by Pam Godwin
“Go.” Magnus pushed me toward Daisy and bent to wipe up the blood.
She grabbed my hand and pulled me into motion. Okay, wow, it was dark now. Too dark to see the trail I left in my wake. But I felt it trickling down my legs and sliding between my toes.
I glanced back and found Magnus following at a distance. Every couple of steps, he angled down and discreetly swiped a napkin against the floor. I was fucking horrified, but it could’ve been worse. I could’ve been walking out of here alone, with the lights on, illuminating a trail for all to stare at long after I was gone.
“Thank you.” I squeezed Daisy’s hand. “For giving me the courage to walk out of here.”
“Thank you.” She squeezed back. “For giving me the courage to walk in here.”
We exited the gymnasium and stood in the dark entryway. Turning my neck, I watched Magnus throw away the used napkins and return the lights to a soft glow.
The floor was clean. Not a drop as far as I could see.
Down the hall to the right, the line to the only bathroom was ten girls long. Straight ahead, a crowd of students gathered near the doors that led outside. To the left was the side door where I’d spoken to Father Crisanto earlier. No people there. I headed in that direction.
“Tinsley,” Daisy whispered. “Where are you going? The bathroom’s the other way.”
It would be a long walk back to the residence hall in the freezing cold. I would have to clean up and find an adult escort before I could leave this building, but I didn’t want to turn back and face all those people. I couldn’t.
I slipped around the corner and pressed my back against the wall in the vacant hallway, disgusted with myself, humiliated, and on the verge of tears. I held my hands to my eyelids as fire swept through my sinuses and scorched my eyes.
The numb shock that had held me together for the past few minutes was cracking. Tremors overtook my limbs, and boiling pressure built in my throat. I couldn’t stop the tears from falling, but I swallowed down the sounds.
I was so focused on trying to remain quiet that I didn’t sense him until his fingers touched my face. I lowered my hands and stared into eyes so blue they made my chest hurt.
“I don’t care what anyone thinks about me.” I clenched my legs, trapping the cold, sopping wet crotch of my panties between them. “But this is awful. I can’t help it. It’s a painfully humbling experience, and I hate that so many people witnessed it.”
“You handled it with grace and class, Your Highness.” His fingers tiptoed along my jaw, his voice caressing my lips with reverence. “I’ve never seen anything more beautiful in my life.”
“Magnus.” My stomach dipped.
“Tinsley.” His mouth slid down the slope of my neck, curving into a smile that felt like the beginning of a journey. Perhaps the most important journey I would ever take.
The sound of footsteps pounded around the corner. He shifted away just as Daisy burst into view, holding our coats.
“Father Magnus.” She draped my coat over my shoulders. “Can you escort us to the church? Tinsley can use the restroom there and—”
“You’re not leaving.” I pointed in the direction of the gym. “The dance just started. Kevin is in there waiting for you. Go dance with him.”
“No, I’m not staying without—”
“You’re so beautiful, Daisy. Please, don’t let me ruin this night for you. If you leave with me, I’ll feel worse.”
“If I stay, I’ll feel terrible.”
She wanted to stay. I heard it in her voice, saw it in her posture.
“I need you to go in there and defend me.” I slid my arms into the sleeves of the coat, holding her stubborn gaze. “Stand up for me when they call me Tampon Tinsley or whatever dumb names they’ll think up. Father Magnus will escort me back to campus.”
Her shoulders squared, and she stepped forward. As she gripped my hands, she pressed a tampon into one of my palms. She must’ve grabbed it from the bathroom. God love her.
“When I was born,” she said, holding my hands, “my parents took one look at my face and saw something they never wanted to see again. They left the hospital within hours and never came back. No one would adopt me, so a convent of nuns took me in. When I was fourteen, Father Magnus moved me here and gave me the best education in the country for free.” She gave him a grateful smile and returned to me. “When I met you, you took one look at my face and saw me. In that single look, Tinsley Constantine, you showed me how to bravely be me.” She blinked, and a tear rolled down her cheek, compelling my own tears to fall. “I just wanted you to know that.”
Walking backward, she wiped at her face. Her lips lifted in a soft smile, and she disappeared around the corner.
I pulled in a ragged breath, shaking. “That’s heavy.”
“It’s all true.” He clutched my arm and guided me out the side door.
The icy darkness attacked my bare legs, biting through my skin. I dreaded the five-minute walk to the church. But the residence hall was even farther.
I hunkered deeper into my coat and stared at my blood-soaked heels as I shuffled along, following his black shoes. He had such a confident gait, powered by muscle and aggression. It was a sexy swagger and a predatory prowl all rolled into one.
“So you let Daisy go to school here free of charge.” My teeth chattered. “How did that happen?”
“I read about her story in the Catholic Times. It moved me.”
“She’s not the first one, is she? I bet there are others who go here for free. Other students that you help.”
“Does it matter?”
“Yeah. It matters.” I lifted my face to the chilly night sky. “You come across as this scary, grouchy tyrant. But there’s some warm, squishiness inside you. Not a lot. But enough to…move me. Be careful with that, Magnus. You might just steal my heart.”
He said nothing, his concentration seemingly focused on getting us to our destination as quickly as possible.
Once we were out of view of the gymnasium, he gripped my hand. His frigid fingers drew my attention to his black shirt and hunched shoulders. He was freezing.
“Where’s your coat?”
“We’re not going far.”
That was when I noticed he’d led me in the opposite direction of the church and campus. I looked around, noting the quiet side street, the small single-story building, and his car parked beside it.
He tightened his grip and ushered me to the front porch.
“Magnus.” My heart stammered with excitement and worry. “I can’t go in there.”
Without a word, he opened the door and pulled me inside.
CHAPTER 24
TINSLEY
“Take a shower.” Magnus locked the front door and nodded at the short hallway on the left.
Don’t freak out.
It was just a shower. Harmless. Innocent. My cold, blood-caked skin rejoiced at the idea.
He didn’t have to tell me twice.
I shrugged out of my coat and left it on the small couch. As I stepped toward the bathroom, he crossed to the open kitchenette and removed a bottle of whiskey from the cabinet.
His private quarters fit the image I’d created in my mind. Clean, simple, and darkly masculine. He had no more than what he needed—couch, table, bathroom, bedroom—and for some reason, that made me feel instantly welcome and comfortable.
“Your floors.” I glanced down, searching for drops of blood.
“I gave you an order, Tinsley.”
Take a shower.
His bossiness helped shake the tension from my body. All I had to do was take a shower. He would handle the rest.
I needed that.
I needed him more than I was willing to admit, even to myself.
As my heels clicked across the wood flooring, carrying me closer to his bathroom, the scent of him curled through my senses. A virile masculinity that leaked into the deepest places inside me and filled me with warmth and hope.
His presence m
ade it impossible not to dream.
In the small bathroom, I set the tampon on the vanity and closed the door. Then I stripped. The dress went on a hook on the wall. The lacy panties probably should’ve gone in the trash can, but they were my favorite, most expensive pair. Maybe I could hand-wash them?
Shower first.
I folded the underwear, blood and all, into a tiny little triangle and set them in the sink. My long, thick hair, piled in an elaborate updo, had taken me two hours to perfect. So I left it, pulled back the shower curtain, and climbed in.
I stayed in there for at least twenty minutes. Maybe longer. While the water ran from red to clear, I obsessively smelled his soap and shampoo, savoring the cedar scent. Then I rubbed the body wash everywhere, scrubbing away the blood and taking extra time to clean between my legs.
The steam cleared my head, and the aroma of his soap soothed my soul.
I think I have a crush on him.
Was it a crush? Or something else?
I think it’s more.
This went beyond a physical attraction. He’d held me the night I thought Jaden and Willow were dead. He was at my side every step of tonight, during and after my horrific display at the dance. He’d even been there when I pissed on the floor. He hadn’t treated me with disgust. Hadn’t hit me when I was down. He’d lent me his quiet strength without judgment.
I’d never been drawn to a person the way I was drawn to him. Even when he was cruel and terrifying. Even when I despised him. Even when he made me sit in his classroom after school and read the scriptures out loud for hours. Even then, I wanted him in a way I’d never wanted anyone else.
The night I’d met him, he told me that ninety percent of this was how I reacted to it. The other ten percent was happening whether I liked it or not.
I figured my feelings for him, this inexplicable attraction, was the ten percent I couldn’t stop. That meant the rest depended on how I reacted to these feelings.
Turning off the shower, I peeked around the curtain to look for a towel. The first thing I noticed—the dress was gone. The second thing—I wasn’t alone.
I slowly pulled the curtain back, keeping my nudity covered, and froze at the sight of Magnus bent over the vanity. With one hand gripping the edge of the basin, the other held my bloody panties.
“What the fresh hell?” Shame coursed through me.
But there was something else, something twisted and curious about his fascination with my dirty underwear. It filled me with dark delight.
“Come here.” He ran his thumb through the blood with a look of deep and solemn respect in his eyes.
I shivered and heated at once. Snatching a towel off the shelf, I knotted it around my body and joined him at the sink.
“I sometimes forget you’re only eighteen.” He turned on the faucet, falling quiet, seemingly mesmerized as the red-tinged water swirled down the drain.
“Why do you say that?”
“Your reactions to things, to me, are so self-contained and levelheaded. When you get upset, it’s over something important. Something that matters. You have a mature handle on everything around you. Despite the obscenities that come out of your mouth.” His lips twitched. “You’re an old soul.”
“Does blood turn you on?”
“Yours does. Does that scare you?”
“Depends.” My voice quivered. With alarm. With desire. “Do you want to make me bleed?”
“No. I would never cut you or wish to see you bleed in pain. I hated your pain tonight.” His hand fisted in the stream of water. “I loathed it. I don’t want to ever see you hurting like that again. But this?” He uncurled his fingers and dragged his thumb along the bloodstained gusset of the panties. “There’s nothing shameful or dirty about this. It came from you, from such a beautiful, intimate part of you. It represents life. Your life.”
My breath stilled.
Maybe I was crazy, but I loved that. I loved that he wasn’t grossed out by period blood. That was the difference between a boy and a real man.
But with Magnus, it was more complicated than that.
“A month ago…” I sat on the lid of the toilet, marveling at the ease and care with which he washed my underwear. “When I called you a sadist, you said you got help, that you came here, became a priest, and abstained for nine years. I have a lot of questions with regard to that. I’ve been afraid to ask them. Afraid you won’t answer them. Or maybe, I’m afraid you will answer them.”
“Ask them.”
“Do you need to inflict pain to get off?”
“I don’t know.”
“How do you not know?”
“It’s not a simple answer. Not anymore.”
He reached for a bottle of liquid laundry soap and worked a small drop into the lace. Then he plugged the basin and filled it with water to let the panties soak.
“Stand up.” He cleaned his hands and turned to me.
My chin jerked back, but I did as he ordered.
“Remove the towel.” He kept his voice low in a smooth dare that I knew, deep in my gut, would strip me physically and emotionally.
“You don’t want to cross that line.” My pulse accelerated. “You said you would never sin for me.”
“This is your choice, Tinsley. Leave the towel on, and I’ll return your dress and escort you back to the residence hall. There will be no punishment for your decision. We’ll go back to the way things have been for the past three months.”
Back to our daily interactions, unresolved sexual desire, and ceaseless mounting tension without consummation or fulfillment?
“Or?” I asked.
“Remove the towel. Show me your gorgeous body, and we’ll have a conversation about my past and our present.”
“If I do this…” Trembling, I clutched the knot of terrycloth between my breasts. “We’re crossing a line we can’t get back.”
“It’s only one line, not all of them. I’m choosing to cross this one. Now it’s up to you.”
Why now? Why on the night I was bleeding? Maybe my period was a deterrent to sex. But I knew that wasn’t true. After watching him play with my blood, Magnus would never be turned off by a woman’s menstrual cycle.
If I did this, if we got caught, it would bring deadly consequences. My mother would send Ronan to kill him. The henchman would probably show up in broad daylight, aim a gun at Magnus’s head, and shoot him. Just like that.
It would destroy me. I couldn’t even imagine it.
Was this one small risk worth it?
Every student and faculty member from both schools would be at the dance all night.
No one would know.
Whatever this was, whatever Magnus had planned, he didn’t believe I would comply. The truth vibrated in his rigid stance. The indifference in his expression didn’t eclipse the vulnerability he tried to hide in his eyes. He braced for my rejection.
I loosened the knot and dropped the towel.
Too late, I realized what I must look like to him. I was nothing like the women taken in those photos with him ten years ago. All sultry, voluptuous, long-legged models in their thirties, forties, and fifties. He clearly preferred ladies in their social, professional, and sexual prime. Not tiny, short, boobless eighteen-year-olds who were still trying to figure out life.
The thought sank like lead in my stomach, but I refused to let it deflate me.
I would never stand naked before a man and wilt. I wouldn’t cower for him. I wouldn’t disintegrate.
I steeled my shoulders.
He stared at my body, absorbing all my pale, feminine lines without reaction. Resting a hip against the vanity, he cradled his chin on his thumb, curled his fingers against his lips, and continued to assess me as if I were a paper he needed to grade.
He was truly a sadist.
“I had particular preferences when it came to sex and women.” He lowered his arm and slowly deleted the space between us, his voice a seductive caress. “Before I became a priest, I hurt women and
got off on it. Only willing women. Only older women.” His eyebrows knitted, and his hands flattened on the wall on either side of my head. “I’ve never touched anyone younger than me. I’ve never been with a virgin.”
He surrounded my senses, smothered me with his heat. I shifted my weight from foot to foot, trying to alleviate the tension that chased my heartbeats into hysteria.
“Do I need to inflict pain to get off?” He watched my throat jog through a hard swallow, and his pupils dilated. A man aroused by fear and surrender. “I crave it. But I don’t need it. Not anymore.”
“Because you became a priest?”
“No. Because I found you. You’re a paradox. You don’t fit any of my predilections. You’re young, innocent, so delicately formed. You contradict every quality that used to arouse me.” He met my eyes. “I want you without cruelty and pain.”
“The welts you put on my ass disagree.”
“Oh, Tinsley.” A wolfish smirk. “A little breath play and some red marks are nothing compared to the brutality I inflicted on women. I can’t fathom the thought of hurting you the way I hurt them. I won’t. Every instinct inside me demands I protect you.” His mouth inched closer, coating my lips with the warm taste of whiskey. “I respect you.”
“You didn’t respect those other women?” I placed my palm on his hard chest. “The women you were with, the ones who let you hurt them?”
“No. I didn’t have an ounce of respect for anyone. I never felt possessive of a woman. Never cared about what they needed or who they fucked. I was never monogamous. Never emotionally available. I was a monster. Evil. Dead inside.”
Beneath taut muscles, his heart drummed wildly against my hand, a frantic rhythm that felt too alive for a man who believed he wasn’t.
“But with you?” He spoke against my throat. Lips like warm velvet. Voice like cold steel. “I am viciously, reprehensibly possessive of you.”
CHAPTER 25
MAGNUS
Tinsley in her glittery gold gown had been a jaw-dropping sight to behold. But Tinsley now? Standing before me in nothing but milky white skin?
God help me.
“You’re more exquisite than I ever imagined.”