Page 32 of Our Sins in Silver (Coven of Sin 3)

Bending to kneel beside him on the floor, my fingers curled around the wooden edge of his coffin.

Then his face scrunched up, his lips softened, and the most agonizing moan left him—flaying me from the inside.

“Elijah. No, please.” He curled up into a fetal position—as much as his coffin would allow—and shook with all the fragility of a leaf in the wind.

My insides somersaulted at the sight of my stoic, unbreakable priest, vulnerable and afraid of whatever haunted his sleep.

Who was Elijah?

Whoever he was, Sterling wore the name on his tongue with all the visceral woe of a sailor’s widow cursing the sea for stealing her true love.

It shook me down to my core.

Tears stung my eyes as I watched this version of my silver prince I’d never seen before. He rocked himself as he moaned and growled and clawed at the interior of his coffin.

I noted the countless scratches.

How many days had he spent like this? The thought of him alone, sweating and tossing and screaming in his sleep as the demons of his past visited him when his armor was off and his mind was pliant made my throat burn with acid.

“Don’t touch me,” Sterling snarled, low and guttural, the hostile spit of his voice etched with terror.

I couldn’t sit here and watch him like this anymore. My human instincts screamed in my ear not to wake the vampire, but my monster wasn’t giving me any other option. I reached for my mate, trembling fingertips stroking over his sweat-soaked temple.

“Shh, it’s okay. Wake up. You’re safe.”

The vampire bolted upright with speed unparalleled to anything I’d seen before. Or didn’t see, rather. I couldn’t track the blur of his hand as it snapped for me.

“Ster—” I couldn’t even get out his name.

Fingers as strong as a steel vice clapped around my throat. I felt myself being lifted off the ground and slammed down onto the couch so hard, my lungs slapped together. The force left me sputtering against my mate’s ferocious grip.

My monster pressed at my surface, ready to protect me, but I held her back. With everything I had in me, I kept her at bay. I knew the moment she came out, he’d kill me.

In this feral, unhinged state, all Sterling recognized was what he could see.

My aura.

The one that he’d told me reminded him of his master.

Gasping for air, the edges of my vision started to go black.

Leaning forward, the vampire’s pale hair fell in pieces to frame his angular jaw, slivers of his pale-red eyes shining through. They blazed with so much hatred that my monster whimpered in anguish.

He bared his ivory fangs at me.

My pussy throbbed at the sight of their virulent, needled tips. I had no right being turned on by the sight of them. Not now, not when he didn’t realize who it was he had pinned beneath him, ready to rip my throat out.

My twisted mind being what it was, I didn’t think about my throat. Not with the way my core throbbed, growing slick as my train of thought drifted to when he’d bitten me a couple of nights back...right at the place I ached for him.

My clit piercing twinged with a heady, tickling heat. Arousal bled from my thighs.

Sterling’s nostrils flexed as he took in my scent. He blinked—something he never did. His expression shifted from a cornered feral wolf to that of the man I recognized.

“Ruby?” His voice was barely his own.

I couldn’t get enough air to speak past the crushing embrace of his fingers, so I jerked my head instead.

Unadulterated horror ebbed across his face. Releasing my throat, he flung himself to the other end of the couch, scrambling to put distance between us as he clutched the wrist of the offending hand as if he was gaming to rip it off for its crime.

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