Sinful

ARABELLA

Iwear the choker for Romain a few days later after taking a couple of days off sick.

The twitch to the corner of his lips when he sees me in assembly is the only indication he approves. He ignores me for most of the day, which leaves me feeling wretched and shaky. It’s only when I’m walking to the chapel for evening mass do I get a message from him telling me to come to the vestry.

“I was right,” he says when I walk into the preparation room next to the chapel. “It fucking suits you.” Then he’s striding up to me, stealing the breath from my lips with a savage kiss. Heat and warmth ripple through me at his touch.

I push him back. “We can’t do this here. Mass is happening right next door,” I say, pulling back.

“I don’t care. It’s been too long since I heard you scream my name,” he growls into the shell of my ear, hitching up my leg around his waist.

“Someone will come in,” I add as he bites the tender part between my shoulder and neck,

“Then fucking let them.”

“Wait…” I say, panting. I stare into his eyes.It took everything in me to wear Romain’s choker, branding myself as his. If all I’ve done is swap one dick for another….

He must see something in my eyes because he stops, frowning. “When you didn’t come back the next day, I thought you’d left for good. You had me so fucking worried.” He hesitates to ask, casting a stilted gaze over me. “Are you okay?”

I shake my head. “I’m okay. I’ve been through worse.” That’s the truth.

He nods and kisses me gently, holding back.

He’s unsure.

Romain is never unsure.

That’s what makes me bolder. I devour him, clawing at his clothes. With a sigh, he shoves me against a stone wall and grinds me against it. And just like that, I’m putty in his hands. I’m so weak around him. He’s like an addiction I can’t seem to get enough of. I cried all night after the pool house, so many tears. But I can’t cry anymore. I need to stop running away. I need to stop playing the victim.

This is my choice.

“This is what you do to me, Bella.” His cock is rock hard, jutting into me as he whispers in my hair, breathing the scent of me in.

To erase what happened in the pool house from my mind and body; to burn away the disgust and revulsion I feel every time one of the students so much as looks at me…

I have to let him in.

He kisses me roughly, lips bruising mine. I moan, hitching my leg up higher. He shoves my underwear aside and slides three fingers deep inside me, thumb on my clit, sending me to seventh heaven. His fingers pump into me with every Hail Mary spoken out loud in the next room. The taste of him, his scent, the feel of him inside me is like a prayer, cleansing me from the inside out.

“That’s it, Bella. Come for me,” he demands.

Lust spins me breathless from my head to my toe when my core tightens, and I come all too quickly, dripping around his fingers. The sound of the choir singing is the only thing bringing me back to earth.

Mass has started. I shove him away, much to his amusement, straighten my clothes and escape into the chapel before he can stop me. Helen frowns when I enter. I’m late. I find a seat at the back and pick up a hymn book, trying to follow the words to the song. Romain enters a few beats later, looking every bit as cool and collected as I never could. The look he gives me is positively wicked. He takes a pew behind me, sitting slightly to the left, so every time I glance up from my hymn book, I see him in my periphery—the Devil over my shoulder.

The next text I get from him is one word.

Tonight.

I’m jittery by the time mass is over.

“Arabella, can I have a word?” It’s Helen, cornering me in the corridor as everyone filters out from the chapel into it. I’m aware of Romain brushing by me as he walks past, his hand teasing up my skirt in the crowded room without a care in the world.

“Yes, of course.” I dart away from Romain’s wandering hands to stand next to Helen. She didn’t see, did she? If she did, she doesn’t show it. She smiles at me like nothing is the matter.

Still, I brace myself for the worst. Too much has happened for no one to find out. I’m walking through the school with my head in the sand. This can’t last.

“I’m having a little get-together tonight with a few of the founders. I’d like you to be there.”