Chapter 3 #2
Nonchalantly, she strolls toward my laundry room, calling over her shoulder, “While I’m here, if you need me to vacate while you add to your body count, just lemme know.”
“I’m not adding to my body count.”
Lies. I want to add you. Only you. In countless, filthy ways, and with every part of your innocent body.
Hell is naming a street after me now.
“That’s not what you told me in the car.” She grabs the garbage can. “You said you fuck men and women, and you need to get kinky about it, and I’m not judging.”
“What do YOU know about kink?”
Yep, she does remember, and … Dick, I can’t believe you just asked that. You’re going to get us in trouble.
“I’m a virgin, not a prude.” She turns back, hugging the small white pail to her chest, dangerously stepping my way.
“I’m not shook over your bisexuality. I mean, maybe I’m bi, too.
I don’t know. I haven’t tried anything yet, but when I get really horny, I watch hard core porn and masturbate to all kinds of kinky fantasies and—”
Holy.
Fucking.
Hell.
Her mouth.
Is heaven.
And I’m dying for it.
“Jesus,” I sigh, “do you know what a filter is?”
She smiles, nodding toward my machine. “For coffee, yes. For my mouth? Sorry, I’ve tried, but they don’t exist. Why? Am I offending you? Are you like closeted or…?”
Her face falls, disappointed. “Please don’t tell me you’re one of those hypocritical, hateful pastor pricks. I grew up around them, and I really liked you, but if that’s who you—”
“I’m not. Our congregation is inclusive.”
“Are you out with them?”
“I’m their pastor.”
“And?”
“And it doesn’t matter. I don’t fuck my flock. That would be a moral failure.”
“So, who do you fuck?”
Jesus, Jesus. “Again. You, needing a filter.”
Her brows lift. “And you, being a grown-ass man. Why be ashamed? You have needs. We all do.”
“Yeah, I need to know who you’re running from.”
“I’m not running.” She tilts her head, winking. “I’m relocating.”
My molars clench. Wren might seem wise beyond her years, but this? She has no fucking clue how dark the world can be.
“Don’t play games with me, Wren. I said you could stay, and I’ll protect you until you’re safe. But you make it hard if I don’t know who the threat is.”
Really hard.
Shut up, Dick.
“Just consider all men, but you, a threat and kill them if they come for me.” With a swish, she walks across the living room to the hallway leading to our bedrooms, which are—fuck my life, not her—right next to each other.
“Where are you going? We need to make a grocery list.”
I need not watch her sweet ass sway.
“Just a sec,” she chirps over her shoulder. “My pussy is about to be a bloody crime scene if I don’t change my pad.”
Dear Lord, please strike Dick down, and her mouth closed. You know what I just thought … and the Devil is proud.
A few minutes later, Wren returns to the kitchen, and I have to force the most taboo thoughts out of my mind, focusing on something else.
“Coffee?”
“Sure.” She opens my refrigerator. In my periphery, while I grab a mug, I catch her pulling back, shocked. “You said you grocery shop.”
“I do. Three times a week.”
“Milk, vegetables, salad greens, and half of a rotisserie chicken carcass? These aren’t groceries. They’re farm supplies.”
She makes me laugh. “No, they’re healthy choices. Milk and sugar?”
“Lots of sugar with a cup of milk and a splash of coffee, please.”
I prepare her cup, phantom pain throbbing in my pinky, taboo thoughts throbbing in my dick. Damn, it’s like a horny demon possesses me as she starts jotting items on the pad of paper I set out. And she keeps jotting. And jotting. And…
“I don’t usually get that hungry.” I hand her a steaming mug of cavities.
“Who would? No one is starving for a salad.” She takes the mug, smiling. “Thank you.”
Innocently, her fingertips brush my bandage.
But it’s the soft, intentional way she pauses, gazing down at my wound for her; it does something to my heart.
It flips.
I didn’t know it could fucking do that. I didn’t know I could feel every right and wrong thing for a person so goddamn fast—forget my world—it’s making my soul spin.
Before she takes a sip, she offers, “I think you’ll love the taste of my recipes.”
Mind: don’t even.
I glance down at the grocery list. Apparently, I’m opening a restaurant. “Who taught you how to cook?”
Slowly, I’ll gather the intel on her and where she came from, so she can go right back, before I do something I’ll always and never regret.
“YouTube, necessity, and Nannie.”
“You said you don’t have grandparents.”
After a tentative sip, she shares, “I don’t. I was raised in foster care. I’ve been placed in over eleven homes, and my last one was with Nannie. I was seventeen and she was going to adopt me. But then…”
Her voice trails.
“Then what? She changed her mind?”
“She died.”
The soul-lifting smile Wren’s worn since she exploded into my life tonight falls with her gaze to the floor.
Arousal abandoned me the moment she said foster care, and now all that remains thundering through my veins is compassion for her.
This is where it comes from. Her wisdom. Her strength. Her sadness. Her habit of smiling through the pain.
The Iron Angel.
“I’m so sorry, Wren.”
She grins, swiping a tear away. “Nannie wouldn’t want me wallowing.”
“But you’re allowed to grieve her.”
“I did. That was two years ago, and I celebrate her by cooking her recipes.”
But I’m doing the math, and it’s heartbreaking. “How long were you in foster care?”
She steps away, shaking her head. “You can’t send me back into the system. I aged out. I’m on my own now. No one can make me—”
“Wren, I’m not…” Fuck this. I set my mug down and surrender my hands.
“I won’t send you back to wherever. I promise.
You can stay here, and I’ll protect you, but from who?
I need to know. How did you end up with that man in that auction?
He sells to the most powerful men in the world.
Politicians. Royalty. CEOs. You’re lucky I was there. ”
I stare at the bottom of her white mug while she stares at me, draining her cup. Fuck, she’s doing it again. She’s seeing way too much about me with those stunning eyes.
Lowering her mug, she licks her lips. “You killed him, didn’t you?”
I cross one ankle over the other—that’s my answer.
“I hope you killed him,” she adds. “I hope you killed all of those men.”
“You hope you’re living with a killer?”
“A killer who kills men like that? This is my cup of care.” She flips her mug over. “Oh, look. It’s empty.”
She mirrors me, leaning against the island countertop, crossing her arms and ankles.
“So,” she grins. “Here we are.”
“Here we are.” I grin, too.
“So, now what?”
“Now. What?”
Her eyes narrow. “Who are you really, Sire?”
“Who are you really, Wren?”
“My lips are sealed.”
“Teach that to your mouth. It needs a filter.”
The way she twists those plump lips, half amused, half annoyed with me…
Damn, if she weren’t so young, I’d claim that gorgeous, fucking mouth. I’d take every virgin inch of her, inside and out, and never give them back.
She’d be mine.
All mine.
To show off.
To fill.
To breed.
These are not the thoughts of a holy man. But there’s been a hole in my dark heart for as long as I can remember, and my evil father is the one who dug it so fucking deep.
I’ve prayed for a way to fill it.
That man, with his dark heart, thanks to his evil father, wants to deflower and defile this young woman in every filthy way possible. He’s a beast. He shouldn’t be let out of his cage. He shouldn’t be near her.
But this man?
The one who prayed and found another father in God? The one whose mother taught him how to love and protect, how tenderness is strength? The one whose brothers give him a family he fights for?
This man can see that he’s staring down at the most stunning woman he’s ever seen. Poems and proverbs are written for the way he feels looking at her.
She rips his breath away.
Long, thick, dark, curly hair, sweeping to her tiny waist. Deep olive, or is it tawny brown skin? Thick, striking brows. A button nose. Her light freckles, a constellation across her high cheekbones. Pink pillow lips and an elfin chin.
Wren’s beauty belongs in an ancient century, a testament to a sacred world long ago, her thick eyelashes shrouding an old soul.
Sure, there’s a wounded child in her topaz eyes, but he has one too.
Maybe we all do.
So, this man?
He uncrosses his arms and ankles, closing the distance between them.
She’s so small, gazing up at his approach, her lips parting, unsure of what he’ll do, but her eyes staring, unafraid of him.
The electricity between them, undeniable. The pull to her, magnetic. Their worlds, divined to collide.
Pecking her forehead, this man says, “Welcome home, Wren Chapel.”
And then I turn to go to bed before the beast regrets ever touching her again.