I lean in until our foreheads touch, the world narrowing down to the scent of her and the rot of the chapel.
“He’s in these walls somewhere, Raven. And I’m going to tear this place apart until I drag him out.”
She shouldn’t be here. She shouldn’t be touching the air I used to breathe when I was nothing but a boy with scraped knees and a heart full of terror. She shouldn’t be running her fingers along the rotted wood of the pew like it means something—like this place isn’t soaked in every scream I never let out.
I watch her, backlit by the jagged stained glass, bathed in the soft, sickly rot of incense and mildew. And I think:Mine.Not with the clinical restraint I used to practice. This is different. This is unhinged.
Because she remembers the smell. Because she stood in this same corner when we were children, and she doesn’t even know it. Because she lit the candles when I was too broken to move. Because the priest looked at her too—but I took her first.
My jaw clenches until it clicks. She doesn’t notice; she’s staring at the secret altar the priest built behind the main one. The one intended for a different kind of sacrifice.
She tilts her head. “Why is there a second?—”
“Don’t.” My voice is a whip-crack. She flinches.
I move like a monster taught manners, closing the space in three predatory steps. I grab her wrist and press it against my chest, hard, so she can feel the war-drum rhythm of my heart.
“You want to know why I came back?” I murmur, my voice a gravelly rasp.
She swallows, her pulse visible in her neck. “Yes.”
I drag her hand lower, past my belt, pressing her palm against the heat of me. “Because I never left you. I stayed in this fucking chapel, Raven. I stayed right here.”
I slam her palm against the altar, covering her hand with mine, pinning her to the wood. “I waited for you to remember me. To come back.”
“I didn’t know?—”
“No. You forgot.” I crowd her, my body a wall of heat. She’s trembling, but she doesn’t pull away.
“You think I watched you in that dorm just for fun?” My breath skates over her neck, raising goosebumps. “You think I wanted to ruin you because it was easy?”
She’s breathing hard now, her chest heaving. I graze her throat with my mouth, tasting the salt of her skin.
“I did it because you were already mine. You were always mine.”
I twist her around, pressing her stomach flat against the altar, and yank her hips back into mine. The wood is cold, but the friction between us is a bonfire. “No one else gets to touch what should’ve died here.”
I shove her skirt up, my movements rough, fuelled by twenty years of starvation.
“This place took everything from me,” I whisper, my lips against her ear. “But not you.”
I palm her bare skin, spreading her wide, watching her own slickness coat my fingers with a single, possessive stroke.
“No panties, little spider?”
She can’t answer. I grab her jaw, twisting her head so she’s forced to look at me. “Say it.”
“No…”
“No what?”
“No one else gets to touch me.”
“That’s fucking right.”
I slam into her without warning, a brutal, deep entry that claims every inch of her. She screams, but it isn’t pain—it’s the sound of a soul recognising its owner. It’s relief. It’s release. It’s mine.
I don’t fuck her gently. Not here. Not where he watched me bleed and prayed over me like it was a favour. I fuck her like she’s the punishment and the prayer, fast and violent. I bend her forward until her chest hits the wood, one hand tangled in her hair, the other gripping her hip like she might vanish if I let go for a single second.
