Tears streamed down her face, the red rims making her eyes so intense a blue they glowed neon as she looked over her shoulder at me, mouth swollen and blooming open around her harsh breath. “I’ll haunt you,” she echoed.
I landed one last resounding slap to her ass and clutched her hard to me with biting hands, forcing her to practically sit on my lap totally impaled on my cock. She cried out as I started to come deep inside her, palming her throat hard to choke off the cry and drive her higher.
She came seconds after I did, warmth flooding my cock and balls as I filled her up, and for a second, just a moment, all I felt was total peace.
Priest
I held her in the come down, hand still at her throat though softer, thumb stroking over her jugular as I licked a bead of sweat off her jaw and nipped at the slanted bone there. She sighed frequently as she settled, little kittenish sounds that made my spent cock stir lazily inside her. One of her hands stroked over my forearm, rucking up the fabric so she could paint little circles with her fingertips on my wrist. It was a simple, intimate touch that almost rocked me more than my fucking phenomenal orgasm.
Bea wasn’t the first woman who had touched me like this, but it felt as if she was. I hadn’t known such tenderness since I was a lad when my parents were still alive and loving me. Each touch triggered an echo in my chest, sorrowful and pleasant all at once. The contraction was one of many between my Little Shadow and me, our opposite natures contracting into one whole, shining thing that my inexperienced mind wanted to call love.
“Oh, Priest,” she gasped, drawing my attention to her dipped head, to the skin she’d revealed to her gaze on the inside of my arm.
There was a cacophonic clang in my ears as all my shields slammed down within me. I was up, pushing her off, backing up with a growl in my throat, teeth bared before I could think to stop myself.
I was panting even though I’d recovered from my orgasm, my chest tight and growing tighter. Shooting pains arrowed up my arms into my chest, reminding me that this and only this was a reason to feel.
Pain.
That was why I was alive.
To feel it.
“Priest,” Bea called, sitting up on her knees, dishevelled hair curling around her sweet face, a vicious red bite mark marring the long column of her throat, clusters of love bites like red roses on her breasts. So marked by me.
Marked as I was marked, but so different too.
Her marks would fade.
Her marks were made from whatever love I could dredge up inside me to give to her.
“Priest,” she tried again. “It’s okay.”
It wasn’t.
She’d seen only a glimpse of the tapestry of history I wore on my skin, but it was too much.
Without saying another word, I turned on my heel and went to the bathroom, slamming the door behind me. I hammered my hands down on the porcelain, fighting to breathe, but my eyes caught on the raised hem of my shirt, on the mottled skin at my wrist.
My vision went red, then blinding white.
I crushed my forehead into the already broken mirror, felt pain slice across the skin and warmth flood down into my right brow.
It wasn’t enough.
The blade I’d used on Bea lay on the back of the sink. My clumsy, numb fingers found it, gripping it so hard the handle cut into my palm.
I sliced my left palm, then my right, sighing in relief at the crystal-clear pain.
I breathed, fisting my hands, the blood seeping through my knuckles.
Drip, drip, dripping into the sink.
The door opened behind me, Bea’s pale head slowly slotting inside the gap. Her bottom lip was between her teeth, but her chin was tipped defiantly. She was scared to disturb me yet determined to bring me comfort in any way she could.
My brave Little Shadow.
I blinked at her, the only concession I was capable of giving, but of course, she understood. We watched each other in the reflection of her broken mirror as she moved to me and gently, so gently her touch was just a whisper, wrapped her arms around my middle before taking my big, scarred hands in the palm of hers. The tears that pooled in her eyes were not the kind of tears I liked to make her cry.
“You do this when you remember, don’t you?” she asked in a whisper I felt through the cotton covering my shoulder. “You need the pain to forget?”
“No.” I fisted my hands again, her little ones cupping my knuckles. “I need pain to remember.”
“Can’t you tell me what happened to you?” It was a question without pressure, floating between us in a way that defied gravity.