Chapter 4 #2
I kiss her. Not a crash—contact, pull, a slow seal that turns heat into heat.
Her lips open on a small sound that stakes me to the spot.
Wintergreen and smoke and nerves. The edge of her veil brushes my knuckles; the borrowed rosary taps my wrist like a metronome keeping time for sin.
When her fingers curl in my lapel and tug, I take the hint and deepen it, tongue tasting the soft give of her, then retreating, letting her chase.
Her knees bracket my hips now. The habit pools at her waist; pale skin and black cloth make a cross of shadow over her collarbone.
I slide the hand at her jaw down, along her throat, onto the line of her sternum, and then lower—slow enough to stop if she wants me to.
She arches once, asking without words. I answer by palming her through thin cotton, feeling the taut peak nudge my hand.
She gasps into my mouth and I swallow it, then lift my head to check her eyes.
“Okay?” I ask.
“Yes,” she breathes. “More.”
I push the skirt higher. Warm thighs. A tremor.
I fit my hand between them and stroke the inside of one until the shiver smooths.
Then I slide my fingers up to the heat of her.
She’s already wet through, slick against my knuckles.
I trace her over the fabric—one slow pass to map her, the next to circle the little knot of nerves I’m looking for.
When I find it, her hips jump. I do it again, smaller, softer, then firmer, testing pressure until her breath starts to stutter on a rhythm I can match.
She moves more surely, then flinches—tiny, almost nothing—when I slip under the edge of her panties and touch her bare. Not fear. Not no. A line no one’s crossed.
I freeze. Everything hot in me goes to ice for one suspended breath. Her lashes lift. She knows exactly what I felt. She knows I know.
“Caterina,” I say quietly, thumb still, fingers slick from her. “Is this your first—”
She cuts me off with a kiss that tastes like defiance and decision. “You wanted a saint,” she whispers against my mouth, softer now, a dare and a mercy. “Let me be a good one.”
That floors me. It shouldn’t, but it does. I rest my forehead to hers until both our breathing evens out. “We don’t have to,” I manage, voice rough from trying to be gentle. “We can stop here and still have everything.”
Why am I willing to stop for this saint? On the one night of the year when I try to burn every innocent image out of my mind, this perfect fucking angel appears. And instead of hurting her, or wanting her to sin and embrace the fallen… all I want to do is make it good for her.
Fuck.
There’s something about the innocent in her eyes. Hell, her very soul is calling to me.
And I need her next words like I need to take her and claim her as my own.
“I want this,” she says, eyes huge under the veil. “I want to choose it. I want to remember when the sheets are cold and all I have are words and memories to keep me warm.”
I nod once. “Then we take it slow. You call it. You say when.”
Her answer is to lift her hips and drag my hand back to her.
I circle her clit with two fingers, a steady, patient rhythm; her mouth falls open, head tipping back against the wood.
I slide one finger lower, testing her—slick heat, tight at the entrance.
I press just the tip inside and wait while her body learns me.
She exhales hard, opens around my knuckle.
I add a second finger to my circling hand, keep the pressure gentle and mean it to be kind.
The sound she makes—quiet, shocked, hungry—goes straight through me.
“Look at me,” she says, and when I do, she glances down pointedly.
Right. On her terms.
I take my hand from her, brace her hips, and pull my belt open one-handed.
The zipper runs a quick, obscene note in the hush.
I free myself and her eyes catch; wary, curious, not afraid as they catch on the metal glint of my piercings.
I fist myself once, slow, to knock the edge off and show her what she’s agreeing to.
Her gaze tracks the motion like prayer. I guide her palm to me.
She wraps her fingers around my shaft, tentative at first, like she’s afraid of it, then tighter when I close my hand over hers and show her the pace.
The sight of her, veiled and focused, stroking me in a church—Christ. I breathe through it.
“Tell me when to stop,” I say, because I need to hear her power in it.
She lets go with a shaky exhale and sets her hands on my shoulders. “Now,” she says. “Help me.”
I get one arm firm around her waist and use the other to line us up. The blunt head of me finds her, presses. Heat and promise—then a catch. There. Her breath stutters. Mine stops.
“Sanct—” she starts, barely a word, more the thought of it.
I lock everything down and ease back. “We stop,” I say automatically, already retreating.
“No.” She swallows. “Not stop. Just… give me a second.”
“A second,” I agree, forehead to hers again, breathing with her until the tight clench shifts under my hand on her hip. I feel the last thin barrier of her—the undeniable truth of me being her first—and I don’t move until she plants her palm on my chest like she’s bracing for a wave.
“Now,” she whispers. “Please.”
I push. Slow enough to feel every millimeter.
Slow enough to hear the way she shatters and remakes my name on her tongue.
The resistance yields; heat closes around me, velvet-tight, and the awareness hits like a bell in my bones: I am inside her, the first. Not a trophy.
A trust. I bury my face against her cheek and say “thank you” like it’s a prayer I still remember.
“It’s okay,” she says, shaking and stubborn. “It’s mine to give.”
“It is,” I rasp. “It is.”
We hold there, bodies learning the fit, and she’s everything I don’t deserve in this life.
She tenses; I go still. She nods; I try again.
Inch by inch until I’m seated deep and her gasp turns—a thin thread of pain pulling through into heat.
I shift my hips a fraction and press my thumb back to her clit, stroking gentle circles.
Her nails dig into my shoulders through the shirt like she needs proof I’m solid.
The next sound she makes—shock cracking into want—is the kind I’ll hear in empty rooms for the rest of my life.
“Good?” I ask, because I need the word.
Her answer is to rock, just once, a small, sure motion that drags a curse out of my chest. “Good,” she breathes. “Do that again.”
I do, slow and careful, letting her set the rhythm, my thumb working her until her breath catches on every second pass. When she tightens around me, the world narrows to wood, wire, skin, and the clean burn of choosing—hers, mine, both—right here where we promised.
“Good girl,” I murmur into her hair, and feel the words go through her like a current.
“Don’t stop,” she pleads, ragged. “Don’t you dare stop.”
I don’t. I keep it deep and controlled, the bench complaining in soft little prayers as we find a rhythm that says ours, ours, ours.
The habit is everywhere—on my wrists, in my teeth, under her knees—and the whole booth feels like a heartbeat.
Her body learns me fast. She starts to move without thinking about it, chasing what builds, turning that first hurt into wanting so pure it’s almost a weapon.
“You feel—” I break off, because language is too small for it.
“Say it,” she demands, eyes wet and fierce.
“Real,” I manage. “You feel real. And so fucking good. Christ, you feel good.”
“Blasphemy.” Her lips part, and she tips her head and I take her mouth again, because she asked for dirty and I am not a clean man, but I’m going to keep this holy. I angle us, change the pull, and she goes tight all over, a strangled little cry trapped between our teeth.
“Sanctuary?” I check, because I will not get this wrong. I can’t get this wrong. Not for this girl.
“No,” she gasps, half-laugh, half-sob. “Don’t you dare.”
She crashes first—of course she does—every nerve singing, body shaking around me until my own control snaps like an old wire.
I hold her on, hold her through, keep my mouth on her shoulder to keep the sound in my chest from breaking the windows.
The door stays open. I keep the promise I made to the room and the one I made to her.
Silence after is a cathedral all of its own. The candles hiss. The wood settles. Her breath saws against my neck in hot, stunned pulls. She’s trembling hard enough that I put both hands on her—one on the back of her head, one low at her spine—and breathe with her until she matches me.
“I should go,” she says into my throat, voice torn up but steady underneath.
“I know.”
She pulls herself together like a soldier, fixing the veil with shaking fingers, sliding the habit back into place, smoothing where the fabric creased against my wrists and hips. She won’t meet my eyes for a beat, then she does—clear, intent.
“Don’t follow,” she reminds me, soft but iron.
“I won’t,” I say, and in the space between our bodies, I mean it.
Liar.
Her fingers touch my jaw once—barely there, quick as a benediction—and she slips out of the booth. I listen to her steps down the aisle, the hinges, the breath of October that gets in and then is gone when the door hushes shut.
I stay where I’m seated, hands flat to the wood, and count my breaths until the shaking in my arms stops. I told her I wouldn’t follow. I won’t.
But I didn’t promise no one else wouldn’t.
I take out my phone, thumb open the thread, and type out a message to Tiernan.
Follow the nun.