“No.”
I tried to accept it, but the way that girl devoured him with her eyes still haunted me.
He reached up and brushed his fingers against the pulse on my neck. “What are you thinking about?”
“That girl at the club,” I admitted. “You seemed intimately acquainted with her.”
“Pain is intimate,” he said. “Exposing yourself, trusting someone so completely to push your limits but stop when you ask… there’s nothing else like that. Some people, that’s what they need.”
“And what do you get out of it?”
His eyes darkened, and his voice was deeper when he responded. “Power. Catharsis.”
“Do you think of your ex when you hurt someone?” I asked. “Is that it?”
“No. I never think of her.”
“How could you not?” I challenged.
“If I thought about her, that would give her exactly what she wants. What’s done is done. I can’t change the past. I can’t change anything.”
“Is that why you go to church?” I hedged. “To find forgiveness?”
“I can’t forgive her,” he said roughly. “But I have to believe that my son is in a better place. It’s the only thing I can believe in. I’ve tried to hold onto that by living my life in a righteous way. At least, until I met you.”
His words stung, and I couldn’t hide it. “Is the sin of my flesh worse than the others?”
“There have been no others,” Lucian answered quietly. “She was the last before you.”
I stared at him, certain I’d misunderstood. “You’re saying that you’ve been celibate for—”
“Seventeen years.”
I got lost in the dark pools of his eyes. There was nothing to compare them to. They were warm like chocolate and strong like coffee, but even those words felt too weak to describe the visceral power of this man. He could disarm a woman with a single look, but he chose not to. I wanted to know what made me so different, but I was too afraid to ask.
My palms found his face, and my lips brushed against his. “Maybe you can find a way to repent.”
He wrapped his arm around my waist, dragging me against his body as he sighed into my mouth. It felt like I was causing him physical pain. He was tormented, and I didn’t know if I was taking advantage of that, but I couldn’t stop. We couldn’t stop. And if he believed we were going to hell because of it, then we’d be going together.
I pulled the tee shirt up over my head and discarded it on the floor. His eyes raked over my body as I fumbled with his zipper, trying desperately to free him.
“Don’t deny that you want this,” I said.
His cock sprang free, a pulsing monstrosity that belonged only to me. The thought was intoxicating in a way I couldn’t admit. I wanted all of him, and I was the only one who’d tasted him in seventeen years. I’d demolished his celibacy. Broken his vows of purity. And I wanted to do it again and again.
His fingers slipped between my thighs, and he groaned when he felt how wet I already was. “I don’t think I have it in me to be virtuous anymore.” He dragged me along the length of his cock. “All I’ve wanted to do from the moment I saw you was desecrate you.”
“Do it,” I begged. “Make me yours.”
He stroked himself roughly and edged the fat head of his cock against me. “You’ve been mine from the minute you said I do.”
The words were finalized when he buried himself inside me and shuddered. I collapsed against his chest and breathed in his masculinity. His raw vulnerability. Everything that made him my sweetest addiction yet.
I stroked his face and ran my fingers through his hair, searching his eyes as I leaned back. “Fuck me hard. Show me.”
He closed his eyes. He didn’t want to hurt me. “That isn’t what I need from you, pet.”
“Maybe it’s what I need,” I said.