Page 15 of Decimation

“What?” It comes out as barely a whisper.

“I said strip.” He says it so casually, like he’s asking me to pass the salt. “Take off your clothes.”

The room tilts. My eyes snap to the bed and then to Isaac and I shake my head, instinctively wrapping my arms around my body. “No.”

“You will…” Isaac begins, and I don’t hear the rest. He’s blocking my exit, I realise. The pair of them had this planned.

“No.” I repeat, louder this time, though my voice trembles. I take a step backward, then another. My eyes dart to the door behind him. If I could just get past him, if I could just…

I bolt.

It’s stupid. Desperate.

I know even as I’m moving that I won’t make it, but my body acts on pure survival instinct. My feet hit the hardwood and I lunge for the door, my hand outstretched for the handle, like I’d even know which way to turn if I got through it.

I don’t even get close.

Ezekiel’s arm wraps around my waist and suddenly I’m airborne, lifted up and thrown like trash. The floor rushes up to meet me and I hit it hard, the impact knocking the wind from my lungs. Before I can even process the pain he’s on me, his weight pressing me down, one hand pinning both my wrists above my head while his body traps my legs.

“Get off me.” I thrash beneath him, bucking and twisting, but it’s like trying to move a mountain. “Get off.”

“You can make this easy,” Ezekiel says from his fine seat, his voice maddeningly calm, “or you can make this hard. Either way, it is happening.”

Is this what he did to Cass? Did he hurt her too?

“This is a sin.” The words tear out of me, desperate and raw. Tears are already streaming down my face, hot and shameful. “This is…you can’t…it’s a sin.”

He actually laughs at that. The sound is low, dark, and makes something in my chest constrict with terror.

“The Esau commit no sins in the eyes of God,” he says, and there’s something almost reverent in his tone, like he’s reciting scripture. “We are His chosen. His instruments. Everything we do is ordained.”

“Please.” I whisper, and I hate how broken I sound, hate the sob that catches in my throat. “Please don’t do this. Please, I’ll do anything, anything…”

“You are my wife.” Ezekiel states, “I have every right to fuck you now.”

I stare up at him, confused through my tears. “What?” We haven’t been married. We haven’t had our hands tied and our blood mixed. He can’t just declare it so and it be true.

But he’s not listening anymore. His free hand moves to my dress, finding the collar, and then he’s ripping. The fabric tears with a sound that seems impossibly loud in the quiet room. I scream, renewing my struggles, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. He tears through my clothes like they’re paper, shredding my dress, my underwear, all of it until I’m exposed and sobbing beneath him.

“This is necessary,” he says, and I can hear him working at his belt, and the clink of metal makes my stomach heave. “This is ordained.”

“God’s will made manifest.” Isaac says from across the room, and I realise with horror that he is still here. He is witnessing this.

“No, no, no…” It’s a litany, a prayer, the only words I can form as he forces my legs apart.

The pain when he enters me is blinding. Searing. I feel like I’m being split in two. I scream again, the sound ripping from somewhere deep and primal and he just keeps going, keeps pushing until I’m certain something inside me has broken irreparably.

“Stop crying,” he grunts above me, his breath hot against my face. “You’re being weak.”

But I can’t stop. The tears pour down my temples, into my hair. I can taste salt, snot, and my own helplessness as he fucks away. My body feels like it’s being torn apart, each thrust a fresh violation that sends new waves of agony through me.

This can’t be happening. This can’t be real, but it is.

God help me, it is.

He’s not gentle. Not for a second. There’s no care in his movements, no consideration for the fact that I’m in pain, that I’m begging him to stop through my sobs. He uses my body like it’s an object, something that exists solely for his purpose, and all the while he’s murmuring about God’s plan, about divine will, about how this is all necessary.

I can smell him, I can smell his sweat, his stench as he grunts and bucks away. I can feel him on my skin, in me, I can feel every awful second that he is violating me.