Page 54 of Our Sins in Silver (Coven of Sin 3)

I screamed my release, the pleasure of it slamming into me in an explosion of sparks. Stars burst. My head swirled. My pussy tingled.

It was complete and total ecstasy.

He fucked me through two more orgasms before following, his jaw flexing and the cords stretching in his throat. Watching this darker side of him fall apart inside me had to be one of my favorite things I’d ever seen.

There was a wash of liquid, and I hummed as its warmth coated me. Sterling rocked his hips, slowing his movements as if trying to stagger how my body milked him, teasing out the last few seconds. He sagged, and the gate rattled as he held me to him. He kissed the smooth column of my throat—the place I knew he’d mark the moment we woke—and rested his head on my shoulder.

After a few moments of reeling, I breathed a contented sigh. The rain had let up at some point, but the sky had darkened to an ominous purply hue. I frowned, not liking the sensation filling my stomach. My attention dropped, and I wasn’t sure how I hadn’t seen them before. I guess I’d been so caught up in Sterling, I hadn’t noticed the monks and nuns gathering at the gate, clustering around us.

But they weren’t paying any attention to us or the sinful act we’d just committed. Their dread-filled eyes bore right through us and to the road beyond the gate.

“What are they staring at?”

Sterling’s head rose, but whatever captured everybody’s attention fell into his line of sight before he could turn to look at the crowd.

The harrowed look that etched his marred physiognomy made all the warmness of our mating fizzle, and my chest filled with ice. With my prince still inside me, holding me to the gate, I couldn’t look to see what stood in the road.

But I felt it.

Despair and death.

I thought for a second that Sterling’s monster would set me down or at least pull out of me. He was frozen. Unable to move. I craned my head to see what captivated everyone.

Standing in the middle of the road was a lion.

It was huge, with black fur and vampire-red eyes. I didn’t like how my very soul seemed to twist into a pretzel at the sight of the animal. Or how it seemed to drain my magical energy, siphoning it from me and robbing me of my control.

“Ruby.” Sterling’s tone shook me to my core. “Break the spell.Now.”

Fumbling for my magic, it slipped from my grasp like reins being ripped from my hands.

The dream didn’t end. The spell remained steady. Hell, even more than before...because something else had taken control of Sterling’s mind.

There was only one other being who could do that.

My silent horror made Sterling’s gaze snap back to mine, fangs bared and eyes wild. “Do as I say!Do it now!”

I went deathly cold and began to shiver in his arms. Hearing the panicked spike in his voice, I felt something inside me crumble to dust.

“I can’t.”

Chapter twenty-four

The Lion's Prey

Sterling’seyesfilledwitha maelstrom of emotions. Mortification. Contempt. Fear. Calculation. As I searched his stare for comfort—a game plan, maybe—the lion’s heavy glare seared my backside.

A more pleasant heat flared over my cheeks when my prince pulled himself from me with an obscene noise. He shoved himself back in his sweats with one hand while the other pulled the remnants of my nun getup over my breasts as if whatever modicum of modesty he was trying to preserve mattered. With Thomas Knight here, all sense of privacy was pretty much obliterated.

Who knew how long the vampire king had been there,watching? He knew what we’d done. I sensed his wrath rolling in like a storm about to break.

All hell was about to break loose, and without my magic…we were trapped. Prisoners. Powerless to do anything. Bile burned in the back of my throat as I thought of all the fucked-up ways my dad could hurt us here. Sterling’s words from just a few minutes ago played in my mind.

“The worst wounds are dealt in places like this.”

I had a feeling I was about to discover the true depths of his words firsthand.

My mate recovered from his shock before me. He unwound my legs from his waist and set me on my feet. Even Sterling, the thousand-year-old vampire and probably the second strongest in the world was no match against his maker. Even in his own mind he had zero control, not while Thomas Knight pulled the strings. My father had abused the gentle priest in every fathomable way. So, if anyone had the right to cower before the king, it was Sterling.

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