#asatt

The whispers of congregants as they filed neatly into their dark wooden pews had the indistinguishable quality of droning insects. Incense coiled lazily through the air, illuminated by spectral candlelight, such that the room seemed alive with the flight of ghosts. You smoothed out your church clothes a little awkwardly, perched in your designated seat at the front row and trying to ignore the way the members looked at you as they passed. Their heavy gaze seemed to bore straight through you no matter where you went in this place- worst of all when it was time to gather in prayer. 

You didn't think you'd ever get used to the way that they treated you, like you were something beyond human. It made your skin crawl at the best of times, and the foreboding quality of the church itself only amplified the effect. All murmurs of conversation fell to an immediate hush as the first telltale click of his heeled boots hit the stage, even the youngest members still and silent by the time he'd taken his place at the pulpit. You felt overheated, sweating in the crowded room with your hands balled tightly in your lap. His watchful eyes always seemed the most inescapable of all- heavy as lead and twice as soft. You didn't have to look up to know when it happened- it fell on you with undeniable gravity. 

He cleared his throat politely, and the congregants began to open their prayer books in unison, though you knew the pointed little inflection had been meant for you. You chanced a look in his direction, that unbendable smile of his fixed directly onto your face. He nodded, appeased, then turned his attention to his flock as he began the smooth recitation of this morning’s sermon. Shivering, you look back towards your lap, ignoring the gold-foiled prayer book sat to your right. The rest of the congregants had plainly bound little black books, but you had been supplied with a richly decorated copy to delineate your difference from the rest of the members. The first time you opened it you were met with an inscription in neat lettering, congratulating you on your new role and signed, presumptuously, "with my love." 

You cringe, pushing it further aside. It was a cruel reminder of your lack of agency under ‘his love’. Neither your exalted status nor his own devotion could wash the dyed in the wool religious fervor out of this place and the countless ways it touched you, wore you down into something you weren't. Ignoring the overwhelming presence of it all was the best you could do to keep yourself sane and safely distanced, given the circumstances. 

There was a great scraping of heels and shuffling of coats and skirts as the church came to its feet at the Martyr's precisely timed instructions. You sat in mute protest, a single body submerged under a sea of fervent heads. There were few freedoms truly afforded to you in this place- every 'privilege’ came with strings attached. Your little defiances sometimes felt like the only thing keeping you rooted to the world, to a version of yourself that you could recognize. 

The sermon came to a close with a roar of applause, rapturous cries echoing through the domed ceiling, twisting and warping the words as they bounced back to you. This is the body he breaks for us. This is the blood he sheds for us. You glance at the Martyr, arms raised skyward, the wan light pouring through the stained glass windows seeming to set him ablaze with an unearthly aura. Blood ran freely down his wrists, the gaping tears in his skin already seaming themselves to a close as the first fat droplets spattered to the floor, or dripped in the font of holy water with the fragile grace of a form taken before complete dissolution.  His crimson eyes pointed directly at you, sharp as flint behind their heavy hooded lids. 

"I'd really like to see you participating in service more." You push your eggs mechanically around the plate, lifting your fork to your mouth every few minutes to avoid Martyr's scrutiny. Your appetite had been poor since your involuntary inauguration into the compound, but you had found out the hard way that Martyr did not tolerate any infractions on your ability to care for yourself. After the first few light or missing meals, he had resorted to trying to spoon feed you himself- an experience you weren't eager to replicate. Your water glass was filled by the server, the ice clinking as it rose to the top. Martyr waved them away dismissively as they looked to your plate, indicating he was not yet satisfied you'd had your fill. They nodded and retreated to the back of the diner. Irritated, you set your fork to the side and crossed your arms over your chest. 

"I just don't see the point." You muttered, staring into your glass. "You know I don't believe in- any of this." Martyr hummed, leaning casually against the table, his chin cupped with mock thoughtfulness in his hand. 

"I understand this has been an adjustment for you, beloved. You've done very well so far, and the last thing I want is for you to be uncomfortable here." Your throat grows tight, eyes burning as your body tries to process the barrage of emotions his ill intentioned kindness floods you with. You couldn't tell what was worse- that you were stuck here against your will, or that he always had to be so fucking nice about it. He drops his hand back to the table, drumming out a calculated beat.

"That being said," he continues smoothly, reaching his other hand palm-up towards you, an invitation to take it as he makes his point. "I do think you'd acclimate more easily if you embraced our way of life. There's real comfort in worship, in prayer- I know you’re not accustomed to it. But that will change with time.”

You sighed, pushing your plate away from you. Martyr raised a slim brow, but seemed to let it go for the moment. His open palm slid from its place on the table, raising up to cradle your jaw in his hand instead, the gentle pressure forcing your face upwards until your eyes met his own. 

“Come on now, darling. Won’t you give it a try? I can teach you how to believe, if you need. You know I wouldn’t direct you to do something that wasn’t in your best interest.”

Your mouth tucked into a little frown, uncomfortable heat blooming in your cheeks from the forced proximity, his hand warm against your skin. 

“It’s not even my faith system,” you mumble, twisting uncomfortably in your chair. “I believe in plenty. But not like this. Not like you.” Martyr sighed and shook his head with more than a little condescending twee.

“I can see you still need a little convincing. That’s alright- you’ll come to learn who you serve- and who serves you in kind. I’ll guide you through it.” He smiled, stroking his thumb along your cheek. “And do you know why?”

Your face grows hotter, embarrassed flush growing by the moment. You know what he wants to hear. He’d made it clear what he expected you to say in situations like these- repeated it to you so many times that the words came to you as natural as breathing. It was easier to just go along with it, in the long run- or at least, that’s what you’ve come to tell yourself. The thought of willingly complying with his little games used to make you sick. Now, it twisted your gut in a slightly different way. No less uncomfortable, but it made the words spilling out of your mouth somehow easier to bear. 

“Because you know best,” you relent. He smiled then, a gentle thing that made the knots in your stomach tighten. Satisfied, his hand dropped from your cheek, seeking out your hand and gently prying it from where it sat tucked under your arm. You let your muscles weaken, and he pulls it from you, gently tugging your open hand to close around your fork. You don't fight him as he keeps his fingers wrapped tightly around your wrist, guiding the fork to your mouth, puppeting the last of your breakfast onto your waiting tongue. You don't fight him when he dabs the corner of your mouth with his napkin, smoothing the crumbs from your lip.

You don't fight him when he rises from his chair, smoothly offering you an arm.

You follow his movements, let him drag you to his side, don’t put up a fuss when he snakes his broad hand around your shoulders as you make your way back to the center of the compound. Every tread you lay walking in his path is another little concession. Every skip of your heart as he rubbed aimless little circles into the nape of your neck a betrayal of your waning principles, another loss in a string of losses that weighed down your ability to leave this place as someone you might recognize. 

He led you back to the polished little house that has served as your prison, the dark wood interior gleaming as he opened the door. You walk in obediently, slip out of your shoes as he closes and locks the door behind you. The key disappears into his pocket- you wouldn’t see it again until he wanted you to. While he had never expressly forbidden you to leave, it was a common practice of his to seal the door when the two of you retired from the prying eyes of the other congregants. It was explained away in the same manner he always gave- an assurance that you’d have plenty of privacy with him, the curve of his smile unnaturally sharp over the edge of his double entendre.

You hover in the study, aimless as he busies himself with the minutia of keeping a community in order. For all the pomp and glamour he maintained as a part of his public image, there was a surprising amount of paperwork he always seemed to need catching up with to keep the machine running smoothly. The perfunctory scratching of his pen nib pauses as you thumb through the records in his sizable collection, looking for something to entertain yourself with while he works. 

You hear the heavy click of the Zenith Allegro switching on and glance back at him, watching him slide the remote back into its place in the drawer with a nonchalant grace. The brassy opening lines of an Eartha Kitt album spilled into the study, and he turns to you with an unhurried grin. He snaps his fingers to secure your attention, then leans back in his chair, leaving an exaggerated space for you to take a seat. On his lap. Again. 

You groan in protest, already knowing where this is headed, but trudge obediently over to him anyway. It was easier to give in, cave to what he wanted before he resorted to more… unorthodox methods to achieve it. The steps had all been laid out for you, a choreographed pattern that wove you tightly to his side. He put you in the mind of a spider- calculated, predatory, inevitable. Already caught in a web you hadn't even begun to notice the extent of.

He hums pleasantly as you settle yourself on his lap, wrapping one arm around your waist to fix you in place. The other arm is still going through the motions of filling out forms, and you watch the looping movements of his hand filling the page with script as he settles his chin on your shoulder. 

The soft puffs of air as he breathes against the hollow of your ear raises the fine hairs on the back of your neck, and you suppress a shiver. He took enormous satisfaction from pulling the smallest reactions from you, and while you were going along with his game for now, you wouldn't exactly say you were willing to comply  as easily as that. 

The crooning from the sound system marks the minutes as they pass, and you find your body sagging somewhat into Martyr’s embrace, muscles unraveling to the tune of the needle spooling through the record’s grooves. Your eyes are just beginning to feel weighed down by the lull of it all when the hand on the soft flesh over your hip tightens into a squeeze, wrenching a startled squeak loose from your chest. 

The bastard just chuckles, palming your hip before his fingers walk themselves down your abdomen, tracing a lazy pattern along the line of your obliques. 

“Aren't you supposed to be working?” You mumble, face flushing in the wake of his slow, kneading exploration. He tucks his face closer to your neck, lips just barely brushing the skin. 

“Does it look like I’ve stopped, pet?” 

His free hand was indeed still ticking boxes down a dense sprawl of legalese, though you'd long stopped paying attention to what it was functionally accomplishing. 

You huff, squirming in his arms as he draws one deliberate line across the tender seam of flesh separating your belly from the swell of your mons. Your lip curls, trying to form a cutting edge with which to structure your reply. 

“Groping me can’t be the most productive use of your time.”

Strike one- you cringe as the words leave your mouth. The tone you'd hoped for was firm, maybe even acrid. Instead you come across as petulant. You feel his lips curve into smile against your throat, feel him settle you deeper onto his lap in response. 

“I’m more than capable of doing both, my dear. Though if you’d like me to divert all of my attention to you, you’ll have to ask a little nicer.” 

Abandoning any attempt to recover that fumble, you do your best to ignore the continued onslaught of his hands. He didn't deserve the satisfaction- not from so little. You make it several valiant minutes before he ups the ante, his fingers winding down the fissure of your thighs just as something hot and wet presses against the lobe of your ear. 

Strike two is the instinctual jerk of your hips, an action he twists to his advantage as he meets the movement with a cupped palm, your sex now fully seated in his hand. He kneads it, gently- runs his tongue along the hollow of your throat and hums when he finds the evidence of your budding arousal pulsing under his touch. A hot, sickly spool of irritation bubbles up in your chest at how quickly your position is falling to his favor, and you dig your nails into his shoulders. 

Martyr lets out a long, syrupy groan, ever a glutton for punishment as your fingers bite into the meat of him, and the pretense of your arrangement crumbles to nothing as he answers by sucking a mouthful of your flesh into his mouth, breaking loose the blood that suffused your capillary walls, purpling the skin and bruising your inhibition under wet lips and blunted teeth. 

You jerk in his arms, unable to pretend the ministrations of his mouth have no bearing on your disposition- not as long as the suction is firing the nerves at the base of your throat, not as long as his thick fingers are spreading over the seam of your clothes, the fabric parting under his touch. It's not that you melt willingly- so far as you tell yourself, anyway. But the fact of the matter is you do melt, boneless in his arms as he maneuvers your hips to brush against the swelling of his cock. 

His mouth detaches from your throat with a debauched pop, wet lips dragging their way back to the shell of your ear as your clothes begin to fall from your body as though by magic, the careful precision of his fingers stripping you by unnoticeable degrees. Your bottoms are pooling around your ankles by the time you catch him crooning, words woven between the labored heaving of your breath. 

“There now, little prophet,” he moans against your skin, a practiced buck of his hips sending a cascade of sensation roiling down your spine. Your toes curl, knees shaking as his palms keep your legs spread wide.

“You're so much more receptive like this. So obedient in the wake of my touch. It's not so hard, hm? Not so difficult to believe in the divine when it’s tending to the needs of the body.”

You screw your eyes shut, head falling back uselessly against him as he moves his attention to massaging the seam of flesh at the inside of your thigh. 

“S’not divine,” you manage, the slur of your mouth betraying the effect of his touch. 

“S’just physical. Nothing special about- ah!”

His fingers have dipped below your undergarments now, tracing the swollen silhouette of your core. 

“Poor thing. So close to the grace of your savior and your body is the only thing that can recognize providence when it comes to call. Spread those a little wider for me, darling, that's it.”

You try to tell yourself it's his hands that part your legs until they're stretched wide over his lap. Try to ignore the pulse in your groin as he abandons his pen, free hand cupping your chest as though it were as delicate as the brittle loaves that pass from mouth to mouth at sacrament. 

“Let me help you, dove. Just relax.”

Your body follows the motions of his hands as he folds you neatly over his wooden desk, legs as open as the good book falling wide at the pulpit, his thumb rubbing against you with the care of a minister leafing over every tender, onionskin page. 

“Not my fault,” you gasp, the new position restricting the rise and fall of your chest as he presses you firmly against the tabletop. 

“It's not my fault I feel like this. You fucking- you're a tease, it's not my fault.”

The protestations are weak at best. He knows your body now, for better or- much more often- for worse. He shushes them with a kiss, the heady drag of his zipper stilling your thoughts in their place. 

“So much fight in you,” Martyr intones, your hips frozen in his grip. “So much fight, but so little resistance. Go on, pet, tell me how badly I’ve been treating you. How helpless you are when I touch you, how cruel I am to love you the way I do.”

You choke as the head of his cock drags over your hole, precum smearing hot and wet and filthy. Your skin is too hot, too damp with sweat, too tight around your body as he rocks his hips, grinding you into the smooth surface of the desk. Your face is burning, screwed up and fighting back pinprick tears welling at the corners of your eyes. 

“Nothing to say?” Martyr laughs, languid rolling motions of his hips lulling your body into the steady thrum of arousal. “Come on, little prophet, you had so much to tell me. Where did that pretty voice go?” He keeps you steady against him, one hand still grasping at your waist while the other moves in long, slow arcs across your body, squeezing flesh and tracing aimless patterns where he knows your nerves will smoulder under his touch. You grunt, face pressed tightly against the wood, grasping at the rim of the desk as though it were the last bastion of order in this life that’s swallowed you whole. 

The dam breaks when his fingers catch around your throat, the press of them not enough to restrict your breathing, but slow the pulse of blood as it travels to your brain. Your thoughts are treacled, thick and sweet and muddied with arousal, and when the rush of burgeoning hypoxia scatters the fragile structure of your dignity, your restraint- you moan and grind your ass against his dick like it's all you’ve ever wanted. 

“There it is,” he coos, and you can hear the damned smile in his voice, you can see the mental calculus as it tips another point in his favor, the inextricable pull of him dissolving you by degrees. The head of his cock is pulsing wetly against you, barely catching the rim of your entrance in a liquid, simmering tease. Annoyed by his smugness and his slow, stupid foreplay and the way for you let yourself fall for it every fucking time, you angle your hips with purpose, using the desk as leverage as you try to direct him to fuck you properly. He catches you out embarrassingly fast. 

Martyr’s hands are wrapping around your wrists, his chest coming down to push you flat against the desk, hips angling so you’re grinding uselessly against the base of his cock, fine hairs brushing against your entrance in an empty promise. You sob, knees spreading further apart in some desperate attempt to get him to see that you could be good, you could behave, if only he’d stop dicking around and fuck you. 

His lips draw across the shell of your ear as he tucks his head against your shoulder, hot, shallow breaths needling unbearably down your spine. “You know how to get what you want, dear,” he pants, and the tears are rolling fast and easy down your cheeks now because, yes, you do, and the words are already building on your tongue, and the shame of breaking down so quickly now is a delicious contrast to the allure of his control, and you’re shaking in his arms, lip caught fast between your teeth because the moment you told him it would be over, a foregone conclusion, an afterthought lost in hours marked by blurred lines and skin on skin. He's waiting for it, would continue to wait as long as it took, hot and thick between your thighs. 

A whine is building in your throat, your teeth doing little to stifle its spill over your lips. The skin breaks under your incisor, pain blooming to the surface in waves as blood begins to pool and drip, a single jeweled ruby splattering the mahogany surface of the desktop. Martyr hisses in your ear, relinquishing one hand to trace the velvet spread of it on your mouth. You lave your tongue over his finger mindlessly as he gathers it up, a thin pinking pool of your submission that drips obscenely from his hand when he brings it up to his mouth. 

The sucking noise he makes as he takes it in is obscene, maddening, naked greed- your blood, your spit, your soul, twining down his throat. It’s the moan that shakes his chest while he drinks you down that breaks you. Supplicant in his arms, shaken loose from every inhibition, the words spooling on your tongue like prayer.

“Fuck me,” you beg, your free hand coming up to press against the hand that remains in his grasp, folded in reverence to him, a filthy facscimile of the hands that fold to him in service. “Fuck me, God, please, just fuck me.” 

His hips jolt into yours, and then there’s an awful squelching sound as he jacks himself off behind you. It's barely a few frenzied strokes before his cum is splattering over your hole. You don't even have the time to complain before his fingers are pushing it inside of you, gathering up rolling threads of spunk to slick his entrance and fingering you full of him. The sensation is overwhelming, your mouth falling slack, relieved sighs braiding with the wet movements of his hand inside you in a filthy, rhythmic dance. 

He lets your other hand go free, patting your folded grasp in approval before using his fingers to spread you open wider for him, watching as your cum-slicked hole stretches open by degrees. Your back arches when his fingers curl, and he tuts soothingly. “Let’s hear that song of yours again, my love. You’re doing so well. Keep going for me, would you?”

It isn't even hard to give him what he wants. You’re soft and pliable in his hands, begging for him to keep going, to hold you, to fuck you, to have you. When he hums, a gentle indication that he’s still waiting, you shakily ask for him to save you. And when his fingers retreat, slick and sticky and leaving you wanting so much more, you know you’ve hit the mark. Because this is exactly where he wanted you, exactly what he’d been planning since this morning, a manufactured void, an emptiness that he could save you from, a deliverance from the needs he’d sewn in your belly and the loss that he’d nurtured in your selfhood. He’d redefined your purpose, and he’d done it as simply as winding you up to need his cock like it was the only thing worth living for. 

You’re full of him before the moment can pass. He knew when to drag you out, when to let the thought simmer inside you until it boiled over- and he knew when to reward your reverence as it came, take the momentum of your cries for salvation and reinforce them with belief. 

The drag and stretch of him is heavenly as he’s finally, finally got you pinned between here and oblivion, gentle piston of his hips curling pleasure in the base of your spine as he murmurs encouragement into your shoulder. You keep at your lonely sermon, the song of your devotion high and tight and overwhelmed with him, him, him as he fucks you open and drinks the melody of worship from your open mouth. 

“There now,” he gasps, and it's a blessing just hear him gasping, to feel even one particulate of his control shook loose from the place when your bodies become one, to think of his face behind you as blooming red and lovesick and just as lost in you as you've been falling, falling into him. “Not so hard to pray when you're full of my grace, is it?”

You could kill him just for that, if it weren't for the way he’s angled just right, and the way the thrill of it makes you kind of want to hear it again, maybe on your knees between the pews. His hands join the effort, and in an impressive feat of maneuverability he’s got one massaging your stomach where it swells with him as the other tilts your chin up and back to meet his mouth without losing a second of driving into that precise spot inside you, the place custom made for him to weaken your integrity and take everything you’ve got. 

Your neck is craning uncomfortably as he sucks your bottom lip into his mouth, tasting you copper-stained and breathless. Warm, fuzzy light builds in your chest as he wears you down, steady as the tides. It makes you shiver. It makes you sick. It feels like love, God help you, and you kiss him back just to force that awful feeling onto him, to imagine it ripping through his ribs until they crack under the pressure of it all, to make him spill over with it, to feel the vulnerability and the shame of a heart lay naked under scrutiny. 

He lets you cum like that, still weeping and helpless against the will of your body made divine in his hands, keeps fucking you through it until you're begging him to stop, and when he’s finally got you standing wobble-legged and defenseless, he takes your sorry body to the bedroom, presses your back into the mattress and kneels between your thighs. That same reverence burns in him still, tender devotion in his hands and the fires of the pulpit on his lips as he tongues the sore mess of you clean. 

You look away from his head bent over your sex, the way his jaw bobs and his hair falls messy in a curtain, the way his eyes are still so alert, so precise in their calculated effort to break you into something only he could fix again. There’s nowhere to hide from him here, not really- the mirrored walls reflect him while he lifts your legs over his shoulders, braces the small of your back and opens his throat to take you like sacrament. Even the ceiling stares back in its solemn crystal vigil, dutifully reproducing the light that's curled up to die behind your eyes. 

You let them close as he makes you cum again, last of your tears washing sore and swollen cheeks, and you permit yourself to imagine- just for a moment- that the tender god above you could also be merciful. 

When you’ve come down from your high, when at last your lungs no longer burn and your thighs have stilled and the liquid spill of senseless pleasure has tapered to a painful crawl, you open them again. And there he is, your god, your savior from yourself, face wet and smiling like you’ve tripped the wire to your own undoing.