“Looks like I’m pledged to you for at least the next time being.”
“Someone could open those doors at any moment, Bastien. This isn’t funny.” Trembles of fear soaked my desire cold. “Undo the ropes.”
Bastien cinched them tighter, drawing one fingertip down the line of my arm and sending shivers over my skin.
“Didn’t they teach you in seminary that bad company corrupts good morals?”
Bastien’s smile twisted up, both his hands working softly at the flesh just under the waistband of my pants.
“Mm, Heaven’s dew and earth’s sweetest juices from amid the flowers—”
I slammed my eyes closed, ears locked to his well-worded weapons. Damn biology, tangling with my logical thought, his assault on me becoming too much. The emotion, the pressure, the pain and pleasure. With ragged desperation and tears itching my eyes.
“Tressa.” Bastien’s voice broadened, his hands sinking into the flesh of my waist, hovering just out of reach of the elastic of my waistband. “With you I’m very well in danger of losing my soul.”
I gulped, dampening all of that pent-up desire for him before I breathed the pained words that’d been floating just out of reach for days now. “I’m leaving.” I paused. “Soon.” I pressed my lips together, looking anywhere but at his face. “Consider this my notice.”
The words cut my throat like they carried miniature knives.
My heartbeats stretched long and slow, all four chambers echoing thunderously in the tiny shell of a holy room as he sat silently between my thighs.
It was laughable.
All of it.
Wewere laughable.
A thousand angry secrets sped up in my throat. I wanted to scream and cry and run my way out of this moment. But instead, the bastard had me here, facing my worst fear, my fucking self.
“I just think it’s time for me to move on—” The words were weak even to my own ears.
“The hell it is.” His hands checked the bindings at my wrists, ensuring they were tight, while his eyes traveled up my torso, gaze sizzling up every soft inch, before his thumbs hooked at my waistband and pushed.
His jaw clenched, eyes equal parts ravaged and desperate, the press of his hands into my flesh left all the marks his words couldn’t.
Eyes holding mine, he slid his fingers inside the elastic of my panties, pushing them down my thighs before our lips came together in a fevered rush. A kiss that stole all of my breath and my soul along with it.
That kiss wasn’t the light at the end of the tunnel; it was the bomb in the darkness, lighting up the dark depths of our souls just enough for us to catch a glimpse before the lights burned out again.
A simple kiss, the beginning of the end.
Bastien wrapped his hands around my waist, pulling my ass to land on the wooden-topped chest as his other deft hand stripped me of my underwear. With one large palm pressed at the base of my back, he snuck under the cage of my arms again before catching my lips with his just as his cock nudged at the edge of my entrance.
His hips moved in a slow rhythm, a torturous tango my head grew dizzy trying to anticipate, my body succumbing to the drugging force of his lips pressed against mine, tongue working in tandem to sever every lock I held tight, burn every wall I’d kept purposely high.
With the blood of Christ on his lips, Bastien entered me fully, filling me so tightly his invasion burned and itched. I gasped, the burn of a man inside me for the first time too much to bear. My teeth sank into the flesh at his neck, tight ropes of muscle strung with sinew tighter than the ones that bound my wrists.
Finally, sweet agony filled my muscles, relaxing around him until the stretch of his girth felt less like an invasion and more a pleasurable assault.
His hands covering my body, paying attention to all the places he’d been promising to, his fingertips and lips owning every piece, I gave him my last moments of innocence.
Encircling me in both his arms, he held me against him in a hug that caged, coaxing out all my love for him against my will. A love the sheer size of which I still couldn’t fathom.
Bastien slipped a hand around his neck, working the red ropes from my wrists and letting them fall to the floor in a heap. I dug my nails into his skin instantly, muscled shoulder blades flexing beneath my palms as I clung to him, begging for more.
With every inhale, we sealed both of our coffins.
Running one hand slowly up my back, he following the curve of my spine. My heart began to pound and I arched my back into him. One finger played with the lace above my breasts, before slowly tugging the fabric down to reveal my chest to him. My nipples hardened as the fabric grazed my oversensitive skin. His eyes looked at me through dark lashes before he dove in, finding my nipple with his teeth and tugging firmly, then sucking it into his mouth. My body shuddered with pleasure as my hands held his head to my chest, urging him on.
