Dead Man Walking (The Fallen Men #6) - Giana Darling Page 0,120

even when you don’t want to be seen. You cannot be invisible to me. Religion teaches you to covet the divine, to swallow it wholesale down your throat like communion. To seek it out for absolution. To me, you are divine, and my pursuit of you is anything but unholy.”

I stood still as she began to explore my clothed body with tender, tentative hands. They fluttered like doves at my chest, plucking the gun from my holster, unclipping the hunting knife from my belt. She knelt at my feet like a servant, eyes shining with worship as she lifted the edge of my denim pant leg to release the dagger at my ankle, then slid the boot knife out of the heel of my right shoe.

She was disarming me, in more ways than I could count.

I was sweating, vibrating with the effort to stay silent and calm while she had her way with me. I slept with those knives. I showered with them collected on my sink basin well within reach. Being parted from my knives felt like an amputation, but I sensed it was important to her to see me without them, to have me defenseless under her soft hands.

I couldn’t give her much, but I could fucking try to give her this.

There was only one weapon left, the matte black tang knife I wore on a chain around my neck. Bea’s fingers hovered over the faint shape of it beneath my hoodie, then brought her gaze to mine in silent question.

I swallowed thickly and jerked my chin.

She didn’t go for the blade. Instead, she tucked her little hands into the shoulders of my leather cut and pushed it over my back. Then she pulled the hem of my hoodie up, but I superseded her by pulling at the neck and shucking it myself.

We were both panting hard like we had run some kind of race. In a way, we were. There was only so much I could take, and we both knew it. Any moment, the beast in me would lash out and conquer her so she’d forget to conquer me in return.

Her eyes raked over my black henley, the way it flowed over the hard edge of my honed muscles like ink. I sucked in a sharp breath and fought a flinch as she trailed her fingers lightly up my forearm to my shoulder then over to my collar. The feel of her skin against my neck made me hiss, a bead of sweat rolling down my temple.

No one had touched my bare skin, save my hands, in over a decade. The feel of it seared through me like wildfire.

Bea made a whimpering noise in her throat but continued her journey, trailing a fingertip under the fabric to hook around the silver chain holding the blade. With one firm curl of her beckoning finger, the chain broke apart the way it was meant to into her hold. The slither of metal whispered between us as she pulled it gently from beneath my shirt and gathered the body-warmed metal in her palm.

Finished with my weapons, we stood there breathing heavily, eyes locked and dark, air pulsing between us to the rhythm of my increased heart rate. She didn’t seem to know what to do now that she’d succeeded in her task. Indecision and excitement sent a flush spilling down her neck and breasts.

“Will you take off your clothes for me?” she asked softly, almost afraid to ask or maybe afraid of the answer.

I ground my teeth as I fought with myself. I wanted to give her everything, all of me, hollow bones and empty soul, but that was too much.

Too much, too much, too much.

I hadn’t been naked since I was seventeen, that last time covered in the blood of holy men who had done so many unholy things to me.

A shiver tore through me so violently, I stepped backward to brace myself.

Bea’s face contracted with sorrow.

And I was done.

Done being too broken to function. Done bringing sorrow to that angelic face. Done being passive.

What did it matter if I was unclothed? I’d never been more naked than I was standing there in that pink living room with my Little Shadow.

I snapped forward so quickly, she gave a little scream before she melted into my hard clutch like warm wax. Then I was kissing her, stealing the air from her lungs because I wanted to taste her breath, eating the sweetness of her tongue to swallow down the