“You came back,” I whisper, my lungs struggling for air. “That was enough.”
His laugh is bitter and beautiful, a jagged shard of sound.
“No,” he says. “It’s not enough. You still don’t fucking remember, do you?”
My heart stutters, missing a beat.
He shifts lower, his lips tracing the sensitive skin of my inner thigh, and I feel his obsession like a brand searing itself into my marrow. Every kiss, every filthy whisper, is a promise to pull me under the waves with him.
“I should leave you here,” he murmurs. “I should walk away. Let whoever’s coming for you have you.”
“You won’t.” My voice cracks, high and fragile. “You can’t.”
“I should.”
But then he pauses—his fingertips still on me, his breath ghosting over the places I need him most—and his eyes flicker with something… haunted. Something old.
“I told you,” he says, his voice distant. “I thought I burned him. Thought the screams meant it was over.”
Screams. Flames. A memory too blurred to grasp, like trying to see through thick smoke.
My breath catches. “You said you were alone.”
“I was. Until you.” His gaze snaps back to mine, wildfire and fury and need all twisted into one. “Until he looked at you.”
My spine arches off the altar, the air stolen from my lungs.
“He looked at me?”
Damien doesn’t answer with words. He answers with teeth. He bites the inside of my thigh—not gentle, not soft—just enough to make me flinch and gasp, to make the sharp edge of pain feel like the ultimate pleasure.
Then his mouth is on me. Hot. Filthy. Relentless.
His tongue moves like it’s trying to erase every trace of the world outside these walls. Slow at first—teasing, cruel—then fast, devouring, brutal. One arm wraps tight around my hip, pinning me to the wood as I writhe beneath him, my fingers clawing at the edge of the altar like it’s the only thing tethering me to reality.
I can’t think. I can’t breathe. The moan that rips from my throat doesn’t sound human; it sounds like the chapel itself is crying out.
He groans into me, the vibration rumbling through my bones. “That’s it. Let them fucking hear who you belong to.”
I don’t realise I’m begging until I hear the words spilling out of me—“Please, Damien, please?—”
He doesn’t let up. Not when I break. Not when I scream. Not when my back bows so violently my head knocks againstthe hard stone beneath the wood. He only pulls away once I’m shaking, sweat-slick, and completely unraveled.
He climbs up my body, his mouth glistening in the candlelight, his gaze feral. He kisses me, filthy and deep, letting me taste my own surrender on his tongue.
Then he whispers, “He wanted you, too. That’s why I had to stop him.”
My blood turns to ice. “What?”
His lips brush my ear, his voice a weapon now—sharp, dragging me back through time. “You think you were just another girl in that church? He told me… if I was good, if I let him—watch—then maybe I could have you next.”
My whole body locks. My vision warps. The world begins to tilt.
“No,” I whisper. “That’s not?—”
“You don’t remember.” His smile is cracked and cruel. “But your body does.”
And I don’t know if I’m crying or gasping or choking. All I know is that something inside me breaks. Because suddenly, I’m not in the chapel anymore.
