“It won’t go that far,” Jericho cuts him off.
There’s a long moment of silence, the tension so thick it’s almost hard to breathe around it.
“If it does, I’ll fucking kill you,” Ezekiel says.
“A Bishop coming between us,” Jericho says, his words wounding me in a way they shouldn’t.
“Don’t be stupid, Jericho. Don’t fuck this up,” Ezekiel says.
“I said it won’t go that far,” Jericho repeats tightly.
Ezekiel studies him, then glances at me, hesitation clear in his eyes. I want to tell him to stay. Not to leave me here with my husband. My own husband. But he does. And he should. Because Jericho is right. Whatever Ezekiel is warning him about isn’t his to deal with. It’s ours. Mine and Jericho’s. And I know in that moment that what happens next, what he does or doesn’t do will change things for us. It will change everything.
20
Isabelle
“Strip.”
He releases me, walking around the altar. It’s pitch black so I’m not sure what he’s doing. But then I hear the rattle of chains and remember the passage in Draca’s diary.
“Nothing happened. He didn’t do anything. I didn’t,” I hurry to say as Jericho walks back into the candlelight.
He steps before me. “Strip,” he repeats then walks around the other side. I know what he’s doing when I hear that same sound. Another game.
No, not a game. A punishment.
He means to punish me like Draca St. James punished Nellie Bishop.
I break out in a sweat, unable to move, or breathe when he comes around the corner. I suck in a breath when I see the braided handle of the whip in his hand, the long, thin tails that my ancestor endured. He places it on the altar as if that cruel thing was an offering to Draca.
I need to run. I need to run right now. But I just stand there and watch him as he takes off his jacket, folds it over the back of a pew then rolls up the sleeves of his shirt.
“I’m beginning to wonder if I need to have your hearing checked.”
I swallow, blink hard as I glance to the door, then to him.
“Don’t bother, Isabelle. I’m faster than you. Stronger than you.”
“Nothing happened.”
“I believe you.”
“Then why are you going to punish me?”
He steps toward me, forcing me back a step. My back touches the altar. “To teach you once and for all that you’re mine.” He grips my sweater and tears it down the middle.
“No!” I try to run past him, but his arm is around my middle. He tugs me to him, my back to his chest, as he undoes the button and zipper on my jeans.
“It’ll go easier if you submit.”
“I don’t want this!” I try to push at his arm but he’s like a fucking brick wall.
“I don’t suppose Nellie did either. Submit or don’t. Choose.”
I push the heels of my hands into my eyes. “Please!”
“Submit or don’t. Choose,” he repeats.
I nod. Try to get my breathing under control. He won’t hurt me. Ezekiel said it. Jericho has shown he would hurt himself before he hurts me. I have to believe this. But maybe what he saw tonight, me with his brother, me disobeying his law after I lied to him about Julia, maybe he changed his mind. Maybe it was too much, too many betrayals.
“No it is then,” he says and begins to push down my jeans.
“I’ll do it!” I scream, shoving at his arm, at him. I hook my hands into the waistband of my jeans and push them off, half inside-out, my shoes discarded at the same time, my feet bare on the cold stone.
He unhooks my bra and it slips off my arms. Before I straighten, he walks me back the few steps to the altar. We’d moved away from it in our struggle.
I resist. I can’t not. But he’s so much stronger than me and keeps hold of my wrists, stretching one arm out to the side of the altar where he locks it into an icy iron cuff. I cry out when he does it, trying to pull free as he takes my other arm and stretches it as wide as the altar, locking me in place with the second restraint. He moves behind the altar and tugs at the restraints, forcing me to bend over almost flat with the shortened chains.
When he steps away from me, I glance up at Jesus on the cross.
“Don’t tell me you’re praying,” Jericho says as he wraps his hand around the braided handle of the whip and makes a point of dragging it out from under me. “There is no god, Isabelle. Or if there is, he forgot about us centuries ago. Think about it,” he says, sliding the taut handle of the whip between my legs. “If he were real, if he gave a fuck about any of us, would you be here right now? Would you be chained to the same spot your ancestor was centuries ago? Where my ancestor bled her to pay for her father’s sins?”
“Please, Jericho. You’re not thinking. God. Please.”
“How many times do I have to tell you there is no god!”
“I—”
“If there was, would Mary have been raped by that monster? Would she have hanged herself? Would Zoë? Would my daughter be motherless?”
He stops then and I turn my head. My shoulders hurt, my arms too wide.
“Jericho?”
I feel him at my back fingers in the waistband of my panties. He pushes them down without ceremony.
“Would your brother be dead?” he asks more quietly.
I drop my forehead to the altar. He’s right. I’ve doubted the existence of god for years but never consciously. Never daring to go that far.
“But that’s not what this is about, is it? That’s not why we’re here, you and I.” He cups my ass roughly, fingers digging into flesh, forcing me up on tip toe. I’m looking straight ahead, body taut. He’s at my back again, breath at my ear. I feel the whip in the hand that snakes around to my stomach.
I turn my face a little so I can see him and he can see me.
“Who do you belong to?” he asks and before I can answer, he slaps my ass making me jump. “Who?”
“You!”
He slaps again. “Say it. All of it.”
“You!” Another slap. “I belong to you!”
“What did I tell you before I left tonight?”
I think. He spanks. But he’s still got the whip in his other hand. And he’s not hurting me. Not really.
“Isabelle.”
“Not to betray you.”
“And why were you in the chapel with my brother?”
“I wasn’t. I swear. I came in here to read that book. I wanted to read it. I needed to know what he did to her.”
“Because you’re afraid I’m going to do it to you. Even though I told you I won’t hurt you.”
“You’re hurting me now.”
“Am I? A little spanking is not what she endured.”
“No. He bled her. He whipped her until she bled.”
“Right. I’m sure he ripped her back open.”
“And you’re holding that same whip.”
“Am I using it?” he rubs the space he just spanked, his touch almost tender.
I shake my head, drop it to the altar because I can’t do this anymore. I can’t.