Page 55 of Sinful Crimes for the Artistically Inclined
At once the bodies of the soul eaters began to writhe on the floor, dragging themselves back together. Joe turned alarmed eyes on Percy, who strode quickly and efficiently to the doorway between them and bolted it shut, saying as he did so, “You were really funny about me wanting to kill that Nazi the other day, and I thought to myself, ‘if Nazis are off limits, bishops almost certainly are’.”
Joe, touched, looked on Percy with adoring eyes as Percy brought his boot down on the bishop’s straining back, flooringhim again. “I just assumed you would kill him outright without considering that.”
Percy smiled his handsome smile. “I’ll only kill him if you want me to. Do you want me to?”
It’s always a strange moment when a person realises that watching their lover kill a bishop is one of the sexiest things they ever could have imagined, so Joe didn’t admit to himself in the least that he had realised this. Instead, he considered, logically, there would be repercussions for both of them should the bishop live, so he said, “I want you to kill him.”
“Then it’s done.” Percy reached down and grabbed the bishop’s hair tight, yanking his head back and exposing his neck, while Joe kept his boot exactly where it was, arresting the movement of the man’s hand.
“Please!” the bishop began, but Percy slipped the knife deep into his jugular on the left side, then pulled it all the way across to the right in one clean, bloody, gurgling slice.
“We probably should have just shot him,” Joe said sympathetically, as the bishop choked and wheezed on his own blood.
“It’s better than an oubliette,” Percy suggested.
“It’s better than an oubliette,” Joe agreed, admiring the way the veins in Percy’s toned forearms flexed as he cleaned the blood from his dagger onto the cuff of his shirt.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
RELIGIOUS INTERLUDE
Joe took the cathedral key from the bishop’s neck and he and Percy dropped the body down into an empty oubliette. They sealed each door, left the razor-wire retracted, and made their way up the stairs. As planned, Joe looked into the cathedral first, and finding the church empty, the two, nearly exhausted, climbed out of the deadly chamber and hauled the fake saint back into place.
They stood for a few minutes, leaning on the glass case, catching their breath and letting their eyes adjust to the soft daylight of the church. Then Joe finally had a chance to inspect Percy.
He looked close to worn out from the near-death downstairs. His cheek was cut, his chin nicked, his shirt ruffled and dusty, all of him wet with sweat and blood. Yet it was only a short time before Percy noticed Joe’s eyes on him, and the spark was accordingly back in his gaze.
Joe sensed the strength in him. His own temperature rose in unison with Percy’s recovery, despite the cool cathedral atmosphere. He said, “We should wash before we go back, so we don’t look so suspicious.I’ll lock the door.”
Percy said nothing, but Joe felt his eyes on him as he walked away, then as he returned, Percy asked, “Are you all right?”
Joe coloured, though he couldn’t explain why. Maybe it was Percy’s gaze. He always seemed to see straight into Joe, in a way Joe couldn’t ever quite see into Percy. There were so many things he would have liked to say, or to not have said, but once he reached Percy’s side, he came straight out with, “I thought you were dead.”
Percy wound his arms around Joe’s waist, linking hands at the back, holding him close and looking into his eyes with an earnest sweetness that melted Joe. “Never. Not when I’ve got you to come back to.” Hands running up Joe’s back, Percy pulled him in for a kiss. And what a gentle kiss it was. At first. One kiss, then two, then again, but harder this time, the tip of his tongue finding Joe’s in a dizzying replay of that first night. His hips and chest pushed firmly against Joe, the sensation intensifying all the while, as Joe’s body switched on, as his hands moved down over Percy’s hips, running back up Percy’s thighs, until it was Percy who broke off abruptly. He licked his gorgeous lips, the look in his eyes somewhere between lust and guilt. “I’m sorry. I’ll go over there.”
He freed himself from Joe’s arms and walked to the cistern, where he leaned down and washed his face. The water that dripped from him turned pink with blood, drops falling from his hair, down his cheeks, down his chest, where his shirt hung open to reveal far more than Joe could easily stand. His breath caught in his throat as he watched. He saw himself bending Percy over that cistern, Percy’s fingers gripping the edge tight, making him scream his name until it echoed all about the cathedral.
Joe rooted his feet to the spot with a wave of shock at himself. Was he really going to do this? Here?
Percy threw a casual glance across at Joe’s quiet reluctance to approach. “I didn’t mean to worry you.” He dragged ahandful of water behind his neck. Joe imagined it spilling down his muscular back. How glorious he would look in this light without that shirt on. “I didn’t want to disappoint you, after last week, so I just waited until I felt sure about what I should do.”
Joe approached the cistern as Percy stood tall. “What do you mean last week?”
“Nazi things. All that Polish stuff.”
Percy seemed oddly bashful about it, but Joe figured there are a thousand ways one might react when talking about their own attempted suicide, so he said, in perfect honesty, “You’ve never disappointed me. Not once in all the time I’ve known you.”
Percy leaned back against a stone column, tastelessly painted to look like marble. He was silent for a moment, then he said, with a quiet fury that set Joe’s heart on fire, “I’m sorry I let him say those things to you. I should have killed him before he got the chance.”
What the bishop had said wasn’t something Joe wanted to remember or discuss. Instead, he attempted only to lighten Percy’s reverie. “You were just bracing yourself down there the whole time?”
It worked like a charm, and Percy’s own tension seemed to disappear with his compelling grin. “It wouldn’t be my first time down an oubliette.”
Joe laughed softly. “I can never tell when you’re joking, but somehow I don’t doubt that.”
“I’m not joking,” Percy protested. “There are some Irish castles?—”
“Are there?” Joe said, stepping a little closer.
