PRAY

The dining room was magnificent. Warmed by two grand fires lit in burnished copper grates and illuminated by skilfully crafted gas lamps with mounts that curled and twisted like fruit vines, it was such a breathtaking sight that it always made Vao feel a little small when she visited. The incredible manor was a sharp contrast to the smaller, more intimate home she'd grown up in with the family she now dined with, and in her lengthy periods of separation she forgot how much had changed in their status and position. The food, at least, was still familiar - the elegance of the small cut of fine meat, served without heavy sauce to let the natural flavours take pride of place, mixed beautifully with the lingering peppercorn flavours of the hot penne and pesto that came before.

She sank awkwardly back in her chair, eating delicately with the heavy silver cutlery, chancing glances up at the terrifying presence at the head of the table. Her mother - one of them, though not directly by blood - sat there eating with her usual enormous appetite. Hainora was fearsome sight even to those she loved. Six and a half feet tall, powerfully built with enormous strength and a body that alternated seasonally between sculpted and merely impressive, it was impossible to overlook her presence in the room. The intensity of her gaze, and the brutal ugliness of the scars that cut across her face, combined in a way that left Vao breathless every time she visited.

She looked out of place in the finery of the surroundings, almost as much as Vao did. Hainora refused to dress for anything but comfort in her own home, and took her meals in the splendid dining room with its polished floors and great two-story windows in roughspun trousers and a shirt, not the expected finery of silks, dresses, and fine frock coats. It was one of the many oddities that kept Vao from easing into the routines she'd learned eating in the Great Houses of the Southern kingdoms, in the company of the Prophet - though she knew, dimly, that to others it was only the smallest.

The naked housekeeper, with her lean body covered in bruises and scars, was perhaps the largest of the oddities to any casual observer who might have joined them for that intimate meal. Kayla took the usual place of the butler out of Hainora's preference, and stayed naked at all times save for when esteemed guests were visiting or attending the children for the same reason. Much of the house ran on Hainora's preference, all of it a reflection of the muscular blonde's will. It left Vao a little giddy, her stomach tensing in knots and her heart fluttering. It was inescapable, that sense of control and power that permeated the halls.

She glanced up at a question from her other mother, Bliss, and blinked away the fog that was clouding her. "Oh, uh... It's going great, there's this new prop design we've been trialling and..." A pause. Bliss had never been the technical one - no, that was Hainora too, one more thing that drew her back into that orbit over and over. She shrugged gently. "The efficiency is great." It was an oversimplification, but it was close enough.

The conversation moved to the rest of the family. Her younger siblings, who she rarely saw, asked about all the other things down south. Was it true that they wouldn't eat squid? How vibrant the grand metropolis must be! Was it a thrill to be home? She drank as she answered politely, letting the sweet red wine ease the tension. She didn't mean to seem distant, but Hainora's presence left her near trembling. Memories and anticipation. Shame. Regret.

She shoved it back down when Melos, her half-sister (the direct offspring of Hainora and Bliss, who was their shared blood parent), asked about the thorny issue. Was it true she had to be monogamous when she married? It made Vao blush in this company, but she answered frankly. Yes - it was true. She was supposed to be monogamous even outside marriage, and in the South was as much as she could be, with her mother's blood and her upbringing constantly urging her towards sin. It was normal there, but here... The people of the Republic were notoriously free, and her family more than any other. They turned society's acceptance of the passing dalliance and the mistress into a mandate for the kind of debauchery that would leave any Confessor gasping for breath and struggling off apoplexy.

And here she was again. In the middle of it. In the middle of her mother's web, quietly watching a naked slave refill glasses while being grilled on her religion, her strange schismatic sect. Melos meant well, and she fought down the irritation it brought up in her to have to explain herself even among family. It was honest curiosity, not cruel interrogation, that made her younger sister ask about the prohibition on blasphemy, then the laws on diet, but it still made her feel like a stranger in a strange land at her own family table.

It was a small mercy when Tifereth, another of her half-sisters, distracted Melos and gave her some breathing room. The nerves settled only slowly, and by the time the meal was finally over with - with no little guilt lurking in Vao's thoughts at how she hadn't given the labour of their cook and kitchenmaids the respect it deserved - her stomach was a deep, yawning pit despite her satisfying fullness. Hainora's eyes had locked to her as they ate, and there had been a moment. It had been terrifying, exhilarating.

No one else could have read the importance of that one slowly rising eyebrow as her mother finished the dessert course. It was a subtle gesture. It was her only chance - Hainora only ever gave her one - to stop what was coming. To answer with a shake of her head, or to look away. But she hadn't. Even as the rational part of her screamed at her not to, she'd nodded back, and then looked down at the impeccable tablecloth, at her small hands with their rough mechanic's skin and the way they looked so out of place against the finery of the silverware. She'd said yes, and she couldn't take it back, and she didn't want to, and she hated herself for it. It went against the teachings. It was wrong. But this was her mother's house, and in it, her mother's will was overwhelming, irresistible, and worst of all - alluring.

They broke as the meal came to an end, Hainora leading Melos and Tifereth to the smoking room while Bliss lead Celeste - yet another of the half sisters - and Letalya to the drawing room for coffee. Vao excused herself from offers of both, waving them off with a claim of lightheadedness, and took a deep breath of the cool air in the broad, magnificently carpeted gallery that served as the hallway through the house's rooms of state. It was so much larger than the cozy - cramped, even, by the end - home she'd grown up in, but she was glad for the walk and even the stairs. They cleared some of the haze from her head, distance from her mother helping diminish her powerful presence.

The peace and quiet of her bedroom was an even greater relief, and she collapsed down on the overly padded armchair by the window with a deep sigh. Returning home always did this to her. Joy at seeing her family again warred with shame at her weakness. Why couldn't she just shake her head? That was all she had to do, she berated herself. Shake her head, not nod. Not agree, not invite what was coming. But she never could manage it. Cocaine had been a hard addiction to beat, but it was nothing compared to this one. Despite herself, despite the disgust that rippled in her body, there was excitement blooming.

A cold shower might ease it. She might find the strength that way to lock her door - that would stop it, she was sure, the unambiguous signal of the door's elegant filigreed handle refusing to nudge. So she rose up and made her way into the adjoining bathroom, a small but comfortable affair, and stripped off her travelling clothes - a plain wool coat, with a simple cotton undershirt and a pair of thick denim trousers. She laughed as she did. She'd looked so out of place next to the fine dresses of her mother and sisters, like a peasant even next to the elegant liveries of the footmen waiting at table.

There was a bruise on her rib, and she briefly stared at it, wondering where it came from. Somewhere on the carriage ride she must have banged against a door, maybe her luggage. It was a mystery to her, and she ran her fingers over it with curiosity. It was just beneath her right breast. The discovery lead her to stare in the mirror at herself, longer, appraising. In the South, she didn't care about how she looked. But here... It was different here. Some how she did. Vanity crept in some time after she crossed the border.

She'd gotten skinny again, but Bliss's blood was still unmistakeable in her. Her natural hourglass was diminished from its lush heights of youth, but far from disappeared. The prominence of her hip bones clashed with the fullness of her breasts in a way she wasn't entirely happy with, though she was unsure how much of that was her general displeasure at her ample bosom. They got in the way when she was working with machines, drew stares and comments, and more than once she'd wished to take more after her other mother, Sonsine, who was thin in all the places Bliss wasn't. Her skin was too pale, too many hours inside poring over books and schematics, but the scars at her right shoulder, the seam that bore permanent witness to the extent of her obsession, remained lurid and vivid even after all the decades. She hated them. They marred the otherwise perfect progression into the arm she'd made for herself, the perfectly hidden clockwork and gears with the false skin that seemed so magnificently real.

She hated them and she hated the rest of it in so many ways. Soft, inefficient. But the Prophet was clear. Seeking to augment the natural plan of creation was a grave sin - in fact, the mother of all other sins. Repairing defects was one thing, but what she longed to do... It was forbidden in the strongest way, and sometimes - sometimes she hated the Prophet for that, hated God for it, even though she knew the teachings had kept her from bringing her own death about pursuing the impossible. She forced herself away from the mirror, turned on the shower, and stepped in under the freezing water. The pressure was strong, and it crashed down onto her like needles of ice, and she scrubbed herself furiously under it with a cloth until she was pink and sore and the urge to scream faded.

The towels were soft when she dried herself off and combed through her short, sandy blonde hair. She kept it fairly close cropped, only down to her shoulders. The biplanes she built made it too dangerous to grow it any longer than could easily be tucked under a cap, and she had no great vanity to risk an unfortunate accident in the service of. The fluffy dressing gown was a luxury compared to the threadbare linen one at home in her simple apartment, and she sighed into it. She could always ask her mothers for money if she wanted such indulgences at home. She never did - it was a point of pride, to an extent, but also an innate asceticism that left her content with spartan furnishings.

Returning to the bedroom, she knelt down to pray and meditate, and to beg God for love, mercy, and forgiveness. She prayed silently, according to the Prophet's teaching that it was better to be righteous and unheard, in direct challenge to the orthodox approach of loud, public prayer and offerings. Her fingers clutched at the simple circular token of the faith that hung on a string around her neck (tin - no precious metal was permitted; such a thing was vanity, and even if the Highlands tribes had taken to wearing gilded symbols she had no such desire to elevate herself) and she found herself bending forward until her forehead touched the soft carpet without conscious will or direction.

She lost herself in the prayer, and when she straightened up from her supplication she had to stretch up and out, cracking her back. It was hard to tell how long she'd been there. The sun had set during dinner, and the moon wasn't in sight from her window to give her a gauge. Rubbing her hands together, she rose slowly to discard the gown, and then sank back down onto her knees on the soft carpet, biting her plump lower lip. She could still lock the door. It wasn't too late, she reminded herself, even as the anticipation blossomed anew, a tingling in her skin and that pit of terror in her stomach. She could lock the door - but she stayed rooted, kneeling, hands on her knees and skin in frightened goosebumps.

Her skin prickled at a heavy footstep outside her door, and she held her breath. Every muscle tensed as she warred with herself again. Get up, part of her screamed, while another ordered her to stay just where she was. Her heart pounded in her throat, and then the handle turned with the slightest creak of metal on metal, and she flinched down. She was on fire, terror and arousal blurred together, and the nagging voice of reason and morality was powerless to stop her from surrendering to its intensity.

Hainora entered, smooth and graceful despite her size, and Vao stared with wide eyes, tracking her movements in. The door clicked shut, and she swallowed, opening her mouth to find no words would come out. Her mother spared her the humiliation of trying to speak and fumbling to make her tongue out.

"Were you praying, Vao? To your God?" Her voice was soft, surprisingly gentle, but her eyes were dangerous as she asked and Vao shrank a little.

"Y-yes." She managed to stammer out, nodding as she did. "I was praying, mother."

"Fucking heathen."

"I - "

She was silenced by a sharp slap across the face, her right cheek stinging and burning, the left sympathetically flushing with it. Her fingers curled tight on her knees, and she choked down the urge to speak, staring down at the carpets, heart pounding. Rough fingers seized a handful of her hair, forcing her head up and back to meet her mother's intense gaze.

"In this house, you pray to my god." Hainora growled down at her, the gentleness gone from her voice, her eyes burning into Vao like embers. She shivered, her skin tingling with fear - and desperate arousal flooding her body, old memories and instincts washing over her.

"I... I won't." She managed to reply, steeling herself, and the next slap left her reeling, coughing. When the hand went from her hair she slumped down to the floor, painfully aware that her nipples were stiff against the carpet, that between her legs she was moist. She felt so powerless in her mother's keeping, and it made her feel terribly, wonderfully alive.

"Get the fuck up." Hainora growled at her, and she meekly pushed herself back up onto her knees, swallowing loudly, tears brimming and blurring her vision. Blinking them away, she shuddered again at the sight of her mother stripping her belt off, bit her lower lip, whimpered instinctively - and found herself lightly thrusting her hips forward before she could stop herself. Her body was a traitor. It always had been, a greedy thing that wanted the sensations, the pain, the magnificent pleasure.

"Pray some more, Vao. Go on - see what happens." Vao trembled, hesitating, torn between the compulsion to obedience and pleasure and her own disgust at debasing not herself, but her faith, like this. Hainora's voice suddenly rose, stern and fierce. "I said fucking pray!"

The hand returned to her hair, forcing her down to supplicate herself with her forehead to the floor, and she moaned. Fingers numbly grabbed at her symbol, and she began, murmuring a wordless prayer - and her mother began as well. "Louder!" She screamed down at her, the belt cutting into her back, knocking the breath from her lungs. Stars danced before her eyes as she choked back a scream of agony, trying to push through the blinding pain that radiated out from the blow. Some, she knew, felt pain as pleasure. She never had - but it drove her deeper into submission, into the state of bliss she could only seem to find at another's feet by surrendering her will and her body to them completely.

"God!" She choked out when the pain faded enough that she could find the presence of mind to speak, almost a hiss through her clenched teeth. "Great creator! I - " Pain lanced through her back again as the belt fell and her words turned into an incoherent shriek. She was dimly aware of the edges of her talisman digging into her fingers, knuckles white with the intensity of her squeezing. Hot tears ran down her cheeks as she shuddered for a fresh breath, starting again only to be cut off with the first vowel by a fresh blow. She sobbed into the carpet, gasping for breath, back on fire.

"I didn't tell you to stop praying, Vao! So keep fucking praying to your heathen god!" Her mother roared down on her, booted foot kicking at her toned backside and knocking her down flat.

Every attempt to raise her voice to pray was answered by a fresh blow, the belt cracking down again and again on her shoulders, back, and buttocks. The ordeal was unceasing and eternal, a nightmare of pain and shameful arousal interlaced with the growing sense of powerlessness and the serenity that came with it. When Hainora finally paused, Vao whimpered and licked her lips, speaking in a shaky voice.

"G-god... Please... Deliver me from temptation and keep me from... From sin..." She melted off into a moan, squeezing her eyes tight against the tears, frustrated with the burning, throbbing arousal that pulsed in her cunt and seemed to permeate every part of her body. Her thighs clenched tight. They were damp, hot and sticky. "Please, God..."

"How's that working for you, Vao?" Hainora growled, bringing her booted foot down again. This time it shoved down on the side of her head, forcing her to turn it and press the side of her face against the carpet. Hobnails dug at her skin, and she shivered with ecstasy at the degradation, the humiliation.

"Huh? Where's your fucking God, Vao? I don't see him here rescuing you from me. And I sure as fuck know he isn't answering, because I can smell your pussy from here."

The belt curled and flickered above her while Hainora taunted, and each wash of cool air it brought against the angry welts marking out Vao's back made her wince. Her entire back ached, an awful lattice of forming bruises, shallow cuts, and raw skin, and it was all she could do to pant with the pain now that she was pinned so badly. Tears flooded freely down her face, rolling over her nose and onto the carpet.

She hated her mother for doing this to her, even though she'd invited it. She'd chased the high of submission for years in the South, hiring dominatrixes and prostitutes. It wasn't the same with any of them - somehow it was hollow, insipid - and she'd long given up. But whenever she came home, every time... This. This awful feeling that left her stupid and breathless, powerless to resist. That made her blaspheme and sin.

"No answer? That's alright. I've got a better use for your heathen fucking tongue, anyway." The aching pressure released, and Vao choked out a sigh of relief even as the boot was replaced by rough fingers in her hair, forcing her up onto her knees.

With her other hand, Hainora unbuttoned her trousers, reaching inside to fish out the leviathan of a cock that lived inside. There was no foreplay, no warm up, before she almost perfunctorily forced her engorged crown into Vao's mouth, slapping her sharply. Tears welled anew in her green eyes as she stared up at Hainora, obediently hollowing her cheeks, running her tongue in circles against the silky skin. It was the same taste as always, intoxicatingly familiar despite the years.

Then Hainora began. It was rough, almost brutal, and Vao gagged. She'd never been good at deep throating, and she hadn't bothered practicing in the South. Each rough thrust into her mouth poked at the back of her throat, and instinctively she raised her hands to her mother's hips, grabbing at them to try and slow her down only to be rewarded with a hard slap that left her ear ringing. Choking on her own spit and the harsh use, she dropped her hands, leaning into the rough treatment, rocking back and forth on her knees with every thrust.

Spit frothed around her mother's cock, running down her chin, dripping onto her chest and lingering there, sticky and cool. She winced and gurgled, fighting down the urge to try and escape, to raise her hands again, to do anything but submit - and with each passing moment she held it down it faded further away, bliss replacing it. Dimly, she remembered an old lesson, and tried to wrap her lip down over her top teeth, where they rubbed against Hainora's throbbing cock on every thrust, her tongue slithering forward for the underside.

Each gasping breath stretched into infinity, snatched whenever she could around the invader in her mouth, and she lost track of herself and time alike. She was only her mouth, raped and abused, and her sense of utter submission that ebbed out from it. Gagging, choking, grunting, she sucked and licked, teary eyes fluttering shut. Her jaw ached, throbbing from being held too wide too long. Her throat burned from the gagging, and each spasming wave rippled through her body in a way that was nauseating and thrilling at once. The wet choking sounds were interspersed with her mother's groans of pleasure and exertion, with the periodic slap of her breasts against her chest when they bounced on a particularly forceful thrust that made her recoil.

She wasn't sure how long she'd been sucking when Hainora finally let out a deep, throaty moan and came, salty and bitter on the tongue. Her world had shrunk even further - every sound muffled and distorted, her body suffused with the sense of pleasure that came with the submission. The hot, sticky splash against her face brought her back, Hainora pulling back for the last ropes that landed on her nose. One oozed against her eyelids, mingling with the choking tears that ran down her sticky cheeks. She squeezed it tighter, gasping for fresh air, daring to open the other.

Through blurry tears she looked up at her mother, filled with awe and love and anger and hate all at once, and she mouthed out a desperate, breathless 'thank you', then crumpled as Hainora released her iron grip on her hair and let her fall in on herself, pacing away to the bedside. She wiped her face with her fingers, then her fingers on her thigh, blinking her other eye open and wincing at the burn of cum. She caught herself in the mirror, moaning softly at the sight, the visible evidence of her submission.

She was a mess, face soaked with spit churned frothy by the violent action and with semen, the two mingling and oozing together. Some ran from her chin as she stared, wet and cool on her slick, shining chest, where the spit had fallen like rain and run in little rivers into the valley of her cleavage, stopping halfway down her belly. It was humiliating, and she throbbed for it, and made no motion to clean herself - though she did burn with shame to see semen clinging to the tin circle that sat high on her chest. Peering over her shoulder, she caught Hainora setting a bottle down on the bedside, and scrabbled to her feet on shaky legs, making the way to the bed to join her.

"How... How do you want..." A pause, a groan of frustration. "How do you want me?"

"Face down."

Nodding meekly, Vao moved with what she hoped was grace but knew was an awkward clumsiness onto the bed, crawling into place before slumping forward against the sheets, smearing the mess into them and biting her lip. Hainora joined her, the bed shifting under her powerful frame, and she shut her eyes tight in anticipation. The lube was cold, and it tingled as her mother roughly smeared it over and into her asshole, and she laced her fingers into the sheets nervously. The finger was easy - just one, perfunctory, casual. There wasn't anywhere near enough lube on it, and she knew it, and her breath hitched in terror when it withdrew.

Then the pain started, and she cried into the pillows, tears streaming freely as she split open around her mother's achingly thick cock again for the first time in months. The soft bedding muffled her screams, but could do nothing for how raw her throat was in moments, the desperate curl of her toes and shake of her legs as she fought to stay still and relax. Despite herself, her eyes flew open, and out of their corner she could see the mirror, see herself. See the desperate tense and flex of her thighs and lean torso, the shuddering rythmic sobs and screams that rippled through her.

It was not tender. It was brutal, and she hated and adored it. The bliss of utter submission resurfaced, stoked stronger and stronger by the pain of each rough thrust, and when it stalled and the pain seemed to overtake her mother responded, grabbing the discarded belt and looping it around her throat, strangling her. The string of her necklace caught, the tin circle digging into her collarbone, an aching reminder of the wrongness of the act that only drove her deeper into it. Stars danced before her eyes and her teeth sang with a dull ache, a vein throbbing in her temple. There was no way to cum, even with the choking, with the strange exquisite giddiness that mingled with the agony and washed through every part of her like a sea of sweet, warm wine.

She disappeared again, reduced internally to nothing but a raw, throbbing hole and desperate strangled gasps for breath whenever the pressure eased. Adrift in her crimson sea of submissive bliss, she moaned and gasped and fought subconsciously against the cock invading her. She didn't know when it ended - only that she drifted back to consciousness, face down on the mattress, cool air washing into her gaping hole and semen on her back. She hurt all over, and her ass throbbed and burned, little white lines of fire cutting across her slack hole. When she weakly pushed herself up and looked back, tiny dots of blood stained the sheets from the little tears.

A tap was running in the bathroom, water gurgling and splashing into itself, and she let her head fall back to the pillow, breath coming slow and ragged as her body recovered from the ordeal. Her throat was almost as raw as her ass, but that queer after pleasure sang in her, not orgasmic but deeply fulfilling. There was a bruise forming on her throat, and it felt a little swollen, and when she experimentally tried to speak her words came out hoarse.

The rest was interrupted by a fresh hand in her hair, and she groaned weakly as Hainora pulled her from the bed and onto shaky feet, marching her into the bathroom, bent over double. Steam rose from the tub, and she shuddered with an old memory of plunging into too hot water, held there, screaming under the surface, and she hated the way it brought that familiar twinge of desire in her traitor cunt. But Hainora didn't steer her there - she brought her to the shower, forced her in and down to crumple against the wall.

Staring up at her, Vao thought how much her mother looked like what she imagined the demons that lay off the righteous path must really be like. Cruel and wonderful, powerful and grotesque, beautiful and twisted into ugliness. She was naked now, a fist wrapped around her own cock, aiming it in her face. Blood still smeared it. There was a faint ringing in Vao's ears, and it took her a moment to turn the motion of her mother's lips into words.

"Baptism time, you fucking heathen."

"But... I've already..."

She tried to answer, and gasped in shock and disgust as her mother unleashed a flood of hot, acrid piss into her face. It splashed in her mouth, and she spluttered and coughed and recoiled against the tiles, scrabbling in shock. The taste was horrible, the sensation utterly degrading as the hot urine washed down over her body. She shrank, tears returning. The sense of utter humiliation blurred into that of being utterly owned, and she hated it for it just like she hated the rest, hated herself for craving it, for craving it so fiercely she debased herself for it. For not screaming to stop. For welcoming the shock and disgust that rippled through her.

"There." Hainora snapped at her, shaking off the last drops and looking down on her with disgust. The moment stretched, Vao's eyes shutting tight and her fingers clenching into fists, and then it broke. Her mother knelt, and reached in with those great, hard hands. The skin was still rough and covered in scars, but now the grip was gentle, drawing her out sweetly. A soothing little sound, half-remembered from childhood, that she scrambled into, hugging tightly to her mother's powerful frame and weeping into her shoulder. Her feet went up from under her as she was picked up, and she offered no resistance.

The hot bath water stung at first on her bruises and scrapes, on the little tears, but as that faded it soothed, and she leant forward to hug her knees while Hainora slid in behind her and drew her back against her frame again, holding her safe, warm, against her body. She cried, tears rolling down her cheeks - and like she always did, she masturbated. Her hand crept from her knees to between her thighs, and the suppressed pleasure of the night found final expression in a shuddering, sobbing orgasm held safe in her tormentor's arms.

"...I hate it." She murmured. "But don't... Don't ever... Don't ever stop doing it."

"I won't, not until you tell me to." Hainora answered, soft and gentle, and kissed her on the top of her head while she lay against her in the bath, chest heaving with the aftermath of her orgasm. "Now be quiet and go to sleep, little tinker."

It was the most natural thing in the world to obey, and her eyes fluttered closed easily.