everyone else envious.”
His lips twitch. “Bigheaded to boot.”
My eyes twinkle. “I don’t think it’s too big to get through the front door.”
“Praise be to God for that.” He arches a brow at me, but he doesn’t move his hand, and I don’t move mine either. “What are you doing in here?”
“I heard you call out in your sleep.” Any amusement in me fades at the memory of his pain. “Y-You calmed down when I came in and I didn’t want to leave you.”
His scowl returns before he hisses out a breath. “Night terrors.”
“Do you get them often?”
He doesn’t answer, but he grows still. “Please, tell me I didn’t hurt you.”
I can feel the tension in him, it’s like it throbs through the blood-soaked mattress.
Maybe it does.
Maybe because his blood is touching me, it’s a conduit to him. To his soul.
I like the idea, and I turn my face into it, knowing it will turn my cheek rosy with him.
“You pushed me away, but you didn’t hurt me,” I assure him.
He releases a shaky breath, one loaded with relief, then he turns to me and catches me humming as I rub my cheek into the fabric beneath us.
Though his scowl is back once more, he doesn’t stop me. Instead, he asks, “What hymn is that?”
“Au coeur de ma vie,” I answer easily, wondering why he asks when he has to know it.
“That used to be my favorite.”
His thickly uttered response has me whispering, “I learned it for you.”
“You sing?”
“I used to. Not so much now.” I clear my throat. “I used to be in a choir at our church.”
“You truly were Catholic?” he questions, his surprise clear.
I huff, annoyed he didn’t believe me. “I haven’t told you a single lie, and I won’t either,” I tack on, wanting him to know that.
Damn nerve.
Something shifts in his eyes, and he shakes his head as a smile blossoms on his lips.
“You truly are peculiar.”
“Thank you.”
Savio
For anyone else, I knew that would be taken as an insult. And maybe, from anyone else, it would have been offered as one. But it wasn’t. I didn’t mean to offend. It was just a truth.
As I watch her coat her cheek in my blood, as I watch her hum a hymn that used to be my favorite, something she had to have learned during her ‘tracking’ of me, I can’t deny there’s no one like her.
No one.
And I’ve met some fruit loops in my time.
But at the heart of her, she’s innocent.
I can see that.
She’s naive and pure.
Maybe a tad naughty, but good.
It gleams out of her. It’s like her soul calls to the dark, empty shell of mine, reminding it what it used to feel like to be that way.
But I stopped being pure when I was thirteen.
A stupid bully changed everything, changed my life, changed me.
Memories crowd me, and she starts to hum again, like she knows the past has consumed me.
Like she knows something changed.
The old song resonates deeply. It reminds me of the first time I heard it—when I entered Seminary.
My parents had been the exact opposite of pleased about my becoming a priest. My mother had cried about it for two days straight, and every time my father had looked at me, he’d shaken his head.
In France, where I was raised, the state and church were not close entities. People weren’t ashamed of their religion, but neither was it embraced as maybe it was in other countries.
The first day of Seminary, my mother’s weeping echoing in my ears, I’d heard the hymn.
You are at the heart of my life.
And He was.
That had been my feeling at the time.
Now?
The hymn is a reminder of how I’d been once upon a time.
“Please,” I whisper gutturally. “Don’t hum that.”
She stops. Instantly.
Just like she does every time I ask her to—or don’t ask, just make her. There’s no rebellion.
None whatsoever.
That’s why it’s easy to let my temper fall away.
She’d touched herself.
In my bed.
Her whimper had awoken me, and for a scant second, I’d watched her, heard her. Felt her response.
Then I stopped her. I had no choice. Because I wanted to see more. I wanted to know more.
Just the thought of the taste of her pussy on my tongue is enough to make me salivate. It’s been so fucking long since I did anything remotely sexual that I can’t even remember when it was.
I’d been thirteen when I killed Luc Roussillon. I’d gotten a suspended sentence at fourteen, and a mountain of community service until I