Page 78 of Sinner

Tying his intended to a tree.

My mouth and throat were suddenly dry, my mind spinning with images of the woman being me. Deep in a forest. Hunted and captured. Now she would be punished.

I longed for it. A taste of pain before the utmost pleasure.

It suddenly dawned on me why the paintings were here. “You painted these?”

“Very good, Jessica. Yes, I did.”

The way he said my name sent another shower of trickles skittering through me. Those pinpricks had turned into an erupting fire that would soon be uncontrollable.

“Out of pain and guilt.” I said the words absently, but I knew them to be the truth.

His sigh was deep and filled with darkness. “I didn’t kill Shanna. I loved her, but she was better off without me. That was the single thing your father was correct about.”

“Then why did you leave her?”

He brushed his hand through my hair before rubbing the pads of his fingers over my shoulder. “Because your father begged me to and I honored his request. It was the one thing he’d asked of me and the one promise I should never have kept.”

I closed my eyes. I believed him.

“You crave the darkness,” I said after a few seconds had passed and I wasn’t certain why. Wasn’t that obvious?

“Just as you do. You have a need to let go of everything you fear, all the anguish you’ve experienced. The hatred. There’s only one way of doing so.”

“How so?” I could barely breathe, my pulse racing.

“By allowing someone to take full control of you. And your destiny. That is what you truly want. Isn’t it?”

“I don’t know what I want, Xander. At least not any longer.”

“Then I truly think you’re lying to yourself.” His voice was deep, not harsh, but holding a stern tone that both excited and frightened me. I was frozen in the moment, still staring at the painting yet the characters were no longer strangers, depictions of the shadows living in those hungering for a taste of something more extreme.

The man in the mask holding a leather strap was Sinner and the woman was his little lamb.

My breath skipping, the moment I felt his fingers brushing against the skin on my shoulders, I shuddered audibly.

“I don’t know what this is,” I whispered.

“I think you do.”

I sensed for once and perhaps this time only, he was offering me a choice. With a merciless beast like Xander, there would be no others. From here on out, he would dictate every interaction.

As I closed my eyes, I fell into the sweet peace of his fingers trailing down my arms, briefly interlocking our fingers together.

“Surrender and I’ll set you free, my perfect Jessica.”

This was wrong, so very wrong, but his touch and the beautiful release was everything I’d craved.

And everything my body and soul needed.

So I turned around to face him, tilting my head. His eyes were positively glowing and to think, the man I’d believed to be a monster didn’t need a mask to excite me.

Everything about him did.

CHAPTER 23

Jessica

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