I needed to go to him. Breathe in his scent, feel his skin against mine. It wasn’t logic, it was compulsion. A new addiction that I feared I might not ever recover from.
He looked up at me as I approached, and I reached out my fingers to brush them through his hair. He had beautiful hair. A striking face. And a body that was made to be seen. I could understand why someone would never want to let him go because at that moment, I felt it too. But more than anything, I felt a new rage inside me on his behalf. An equal need to destroy the bitch who ruined his life, and one to comfort him in the only way I could.
I made myself at home on his lap, straddling him as his cock stirred to life between us. “Has anyone ever told you how beautiful you are?”
“No,” he answered, his lips a breath away from mine. “You would be the first.”
I slipped my hands beneath his shirt, savoring the warmth of his skin against mine. “Sometimes, I think you came into my life for a reason. I think you came to save me.”
“Then you would be right,” he answered.
I buried my head in the crevice of his neck and breathed him in. “Why?”
“It’s the only thing I have to offer you.”
I clung to his body, terrified of what I wanted to ask next. “Have you done this with others? Women like me?”
“No.” He petted my hair. “You’re the only one.”
Tension melted from my body, but I was greedy for more. “What about the girls at the club?”
“They are different,” he said.
“Different how?” I demanded.
“They want pain. I want to provide it. That’s all it ever was.”
“And sex too.”
“No.”
I tried to accept it, but the way that girl devoured him with her eyes still haunted me.
He reached up and brushed his fingers against the pulse on my neck. “What are you thinking about?”
“That girl at the club,” I admitted. “You seemed intimately acquainted with her.”
“Pain is intimate,” he said. “Exposing yourself, trusting someone so completely to push your limits but stop when you ask… there’s nothing else like that. Some people, that’s what they need.”
“And what do you get out of it?”
His eyes darkened, and his voice was deeper when he responded. “Power. Catharsis.”
“Do you think of your ex when you hurt someone?” I asked. “Is that it?”
“No. I never think of her.”
“How could you not?” I challenged.
“If I thought about her, that would give her exactly what she wants. What’s done is done. I can’t change the past. I can’t change anything.”
“Is that why you go to church?” I hedged. “To find forgiveness?”
“I can’t forgive her,” he said roughly. “But I have to believe that my son is in a better place. It’s the only thing I can believe in. I’ve tried to hold onto that by living my life in a righteous way. At least, until I met you.”
His words stung, and I couldn’t hide it. “Is the sin of my flesh worse than the others?”
“There have been no others,” Lucian answered quietly. “She was the last before you.”
I stared at him, certain I’d misunderstood. “You’re saying that you’ve been celibate for—”
“Seventeen years.”
I got lost in the dark pools of his eyes. There was nothing to compare them to. They were warm like chocolate and strong like coffee, but even those words felt too weak to describe the visceral power of this man. He could disarm a woman with a single look, but he chose not to. I wanted to know what made me so different, but I was too afraid to ask.
My palms found his face, and my lips brushed against his. “Maybe you can find a way to repent.”
He wrapped his arm around my waist, dragging me against his body as he sighed into my mouth. It felt like I was causing him physical pain. He was tormented, and I didn’t know if I was taking advantage of that, but I couldn’t stop. We couldn’t stop. And if he believed we were going to hell because of it, then we’d be going together.
I pulled the tee shirt up over my head and discarded it on the floor. His eyes raked over my body as I fumbled with his zipper, trying desperately to free him.
“Don’t deny that you want this,” I said.
His cock sprang free, a pulsing monstrosity that belonged only to me. The thought was intoxicating in a way I couldn’t admit. I wanted all of him, and I was the only one who’d tasted him in seventeen years. I’d demolished his celibacy. Broken his vows of purity. And I wanted to do it again and again.
His fingers slipped between my thighs, and he groaned when he felt how wet I already was. “I don’t think I have it in me to be virtuous anymore.” He dragged me along the length of his cock. “All I’ve wanted to do from the moment I saw you was desecrate you.”