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His hand moved to the back of my neck. He waited until I opened my eyes.

“Adriana.”

Something inside my chest tightened. I had heard him say my name numerous times, but it had never sounded like that. Possession. Obsession. Ownership. Like a man who had spent years believing he deserved nothing, finally allowing himself to want the thing he wanted most.

Me.

I touched his face. I knew him now. I knew how much feeling Demitri could hide inside a fraction of movement.

“I love you,” I whispered.

My forehead came down against his. For one heartbeat, I didn't move. Then another. The heat between us remained, but something deeper moved through it as his thumb traced my cheek.

“I know.”

I frowned.

“That isn't the response I was looking for.”

“I love you too.” His mouth twitched. “And I will love you always… if you just ride my rock like I’ve been dying for you to do, Adriana.”

Demitri’s eyes darkened. His hand tightened at my waist as he positioned me on top of his cock. His gaze dropped to my mouth, then to the spot where our skin met, as though welded together. There was no space between us. No air, no distance. There was just me, sitting on top of him, my eyes fixed on him as my back arched and I slowly started to move. I rocked back and forth, the slowest movement at first, before I pushed down deeper, until he was seated all the way inside me, before I started to grind.

There are not many things I know. There are even fewer things I know without doubt. But this? This I knew.

After the night I had spent in Demitri's arms, there was no room left for uncertainty. No place to hide behind excuses or pretend what had happened between us was some reckless lapse in judgment I could bury beneath regret.

I was in love with him.

Deeply. Madly. Completely. And unintentionally.

Father Demitri Marco. DeMarco Cavalho. The man who had walked into my life wearing a priest's collar and carrying enough darkness inside him to swallow every prayer I had ever whispered. I had spent so long trying to understand what he was to me that I had missed the simplest truth.

He was my life.

Not the safe part of it, nor the clean untainted part. He was blood and sin and secrets. He was a man who had buried one life beneath another and dared the world to dig him up. And somehow, somewhere between the man everyone feared and the man who held me when nobody was watching, he had become home.

The realization terrified me in a way I didn’t expect. I wasn’t afraid of loving him, but I was afraid of how much I had to lose now that I did.

Before Demitri, I had always believed love was supposed to make you feel safe. I’d thought it was a softness, an emotion that made you feel warm and sheltered.

Demitri had taught me otherwise.

Because loving him felt like standing barefoot in a burning church.

It was beautiful. It was forbidden. And I knew damn well I would walk straight into the flames if it meant reaching him.

Because I had met the man beneath the collar. I had seen his rage. His violence. The cold calculation that could settle over his face when someone threatened what belonged to him. I had seen the darkness he tried to keep chained inside himself, and I had never once mistaken him for a good man.

That was the strangest part.

I didn't love him despite the darkness. I loved him knowing it was there. Knowing exactly what he was capable of. Knowing that there were parts of him I would never be able to reach, and that trying to would only destroy us both.

And still, I wanted all of him. The priest. The sinner. The man who knelt before God. The man who had once ruled through fear. The man who looked at me as though I was the only thing in this world worth saving. Especially that man.

Because Demitri had never promised me a beautiful life. He had never lied to me about what he was. He had simply given me the truth and let me decide whether I could live with it.

And I had.