Page 68 of That Sik Luv

There’s no going back from this. Once Briony sees me, she either accepts the truth and embraces our destiny of destruction together, or I’ll be forced to complete the job I’d never intended to finish.

Chapter thirty-four

Formidable Faces

Hisarmsaroundmespeak an entirely different language than the words of his body in the woods. Hands hold on to me in a new, unexpected embrace. Comforting. Almost gentle and protective.

Aero is carrying me to the bathroom of one of the strangest cabins I’ve ever seen.

I wouldn’t define it as a cabin. The word cabin to me implies something old, rustic, and warm. This is a sleek shell of modern. With its linear architecture, the exterior boasts high-end craftsmanship, echoing that same design in the interior. Nothing but black walls, granite floors, furniture that’s practically scraping the floor with its low height, and floor to ceiling windows facing an entirely hidden forest behind us.

This looks like a billionaire’s getaway, not a homeless stalker who fucks his conquests in the woods, smashing their face into the earth beneath them.

What we did out there was animalistic. It was organically primal. The raw passion of his unrelenting need stirs my internal femininity into a cyclone of desire. Needing him to claim me as his in his woods, craving his release on me like some sort of marked property. I realized I enjoyed the submission during sex. I loved to feel owned and belittled in order to open myself to feeling that freeing release. It was oddly cathartic for a woman who fights wars for equality on a daily basis.

The orgasm I experienced out there in that dirt defies everything I should want out of sex and intimacy, and yet, it terrifies me entirely, because I don’t think I can see the act any other way now. Becoming one flesh is whatHeintended for us. Sex is its own form of worship, and what we did was nothing short of honoring this newfound religion we’ve created. If it’s not that type of primal passion, that spine-tingling demand of his body inside the deepest part of mine, I don’t want it.

Exhaustion is taking over, and my eyelids are growing heavy. He sets me on the counter of the expansive and sleek bathroom as he starts up one of the largest walk-in showers I’ve ever seen, returning to me with a small white hand towel.

Going to pick me up again, I grab his forearm, stopping him. Steam billows above the black granite floors, and I turn my back to Aero to look at myself in the mirror.

Mud and dirt cover the right side of my face where I was held down. There’s foliage in my hair, and I note the presence of smeared blood near my mouth from his wound. My shirt is ripped open and my breasts spill over the edge of my bra. My skirt is covered in dirt and my knees are black from the wet soil. I look ravaged. I look raw in my reflective form. The furthest thing from beautiful, and yet, with the flush in my cheeks, the swell of my lips, and the belly twisted with never-ending lust, I’ve never felt more ethereal.

“For we are God’s masterpiece...” he quotes near my ear, staring into my eyes in the reflection before us. “Your beauty is my chokehold.”

“Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised,” I retort, pulling a stick from my hair.

His eyes stay locked on mine as I take in the mess of paint smearing off his face.

“Do you see it now?” he asks, circling me to grab the hand towel. He wets it with water from the sink near me before ringing it out and standing behind me again. His hands brace the counter around me as he leans over me, his chin practically resting on my shoulder as he speaks into my ear. “How they try to tame the wild in you? How they focus on detainingHisown natural creation in its purest, most exquisite form? We are created inHisimage, are we not?”

He takes the towel and wipes the dirt from my cheek. I gaze at my image. The woman before me, made inHisimage. The one who seeks freedom in the expression of her body, the opening of her soul to another. Yes, there is no marital union between us, but does that make what we’re doing of any less worth? Are we idolizing all the things the Lord himself asks us to deny? Is my God a truly jealous God?

“For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous,” I recite, the words falling from my lips from years of studying the word. But these words: disobedience, obedience; they fill with new meaning, a new understanding as the man behind me looks on.

Aero reads me in my reflection.

“Never fall in line with the disciplines of men who restrict the freedom of thought. It encourages immorality rather than reducing it. They assume utopia rather than expecting realism. Your religion is a man-made institution that uses fear and intimidation to maintain power over you. But the true power resides in you, Briony. It resides in you, and it resides in me. For we are of this earth, not some dreamed illusion of men who came before us.”

I swallow as he holds the warm cloth at my cheek, gazing into my eyes in the mirror. This inevitable, universal truth lays its weight over me. Everything he’s declaring comes from a man scorned from the exact teachings he’s professing. But where in that lies the faith? I may not agree with all the teachings of my school and my religion, but I hold steadfast to my beliefs in something greater, whereas this man has lost any semblance of faith.

“There is right and there is wrong. There is good and there is evil,” he continues. “But their definitions bend for those who wield the ability to manufacture their own fate. The words distort for them. Conform to what they need to hold tight the power over naivety. But in this life, Briony, the disadvantaged either break or build from the shards of their own shattered bones. The weak hit a darkness so low that existence becomes secondary to revealing the pragmatic truths.”

My legs tremble while my stomach churns uncomfortably at the words spilling from his tormented soul. He’s revealing a version of his own story, somehow effectively aligning it to mine because, as he assumes, we are one and the same.

“And what is that truth, Aero?” I ask cautiously.

He sighs, the powerful muscles of his chest stretching his sweatshirt taut while flexing his jaw beneath the paint. Grabbing the towel from the counter where he placed it before me, I turn to face him. His hazel eyes burn through mine as he continues to lean over me. He removes his sweatshirt with one hand behind his back, letting it fall to the floor beside us before gazing back up at me. His hair is a mess of dark, intertwined locks hanging loosely across his forehead. With one hand, I push it back, taking the other hand and cupping his coal-covered face.

He reluctantly allows my touch. Basking in his discomfort, he raises his chin. I feel him attempt the impossible. Submitting himself over to me.

I study him with cautious eyes as I slowly remove the paint, his gaze never once deterring from mine. Then tension is thick, the energy of the room around us charged, as he lets me clean him, washing the remnants from his eyebrow where that large, fleshy scar comes into view. I continue running the cloth along his lips, peering at them as his warm breath leaves his parted lips, the tension increasing with every swipe of the cloth. I continue until his face is clean enough to get the full view before me.

The air feels taken from me. As if there’s an invisible weed climbing its way into my body, wrapping itself around my lungs, constricting their expansion, stripping me of oxygen.How could it be?

“You’re...” I shake my head, my face distorted with pure confusion.

I see it now. The resemblance is uncanny.

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