Page 48 of Safe Word

My heart hammered in my chest, each beat slamming against my ribs like a warning bell. The air felt suffocating, as though the room itself had turned against me.

The man I’d left behind… The broken, bloodied heap… was still here. Only now, he was whole and alive.

And staring straight into my soul.

I couldn’t feel my knees. My feet were rooted to the spot even as the nurses fired off a stream of words. My mind reeled as memories flooded back in a violent torrent: the crack of his belt, the sound of my mother’s muffled sobs – it all crashed over me, drowning me in the past.

‘You look different,’ he said, almost proudly, his voice raspier than I remembered.

I said nothing. My throat felt like sandpaper, catching the words like a snare, and my body refused to obey me.

‘Don’t just stand there,’ he added merrily as he spread his scrawny, wrinkled arms. ‘Give your old man a hug.’

TEN

The night before…

She looked like a prayer and a curse in one.

Mascara streaked, lips parted, chest rising with those soft, shallow sighs that made her seem as if she were already halfway to the grave. Sprawled across the couch like an unholy offering, one leg crooked over a cushion, the tiny black whore dress clinging to her skin. No lace tonight – just bare flesh underneath all that.

From the armchair, I stroked myself, eyes fixed on the space between her thighs. Her sex lay open, pink and glistening with the memory of another man’s touch.

It made my lungs burn.

One step.

That was all it would take. One step to still her breathing, to drag her across the veil she flirted with but never crossed. One step to show her how close ecstasy and death truly were.

She offered herself to him, a lamb at the wrong altar. But her soul was mine to claim. Her breath was mine to steal. And it took every ounce of devotion not to press my palm over her mouth right now, watch her eyes widen, and feel her tremble into our Lord’s silence, while I filled her completely with my cock until breath left her.

With the silence choking the breath out of my lungs, I stood slowly, careful not to let the floorboards betray me.

She didn’t stir – didn’t even sense the weight of my stare peeling back her skin.

My sweetheart. Still breathing.

The window let me out. The breeze took me with the softness of an open throat, and I stayed behind for a moment on the ledge – watching her. Watching the way her fingers curled into the cushion as if they dreamed of clutching a saviour. But she had chosen a sinner.

She had chosen him.

Slipping into the shadows, my boots hit the pavement like a benediction. The laptop was tucked behind the drainpipe where I had left it. I flipped it open, fingers dancing in the arc across the keyboard. The film roll I’d previously set to loop seized, and the cameras blinked back to life. Digital eyes were back where they belonged – on her.

My Ducati glinted under the streetlight, dark and silent like the body I’d left behind in Obsidian’s basement.

I mounted the bike with reverence, but the engine stayed quiet. I wasn’t ready to leave just yet. The thoughts kept me tethered to her.

How easily she let him inside her. How quickly she opened.

As if my gaze, my prayers, my patience meant nothing.

She let another man desecrate the temple I’d vowed to keep clean and holy in preparation for the absolution.

And yet she slept. So peaceful. So unrepentant.

No one had ever wanted her the way I did. Not with devotion. Not with purpose. He just fucked her. I would have buried myself in her. Fill her lungs with me. Take the last of her air and keep it inside me – like it was always supposed to be.

She would learn…