Isabella wraps a gray wool cloak over the blue dress she wore to dinner and opens the door to her bedroom. She extinguished all the candles behind her. Even if she paused now to look back at her trunk she would not be able to see it, so she does not glance back at everything she is leaving behind. She realizes she has to sacrifice her dresses, shoes, books and journals if she wants to save her soul, therefore, she ignores the stab of pain she experiences as the door closes on her self.
She turns right down the torch-lit corridor, the direction Lady Wulvedon took for their first lesson under the ancient oak. She has no idea if she will be able to find her way out of the Castle, but she will cease to respect herself if she does not try.
Lord Wulvedon does not care about her in the least, he made that humiliatingly clear at dinner. He amused himself with her briefly, and that is all. She was foolish to think he felt any real sympathy and respect for her. It was incredibly naive of her to trust him so fervently. It was only her desperate imagination their souls touched through the magically intimate fingertips of their thoughts and his feelings caressed hers with a special understanding, making her an intensely exciting promise. Her father often told her she had a wonderful imagination, and now she understands why his eyes were sad above his indulgent smile.
As she hurries down the twisting passages, it seems quite natural to move from darkness into light and back again. One minute she feels absolutely miserable, and then hope begins warming the cold darkness Lord Wulvedon's indifference plunged her into as she tells herself he was only pretending not to care about her. Her faith in him resurrects beautifully, only to fade again when she can find no real evidence to sustain it. And this intense emotional conflict, combined with how quickly she is walking, makes her heart beating against her chest feel like her soul's clenched fists demanding the universe pay attention to her.
Isabella has no idea what she will do if she manages to find a way out of the Castle. Strangely enough, this seems like a good thing since it will put her entirely in God's hands. The dark roads outside--all of them leading to a world in which she must somehow survive with nothing at all--are the lines of a divine palm, and whichever path she ends up following in order to save her soul by leaving this sinful place will take her where she needs to go.
At long last, she comes to the first large silver-studded door leading out of the maze-like passages. She has no idea where it leads, and she does not care. It takes all her strength to press down on the wrought iron latch with both hands and push open the thick wood, but she manages it and enters an open space she does not recognize.
She pauses, unable to believe her eyes. She seems to have taken all the right turns, and the miracle inspires her to slip her right hand out of her cloak and quickly make the sign of the cross. The moonlight streaming in through the floor-length window directly before her is as clear a sign as she could have hoped for, shining pure and gentle as a divine finger pointing the way out for her.
She rushes towards the blessed light, unable to run as silently as she would have liked across the stone tiles. Yet it scarcely matters how much noise she makes since there is not another soul in sight. But the glass of the windows, she discovers, is broken up into small triangular panes. Even if she dares risk the noise of breaking it, she would need to be as small as a cat to slip out of the Castle this way. Then she realizes the diamond-shaped panes belong to a pair of doors, which part as if by magic when she touches the curved black iron latch.
'Thank you,' she whispers fervently, and as the doors close behind her again, she pauses to gaze up at a universe filled with stars. Winter has returned full-force and the frigid air comes as a shocking, sobering slap to her body. Suddenly, questions begin cutting into the pure elation of escape, and she merely stands there hugging herself beneath the cloak even as she despises herself for hesitating. Then she stiffens when one of the deep shadows to her left begins flowing like black water towards her feet...
The black cat crosses her path, and glances back at her with indifferent golden eyes.
She stares back at it intently. 'What am I going to do?' she whispers, half hoping for a magical meow which will give her a clue as to how she can land on her feet in the world if she leaps wildly out of Lord and Lady Wulvedon's hands now.
The cat looks past her into the Castle, and flows seamlessly back into the darkness.
Isabella peers anxiously over her shoulder.
The tall silhouette making its way toward her seems to burn itself on her vision as if she looked directly at the sun, so that even as she turns and runs she continues seeing its black ghost everywhere. She could not distinguish the face of the man stalking her, but every fiber of her being recognized Lord Wulvedon; already she does not need to see him clearly to know him.
The bitter December air cuts into her lungs and the darkness seems to do everything in its menacing power to put as many obstacles in her way as possible. The smooth garden path she follows off the stone terrace does not get her very far before giving way to uneven ground treacherous with roots. The large ancient trees let her pass, but their branches toss the full moon around in a way that makes it nearly impossible for her to establish a sense of direction. Luna's steady luminous gaze becomes a mischievous winking between naked limbs, and Isabella suffers the disturbing impression she is following a less obvious path even deeper into the estate, but she cannot stop now. If she allows herself to be caught she will be severely punished for attempting to escape. And yet ... she presses herself back against a broad trunk to catch her breath ... she could say she merely stepped outside for some fresh air because she could not sleep. She will still be punished for leaving her room, she is certain of that, but perhaps not as severely...
She keeps running, not daring to look behind her, yet there is no escaping the thought haunting her. Lord Wulvedon went to her room! Her flight was prompted by the belief he felt nothing for her. But if he felt nothing for her, then why would he go to her room? Had he read her mind at dinner and seen it in her eyes she had decided to try and escape tonight? She cannot seem to tell the difference between the roots she trips over and these questions; her heart is beating too fast and hard to let her think straight. Running helps keep her body warm, but how cold her ears and her lips are warn her this is a dangerous illusion. Therefore, when she glimpses the side of a small house at the top of a hill, she hurries towards it. Being forced to hold on to her skirt in order not to trip makes it even more difficult to move quickly over the sloping ground since she cannot use her arms for balance, and gradually she realizes there is something strange about the building. It catches the light beautifully, almost as if the moon is admiring her cold complexion in this earthly mirror of smooth white stone. If her wits were not essentially frozen at the moment, she would understand why she knows she will find no succor in the strangely narrow and windowless house. It is not until she crests the hill that the word she is looking for crashes into her mind, ponderous as its marble reality--mausoleum.
The moon and the trees conspired to lead her straight into the Wulvedon graveyard.
Her lungs are so outraged by the freezing air it hurts when she laughs, perversely elated to find herself surrounded by disembodied souls who no longer need to worry about surviving in the world. She thought she had come upon the small home of some poor farmer who might have been kind enough to offer her shelter, instead she is headed straight for the skeletal arms of another Lord or Lady Wulvedon. The intense irony of this fact uses the sharp cold to fell her willpower. Suddenly, her passionate desire to save her soul transforms into the much simpler, and much more immediately urgent, task of preserving her body. Her feet are so cold she can hardly feel the ground beneath her little white boots any more. A mausoleum is a form of shelter after all, and she can only pray it will be a little warmer inside the tomb, only one of a handful of similar structures scattered across the grass at the top of the hill.
The black wrought iron gate is not only miraculously unlocked, one side swings loosely open almost as if inviting her in.
The light surprises her. She anticipated an absolute darkness in which she would stand trembling in fear waiting for Lord Wulvedon to find her, so it is a pleasant surprise to have the moon's company as the result of a gap between the walls and the vaulted ceiling. Stars also wink down at this eternal resting place, where a large sarcophagus sits high on a platform in the center.
She is not going to succeed in saving her soul, not tonight. She is going to be forced to give up and return to the Castle's purgatory of severe punishment, where she will be just another damned body.
Admitting defeat, and standing still after running hard, makes her feel so strangely calm, and she wanders curiously up onto the stone platform. The lid of the massive coffin is a carved effigy of two bodies lying side by side. Their clothing immediately makes it apparent one figure is a man and the other a woman clad in a long gown with full sleeves. The man is wearing a suit of fine chain mail, his gloved hands clenched around the hilt of a long-sword resting down the length of his body, the wide blade covering his sex. Their gray stone faces look remarkably alike, and it is not just their smiling acceptance of death that gives their features such a strikingly similar cast. Either they are brother and sister or the artist was not very good.
Isabella shudders imagining Bernard and Bridget buried together like this. Then a small sound behind her prompts her to wrap her arms around herself beneath her cloak and to hold desperately on to her feelings. Turning around slowly, she stands motionless as another statue watching the gate leading into the mausoleum creak open again.
Lord Wulvedon enters the crypt. 'Isabella,' he says quietly, and there is just enough moonlight for their eyes to meet across the dark space.
Trapped within the marble walls, his deep voice imbues her name with a mysterious power, enabling her to reply fearlessly, 'My lord' as though they have merely run into each other on a stroll.
His boots make a hollow sound on the stone as he approaches her. He does not ask her what she is doing here. He does not say anything at all.
'If I am to be punished for running away,' she desperately wishes he would speak, for not knowing what he is thinking frightens her, 'please punish me yourself, my lord. Do not just let someone else do it.'
'Isabella,' he steps onto the platform with her, 'I would appreciate it if you would not tell me what to do.'
'Forgive me, my lord.' She moves behind the heads of the eternally sleeping couple away from him. The moonlight playing on his black leather vest and leggings makes her even more conscious of his relaxed strength and of how his proud, straight-backed carriage is tempered by his light, cat-like gait. 'Please do not hurt me,' she whispers, and for the first time dares to say his name, 'Bernard...'
He stares down the length of the stone bodies at her. 'Did I hurt you last night?' he asks quietly.
'Yes...' His features are a black-and-silver mask, yet she seems to see him more clearly than ever, as if their souls are standing naked before each other in this eternal resting place. 'But that is not what I mean...'
'Come here, Isabella.'
'You told your sister I was all hers,' she exclaims, and stays where she is.
'And I told you we would have to be careful.'
Her relief is so intense it makes her feel faint even as she finds herself unable to resist walking back towards him slowly.
He grabs her by the shoulders and traps her between his body and the coffin.
'I miss my father,' she tells him, enjoying the spectral illusion of intimacy provided by the ghosts of their breaths meeting.
He gently cups her face in his amazingly warm hands. 'I am sorry,' he whispers, and lowering his head rests his mouth gently over hers.
His lips are cool and firm, and like the edge of a blade the feel of them cuts her to the quick.
He lets her feel the warmth of her name against her cheek as he breathes, 'Oh Isabella...' Then he steps back abruptly and slips his hands into her cloak. 'Do you want me?'
'Yes,' she whispers.
He unfastens her cloak, lifts it off her shoulders, and lets it fall to the floor. 'Then why were you running away from me?'
'Because I thought you did not really care about me ... because I do not wish to be merely another body to you.'
'If that is all you were, Isabella, I would not be here now.'
She trembles. 'I am so cold, my lord.'
'I will warm you up,' he promises. 'Trust me.' He reaches up and grasps a silver key, which opens the glimmering black leather over his chest as he pulls on it, exposing his pale flesh all the way down to his navel.
She slips her hands into his vest gratefully. 'You are so warm, my lord.'
'I had a lot to drink, and you run like a rabbit. I nearly lost you.'
'And you are so smooth and so hard...' Her father's chest had been big and tender and hairy.
'Oh yes, I am very hard.' He grabs one of her wrists, pulls her hand down, and forces her to cradle the firm bulge between his thighs in her open palm as his other arm slips around her shoulders. 'Hard for you, Isabella.'
Her cheek resting on his warm chest and her hand full of his mysterious potency, her eyes close contentedly.
Keeping firm hold of her wrist, he caresses his buried erection with her hand.
The friction makes her feel oddly breathless, and a delicious urgency like a flame flickering to life begins licking up between her own legs.
'Take it out,' he urges quietly.
The thought of freeing the powerful shaft of his penis frightens her. Yet the mausoleum is a silent chapel, and it is not so much his hands on her shoulders as a profound desire to worship that brings her to her knees before him. She wants to express her faith in him and to receive confirmation of his feeling for her in return. She is very glad he helps her open his leggings because her fingers are stiff with cold, and she is overwhelmed by the sense of daring to take part in a dark sacrament.
'Do not be afraid, Isabella.' He rests both his hands on her head, very much like a priest blessing her. 'Take it out and give it a kiss.'
She reaches obediently into the tight space of his leggings, finds the firm but tender shape curled up inside them, and lifts it out reverently.
His penis rears straight out at her, serpent-like. 'Kiss it,' he commands. His fingers are entwined as inexorably as ancient roots through her hair, making it impossible for her to look away.
She is morbidly conscious of the decayed man lying in the crypt behind her and of the woman resting peacefully by his side as she closes her eyes and kisses the tender rift in the tip of Lord Wulvedon's cock. She means only to rest her lips on it for a second, but he pulls her face closer, forcing her mouth open. 'Mm...' she moans in protest, but there is no resisting the pressure of his hands as his erection slides onto her tongue. The moon seems intensely interested in his pale shaft, for she can see it clearly in the darkness as it glides slowly into her mouth like solid light. He disregards the dangerous barrier of her teeth, which for some reason she is careful to keep out of his way as his smooth length penetrates her otherwise very reluctant orifice. Her eyelashes flutter from the effort she makes not to gag as he gently forces her head back and leans over her, reaching down into her body with his remorseless hardness. She is sure cannot take it. She closes her eyes as her chest heaves with the urge to be sick when his head rubs against the back of her throat. Then once again in her mind's eye she sees that other girl kneeling in a dark corridor, sees her taking his full length down into her delicate neck not only without gagging but with her eyes seeming to beg for more, and the profound stab of excitement she experiences deep inside her relaxes her jaw in astonishment.
'Oh yes,' he murmurs, 'let me fuck your mouth just for a moment...' He slips out from between her lips with obvious reluctance.
She is breathlessly relieved he allows her to stand up, until she sees moonlight glint off the polished blade in his hand. 'No,' she gasps when he clutches a fistful of her dress, thrusts the dagger into it, and slices the fine material all the way down from her belly to her ankles. 'Lady Wulvedon gave me this dress!' she cries in despair.
'You are in trouble now.' He sheathes the knife, and lifts her up onto the hard edge of the sarcophagus behind her. 'We both are.' He spreads her legs.
She clings to his shoulders while both watching and feeling his cool head disappear into the warm darkness of her flesh. It gives her such pleasure to meet him in this way she does not mind the pain as he forces her legs wider apart, making her aware of a muscle in her inner thighs stretching all the way up inside her to a tight space aching with a need she cannot define.
'You are going to bleed,' he warns.
She shifts her hands up from his shoulders to his neck to get a firmer grip on him, and the column of flesh joining his head with his shoulders feels excitingly related to the other hard part of his body pushing into hers. 'Oh God, it hurts,' she sobs feeling the tip of his rigid penis hit bottom just as his man's fingers did, and yet at the same time she becomes aware of how much deeper she really is...
'Enjoy it,' he commands, and his quiet intensity is more irresistible than the hot flood of pain as his erection breaches her virgin pussy with a single violent thrust.
'Oh my lord, stop,' she gasps. 'Stop!'
His response is to kiss her so furiously his tongue helps her forget the torment of his cock stabbing her relentlessly. She can feel her inner flesh clenching around him, making her hot hole even more agonizingly tight, but she cannot help resisting his penetrations as the edge of the crypt cuts uncomfortably into her bottom through the fine dress. At the same time, however, there is no denying the thrill she takes in being so absolutely full of him, especially since there is no doubt about his feeling for her now.
'Mm, Isabella, if you are this luscious as a bud imagine what you will be like in full bloom.'
'Oh my lord, will it always hurt so?'
'Does it hurt, Isabella?'
'Oh God, yes!'
'Do not fight it. Flow with the pain and let it bring you to me.'
He kisses her again, and somehow she understands what he means when he explains it to her this way, wordlessly and passionately. His neck, his penis and his tongue are all so very firm she cannot help but be happy they are all hers; that he is letting her brace herself on them and cling selfishly to them. And she begins to feel there is something comforting about his steady strokes despite the torment they cause her. She can depend on them. She can rely on his stiff penis to give her all the mysterious support she needs. All she could feel was a burning discomfort until he began kissing her, now she realizes he is attempting to lead her in this shocking dance, and her body glimpses how wonderful it would be if she could relax and fall into rhythm with him.
'Mm...' His lips smile against hers. 'Mm!'
No matter what Lady Wulvedon does to her, Isabella knows she can never reach into her body like this, and it gives him a frightening power over her that only he can caress her from the inside out in this devastating manner. Because even though she feels it might kill her it hurts so much, she loves the overwhelming moment when he thrusts. The experience is so intense it is impossible to be aware of anything except the excruciating fulfillment of his cock slipping in and out of her smoldering pussy. Then she looks down and sees his boner is dark with what can only be her blood, as if he truly is killing her. But it feels more like he is stabbing her to life as she never imagined it could be, so violent and yet so intensely intimate...
)
