Total pages in book: 144
Estimated words: 130761 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 654(@200wpm)___ 523(@250wpm)___ 436(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130761 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 654(@200wpm)___ 523(@250wpm)___ 436(@300wpm)
I swallowed and looked up at AK’s face. It was filled with thunder. His teeth were gritted together. I reached up and threaded my fingers through the hand that was on my face. I lowered it to my chest and kept it near my heart. “Then the training started. Older Sacred Sisters would come to our rooms every day. There were about twenty of us when I trained. All similar in age and all receiving our first sexual encounter from Brother John. More lessons followed. Lesson after lesson on how to hold a man’s length, how to stroke it until he begged for more. How to take a man in our mouth and entice them with the subtle movements of our body, how to make them fall into our arms and give themselves over to the Lord through our bodies. We fished the men and they always took the bait.”
“They trained you to fuck?”
“Yes,” I said and hated that it was the harsh truth. “In the commune at first. Prophet David often invited men who were important to our cause to his many communes, both domestic and abroad. I never knew what they were there for—business, we were told—but from the age of ten I was called to seduce them. Many liked young girls, even more so when we could service them in bed with the skill of a woman twice our age. And I did it all happily . . . eventually. I came to believe in what I was doing so much that I rejoiced when I was chosen by a visiting male from the lineup. Even more when I reached the age of fourteen and was sent outside into the world. Only the best Sacred Sisters were sent outside of the gates. Those who excelled at pleasing men.”
I could tell by AK’s expression that he could not speak. So I continued. “I had never been outside of the commune before. There were so many sights and sounds that made me scared. But the brothers who would drive us out into the towns would keep us safe. They would keep us focused.” I sniffed as I recalled walking into the hundreds of bars I visited as a child, then later as an adult. “The men always took the bait. When they saw us coming in they would practically salivate on the spot. We would dress seductively, take them back to the bus that took us into the town. We would give them pleasure like nothing they had ever felt, and then we would convince them to return to the commune with us. And they mostly always came. Especially when they saw what awaited them there. More free love. More women . . . little girls.”
“The pedophilic cunts,” AK snarled. “I’m glad I put a bullet through that fucking dick’s head. And took out dozens of the other cult fuckers too.”
I stilled and blinked at AK, allowing his words to sink in. “You . . .?” Surely I was mistaken. “You killed Prophet David? You were the devil’s man that took his life?”
“Yeah.” He pulled me closer to him. “I fucking watched that pedo prick fall as my bullet got him right between the fucking eyes.”
My breathing sped up at his confession. In the commune, I had mourned the prophet’s death as though my heart had been ripped in two, but now, after everything that had happened, knowing that AK had been the one to slay him only made me want AK more.
I lifted his hand and kissed along his fingers. “Thank you,” I whispered. He would never understand the level of my gratitude. Yet with that enlightenment came my greatest pain.
My regrets illuminated.
AK held me close as the tears fell from my eyes. He pressed kiss after kiss on my forehead. He made me feel safe. “There have been hundreds upon hundreds,” I confessed and felt the deep shame run through me like a sweeping tide. AK was as still as a statue underneath me. “I have serviced so many men I do not even know a number. Sometimes by choice and sometimes by force.” I sucked in a breath. “But if it was the latter, it was because I had failed as a Sacred Sister.”
“What? What the fuck does that mean?”
“If the seduction was not well performed, or my whisperings of God’s scriptures were not strong enough in conviction, sometimes the men would be unkind and take away our will. They would take the tithe of our flesh for our failure.”
“Rape?” he growled. “You’d be blamed if they raped you?”
“It happened sometimes,” I said, remembering the first time I had a knife held to my throat and was beaten as the man thrust himself inside me . . . in my every entrance. I remembered Meister and how he had been one of those males. “Meister did not like to be seduced; he liked to take. He took pleasure in extracting pain from my body. But the less I protested, and the more I allowed him to do with me what he wished, the more his possessiveness of me grew. I could see him becoming addicted to me, day by day, and I was frightened. But Judah ordered me to be beside Meister as long as he wished.” I closed my eyes. The rest of that story was blurred, due—I knew now—to the drugs. “He never gave me up.” My fingers stroked over AK’s face. “Until you came to claim me from his command.”