slapping the wood as he fucked the virginity from her tight hole, as he spread her cheeks open and whispered to her over and over…

  “You’re beautiful. You’re the one. Your ass is mine. Your holes are so beautiful. Mine to fill. To share. Mine…”

  She could hear the tears in his eyes, feel them against her skin.

  “I wish you could see what I see. I wish you could feel how tight you are around me. I want you to know the power you have over me.”

  And with those final words of truth, meant only for her and heard only by her, he became quiet. His chest shook against her backside as he nailed her to that cross and sacrificed her virginity to God and the room.

  And as he came inside her, filling her with his warmth, she only came … down.

  After releasing her from the cuffs, he picked her up and held her in his arms, the same way he had the first time he’d bound her to the very same cross. Except now, his seed spilled from her asshole. Now … every part of her body belonged to every part of him.

  Nothing was hidden.

  Eyelids heavy, limbs numb, she couldn’t speak or even sigh. He carried her somewhere — her eyes closing and opening, her mind too drugged to see — through doors, past items and things, into a bathroom where he showed her specks of fresh blood on the tips of his fingers. He spread her open and licked it from her hole, cleaned her with his tongue, and then he bathed her, caring for her the way a parent does a small child.

  All the while, she remained silent, limbs shaking, a baby girl in his charge. And until the trauma and shock — the subspace? — had passed, she wouldn’t speak.

  She’d only submit.

  She knew she would do anything he asked.

  Suck another. Fuck another. Play with herself in front of whomever he chose. Have her asshole torn open for show. She’d become what she’d dreamed of not so long ago...

  A diamond shining through mud. Sunlight breaking over the horizon.

  There was no going back now.

  She’d stepped into the shadows to find the light.

  8

  Audrey blinked.

  There were no windows in this room, and not having the sun to provide assistance as to the time was disconcerting. But there were many other things in here: pictures and books, items which told her this place was lived in and not just decorated — objects that made it feel like home and not a hotel suite.

  Did Gavin live here in this tiny, windowless, homey space?

  She heard water running. Light shone from underneath a door. God, she was sore. Gavin had cared for her last night. Or was it still tonight? Where the fuck was her phone? He’d bathed and oiled and massaged her. He’d spent a long time kissing her as she soaked in bubbles. The man could kiss as well as he could beat and burn and fuck. Maybe even better.

  He was a little bit of everything.

  But then he wasn’t either, was he?

  They weren’t exactly dating. They’d covered that. He was here. And she was somewhere else … on the outside. There was danger in this kind of thinking. She would ignore the consequences of what might come from overthinking or from not thinking things through at all … and instead follow instinct.

  Right now, she followed light.

  Stepping out of the king-sized bed, she made her way naked and bruised and deliciously sore — her asshole reminding her what had been taken from her and what had been given to her — to the bathroom, where she gently pushed open the door.

  Gavin stood over the sink, wearing his traditional jeans and a short-sleeved tee. But he was barefoot, holding a razor, and he had a gleam in his starry eyes — a luminosity that seemed custom-made for her.

  “Do you know the story of Hannah?” Gavin’s eyes remained fixed to Audrey’s gaze.

  Sometimes his stare, the way he wielded and honed it, made her feel more than naked.

  She swallowed. “Who’s Hannah?”

  “You reminded me of a scripture earlier tonight.” He applied shaving cream to his scalp.

  So, it was still evening. Her days and nights were getting mixed up and crossed. Darkness and light.

  “This is your room? I mean, you sleep here too?”

  “Come here, Audrey.”

  She stepped inside the modest bathroom. It was warm and still a little steamy, and it smelled like the shower and whatever Gavin used for shampoo.

  “Closer, baby girl. I want you to shave me.”

  “What?” She shook her head and felt her cheeks heat. “I can’t. I might cut you.”

  He pressed his palms against the countertop, dropped his chin, and stared at the sink full of water. “You’ve already sheared me.” He looked up, peered into her eyes, and placed the razor in her hand. “I trust you … and I will guide you. It’s not difficult.”

  Her eyes closed, then opened. Everything with him sometimes felt like slo-mo. His arms were so close, threatening to tear his shirt to shreds with a sudden movement. His leather and cedar permeated her nose. Her flesh broke out in goose pimples as her nipples turned to stone.

  “Concentrate. You’ll shave me, and I’ll tell you a story. Start with the sides. Top to bottom. Go ahead.”

  “Gavin,” she whispered with a smile.

  Taking her hand, he placed it where he wanted her to begin. “Care for me as you do yourself.”

  Their eyes met and locked for several heartbeats, seconds in which she couldn’t breathe properly. Caring for herself had become something she did last, not foremost. He could surely see things in her gaze: hesitation and insecurities. He’d seen them the day he’d fed her the potato soup.

  “Top to bottom.” He dragged her palm with his toward his ear. “Good girl.”

  Her hand seemed to trip on the compliment, and he caught it and smiled. “I trust you, Audrey. Now listen to me.

  “Hannah was a woman who hadn’t a single child. And she desperately wanted one.”

  “I don’t know why.” Audrey smiled and shook the razor out in the sink full of hot water.

&
nbsp; “Her husband’s other wife had them, and she ridiculed Hannah for being barren. She wanted a child so much she took to praying in the house of the Lord. And one day, Eli the priest observed her and thought she was drunk.”

  “Why?”

  “Because sometimes we believe what we see or what we think we see, Audrey. Not what’s true. Now finish me, and I’ll finish too.”

  His next words, though, sounded like a recital direct from the Bible.

  “Hannah was praying in her heart, and her lips were moving but her voice was not heard. Eli thought she was drunk and said to her, ‘How long are you going to stay drunk? Put away your wine.’

  “‘Not so, my lord,’ Hannah replied, ‘I am a woman who is deeply troubled. I have not been drinking wine or beer; I was pouring out my soul to the Lord. Do not take your servant for a wicked woman; I have been praying here out of my great anguish and grief.’”

  The task complete, Audrey placed the razor next to the sink while Gavin’s eyes combed her skin, crawling around, trying to get in. But she wouldn’t look at him or let him go any deeper.

  “What do you think those people saw earlier when you said no? When you begged me to stop? What if an outsider had witnessed our scene? What would they have thought? Many of us here know what it feels like to be considered ‘wicked.’”

  “Sir…”

  “Your lips moved earlier tonight, baby girl.” He ran the pad of his thumb along them, then he planted several kisses on her cheeks, forehead, and jawline. “Without sound. Were you praying to God for relief? Does anyone else know the words in your heart?”

  “Gavin…” Her eyes started to water. “I don’t pray.” She glanced away, and he wiped her tears before they fell.

  “Every time you come to me, it’s an act of faith. God answered Hannah’s prayer, and she said she was given a child ‘because I asked the LORD for him.’ No one else knows what’s inside you but you and Him.”

  “You know what’s in me.” Her throat felt raw, and her stomach ached. “You see me.”

  “Come on, baby girl. You’ve had enough for one night. Let’s get you back to Kitty Kate.”