Chapter 3
Nicholas
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”
Nicholas pressed his palms against the chipped shower tiles, hot water sluicing down his rigid back.
Never one for believing in coincidences, he blamed Gabriel for the worsening of his dreams. He couldn’t get him out of his head.
Every waking second had been filled with his dark presence, with the deep hollows of his cheeks, and the way his expensive suit conformed to every muscular curve of his body.
Nicholas was more exhausted than usual, consumed all week with Gabriel’s proposal, which he believed to be the cause of his dreams intensifying.
They were real enough to touch, and too confusing to understand or explain. Especially since the scenes within the recurring dreamscape were never in sequence, leaving him to try to puzzle them together during his waking hours.
They involved a stranger, a man through whose perspective Nicholas had the ability to observe the dream-world.
Night after night, he found himself a paralyzed voyeur to this man’s consciousness, a victim to his visions and emotions as they played out in what felt like real time.
The first dream had sent him shooting up in bed, sweat and cum soaking through the sheets. But last night’s dream hadn’t been a dream at all. It’d been a hellish nightmare.
The man was brutal, cold, lips curled back from clenched teeth reflected in the stark, dead eyes of his first casualty.
Blood soaked his powerful body and flowed like a river from the hilt of his sword as he tore through an encampment in the dead of night.
The desert had quenched its thirst on shed blood. He spared no one.
The massacre wasn’t indiscriminate. His stride had been purposeful, his goal clear in the determination with which he killed—or better yet, culled. The intent was to exterminate these people.
No, not just people. Nicholas recalled the distinct features that marked them as kin. These women were sisters to each other, the men brothers, and the children siblings and cousins.
This man, whose consciousness Nicholas could not escape, had eliminated an entire bloodline.
Nicholas panicked in the steam-filled bathroom, his breath clogging his throat as he recalled the grizzly scene. He spun the faucet lever to the right, icy cold water now pummeling him.
Yanking back the shower curtain, he gulped in a lungful of air. Water escaped onto the bathroom floor, but the blow-by-blow playback consumed him too much to care.
A soundless scream had torn from Nicholas within his voyeuristic prison. The savage monster lacked compassion and denied mercy to those who appealed to the goodness in him, unaware that he was devoid of any.
Nicholas hated the nameless man. Hated what he’d been forced to witness, knowing the events had taken place at some time. He was sure of it, even if he couldn’t make sense of it all.
But then the man had sheathed his weapon and charged into the star-filled night on his black stallion. He rode as if fire chased his heels, only stopping once he’d reached the mouth of a cave.
Dismounting, he armed himself again, tunneling deeper into the cavern on booted feet. His steps were light, and he stuck close to the jagged walls before coming to an opening lit by the withering flame of a torch.
A few trinkets were scattered about, and a makeshift bed of furs took up one corner, but not much else. Seemingly convinced he hadn’t walked into an ambush, the man’s savagery gave way to a crushing sadness. Nicholas had felt suffocated by it in his sleep, like a fist lodged in his airway.
He fell to the cave floor in front of a grimy shard of mirror propped against the rough wall.
Amber eyes glowed, and blood had turned the coiled tips of his dark, shoulder-length hair into dampened strands of silk.
Hard features softened as he peered down at a piece of parchment in his hands, running a bloodied finger over the sketched photo.
“Habibi,” he’d whispered.
Nicholas shook off the last of the nightmare—and his conflicting feelings over the deadly but handsome man.
He didn’t want to remember how he’d startled awake, curling around his pillow, tears dripping down his chin. And he didn’t want to admit that those tears weren’t for the men, women, and children who’d had their lives taken. He didn’t want to admit his heart could ache for a monster.
“Keep it together,” he berated himself, taking a deep breath before drying off on the soaked bathroom mat.
He rushed into the bedroom, checking the time before heading for the closet. He couldn’t miss his fencing match with Mateo, and he needed to see Liam—Father Murphy to most—beforehand. He’d been avoiding the priest all week.
Fencing was the one reliable thing holding his frayed life together.
His late foster mother had enrolled him in every activity under the sun as a kid in an attempt to break him out of his shell.
Fencing was the only one that stuck. Having the saber in his hands felt as natural as breathing.
His foster brother, Mateo, had joined as well.
His thoughts inevitably drifted to Gabriel again. Eliana confirmed his claim of being a businessman. A coffee importer, she’d said. Nicholas wasn’t sure he believed it, but it didn’t stop him from constantly thinking about him.
His innate reaction to Gabriel terrified him. There’d been an invisible string tugging him toward the mysterious man from the moment he’d entered that suite. He’d allowed himself to be pulled in, both his lust and unending thirst intensifying.
He had experienced a break from both, though. A moment of freedom that held until right before he left without even a whispered goodbye.
“I will have you.”
It was the implication of sex that saw his cravings rushing back to him. Had to be, because there was only one other alternative, and it scared him too much to contemplate it.
“I have a proposition for you.”
Could he accept it?
If thoughts of Gabriel consumed his mind after one meeting, then what would happen if he agreed to be his companion? Nicholas feared Gabriel had the ability to make him forget his rules and his path. A path chased by fire, the heat of it nipping at his heels.
Outside of his former foster brother and his priest, Nicholas didn’t form attachments—especially not sexual ones.
That was why he’d jumped at the opportunity to work for Eliana.
The escorting part of her business wasn’t illegal, just the unspoken prostitution element.
Still, he did it because both parties got what they wanted, and he never had to see the same face again.
That was the deal he’d made with her. No repeats.
Nicholas made up his mind then. He wouldn’t be giving Gabriel a call, and he’d tell Eliana not to hire out his services to him ever again, regardless of whether they’d had sex.
Gabriel aside, Nicholas couldn’t go on living this double life. The guilt of breaking his promise of celibacy ate away at him constantly. A hard decision had to be made, one that would fracture something inside of him. He shook his head, ridding himself of his conflicting thoughts and emotions.
Going through his stack of folded jeans on the closet shelf, his hand stilled on the Roman collar Father Murphy had given him a few months ago.
He hadn’t earned the right to wear it yet, nor completed the necessary steps.
It was a gifted reminder of what awaited, a demonstration of Liam’s faith in him.
Now it was nothing more than a reflection of Nicholas’s failures.
The white collar shone a light on how much of a disappointment he’d become.
He traced the engraving on the gold button.
Saint Nicholas.
Never had he felt more unworthy, and any lingering doubts he may have had were wiped away. He knew what he had to do.
Dressed and laced into his beat-up Chucks, he considered his skateboard before hefting his bike off the mount on the living room wall. Slinging his fencing pack over his shoulders, he headed for the only place that ever felt like home.
The eyes of the church bore down on Nicholas as he chained his bicycle to the rack near the curb.
He stiffened when the arched doors opened, and voices poured out.
He’d made sure to show up after Sunday mass had ended, but there were always a few stragglers who stayed behind to speak with Father Murphy.
Mrs. Tilbury’s grating laughter could be heard through the chorus of chatter, and so could her heels clicking against the bleached-stone steps. Nicholas tugged on the bike’s cable lock, double-checking it was secure, stalling in hopes of going unseen.
He took the stairs two at a time once the coast was clear, suddenly anxious to get things over with.
A church as old as St. Michael’s was never truly at rest. Doors squeaked on their rusted hinges, the pipes banged below, and papers rustled from the constant draft. A loose floorboard creaked beneath Nicholas’s foot as soon as he entered the nave.
Liam read his Bible aloud from the lectern, his shock of jet-black hair dangling over his forehead. He lifted his gaze at the sound.
“Saint Nicholas!”
Even from a distance, his smile for Nicholas was blinding. His joy untangled some of the knots in Nicholas’s stomach. Father Murphy had that effect on people. His enthusiasm and easy honesty tended to disarm those he interacted with, which was why Nicholas had been dodging him.
“I could come back.” His voice echoed down the rows of pews.
Liam glanced down at his open Bible, closing it. “Nah, I’m just finishing up. I was about to head to the rectory for a late lunch. Wanna join me?”
He descended the sanctuary steps, meeting Nicholas halfway down the aisle.
“I can’t. I’m meeting Mateo.”
“Oh.”
His tone held disappointment rooted in missing his friend. Those knots weaved together again as Nicholas prepared to disappoint him further.