by Luis, Maria
And what ulterior motive did you have for saving Isla Quinn?
None.
I hadn’t thought twice. Instinct guided my feet forward. Instinct guided my fingers to her neck, checking—no, praying—that her pulse would still be fluttering beneath my touch. And instinct guided my arms around her body, swiftly picking her up before any more harm could come to her.
I had no motive—nothing but an unexpected, devastating need to see her safe and out of harm’s way.
Softly, I hear my name trip off her tongue, a question hovering within the two syllables.
I swallow, tightly, and twist around to give her my back. “You did try to strangle me,” I mutter, all too aware of the grit in my voice.
Isla laughs. “I said that I was grateful, not that I was a saint.”
Chest tight, I flatten my mouth, killing a smile before it can even breathe itself into existence. “Nor am I—a saint, I mean.” Unable to stop myself, I trace the scarred flesh behind my ear. 502. A reminder of who I am, now, yesterday, and forevermore. “The only outcome of you telling me who wants me dead is more violence.”
“You told me that knowledge is power.”
“I did.”
I hear her footsteps behind me, coming closer, until she’s at my back. Slowly, I slide my eyes shut and simply . . . listen. To her steady breathing, to the wood floor groaning beneath her slight weight, to the movement she makes, as though she’s tempted to lean forward and lay a hand on my spine—but won’t.
“Maybe you’re ready to chance death, Saxon Priest, but everything I’ve done in life has been to run the opposite way of it. I don’t . . . I don’t let people in, not anymore. But you saved me, and I’ll be damned if I don’t do the same for you.”
I spin around, but she doesn’t stumble back. No, not Isla Quinn. She holds her ground, cants her head up so that our gazes clash, and even when I growl, “Don’t,” she doesn’t obey.
“A group of loyalists want you dead. Peter overheard them when he stumbled across one of their meetings on campus.”
“On campus?”
Isla shifts her weight from one foot to the other. “At Queen Mary.”
I lower my chin, getting close to her face. “You’re telling me that a bunch of bloody uni kids want to take me out, and you think I ought to be . . . what, frightened?”
“Yes,” she says simply, like I’m short a marble or two.
“I doubt they’re savvy enough to even know where to find their own balls.”
When I turn away, Isla latches a hand around my bicep and keeps me rooted in place. I could easily throw her off, if I wanted. But I don’t want. Every part of me fixates on her fingers squeezing my arm. When was the last time I allowed a woman to touch me? Really touch me, with her mouth on my flesh and her limbs wrapped around my body?
Never.
My aversion to being touched has been a part of me for as long as my scarred mouth. No kissing. No touching. It’s me who does the fucking, and my interactions with the opposite sex have only ever been about scratching an itch until the next time it rears its ugly head and I do it all over again.
Guy was right about me—I don’t do pets and I don’t do gentle and I don’t do affection.
And yet, my fingers close over Isla’s and instead of tearing them away, as I’ve been known to do before with rare, unwanted advances, I find myself soaking up the once-in-a-lifetime sensation of a woman not shirking away at the very thought of laying a hand on my body.
Fucking hell.
Completely unaware of my internal struggle, Isla argues, “You’re not immortal, Saxon. I don’t care how many times you’ve come out a scuffle alive, you are not immortal.”
The devil controls my tongue when I grunt, “Careful, Miss Quinn, or I may get the impression that you actually care about what happens to me.”
Her blue eyes fly wide. “I-It’s as I said before, I—”
“Yes, I heard. Without me, you’re proper screwed.”
“No, not—I mean, bloody hell, yes, that too,” she stammers awkwardly, fumbling over her words in such a familiar way that I nearly take pity.
Nearly.
“So, you want to save me.” Her hand, still fitted beneath mine, tenses. In fear? Self-preservation? Lust? “What is it that you’d have me do? Drive to Queen Mary and murder every one of those kids? Should I learn where they sleep—slit their throats before they can return the favor?”
Her lips part and snap shut, once, twice. “You’re trying to unsettle me.”
I drag her closer. “I’m discussing my options.”
“No,” she retorts, her voice dipped in an emotion that I can’t decipher, “you’re pulling on the same mask you wore when we met. Cold. Callous. Maybe that act works on your brothers or Jack, but it won’t with me. Don’t insult my intelligence by pretending otherwise.”
“No one said anything about your intelligence,” I edge out, heat flooding my veins. “You don’t know me, Isla. You have no idea what I’ve done—what I’ve chosen to do.”
“The tortured villain spiel would be more compelling if I didn’t already know you’re a killer.”
Jesus. Christ. The fucking mouth on her.
Releasing her hand, I spin on my heel and put some much-needed distance between us before I do what my hard cock is begging for—to shove her on the closest flat surface, even the unforgiving wood floor, and strip her naked. I’d show her how she’s wrong, how coldness is all I’ve ever known. Her pants torn down around her ankles, her hands pinned down by her sides. Each callous thrust inside her heat would prove to be her worst nightmare.
Cold. Callous.
Me.
If I had any hope of being anything but what I am, that ship sailed years ago.
I plant my balled fists on the kitchen table, my bruised knuckles bearing the brunt of my weight. The tightness of my cracked, healing skin aches and reminds me that I’m human—not immortal, not the icy veneer that I wear like a second skin.
A red-blooded man, just like any other.
I despise the vulnerability, just as much as I despise the idea of being at a woman’s mercy.
Isla’s mercy.
Harsh, angry words spill from my mouth. “Go the bloody hell home.”
I feel her shocked gasp like a knife plunging between my ribs.
“Isla, go home.”
“Really?” I can almost imagine her shaking her strawberry-blond hair back from her face, her pert chin shoved up with insolence. “I’m to hop to your every command, then? You tell me to run, and I sprint. You tell me to fall on the blade, and I aim it straight for my heart.”
I cast her a sharp look over my shoulder. “You work for me—or have you forgotten?”
“You told me to call you whatever I wanted, and the only thing that comes to mind is coward.”
If she were anyone else, she’d be bleeding out on the floor already.
My nostrils flare at her brazenness. “You’re on thin ice, Miss Quinn.”
Fiery confidence bleeds from her expression when she counters, “Except for when I’ve been slung over your shoulder like a rag doll, thin ice is how we operate. It seems my tail has gotten tired of hiding between my legs and can’t be bothered to get with the program anymore.”
Air comes fast, pumping into my lungs at such an alarming rate that I feel unsteady.
Isla Quinn is thawing me out, and nothing about that sits well with me.
Get this conversation done with—now.
“Tomorrow, after confessional,” I say from behind clenched teeth, refusing to even acknowledge what she’s said with a suitable response. “Meet me at the pub. Don’t be late.”
Sarcasm clings to her slender frame when she clicks her heels together and salutes me with two fingers—a sod off, if I’ve ever seen one. “Of course, boss,” she says, every word soaked in saccharine sweetness, “I wouldn’t dare disappoint you, boss.”
First Jack, now her.
I’ve been thrown into an alter
nate universe that’s my own version of hell.
It takes everything in me not to squeeze my eyes shut and burst into a chorus of a thousand curses. “Tomorrow,” I reiterate stiffly.
She moves to the door, hips swaying angrily, hair flicking out behind her like a mane of candlelit strands. Ripping the bloody thing open, she pauses on the threshold. Her shoulders rise with a heavy breath, and, in the rarest display of vulnerability that I’ve ever been shown—by anyone—she touches her forehead to the door frame.
A gift.
That’s how this moment feels, like she’s gifted me some forever elusive puzzle piece to humanity that’s escaped me.
She turns her head, her temple still kissing the wooden frame, before her gaze fixes on my face. “Friends keep each other alive.”
Just like that, the imaginary ropes encircling my wrists finally chafe hard enough to draw blood. “We aren’t friends,” I tell her, my voice hoarse.
She pauses, her blue eyes flitting over me, before she pushes back. “We could be, Saxon, if only you’d let us.”
And then she leaves, as I demanded of her, and I’m alone.
The way I’ve always been.
The way I’ll always be.
Forever.
16
Isla
Father Bootham is right on time.
I hear the door to his side of the confessional click closed, and then the rustle of heavy robes being resituated as he sits.
Without Saxon here to invade my personal bubble, the confessional is surprisingly roomy.
Fucking Saxon.
In the twenty-something hours that have passed since I fled Guy’s flat, I’ve hovered between wanting to skewer Saxon where he stands, with the sharpest object I can find, and the utterly inexplicable desire to ask him how he can be so flippant with his life.
It’s no secret that he’s lived roughly. One glance at his face and I can only imagine the thousands of stories that he must keep locked away behind his formidable, don’t-try-me attitude. Saxon Priest is no sweetheart, that’s for sure, but his barks don’t terrify me—they only pique my curiosity.
Father Bootham’s voice startles me from my thoughts. “My child, shall we begin?”
Bollocks. One day in and I’m already on the verge of cocking it all up. “Yes, sorry. Apologies, Father.” His answering silence stretches on, awkwardly, until I remember that I’m meant to play the dutiful role of a parishioner seeking penance. Think of the money, think of the money, think of the money. “Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been”—approximately my entire lifetime since I’ve done this for real—“three days since my last confession.”
“Welcome back, my child.” Father Bootham’s voice warms, when he adds, “No need to be nervous.”
My fingers grip the bench. “I’m not nervous.”
“Is that so? If you think any louder, I fear you’ll implode.”
At his unexpectedly wry humor, a laugh slips off my tongue. One glance at the dark wood around me reminds me that I’m in a church, and the laughter dries up faster than rain falling in the Sahara. “Apologies.” I bite my bottom lip. “Again.”
“No apologies required . . . again.”
I squeeze my fingers around the bench’s wooden lip, trying to smother another chuckle.
“Tell me what’s on your mind, my child.”
What’s on my mind isn’t fit for a priest’s ears. I want to storm over to The Bell & Hand and get in Saxon’s face until he ceases to be a complete bellend. I want to feel his strong fingers intertwined with mine again. And, more than anything, I want him to realize that we’re allies in this, not enemies. We both want the same thing. Why he feels the need to thrust me away, as though I’ve offered him nothing of worth, feels almost worse than the guilt that continues to gnaw away at my soul.
Yesterday, for the span of a heartbeat, I’d felt united in our misery. Saxon understood. He understood me. And then the bloody bastard had to rip the proverbial rug out from beneath my feet and remind me, all too bluntly, that I am alone.
Well and truly alone.
A quiet knock on the screen recaptures my attention and I fabricate a lie, just like all the others I’ve told in recent years. “I feel . . . uncertain.” When Father Bootham says nothing, I hurry to elaborate. “In my place here. What I’m meant to say. How much I’m not allowed to say.”
“There are no boundaries,” the priest replies smoothly. “I give you information. You dole that out. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“And you don’t worry that the information may land in the wrong hands?” I ask before I can stop myself. But, oh hell, do I wish I could snatch the words back. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Saxon is going to absolutely murder me—and, given his history, I’m not at all sure that he wouldn’t actually do it. “Never mind. I’m sorry, that was a nosy question. Let’s forget I even asked.”
“I have ears, my child.”
I swallow, hard.
He continues in that self-assured, no-nonsense tone of his. “I know the risks I face by helping the Priests. All it takes is one word breathed in the wrong direction and everything I’ve worked for will come crashing down around me. I wouldn’t survive the fallout, that I know.”
“Then why—”
“Because we’re put on this earth to believe, and it is up to us to decide what we believe in. I choose God or, perhaps, He chose me. That belief lives in my veins, in my soul. It is who I am.”
“And Queen Margaret?”
“Others may say that He chose her, and so we all must too.”
I slide my arse to the bench’s edge. “But you don’t think that?”
Silence reigns, casting a chill over my skin. Then, “I believe that the queen has peace in her. I believe that she leads with love, where her father led with fear. I believe that, if we only offered her a chance, she would give us unity, safety, and a country that inspires hope, not never-ending deceit.”
Deceit.
Here I am, doing exactly that.
Because I don’t believe—not in the Crown, not in our queen, not in anything that carries the stamp of King John.
“I think . . . I think that the world needs more people like you, Father Bootham.”
He issues a soft chuckle. “My child, the world is already filled with people like me—if only you look hard enough.” Before I can edge another word in, he adds, “Now, let us get to it, shall we? The congregation has been chatty, and while most of it sounds quite the norm, one thing leaves me worried.”
My ears perk up. “Whatever it is, I’ll be sure to pass it along.”
“We all carry our struggles,” he says, almost as if he’s reassuring himself, rather than confiding in me, “and those struggles weigh heavily on our shoulders.”
Even though he can’t see me, I nod. “Yes.”
“You asked me who I believe in. I believe in the Lord, I believe in our queen, and I believe in the Priests. And believing in the latter two is the cross I bear, for when they cross hairs . . .”
I have no idea how Saxon does this twice per week. Listening, lying to the priest’s face, pretending all will be well before turning around and using the information to further dismantle the institution.
Guilt strains my fingers as I knit my hands together in my lap and bite my tongue to keep from shouting, “Please! Don’t tell me!”
My morals are slipping away faster than I can even think to tie them to me for safe keeping.
“A mother came in,” he continues, the angst in his voice weighing down my own conscience. “Her son attends Queen Mary.”
Queen Mary. As in the same university that Peter attends, Queen Mary.
Thank God for the screen separating us because Father Bootham goes on, completely unaware that all the blood has drained from my face. “In any other circumstance, I might hesitate to relay this information, but I find that I cannot hold my tongue. When the son visited for family dinner, he was . . . inebriated. He confessed that he had joined a group�
��led by one of the university’s professors—who believe that . . . that Saxon Priest killed the king.”
“He didn’t do it,” I whisper, feeling every bit the liar that I’ve become. “It wasn’t Saxon.”
“I know.” Father Bootham sighs. “I’ve been doing this for a long time, you know. I know when someone gives me untruths, just as I know when someone bleeds good faith.”
I tremble.
Right there in the confessional, before God, before Father Bootham, I tremble with fear. Saliva sticks to the roof of my mouth, and no matter how many times I swallow, I find myself on the verge of tearing out of this prison box of worship and hightailing it out of Christ Church, never to return again.
I half expect Father Bootham to wait me out until I confess to all of my misdeeds, but he doesn’t, too wrapped up in his own quandary to ponder my sudden silence. “I was told they’ve hatched a plan to do away with Saxon. The details are sketchy, at best, and not entirely reliable. The boy was drunk, and the mother too horrified that her son was concocting a murder scheme to demand he tell her everything.”
Finally, I manage, “Did she go to the police?”
I can practically imagine Father Bootham shaking his head. “The Met is unreliable, as you well know. They’d just as soon put her boy in a prison cell as praise him for doing what most of the city wants done.”
The likelihood that this boy and the men that Peter overheard talking are two different groups seems far-fetched. Peter told me in warning, so that I wouldn’t inevitably involve myself and get caught in the middle. Father Bootham is telling me now so that I can warn Saxon.
Which I’ve already done to no avail, the stubborn bastard.
I run my fingers through my hair, digging my fingertips into my scalp. “If I tell Saxon, you know what will happen.”
A small pause before, “That is my own sin to bear.”
“But you believe in him.”
“I believe in him as much as I believe in myself.”