The quality of his stillness changed then. It solidified like water into ice, rain into the snow now thick in the air all around us, settling into a thin blanket over his back and hair.
I thought I’d lost him. Closing my eyes, I steeled myself for rejection, even knowing it would obliterate me.
“The only thing I can give you is my darkness, my desire, and the endless hunger I feel for you in my gut.”
My lids popped open to see Priest staring at me solemnly, so sombre and acute with something like self-hatred it felt like we were in a confessional.
“Okay,” I said immediately, letting the joy ricocheting inside me burst across my face. He blinked as if into the sun. “Okay, then.”
He kissed me then, a hard stamp of lips against lips, and it felt like an official seal on our declaration. I wasn’t sure if we were dating or not, if this meant we could have sleepovers and go on dates—all the rituals of courting—but I didn’t care. Priest wasn’t a normal man, and I was discovering I was nowhere close to a normal woman.
It felt good to acknowledge my otherness. I was happy to live in the shadows so long as I could hold his hand.
As long as I belonged to the reaper of The Fallen, I was in heaven.
Priest
The feel of my bike between my thighs, the icy tug of wind in my unbound hair, and the endless scope of road to ride before me were three of my favourite damn things about my decidedly ascetic lifestyle. I couldn’t concentrate on any of them at the moment. Not with Bea pressed to my back, not knowing she was wearing nothing underneath that little skirt. I’d left her so wet, so full of my cum, I knew it must’ve been leaking all over the leather seat of my bike. My cock was an iron bar in my jeans as I thought of how she was baptising it with her sweet fucking honey.
The entire ride was a battle. I regretted driving back to the farm to swap out her car for my Harley. It was her idea as much as mine, and now I knew why. The feel of her was a distraction I couldn’t shake.
I intended to drop her off at her house, search it before she went in, then wait outside until some other brother arrived to safeguard her. She wanted to spend a night in her own bed, which was fair, but there was no way in hell I’d leave her without at least two of my most capable brothers as her guards.
Even then, I had no doubt I’d end up back at her little pink house later that night to stand sentry in the shadows myself.
But I needed space.
Suddenly, just existing in the same place as her, knowledge that had once brought me some kind of fucked-up solace, was too much to bear. My skin itched and burned the way it had years ago when I’d been scarred and torn and branded. All the old wounds of my flesh and mind were festering, blistering, and I knew they’d pop horrifically into open sores if I stayed a moment more with my angelic girl with the dirty mind.
But, but, but….
The refrain haunted my thoughts.
Memories of the night flashed through my brain each time I repeated the caveat.
Alone in a graveyard with a dead man and a killer, Bea had offered her hand in a way that implied she was willing to follow me wherever I went, and the courage of that action made the breath catch in my throat.
“Come,” she’d said, ethereal in the moonlight, voice as sweet as some singing angel. “Show me who you really are, only ever alone. Let me follow you into the dark.”
That this was Bea Lafayette, the sweet girl who led Bible studies and wore ridiculous pink bows in her hair, the girl who had studied me for years the way some monks dedicated their lives to the study of religion, the girl who seemed to know just exactly how fucked up I was. That this was her.
It rocked me.
Fucking rocked me.
I’d blinked because that was the only thing my body knew what to do as I attempted to process the sheer, over-fucking-whelming beauty of this girl and her trust.
I blinked, and I breathed.
Bea waited, patient as a saint.
In truth, I was in conflict with myself. I already considered her mine in a way I’d never be able to shake. It was scarred into my skin, my muscle and bone. I felt her possession of my body and whatever soul I might’ve retained just as I felt her like my obsession was something omnipotent, fateful and huge. I couldn’t cut this feeling out of me neatly with a good blade and sheer will. It was too late for that, too inconceivable of me to even want to mire myself from such a miraculous thing.