Page 41 of Of Heathens & Havoc

“Can you put it up now?”

She gulps, panic in her crystal blue gaze as it bounces away, lighting on anything but me. “I—I don’t have a hair tie.”

“Use your hands,” I say, my voice coming out low, in a seductive command that makes my words sound obscenely sexual.

Her lips drop open, her pupils dilating and her cheeks staying rosebud pink. It’s not embarrassment making her flush, I realize. She feels this too, the sizzling connection between us.

Slowly, she lifts her hands and gathers the sleek rose gold strands, straightened to form a curtain today instead of bound as tightly as a nun’s behind her head or tumbling in waves around her shoulders…

At last, she pulls it back, holding it behind her head with both hands in a ponytail.

“Put your elbows on the desk,” I tell her.

She hesitates, then leans forward without a word, obedient as the sweetest lamb. She rests her elbows on the surface of my desk, her hands still behind her head. The position makes it impossible not to envision her mouth on my cock, which is straining painfully under the desk. To imagine circling the desk, flipping up her tartan skirt, drawing down her drawers, spreading her cheeks wide, and tasting her from front to back.

“Chin up, little lamb,” I say in a husky murmur.

She lifts her face as far as she can in the position, baring enough of her slender neck for me to see the angry bruises lining both sides of her throat, the bite prints and teeth marks clear.I reach out, running my thumb over the red skin where teeth raked over it until it’s raw.

“That’s a good girl,” I growl.

Her eyes flutter closed, and her throat works as she swallows, leaning into my touch. A swell of power rises in me, and I wonder how far I could push this, if she’d obey my every command, lay herself at my feet and sacrifice her innocence, her dignity, her soul, just for me.

“Does anyone else know about this?” I ask, marveling at the heat of the marks compared to the cool, smooth, unmarked skin of her cheek.

“No, Father,” she whispers, the breathiness in her voice as it feathers hot against my skin making an ache start at the base of my cock. My thumb slides along her jaw, and her plump lips part, and I know I’m treading dangerous ground, unholy ground where footprints cannot be erased.

I’m about to draw away and tell her she may rise, when her little pink tongue darts out, wetting the corner of her mouth.

I jerk my hand away, my heart drumming in the hollow of my chest. I give back to my flock. That is how I atone for the sins that can never be absolved, the blood on my hands that can never be washed away. I live to serve, not to take. My eyes fall on her throat again, and I take her arm gently, pulling one of them down flat on the desk. She grips her hair with the other, her luminous eyes meeting mine with some mixture of arousal and fear that only increases my own sense of power.

I push up the cuff of her sleeve a few inches, skimming my thumb across the angry red lines on her wrists. “Do you want to tell me where you got these?”

She nods mutely, as if waiting permission to speak.

“Confess.”

The word rolls off my tongue like a prayer, a plea to God to relieve me of this burden.

“Can we do it in the booth?”

My thumb presses on the raw skin of her wrist, and she winces, but she makes no move to pull away. My little lamb might like pain as much as I do. I want to know what she’s punishing herself for, if there’s more to the story than a little girl discovering her sexuality in an unwelcome way. Unfortunately, that’s not a rare experience. What’s rare is her continued need for redemption. Something tells me there’s more to the story—something that makes me want to unravel it one thread at a time, learning her every secret, until she’s as bare and pure as the day she was born.

“We can go to the confessional or my office,” I tell her. “But I have one question first, little lamb.”

She licks her lips and nods, an awkward movement in her current position. “Yes, Father.”

I can’t stop myself, and the question falls from my lips before I can pray for strength to resist this lamb with eyes of liquid temptation and a body built for sin.

“If I asked you to look in my eyes while you confess every carnal sin that’s ever crossed your mind, would you trust me that much?”

Her cerulean eyes widen, her moist lips parting in a small “o” of shock. Scarlet flushes up her neck, darkening the raw skin and purple bruises before blooming in her cheeks like the first blossom of spring. But she doesn’t drop my gaze, and her own eyes go heavy with lust as the seconds pass, each one carrying more heat, until sweat breaks out along my brow. I can feel her pulse thrumming in the delicate skin of her wrist, like a scared lamb who’s been led to the slaughter and waits for the blade to fall.

Still, her seductive gaze holds mine, her eyelids heavy. Her voice is throaty when she speaks at last, managing to utteronly two words, the only ones I ever want to hear fall from her dewy, sensual lips.

“Yes, Father.”

sixteen

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