Vespera opened her eyes.
The ceiling was white. Familiar. The crack in the plaster ran from the corner to the center, the same crack she'd seen every morning for twenty years in this room. The pillow beneath her head smelled like lavender and something else. Something musky. Something thick and warm and unmistakably male.
She blinked. The haze of sleep clung to her brain like cobwebs. Her body ached. Not the ache of illness or exertion. A different ache. Deeper. The ache of muscles that had been pushed past their limits, of joints that had been bent into positions they'd never known, of skin that had been rubbed raw in places that hadn't been touched in years.
'What happened?'
The memories surfaced slowly. Fragments first, then waves, then a tsunami that crashed through her consciousness with devastating clarity. The magic circle. The glowing runes. The blindfold. Her mother's body beneath hers. The warmth. The milk. The cock. The screams.
'Oh gods.'
