The room itself is as medieval as it comes. Chairs have been arranged for my guests to relax as they bear witness. Refreshments are served by two waiters who stand in the shadows. At the farthest corner beneath the window stands the iron pit inside which burns a fire. I recognize the handle of the poker sticking out of it. Ceremony, I remind myself. I don’t let myself dwell on what my father did with that poker.
Judge and Zeke speak quietly in one corner, although their eyes follow us. Hildebrand sits in his throne-like chair, his soldiers standing behind him. Santiago stands alone.
“What is this?” Isabelle asks in a full panic, stopping dead when her eyes land on the makeshift dais where she’ll be the guest of honor.
“Your marking ceremony,” I tell her. “Take off your shoes.”
“What?”
“Your shoes. Take them off.”
She’s confused but she does it, and, leaving them at the door, I walk her toward the dais upon which lays a silk cushion for her knees. My chair and the equipment I’ll need to mark her stand just behind that cushion. Before it stands an intricately carved wooden pillory that must be hundreds of years old. Made especially for the marking ceremony, it’s low to the ground, designed with the purpose of having the woman it hosts on her knees. Another form of supplication. The thought of it, of Isabelle bound by it, is more erotic than anything else and a part of me wishes I could make these witnesses disappear.
“Jericho?” she asks, her voice a choked whisper as she resists.
I walk her to the center. Hildebrand dispatches his soldiers and when Isabelle sees them, she turns to run, except that I have her arm and she just runs herself into my chest.
I wrap one arm around her and hold the other up to halt the soldiers.
Isabelle’s breaths are pants against me, her face hidden in my shirt. She’s not making a move to get around me or out of my grasp. I don’t know if that’s because she knows there’s no getting out of here or if she’s simply seeking protection against the soldiers.
I dip my head down to her ear.
“Ink. Just ink. Not fire,” I tell her.
She shakes her head, buries her face deeper against my chest.
“You just relax, and it won’t hurt.” Well, I’m not quite sure that’s true. To me, a tattoo is not painful. It’s almost meditative, in fact. But to her, I don’t know how she’ll take it.
“I don’t want to do this,” she says, dragging her gaze up to mine. Her face is wet, eyeliner smeared. “Please don’t make me do this.”
“That’s not a choice you can make. Your choice is how we proceed. Do I ask these men to put you in the pillory or do you kneel and submit to it? To me?”
She just stares up at me with her watery eyes.
I take her wrists because there is something so sexually charged about this ritual. Something darkly arousing. “Kneel, Isabelle. Face your witnesses and kneel.”
She glances over her shoulder at them, at the wooden device and I turn her, walking her toward that silk cushion. She resists all along as Santiago approaches and lifts the heavy top of the pillory.
“On your knees,” I tell her as she looks at him.
She’s shaking, pulling into me as she drags her gaze to mine. “You’ll do it?”
Is she taking comfort in the thought that it will be my hand doing the marking?
“You?” she asks again. “Not him? Not them?”
“Yes,” I tell her, confused.
Two tears slide down her face, one on each cheek. She nods. She’s steeling herself.
“Then you’re finished? It’s over?”
I don’t reply.
She studies me, a wrinkle between her eyebrows. “It’s not, is it?”
I wait.
“You’ll bleed me,” she says, forcing herself to stand tall in this show of resistance. She and I both know she will submit. It’s the only choice she can make. “My blood will stain your sheets.”
I don’t reply, just keep my gaze locked on hers. She’s right.
“I won’t forgive you any of it, Jericho St. James. Ever.”
We remain like that for a long moment, silence between us, but so much to say. I only speak one word though. The only one that matters for now.
“Kneel.”
She lowers her lashes, then turns from me and kneels on the cushion.
She leans forward, she sets her wrists into their holes then extends her neck and bows her head, settling into place like a condemned prisoner offering her head to the executioner’s block.
Santiago lowers the heavy wooden bar, the sound of him locking it reverberates off the stone walls. He steps behind her to my side.
I look down at her, my supplicant bride. I glance around the room at the men watching the display, no whispers now, everyone is riveted. And I want to clear the room, but I can’t. This has to happen, and it has to happen this way. The fact that she won’t forgive me can’t matter. And she has accepted her fate with more grace than I expected.
But it’s not over yet. It’s barely begun.
Santiago extends his hand, and someone places a leather folder in it. His wedding gift to me.
I draw my chair closer and take my seat behind her, noting how her bare feet show from beneath the dress, how strangely complete the sight makes this. With two fingers I slip the pearl button from its loop and spread the dress open, baring the entirety of her back. The dress is especially made for a Society wedding by a Society dressmaker. They know what is expected. But it’s not quite enough and I take the two sides in each hand and rip the dress a little farther.
Isabelle gasps and I see her hands clench and un-clench.
“Lift up,” I tell her and remarkably she does so I can tuck the top of her panties underneath her to expose the cleft of her ass.
Santiago crouches down, runs two fingers over the scar along her spine.
Isabelle stiffens. Can she tell the hand is not mine? And can he feel my aggression as he touches her?
He then lays the flat of his hand on her back. I know what he’s doing. He’s measuring. And a moment later, once he’s satisfied, he nods and steps away.
I clean her back, feeling her shudder at the cold press of alcohol.
“Relax,” I whisper.
“Go to hell,” she whispers back.
I’ll forgive her that. It’s where I belong for this act alone.
Santiago opens the folder and holds it out to me. Inside is the stencil sketch. The twin dragons that are the emblem of the St. James house. Created by Draca St. James, they represent power, might and in some cases, chaos. Wickedness.
I think about the mangled mess that is my mother’s neck but only momentarily because as I press the stencil onto Isabelle’s back, I know what I’ll make is something beautiful. Twin dragons to overwrite the scar her brother put on her back. Maybe not with his own hands but it may as well have been. Twin dragons to match my own tattoo albeit smaller.
Twin dragons to make her mine.
I take off my jacket and roll up my sleeves. A moment later, the tattoo machine buzzes and I begin.
28
Isabelle
Humiliation comes first. Then pain.
Crap.
The tattoo gun buzzes as needles press into my neck, down along my spine. It hurts.