In human skin.
Who’s the crazy one here?
She pauses then shuffles in the covers some. I tense when her leg kicks over my hip, but I know it’s to get closer to me. Out of nowhere, she’s trembling.
“What is it?” I rasp, and concern has me dragging my hand along her arm, both to soothe and to reassure.
“The last woman I helped, it went wrong. I didn’t save her. If anything, I got her killed.”
My eyes flare wide at that. “What? How?”
“Her husband came for her. He got to her because she was running from me.”
“What did you—” Her tension transmits itself to me. “Oh.” And suddenly I get it.
I understand.
“The wings?”
“Yes. I told her about them,” she whispers miserably.
“You didn’t show them to her?”
She licks her lips and her tongue accidentally pokes my chest. I know it’s not on purpose because it slips back in as fast as it popped out, not caressing me like she might if she was trying to seduce me.
I wouldn’t put it past her, but still, at this moment, that isn’t her intent.
“I got the tattoo after she died. Before my surgery.”
“Why?”
“I just needed to.” She gulps. “When she... she looked at me like I was a freak. I’d been helping her, been building her up to escape her husband, and she looked at me like she was escaping one lunatic only to fall into the arms of another.” She shudders. “I knew something was wrong, so I went to the doctor.”
I squeeze her in my embrace. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. You got me through.”
“I did?” My brain brakes to a halt. “How?”
“At every pivotal point in my life, you’ve been there. When I realized what my calling was. When I helped save my first person—Diana. Then, when I was diagnosed with the cyst. You were along for the ride, and you didn’t even know it.”
I could see how, when she was sick, that would make a difference.
But this talk of soul mates?
I sigh, my breath brushing her hair, making the slight scent of rose and vanilla waft around.
It’s stupid and makes me feel like I’m taking advantage because she’s ill, but I press a kiss to her head.
She nuzzles into me, and for a while, we’re silent. I know she isn’t asleep. It’s more like she’s resting her eyes.
After some time, she whispers, “Savio?”
“Yes?”
“I think I need to clean your back up again. It’s really wet on the sheets.”
I tense, then register just how bad the pain is.
It’s weird how I’d been numb, my body blocked from me as I processed her story. I’m not sure if I like that.
What’s the point of going through what I’d done only for me not to feel it?
“I’ll put a shirt on.”
She frowns—I could feel her brow against my chest. “How do you keep this from people?”
“I don’t. Not always. When I was in Switzerland, the blood seeped into my chasuble. It caused complaints.”
“I can imagine.” She snorts.
My lips curve, and even though I never, in a million years, imagined smiling about something like this, I do it now.
And it feels... strange.
I clear my throat, then whisper, “I’ll be two seconds.”
“Don’t you think it needs more than a shirt?” she asks, as she watches me move off the bed.
I wear a pair of boxer briefs, but suddenly, it feels like I’m naked when I can feel her eyes drifting all over me.
It’s been such a long time since anyone looked at me like that, as though I were a man, a potential mate, that I find myself hovering for a second.
Whether that’s to show off some more or because I’m dithering, I don’t have a clue.
The thought is a prompt, though, and it makes me shuffle over to the dresser.
When I do, she hisses, and I know why. I don’t bother to look at her. She can see the wounds, see the mess.
All the blood.
The barbs in the whip make more of a mess than the leather itself. But it’s only when I bleed that I feel clean once more.
I don’t hear her, it’s almost like she uses those wings of hers to fly over to me, but she’s there all of a sudden.
Her arms slide around my waist, her face pushing into my arm.
She doesn’t say anything, she just holds me, and somehow, that’s what has my eyes burning with tears.
I don’t let them fall.
They’re not for me anyway.
They’re for the fallen. The innocent.
“Why?”
One question, and it resonates inside me, throbbing like it has a life of its own.
“They took me because they wanted me to absolve them,” I answer huskily. “They wanted me to hear their confessions, and for me to permit them to commit the atrocities while whitewashing their souls.”
“You refused.”
Not a question.
“I did.”
She squeezes me.
“I refused to the point where they decided to choose a different means of gaining my compliance. They’d take a woman from a village, from a town, or wherever they were attacking. Sometimes, it happened once a week, sometimes it was once a month. But they always did the same thing.
“They’d bring them, strip them of their clothes, and rape them in front of me. It was—”
“Hell on Earth.”
“Yes.” Even that couldn’t describe it. “I fought, I even killed some of the rebels, but they’d torture me beforehand. Punish me until I was nothing more than a shaken bag of bones and I had no will to do anything other than lie on the ground.
“That was when they’d drag me out and do it.” I cleared my throat. “About two weeks before I was liberated, they brought a little girl.”
The sob that escapes me this time is impossible to contain.
She squeezes me so tight that it hurts, my wounds, my organs, but it feels so fucking good.
And I know, all of a sudden, what I need.
I drop out of her hold—literally, sinking to the ground so she has no choice but to release me or fall with me.
When my knees collide with the wooden floor, I bow over, pressing my forehead to her knees as I rasp, “I couldn’t do it anymore.”
Her hand strokes through my hair, mimicking the touch I gave her earlier.
“You absolved them,” she intones calmly.
“Y-Yes. I couldn’t let them—”
She hushes me, bows over me, and she reaches for my chin, tugging my head back until we could press our foreheads together.
“And they did it anyway?”
Tears burn.
I can’t answer.
“This is why you struggle with your faith,” she whispers. “This is why you go through the motions, because you know that confession means nothing. If you truly believe that God will allow those monsters into heaven because you absolved them, then I’m not the one who’s crazy here, my darling.”
I flinch at her endearment, but the rest of her words?
They sink into me like a stone through water.
Is she right?
I’d never thought of it that way.
When all I heard was the child.
And those fucking animals.
No.
She was right.
God wouldn’t...
He couldn’t.
Would he?
And if he did, what use is this faith? What point is there to my position as a priest if the God we cherish, revere, would allow that?
How do I only see this now?
Confession is a pivotal point of the religion I preach, but I can’t believe in it.
If I do, my shattered sanity will fall around me, until I’m nothing more than a walking bag of bones.
It’s only now when she says this, phrases it like that, that I
know how right she is.
Confession is more than just an act. Without the desire for forgiveness in one’s heart, it means nothing, and if anyone is going to know that, it’s God.
As a crisis of faith that’s a decade in the making blows me apart, my arms slip around her thighs while the broken fractures in my mind cluster together like a cancer, tossing out poison for me to process, I whisper, “The screams.”
Another husky hum escapes her, and it sounds crazy, but it soothes me.
I feel it in my being.
It whispers through my body, making me feel at ease, even as I want nothing more than to sink into her.
“You’re not a priest, my love.” A kiss goes to my forehead as she pulls away. “You’re not. You’ve seen the reality of life. Just like I have. I didn’t hear it or endure it like you, but I saw the aftermath. I see it now. In you.”
“I’m not a victim—”
“If you can’t see that, then, love, you need me more than I even realized.” She sighs, her breath brushing over my forehead. “The past skews your vision. You see everyone as a sinner with no hope of redemption... does that mean you have no hope of redemption either?”
“I’m a killer.”
“You are, but does that stain you forever?”
“You don’t know my past. You don’t know what I’ve done. I don’t deserve—” I gulp. “The only way I can make it right is if I punish those who hurt the innocent.”
“No, I don’t know what you’ve done. But I’m here now. You can tell me.”
I haven’t had a truthful confession in so long. I lie to the bishop when he comes to take mine, and I do so with ease because she’s right.
I’m not a priest.
I’m a man just going through the motions of life. Sticking to a calling I’d once had because, in the aftermath of a catastrophic life event, I have no idea which path to take next.
“I killed a boy when I was thirteen. Death has stained my soul since I was a child, but I know my soul is clean of that particular sin.”
“Why? Who was the boy?” She doesn’t sound shocked or terrified, if anything, her hand gentles as she strokes it over my head.
“My tormentor.”
“Was it an accident?”
“Y-Yes. That’s the only reason I didn’t go to prison.”
“What happened?”
“He started a fight, I ended it. I beat him badly, but he fell and hit his head on a stone verge that lined the playground. I pushed him though—”
“Savio,” she whispers, “you’ve shed blood for that boy. You shed it tonight. You shed it every time you hurt yourself. You’re a sinner seeking redemption, but you won’t find it on your current path.”
“How do you know?” I whisper thickly.
“Because you’re giving your victims peace and torturing yourself even more.”
And at that, I have no words, because this crazy angel with wings written in Aramaic is right, and my entire life, I suddenly see, is a complete and utter lie.
Eight
Andrea
“Did you seek penance for your part in the boy’s death?”
“Yes,” he whispers, sounding so miserable that my heart hurts for him.
“And did you mean it?”
“Yes.”
“Then his death isn’t on your soul, is it?” That didn’t mean the other stuff wasn’t. But damn, I could only deal with so many issues at once.
He blows out a breath that gusts against my belly, pooling warmth there. “I’ve never been a popular priest.”
His sermon was a little wooden, but I’m not sure I can see him being disliked. If anything, the way he cares for his flock makes me suspect his perception is skewed. If anyone is suffering with PTSD here, it’s Savio. I’ve seen those pictures on Facebook. I’ve seen how the brain works, or doesn’t work, when someone is depressed or in pain or dealing with PTSD.
Savio’s clearly just as damaged as I am—but in a different way.
“Why do you say that?” I inquire instead of disagreeing with him.
“I ask too much of parishioners. They don’t want to give it.”
“That’s modern life. We want to go to church, want our soul to be pure for heaven when we die, but we’re lazy.”
“They want lazy priests, and I’m not that. I might not believe what I preach, but I don’t believe in loopholes.”
“Loopholes?”
“When I was in Spain, I was in this tiny town just off Madrid. It was on the commuter belt, but it was still small, and the parish wasn’t that large. A girl came to me, her mother dragging her there because she’d stolen something. We discussed what she stole, then she told me that she only did that because her mother punished her by denying her food.” His throat works. “Sin is everywhere.”
“What did you do?”
“I told her that stealing was bad, and that if she was hungry, she should come to me, and I’d feed her.”
I sigh and can’t stop myself from pressing a kiss to the crown of his head. “That sounds like you were a good priest to her.”
“You’re not getting the point,” he mumbles, but he doesn’t pull away from me. If anything, he tightens his hold on me. “I’m a Bible scholar. I know the ‘rules’ of religion, and wherever I turn, there are these things that nag at me. She stole. She should atone. She wasn’t to blame. Her mother was, yet she refused to atone for denying her daughter food.” A shaky breath escapes him. “In that situation, I broke the seal of confession.”
“I didn’t know that was allowed.”
“It isn’t. I had the girl taken out of the mother’s reach for her safety.”
“If you did it once, why didn’t you go to the cops with the others?”
“Because they needed to pay and that’s why I’m damned forever, because there is no apology in my heart for God to accept. I had the option, and I didn’t take it. I chose my path, and I damned myself forever with that decision.”
My brow furrows at his words, but I run my hands through his hair, loving the way he huddles into me. He’s a broken man. Twisted. Shattered.
But he’s mine, and he needs me.
That’s why I carried on soothing him. Why I didn’t run for the hills. Why I stayed the night, why I spent it at his side.
It’s why I get to experience heaven the following morning when I wake in his arms.
But it was hell, through the night, not being able to touch him how I wanted to.
I’d cleaned up his back and changed the sheets, even though the freak in me had quite enjoyed lying on them. They were sticky and wet, though, so that was less pleasant, but we’d put a towel under his side so that it could catch more of the blood that might shed while he was resting.
He’d fallen asleep in my arms, like a child would in his mother’s embrace, and I sang to him.
“Hallelujah.”
The Leonard Cohen version.
He’d softened against me, drifting away while never being closer to me, and shortly after, I’d drifted off too.
We hadn’t moved throughout the remainder of the night. If anything, we’d stayed closely packed, like sardines in a can, and we awoke that way too.
I almost thought his expression would be filled with hatred when he looked at me, his body stiff with rejection. But he turned his face into my throat, and whispered, “You smell like home.”
My heart thudded in my chest at those words, and it’s why, now, I have no idea what to say.
I can only lie here, staring up at the ceiling, holding him as he dozes in the early morning light.
I smell like home?
Dear God, I don’t think he could have said anything else that might have hit me harder.
His words resonate in me so strongly, so purely, that I can’t contain the happiness rattling around inside me.
I did smell like home, because I am his home.
Just as he’s mine.
Another person might think this is religious mumbo jumbo, soul m
ate nonsense that belongs in a romance novel, but nothing about this is ideal.
Nothing about this is romantic.
If anything, it’s a stark truth.
This man needs me to stop him from escalating into a serial killer.
Cold.
Hard.
Fact.
Technically, he already is, but I could curtail his habits, limit him.
If ever there’s a man in more need of a means of slaking his emotions, it’s Savio.
Denying him sex, the purest form of release, is like chaining a dog to a wall and not letting him walk.
He’s dying on the inside because he has no means of purging himself of the emotions that drown him.
He needs to drown in me.
And, God, I’m more than ready for the flood.
I shiver as he presses his face between my breasts, and the move is natural, not like that of a player. He breathes in deep, then whispers, “This is wrong.”
“Nothing between us can ever be wrong.”
My words are calm because I feel calm.
I feel at peace for the first time in forever.
And knowing he feels the same?
It’s pure bliss.
He didn’t stir, not once, through the night in my arms, and while I’m not saying I’m a miracle worker...
Okay, wait, maybe I am.
“I’m asking myself if you’re real.”
“Can’t you feel me? Can’t you tell I am?”
He moves slightly, and all of a sudden, I feel his erection against my thigh.
Everything inside me tenses up, then just relaxes, turning molten as need rumbles through me.
The need for him.
The need to connect.
To be at one with him.
I sigh, my breath brushing his hair as he turns his face and rakes his teeth over my nipple. Through the cotton, it feels like heaven, but I know it will be even better when he touches my skin.
I shiver as he nibbles, then when he nips, I squeak, but my hips jerk and I let my legs spread a little.
The noise jolts him and he freezes. Then his forehead pushes into my chest, between my breasts, and he mutters, “I’m a—” He gulps. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
“I’m the Eve to your Adam,” I murmur, repeating what I’d told him last night, tempting him just like she tempted her man. “I was born for this. Born for you.”
The Vows We Break: A Twisted Taboo Tale Page 14