Page 39 of Saint, Sorrow, Sinner
“You’re my first,” she admitted.
Juniper Castle tilted her head. Her hair splayed around her, falling loose from her braid. She trailed her hand along Sophia’s waist and inhaled sharply. Caution held fast to each movement.
Sophia parted her lips and reached for Juniper’s hand, pulling the tender touch along her side. “This isn’t about liking me,” she whispered. “Do you want me?”
Juniper stayed perfectly still. Her silence wrapped around Sophia’s throat and squeezed. Denied her vital oxygen.
“C’mon, fortune teller,” Sophia rasped, guiding Juniper’s hand over the swell of her breast, higher, around the back of her neck. “Stop being polite—”
Finally, Juniper yielded. She pulled Sophia by her nape and kissed her hard. Their teeth clicked, breath came fast, stuttered and swallowed, and Sophia smiled against her mouth, softening atop Juniper’s body. She’d kissed a handful of people before, but never a woman. A girl, yeah. Once, when she was sixteen and too lanky, still growing into her legs. But that encounter, spurred by curiosity and doubt, paled in comparison to the hunger she felt for Juniper Castle.
But first they must catch you.Sophia De’voreaux had been caught.
Juniper kissed like she was starved. Her plush mouth parted, and Sophia tasted tea on her tongue, inhaled the hot gust of a soft moan. One wide hand roamed beneath Sophia’s baggy shirt while the other threaded through her messy hair, angling her closer. Juniper’s chest expanded, and her hips reached, rolling sensually. The hard line of her cock pressed between Sophia’s thighs.
“Sophia,” she warned, craning her neck to accommodate Sophia’s mouth on her jaw, throat, shoulder. “This is ...”
Sophia pinched the bottom of her shirt and pulled it over her head. She tossed it, cheeks flaring hot, bare upper half on display in the dimly lit bedroom. Speech became too difficult. Stole her concentration. So she opted for body language, shaking her head, allowing her breath to weigh heavy. Sex had always been a fleeting thing. Never generous, always modest and clinical. For once, Sophia wanted toknowdesire.To take hold of it, to wield it. If she spent too much time analyzing each action, each movement, she’d fall backward into memories, get stuck somewhere in her body, wading through Daniel and Haven like molasses. She took the bottom of Juniper’s nightshirt and waited, sliding her thumb and pointer finger along the seam.
“A terrible idea ...,” Juniper breathed out. She nodded, though, and lifted her shoulders.
The shirt landed on the floor. Spirits whispered distantly, echoes crossing a lake. She ignored them, focusing intently on the woman stretched underneath her instead. When Juniper reached for her face, Sophia leaned toward her. When she rested her palm there, cupping her cheek, Sophia sighed, nipping at the psychic’s wrist. They stayed like that, studying each other, sharing breath and warmth and hazy eye contact, until Juniper sighed and said, “You’re enchanting, Sophia De’voreaux. Pure magic.”
Sophia kissed her again, savoring the gentle stroke of thumb against cheekbone.
An anthem beat to the rhythm of her heart.Alive, alive, alive.
Chapter ten
Sophia woke to apigeoncooing on the balcony. The blue hour mottled white bedsheets and cast an astral glow across Juniper’s face. Headlights beamed past the curtains, rain pitter-pattered the roof, and Sophia listened to the city stir as Juniper slumbered beside her. The Belle House remained peaceful, enduring the tail end of an impromptu storm. Last night, after Juniper had touched Sophia effortlessly—swept her palms over thigh and hip, pressed her open mouth to Sophia’s cunt, gazed at her, awestruck, as Sophia rode her cock, dragging out pleasure, momentum,everything—they’d curled close, clutching the quilt and each other, and whispered about mysticism.
They’d returned to one another throughout the night, playing each other like instruments. Juniper’s fingers wedged inside her; Sophia’s teeth on her hip bone. It was primal: lovemaking like that. The messy, animal kind, overdue and delightfully rich. Sophia felt awake, finally. As if the lock on an invisible cage had been smashed.
Juniper cracked her eyes open. She blinked at first, surprised, before her gaze softened. “Good morning.”
“Mornin’,” Sophia said. She stroked Juniper’s nose with her index finger.
Hours ago, they’d talked about what they shared—natural inclination toward ritualism, fondness for hot tea, love of reading—and laughed over their mutual hatred of undercooked oatmeal. They’d bonded over prayer and repetition, comfortability and loneliness, and playfully argued about establishment and righteousness, privilege and permanence. At one point, Juniper had rolled her eyes and sighed, saidyou’re youngin one breath, like a lioness scolding a cub, and then smirked, kissed her, and saidcome herein the next.
Sophia pressed her cheek into the pillow. “Never thought I’d wake up like this.”
“Next to a fortune-telling lesbian?” Juniper purred.
Unafraid,she thought.Brave, reckless, satisfied.“Safe.”
Juniper’s sleepy gaze sharpened. “Don’t mistake comfort for safety. We still have an exorcism to perform.”
“Is that what it is? Are you exorcising me?”
“In a sense. We’re extracting an unwanted presence from your body. That’s exorcism in its most basic form.”
“And the ghosts?”
“They’ll follow Iscariot,” she said. Uncertainty permeated the room, though. “Or ...” She reached out, following the tendon in Sophia’s neck. “You’ll scream them into submission.”
“I don’t know how to scream, June. It’s just a ... a thing that happened. I don’t—”
“I’ll teach you.” She met Sophia’s gaze. “A banshee is a combination of two things—harbinger and boatman. Scream to signal the arrival of death, scream to announce the departure of a soul. I can speak to the dead, but you canmovethem.”
