Chapter 20
The second I pulled out of the club parking lot, I knew two things. One. I’d made a mistake and two…
I didn’t give a fuck.
I always craved the burn. The click of my lighter was a constant thought in my mind, but right now, looking at this beautiful woman beside me, I knew she was the burn I craved. The intensity she made me feel was hotter than even the flames against my skin.
I still had to repent for what I did all those years ago, but Sayuri made me feel like maybe, just maybe…I was worth saving?
No matter how I looked at it, I’d definitely fucked up.
Again.
I could practically hear Jerry and Dawn scolding me like I was Elias when they sobered up.
This wasn’t just the usual somewhat-cute-style-typical-Jed fuck up. Nope. This was a monumental, biblical, burn-the-whole-cathedral-down kind of mistake.
I looked over at the wrecking ball in the seat next to me and smiled despite myself.
Sayuri sat in the passenger seat, her hands folded neatly in her lap like she hadn’t just clawed my chest raw and made me whimper like a bitch. That was one of the things I loved about her.
She was so feisty, yet you would never know it from her diminutive stature and composure. The red neon lights faded behind us, swallowed by the deserted dark, and the silence inside the truck turned suffocating when the radio fuzzed out.
I gripped the steering wheel so hard my knuckles throbbed, trying to think of anything to say that wasn’t already out there.
Her lips were still swollen from the kisses. That alone made my dick jump to life, and I put one hand down to hide the offending moron.
“You didn’t hesitate,” she said softly, her face turned toward the window. I almost didn’t hear her, but my ears were homed in on that soft yet husky tone of hers.
“To do what?”
“To take me in. You barely know me.”
Her voice wasn’t accusatory. Honestly, it was more confused than anything, but there was a subtle hint of something else there, too.
Fragile relief.
I swallowed under the weight of that emotion. I didn’t know how to handle her seeing me as some white knight when I wouldn’t have done it for anyone else. Not exactly like I could tell her that, though.
“You said you had nowhere to go, and my parish is not the first conclusion on where you’d be, so it makes sense.”
“That is not what I meant, and you know it, Jedidiah.”
Of course it wasn’t, but I couldn’t let myself feel that either.
I kept my eyes on the road. “You need protection, Sayuri. You are strong as hell, I have seen that for myself, but you are only human, Mortifera.”
She turned her head slightly toward me, and I felt her gaze like a blade against my throat.
“I can take care of myself, Jed. I have done it for a long time. Kaito doesn’t scare me. He just has something of mine, so I have to play nice, for now,” she said.
That name tightened something in my chest and made me want to go back and kick his unconscious body.
“Yeah, well, whatever your weird arrangement is, he’s dangerous, and you need a place of refuge where you feel safe.”
She was quiet for a long moment, and then she turned fully to face me, her dark eyes cutting.
“And what about from you?”
The truck drifted slightly before I corrected it.
She thinks I am dangerous. Or does she know just how dangerous I can be?
“I am not a threat to you.” It was the truth. I wasn’t. I would never hurt her. My blood had already been spilled to defend her. She had to see that, even if she listened to stupid rumors uncomfortably close to the truth.
A faint hum left her throat instead of a reply, and I raised my hand in surrender.
“What?”
“You slammed Kaito’s head into a brick wall unprovoked. Maybe he is not the only wolf in sheep’s clothing.”
“I happen to lead a flock, so I am hardly the sheep,” I argued. “And he threatened you.”
“He threatens me often, but again I have to be cordial while he has possession of my…” Her words faded, and that made my jaw tick.
Why all the secrecy?
That was rich coming from me, but I didn’t like her keeping secrets. “Then I’ll make sure he keeps his paws to himself while you’re in negotiations for this object.”
Sayuri sighed and held her heart. “It is not an object…it’s a piece of my past I cannot live without.”
I pondered that as I watched her fingers flex subtly in her lap, but before I could throw out guesses, she spoke up again.
“You enjoy it,” she murmured.
“Enjoy what?”
“Hurting the men who you deem deserving it.”
The words hit too close to home. I didn’t know if I did or not. I certainly got off on spilling the blood of monsters of my past.
I would never be able to have my mother back, but that didn’t stop me from beating every single man who hurt her before I left the only home I knew.
The Black Onyx seized everything when I ran. I didn’t have anything to live for, and I knew that if I were going to die, it would not be before I got revenge for her blood spilled. I didn’t enjoy hurting anymore. I enjoyed having some sense of justice that the world forced you to take for yourself.
“It takes a beast to defeat one, I guess. I have taken my pound of flesh, Sayuri.”
I cleared my throat and let the verse flow in latin. “Nolite vindictam tibi, carissimi, sed date locum irae. scriptum est enim: Mihi vindicta, ego retribuam, dicit Dominus.”
“What does that mean?”
“Do not avenge yourselves, beloved, but leave room for wrath. for it is written: ‘Vengeance is mine. I will repay, says the Lord.’”
The highway stretched empty before us, moonlight silvering the asphalt as we got closer. Monticello’s outskirts were quiet as usual. It was comforting to leave the city lights behind and return to the soft fields, scrub, and old fencing.
It was nothing but space and ghosts here. This was home. The only place I had ever truly felt safe.
“I don’t enjoy it,” I said finally to her. “But sometimes survival requires sacrifice. I will spill their blood before they can reach me to spill mine.”
“Survival. Will you sacrifice another for that freedom?”
I thought about that honestly. For most of my life, I felt like I put my mother above myself and endured the gang to better her life. But when I truly peeled back the reasons, it was my pride and anger. I didn’t want to see her broken.
I could have tried to get her a better job or pursued legal action myself, but I took the easy way out. High pay for little effort.
I didn’t know it back then, but the minute I allowed the brand on my skin, I had already offered my mother’s soul.
“Not anymore,” I said finally. “I have lived too much of my life being selfish and choosing myself. I won’t let someone burn to keep me warm.”
I would strike the match for the fire if it were a threat against her, though.
That was the problem.
Something about her made me want to sacrifice…myself.
For her.
From the minute she walked into my church, the facade that I tried so hard to hold onto, that I never quite fit, slipped little by little.
I was losing that illusion more and more.
These last ten years of my life were like a daydream, and Sayuri had awakened me to the real world.
“Then why did you draw the first blood this time, Jed?”
The moment I heard her name in the club alley. The moment I saw her beside him. It was like something primal had taken the wheel, and I broke.
I didn’t smash the man’s head into concrete as Jedidiah Franklin, the priest and adored holy figure. I was just me when I was with Sayuri. Jed. A man.
“You don’t get to analyze me, ma’am,” I muttered, likely resembling Maria throwing a temper tantrum, but so fucking be it.
“Yet you demand answers from me.”
“I am not the only one with my secrets, Sayuri.”
Silence.
The engine hummed low under my ass, and my pulse felt louder.
Her sweet floral scent lingered in the truck, and it reminded me of the taste of her lips. It clung to me like smoke, making my ever-persistent dick ask for its opening night. There was another scent that kept it at bay, though, and that one concerned me.
Blood.
“You shouldn’t have kissed me,” she said slowly, her body turned again toward the window.
A bitter laugh broke free, and she turned to glare at me.
“You shouldn’t have kissed me back.”
She didn’t deny it to her merit.
“That does not absolve you, Father.” The way she said my title was mocking and made me laugh harder.
“Nor you, Acolyte of the holy spirit, but I’m not your priest right now.”
“No?” she said quietly. “Then what are you?”
The question threw me on my ass, and I blinked. “Uhh, well…uh…”
What the fuck was I?
Not holy. That was for damn sure.
Not righteous. I think coming on someone in a shower somehow skipped the Bible.
Not innocent, though she made me feel redeemable.
“I am trying,” I said.
“To do what?”
“I don’t know. To be what you need me to be? To not fuck everything up and destroy the ashes.”
Her gaze softened, just barely.
“You think I am destruction?”
I let out a breath through my nose. “You are temptation, Sayuri. A damning concoction created to perfection for me.”
She tilted her head.
“You think I belong to you? You think highly of yourself, ōkami.”
What the hell did that mean?
The buttons on my shirt popped as I opened the top four and dragged her hand onto the fresh lines of swollen red.
“You clawed me like you want to mark me.”
Her hands froze on my chest, and I felt her slowly explore the little red welts from her nails. The action made me sigh. I knew she could see my stupid dick, but she didn’t seem to mind.
“You grabbed me first.”
“And you liked it.”
Her breath shifted into a subtle, warmer air as she continued to caress the marks. Her head tilted as she studied me, and the intensity made me swallow thickly. I was focusing on the road, but I was nearly driving into the gutter.
I knew I was done for when I saw that wicked smirk playing on her lips, and sure enough, she brought her mouth down to the marks on my chest, slowly pulling my shirt until more buttons popped.
The sound of the pops was so jarring in the quiet space. It made my heavy breaths seem so loud.
Pop.
“She took off its fruit and ate.”
Pop.
“She also gave some to Adam.”
Pop.
Fuuuuuck. This woman was unfair to exist. Adam may not have been the fool we all thought.
Sayuri’s lips were on my skin, running her sinful tongue down my body, and making me pant.
“And? Hmm, I always forget that line.”
No, she didn’t. She just wanted me to say it, and to admit that I was as damned and blissfully ‘begging for it’ as Adam did.
“And…” I groaned, hyper-focused on the road but needing to grip the steering wheel firmly to keep from ripping her on top of me.
That fucking tongue was so dangerous. So incredibly low, my pants hem was damp. Even still, she continued, slipping the pink fucking weapon inside the hem just to pull it free and start a new trail somewhere else.
I was aching so fucking hard my pants were wet from my precome.
“And…” I tried again, choking on my own tongue, watching hers work me over like the devil. “He ate.”
Sayuri smiled so wide and beautifully. It broke the constant lines of worry she always carried in her face. Now, she looked like an angel, radiant and free.
“That’s right, Father Jedidiah. He ate.”
She raised up to brush her lips against mine, but as soon as I tried to press into hers and kiss her, she pulled away, making me groan in utter defeat.
The parish sign appeared in the distance, barely visible in the dark.
“You are missing one important piece of the scripture, my darling acolyte,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
I laughed and pulled into the parish parking lot.
“Adam only ate the apple for one reason,” I said, unbuckling my seatbelt and leaning over her before she could do the same.
My fist looped into her seat belt, pulling the fabric taut against her chest and throat as I held it under her chin with my other hand.
Her eyes were so wide at the closeness between us, her mouth open and waiting for me to close the distance, but I didn’t.
Against her lips, I whispered my words slowly, letting her feel them to her core.
“He ate it…because it was Eve who asked him to.”