“I did,” I lied brazenly, looking him in the eye.
“I’ve got it ready, Father, if you’ll allow me.” Father Lucciano was right there.
God, I hated him. How beautiful he was. How strange and unsettling. A striking demon come to play in this little playground that the men in power had made, hidden away from the world. Somewhere they could let the beast out.
“Go ahead, Father, as you see best.” Father Benedict sank back into his chair and watched us with interest.
He was a man who had observed me kick and scream in pain, injecting different stimulants and sedatives into various veins and taking notes on the effects. Vargas was in it for the money, or the power, it seemed. Pavol was in it to satisfy his twisted sexual desires. But Benedict? He has his own sick kinks, but what reallygot him going was the need to experiment on human subjects. To see what happened when you combined different variables.
“Miss Dmitrova, open wide,” Father Lucciano said. He’d moved in front of me when I was glaring at Benedict’s balding head.
I glanced up at him, fighting the urge to scream. He held my medication in his hand.
Open wide?
I stuck my hand out, palm up, waiting for the pills, but he didn’t drop them.
Instead, he held a pill to my lips and waited for me to open my mouth.
“What? Why?” I demanded lowly, disappointment crashing into me. I wasn’t going to be able to avoid taking today’s medication, which meant resetting the clock all over again. Staff at Hallow Hall were pros at checking that you’d really taken the pills. There was no escaping their inspection. It had happened to me countless times, but this time, I felt like my heart might snap in two.
“To ensure there are no mistakes,” Lucciano said dispassionately. He was a different demon from who he had been before, questioning me about my voices. Now, it was like a mask of cruel indifference had slid over his handsome features, cloaking them in ice.
There would be no mercy from a man like this.
My face felt hot as I slowly opened my mouth and let him slip his fingers inside. They were long and thick, the kind you might find on a man who sculpted marble. I had to widen my mouth to fit him. There was something twisted and shameful about the feeling. He was staring down at me like he was committing every scorching second to memory. It was violating. It was titillating. It was wrong and yet it made me burn.
Crazy is as crazy does.
His fingers caressed my tongue for a second before he moved them deeper, filling my mouth, choking me as his dark eyes sucked up all the air in the room. He watched the place where his fingers disappeared in the cavern of my mouth, and I watched him back.
Then he was pulling away, leaving my mouth strangely empty.
Empty?
Before I could process that fact, he brought the paper cup of water to my lips and tilted it up. Water ran down my chin and dripped onto my chest, wetting my T-shirt.
“Now, swallow,” he commanded in a voice that had probably never once been defied.
I swallowed, my throat bobbing, pushing the water down my gullet. Only water, and nothing else. I was so relieved I could have cried.
He nodded. “Good girl.”
My face burned hotter, but I didn’t turn away from him. I couldn’t seem to make my eyes leave his, or the words they seemed to be speaking to me in secret.
“Interesting technique for giving medication,” Benedict said from across the room, the spell breaking.
“It’s the only way to know for sure that the right dose has been administered,” Father Lucciano replied, and stepped back from me. “If it suits you, I can oversee Miss Dmitrova’s medication schedule from now on. It might be a nice way to continue my training on her case.”
My pulse jumped as Benedict considered his words and slowly nodded.
“Very well, go ahead.”
Sister Vera appeared in the doorway. She reached for my arm with the meat pincers she called hands and grabbed at me.
“Thank you for today, Miss Dmitrova. I look forward to working with you,” Lucciano murmured, his gaze not leaving me for a moment.
I nodded, confused and flustered.