Page 68 of Buried Beneath Sin

“Hey.” Thatcher’s fingers slide beneath my chin and tilt my face upward. His strange eyes stare down at me, piercing and intense. “I promise, with our help, this business will go from surviving to thriving.”

This close, I can’t help but breathe him in. The hint of his cologne is strangely comforting, as is his touch. The subtle hints of sweet fruit mixed with leather and sandalwood makefor a delicious and inviting scent. Tension leaks from me slowly. As stupid as it is to place my faith into complete strangers,dangerousstrangers, I can’t find it in me to be too worried. This will work out if they say it will. They’ve thought about this long and hard.

Thatcher must see my acceptance or is able to read my body language, because a new smile curls the corners of his mouth. Carefully, he lowers himself down into a crouch between my legs. His hand drops from my chin so that he can place both of his hands on my thighs. The touch is startlingly intimate.

“So trusting…” he murmurs. “You won’t regret it, Little Sister.”

“This is so strange,” I admit, having to look away from the speculative gleam in Thatcher’s eyes. “Three serial killers taking over a funeral home…”

“That isn't the strange part,” he denies, shaking his head. “What's strange is how easily the wicked find and prey upon you. How can someone like you attract such darkness?”

His words are a kick to my gut. Countless time I’ve wondered that same question. Thatcher must be good at reading people—I suppose you have to be in his field of work—because his amusement drifts away, his pupils narrowing. His gaze travels over my face. The grip he has on both my upper thighs tightens slightly before his hands rub them up and down in a comforting gesture.

“The world is such a cruel place, isn’t it?” he asks. At my nod, his smile returns slowly and colder than before, yet no less handsome. “No one else will touch you ever again, Beatrix.”

Unnerved by his intense gaze, I let out a shaky laugh and give his hands a pointed look.

“You're touching me.” I think about Sagan and what he did to me last night. “And your brother... he enjoys touching me.”

Thatcher's answering grin is breathtaking. I feel unworthy of it.

“I won’t promise thatwewon’t touch you.” His hands come to rest too high on my thighs to ignore. My heart races and my core clenches around nothing. “But I don’t think you’d want that anyway. You seem to enjoy our touch.”

He stands then, giving me the chance to breathe easy. I suck in a shaky breath and swing my chair forward as I look away from my stepbrother.

Swallowing hard, I force myself to ask, “You have everything planned out for yourselves, but what do you want from me out of all of this?”

His answering laugh is loud and carries an edge to it. “What do Iwantfrom you? Oh, Beatrix. That’s easy. I want to possess you so thoroughly you cannot fathom a life without me. I want to be the one you direct your prayers to, and I want to answer them in any capacity that I see fit. What Iwantis to devour your soul—to entomb it inside of me where I will keep it for all of eternity because it belongs to me. You flaunted it at me the night we met, now I wish to steal it.”

My limbs go limp in shock. He’s crazy. I want to ask what’s wrong with him. But I don’t. Ican’t.If I did, I’d have to ask myself the same question. Because it’s taking everything in me not to beam up at him, to fight the urge to wrap my arms around his neck and kiss him. I’ve never been so wanted in all my life, and I can’t help but love it.

Swiftly, Thatcher bends at the waist and surprises me with a kiss. Without hesitation, I return it, savoring it. His lips meld against mine, and I let out a breathy sigh of contentment. Thatcher pulls away only to kiss the side of my mouth and then down my neck. I tilt my head to the side, shivering as his kisses elicit little sparks of delight in their wake. When he pulls away abruptly, I can’t stop the way my bottom lip juts outwards.

Thatcher straightens with a chuckle. “Don’t pout, Little Sister. If I get carried away, we may end up fucking on top of that corpse. I’d hate to ruin your work like that.”

I gasp in disgust at the thought. The sound only causes Thatcher to laugh softly again.

“Don’t be a prude. I hear morticians fuck corpses all the time,” he says dismissively. “Don’t tell me you’ve never tried. I myself have seen a stiff cock on a corpse before.”

“N-no!” I sputter after a second of complete and utter shock. “I’ve never touched a corpse inappropriately before.” I shiver at the thought. “But that’s why funeral homes hesitate to hire male morticians. When presented with a woman’s body, alive or dead, it seems some men can’t keep it in their pants.”

Thatcher shrugs. “I wouldn’t judge you if you had, Little Sister. We all have our own kinks.”

“Sex with a corpse isn’t mine,” I assure him weakly as I grimace. Needing to change the subject before my stomach turns inside out, I push out of my chair and stand. “Mr. Jones there needs to be refrigerated since he’s done. When I’m done doing that, I have a call to make if you want to listen in.”

My stepbrother nods before he saunters over to the body on the table. Before necrophilia can be brought back up, I bend down and swipe the bag of ashes off the floor beneath the desk and plop them on top of it.

“We also need to get rid of these. I didn’t think you would care if I threw Patrick away, but I figured I’d at least run it by you first just in case,” I say. Thatcher whirls around to face me, his smile vanishing as his gaze drops to the large, clear bag full of ashes. “He’s mixed in with Sebastian and Mom, so I’m not exactly sure how much of this is him. Oh, that reminds me, you have to clean the ashes out of the furnace after each cremation—you’ll break the machine if you don’t.”

“Good to know,” Thatcher mutters, his glare trained to the bag. “Dump them all in the trash. That’s where they belong. While you do that,” he turns to face Mr. Jones, “I’ll freeze his ass.”

I nod before I slip out of the preparation room, leaving Thatcher to handle Mr. Jones so that I can throw the last of what remains of the people who tormented me away.

28

BEATRIX

Ithought having people around all day would be overwhelming. Instead, I found it strangely pleasant.

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