Dead Man Walking (The Fallen Men 6)

Priest pushed off the wall slightly, then paused, as if caught between two dueling ropes.

I almost had him.

So close.

I was toying with a creature that was more monster than man, but I’d never felt more alive. More aroused. The place between my thighs I’d never been very interested in was slick with moisture, the tips of my breasts so tightly furled they throbbed.

I almost had him.

My heart thrummed like a hummingbird’s wings as I brought my saliva-slicked thumb back to my lips and purposely smudged the blood over my mouth like macabre lipstick.

His chest was discernably rising and falling now, great, calculated breaths dragged into his lungs in an effort to calm the beast that stirred there.

I wanted him to come out and play so badly, I shook with it.

Still, he didn’t move.

My tongue peeked out slowly, shyly, to prod at the wound as I assumed a more languid position against the wall, muscles lax, head tipped so slightly to the side to expose my throat.

The way a submissive wolf might do to its alpha.

The air went electric a fraction before he moved, sinuously, predatory, stalking the three paces across the hall. His hand went up to my neck at the same time his head bent to bring his mouth to mine.

He didn’t kiss me.

Instead, he carefully took my split lip between his teeth and tugged slightly. A bead of blood pooled from the wound, and Priest, sensually, almost lazily, licked it from my mouth.

I gasped, my mouth blooming open naturally, begging for more.

And for the first time in all my years of knowing him, ascetic, controlled Priest, he indulged.

My God, he ate at my mouth as if it was a lush fruit, licking up my spilled blood, diving deeper to taste the silken edge of my tongue with his, to explore the recess of my mouth. He ate at me as if I was his to devour.

I made low, whimpering, shameless noises that I couldn’t control. I was desperate to touch him, but too concerned it would shatter this perfect moment and remind him of his control. So I just hung there, pinned to the wall by the strong hand around my throat asserting just enough exquisite pressure to make my blood sing.

And I let him kiss me.

I let him ruin me so surely in that one, long, luscious kiss that I knew nothing else would ever do.

I needed this.

Priest and his dark, ferocious need. His cold, calculating mind locked like warring antlers with mine.

Lord, but I would eschew everything I knew to exist forever in this cruel, claiming embrace.

And then, it was over.

Even though our only points of contact had been our fused mouths and that straining, edgy hand on my neck, my body felt sluiced with ice water when he pulled away.

I watched, still mired in the aftershock of that earth-shattering kiss, as he wiped that cruel, lovely mouth with the back of his hand. As if he needed to be rid of my taste from his lips.

Boy, that hurt.

He stared at me, so completely dispassionate, I wondered woozily if I’d hallucinated the entire embrace. When he moved, it was back into the bathroom, his gait efficient and controlled as he disappeared behind the door. I watched through the thin crack between the door and its hinges as he pushed the shower curtain back and bent to retrieve something heavy from the basin of the bathtub. He reappeared moments later with a large black plastic wrapped shape hefted over his broad shoulder.

There was no mistaking the shape of the body within it.

Or the slight splatter of blood on the white tape holding it closed.

In the hand not occupied in keeping the dead body balanced on his shoulder, Priest held a leather saddle bag, the white top of a bleach bottle poking out of the flap.

I pressed myself to the wall and my hand to my stomach as he maneuvered past me in the narrow space without hesitation.

Not one blink or acknowledgment of my presence.

Without a single look back, Priest stepped over the broken door to the room and exited with his bagged corpse into the ink dark of night.

I watched him go with my broken fingers unconsciously dipped in the blood of my torn lip, anointing the cast with my blood.

It didn’t taste like blood in my mouth. It tasted like faith, like distilled divinity. It tasted this way, I knew with dawning rightness, because it tasted like us.

Bea

When I was little, God was my best friend.

I was a lonely child. My sister was mostly in the hospital, my parents preoccupied with their respective social lives, our rotation of European nannies the only constant presence in my life.

So, my Grandpa became my closest familial bond and with him came God.

He was my grandpa’s first love, even before my grandma, who passed on when I was only six.