Adrien
Present
“Wait, let me go—” she wheezes through a giggle as I stumble into her room with her slung over my shoulder. I clumsily crash into a piece of furniture on the way to her bed, and our laughter fills the space for a moment.
“Put me down,” she snorts.
“Okay,” I say at last as I swing her off my shoulder and toss her onto the bed.
She lands in the sheets in a fit of echoing laughter, her hair spilling around her in complete disarray, and I just stand there above her, soaking in the moment, a smile permanently stuck on my face because I still can’t believe we’re back.
She’s mine again.
I did it.
I got her back.
She props herself up on her elbows as I lean in and slowly climb onto the bed, hovering above her, still stunned by this new reality of mine.
We simply look into each other’s eyes, our noses brushing in little accidental bumps while neither of us can stop smiling.
I really did it.
“I won’t let you out of my sight ever again,” I say, pressing little kisses all over her face.
“That sounds suspiciously like captivity,” she says, her tone laced with mockery.
I pull up the hem of her shirt just enough to reveal more bare skin to cover with kisses.
“I’ll make sure it’s the most pleasurable captivity, don’t worry,” I say through a smirk, my fingers working on the button of her jeans. “I’ll take care of you in every way possible.”
Her stomach trembles with a silent chuckle beneath my mouth, then I feel my phone vibrate in my back pocket for what has to be the hundredth time, so I ignore it.
“If you want to take care of me right now, I don’t think I can take it. I’m sore,” she says through a laugh, though she doesn’t exactly stop me from taking her clothes off.
“I’ll be more gentle this time, I promise.”
Her fingers eagerly slip beneath my clothes, giving me silent permission to keep going.
But someone knocks on the door, making us both freeze mid-movement.
I don’t want to deal with anything anymore. I don’t want to see anyone else, talk to anyone else, or even think about anything other than what’s right in front of me right now.
We should’ve stayed in the church and lived there forever. It could probably be turned into a house, now that I think about it. And it’s not entirely a bad idea—it’s not like I couldn’t do it. I could make it two stories, something like a gothic-style loft—
Someone knocks on the door again.
I press a finger to her lips, shaking my head and silently gesturing for her to stay quiet.
“We’re not here,” I whisper.
But the knocking continues when neither of us answers, until Dorian shouts from the other side of the door.
“I saw you go in there, you idiot!”
I let out a long, frustrated exhale.
“Don’t move,” I mumble before placing a small kiss on her nose and pushing myself off the bed.
I slip into the hallway, pulling her door shut behind me.
“This better be important,” I grit out when I find Dorian staring at me nervously.
“Believe me, it’s important,” he says before turning on his heel and rushing downstairs.
I follow him, and soon we end up in the tech room, surprisingly crowded with a few more guys, Kiara leaning against one of the tables and Kasien standing in the middle, all of them wearing the same pale expression, as if they’ve collectively seen a ghost.
“Devereaux called,” Kas says, meeting my gaze.
“Finally,” I mutter. “So what now? Did he agree to see us? Let’s kill him and—”
“Not exactly,” Kas cuts in before handing me his phone and playing the recorded call for me.
There’s a second of silence after Kasien picks up, then old Devereaux speaks.
“By any chance, are you keeping my son entertained?”
“You miss him?” Kas answers lightly.
A rusty chuckle comes through the speaker.
“You broke our deal,” Kasien continues angrily. “We settle this face to face—”
“I see that you’re under the impression that possessing my son puts you in a position to make demands,” Devereaux cuts in, almost amused. “It doesn’t.”
The line stays silent for a quick moment.
“Listen,” Devereaux says, suddenly in a profoundly serious tone. “I’m giving you one more week to think about how spectacularly you’ve misjudged this situation. You’d better come to your fucking senses.”
Then the line goes dead, and the recording stops.
I lift my gaze to find Kas standing in front of me with his arms folded and that serious expression suggesting he’s waiting for my reaction.
“Well.” I nod, not entirely sure what to say while my palms grow sweaty. “That sounds a bit scary, I’m not gonna lie.”
“A bit scary?” Dorian blurts out from beside me and immediately starts pacing around the room. “He’s going to kill us all!”
“No…” I drawl, trying to ease the tension while my telepathic conversation with Kasien translates to—yeah, he will.
“Remind me,” Dorian says. “What exactly did we expect?”
“That he’d call,” I start, rubbing the back of my neck nervously. “And say something like, ’Oh no, please, not my dear son. I’ll do whatever you want,’” I add, trying to mimic his deep voice.
Everyone stares at me for one long, uncomfortable second.
“Yeah,” Kas exhales. “That didn’t quite work out.”
“Everybody relax,” I announce with all the confidence I can fake. “We just need to find him before the week is up.”
“Can’t we just leave?” Kiara says, barely above a whisper.
“And spend the rest of our lives looking over our shoulders?” I ask. “No. We need to end this properly this time.”
Kasien turns to her and cups her cheek.
“I’m so sorry, but he’s right,” he mumbles. “He’s the one who wanted you dead. I’m not risking your life by running.”
“Lucien already gave us every possible place he could be, and he’s nowhere to be found,” Dorian retorts angrily.
“We still have a week,” I say calmly, trying to inject some optimism into what is, admittedly, a really fucking bad situation.
“Let’s just keep looking for him,” Kasien says before taking Kiara’s hand and walking away with her.
As everyone seems to reluctantly accept the situation and drift back to their own business, I disappear too, making my way toward Natalya’s chambers, even as a cold sweat creeps down my spine and settles between my shoulder blades.
One week to find him first. One week, or we’re spectacularly fucked.
The thought uncomfortably clings to me the entire way there.
When I slip back into her room, she’s already tucked in beneath the blankets, wrapped in nothing but a bathroom towel, apparently showered and fast asleep. I walk toward the bed and gulp down a glass of water without taking my eyes off her.
Despite everything that’s happening, despite the danger hanging over all of us like a blade waiting to drop, a warm rush spreads through me the second I see her, because after spending weeks crawling into her room like a ghost, I can finally climb into bed beside her.
I made it back into her reality.
I reach behind me, grip the hem of my shirt, and pull it over my head before slowly slipping in beside her. Wrapping my arms around her waist, I draw her close as if I can somehow shield her from everything waiting outside these walls.
She lets out a sleepy little exhale before melting back into sleep.
?
The last rays of fractured color seep through the window, bleeding across the church walls before settling on her body, casting a halo over the way she lies restless on the altar like my own heaven embodied. Like my holy salvation wrapped in one beautiful, gleaming skin.
I’ve never seen anything more devastatingly hot than this.
The light doesn’t just touch her, it pours around her, worships her, outlines every curve as if she was sculpted specifically to dismantle my brain function.
My gaze roams greedily, unable to decide where to rest, what part of her I need to taste first, what part of her will undo me quickest.
The ends of her hair are curled, the strands brushing along her body like living temptation, flawlessly fluttering in the faint draft of the cathedral.
They catch on her shoulders, slip lower, graze over the swell of her breasts before cascading down her waist like narrow waterfalls tracing the architecture of her shape.
I obey and do as I’m told.
I fall to my knees before her, surrendering myself to her mercy as if this was written into my bones long before I learned how to speak, because this is the only position my body was ever meant to hold and this is exactly where I have always wanted to be.
The view from down here makes everything feel unreal again as I’m kneeling in front of the most beautiful fallen angel.
I’ll accept every wicked order she grants me, because she owns me—down to every bone, every vein, every drop of blood that circulates only because she allows it to. I’ll pray forever if that’s what it takes to earn a single taste of her.
And she lets me worship.
I pray my way upward, until I reach the source of my internal turmoil and the reason I turned into a devoted pet.
She tastes like heated skin dipped in honey, or melted vanilla ice cream stolen at midnight, sticky and sinful and impossible to stop once I begin.
Her pussy is warm like she carries her own private sunset between her thighs, created only to pull me under.
She was just engineered precisely for me. Someone studied the exact chemical composition of me, extracted a sample, and built her molecule by molecule to control me.
She drives her pussy into my mouth, her body slowly begging for the incoming wrecking, arching toward me and daring me to be the one who delivers it.
I could eat her forever.
Every movement, shift, and unhurried stroke of my tongue over this adorable pussy draws a new sound from her and her reactions spill over me in waves.
My hand slides up her body, over the trembling tension of her stomach, feeling the way her muscles tighten and release beneath my palm. I trace the rise of her ribs, the fragile architecture of her breath, until my hand settles between her breasts.
Right over her heart.
I need to feel it. I need to know it’s racing because of me. I need to feel her soul panicking that the shell it’s living in is about to shatter.