“You don’t have any siblings?”
“Alas, reproduction was incompatible with my mother’s continued existence.”
“What…”
“She died having me. My father, stricken with grief, became an alcoholic and then passed away when I was fifteen. Crichton held the place in trust for me until I could legally take responsibility at the age of eighteen. The Brotherhood was fractured even then, but the remnants remained close to the abbey. My father and yours were excellent friends, until my father’s untimely passing.”
I shouldn’t be asking this, but morbid curiosity and Direview Abbey go together like a horse and carriage. “What happened?”
“He was found in the river. We assume he was drunk when he fell in.”
“I’m sorry.”
“By the time that happened I wasn’t capable of missing him anymore. He had been gone forever, since my birth. I did not know a time he was not distant and morbid.”
“And my mom, she ended up marrying your father’s friend, and then running away.”
“Exactly. She was closer to me than a sister. And yet not a sister. What was between us was passionate, yet unrealized. There was a hallowed chastity to her I always respected.”
Sounds like he was friend zoned hard in favor of an older man, but I’m not going to say that. I can’t talk. He's old enough to be my father, and he was the best sex of my life. It’s the twisted darkness in him that makes him so attractive, maybe because it speaks to the twisted darkness in me.
“We’ve both had a lot of fucked up stuff happen in our lives.”
“Yes. We have,” he agrees with a slightly pained smile. “And I am sorry to say that we are likely to have more. Our path is not destined to be an easy one, Nina. There will be nothing smooth about it. Likely you will come to loathe me.”
“You're not that bad.”
His smile fades completely. “I assure you, I am worse than you can imagine.”
I believe him. He is completely authentic in this moment. He is cold, but not distant. Being near him, sharing this intimacy of knowledge with him gives me the chills to my core. But it doesn’t make me want to run away. It draws me in. I have spent most of my life plastering on a smile. People have been desperate for me to be happy. I don't know if Bryn actually believes in happiness. He is a shadow in this world, and when I am with him I am free to be the same.
“You will sacrifice a lot to be with me, if that is what you choose,” he tells me plainly. “Direview is a place where everything is felt intensely. It is not a place for comfort, or ease. I may have made an unforgivable mistake by bringing you here, but I thought even a place such as this better than staying at her majesty’s pleasure.”
“It is. Jonah and I owe you so much.”
“Neither of you owe me anything.”
With that said, we continue to eat in silence. I wish he’d say something. He is the one in charge. The older one. The one who held me in place and fucked me raw. Shouldn’t he be the one saying something?
“Are you hungry, Nina?”
He’s not asking about food. I have already cleaned my plate.
I bite my lower lip. He makes me nervous. Everything we do together is wrong, and yet I can't stop myself because I can’t quite put my finger on why it is so wrong. It feels taboo and twisted. It feels like I am sinning. But he is a priest, so I have to trust he will do the right thing by me.
He stands up and walks toward me. I am nervous, concerned that Crichton or Jonah might come in while we are doing something here in this big room with the great windows looking out onto a large lawn. This is not a private chamber. It's not a bedroom. He has never touched me in a bedroom. He prefers perverting the mundane with sexual acts.
I like his style. I like how it makes me feel naughty and daring and dangerous, how when I am with him, I’m not normal. I’m someone special by merit of how strange he is.
He puts his hand into my hair and uses it to lever me up from the table. I can smell him, his raw masculinity sinking into my lungs, making its way into my bloodstream and thence to my heart.
I think I am falling in love. I have all the symptoms — nervousness and delight in equal measure, anticipation and joy. I feel as though all the confusion and sometimes misery of my past is about to evaporate entirely.
He bends me over the table.
He throws my skirt up over my waist.
And he fucks me.
His body merges with mine, his hot cock stretching me wide and making me his, absolving me of all those stressful attempts to understand myself and simply making me part of him. I don't need to think. I don’t need to be… well, anything. I just need to lie here, let him do what he will with me and bask in the glorious pleasure that unfolds as a result.