Page 130 of Primal

A sound cracks the silence.

Not Payton.

Josh.

Choking back another sob—or maybe gagging.

The mask sucks against my face—tight, suffocating. My gut lurches. But I don’t get to be sick. I don’t get to break.

Derek clicks his tongue. “Tsk, tsk. That’s no way to honor a sacrament.” He paces, boots echoing like judgment through the pews. “Come on, Thirteen. Make her sing.”

The chapel spins around me. I claw for an anchor. Her skin. My shame. The altar’s edge biting into my thigh.

Nothing holds.

Only the mask. The sweat. The stink of rot and wax.

And still, I fucking move.

Her hand shifts—fingertips grazing my thigh. A plea. Maybe a ‘Fuck you.’

I freeze.

She feels me. Not just the pressure but the weight of it all.

The thing I’ve let out of its cage.

The monster she keeps pulling back into the light.

I try to drown it all out. The dead. The watchers. The shitty soundtrack.

Until there’s only her.

That broken sound she can’t quite swallow when my fingers find her.

The way her body moves beneath me—more rhythmic now. Less resistance.

It’s wrong.

It’s fucked.

But we’re so far past that now.

Her fingers dig into my thigh—a silent pact. If we burn, we burn as one.

I don’t hold back. Let the friction carve us both raw.

Her muscles clamp down, hips jerking back instead of away. She arches, curling like she could twist around the wave.

And when she comes—

It’s not for me.

Not for her.

Not even for Derek.

Just biology reducing her to nerve endings and raw tremors.