Chapter 3

“What have you done?”

The voice echoed in that lonely stone room and made me shiver. My head shot up.

It was Bishop Jonah’s voice. I was sure of it.

Unbidden memories came to me—his beatings, his teachings, his frequent scolding. My fingers dug into the filth-covered stone, tense and insistent. I hoped I would find purchase there; I craved the feeling of being anchored.

But my mind was clouded by the orgasm, and as the pulsing aftershocks faded, the nonsense of my fears became apparent.

I was alone, and Bishop Jonah was long dead. The voice had been in my mind.

I thought again of how often the old man scolded me when I was new to the holy order. What I had heard must have been the voice of guilt, like a puckered wound refusing to heal. Either my own or God’s last attempt to keep his child pure.

Only, if God truly intended to keep me pure, He should have made me feel guiltier. Instead, I’d had years—decades!—to overcome the guilt and the shame. I never would have gotten this far if guilt was enough to stop me.

Splayed there with the old scroll spread on the ground and my cock spent and dripping, pleasure, and stinging pain throbbing around my body, I struggled to feel anything but animalistic joy. A strange and blissful shock.

I had really done it. I had done something forbidden in the eyes of God — hell, in the eyes of any decent man — and the consequence was beginning to rise now from the pentagram of chalk and blood I had drawn on the clear stone floor.

It came together in a knitting of nerves, osseous matter, tendon, muscle, skin; a tapestry of life made from the wet gore of my own hand. Droplets of my blood were sucked through the air to join with this unholy making.

The godly man in me screamed. I shifted inexplicably away from the growing creature, frightened in that primal way where the core of you starts to open like a yawning chasm, and every other part of you drops inside. I knew if I didn’t get a handle on it, I would be lost to the fear. Imagining running and leaving the Prince of Lust alone in a monastery—whatever dark scenario would play out; I knew I would regret fleeing.

You wanted this, I kept telling myself. You have been wanting this for years.

For my whole life. Every waking breath. Every dream.

I scuttled back inside the pentagram and stood to my full height, and as the demon materialised, it seemed to mimic me. Pink, puffy lungs expanded with sudden breath and were rapidly covered by tendons and muscle and skin. At once, everything came together and rendered it physical.

Asmodeus stood five feet, six, seven, and as the mist surrounding it dissipated, I choked in surprise.

To say the body was strong would be too lacking. The muscles were prominent, as if carved from marble, with the same sturdy density one would expect from a statue. It stood naked with its back turned to me, and I risked assessing it. Or, more accurately, my eyes wandered, grazing down its rippled back, where ridges grew from its spine to the tight waist and lower. Each thigh was the width of a small tree trunk. As if sensing me for the first time, it turned rapidly, sending its tail out to lick at the marble, the sound echoing like the clanging of steel against steel. I would have named it a beast. I had almost expected a beast. I would have taken anything. Anything at all willing to touch me.

But this. . .

It looked nearly human, if distended and much larger. The demon’s torso was pure muscle, skin taut and rippling over its sinews, and its skin was a tawny brown. The light from my torch was thrown over its face, which was handsome, eyes dark and watchful. Its skin glowed. Briefly, I was rendered silent: I saw a vision of Asmodeus’ glory, the prince surrounded by rings of hellfire, the whole body illuminated in beautiful destruction.

Fear thrummed through me, and something else, something deeper in me that Bishop Jonah had tried to beat out of me. Standing there, watching this thing materialise and knowing I wasn’t going to run, knowing instead I wanted to stay, I realised maybe Bishop Jonah had been right all along. There was something wrong with me. There was a terrible desire in me, and there had been all along. Maybe my entire life. And the other thing, the worst realisation of all: if this was a test from God, I was going to fail.

The demon met my eye.

Instinctively, I darted backwards, not quite out of the pentagram. Was it a game I was playing or genuine fear? I could not tell you. Resistance and willingness fought for my attention.

The demon turned to look at me. My shoes squealed as they slid over the stone.

“I asked you a question, Alessandro. What have you done?”

I watched the demon say the words in the stolen voice of Bishop Jonah, and I thought about laughing. The cruelty of that, the delicious blasphemy of it. All that emerged from my mouth was a desperate exhale.

The demon shifted its head to inspect me, and its voice morphed to a stranger tone, jolting, deeper, gruffer. “Are you ashamed?” it asks. “Embarrassed? What would they say, all your brethren, if they knew what you really wanted?”

Everything in me lit up. Warmth pooled in my belly and lower, and my heart beat madly. I still couldn’t help but flinch away from it. It was the size, I think, or the look on its face. Its eyes were the deepest black I had ever seen, save for a small gleam I’d like to think was amusement, which sparkled in the corner of its iris as it took in my squirming. The demon—Asmodeus—laughed.

The room rumbled with the sound. Dust dislodged from the ceiling and rained over us. The very core of my body tightened with anxiety and want; a smirk appeared on its lips. It stepped forward. I stepped back. We moved in a perverse little dance for a moment as I fought my open human fear, trapped in frightened muteness as the demon matched my every step. It looked me up and down, and its eyes turned bright and hungry.

Growling, it spoke. “You have summoned me with desire. With the open wet gore of your own body, you have pleasured yourself. You have thought of me and manifested me, and I can see what you want. You’ve been wanting it for years. Someone to open up your body. To take it. To make you take it. To hold you down as they ruin you.”

I shuddered. I had never—not once—heard it said so openly. The confidence with which it spoke and the nerves it sparked in me made me nearly instantly hard.

Asmodeus noticed. It glanced down between my legs and chuckled. “I know,” it said, “Poor little lamb. But I want you to say it.”

It stalked forward. Each footfall rattled the building, shooting vibrations up through my feet. Its tail flicked out like an agitated cat, whipping back and forth as it approached, and it bent down to better meet my eye, the way one might a child.

It reached out. A pointed, dagger-like claw scraped beneath my chin as it tilted my head back. The skin popped, oozing blood instantly. More gently than I thought I deserved, Asmodeus took my chin between forefinger and thumb, claws pressing into my puckered skin, and tilted my jaw until my neck strained.

“Filthy, blasphemous priest,” it growled. “What do you want?”

I exhaled. That sigh—it had a weight to it. I wanted to move without words or to have things done to me, partly because I felt inexperience hovering like a guillotine above my neck and partly because I wanted absolution. I wanted to touch it and be touched. I wanted it to fuck me, stretch me, gape me, to render every waking moment I spent in the worship of God worthless. Make me an object. Make me yours. Compare me to something to be discarded, something useless at best, a body to be fucked. Make me forget everything but the feel of your cock.

But the slut was still a chained animal at that point, and I found I could say anything. I couldn’t understand what I was feeling. Hadn’t I wanted this? I had risked everything.

My priesthood. My reputation. Now that the demon was here, I was a stuttering, embarrassing mess. All my inhibitions rose up. I remember the death throes of my faith rearing up like a spooked horse, screaming in the void of my lust-flooded mine: you are a priest, for God’s sake!

The thoughts I was entertaining—imagining this demon taking me and pinning me against a wall, massive hands wrapping around my waist—I knew I shouldn’t want that. I was too embarrassed.

Asmodeus grabbed my chin again, harder. The claws strained so hard I cried out, hissing against pain. Warm blood dribbled from the puncture wounds.

“Please,” I managed.

“Ah,” the demon said, smiling cruelly. “The bitch speaks.”

I gasped, hands coming up in a pathetic resistance. I pushed weakly against the demon’s wrist, as wide as my own thigh, and before I could say anything more, it dropped its hand from my chin and slid down to my neck. The grip tightened. I took a feeble breath and kicked as it lifted me from the ground. Sweat, stars, cock straining—my body reacted with uncontainable glee, but I was frightened. It means to kill me.

Then, the breath was knocked out of me.

My back hit the wall, and I half collapsed as the grip around my neck suddenly released. Fresh air scrabbled down my bruised oesophagus, and I clawed at my neck, gently pressing at the indentations where massive fingers and claws had pressed.

Asmodeus regarded me with sadistic disgust. I couldn’t parse the expression. It enjoyed my reaction—but I knew without it saying anything that it thought me pathetic.

Why was I so aroused by that?

The demon approached. I turned my head up to stare up at it from underneath my brow. With a cooing, sweet sound, it reached out to me with a hand almost the size of my head. I closed my eyes.

“Look at me.”

That was a command. I knew it, knew there was no playful question in that tone. Once again, Asmodeus dragged its clawed finger against my jaw. I breathed in. The scent of the demon was richly vile, sweet, and enticing, and I let it enter my lungs, almost grateful to breathe in its presence. But I winced as the skin split once more, and part of the claw dug roughly into an earlier wound. I imagined how I looked: flushed, desperate, bleeding. With my chin balanced on the edge of the demon’s claw, it lifted my head upwards. Tentatively, I opened my eyes.

Asmodeus loomed over me, its black void eyes reflecting my frightened expression back at me. Its other hand grazed over my right arm, fingers sensually sliding through the cut on my palm. I jolted, first from the pain and then the arousal that shocked my body. My cock was swelling to erection, but if Asmodeus noticed, it did not do me the goodwill of touching me. Instead, a wolfish grin split its warm lips open, exposing two sharp canines and a long, forked tongue. Gently, it raised my arm, and I let it, suspended in a fugue state of helpless eagerness as it yanked my arm above my head. I realised what it was doing belatedly: those lips, those teeth, that tongue—it bent its head towards the wound and, its eyes transfixed on my own, it licked at the bloody palm.

Then, it was more than licking. Or rather, there was a dedication to the act now. Asmodeus’ gaze grew dark and heavy with desire, and I felt myself growing hot. When that forked tongue prodded at the wound, digging in until it hurt, a small moan escaped me.

My legs were quivering, cock twitching in my pants, and I couldn’t look away. Deliciously inescapable, we stared at one another as Asmodeus licked slowly, methodically, taking the blood I used to summon it into its body like a holy sacrament.

“You want me here,” Asmodeus said. It was teasing me but with the kind of confident surety that told me I needn’t have bothered answering. It could tell. My body betrayed me, shivering with pleasure and swelling to erection. I still gulped, trying and failing to find some dignity to hold on to. What was I going to do? Lie to the demon? Send it back to Hell? Did I even want that—no, you desecrator. You blasphemer, you slut. You want this. You want this!

Everything I had done that night had been in a haze of lust. And the demon knew it. With one hand, it reached out to my clerical collar. All it needed was one sharp claw. Just like that, it sliced through the white collar, tearing it from my neck and throwing it to the ground.

My eyes flew wide. Naked, suddenly—or exposed in God’s house. I opened my mouth, voice coming out in a cry of protest, but Asmodeus grabbed my face, slicing new wounds into the meat of my cheeks.

“If you’re going to be my bitch,” it growled, “you won’t be wearing God’s dog collar.”

I whimpered like a proper dog and grew soft and pliable in the grip of a demon. Asmodeus leaned close. I could smell it. All-encompassing and intoxicating: sulphur, cedar, something strangely sweet like caramel — I couldn’t help but lean forward into its strong body until it was supporting the weight of my traitorous body by my neck. It brought its lips to my ear, sharp teeth grazing against my earlobe, and move along my neck. That forked tongue licked over my lips with strangely sweet affection.

“Tell me what you want.”

It spoke slowly and clearly, like I was stupid and needed to be told exactly what to do. And I did. I wanted the demon to order me around. I wanted to be absolved of free will, of misusing my free will for this.

“I—don’t know.”

I thought about Bishop Jonah as the demon breathed heavily over me and imagined the way he used to ask me that same question.

A lot of lost lambs come to us. God points them in their holy directions. But you, Alessandro. . .

I was never so easy. Never so simple. But I tried.

On his deathbed, he had still called me that. Even after I had become a don. Alessandro, without the title. Tutted when I told him, “This. I want this. The monastery is my life.”

“Don’t you lie,” he had said in between wheezing coughs. “It’s a sin to lie.”

And now, I had lied again. I told Asmodeus, “I don’t know,” despite my cock swelling. Despite baring my neck—free of God’s mark, free of my priestly collar—to a demon. Despite loving it.

Even to my own ears, my voice sounded weak and pitiful. Asmodeus frowned, genuine and utter disappointment twinging across its face. It dropped the hold it had around my neck, stepped back—and slapped me.

Blood spurted from some part of me. I didn’t know where—couldn’t pinpoint the part of my face that hurt the most. My cheek was stinging from the impact and the puncture wounds. My lip burned with sudden ferocity. I spat blood out and coughed, and my hand shook as I reached up to touch the cut on my lip.

I looked back at the demon over my shoulder. It slouched, watching my expression carefully, curiously, poised as if expecting me to cry. Honestly, I don’t know what I was feeling. All the anxiety had been struck out of me. I suddenly couldn’t feel all the niggling thoughts of concern. I stood to my full height and turned to face it.

“Asmodeus,” I said. “What are you going to do to me?”

The demon’s expression ruptured like rot bubbling to the surface. That fine, handsome face imploded. Ridges, lines, fury, the smell of sulphur—it all increased tenfold. Asmodeus stalked forward and shoved me back. My back slammed hard against the wall, and I coughed as air struggled out of my lungs before I choked. One of those impossibly large hands had closed around me. Everything was cut off. Pain and a dull fog began in my head and my neck.

Asmodeus lifted me by my neck.

I kicked weakly, barely struggling. All the blood pooled into my cock, abandoning my head. I quickly grew light-headed. The world fogged and blurred. I couldn’t breathe. A glimpse of its true nature, I thought. A revelation.

The demon leaned forward. Its breath, half vile and half sweet, loped into my open mouth and coated the roof.

“You don’t call me that name,” it told me. Ordered me. “You are an ant to me. A toy. An object to be used.”

“No,” I wheezed, nodding feebly. “No, of course not. I’m sorry.”

The demon’s grip tightened. “Address me by my title. Prince of Lust. That is my name to you, slut. “

I started babbling, gasping air as my voice cracked. “Yes, yes. Prince of Lust. My Prince…”

“Good boy,” the prince said. Without further ceremony or questioning, it threw me roughly to the side. I hit stone and started to crawl away on instinct, exposed and panting hard. I will admit a bit of ego seeped into me then because I thought, what am I doing? What am I doing?

I was full of fear. I had summoned something dangerous, lustful, ravenous. I knew innately it would not leave before it had come for what I had called it to do.

I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t eager. Neither did I want to pretend. Besides, there was no point. Both myself and the demon knew what I wanted. I saw the prince staring at me, low knowing look glinting in those dark eyes.

All I had to do was surrender. Be the slut I had always known myself to be. Forget everything I had been taught about being chaste and good and boring. I was sick of it.

My vestments were torn. A button lay outside the pentagram circle, ripped away from my chest. Would it tear the rest of my clothes off me, I wondered? Did I want it to?

I looked back over my shoulder and ,teasingly, I began to spread my legs.

The prince chuckled. The sound made my heart race. Pathetic—I heard that somewhere deep in my skull, but I don’t know whose voice it was. Bishop Jonah, or my own squirming morality. I don’t know whether the Prince of Lust himself had said it because the way it looked at me was scathing.

The demon stepped forward and wrenched my head back by my hair. Blood drizzled from my scalp where its claws scratched me. A few sapless sounds edged out from my lips; I arched towards the force of its hand.

Once again, it asked me, “What do you want?”

I knew what to say this time. I bit my lip and rolled my eyes as far back into my skull as I could, hoping to see the prince’s eyes. Like that, straining and shaking, I spoke.

“You.”

The demon smiled. “Good.”