Page 74 of Priest and his Anarchist

His eyes narrow when they fall to my lips. Confusion knots his brows together, and then it’s gone.

Through the spasms of my muscles, fatigue threatens my sanity when he jerks his head at Vaden, swiping a bottle of whiskey from the side. “Again.”

“What?” Vaden pauses, and when he withdraws, the emptiness is a painful reminder of what I’ll never have.

I push myself up from Priest’s thighs, and I’m about to walk away when his hand is on my chin, forcing me into place. Priest’s eyes search both of mine, the room and everything in it dissolves into nothing. His lips are plush and full, with almost too much softness to be on a man who emanates this much masculinity. This time, the weight of his confusion cuts deeper than the striking lines of his features. He’s fighting an internal battle that no one can see.

“I said again.”

Hope dies the same way flowers do when they’re stepped on. His fingers loosen, and he lifts the bottle to his lips.

Vaden pulls me back against his chest. He must be sitting on the edge of the bath before I spread my legs wide and direct my hips over his length. My muscles tense around him once more, feeling the heat pool between my thighs. Tears of sweat slide down my body as my hair clings to my skin, but I keep my eyes on Priest as I ride against Vaden. He doesn’t smirk this round, watching carefully as he takes swig after swig of whiskey. It’s not until the heat of my orgasm snaps around us that my knees buckle and my thighs drip with glaze. I slide off Vaden’s lap and out of the tub. Cold tiles of the bathroom floor bathe the heat of my skin when I rest my cheek against it, the pounding of my heart still loud in my chest. Tree branches weave togetherthrough the window, twisting into nature’s sculpture as the colors in the room whirl around me.

Vaden’s footsteps bring me back to reality. “I can answer the question you’ve kept asking yourself since the moment Bishop brought her to you. No matter how many times I fuck her, you’re going to have the same result.” He must get closer to him, but I roll onto my back, blinking up at the chandelier. “That thing you feel in here when you watched that? That’s you caring, Priest. It’s not going to go away the more you watch it happen, in fact, I’m going to go ahead and say that it’s only going to detonate you in a way that you’ve never fucking known before.” Vaden pauses. “Think about what the fuck you’re doing, and why you’re doing it, and then reconsider the who. Because I ain’t about risking my life for it.”

Everything is heavy. So heavy.

Chapter Eighteen

priest

Icrash against my bedroom door to slam it closed, the bottle of whiskey slipping from my fingers when the room swirls around me in a blur. I can count on my hand how many times I’ve been drunk.

Twice. The first time, and now.

I learned quickly how to handle my liquor, a secret passed down from every father of the EKC. Bordering alcoholism, we were trained to start by sipping alcohol at a young age, before it moved to a finger a day, to a glass a day, before moving to a glass and a sip, and a glass and a finger and so on. Handling our liquor to never be vulnerable was one of the first lessons we learned.

I don’t even want to know how much I put away tonight, and it still wasn’t enough.

A kaleidoscope of patterns carves a story into the wooden door, one that I’m sure she’ll tell one day. A story of a girl. Of the dark. Of death. Instead, my fingers find the cold handle and I twist it open onto the spill of darkness.

My muscles relax the longer I stay in place, but when the sweet hint of her scent hits me, it’s a brutal reminder of what triggered my drunkenness to begin with. I wanted her to know how much I hate her. How much I despise her. She’s everything I hate about the human species. She loves too much, cares about shit that I’ll never understand, and fucking smiles way too damn wide.

I hate her.

Despise her.

I want to wipe her from this earth so I never have to be reminded of the kind of stain something so delicate can leave on a place so dark.

But I can’t.

I. Fucking. Can’t.

Not because I don’t want to, or because there’s some lost place inside of me that feels something for her, despite Vaden’s words, because there isn’t. I hate everything about Luna Nox, and there is no changing that.

My feet carry me down the familiar concrete path. As soon as I reach the end, dots dance behind my eyes as my shoulder crashes against the wall. Resting my hand over my stomach, I clear my throat and slowly lift my head up to the room in front of me.

Walls spoiled in white permanent chalk, drawings, words she’d hear. Everything reminded me of her while I was too busy trying to do the one thing to get rid of her.

The plush carpet takes your weight when you step foot on it, and even lost in the land of too much whiskey, I know one thing for sure.

I want this.

Her.

“Hello, Darling…” I whisper hoarsely, rolling to my back and leaning up to stare at the blank ceiling of color. “Did you miss me?”

The sound of her dragging herself across the carpet draws my attention down to her body.

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