Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 130317 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 652(@200wpm)___ 521(@250wpm)___ 434(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 130317 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 652(@200wpm)___ 521(@250wpm)___ 434(@300wpm)
“What happened?” she muttered. “I feel so weird!”
“You did it again—you got hypnotized. Here—I want to try something.”
Sev straightened up and then, reaching around her, he pulled Mia close so that her back was to his front. He then put a hand firmly over her eyes.
“Sev! What are you doing?” she protested, wiggling against him but not actually trying to escape.
“I want to try something,” Sev repeated. “I want you to listen to what The Prophet says without actually watching him while he says it. Then tell me how you feel about it—okay?”
“Well…all right.” She subsided and stood quietly with his hand over her eyes and they listened to The Prophet speak together.
“Men…husbands…Heads of the Household,” he called from the stage. “Your wives must be Taken in Hand! They must learn that they were put in this Universe for no other reason than to SERVE YOU—especially sexually! Sexual acts are designed and ordained as a way to show dominance over your wife! You must take her whenever and however you want, to teach her that her rightful place is BELOW YOU!”
“All right, that’s enough!” Mia was struggling against his hand and Sev could smell her fury—sharp and bright as a knife in the artificial moonlight.
“Uh-huh, I thought so,” he murmured. “You don’t like it so much when you can’t see him while he’s talking, do you?”
Mia turned to face him, her gray eyes snapping with fury.
“The man’s a pig!” she snarled. “A disgusting, misogynistic pig!”
“Shhh!” Sev clamped his hand over her mouth and looked around anxiously. Luckily all eyes were still on the stage and no one appeared to have heard her.
“Sorry.” Mia took a deep breath when he took his hand away. “It’s just…this is the same kind of thing they taught in the sect I was raised in. But they weren’t this blatant—it’s like he’s saying the quiet part out loud! And all these people believe him!”
“You seemed to be on the way to believing him yourself before I put my hand over your eyes and blocked your view,” Sev pointed out.
“I’ll keep my eyes closed from now on,” Mia promised. “It must be that sparkly thing he’s wearing—it makes it hard to think somehow.” She frowned. “I wonder why it doesn’t affect you?”
“Dunno.” Sev shook his head. “Maybe because my eyes are different from yours. Kindred can see in the dark—we can also see more spectrums of color than humans. Or Chakiouns for that matter,” he added.
They stood there for a while longer—Mia with her eyes tightly closed—and listened to more of The Prophet’s “Wisdom.” Mainly it was all about wives submitting to their husbands and giving them sex any time they wanted it, even if they were tired or not feeling good. The Prophet emphasized that this was the woman’s role—even her reason for being—serving her husband and meeting his needs in any way he wished her to. Some of the “gems” he came up with included,
“Wives—if your husband wishes to punish you by taking you anally, you must let him! And afterwards you must thank him for taking the time to teach you a much-needed lesson!”
And…
“Husbands—use your wives often and hard. Never allow her to say no to you! A haughty wife may try to deny you your husbandly dues—do not allow it! Punish her soundly and use her anyway—hold her down and enter her—take her hard and fast and fill her with your seed! Make her know your dominion over her and your ownership of her body!”
Sev felt sick. Now the bastard was just talking about rape, he thought. Though the Dae’mon part of him responded to the idea of sexual punishment and the D/s lifestyle most of the couples seemed to be living here, the idea of holding a female down and taking her against her will was disgusting to him.
Beside him, Mia was shifting restlessly.
“Ugh—this is horrible,” she whispered and Sev saw that she still had her eyes tightly closed. “What an awful man! How can these people listen to him and not feel sick and outraged?”
“Well, I suspect some of them actually believe and agree with what he’s saying,” Sev murmured in he ear. “But a lot of them are agreeing because they’re mesmerized by him.”
“Can we go yet?” Mia pleaded. “I don’t know how much more of this I can take!”
“We don’t want to be conspicuous,” Sev reminded her. “We have to wait until there’s some kind of distraction. Hang in there—it can’t last forever.”
He hoped, at least.
“And now,” The Prophet was saying. “I’d like to bring some good and pious Sisters to the stage to witness to you about their own submission to their husbands.”
He nodded and a Chakioun woman came forward. She spoke timidly and her voice was much softer than his, but also magnified so that everyone in the crowd could hear it.