Page 73 of The Savage

When he nips my lower lip, I gasp, and his hand fists in my wimple like a man at the end of his tether. He doesn’t pull. He holds it with his breath shuddering, restraint a miracle visible on his face.

It undoes me worse than force ever could.

I kiss him back like I’m trying to find the name he insists is mine at the back of his teeth.

I kiss him like I’ll be punished for it and decide I’ll pay when the angels come to collect.

I kiss him because the dream is still bleeding under my skin and he is the only thing in the room that feels solid and alive and mine.

He slows. He always knows when to stop before I break, as if some part of him is listening to a metronome in my pulse. He softens the pressure, breathes against my mouth, rests his forehead to mine.

‘Breathe,’ he says. ‘Just breathe, angel.’

I drag air in. It shakes on the way out. My hands are still on him, one at the nape of his neck, one braced on the hard plane of his chest, and my body remembers a thousand unsanctioned things. I feel his heartbeat under my palm like a drumbeat I know the rhythm of. It terrifies and steadies me, this raw and daunting familiarity.

I pull back another inch. Then two as the room swims.

His eyes are heavy-lidded and bright, his pupils blown, his mouth kiss-bruised. It’s indecent, what looking at him does to me. It’s indecent, what I’ve done to him.

‘No,’ I whisper suddenly, shoving at my own treacherous ache. ‘No – this is wrong.’ I step back, fingers flying to trace the sign of the cross before I even think. ‘Forgive me,’ I mumble to heaven, to myself, to the woman in the mirror who keeps blushing like she’s on fire for something unholy.

He watches. The corner of his mouth crooks up; not cruel – amused, fond, wicked. ‘I’ll remind you again. You’re meant to be on a break,’ he says, voice husky with satisfaction. ‘From the nunnery.’

‘God still hears my prayers,’ I say, a little desperately. ‘And that doesn’t include—’ I falter, heat roaring to my face.

‘It includes the world,’ he counters. ‘Drink, sun, sea, laughter. Fast food, faster hands from a man who desires you. And at the risk of sounding like a broken record, in case there’s an ambiguity, that man will be me and only me, bedda. And most definitely hot, unhinged, and probably unholy sex. As often and as hot and vigorous as you want.’

‘I don’t want,’ I rush to say. It comes out breathless and unconvincing. Even my pulse calls me a liar.

He tilts his head, eyes narrowing with the kind of patience that’s new on him and infuriating on me. ‘You can pray the ache smaller,’ he says softly. ‘Doesn’t mean it will go away. And aches like that, ignored, just tend to get bigger.’ His hands dig into my hips, pulls me closer until I feel the imprint of his… his manhood. Sweet heaven. ‘And bigger.’

‘Stop. Please. I am trying to be good,’ I hiss, more to myself than to him.

‘Maybe this is good,’ he says. ‘Maybe someone tried to convince you that pleasure and sin were synonyms. They’re not. Not always.’

I bristle. ‘So now you’re a theologian.’

‘No,’ he says simply. ‘I’m a man who’s been half-fucking-dead and knows exactly what like feels like.’ His hands mould my hips tighter and why oh why don’t I move away? Place some distance between myself and this iniquity?

His gaze drops to my mouth and I feel his manhood jump.

Then he releases me but only so he can reach out again, but slower, palms up like he’s asking, not taking. I don’t give him my hands. I don’t pull away either. It’s the worst kind of permission, silent and trembling and waiting. A lamb to slaughter.

‘Tell me about your dream,’ he says.

‘What?’

‘You came in like a woman chased by wolves.’ He nods towards the couch. ‘The housekeeper mentioned you were napping in the living room. Sit. Tell me.’

I sit because my knees don’t trust me. He shifts off the table with a hiss, manoeuvres himself beside me, close enough that our shoulders touch. I keep my eyes on the terrace door and the slit of blue beyond it.

‘There was a church,’ I say, the words tasting of copper. ‘Lilies. Choir. Someone shouting “run”.’ I swallow. ‘My hands were bloody.’

He goes very still and I feel the echo of certainty in my veins. He knows. I feel him bank himself like a pilot in a storm. ‘You know what my dream means, don’t you?’

His lips firm, but when he speaks it’s not the answer I want. ‘You’re safe,’ he says, like a promise he intends to keep even against physics. ‘You’re here. With me.’

‘And I… wanted to scream but I couldn’t,’ I whisper. ‘And then you did.’