Page 75 of Dirty Little Saint

The students look toward the door.

I can’t breathe.

Fuck.

Felix’s eyes widen when they land on me.

The ringing gets louder. Fuck, are my ears are bleeding?

He smiles and looks at his watch. I wish I could hear what he’s saying.

I see everyone getting up and putting their books away. Are they leaving? There’s no way we’ve been in class an hour already. I try to move, but I can’t.

Felix rushes toward me and places his hand on my shoulder. My ears pop just in time to hear the room descend into chaos.

A cold draft hits my back as the church doors fly open. The silence gets sucked out like a vacuum as their shrieks fill the room. I spin around to see at least twenty ravens dive inside the church. They peck and squawk at my classmates, sending them running down the steps.

What in the actual fuck?

Felix traces his finger over the back of the pew, the one I’m holding onto for dear life. Panic washes over me. The wood is… cracked.

“Wh-what the fuck did I just do?” I stammer.

He looks back and forth between me and the church doors, shaking his head. He’s going to leave. He’s a fucking coward. My knees tremble as I struggle to stand, my adrenaline still racing through my veins.

But when he gets to the doors, he closes them, and turns back around to face me. So he’s not a coward. I’m just a judgy bitch who jumps to assumptions.

“You’re staying?” I hold onto the back of the pew to steady myself.

He moves like a predator, slow and calculated, inching toward me like I’m a timid deer who’s about to run off. “Do you want me… in your coven?”

A tingling sensation swells in my belly. I don’t know if it’s from whatever the fuck just happened or from the way he’s looking at me right now—like I’m some fragile flower that needs to be sheltered from the storm.

“He was right about your eyes… They glow. Riot says we’ll be stronger if you join us—because you’re a Crane.”

Felix closes the gap between us and towers over me. “That’s not what I asked, Little Raven. What do you want?”

I want this heat between us to either set me on fire or fizzle the fuck out. I can’t breathe with him this close. “I’m losing control, and it scares me,” I whisper.

His chest heaves with the same need. “What triggered you? Was it the poem?”

I shake my head and collapse back into my seat. “No. I think it was you. You said something that made me angry. But I’m really just angry with myself. I keep stifling what I feel… what I want.”

Felix sits down next to me, our legs touching. “You haunt me. Just like Annabel Lee haunts Poe.”

I take a deep breath and surrender to the power of his scent. That earthy musky fragrance that reminds me of a rainstorm. “It’s about so much more than wanting you, Felix. I need you… It was you who pulled me out of that tailspin I was just in. It was your light.”

He unbuttons his shirt and strips it off, revealing his white ribbed tank top underneath. I try not to gawk at his corded muscles. Try not to salivate over the tattoos covering every inch of his arms.

He leans back against the pew. “Can I hold your hand?”

I slip my sweaty palm into his. As our fingers lace, a flutter of nerves churns in my belly. “Do you want to be with us, Felix? I need your answer.”

He turns to look at me, and I almost cry. There is peace in his brown eyes. “Yes, Maur. My answer has always been yes.”

I let out a sigh of relief. Suddenly, the thought of not having him be a part of this feels like spiritual suicide.

There’s only one thing that could ruin it all. Villette.

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