Chapter 17 #2
Relief floods through me, but it’s short lived when I see the pool of blood spreading across the polished surface of the desk. I swallow hard. “I—I’m sorry.”
“Is he dead?” she asks, visibly gulping.
“I… I don’t know.”
As we stare at the doctor sprawled there, his limp body begins to slide. Neither of us move as it slowly crumples to the floor. His head thuds like a melon to the carpet. Blood splashes onto the papers around him. I think I might be sick.
“You did that,” Mercy whispers. “For me.”
I don’t say anything. She turns to stare up at me, her eyes huge and shining. Not with fear or disgust. With admiration.
“For me?” she presses.
I nod reluctantly. “He tried to kill you.”
She steps closer, swallowing hard as her gaze skims over my face. “And?” she whispers.
“And?” I ask, blinking a few times to come fully back to the present, to this beautiful temptress blinking up at me with such innocence, seen through the blood specked lenses of my glasses. I clear my throat and avoid her beseeching gaze. “And my job is to protect you. So, I did.”
Without a word, she closes the gap between us, wraps her arms around my neck, and pulls me down. Her lips are on mine before I know what’s happening. They demand an answer, a response. My body gives it eagerly. My lips crash against hers, and a full body shiver rolls through me.
My hands close around her soft hips, and I back her into the desk. When I do, her foot stumbles over the body on the floor, and my mind comes crashing back. Pulling away from her is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
“Lamb,” I say, my voice coming out rough with unspent desire. “I can’t. I took a vow.”
“Priests don’t have to take a vow of celibacy anymore,” she murmurs, staring at my lips like she’s been dreaming of them as long as I’ve been dreaming of hers.
“They don’t have to,” I agree. “But they have to protect and guide their flock.”
I promised myself I wouldn’t become my father.
That I’d do good. That the evil that lurks inside my heart would never spill out onto anyone else.
I told myself that I would never be like him, and that ridding the world of his influence was doing all of humanity a service.
If I can do the same to another man, though, then I’ve been lying to myself all along, repressing desires that were always there.
If I can harm another man, then I’ve broken my vows already. I’m not a holy man. I’m a killer.
But I killed to protect someone I love today, just as I did then. I’d do it again in a heartbeat. I will always protect the ones I love, even if that makes me immoral, even if it makes me a sinner beyond salvation.
“You did protect me,” Mercy says, her arms tightening around me. “Let me thank you.”
When her body sways into mine, I lose whatever shreds of sanity remain. She is my salvation.
“Fuck it,” I grit out, and then my lips are on hers again, and I’ve backed her over the body, my mouth never leaving hers. My tongue demands entrance, and she opens with a soft moan of pleasure. I sweep my tongue over hers, tasting her sweetness, her hunger.
I’ve already broken my vows, after all.
One kiss, I tell myself. It’s one kiss. I can have that.
I’ve been without touch for so long, I’m a starving man.
And here is this lamb, this perfectly shameless goddess shaped by my hand, formed into the perfect woman by my hand as surely as man was formed from the clay by God Himself. A woman who’s cast off her demons and embraced her truest nature, a temptress who now urges me to do the same.
For her, I can admit the truth, just as she has admitted hers: that she may look like angel, but she fucks like the devil. And my truth is equally simple: I want her. I will take her. It’s as simple as that.
But my truth is far more blasphemous than that.
I want to take whatever I want because it is my right to do so.
I don’t want to obey the rules like any ordinary man.
I don’t even want to obey God. I want to be God, to be worshipped in whatever twisted form of this religion we’ve created, just as I want to worship the body of the woman before me.
I want my disciples to obey without question, to worship her without question when I tell them she’s worthy of their reverence.
I have created bonds with the Hellhounds that ensure just that.
I am not a passive watcher as I have led them to believe—as I have convinced myself to believe.
I have shaped them just as I’ve shaped Mercy; have led them down this path, to this final crossroads, this hallowed ground between her thighs.
I am not an observer, an audience member. I am the puppet master.
I have always been part of it, even as I’m above it.
Pulling the strings, making them dance. And now, they will dance with me instead of for me.
Now she will open herself not only for them but for me.
I am as necessary to the group as she is, having orchestrated it all from the start.
Now it is time for me to stake my claim, to take my rightful place in the group, in her bed, in her body.
But will I ruin it all if I take her for myself?