Page 102 of Her Creation

Still, there was a hollow inside of her that she needed him to fill and nothing but him could sate her savage needs. Her desperate fingers pulled at him, needing more immediately. He stood, eager to give her everything she would ever need.

His eyes found hers as he opened his mouth and let the rain pepper over his face and fill his mouth. He swished and swallowed the mouthful, savoring the taste of her as she reached out and undid his breeches, her hands fumbling and pushing the wet fabric over his soaked skin.

His large, enormous body darkened the sky as he towered over her and lifted her leg around his hip as he pressed against her. Skin against warm skin. Her eyes fell closed as his hard cock pressed against her throbbing center. Her fingers dug into his shoulders before roaming over him in a frenzy of need.

He held her sopping wet skirt up as he took her mouth and slid himself inside of her.

She bit at his lower lip, unable to process how good it felt. How fully he filled her.

Nothing had ever felt so good. Nothing.

He took control of her mouth as he gripped her other thigh and lifted her up, wrapping her around his waist and thrusting deep inside of her.

Ragged breaths left both of their chests as she settled around him. Innominatus grunted a low, rumbling sound as he pulled his mouth back just enough to catch his breath and pull out of her wetness before sliding back in, trembling to keep control as his slow thrusts went so deep it lifted her slightly.

Victoria cried out and gripped his shoulders, working herself over him, pushing against him as he pushed into her.

The rain poured over them, cooling their hot skin as they devoured one another, lost completely to the forbidden unity.

Innominatus dropped to the muddy ground with dirt speckling his face, still inside of Victoria and stretched his long body out in the grave. She moved over him, grinding and working herself over him as his hands covered her body until she was lost to the feeling of him inside her. Her body tensed, and he placed his hands on her hips, lifting and lowering her until they both cried out and climaxed.

Victoria leaned over him, feeling the raindrops tickle her back and the puddle of muddy water press into her sleeves as they lay on the ground of the empty grave. When she slumped against him, he lifted her into his arms and held her until she fell asleep clinging to him.

Chapter 29

Log entry

March, 1803

Recounting events 1773–1795 Location: Unknown

Innominatus and Victoria remained in the rain-soaked grave long after the storm began to loosen its grip on the sky. The thunder drifted farther away, leaving only the hush of rain threading through broken stone and roots. He held her as though letting go would mean the world might claim her again, or that she might remember the blade, the bodies, the blood that had led her here. He curled himself around her, shielding her with his own body as if that might atone for the harm he had already done.

Her breathing slowed against him, and the steady beat of her heart pressed into his chest, every pulse a quiet miracle he knew he did not deserve. For so long, the only rhythm he had known was the echo of his own steps in the laboratory, the sound of chains, the silence that had hollowed him until his unhinged obsession felt like purpose. Then there came only her footsteps. Now there was this. Weight. Warmth. Proof.

He had gone into the town to prove something to her, to show her how much restraint he had shown her, how good he had been for her, and how dangerous he really could be. Instead, it was he who had been shown the truth. This second life had not changed him, not in the way he had hoped. Freedom had not softened him to be more human. It had sharpened what was already monstrous inside of him. He saw it clearly now, without excuse or deflection. She had been right to fear him. Right to deny him. He was a devil asking God to leave the angelic raptures of heaven and sink down into the pits of hell and love him. Loving her had not redeemed him. It had only revealed how far he was willing to fall.

And yet she lay in his arms, breathing, having finally chosen him.

The knowledge broke something open in his chest that no violence ever had. He pressed his mouth to her damp hair and let the feeling sink into his bones, as if she were something sacred and fleeting, something the earth itself might reclaim if he loosened his grip even slightly. He would not ask for forgiveness. He did not believe in it. He only endured the truth of her nearness and the certainty that loving her would always cost blood, even if it was his own.

Above them, the storm thinned into mist. Below, the grave held them, a melancholy foreshadowing of their future—of what would happen to her, because of the monster that he was.

He was no different in this life. If anything, he was worse.

The first kill in the village had awakened something obscene inside him. This body was stronger, its senses sharpened to a cruel, merciless acuity, and when he reached for the skills he had once been forced to bury, a dark elation surged through him. He had forgotten the intimacy of it. The closeness. The way death responded when summoned with patience and intent. In this flesh, the thrill came quicker, heavier, sinking into him like a remembered sin finally indulged.

And yet it had not been for himself—it had always been for her.

Victoria did not know it, but every person he had taken had wounded her first, however slightly. Some had turned from her at the ball, their smiles thin and false, their eyes already measuring her absence. Others had spoken her name in town with careless cruelty, never suspecting they were confessing their sins aloud. Some were people she had mentioned to him in passing, slights recounted without bitterness, never knowing he gathered each one like a relic. Somewhere deep within him, a ledger had formed. He had not meant to keep it. It had simply grown, line by line, grievance by grievance, until it demanded blood. Even Helena. Despite her good intentions, she had come close to destroying her beloved friend with loose lips. When the moment came to punish them, he answered it without hesitation.

The pleasure had been immediate. Exalting. A fevered righteousness that flooded his veins and assured him he was doing what the world had refused to do. He was correcting it. Sanctifying it. Avenging his sweet, blameless goddess in the only language the world had ever respected.

Now that he had begun, the hunger no longer slept.

As he cradled her carefully in one arm and wedged his foot into the slick wall of the grave to lift them free of the earth, the truth struck him with brutal clarity. The true ruin was not the village. It was her, what he had dragged into her life simply by loving her as he did.

Shame constricted his chest as he looked down at Victoria, rain-soaked and fragile in his arms, her hair darkened and clinging to her face. She had been pulled into fear, into death, into filth, because of him. The realization fractured him.