I’ve never had a crowd this large before and they all need to pay to enter my little palace of pain and hell so I know the reward will be grand.
“What else do you have in that bag?” he asks as he walks over to a wastebasket and drops the bird in. “Anything bigger?”
Bang! Bang! Bang!
I sigh in frustration as I get to my feet and head toward the door.
“Please don’t leave me,” I tell him as I reach the door. Pushing my hair behind my ears, I look at him with hope that he’ll stay.
“I can’t. I’m not done with you yet,” he replies with a smirk.
I let out a sigh of relief as I open the door and step out into the hallway.
* * *
“Stop distracting me,” I hiss at her.
“You shouldn’t be doing this to yourself. Your body is a gift and you’re mistreating it,”she snaps at me.
“I can do whatever the fuck I want,” I bark into the darkness, stamping my bare foot against the dirty, concrete floor. “It’smybody.Mytemple to do with what I please and this is how I choose to be worshiped.”
“Paloma, isn’t there more that you can do with your time rather than destroying yourself slowly? You’re a beautiful girl—a smart girl and you hate yourself so desperately. Why?”
I put my hands on my hips as I tap my foot impatiently. I don’t know why she thinks she can speak to me like this. As if she knows me better than I know myself; I’m happy the way I am now, which speaks volumes because I’ve always hated myself before.
“I want you to leave me alone. And don’t tell the Bitch Mother what I do down here or you’re going to regret it,” I warn, holding up a finger I know she can’t see.
She lets out a sigh that echoes through the empty halls, but offers no other words. I squint in an attempt to see what she’s doing, but it never works. She always hides from me because she’s afraid of what I can do to her. It doesn’t stop her from meddling in my affairs, but only to a certain point.
As I walk back toward the door, back to Reade and our adoring, captivated audience, I let out a sigh of relief when I hear her footsteps shuffling into the distance.
Perhaps I’ve finally gotten to her once and for all.
Chapter Twelve
"Sorry about that,”I tell Reade when I reenter the room and lock the door again. “She can be so goddamn annoying sometimes, but I made sure she’ll leave us alone for the rest of the night.”
He glances up at me from where he’s been digging through my bag and gives me an odd look, but shrugs. “If you say so. Are these all animals, Pally?”
“Mostly,” I reply slowly as I walk over to him. I crack my neck as I glance at the screen again and grunt. In my absence, we’ve lost viewers. “Ready to keep going?”
I have to get them to come back. They need to see all of the wonderfully ugly things that I’m capable of and they’ll keep coming back for more.
“You’re insatiable for a nun,” he remarks with a smirk as he gets to his feet, bag in hand.
I shrug and close my eyes for a moment. I need to regain focus, I need to breathe, I need to repent through blood and my time is running out. I need to push away the humanity that’s struggling to shine through because I don’t feel like Pally right now.
I feel like Grace and that just won’t do.
“Gimme,” I hiss at him, snatching the bag from his hand. He shouldn’t be holding this—it’s not his choice what we get to use—it’s mine.
“Don’t be a bossy little bitch,” he warns as he takes a step toward me and grabs a handful of my hair. Reade pulls it back, arching me at an uneven angle before he reaches a hand down and roughly shoves a thumb into my pussy.
“Good; you’re still wet. Let’s keep going.”
* * *
I bite down on my teeth to keep another wail of anguish from escaping me. By now, Reade has lashed me across my ass with his belt at least twenty times.