Total pages in book: 43
Estimated words: 40966 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 205(@200wpm)___ 164(@250wpm)___ 137(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 40966 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 205(@200wpm)___ 164(@250wpm)___ 137(@300wpm)
When he slides inside me, we both go still.
This is home.
This is church.
This is the religion they'll damn us both for practicing.
He begins to move, slow and deep and devastating. Each thrust brings me closer to the edge, closer to the truth I've been running from.
This is when reality hits.
This is when I understand the choice I'm really making.
I'm gonna lose everything—my family, my inheritance, my carefully constructed life.
But I don't care.
At least, not right now.
I just come apart in his arms, moaning his name as his endless battle between good and evil plays out across his chest in ink that reminds us both that this love we have… is forbidden.
CHAPTER 7
Angels sound like salvation you don't deserve.
Demons feel like the damnation you've earned.
Savannah tastes like both.
Her body arches beneath me, lips parted, eyes half-closed. The fairy lights I strung up this afternoon catch in her hair, making her glow while she falls apart. I hold back, grinding my teeth against the need to follow her over. Not yet. I wanna watch her first.
Wanna see if she still looks the same when she comes. If she still whispers my name like it's something holy instead of the curse it is.
She does.
Three years locked away, and her body still remembers mine. Still responds to my fingers, my mouth, my cock like we were made to fit together. Like we didn't spend a thousand nights apart.
I pull out and she reaches for me, grabbing at my cock to put it back inside her. But I shake my head. “I’m gonna go slow now. I needed to be inside you, but now I want to go slow.
I trace my fingertips over her nipples, feeling them harden under my touch. Trail down her ribs, counting each one. She's thinner than before. Sharper. Like prison carved parts of her away too.
My hand slides over her hip, stopping at the small tattoo there. Seven words inked into her skin:
A place where damnation and light begin.
The last line of a poem I wrote her when we were sixteen. When I was still stupid enough to believe words could capture what we were to each other. Because that’s where we live. That’s where we’ve always lived. In some unholy purgatory where love is evil.
"You kept it," I murmur, running my thumb over the ink.
She nods, breath still coming fast. "It's the only part of you they can’t ever take from me."
I don't tell her I recited that poem every night in my cell. Line by line. Word by word. Like a prayer or a curse or both.
I slide down her body, spreading her thighs. She's wet and swollen, and when I put my mouth on her, she makes a sound that would bring angels to their knees.
I work her with my tongue, with my fingers, until she's shaking again. Until she's gripping my hair so hard it hurts. Until she's coming against my mouth, my name a broken plea on her lips.
This is what we are. What we've always been. Fire and ruin. Grace and sin. Forbidden longings burning from within.
I kiss my way back up her body, tasting salt and sweetness. When I reach her mouth, I kiss her deep, letting her taste herself on my tongue.
"Turn over," I tell her, voice rough with need.
She doesn't hesitate. Doesn't question. Just rolls onto her stomach, face pressed into the blankets, ass raised slightly. Waiting.
I spread her legs wider, positioning myself between them. Run my hands over the curve of her spine, the swell of her ass. She shivers under my touch.
"Look at me," I say, and she turns her head, eyes meeting mine over her shoulder.
I push into her slow, watching her face as I fill her. The way her lips part. The way her eyes flutter closed. The way she bites down on her bottom lip to keep from crying out.
"Don't," I growl, reaching around to grip her jaw. "I wanna hear you."
She nods, and when I thrust deeper, she moans my name. Loud enough to echo off the silo walls. Loud enough for God himself to hear.
I fuck her hard and deep, one hand gripping her hip, the other tangled in her hair. Each thrust pushes us both closer to the edge. Each sound she makes strips away another layer of prison-hardened skin.
"Mine," I mutter against her shoulder, teeth grazing the soft flesh there. "Always been mine."
"Yes," she gasps, pushing back against me. "Yours."
I believe her. Even though she wears another man's ring—it's missing now, but the shadow of it remains, burned into her skin like a brand on a bull.
Even though she built a life without me. In this moment, with my cock buried inside her and her body trembling beneath mine, she's mine.
This wasteland keeps their secret, dark and grim.
When I feel her tightening around me again, I let go. Let the heat and pressure build until there's nothing left but release. I come inside her with a groan that starts somewhere in my chest, emptying myself into the only woman who's ever seen past the ink, and the scars, and the rage.