“It’s very simple,” Seraphina said and she trailed the tip of her tongue across the girl’s neck, looking across the room at me with those dark pools of sin and salvation. “We do everything together, my love”—her tongue traced the girl’s bottom lip and the girl returned the gesture—“my devil, my dark prince.”

I stepped forward, breaking apart the buttons of my dress shirt.

Seraphina went on:

“We seek vengeance together. We fuck and we love and we damn and we destroy together until the day we die together.”

She reached out her dainty, but deadly hand and gestured for me, curling her fingers toward her palm, slowly and suggestively.

“Come here and taste her,” she said and then dropped her hand in-between the girl’s thighs. “You have to taste her.”

The girl moaned with Seraphina’s touch, her blonde head pressing against my wife’s shoulder, her petite and tender breasts pushing into view of the dim light in the small room.

I remained standing at the foot of the bed, watching them, the way Seraphina’s fingers moved with such artistic precision, how the girl’s legs parted for her, exposing her most secret place to me and to the cool night air.

“I told you not to bring them here,” I finally said as I slipped my belt from the loops on my black pants, the sound of leather moving against fabric in a slow and deliberate motion. “Never without my permission. And never here.” I was infuriated, but I kept it inside.

Seraphina’s dark red lips spread into a delightful smile. The girl fondled Seraphina’s breasts, nuzzled her head in the crook of her neck; she tried to touch Seraphina below, but wasn’t allowed, so she pulled her hand away, trailing her fingertips across her stomach.

“Oh, Fredrik,” Seraphina said, raising her back from the bed, “you can’t mean that all of the time. I’m trying to help you. This is just part of the process.”

“But just the same,” I said, “I’ve told you not to bring them into our home.”

Seraphina and I shared a look, her smile darkening with disappointment; my unemotional face had not changed. But my wife was never one to back down so easily. She was never one to do as I said with the snap of two fingers because she was bold and defiant and I loved that about her.

She got up from the bed.

The girl became alert and sat up when she noticed the growing tension in the room.

“I want you to fuck her,” Seraphina said. “I brought her here for you. Look at her”—she waved a hand at the girl, who was quite beautiful with plump lips and big brown eyes and curvy hips—“I thought you’d like her. I like her.”

The girl glanced back and forth between us nervously.

“But this is our home, Seraphina.” I stepped closer to her tall, naked form. “You know I don’t like fucking them here, where we sleep, where I fuck you.”

“I uh…I think I’ll go now,” the girl said, getting up from the bed.

“No!” Seraphina snapped, pointing at her. “Sit the fuck down.” She looked back at me, glaring, gritting her teeth. Her brown eyes brilliantly gleaming in her angry oval face; the black of her short hair glistening against the creamy-white of her cheeks.

The girl was too afraid to move. She remained on the bed, drawing her knees up toward her and covering her breasts with her long hair.

“You can go,” I told the girl, jerking my head backward, indicating the opened door behind me.

“I said she fucking stays, Fredrik!”

Seraphina started to lunge across the bed for the girl, but I grabbed her from behind, gripping her firmly around her waist. The girl jumped up quickly with wide eyes and grabbed her clothes from the floor.

Seraphina fought me every step, every moment, until the girl rushed out and I heard the front door of our small house shut behind her.

“Bastard!”

Wrenching Seraphina’s hands behind her back, I shoved her over forward onto the bed.

“Why do you do this, Seraphina?” I asked her, my voice choked with anger and desperation. She struggled against the bed, but I held her still, stepping between her legs and spreading them apart with my own. “It’s my only rule and you break it. Why?”

“Because it’s a stupid fucking rule!” she shouted, one cheek pressed against the mattress.

Leaning over her body with her wrists still bound behind her in one of my hands, I whispered into her ear, “Is it stupid that I love you, Seraphina?”—my grip tightened around her wrists—“Is it stupid that I never want to share you or myself with someone else in our home?”

“What difference does it make?” she asked in a calmer, but bitter voice. “It doesn’t matter where we do it.”

“It matters to me.” I kissed the side of her mouth.

“Why?”

“Because there must be boundaries,” I said and rose upright again. “We will not fuck or kill or destroy any person in our home. Do you understand?”

She nodded her head still pressed against the mattress.

“Now are you going to be still or am I going to have to tie you up?”

“I’ll be still,” she said.

I released her wrists and she moved her arms out and rested them on the mattress above her head.

“And why will you be still?” I prompted as I got a firm grip on the belt in my hand.

“Because I deserve it,” she said, the same way she had said it the times before that I had to punish her.

I crouched down between her legs and with both of my hands I spread them apart just a bit farther to expose her to me.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do with you,” I said and kissed the warm flesh of her ass.

“You don’t know what you’d do without me,” she said in return.

I kissed the other cheek. “No, I don’t, and I never want to find out.”

She moaned and her body stiffened when my tongue snaked out and licked her clit.

I rose into a stand and stepped from between her legs. She remained still, waiting, knowing, bracing. I watched her for a moment. She pushed up on her toes just a little, enough to brace her legs as she lay flat against the mattress from the waist up. I wanted so badly to put my cock in her, I wanted to squeeze her ass in my hands and fuck her until neither of us could see straight, but she had to be dealt with first. I could never let her have her way when it came to these things or she would become uncontrollable. Seraphina may have been helping me to control my torturous urges, my murderous urges, but I was not the only one of us who needed to be taught and controlled and guided—Seraphina was a dangerous and wicked woman who could lose herself at any moment and could never have too much control.