Chapter 5
Chapter Five
I had never been touched like this.
Not the way his hands came to me, not the way his eyes found my skin before his fingers did. He touched like he was speaking into me. Like his palms were pages and I was the last scripture he would ever be allowed to read.
He didn’t hurry.
That would’ve been easier. If it had been urgent. If he’d been wild or frantic or overcome. But there was nothing frantic about the way he peeled the robe from his shoulders and laid it down on the stone for my back. Nothing careless in how he brushed my hair away from my eyes before lifting me—lifting me—onto the cloth, onto him.
My thighs ached from kneeling. My throat was raw from silence. My chest still wore the shape of the basin’s cold. But none of that mattered. Not now. Not with the way he looked at me.
Like I had already been broken.
And he intended to build his vow from the pieces.
I lay back. Not in surrender. In offering.
He hovered over me. Bare-chested, his sigils catching what little light the chapel held, his skin marked with words I hadn’t been taught to read. I didn’t ask what they meant. I didn’t need to. I felt them.
And I knew.
He was not here to take.
He was here to claim .
He braced his weight on one arm. His other hand found my wrist and lifted it. He didn’t bind it. He didn’t force it. He just guided it above my head. Then the other.
And I let him.
Because there was power in obedience when the choice was mine.
He pressed a kiss into the center of my palm.
Then lower.
To my breastbone. He licked my nipple until the skin puckered and want filled me.
To the soft dip of my stomach.
To the crease of my hip.
Each one a sentence.
Each one a vow.
When he moved over me, I felt the shape of him—hard, heavy, sacred.
My body arched.
I didn’t mean for it to.
But I needed the weight.
I needed to be reminded I was still made of flesh.
“Look at me,” he said.
I did.
He pushed forward.
Not all at once.
Just enough for my breath to catch and my mouth to fall open.
The stretch burned. It felt like something coming undone. Not pain. Not exactly. More like pressure. A deep pull in my core that said you were not meant to be empty forever.
He didn’t move again until my body adjusted.
Until my hips tilted to take him deeper.
Until I said,
“Yes.”
It was the first word I gave him freely.
And it broke something in him.
He groaned. Low. Controlled. But not distant. Not detached. He sounded like a man praying through his teeth. Like he knew he wasn’t just inside me—he was inside something holy.
He began to move.
Slow at first. A rhythm more reverent than erotic. His eyes stayed on mine. His body hovered. But his hips claimed.
Every thrust felt like worship.
Like he was driving his vow deeper into my marrow.
I didn’t cry.
I moaned. Quietly. Like each sound was permission.
His hands gripped my wrists. Not hard. Just enough to anchor me.
I felt the chapel around us fall away.
The stone didn’t bite anymore.
The fire didn’t burn.
All that existed was this. Him. The vow.
He leaned down.
Pressed his lips to my throat.
“Mine,” he said.
I arched beneath him.
“Say it,” he demanded.
“Yours,” I whispered.
“Louder.”
“Yours.”
He slammed into me. Once. Hard. Deep.
And I gasped.
It wasn’t pain.
It was recognition.
“Again,” he said.
“Yours,” I moaned.
“Even if I never let you go?”
“Yes.”
“Even if I ruin you?”
“Please.”
He groaned into my throat.
And he began to fuck me in earnest.
No violence.
No rush.
Just deep, punishing reverence.
My legs wrapped around his waist.
My back arched off the cloth.
My mouth found his shoulder and bit.
And he didn’t stop.
He kept moving.
Until I shattered beneath him.
Until the ache in my belly turned molten.
Until my body shook and I sobbed his name.
He came with a growl.
Low. Broken. Sacred.
And collapsed into me.
He didn’t pull out.
He didn’t speak.
He stayed.
His mouth at my ear.
His hands still at my wrists.
His breath matching mine.
“You’re not my offering,” he said.
I turned my face to his.
“Then what am I?”
He kissed me.
Not softly.
Not sweetly.
Just once.
And said,
“You are my vow made flesh.”