supplicium post mortem

She was a transparent liar. She never lied about things she had done, nothing deliberately mendacious, but she had trouble admitting what was inside her chest. She thought he had paranormal guessing muscles, but he could see it all on her face, in the blushes, the set of the mouth, the water in the eyes, everything.

A war waged inside Casey Morgan, between what he wasn’t always sure. Between niceness and the truth. Between the cruel task-master and the little girl. Between the noxious demons he brushed, forcefully, off her shoulder – oh, he believed in demons. He knew their power, their seductive corrosion, their allure – between the devils at her ear and the huge, throbbing heart.

Counter-irritant: that’s what it was when he put her across his knee. There might be a bit of discipline, a bit of reassurance, a bit of atonement, and a bit of calming-down about it, but more than anything, the spanking drew the sting of a pain deeper inside, the kind he couldn’t salve directly. When she cried – whether after a long, hard slippering or a light application of his hand, which was what she needed most of all – when the tears issued forth, warm rain drops on the knee of his trousers, he loved her, so much that it hurt. She almost cried holes in his trousers that first year, so many tears so long held in.

God, could he not hold her again, that girl, that heart?

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Read other folks writing this week:

• Rafi
• Melen’s Rayne
• Nettagyrl
• PapaTomLA