Page 97 of Sinful

“Of course.”

“So your muscles are super-tight and they can’t get anything in you. Then they declare you to be a pure little virgin. Right?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“You can do that even when you aren’t stressed. You can control the muscles and make them tight or loose. It doesn’t matter if you’ve ever had sex or not.”

I stared at him with wide eyes. “What?”

“It’s like when you really need to piss, but you have to hold it in because you’re nowhere near a toilet. It’s that same tensing and squeezing,” he replied. “If a woman does that during a so-called purity test, the muscles will be so constricted that the tester probably won’t be able to get one finger inside, let alone two.”

I scoffed and handed the phone back to him. “That’s not true,” I said, picking up my sandwich again. “Our healers are trained at universities.”

“Yeah, exactly. So they know for sure that the purity tests are bullshit. They probably just go along with it because it’s part of their job and they don’t want to rock the boat.” Sebastian sat up straight, giving me a hard look as I chewed. “Tell me something. Has a girl or womaneverfailed one of these proving rituals?”

I swallowed my bite. “No.”

“And do you really thinkallthose women were virgins?” he asked, forehead wrinkling.

“Yes, of course they were,” I said, narrowing my eyes.

“I can almost guarantee you they weren’t. Sure, a few of them, or evenmostof them, might’ve managed to avoid giving into temptation. But there’s always someone like you, Rose. Someone who likes to break the rules.” A wicked grin spread over Sebastian’s handsome face. “I bet you there’s been at least fifty of them over the centuries, lying about their virginity. And the world didn’t end when they were sacrificed, did it? Because literallyallof it is fucking bullshit. Virginity doesn’t matter.”

I shook my head, anger flaring inside me. How dare he question the virtues of our past sacrifices? And how dare he question the will of the Entity?

“Virginitydoesmatter. To the Covenant, at least. And the healers would know if any of those women lied,” I said stiffly.

“Nope. They wouldn’t. Like I said, the healers would all know that the concept of virginity is total bullshit. They just claim that the girls are virgins when they test them, because they know there’s no way of actually knowing for sure, and if they ever denied that a girl was ‘pure’, then that girl would probably be tortured with one of those Confession things. And they don’t want to subject a girl to that if there’s a chance that she’s actually telling the truth, right?”

I jumped up, incensed. “You’re wrong!” I said, crossing my arms. “Every celestial virgin in history has been pure!”

“Sure.” Amusement glimmered in his eyes. “Tell me, if the Entity cares so much about his prized virgins remaining that way until their sacrifice, then why didn’t he strike you down with a bolt of lightning from the heavens the second my cock went inside you? As a punishment.”

I breathed deeply, trying to control my fury. “You are so disgustingly disrespectful sometimes.”

“Honestly, Rose, I’m not trying to mock you. I swear. It’s just that the stuff they teach you up on that mountain is a bunch of bullshit. I think you deserve better. I think you deserve a life where you’re free to enjoy your body.”

I stared at him, unable to believe the hypocrisy coming out of his mouth. He thought I deserved a life where I was free to enjoy my body, and yet, at the exact same time, he was happy to keep me locked away in this godforsaken cage where I had no freedom whatsoever. It didn’t make any sense.

Lord.Nothing made sense anymore. Trying to think about it all gave me a splitting headache.

I sat back down, rubbing my temples with one hand as I finished my food with the other.

Sebastian shuffled closer and tenderly stroked my arm. Part of me instantly wanted him to strip off and touch me the same way he did a few hours ago; wanted him to bring me all those heated pleasures so I could forget the world and its cold, brutal reality for a few blissful minutes. But one last remnant of rationality told me I shouldn’t want that. Shouldneverhave wanted it. Not as long as he remained my jailer.

“You haven’t changed, Rose. It’s like I said. You’re stillyou,” he said softly. “The Covenant would never know just from looking at you or touching you.”

“ButIwould know,” I murmured, lowering my eyes to the floor.

“Well, it doesn’t matter. You aren’t going back there, so they can’t do anything to you.”

“I suppose that’s true,” I murmured before taking my last bite of the sandwich.

His words echoed in my mind as I chewed and swallowed.You aren’t going back there.

I wiped the crumbs from my hands and closed my eyes, feeling the weight of my former life pressing down on my shoulders again. It seemed to call out to me like a distant echo, making me long for it, but at the same time, I knew Sebastian was right. I could never go back to Alderwood. Not when I was no longer a virgin. The shame and guilt of my betrayal would be too much to bear, and the entire Covenant would know about it the second the healer slid his hand between my thighs.

Then again… a sacrifice still needed to be made on the evening of the final Tetrad moon in order to complete the ritual. If not me, thenwho? No other girls had been born to dying mothers under a blood moon in recent years. I was the only option left, and if I wasn’t sacrificed at the Red Rocks, the whole Tetrad ritual would fail.

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