17. Savio
CHAPTER 17
Savio
Undiscovered - James Morrison
S he’s insane.
That’s the only way I can accept what she’s saying.
At my silence, she continues, “Is it true what they wrote in the articles? About the rebels who held you?”
Tension fills me. I didn’t expect her to speak about my past. No one ever does. It’s there, a big shadow that looms over everything, but it’s avoided by all—be they my flock or the higher-ups in the Church.
“There were many articles written about them. How am I supposed to know which one you mean?”
She ignores my defensive retort and clarifies, “The authorities said they found dozens of women’s and girl’s bodies buried on the compound when they finally infiltrated it.”
My throat feels too tight, too thick to swallow. Air doesn’t penetrate my lungs as I’m transported back to that time, to that place.
To the heat.
The stench.
The terror.
The pleas.
Fingers touch me, bringing me back. Grounding me. I stare at them, at the soft palm that’s free from calluses but stained red from my lifeblood.
Her palm brushes my chest like she has the right to touch me there, and par Dieu , if I hadn’t felt the same way when I rubbed my hand over her hair.
Insanity—I’ve hovered near the precipice before but I’ve never felt so close to the edge as I do now. Perhaps we’re twins in that?
“They were all raped before they died,” she says huskily, stepping closer to me once she’s back on her feet, not allowing me to move away from her.
Not allowing me to hide.
“Yes. All of them,” I rasp, shuttering my eyes like I wish I could shutter my mind to the memories.
In front of me.
My jaw clenches at the memory.
Sixty-six women.
All butchered in front of me.
Sixty-six victims were used as leverage to force me to absolve souls who deserved to rot in hell.
“It’s amazing you’re still in one piece,” she whispers, eyes wide at my revelation.
But she’s wrong.
I’m fractured into a million pieces. I’m not whole. I haven’t been since Oran.
People have suspected, but they never come out with it. That’s the only joy to nobody discussing my past.
“God sent me to you,” she rasps. “To help you.”
She’s unhinged.
“He gave me wings to fly to you.”
Disturbed.
“You need help.” It’s all I can think to say.
“No. You do. You need mine.” Her smile is wry, crooked. God help me, it’s charming too.
Once upon a time, she’d have been my type. Exactly what I went for.
But that was before .
When those troubled times had been like a fairy tale in comparison to my current circumstances.
“You need help,” she repeats, “and if you don’t let me in, then I’ll find someone who will.”
The words are strained, uttered like she doesn’t want to say them, but feels as if she has no choice.
She already admitted that the illness she suffered had affected her mind, and for the first time, I sense a threat from her.
Not when she spoke of the bodies that litter my past, not when she spoke of my crimes... I didn’t feel the threat then.
But now, I do.
“What are you talking about?” I rumble, wary with the nascent belief that she just cornered me and I didn’t even notice until I was denied an escape.
“Prison is penance. This life you lead, it’s a prison in itself.” She shakes her head. “I know what you fear most, and I’ll feed it to you if you don’t let me in.”
Despite myself, I bark out a laugh.
She’s a pocket rocket, barely comes up to my chin, has blonde spikes for hair on one side, short curls on the other, a face that puts Grace Kelly’s to shame, and a body made for sin—the purest of them all.
Her threatening words should be ridiculous, but somehow, even though I laugh, something uneasy settles inside me.
She means it.
And while she’s addled, while I know the police would believe me where Paolo was concerned, she already mentioned five names who were my victims.
“Trapped inside your own mind with nothing to think about and nothing to do other than focus on your past, and because of that past, you’d never go to jail,” she states with a humming lilt that, once again, makes me question exactly what kind of lunacy has walked into my life. “We both know that.”
My jaw works as her assertion hits home.
An institute.
Locked doors.
Medication.
A subsistence of dull nothingness until I’m finally embraced by Death and the Devil gets his hands on me at long last.
She’s right—I couldn’t endure that. Wouldn’t.
“So, what is this? Blackmail? To what end? What do you want from me?”
Her smile sends chills down my spine. “Everything. Nothing less than that will suffice.”
My nostrils flare when she slips her arms around my waist, and somehow, she avoids the areas that were bleeding, that are raw from my ministrations.
Her front collides with mine, branding me with a heat that seems to penetrate my bones.
That sinks soul deep.
I barely refrain from shuddering in response.
I have no idea what to do, no idea what she wants, but I know she’s a threat to the one thing I have left—my vows.
The words spill from me. “Eve didn’t threaten Adam.”
“She tempted him with knowledge,” she whispers, and God help me, she sounds so... authentic .
As if she believes what she’s saying.
Did she suffer brain damage during her surgeries? Would the hospital, her physicians, have let her discharge herself if she were still ill?
“What kind of knowledge do you tempt me with?”
“The oldest knowledge in the book,” she teases, eyes sparkling.
Disgust flares inside me. “I won’t break my vows.”
“You’ve broken every other,” she counters easily as if she knows there’s no use in arguing.
Only, I get the feeling it has nothing to do with how staunch I sound, but because she knows that all men fall into temptation eventually.
To her, it’s only a matter of time.
Damn her.
I pull away, but her hands flatten on my back. Except this time her fingers touch my wounds, and I tense, pain spearing me.
It’s messed up, but my cock hardens as the agony fucks with my nerve endings, and I know she feels my erection. She can’t not. We’re standing too close together, our bodies brushing, my dick nestling against her stomach—she has to feel it. She has to.
My response, however, doesn’t trigger satisfaction or smugness. No, it triggers pity. And that fucks with my head some more, especially as she sadly whispers, “Oh, sweetheart, they really did mess you up, didn’t they? Pain doesn’t have to equal pleasure. Pleasure can just be that. Pure and simple. A gift, not a curse.”
I can’t answer that, can’t say a word because there’s nothing to say.
She’s right.
Again.
Her forehead pushes into my chest. “I can guide you, Savio.”
“Guide me where?” The words are guttural as acceptance hits me.
She’s right.
Again.
“Back toward the light. To where you need to be.”
Pain of a spiritual variety tangles with the physical. For a second, I’m speechless with the agony of knowing she’s wrong—of knowing that I want her to be right.
“Only God can guide me there; only He can bring me home,” I murmur brokenly.
“You don’t listen, do you?” she chides. “He gave me wings. We’ll go there together, but not before we follow his plan first.”
Her fingers tighten about my waist, pulling at my wounds. I clench my eyes closed, wincing even as the glorious agony screws with my head in the best imaginable way.
“I need to clean your back,” she muses, her tone gentle. “I shouldn’t have touched you, but I couldn’t help myself.” She tuts, annoyed at herself, not me. “Where’s your first-aid kit?”
Like I’m a lamb being led to the slaughter, she untangles her hands from my waist then guides me to the stool she’d been sitting on after she’d fallen over.
I had proof right there that she wasn’t one hundred percent fit. And yet, aside from all these ramblings of wings and angels and God’s plan, she seems lucid. But then, so do I.
I blink at her as she repeats, “Where’s your first-aid kit?” Then, when I point to a cupboard below the sink, she sighs.
And even though she’s messed with my sanity to the point where I don’t know what’s up and what’s down, I watch her carefully as she opens the cupboard and takes a step back so she can look inside without bending first.
I wonder how many other adaptations she’s having to make in her regular life to transition into this new phase, one where she’s a little less mobile than I sense she’s used to being.
It’s more proof that she’s not as stable as she might seem.
That golden hair just looks like it’s styled into an edgy cut. Her face is thinner than the last time I saw her on TV, but that could be down to some fad diet.
She appears normal. Inside that beautiful head, she’s anything but, and that makes her dangerous.
Just as I appear to be normal.
But inside my head, her danger calls to me. Like a moth to the flame, my only desire is to feel warmth after being forsaken for so long…
Have I finally been found?