“It’s ayes, Preacher.”
A ‘yes’ to everything.
The estate still carried that faint beeswax scent and something faintly floral — some arrangement somewhere I couldn't see in the dark. He didn't turn on the overhead lights. Just the lamp in the hall, which threw a low amber pool across the floor, and then the one at the top of the stairs.
I followed him up.
His bedroom was at the end of the hall — large and dark. He turned on the night lamp by the bed, and the place lit up with a warm sheen that jumped off the damask wallpaper. This was not a bedroom of a pastor — it was a room of a man in charge of more than just religion. The furniture was antique, inherited with the manor itself. The room had four tall windows. Two on the south-facing wall and two on the west. The daylight curtains were so long, they brushed the polished floor and pooled on it. I saw a mirror as big as my living room, hung above a fireplace with a marble finish. And a bed frame with posts thick as a man's thigh.
Judah came up behind me. His hands settled on my hips, steadying me as the room seemed to tilt slightly with the rum still coursing through my veins.
“Second thoughts?” he asked, his breath warm against my ear.
I shook my head, my hair brushing against his chest. “No. Just... taking it all in.”
His hands slid up from my hips, tracing the curve of my waist before coming to rest just beneath my breasts. The touch was possessive but restrained, as if he were measuring something — my breath, my pulse, my willingness.
“You’ll talk me through it?” I asked and rested my head against his chest. “My first time, if you’ve forgotten.”
I felt the rumble of his chest as he chuckled. “You make it sound like punishment.”
I tilted my head back and looked up at him in question.
“It’s not. Christianity has warped the very idea of it,” he said.
My eyebrows raised. “And that’s coming from a pastor.”
“If it’s not fun, you’re doing it wrong.”
His hands found the zipper at the back of my dress, drawing it down with deliberate slowness.
“And you're going to make it fun?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
“That's my intention.” He pressed his lips to my shoulder, his touch feather-light.
The dress slipped from my shoulders, pooling at my feet in a whisper of fabric. Standing there in just my underwear, I felt suddenly, achingly vulnerable. Not just because of my near-nakedness, but because of how he looked at me — like I was something precious and rare he'd discovered in this town of secrets and sins. I saw us in that big mirror, and I didn’t know what to make of it.
Something shifted in his eyes as he watched me watching our reflection. His hands stilled, then he turned me to face him directly, breaking the spell of our mirrored image.
“You don't have to do this,” he said, his voice lower than before. “The rum will wear off by morning.”
“I don’t care,” I told him, a smirk tugging at my lips. “You promised me fun. I’m waiting on it.” I tapped the top of my wrist, theatrically.
His gaze darkened at my challenge, and suddenly, he wasn't the composed pastor anymore. His hands gripped my waist, lifting me effortlessly and depositing me onto the edge of his massive bed. The mattress gave beneath me, softer than anything I'd ever slept on.
“You want fun?” He was already unbuttoning his shirt, revealing the continuation of those tattoos — intricate designs that disappeared beneath his waistband.
“Mhm,” I hummed, watching him, and just then I realized he was grinning.
“Tell me. How do you think this is going to happen? Have you had the birds and the bees talk?” he teased.
I rolled my eyes, even as heat spread across my cheeks. “I'm notcompletelyclueless, Judah. I know you’ll tear my clothes off, you’ll grunt a few times, and be done with it in less than two minutes,” I said with a completely straight face, and he lookedgenuinely— honest to God — horrified.
For a moment, Judah just stared at me, his expression caught between shock and something that might have been pity. Then his shoulders began to shake, and a laugh burst from him — genuine and unrestrained, nothing like his careful chuckles at church functions.
“Are you joking or is that what you’ve actually been told?” he asked, the laughter still in his voice.
“Half and half,” I admitted, smirking. “I’ve been told it will hurt, though. That’s honest. And that the first time is for you. Not me.”
