Chapter 26

CHAPTER 26

THOMAS

“ W here is your bedroom?” I asked.

My little angel was testing my last thread of patience. First, she left the city without permission, without even telling me where she was going, and then she tried to run from me in the dark, wearing ridiculous shoes.

Didn’t she understand what could have happened to her? She only fell and twisted her ankle, but it could have been so much worse. What if I wasn’t able to catch up with her, and didn’t find her in that maze? What if she had fallen and hit her head instead of just twisting her ankle?

And why the hell was she running from me in the first place, without even a coat? I knew she had had a few glasses of wine, that was clear enough, but she wasn’t inebriated to the point of using that as an excuse for her foolish behavior.

“Where is your bedroom?” I asked again, raising my voice and tightening the grip I had on her body.

“I won’t tell you. Put me down and leave.”

I should’ve done just that. I should have abandoned her there and just let her suffer with her ankle and freeze to death in that cold maze.

Sucking in a deep calming breath, I tried to let go of some of my rage and hold on to the fact that Rose was in my arms, safe. She was shivering, but she would be warm soon enough.

All I had to do was to carry her inside, check her ankle, make sure she didn’t actually break it, and then she and I would have a very long conversation about her actions.

Starting with her running off and ending with the collection of soft-core porn she had painted of me.

Though, I kind of enjoyed knowing that my little angel thought about me just as much as I had been thinking about her. It also proved that my plans were coming together. I needed her to at the very least have a crush on me, but it was clear to see that she was close to full-on obsession.

Maybe, when all this was over, I would carry through on my threat to keep her chained to my bed, just waiting for me day in and day out.

There was some appeal to that.

“Angel,” I said much more calmly, trying not to scare her too badly… yet. “Which of the rooms are you using?”

“I’m not telling you,” she bit back.

“Fine,” I said. “Make this harder on yourself. I’ll find it myself.”

I carried her down the hallway that held all the bedrooms and started kicking in closed doors.

Breaking the locks or denting more than a few of them. When I found the room that had clearly been occupied, the bed made with fresh sheets and her hairbrush sitting on the dresser, I knew I had the right one.

“Put me down,” she screeched.

“Gladly,” I said as I threw her on the bed.

She let out a yell of anger as I followed her onto the bed, reaching under her sweaterdress to grab the top of her tights and yank them down her legs.

“What are you doing?” she screamed.

“Calm down,” I demanded. “I’m just checking your ankle to make sure you didn’t break it.”

“How did you even find me? Why are you here? Why won’t you just leave me alone?”

Her questions came out one right after the other, while she crossed her arms over her chest and stuck out her chin like a child throwing a temper tantrum.

“If you want me to answer those questions, I suggest you ask them nicely.” I gently touched her ankle. She winced as I picked it up and started slowly rotating it. As I moved her foot, I could tell it was tender, but nothing seemed broken. She merely twisted it. She was lucky, running in the dark on the grass on a mountainside in those heels—she could have done permanent damage.

Rose huffed as she tried to pull her foot out of my grasp before I was done. I tightened my hold on her leg and continued to run my fingers along the contours of her ankle. Partly double-checking for fractures, but mostly just loving the way her skin erupted into tiny little bumps under my touch.

“How did you find me?” she asked.

I looked up at her, raising my eyebrow and then focusing back on her ankle.

“Fine. How did you find me, Father?”

That hadn’t been what I meant when I said ask nicely, but it was close enough.

“Luc. I was having an enlightening conversation with my father when my brute of a brother burst into my rooms and punched me in the face. Apparently, your sister is under the impression that I have been corrupting you.”

“Well, haven’t you been?” she said. I had to fight back a smile. She had no idea.

“Wine makes you mouthy.”

“So does being stalked.”

“Don’t be dramatic. I didn’t stalk you. I came up here to check on you since you left in a hurry and haven’t been responding to any of my messages. Do you know how worried I’ve been? I wanted to make sure you weren’t hiding any fresh bruises or cuts delivered by your mother.” The lie slipped easily from my mouth, and it took a moment for me to realize that I actually wasn’t lying at all. I really came up here not to punish her, but to make sure she was okay.

But since I had come all the way up here anyway…

“You saw me. I’m fine, you can leave.”

“No.”

“Why? Why won’t you leave me alone?” she whined. I looked up to see tears filling her eyes and, for a second, the ice around my heart cracked just a bit.

Why wouldn’t I leave her alone? Did I really still need to use her for my plan? Mary Quinn had been knocked down so many rungs of the social ladder I doubted she’d ever be able to crawl her way back up. She had paid for her crimes against me. I had taken away her leverage over my family, and by taking the rest of the blackmail material and bonds, I had essentially declawed the rabid bitch.

Still, I wasn’t satisfied. Not until she hurt, not until she knew pain and fear the same way Rose knew it.

I worked my fingers over her ankle, trying to massage out the tender parts, trying to ignore the obvious.

My reasons for attacking Mary Quinn Astrid had less and less to do with my revenge for the heinous crime she committed against me, and more for how she treated my angel.

This was not supposed to happen. I was not supposed to develop feelings for my little pet. Rose was supposed to only be a means to an end, not wiggle her way into my heart. I was supposed to corrupt her. She was not supposed to soften me.

“Tell me the real reason you came up here,” I said, needing to wipe those thoughts from my head.

“You know why,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.

“Tell me anyway.”

She said nothing, and when I looked up at her face, she was chewing her bottom lip, her eyes cast down and to the side.

“Tell me, angel,” I said, my fingers moving up to her calf, still massaging away the tenderness.

“What you’re doing to Mother, I don’t know how you’re doing it, I don’t know what was in that safe deposit box, but it’s not?—”

“Did she hit you again?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “She didn’t have the chance.”

Relief filled me, and that pissed me off. Why did I care so much? How had this girl, this sweet, na?ve little girl, changed my motivations? I had planned this for over seven years.

Everything was perfect, everything was coming together and I was almost at my victory, but instead of worrying about putting the final nails into Mary Quinn’s coffin, I was sitting here rubbing the ankle of her fucking daughter.

Suddenly, I was more concerned with how Rose felt than how I was going to take down the evil bitch. This little witch stole my power, redirected my anger.

I didn’t know how Rose did it, but I needed to get my control back. I needed Rose back in her place, under me, obeying me, and complicit in her mother’s takedown. Not for her, but for me.

“Why won’t you leave me alone?” Rose asked again.

Answers flooded my mind. Because I wanted to make sure she was okay, because I needed to know she was safe, because I just wanted to be near her and I was missing her. Instead, I gave her the answer that would put her back in her place.

“Because I enjoy fucking you.”

She jerked back, her eyes wide as she tried to pull her leg from my grasp.

“You can’t say things like that,” she said.

“Why not? Little angel, it’s the truth. I like the way you moan for me, I like the way your body bends to me, and how sweetly you so willingly obey me.”

“No, you have to stop saying those things.”

“Oh, angel, there are so many things that I can say to you. I can tell you how hot and wet your sweet little cunt is. There’s absolutely nothing stopping me from telling you how much I love the way you look with your lips wrapped around my cock, and that there was no sweeter moment in my life than when I took your virgin ass.”

Her eyes got wider, and her lips parted as her chest started to rise and fall a little more rapidly. She could pretend to be scandalized all she liked, but that didn’t change the signs of her body. It didn’t change the way her pupils dilated and the way her skin warmed to my touch.

My little angel could pretend that she didn’t like what I was saying, but her body told me otherwise.

“No. This is so wrong. You’re not supposed to talk like that. You’re not supposed to do those things that you do.”

“And why not, little angel?”

“Because you’re a priest!” she practically shouted, her little fists balling up at her sides. “You’re not supposed to do any of this.”

“Is that your problem? Is that why you refuse to let yourself truly enjoy the things that I do to you until you are lost to the pleasure? I can fix that.” I sat up, reached for my collar and ripped it off, throwing it to the side. “Better?”

“No! That means nothing.”

“You’re right,” I said, sitting back a little. “I saw your paintings. I know what will help.”

Keeping my eyes trained on hers, making sure she knew I could see inside her soul and there was no hiding the truth from me, I unbuttoned my black shirt, leaving the cross hanging from my neck, resting just below my sternum against my bare skin.

Once my shirt was off and I threw it the same direction I threw the collar, I crawled back up onto the bed.

“You are still a priest,” she said, her eyes trailing down my body. Just feeling her gaze on my skin was enough to make my cock throb.

Pushing down the feelings that she had pulled out of me, I refocused on my plan. I could have forgotten about the plan and seduced her sweetly. Shown her I was still a man under that collar and that my heart ached for her.

There was some temptation in that idea. To let her see all of me, the good, the bad, and the in between. I could show her everything she craved and offer it to her, letting her know she had my heart as well.

I wouldn’t be the first priest in a serious relationship outside of God. I wouldn’t be the last. But that wasn’t the plan. I had worked too long and too hard to be distracted by the sweetness of my little angel.

I pushed all thoughts of loving her aside and refocused on how this was supposed to be.

She was not supposed to seduce me. She was not supposed to pull me into the light. I was meant to drag her kicking and screaming into the darkness.

I reached up to the neck of her dress and started undoing the buttons.

“No, you are still a priest,” she said as she gripped the soft knitted dress.

“I am a priest. That does not mean I am not still a man. It does not mean your body doesn’t crave mine, or that there is any future in which you are not mine.”

“That is exactly what it means,” she countered as I pried her fingers away from the dress and undid another button.

“If that was true, then why is the Bible so full of stories about sex?” I asked as I pulled the dress, making a few more buttons slip undone all the way to her navel.

She opened and closed her mouth for a second and I pulled the bodice of her dress to the side, exposing her white cotton bra.

“If God didn’t want us to have sex, why did he make you so tempting? Why did he make your body so sweet?” I asked as I pulled the cup of her bra down and then put my mouth over her taut nipple, sucking gently before biting. When I released her breast to refocus on her face, her cheeks were blazing red, her teeth sinking into her bottom lip and her pupils blown wide.

“It’s still a sin,” she gasped, trying hard to convince herself more than me.

“If God didn’t want us to fuck, then why did he make sex so much fun?”

Again, she didn’t have an answer. I slipped my hand back down her body, opening up the few buttons left holding the sides of her dress together. As I kissed down her flat stomach, her breathing picked up, and I could feel her heart racing.

“If God didn’t want me to give you so much pleasure, why did he make you so damn responsive to me?”

“Please.” The words came out of her lips, more a prayer than a plea. I knew what my little angel needed, and I would give it to her. I would hand her the salvation she craved just before I used it to destroy her.

Kissing my way down her body, tasting her sweet, delicate skin as my hands hooked into the sides of her cotton panties and pulled them down her legs.

“This is a sin,” she said, her voice a little stronger.

“Do you know your Bible, little angel?” I asked as I situated myself between her calves, her thighs still clamped tightly closed.

“Some,” she admitted.

“Do you know Solomon 4:16?” I asked, placing my hands on her knees.

She shook her head, and I smirked up at her, knowing I had her.

“Blow on my garden and spread its fragrance all around. Come into your garden, my love. Taste its finest fruits.”

I pried her legs apart, then ran my tongue through her wet folds, tasting her finest fruits.