I joined the end of the snaking line of patients forced out in the snow and followed them into the drafty chapel.
Instead of sitting at the back, I took the creaky stairs upward to the gallery. It was dark up there, and the air was close. Incense and the oily scent of the lamps and candles permeated the air. I walked to the edge of the barrier and stared down. Below me, patients from Hallow Hall continued to mill about and find seats. One drew my eye immediately. With her long blond hair strewn around her shoulders like golden satin and her curious eyes, my gaze found Katarina right away.
Ah, there she is. My angel.
She glanced around. Searching for me. As soon as her gaze hit mine, her shoulders relaxed a little and a faint smile touched her lips.
No one looked at me the way she did. Like I was her savior. Like I was a man who might one day be worthy of a real life, a family, and all the things I’d long ago given up hoping for. And suddenly, I couldn’t be without her for one more second. Tomorrow, I’d take her from this place and bring her home. My home would be her home. And she would be mine. A home at last. It was more than a man like me could dream of.
I lifted a hand and crooked my finger at her. She dropped my gaze. Would my little angel obey the call of her devil?
She turned and started to walk upstream to the people flooding into the chapel. Anticipation roared in my veins as I waitedfor her to appear at the top of the creaking stairs. A quick scan reassured me that no one in charge had noticed her slipping past.
That meant that for the duration of the mass, she was all mine.
She walked up the stairs, her white sweatshirt and pale hair glowing in the candlelight.
I was sitting in the second pew from the front, invisible from below.
Music played downstairs, a shitty organ recording, while the chatter died down among Pavol’s congregation. The man wasn’t even a real priest, so how he thought he could lead a mass was beyond me.
Katarina walked unerringly across the rough floorboards toward me. She was a woman who looked better in the graying, old institute uniform than other women did in head-to-toe couture. Her goodness glowed, and she was smiling at me. My heart beat fast. My palms dampened. I was a nervous schoolboy watching the most beautiful girl in town approach, but this time, she’d chosen me.
Me, the worthless sinner. Me, the original stray.
“What are you doing up here?” she asked, sinking down into the pew next to me.
I threaded my fingers between hers. This was a hand that deserved the finest jewelry money could buy. When we got out of here, I’d spoil my angel rotten.
“Waiting for you,” I told her, and pressed a kiss to the back of her hand. “Waiting to be alone together.”
I parted my lips and grazed my teeth against her skin. A gentle bite. She jumped, and then her cheeks flushed, a wave of pretty, innocent pink washing up her neck. Since I’d become a connoisseur of her body, I recognized it as the same pale dusty rose of her nipples. I wanted to paint my bedroom in that shade and see it every day.
“What? Father Lucciano, don’t tell me you’re interested to hear what a disgraced former psychiatrist has to say about God?” Katarina teased. With intense interest, she watched my lips brush her hand.
I shrugged. “What can I say? I guess I’m going to hell, but I’m not interested in lessons on morals from a man like Pavol... I’m here for something more.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Such as?”
“You,” I murmured. This woman had taken over my thoughts effortlessly, and I was a slave at her command.
She smiled, a small, secret thing, and then wet her lips.
“What for?” she wondered.
I dropped her hand and patted my lap.
“Come sit here and I’ll show you.”
A grin twisted her lips, and she stood just to move over and sink down on my lap. I cradled her back to my chest and hugged her closely. It reminded me of the morning after we’d signed our deal with a bloody kiss, when Blackwood had given her an MDMA-laced sedative that had made her desperate to be touched.
My cock stiffened at just the memory of that first, desperate touch of hers. I’d been determined not to participate in her frenzied reach for relief, and yet had come in my goddamn pants like a teenager.
She gasped as I flexed my cock on her ass. Her weight on me was sweet torture.
She evidently felt the same, because she moved tentatively on me. I wrapped one arm around her waist and pressed my face into the nape of her neck, using the other hand to collect the heavy fall of her hair into a rope and tug her head to the side. My mouth found the delicate skin under her ear, and I traced it with my lips, and then tongue. She squirmed, rubbing my cock with her cunt,hidden from me by the many layers between us. This was going too far. I was too hungry for her. One wrong decision and my mask of control would shatter, and I’d take her against the wall beside us and not care who knew it.
“Stop now, unless you want to be fucked in this church during mass,” I said.