“Do you think I like feeling this way?” I question with a booming voice. “Fuck you, Noah,” I explode and turn to face him. “I don’t need sympathy and I sure the fuck don’t need a sermon!”
He turns slowly with an apparent look of trepidation. With a forced, uncomfortable smile, he shakes his head.
“Do you want to know why I came back?” I continue, prepared to leave everything on the proverbial floor—tearing the wound open and letting it all pour out. “I came back because I was fucked up enough to believe that I could start my life over here. But that was just another one of my grand delusions, wasn’t it?’
He remains motionless, standing there as if he’s nothing more than a canvas I can throw my emotional paint at...
And I’m not finished. Not even close. “How very fucking pretentious of me to believe. I was supposed to be somebody, but I’m nothing. Do you understand that? I’m nothing but a whore.” Tears pour down my face, crawling against my quivering lips and shielding my vision. Noah begins to fade away and all that’s left to scream at are blurry shadows of where he used to stand. “I’m a stripper, I’m a whore. And the worst fucking part about it is that I never had a goddamn choice.”
With a pained swipe across my face, I try to clear the tears with my palm. It works well enough so that I can see Noah again, standing in the same exact position as before, with the same exact damn empty look on his face. “Say something,” I scream. “You want to say something, I know you do. So just fucking say what’s on your mind.” Out of energy, my screams wind down to lowly pleading. “Say anything. Say anything—something—to shut me up.”
His tongue passes over his lips. He sighs and takes a gulp. “Do you think you’re the only one that’s fucked up, Faith?’ he asks as soft as a whisper. “Take a look at me.” He throws his palms outward, similar to a man on the run surrendering to the police. “I became a preacher because I thought I could save someone—anyone—from feeling the pain I felt the night our world caught fire.”
“Stop,” I whisper, realizing I’ve opened Pandora’s Box.
He shakes his head a defiant no. “But I couldn’t save Luke,” he chokes on his words and his eyes grow heavy. “So what was the fucking point?” He bends down and gently sits the bottle of whiskey on the cherry floors. “My faith saved me, but now it’s six months gone. I look up into the sky and my entire body fills with rage.” The pupils in his eyes do acrobats, as if they’re searching for an escape from his body. But he finally manages to look at me, the way he always used to look at me, even if his eyes have been overtaken with fire. “I’m ready to burn.”
There’s silence in the cold air, a haunting chill circling the both of us, followed by a brief moment of understanding. But the palpable tension remains, lurking in the edges of our psyches. Someone might be thrown through the frozen windows.
“I think about the fire all the time.” He takes a long, drawn out breath while staring blankly right through me. “And what it would feel like to feel the burn against my skin. But every time I sit on the precipice of pain, I’m reminded that I can’t feel anything. Not anymore.” His lips quiver and I notice the visible restraint written all over his face. He’s about to say something he doesn’t want to say—or something he’s not supposed to say. “Nothing but you…”
He grabs at the hem of his t-shirt and pulls it to his face, patting away the dampness that has set in. The folds of his abs, highlighted by the shadows of lingering darkness, speak to me.
“Fuck me,” I declare and place my palm on his exposed abs. He stares down at me wide-eyed and considerate. “Let’s fuck the pain away.”
“No,” he says and wraps his hand around my wrist. “We can’t.”
I shake his hand off me and grab at the hem of his shirt, pulling it higher as I try to persuade him. “It’s the only medication that’s every worked. Trust me, I know.”
He stands still, his entire body pulled taut. With one last tug, I pull the shirt over his head leaving his upper-body bare. A heavy silver cross hangs from his neck, held by a thick chain. I take notice of his body and come to terms with the truth that he’s not the same Noah I used to know. He’s harder, but fragile. He’s stronger, but broken. He’s hungry, but afraid.
“Fuck me, Noah.”
He paces backwards, almost tripping over himself in an attempt to escape me. “You know I can’t, despite what happened in the bar earlier.”
“There’s a list of things you can’t do, but you do them anyway.” I grab a half-drank glass of whiskey off the counter and model it for him. “This? You can’t drink this, but you do it anyway.” I slam it against the floor where it shatters into a thousand shards of sharp glass. “You curse! You fantasize about touching me, but you won’t actually do anything about it!”
“It’s not that simple!”
“What fucking is?”
He’s speechless, his heaving chest speaking volumes his lips can’t. “I’m compromised, Faith.”
Careful step after careful step, I avoid the sharpest pieces of glass as I make my way to him. “Then let me fix you, even if the absolution is only temporary.” When I’m close enough to touch him, I merely tease him. Standing close enough that the heat of my body warms him in this hellish cold loft. “I just want to feel something.”
“Okay,” he mutters softly. “Okay.”
He leans over me and presses his lips against mine. They’re rough and familiar, and all the bullshit begins to fade away. I push myself into him, taking hold of his back with no intention of ever letting go.
I’m not sure if the tears welling up in my eyes again are from happiness or something dark and blue.
I also don’t care.
12
Noah’s hands fold against my ass, groping me through my jeans. With his strong arms, he lifts me off the ground, not once taking his complete attention off of me. His teeth sink into my lips passionately, violently.
He begins to move, carrying me toward the window, but grimaces in pain and almost drops me half way. “The glass,” he pants as he continues to drive us toward the window. When we reach it, my back is thrown against the cool window. My body held against the frosted glass by his powerful thighs.
His lips are removed from my own, and he pulls back so that the moonlight kisses his cheeks with shades of innocence. In this moment, through the trajectory of his unaffected gaze, I remember the way things used to be—the way things will never be again.
My palm rests on his cheek, soaking in the view of his lust-filled face. He’s waiting for something and I can’t figure out what it is. “It’s okay,” I promise him with a gentle whisper and grab the back of his head, pulling him back into my mouth.
I’m lodged between two extremes—excruciating heat and freezing hearts. His body to the front and the cold grasp of November to my back. My lips tremble with every lap of his tongue and burn with every bite. My fingers dig into his back, craving for escalation.
I retreat from his kiss and pant against his neck, “What are you waiting for?”
“Absolution.”
“It’s okay,” I reiterate. “I promise.”
“Fine,” he growls. “I’ll work on my demons in the morning.”
Then he’s at it again, devouring every piece of me that’s available—leaving a wet trail of kisses on the slant of my neck. When I begin to slip, he lifts me forcefully back up with his thighs and slams me against the window.
Which hurts, but not enough to overtake the pleasure. Faintly, I hear a crackling sound coming from behind me, so I jump free from Noah’s grip. I spin around to face the glass and see a crack creeping across the frozen panes.
“That was an accident,” he says dryly. “It’s about to get real cold in here.”
“Then let’s get out of here.”
In one quick motion, he scoops me into his arms and marches to the bedroom, his feet crunching across broken glass. He’s able to hold me with one hand as the other twists the knobs.
It
’s a small room with only a few feet of space on each side of his queen size bed. He steals a kiss before grabbing the hem of my shirt and ripping it over my head. He plants another kiss against my lips before I’m airborne as I’m thrown from his arms and onto the cool silk sheets that cover his bed.
He’s on top of me in an instant, licking a path from the edge of my jeans all the way to the folds of my breast. A palm creeps under my bra and runs over my hard nipples before groping the entirety of my breast with a firmness reserved to the strongest of men.
But he moves, too slow, to the finely tuned romanticism of a non-existent violin. I roll on top of him and slide down to the lip of his jeans. I’m well-versed in popping buttons, and I do it so quick that by the time I wrap my lips around his cock, surprise isn’t a word that fits into his vocabulary.
“Fuck,” he mutters and wipes his palms against his face.
I’ve tasted more dicks in my life than the average woman would in the span of five lifetimes. To say I’m a pro would be the understatement of the century—after all, I’ve been paid for this very act numerous times.
But this is different. It’s Noah and it’s wrong. But also kind of right. The solace I find as his smooth dick passes over my lips is heaven-sent. His entire body quivers, shaking from toe to head. It’s been at least five years since he’s been laid and he’s getting impatient.
He grabs at my arms and pushes me to the side and then onto my back as he hovers over me. He rips at his jeans, sliding them down the length of his long legs before they fall to the floor with a clatter of his belt.
Under the moonlight, his body glows like an angel. Sent from above to absolve me of my sins and pain, even it if’s only fleeting. He pops the button on my jeans and pulls them—and my panties—off in one righteous swipe. He’s immediately back to me—servicing me with a kiss against my nipple.
He’s insatiable. Wanting—needing—devouring every part of me. His fingers spread me apart while his tongue sings a tune I’ve all but forgotten. My toes curl into the satin sheets, getting tangled in a web of intolerable pleasure.
Glass shatters from the living room. It momentarily steals my attention, but in an instant, I’m pulled back into the folds of pleasure as Noah inserts another finger. My back arches on the bed, and my hands fly to the headboard for safety.
The wind begins to howl and slips under the cracks of the door. “Noah,” I nudge him gently and he cranes his head to face the door. With a stretched arm, he reaches over the side of the bed and throws a blanket over our naked bodies—trapping our heat underneath.
He continues to run his fingers into me, going deeper and wider with every thrust. I can feel his slick knuckles against my opening, almost begging for entrance.
“Turn over,” he commands as he pulls his fingers from my pussy. I do as he says, but the blanket falls to the floor. I’m hit with a burst of coldness, but when his dick aligns with my cunt, I instantly begin to warm up. “Are you sure you want this,” he asks softly.
“Are you?”
There’s no verbal answer, just his dick sliding into me. I exhale harshly as his width spreads me open and he takes every part of me that I can give. I let out a light yelp when his pelvis slams against my ass.
He holds me by the hips, rocking gently into me and taking his time. For a five-year virgin, I’m shocked he has any restraint. But he does and with no idea that what I really want is to be fucked into headboard.
His rocking channels into thrusting, pulling himself as far as he can go without pulling out, and then carefully rocking back in. I reach around with one hand, grabbing his ass and pulling him into me. I think he gets the hint.
He pounds me from behind, his fingers digging into my hips with every thrust. When it all becomes too much, I throw my fist against the brick wall. A large wooden crucifix drops from the wall and lands with a loud thud against the floor.
Since the revelation of Luke’s death and my subsequent emotional coma, it’s within the confines of each thrust that I discover what it means to be alive again. His cock becomes a driving force, a motivation to press on. A reminder that even the deadest of souls can find a reason to live.
I relish every buck of his hips and every moan that escapes his lips. There is nowhere in the world I’d rather be than underneath Noah Parker, if for no other reason than his cock being the key to not completely falling apart.
So even as my body breaks, shuddering in indescribable pleasure as my pussy tightens around him, I’m still whole. My entire body shakes and my mind is stirred, breaking reality with clouded thoughts. I feel nothing but release, but see a haunted face when I close my eyes.
It’s Luke. Sadness overtakes me and I beg to Noah, “Don’t stop.”
But he stops and I drop onto my belly, but roll onto my back. He’s lost in a sea of ragged breaths, trying to regain his composure, but he’s worn out and glistening with sweat.
He falls onto fists, his head hovering right above mine. Without the use of his hands, he guides his cock against me as he thrusts with one perfected punch.
His eyes go feral, his hips slamming into me without so much of an apology. This is what I craved—a fuck that’s free from the weight of the world. It’s just fucking. Sweet, beautiful fucking.
He fucks me fast, and he fucks me furious. He tears me up from the inside, and I begin to scream in agonizing ecstasy. “Fuck… fuck… fuck…” I cry as he has his way with me, using me for all the same reasons I was using him.
To feel alive.
The cross that hangs from his neck teeters within an inch of my face. I snatch it in my palms and hold onto it as he continues to fuck me into fifty shades of entropy.
When he’s on the verge of coming and begins to draw out, I lock my heels behind his ass and pull him further into me. “Faith,” he moans while pulling his hips backward, trying to free himself from my grasp so he can come where it’s safe.
But I don’t want safe. I want to feel him quake while he’s still inside of me. I want him to release all the pain, all the demons into me. And I’m not naïve—with his strength, if he wanted to pull out, he’d been out as soon as he made up his mind.
He wants this just as much as I do. “Fuck,” he cries out and slams into me one last time, all the way to the hilt and then another scorching inch.
We stare into each other’s eyes with a hint of understanding as he comes down from the euphoric high his career of choice had robbed him of and as the uncertainty fades, all that’s left is guilt.
All that’s left is sin.
Teaser
NOAH
I left Faith in my bed this morning.
She came back into my life at the exact wrong moment. She came back into my life at the end of the road where certainty is only rivaled by the absolution found in death. I follow no one and live for nothing. And for those who’ve crossed me and stolen from me, they will find themselves on their knees. And then they’ll pray that there’s a God to end their suffering.
But it won’t matter.
I twist the key into the padlock and push the door open. I block the muffled cries out and step to the darkest of the four walls. My hands run along a trail of tools that hang until my fingers tangle around a pair of bolt cutters.
These will do.
* * *
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Also by K.B Nelson
Carnival Series
Carnival
Carnival Nights
Amusement (Coming Soon)
Tainted Love
Faithless #1
Faithless #2
Faithless #3
Anthologies
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Faithless #1: A Tainted Love Serial Page 6