Chapter 7
June
The sky was streaked deep purple when we left Mabel’s, the last blush of sun just barely clinging to the pines. The air had cooled some, but my skin still buzzed from the heat of the diner…and the man beside me.
Silas didn’t say much as we walked out—just opened the door, a perfect gentleman, big hand brushing the small of my back. He opened the passenger side door of his car, too, and I climbed in with a smile.
I wasn’t drunk…hadn’t had a sip of alcohol. But I felt drunk on his touch, on his words, on the way he looked at me.
And that only got more intense when he didn’t step away from the passenger’s side door…leaving it open to move closer, between my knees.
“Can I kiss you, Reverend Fontenot?” he asked, bracing one hand on the roof of the truck.
I took a shuddering breath, reaching for the collar of his shirt.
“Yes,” I breathed.
He didn’t waste another second.
Silas dipped his head and kissed me like it was the only prayer he knew how to say—low and full of longing, his lips catching mine, his teeth dragging on my lower lip.
I gasped, fingers curling in the fabric of his shirt, and he pressed in closer, tongue thrusting into my mouth.
His free hand curled around the back of my neck, taking all I had to offer.
He’d been nothing but gentle, quiet, composed.
This…this wasn’t like that.
I moaned into him, dragging him closer by the front of his shirt until our chests brushed together and my knees tightened around his hips. He tasted like sweet tea from the restaurant, like summer heat, like every damn thing I’d been craving.
God help me, I wanted him.
I wanted to haul him into this truck and let him have his way with me in the parking lot.
I wanted to go back to the church with him and forget about the world, about every reason we shouldn’t.
I wanted to bury my hands in his long, dark hair, and press my body against his and say yes, yes, yes.
He kissed me again, deeper this time, like he was testing the boundaries of how much he could take—how much we could both stand.
His hips pressed forward instinctively, letting me feel the hard length trapped in his jeans, and my back arched in response, a needy sound slipping from my lips before I could stop it.
That made him freeze.
His breath hitched, and he pulled back just enough to look at me—his lips red and kiss-bruised, eyes wild with want. His hand was still at the back of my neck, his thumb brushing against the hinge of my jaw.
“I’ve been tryin’ not to want this,” he said, voice low and hoarse. “Tryin’ like hell.”
I swallowed hard. “Me too.”
His eyes darkened at that.
Then he dropped his head again, pressing a softer kiss to the corner of my mouth. “We need to go,” he murmured against my cheek, voice cracking like it hurt to say it. “Before I do something I’ll regret doin’ in front of every damn gossip in town.”
I almost laughed—but I didn’t, because I didn’t want to break the spell. Instead, I reached up and touched his face, thumb tracing his cheekbone, jaw, lips.
“I wouldn’t let you regret it,” I whispered.
He let out a rough breath and backed away, like it physically pained him to move. He shut the door, hard enough to make the frame rattle, then stalked around to the driver’s side and slid in beside me with a muttered curse under his breath.
The drive back to the church was short…but it felt infinite.
Every second stretched between us like a live wire, like we were teetering on the edge of something big and terrifying. I could feel his thigh near mine on the bench seat. I could feel his pulse in the air. I could feel how close we were to doing something neither of us could take back.
And we got started as soon as he pulled into the gravel lot behind the parsonage.
We both moved just after he killed the engine, meeting halfway—our lips crashing together, Silas hauling me into his lap.
I straddled him, my knees bracketing his hips as he kissed me like he was starving for it—like he didn’t care that the windows were fogging just a block or two from Main Street.
His mouth was hot and demanding, tongue slick against mine, fingers roaming greedily beneath my shirt and over the bare skin of my back.
“Thought about you,” he was saying. “Thought about you all the fuckin’ time. Should’a called…”
“It doesn’t matter now,” I gasped.
He fucking snarled when I ground down against him, the hard line of his cock trapped between us. I was panting, my hands threaded in his hair, pulling him closer, needing more.
I hadn’t realized how bad I wanted this, needed it.
“Take me to bed,” I whispered. “Please.”
I don’t know how…but somehow, he did exactly as I asked.
Silas yanked the door open and slid out of the car, swaying slightly as he took me into his arms. My legs were still wrapped around him as he strode to the parsonage door, pulled it open, and carried me across the threshold like a man possessed.
I didn’t care that it was dark.
I didn’t care that I could barely see a thing.
I only cared about Silas’s hands on my bare skin.
He set me down only so he could use those big hands to tug at the tie on my shirt, unravel it, yank it off over my head.
My shirt hit the floor, followed by his…
then my hands were on him, my breasts pressed to his chest, nipples grazing his dark chest hair.
I could make out the shape of him in the dim light through the window, the lines of muscle, and the way his eyes roamed over me…
“God, June,” he murmured, like it physically hurt him to say my name. “You’re…”
He didn’t finish.
His lips found my collarbone, then moved lower—his mouth closing over my nipple while one of his hands palmed my other breast. I was already writhing, helplessly thrusting my hips when he laid me down on the bed, moving to my jeans.
It was like he wanted to taste every inch of me, feel me, touch me—
My head snapped to the side at the sound of something…wrong.
“What the hell was that?” I whispered.
Silas froze. “You okay?”
I sat up, looking around. “Can you turn on the light? I just…it sounds like there’s something in here.”
I couldn’t describe it; it was like…a whisper against the sheets. Damn it—we’d probably stirred up some mice or something. What a mood killer.
Silas pushed off the bed, bare feet hitting the creaky floorboards, and moved toward the wall. He flicked on the lamp by the dresser with a low click—and in that breath of a second, everything changed.
Because there, coiled at the foot of the bed where I’d just been lying, was a rattlesnake.
The world narrowed.
I didn’t scream.
Didn’t move.
Couldn’t.
My breath locked in my chest, not out of fear…no, not entirely. It was more like some sacred, awful recognition.
A serpent in the bed. A woman naked beneath it. A moment of want turned straight into a warning.
The snake was watching me, its head lifted, its tongue flicking. And for one insane heartbeat, I thought: God sent it.
“June,” Silas said, his voice sharp and full of fear. “Don’t move. Please don’t move, I’m gonna—”
I didn’t hear what he had planned—because the snake struck.
Pain bloomed like fire on my left wrist, biting right above where I normally wore a wooden rosary. My body jerked, a violent shudder seizing my limbs as I cried out. My hand flew to the wound. Blood pulsed hot through my fingers.
Silas lunged. He hit the snake with something—maybe the lamp, maybe one of the heavy books on the nightstand. I couldn’t tell—I was too busy trying to breathe, trying to stay upright.
Trying to comprehend that I was both burning alive and being sanctified.
Silas shouted my name.
Somewhere in the blur of sound and heat and vertigo, I felt his hands on me—strong and shaking, one at the small of my back, the other trying to get a look at the wound. I think I said his name, too. Maybe more than once. Maybe it was the only thing I could remember.
“Oh fuck—fuck, baby, it got you—”
His voice was hoarse, disjointed in a way I didn’t know he could be. He’d never called me baby before. It was strange, new…
…a sign of panic.
I couldn’t answer him. I could barely see. My skin was hot, my blood thundering in my ears. My wrist burned like it had been branded. My chest ached from the effort of trying to draw in breath that wouldn’t come.
“I’m takin’ you to the truck,” Silas was saying, lifting me in his arms again. I was naked from the waist up, trembling and sweating and shaking in his grasp, but none of that mattered anymore. Modesty had been burned away in the fire of this moment—like everything else but pain and prophecy.
“It’s okay,” I whispered, not sure if I meant it for him or for myself. “It’s okay, I deserve it—”
“No,” Silas growled. “You don’t deserve this, you don’t—Goddammit, June, stay awake.”
I was trying.
But everything felt…distant. Like I was floating just outside of my own body, watching him carry me out the door, down the dark hallway and into the night.
I could feel the gravel crunch beneath his boots.
I could smell the sweat on his skin. I could hear him muttering prayers or curses—or maybe both—under his breath.
“I got you,” he said. Over and over. “I got you, June, stay with me—don’t you close your eyes, baby, we’re gonna get you help.”
He laid me across the truck’s bench seat and slammed the door, yanking the keys from his back pocket with trembling hands. His face was bloodless. His breath came in ragged pants.
“You’re gonna be okay,” he said again, though now it sounded like he was trying to convince himself. He slid into the driver’s seat and gently rested my head on his lap. “You’re gonna be fine.”
I believed him.
Even with the pain surging up my arm. Even with my vision going dark at the corners. Even with the terrifying knowledge that I might not make it to a hospital before this poison carved its way through me.
I believed him because I had to.
Because it was him.
And as the truck roared to life beneath us and Silas floored it onto the road, gravel flying in our wake, I thought:
The snake didn’t come to kill me.
It came to mark me.
To claim me for whatever was coming next.