“You’ll be sitting on here with me from now on.” He pulled me down until my head lay on his bare chest and my body pressed against his. His hand was immediately in my hair, stroking through the long strands as if it calmed him somehow. His skin was warm; it too had been burned slightly by the sun. But it smelled heavenly and felt even better under my cheek.

I sighed in contentment. AK got up to get us some food. We ate side by side, not saying much, just content to be by the other’s side. When we had finished, AK lit a cigarette. I curled back into his chest. I was sure if I never left this spot again that would be just fine. I watched the white smoke soar up above us and drift into the blackness of the sky, shapes swirling and dancing in the night air.

“It’s so beautiful out here,” I murmured. I tried to count every star, but it was impossible, there were so many. “I do not think I have ever truly looked at the night sky before. I am sure I have never really looked at the stars before you compared my freckles to them at your home. Yet now I find myself wondering what they look like up close, if they are as beautiful as they appear from here.” I shook my head, amazed at the fact that I was here, doing something as idle as looking at the stars. I ran my hand across AK’s torso. “And here I am. With you, in this unfathomably blissful place.”

“Red,” AK said gruffly and pulled me closer to his side.

“It is true.” I thought of my days back in the commune. No man would have ever lain with me like this, not without sex having been performed. He would never have stroked my hair. Played and joked with me in a waterfall’s pool. Affection held no place in The Order. Love was shared through the act of sex. And as a Sacred Sister, it was never gentle or pure.

Yet here was AK, holding me for no other reason than he wanted to.

I was wanted.

“When I am here, with you . . .” I said softly, feeling my heart beating too fast at what I was about to confess. “When I am with you, it is easy to not think about my life before. I . . .” My cheeks burned with embarrassment and a sudden wash of pain. “I have never been with a man who saw me as anything but someone in which they could find their release.” My stomach sank at that sad truth. “It was all I was ever meant for, AK. To give pleasure to men for our Lord’s cause.”

I lifted my head from the crook of his arm and rested it on his chest. He was looking up at the sky. His cigarette was burning in his hand, and his jaw was clenched. He must have felt me looking upon him because his eyes rolled to meet mine. “It is true.”

Shifting my leg over his, I lifted my dress. AK’s forehead creased with confusion. I pulled my dress higher and higher, until my inner thigh was exposed.

“Matthew 4:19,” I said. “‘And he saith unto them, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.’” I turned my thigh and ran my finger over the tattoo that the prophet had commanded all of his Sacred Sisters to wear. AK was frozen as he stared down at the tattooed scripture leading to my core. The place Prophet David said men desired most.

“What the fuck does that mean?” he asked angrily. Pulling down my dress, I placed my hand on his shoulder and guided him to lie back down. He did so, reluctantly, and I placed my head back on his shoulder and my arm around his torso.

“Prophet David declared that certain women in The Order were meant for a special service. Revealed to him by God, as a way to bring in more members. He claimed that this scripture, particularly the words ‘fishers of men’, had a bigger meaning than we knew. He claimed that God had revealed to him that women from the commune, handpicked by him and his disciples, would become such fishers of men. Men were the goal, the prize for the prophet, and we—the Sacred Sisters—were the bait.”

AK had become incredibly tense beneath me, but now I had started, now that I had begun to unload this burden from my soul, I could not stop. I wanted to speak these words, words I had never spoken before. “They came for me when I was ten years old.” I closed my eyes, remembering that day in great detail. Brother John taking me away to be trained.

“I had been touched before by men. Children at the prophet’s communes were freely touched by anyone who wished to do so. There was no age that was deemed too early. In fact, Prophet David encouraged our parents or guardians to touch us first, to show us what God’s love felt like so we would not be alarmed when other men and women came for us sexually too.

“When Brother John came for me when I was ten, to tell me I had been selected to be a Sacred Sister, I had tasted grown men on my tongue, and they had tasted me. I had been touched in every way but full sex.” I winced, still remembering the week that followed. “Though it was less than one week later when I was introduced to that act.” My thighs clenched together as I recalled Brother John laying me down on the bed, his naked body climbing above me. I flinched as I remembered his breath on my face and his hands skirting up my bare thigh. And I remembered his length as it pushed through my innocence. The tears, the blood, the pain and the shame . . .

“Phebe.” AK turned his body to face me. I had not realized the tears were on my cheeks until he wiped them away. His hand cupped my face, and his thumb stroked along the damp skin.

“For days afterwards, I tried to stay hidden in the corners of rooms. But every day Brother John came for me and took my body again. He took me until I managed to block out the pain. Until his touch and attentions became the norm for me.”

I swallowed and looked up at AK’s face. It was filled with thunder. His teeth were gritted together. I reached up and threaded my fingers through the hand that was on my face. I lowered it to my chest and kept it near my heart. “Then the training started. Older Sacred Sisters would come to our rooms every day. There were about twenty of us when I trained. All similar in age and all receiving our first sexual encounter from Brother John. More lessons followed. Lesson after lesson on how to hold a man’s length, how to stroke it until he begged for more. How to take a man in our mouth and entice them with the subtle movements of our body, how to make them fall into our arms and give themselves over to the Lord through our bodies. We fished the men and they always took the bait.”

“They trained you to fuck?”

“Yes,” I said and hated that it was the harsh truth. “In the commune at first. Prophet David often invited men who were important to our cause to his many communes, both domestic and abroad. I never knew what they were there for—business, we were told—but from the age of ten I was called to seduce them. Many liked young girls, even more so when we could service them in bed with the skill of a woman twice our age. And I did it all happily . . . eventually. I came to believe in what I was doing so much that I rejoiced when I was chosen by a visiting male from the lineup. Even more when I reached the age of fourteen and was sent outside into the world. Only the best Sacred Sisters were sent outside of the gates. Those who excelled at pleasing men.”