Dishonorable

He studied me, his eyes more defeated than angry. He stepped backward, his shoulders slumping. I shook my head and cupped his face.

“No. You can’t do this. The memory of your mother is sacred, Raphael. Don’t let that man taint it with his lies.”

“They’re not lies, though, Sofia. Don’t you get it? And you? I’ve made you my whore.”

“Then fuck me.”

“Go back to the house, Sofia,” he said, shoving me away.

“No. Fuck me. Fuck your whore.” I said, growing more and more angry myself.

“I said go.”

He took my arm roughly and physically moved me away.

“No. You can’t do this! I won’t let you!” I yelled, getting back into his space, my hands on either side of his face. I just needed to get him back, to draw him back to this moment, here and now, from whatever hell he’d bound himself to. “You think you’re the only one with demons?”

“Go!”

“You think you’re the only one who suffers?”

“I said—”

“Fuck what you said. And fuck you! You brought me here. You married me. And I think you care about me more than you’re willing to admit, but you won’t let yourself have that, will you? You can’t do it. And you don’t want me to have it either. Well, fuck you, Raphael Amado. I’m taking it!”

I pulled his belt apart and undid the top button of his jeans.

His hands covered mine, but he didn’t stop me.

“That’s what you want?”

He leaned down, his face an inch from mine.

“You want a good, hard fuck? You miss my cock inside you?”

He spun me around, bending me forward and slapping my hands hard on the altar.

“Keep them there. Don’t fucking move.”

I gasped as he undid my shorts and tore them and my panties down and off, then shoved my tank top up and pushed my bra beneath my breast, so that when he bent me all the way over, the cold stone of the altar made me shudder.

“Ra—”

But before I could even speak his name, he was inside me. He leaned over me and thrust in hard.

“You want to be fucked?”

His breath was hot against the side of my face.

“You want my cock in your pussy? You want me to make you come?”

I let out a groan as he thrust.

“Like a whore? Here? Before your God? Here, bent over his holy altar?”

It should have felt wrong. I thought it would. This sacred place, us doing this in this holy place.

But Raphael’s hands closed over the backs of mine, and he dragged my arms out to the sides and pinned me to the altar, and nothing had ever felt more right. He needed this. And I needed him close to me. I needed him inside me. It was the only way to reach him, to drag him out of his hell.

“You don’t even know the half of it, Sofia.”

His voice was hoarse against my ear, and my breath caught when his fingers pinched my clit.

“I don’t care,” I managed, closing my eyes. Taking him. Letting him take me. Own me. “I don’t care. I love you.”

He suddenly stilled, his cock buried deep inside me.

I didn’t turn around. I didn’t need to, because I could imagine his face. I could imagine his shock.

“I love you,” I said again, not caring.

Finally, I craned my neck to look back.

“You don’t know what I planned to do,” he said, pulling out. He stepped away from me. I turned. He pulled his jeans back up over his erection.

“Raphael?” But he’d gone back into his hell, and there wasn’t room for me there.

“Would you still say that if you knew? If you knew the amount of damage I intended to do to you?”

“Stop. Look at me. Just look at me. I’m here. Right here. You don’t need to do this.”

He stumbled backward. “When I made the deal with your grandfather to let your sister stay, he wanted five percent of what I’d take. I agreed, but maybe he thought it was too easy. That I didn’t suffer enough.”

He sat down again in the same pew, almost falling into it. I went to him and knelt before him, my hands on his lap, holding his hands. His eyes—even though he was physically here, he was so far away. Too far for me to reach.

“I already know that story,” I said quietly, my vision blurred from unshed tears.

“That’s when he asked for the sheets to prove we’d consummated. He knew already. He knew you’d become a weakness. My weakness.”

Watching him, watching his eyes, I knew there was more. And it wasn’t good.

“I didn’t do it, though. I burned them. He never saw the sheets.”

“You did?”

“I still wonder why he did that. Why he asked for that one thing. And all I could think of was that he didn’t believe I’d go through with it. Maybe he hoped you’d say no. Stop me. End this. I don’t know.” He paused. “But it doesn’t matter. I’ll say the marriage wasn’t consummated. We can have it annulled.”