Phoenix (dystopian romance) (Theta Waves: Episode 1) by Thea Atkinson Read Free Book Online Page A

into a pleasure, it became the one thing that decided her. Not his wealth and position. No. She needed a man to thrill her body, and Erich did.
    His mouth leaves her skin only long enough to curse at her, to tell her how she will be punished. To tell her all the delightfully delicious ways he will make her suffer. She can feel her lip trembling in anticipation and her eyes lock on Markus's even as her husband's mouth descends below her navel, to scour between her legs with his tongue. She can see the bulge in Markus's breeches, and knows he feels the same. Her husband might think to punish her with his touch, find his way to dignity through treating her like a harlot, but he can't imagine how badly she wants it.
    "Punish her, Markus," he says. "Make her suffer for making you wait, for cuckolding me."
    She half expects Markus to resist; he's a gentleman, after all. He's Erich's best friend. He should be mortified at his betrayal.
    But he isn't. He shifts onto the bed, facing her, on his knees with his cock insisting she open her mouth for him, and they throttle her together these two. Yet Erich's expression is never more than controlled complacency while Markus's is pure abandonment and surrender. Even in the heat of orgasm, Erich watches her carefully, as though he's examining her, searching for something.
    It's a fortnight before the truth of the punishment finally comes out and she realizes the depth of her betrayal, how profoundly Erich feels that his examination is nowhere near done.
    She's in the parlour when they come for her. At first, she's confused, thinking that Herr Schönenberg is there simply to pay his respects, to introduce her to the newest member of his diocese, Constable Fritzaen. She's seen the man about the village, dressed in cloth of gold as though he were royalty, his wife ingratiating herself among the nobility as though they always belonged. Of course they didn't; Erich would have organized a masque if it were so and he hadn't.
    No, this constable had no lineage but what came from the cesspools of execution and theft.
    She lays down her needlepoint at any rate, smoothing her skirts as she stands to welcome them. She's about to ask them if they'd like some tea when she notices that Erich is coming in behind them. He doesn't so much as point a finger at her, or lock his eyes on hers when he speaks.
    "There she is," Erich says. "The mark is on her."
    "The mark?" she asks her husband, confused. "What mark are you talking about?"
    No one answers her. The only response she receives is to be manhandled by the constable. He's an ugly man, his face full of scars from the smallpox, his eyes a blue as hard as his grip on her elbow, even bluer against the purple of his doublet.
    "Where has the devil marked you, child?" he asks her.
    "The devil..." The panic is rising now, twisting its way up through the confusion as she searches for her husband's face. "What are they talking about, Erich?"
    "She's lain with the devil," Erich says to the Herr Schönenberg "You'll see his mark there on her thigh."
    Herr Schönenberg jerks his head at her, flaring that bulbous nose of his, his strip of mustache wriggling grossly as he chews at his thin lip. Without so much as a sense of proprietary, the hard-eyed parishioner, the witch Hunter she realizes now, yanks her skirts up as he leans in.
    "Yes," he says as his fingers pinch the tender flesh of her inner thigh. She knows what he sees. It's been there since Erich bit her a fortnight ago and has now healed into a perfect half-moon still as red and tender as a newborn bottom.
    "That's not the devil's Mark," she protests. "Erich, tell him what it is." She tries her best to wrench her skirts back down, to twist herself out of the hard grasp of the constable.
    "Quiet, witch," Erich says. He makes a great show of being unable to meet her gaze. "The devil has you; the devil take you." His face is such a contortion of disgust, that she's unsure whether he's acting or whether he's