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Normally, John would have listened with rapt attention to his older brother’s sermons. But his sin was clouding his mind, stifling his ears to his brother’s teachings, and causing his eyes to wander from a pair of yellow aviators to the milky flesh of his step-sister’s thigh. The lace of her dress was hiking up to the line of her underwear, and he couldn’t help but wonder if she was aware of how much she had on display. He couldn’t help but wonder if she wanted him to see it – if she wanted him to re-enact what he thought about doing to her every night when he tried to fall asleep.
No; he was letting sin guide him, letting it plant these false hopes inside his mind in order to sway him from his course. He wished so greatly that he didn’t still want, that he didn’t still fall so helpless a victim to lust. It only gnawed at the emptiness inside of him that he wished to fill with all these desires of his – some of which were twisted and taboo, and would no doubt earn Joseph’s scorn if found out.
And he knew that Joseph would chastise him for his sinful thoughts in this moment, not only for his lust but for whom it was for. Faith was Joseph’s treasured daughter, his innocence and his purity – his bliss. And John was her brother, her protector and her family. He had the suspicion that if he were to act on these thoughts, he would be cast out, that in Joseph’s words, “the gates of Eden would be shut to him”. He’d read every testament in his brother’s book, and he remembered clearly the statement that forbade incestuous relations.
But even when he tore his gaze from the lace hem of Faith’s dress, his mind could not be cleansed. He was imagining what she might look like without a dress at all, perhaps with her legs spread apart, perhaps with her hands bound behind her and her lips parted in ecstasy or sweet, delicious pain…
“Brother? Is everything okay?” her whisper yanked him from this fantasy, and reality hit him hard, unlike how soft the hand was that now rested on his thigh. He hadn’t realized that his leg had been bouncing in anxiety and he’d been leaning forward to try and hide the arousal that was making an appearance in his jeans.
John took Faith’s hand, and guided it from his leg – not that he would have minded if it had travelled further, but that was beside the point. He didn’t want to make the situation awkward by her noticing something she shouldn’t.
He offered her a smile, and uttered back, “Yes, I’m fine. Thank you, sister.”
Faith was concerned; something was eating at her brother, and more so than usual. He usually seemed at least mildly on edge, at least when he wasn’t acting all calm and suave for a camera. She knew what he did to the sinners in Holland Valley, and she had to admit that sometimes, when she wasn’t under the influence of the Bliss, he scared her.
Joseph had taught her to not be afraid, to embrace those whose sins plagued them, to cleanse them and ultimately free them. And John, of course, enforced this as well; Joseph trusted him enough to keep him in this family, and so she had nothing to be afraid of. But there was something so unhinged about him that couldn’t help but make even her a bit uneasy.
Still, she was naturally inclined to feel empathetic towards others, and so in this moment of trouble she attempted to comfort him. It was unusual how he pushed her away – was he angry with her? Her brow furrowed in confusion, and although she returned her focus to the Father, it was this enigma that caused her to linger inside the tent once the sermon was over, giving her blessing to each member of P.E.G. as they departed from its entrance.
Seeing Joseph’s forehead tip to Faith’s, if only for a moment, caused John’s blood to boil with an unexplainable envy. This settled, rocked from its venomous growth only when he felt her hand on him once again, this time lightly settling over his wrist. He cocked a brow, searching the emeralds of her eyes for an answer. But her expression was difficult to read, and all she spoke was a request for him to stay.
As the last devotee disappeared from the ingress of the tent, he turned to her questioningly, and Faith realized in this moment that she needed to choose her words carefully; her brother was volatile, and she didn’t want to set him off by prying too much. But she reminded herself that she needed to trust, in Joseph and his family, and so she dared to ask,
“You seem so nervous today – is something on your mind? Was it the sermon? Is it me – did I do something that bothered you?”
Bothered was certainly a word for it; Faith was driving him insane, and she likely had no idea. He wanted to tell her this, to voice his sin like he wore it on his flesh, but his better judgment hadn’t completely fallen victim to lust, and so he kept his answer vague,
“Bothered, yes, something is on my mind.” John plucked his trench coat from the rack beside the entrance and busied his hands with fitting it over his body. He needed a distraction from his sin. It was all he could do not to feed it, to grab her wrists and take what he wanted from her.
“Do you think you could talk about it?” Faith pressed him boldly, her curiosity piqued by his confirmation of her concerns. “I’ve been told that I’m a very good listener,” she added and peered up at him from long lashes with an innocent yet playful smile tugging at her lips.
“You wouldn’t want to hear what’s on my mind,” John assured her. Though he wasn’t worried about what she thought, he was worried about what Joseph would think when she went crying to him about John’s secret.
“You’re my brother. There’s nothing you could tell me that would scare me,” she persisted, voice now pleading. This poutiness was what she used to get what she wanted, and to her unawareness, it only made it all the more difficult for John to forget his sin.
A strenuous breath was released from John’s lips, and he went to run a hand through meticulously-combed hair, but his fingers caught on the metal of his sunglasses, and in that moment he felt like taking them in his fist and shattering them, not only to ease his frustration but to indulge in the pain that would split his palm, the consequence of his wrath.
Instead, he tucked them carefully away in the deep pocket of his coat, and decided to indulge himself by taking a step further into her space. He wanted to test the waters, to gauge her reaction to this primal desire that rooted itself inside of him.
“Would it not scare you if I told you that you were distracting me from the entirety of that sermon?” he asked her, his heart-rate quickening in his chest.
A warmth flushed Faith’s cheeks, and she took a moment to try and process his words. Did he mean… in the sinful way? Or did he mean it in the threatening way? His words carried a hint of suggestion, yet his stature was imposing. His eyes were alight with an emotion she hadn’t seen in him before – at least not up-close – and they reflected her own curiosity. She decided that he likely meant both.
“No…” she replied softly, awaiting his next move. She found that it would be smartest not to provoke him in this moment, that she should allow him to commandeer hold of this bizarre and uncomfortable conversation that they had wound up in.
“Would it scare you if I told you that when I think of you, I think of sinning?”
Faith’s stomach fluttered, but not in the unpleasant way. The feeling was, in fact, oddly thrilling. It wasn’t often that she felt something when she was sober, and she welcomed it, even if this feeling was created by sin.
“Of course not,” she spoke, trying to sound sure of herself. She could feel her voice faltering in apprehension. “Sin is natural – we’ve all fallen prey to it at some point. Do you need help ridding yourself of your sin, brother?”
Not even Faith was certain what she meant by that last sentence, if it was asked out of that innocent, genuine desire to help, or out of a different sort of desire, the kind that she shouldn’t feel for anyone let alone the man who was supposed to be her brother.
Faith didn’t appear as repulsed as John anticipated she would, and he took this as his cue to continue with an unimpeded force; her willingness to listen this far and her receptiveness to this taboo idea he introduced shed the lock he had on his self-control.
“Sister…” His reached for her, his fingers clasping the hipbone that was still so defined beneath the thick lace of her dress. “I need you to help me get rid of it.”
His touch felt rough and greedy to her; nothing about it was gentle, but she wasn’t sure that she minded. Something about the neediness of it, the power that it seemed to emanate in a spiraling lack of control drew her interest even more.
“What do you need me to do?” she asked him, voice still maintaining that gentle innocence of hers.
Her brother’s mouth curved sharply into a wicked smirk that would put the Devil’s to shame, and the undertones of his voice carried a sinister yet hungry growl as he spoke, “You don’t need to do anything.”
Faith didn’t have the time to react before his hands slid to her wrists, and they were yanked behind her. She released a startled noise akin to a squeak, but bit her lip and made no complaint as he forcefully guided her to the lectern that Joseph had been giving his speech behind mere minutes prior. The edge of it dug sharply into her spine as she was shoved against it.
“Are you sure this doesn’t scare you, sister?” John asked her as he rifled through one of his pockets.
Faith watched as he withdrew zip-ties from his coat, and a shiver of unease ran down her spine as she felt them tighten around her wrists, the plastic biting harshly at her tender flesh. But this discomfort was the least of her worries, and she took it that he wouldn’t care much for these worries. Although his words seemed to indicate caring, the way he handled her spoke otherwise, like that brotherly kindness had switched off and been replaced by a feral brutality.
“I don’t know,” she answered truthfully. “Maybe. I think it’s starting to.”
She needed her Bliss, something to smooth her mind’s edges and let all of her unease melt away so that she could be a good sister for him, a cure for his sin.
“Good,” he cooed, and procured his treasured knife from his pocket next. Her fear excited him, spurred him onward. It was a feeling he’d often get when his latest recruit found their way into his chair, only this time it was the sister he’d lusted over for months on end. When John had led her confession, Joseph had been there as an overseer, but he finally had her away from the eyes of his brother. He wanted her to confess so much more than that drug addiction of hers.
John’s only hesitation came from when he held the blade of his knife to her dress, for he knew that if Joseph caught her with the garment sliced apart that he would surely have questions. But then he remembered how Joseph had prevented him from drowning the deputy at the river, how he’d had to suppress his sin because of how his brother had favored such a sinner. How he’d criticized his methods of forcing those like them to atone. Every move he made was followed closely by the eyes of Joseph, and he was sick of it. A streak of defiance shot through him, and before his rationale could intervene, his blade pinched the seam of her dress and he brought it all the way down to where the fabric tightly hugged her upper thigh.
The temperature seemed to drop as the cool air pooled across Faith’s skin, now exposed to her brother as he peeled aside the white lace. Her breath hitched in her chest, and she bit her lip to keep from whimpering. But past the peril and the wrongness of the situation, she couldn’t help but think, I liked that dress. It had been a gift from Joseph, after all.
John had waited so long to see beneath that pretty dress of hers, and he cast it almost angrily to the side to reveal what he had only been able to imagine before. His hands couldn’t help but immediately seek out the perky yet soft breasts that rested on either side of her sternum, and his eyes drank in the rest of her like an expensive whiskey, tracing the line of her hips and panning across such undisturbed, such sinless flesh.
Like an artist with his paintbrush, the Seed brother began to trace the letters of “Lust” across her lower stomach with the tip of his blade. He was delicate only in this movement, for he didn’t want to spill her guts across his nice shoes; he only wished to create an outline in his mind, and for her to squirm under his touch.
Faith really couldn’t help but whimper now; the cold steel of the blade was enough to set her nerves on end, but before it left her flesh, the tip dug into her – perhaps by accident or his wicked design, she wasn’t quite sure – and a droplet of hot blood welled from her abdomen, pain biting into her. As he drew the knife away, she caught sight of her own blood on its blade, and panic started to seep in past her curiosity.
“I don’t understand, brother. I’ve already atoned. What is it that you want from me?”
“Oops,” John muttered almost sarcastically as the knife drew blood, and he wiped it unapologetically against the blue silk of his shirt before hiding it back in his pocket. He took his time in answering her, and shrugged the coat from his shoulders, folding it smoothly and placing it over the back of one of the seats.
When his gaze met hers again, he smiled wickedly and brushed her cheek with the back of his inked fingers. “I want you, sister. I want my sin inside of you. I want to hear you scream yours.”
His words were uttered dangerously in her ear, and hearing them made that curiosity return stronger than her fear. A heat roared to life in her stomach, and her lust took hold. Her hips squirmed as a wetness formed between her thighs, and she began to rub them together to try and satiate the itch that she felt for her own brother.
“Please do,” she begged. “Oh, John, please.” Faith’s mind sought out a phrase that might make him lose his control as wildly as she had, and she recalled a word that Joseph had once urged her to call him.
“Please, Daddy,” she breathed.
John’s fingers had sidled down to her throat, where they rested eagerly against her jugular. Her new nickname for him was enticing, but it didn’t quite hit the same viscous pocket of sin that had stiffened his jeans.
“No, I am your brother,” he growled, his fingers tightening against her throat. “Call me brother.”
Faith always knew that a screw or two was loose in John’s head, but never in a million years had she anticipated that he’d get off to hearing her refer to him as her family. That being said, the two didn’t technically share blood ties, and even if it was still incredibly wrong, she was too wrapped up in her own desires that she didn’t want to stop now.
“Yes, brother.” She obeyed. His fingers felt rough against her throat, and his cologne was drowning her senses. She wasn’t just compelled by sin; she was enthralled, and her hips nearly bucked with how much she wanted to feel him inside her.
He almost thought it would have been more entertaining had she refused, had he needed to pry the word from her like he pried “yes” from the rest of his sinners. But it still caused his breathing to labour in his chest, and his pants to twitch in anticipation. He undid his buckle and slid his belt out from the loops of his jeans, casting it aside with less collected calm than he had his jacket.
The rest of his clothing was shed rapidly, his movements fueled by his mad craving for her. Once there wasn’t a single layer of fabric that stood between him and his prize, he gripped her by the hips, nails digging into her smooth flesh, and buried himself inside of her.
The young woman gasped. Although she hadn’t expected him to be gentle – as he hadn’t been with anything else – she also could not help but feel a shock travel throughout her body as a jolt of pain shot through her core. It reverberated through her muscles, sending every one of her nerves into a frenzy of sensation.
John’s hands found their way back to his sister’s throat, and this time his grip was like a vice; her moans soon devolved into sputtering cries, and in anyone else it may have invoked terror or guilt, but in him it awakened a twisted joy that fueled his lust and helped fill that chasm his own pain had split within him.
And she felt like bliss around him. He’d never fallen victim to drugs like Faith, but sex had always felt incredible, and the way she clung so perfectly to every crevice of him was already challenging his stamina.
He paused to listen to her breathe as his grip loosened around her throat, and his own breath came in short, strained huffs as he asked, “Tell me, sister, you wouldn’t let Joseph do something like this to you, would you?” As he gazed at the lust-fueled junkie he had reduced her to, he couldn’t help but recall the intimacy the two had shared earlier, and he felt envy surge in his chest again.
It seemed that her brother was never finished with his surprises, because she was still trying to recover from this partial high he’d granted her when he asked such an out-of-nowhere question. Her airways burned, and she choked out a much-needed breath. Her body was quivering so much that, had he not been holding her, her legs may have collapsed beneath her.
Lying was a sin, but then again, so was what they were currently doing. And in this moment, she feared nothing more than what he might do to her if she spoke the truth. She attempted to mask this uncertainty by sputtering out her breaths longer than she needed to.
Just lie, a voice told her. Just tell him what he wants to hear.
But the Father had taught her not to lie, and unlike his preaching of sexual purity, he never went against what he said about lies.
“He doesn’t do it nearly as good as you do,” she finally decided on, her voice nothing but an estranged moan. She tensed, her body preparing itself for him to inflict his wrath upon her.
John growled not out of desire this time but out of an emotion far more dangerous, one that tightened his chest and caused his blood to boil with hellfire. He twisted Faith around and slammed her against the lectern. This time his fingers entwined themselves into her dirty-blonde hair, and he pulled at a fistful of the strands as he began to thrust into her again, channeling the rest of his energy into a carnal aggression.
Faith’s skull was rocked against the wooden finish of the lectern, her head beginning to spin. Pain had exploded all across her body with the way he was handling her, but it was nothing compared to the ecstasy that began to envelope her as he brought her crashing over her peak, and she wasn’t sure which was causing this dizzying wave. But even as her muscles relaxed and she came undone around him, he didn’t quit his relentless pursuit to make her his.
John had been fighting the inevitable end of their amorous adventure for some time now, but at last he finally let himself go, only when he’d felt as if he’d taken out his frustration appropriately. He spun her back to face him, all dopey-eyed as if she’d been snorting some of her Bliss, and made her watch as he came across her stomach, the action sending involuntary shudders throughout his own body.
Warmth speckled her abdomen, flooding her belly button and slicking her bruised flesh with her brother’s seed. She blinked the blurriness from her eyes, the darkness of his tattoos swimming in and out of her vision before she could come to. For God’s sake, he had nearly knocked her out.
“Joseph isn’t allowed to do this to you,” John hissed. “If you ever need to submit to your sins, sister, you come and see me.”
She nodded numbly as he finally released his hold on her, and her back slumped across the lectern as her legs buckled beneath her. Before all could be said and done and she’d have to clean all of this up, she managed to form the words on her lips,
“I promise... brother.”