Chapter 16
TINSLEY
B reathing wasn’t an option. All the air in the classroom had fled.
Magnus removed the phone from his pocket, tapped the screen, and moments later, church music strummed in my ears. Loudly.
I didn’t know the name of the song, but I heard it every morning during Mass—the slow chime of bells, haunting flute, and hypnotic thrum of a harp.
In church, it sounded peaceful.
In this room, with him, it rang of pain and damnation.
Paralyzed, I didn’t take my eyes off him as he walked toward me in a slow, menacing manner.
I suppressed the need to swallow and jutted my chin higher.
For six weeks, I’d poked and pushed and drove the beast to the edge. I wanted to watch him unravel so completely he would have no other option than to send me home. I was here for the ruination. Mine. His. No matter how badly it hurt.
This could’ve been so much easier. He could’ve gotten rid of me on day one, but his arrogance stood in the way. Now, we would both pay the price.
He set down the phone, the ghostly music pealing around us. He didn’t try to speak over it. Instead, his hand shot to my hair, fingers closing around the roots, and with a force of aggression that emptied my lungs, he swung me out of the chair.
My hips slammed into the desk as he threw me face down across the surface. The rough treatment should’ve panicked me, but I loved the feel of his iron grip, the heat of his legs against my backside, and his single-minded focus on teaching me a lesson.
I wanted his lessons in sin.
Stars danced across my vision as he shoved me harder against the desk. Then he was on me, his whiskered jaw scratching my cheek, his heavy frame folding around my back, tucking me against him as he panted in my ear.
“I tried to protect you.” He curled his fingers around my throat and scraped his teeth against my jaw. “I tried, and now, it’s too late. I won’t be able to stop. Not with you.”
Every thought, every snarky retort, died with my breath. The collar of his fingers around my throat squeezed harder, sending my nails across the desk, scratching, breaking, my entire body fighting for sips of oxygen.
“I’m not a liar, Tinsley.” He lowered his free hand to the front of my thighs and gathered my uniform in his fist, dragging the hem up my legs. “But I lied to you once. I’m interested in everything beneath your skirt. Every hole. Every drop of blood. Don’t make a sound.”
Holy sweet Lord Jesus. He was going to fuck me. For once, I would do every damn thing he told me to do. I wouldn’t make a sound.
At my nod, he released my throat. Then his weight was gone, taking all the heat with him.
Turning my head, I clutched my neck and angled my chin upward to gulp air into my lungs. Standing behind me, he wasn’t looking at my face. His eyes were fixed on my ass.
He lifted my skirt.
The material flipped over my back, and goosebumps stampeded across my skin. Bare skin.
No panties.
Yeah, I’d come prepared.
His outrage was immediate.
“You’ve been like this all day?” His voice roared, his expression thunder, booming, deafening in his anger.
“You said you didn’t want to see my underwear again.”
So I’d stopped wearing them, holding out with wicked hope that he would get an eyeful the next time I scrubbed the floor. Well, he was getting an eyeful now, and it produced a quivery, satisfying rush of warmth between my legs.
He was right. I craved his attention. Good or bad, positive or negative, platonic or sexual, I was crying for it.
His heated gaze gave it to me, never leaving my exposed backside as his hands fell to his belt. In a swift movement, the leather strap pulled free and dangled from his fist. Then…
Crack!
I lay there, suspended in that split second of shock between the strike in my ears and the pain it would bring. With my neck craned, I watched in frozen silence as he reared back the belt and swung again.
The second blow landed just as the fire from the first erupted. It spread outward, radiating across my buttocks and stabbing deeply and with precision directly into my bones.
Mouth dry, muscles locked, I gasped without sound.
Then he beat the unholy hell out of me.
The instrumental church music played on. His strikes kept time with the toll of the bells, and his labored breaths built in crescendo with the flute.
I couldn’t breathe at all. My teeth sank into the insides of my cheeks, and the metallic taste of blood wet my tongue. The urge to reach back and protect my burning butt was enormous. Instead, I clutched the edge of the desk and focused on him.
The unfazably frigid priest was gone, and in his place was a feral, ravenous, vengeful god hell-bent on punishing my ass. He grunted through every hit, his teeth clenched and bared, and the sounds of his breathing so heavy and fast he drowned out the music.
I’d never heard or seen a man so worked up. And I was the source of that. The fuel for his fire. I was freeing him.
It did something to me. Called to me. Shook me like an awakening.
As the shock from the pain subsided, my mind began to calm. My limbs loosened, and I relaxed into the belt that rained down on my flesh.
Trickles of liquid heat pooled between my legs, opening the muscles and rippling through me in heavy pulses of need.
I adjusted my hips, positioning my clit against the edge of the desk.
With each driving blow from the strap, I let my body rock, grinding that bundle of nerves against the hard surface.
As the music climbed, his strikes came harder and faster, and everything increased in intensity—my hunger, my trembling, my pleasure. I rose to the precipice, reaching.
Until the belt hit the floor.
A heartbeat later, he was on me, stretched over my back and hauling my pussy away from the desk, denying me that friction.
“You will not come.” He ruthlessly kicked my feet apart as if he didn’t so much as want my thighs clenching the spot where I ached.
His cock lay along the crevice of my buttocks, rock-hard and miles long, straining behind his zipper. He felt huge, monstrous, throbbing to get inside me.
I wriggled my ass.
He fisted my hair and yanked my head to his shoulder with such viciousness I thought my neck might break. His teeth pressed against my cheek, his lips pulling back and his breaths lashing like an inferno blowing through the gates of hell.
His muscles were coiled, his entire body flexing against me. Or away from me. He was fighting demons.
“Leave.” His hand tightened in my hair, at odds with his hoarse command. “You must go.”
Trapped beneath him, I didn’t have many options. Leaving wasn’t one of them.
I angled my neck, struggling against his hold so I could see his face. When I finally turned enough, when I met his stark gaze, my heart stopped.
A blood vessel throbbed in his brow. Guilt etched his beautiful features. And the pain in his eyes…it devastated me. It wrenched open the door to my soul and stuffed every useless corner with self-loathing and regret.
Magnus was never going to expel me.
And he never wanted to want this.
When it came down to it, after he fucked me, what was I going to do? Would I actually report him? Get him fired? Arrested? Or, the most likely scenario, murdered by my family?
The song ended, and silence assailed, magnifying the harshness of our breaths.
I glanced at the door. It was locked, but I knew from experience that if someone pressed their ear against it, they would hear our conversation.
“Magnus.” I twisted beneath him, swiveling my hips to sit on the edge of the desk.
The action cost me, dragging unbearable pain through my abused backside.
With his legs imprisoning mine, he loosened his grip on my hair but didn’t back away. Instead, he pressed in, his chest heaving, our foreheads touching. He smelled like man and God and war.
The war was still waging. Clashing and burning behind his eyes. I’d sensed his internal struggle so many times before and pressed on with my selfish agenda anyway.
I was the biggest asshole of all.
As part of my religious training over the past six weeks, I’d received the sacraments of Baptism and Confession. I’d fought the whole process in my usual way, going so far as refusing to sit in that creepy dark closet and talk about my sins.
But right now, I felt guilty. I was sick to the pit of my soul with guilt.
It was time to confess.
With a shaky hand, I reached up and rested my fingers against his steely jaw. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. This is my first confession.”
His breath left him.
“I tried to seduce a priest.” I licked my lips, inches from his. “It was selfish. Vindictive. I want to go home and thought only of my needs, not once considering what would become of him if I succeeded.”
“Is there anything else?” His voice dipped, gruffly sexy and thick with desire.
“I cuss every day and masturbate every night.”
“Tinsley…” He groaned.
“I shouldn’t have said that last part, even if it’s true.” I sighed against his mouth, savoring his heat, his delicious dark scent. “I have a lot of sins, Father. I’m sorry for some of them.”
“Only some?”
“Not gonna lie.”
“You rarely do.” The hand in my hair went slack, his fingers sliding downward to linger along my jawline, caressing. “You’re the most honest person I know. Except for maybe Crisanto.”
“That’s sad.”
“Not for me. For your penance, pray an Act of Contrition.”
“Okay.” I swallowed my pride and held his gaze. “O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended you…”
I regurgitated the prayer from memory in a tone that lacked my typical mockery.
If I could recite every prayer like this—with his hand on my face and his mouth close enough to kiss—I would do it without complaint. So I said the words slowly, drawing it out, never wanting it to end.
He closed his eyes, listening with a serene expression, but the tension didn’t leave his rigid body. He didn’t release me, didn’t move away. He held me as if he were never letting go.
I finished the prayer.