The ache in his voice is undeniable, and when I run my hands along the length of him, I know why. Even for our clothes, I feel every hard inch of him, and it sends my hips bucking forward.
He grins and dives toward my neck like a starved beast. I form my fingersaround his hard ridge, and a growl echoes from his lips. He catches my hands with his, splaying them to the sides.
“You first.”
His words send shivers along my legs, and faster than I can blink, he tugs the loose sides of my bodice down around my shoulders. Lips like velvet trail my throat, the jutting bones of my shoulder, landing on the soft mounds of my breasts. I moan at the gentlest touch while he runs his tongue over my skin and sucks my nipple between his teeth.
The sounds release something in him, animalistic and feral. His muscles tense, and he rips his breeches from his body, tears the silk of my bodice until I am exposed to the navel.
To hell with this dress. With its scent of bitter almonds and poison.
Another shiver ripples down my spine when Bram pulls back, studies every inch of me like I am some rich jewel. His length, now free of his breeches, is long and hard and so beautiful. My center aches with more need than I ever thought possible.
Bram trails his hand down between my breasts, pressing against my stomach. My back arches at the touch, and I reach for him, taking him in my palms. He groans, leans down, and buries his face in my hair.
“Addie, you’re a work of art.” Slowly, he presses my legs apart and pushes my skirts up around my hips.
I gasp when the cool air touches my heated flesh.
With hands on the ground at my sides, Bram stares at me, the eye contact threatening to tear me apart.
“What are you doing?”
His smile simmers with devilry, the light from the sky pooling red around his head. A holy icon from the depths of Hell.
“Do you want this?”
“Yes.” I barely breathe before the word is spilling from my mouth. “Yes, Bram. I want this. I wantyou.”
He braces his hand against the floor of the nave and slides his length into me, filling me up until I think I will burst. I edge so close to pleasure my heart races into my throat. Every inch of him burns, makes me ache beyond desire. It morphs to something like hunger. For him. For this.
I flex my fingers and reach up to twist them through his hair. He moves with slow, deliberate thrusts, drawing out the moment, keeping his eyes fixed on mine. I trail my hands down his shoulders, nails raking his back. He looses another groan from his throat, falling over me, drawing out and pressing in again.
I move with him, the slick ache drawing lower into my stomach. His tongue slices my throat, then up against the sensitive hollow behind my ear.
“Addie.” His breath is hot on my skin.
“Don’t stop,” I gasp. “Please, gods below and above. Don’t stop.”
He doesn’t. Instead, he thrusts harder and deeper until I am sure I will come apart there in all the bloody light. Bram sends me teetering toward the edge of oblivion with each press, each breath from his throat. My fingers flex and release, succumbing to the darkness, the truth. I am no vicar’s daughter. No cursed creature, touched by Erybrus.
I am the daughter of both darkness and light. Of earth and Heaven and Hell. I am poison and healing in one. A Reaper. Neither for the light nor the shadow, but for something in between.
The taste of soil fills my mouth when Bram pushes me to the edge of climax, and I surrender. Bitterbloom breaks through the stone of the floor, petals unfurling in a blossoming of light. Bram increases his speed, and I stiffen. Every inch of me feels ready to explode. To come apart in this place until all that is left of me is dust.
He brushes his lips against the curve of my shoulder, moaning my name like a holy prayer. Like I am something he has come to worship.
I shatter. Sparks cascade through my core, my chest, my limbs, while I cry out in pleasure. My back arches and Bram follows, stifling his cry in the white curls gathering at my throat. Together, we crash and fall, bursting and then coming together through gasps and moans and delirious smiles.
The woman afraid of dying and the man who only wanted to live.
I do not know what time of day it is when I follow Bram from the vestry, wrapped in a dusty wool dress of winter white. It was tucked in an armoire, gathering desiccated insect shells and cobwebs. Something warm brews at the center of my chest, the fire Bram lit still roaring inside me.
Clara peeks her head over the back of a broken pew, a knowing look glinting in her eye.
“Haunts have been quiet.”
Bram, his hand wrapped tight around mine, nods. “Good to know.”
