“What am I?” I asked, though I feared the answer.
He pulled back enough to look at me, and in the dying light, his face was transformed. The gentle scholarly features I’d memorized were sharpened somehow, made hungry. His pupils were blown wide despite the light, turning his gaze into something…unholy.
“You’re what your mother was. What they burned her for being.” His thumb pressed against the pulse in my throat. “A woman who refuses to kneel unless it pleases her to do so.”
Heinrich’s laugh was soft but edged with danger. “You help women control their own lives. You know which herbs kindle lifeand which extinguish it. You walk through this world with power the Church can’t control, and therefore they fear.”
My bound hands trembled between us. “You knew. You’ve always known.”
“I knew.” His fingers traced the line of my jaw. “I saw the women who came to the church doors with desperation in their eyes leave yours with hope. A hope no priest could ever deliver to those in their position.”
That was his confession, and it hung in the air between us.
“And you never stopped me? Why?”
His eyes softened, if only for a single beat of my heart. “I would never do that to you, my dove.” The endearment on his lips was weighted with new meaning. “The question is whether you’ll continue to hide in the shadows, or whether you’ll finally admit what you truly hunger for.”
The rosary had numbed my hands now, the prayer beads cutting off circulation until my fingers tingled. The pain was exquisite, focusing all my attention on the points where wood pressed against flesh, where his hands held mine captive.
I wanted his hands all over me. The confessional had become stifling, the heat of our bodies and breath turning it into a very gateway to Hell. One tiny step, and I would fall and never come back.
This was madness. This was suicide in a city where mere suspicion meant death. But his words ignited something in me that had been smoldering since I’d first laid eyes on him.
“Release me,” I said, testing.
His grip on my wrists tightened instead, pulling me closer until I could feel the heat radiating from his body through his clothes, all softness gone. “Is that truly what you want? Or do you want me to wind this rosary tighter, until the Blessed Mother’s beads leave marks on your skin that you’ll feel for days? Until every time you fold your hands in prayer, you remember this moment?”
God help me, I wanted the marks. I wanted the memory pressed into my flesh like a brand.
“Heinrich,” I breathed, and again something flickered across his face. For an instant, his grip gentled, and I saw my guardian there—the man who’d protected the girl everyone was willing to throw away.
Then it was gone, replaced by this beautiful stranger who wore Heinrich’s face but moved with a malice that awakened the worst part of me.
“Say my name again,” he commanded.
“Heinrich,” I repeated, letting my need creep into the sound, and he rewarded me by unwinding one loop of the rosary, blood rushing back into my fingertips with painful sweetness.
“Good,” he murmured. “Very good.”
Somewhere in the distance, I heard footsteps on cobblestones, voices carrying through the evening air. The city was settling for the night, the threat of rumor and accusations weighing on everyone, the tension like miasma lingering in the air.
“Someone’s coming,” I said.
Heinrich listened, his head tilted like a wolf scenting the wind. Then he leaned closer to me, the small door of the confessional closing behind him. “Then you must be very quiet, my dove.”
He yanked the rosary so my hands were above my head, pinned against the rear wooden wall. The beads bit deep again, grinding against bone.
“You asked for penance for your multitude of sins, so I will give it to you.”
His fingers bunched my skirt, tugging it higher. He pressed his leg between my thighs, spreading them as he traced the delicate, untouched skin of my inner thigh.
“Heinrich…” I barely breathed it, afraid of making any sound. It was a plea—but not a plea to stop.
My leg twitched as he found the place no man had ever been before, sliding back and forth slowly, like his fingers tracing words on a page. I bit my lip to stifle the cries that tried to escape.
“So wet, and in the House of God, no less. Such a lustful creature you are.” He circled the spot that had me melting. “Confess—have you touched yourself here, thinking of me?”
“Yes,” I gasped as he stoked the fire that threatened to consume me.
