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“Not for you,” I tell him. “You’ll be alive until the end of time. My story will end eventually, and our story will be done.”

“Please,” he whispers, trying to move against the chains, but they rattle as they hold him back.

“Please what?” I ask, hating how good it sounds to hear him beg for a change.

“Please…just please. Please don’t go. Please don’t give up on me. Please just…”

“Just what?”

His gaze is a loaded pistol. “Give me your heart again and I promise not to break it.”

I nearly laugh. “Give you my heart? Priest, I don’t love you. I might even hate you.” I’m spitting out the words now, trying to hurt him.

“I can handle your hate,” he says after a moment, adjusting his stance. It’s enough for my gaze to drop down to his cock again. Of course; I think hate only arouses him further. “I might even crave your hate sometimes.”

“And you still want my heart?”

“I want every part of you,” he admits. “I need every part of you. You’re mine, Larimar. No matter what you say or think or do, whether you cast me off in a boat, never to see me again, or if you put your heart behind a locked box for safekeeping. You’re still mine. You’ll always be mine. You have no say in the matter.”

This sounds more like the Priest I knew, and I hate how much I love to hear it.

Hate how much my body answers his call.

“You treat me like I’m your possession,” I say, putting the soap in the clean, cold water and crouching down to submerge a washcloth. “Like I’m something you own. Something you keep. Something you control.” I straighten up, wringing the excess water from the cloth. “Yet, here you are, the one in chains. Seems like I’m the one keeping you at the moment.”

“I guess our roles have reversed,” he says darkly, desire blazing in his eyes.

I take a chance and step to the side of him, as far away from his hungry cock as possible. The heat of his body nearly overwhelms me, and I raise the washcloth. “You bathed me so many times,” I tell him. “It’s only fair I get to do the same.”

A low noise rattles in his chest as I bring the wet cloth down over his chest, slowly running it down to his hips. He starts to jerk at the chains, but he doesn’t try to move away from me.

“But when I bathed you, it wasn’t torture,” he says through a groan as I bring the cloth down over his thighs, down the taut muscles of his calves.

“How do you know?” I ask, straightening up to bring it down over his back.

His head arches back. “You enjoyed it?”

“Of course I did,” I admit. “I would never tell you that, though. You’d probably have stopped if you found out I liked it.”

“I would have made you come is what would have happened,” he says.

I smirk at that, wetting the cloth again and doing the rest of his back, enjoying the feel of his lean muscles beneath my hand. “Such a contradiction. No problems in sticking nails through my wrists, as if I was your personal Jesus, but you didn’t dare give me pleasure without my permission.”

“I’m sorry I happen to have some morals,” he rasps, his back arching, his firm rear pushing against my hands.

I bite my lip, resisting the urge to bite his cheeks instead.

“Or was it just about humiliation?” I ask. “Was that your goal?”

“You don’t wear humility well,” he says.

“Do you? Can I humiliate you instead? Or will that only excite you?”

“Everything you do excites me,” he says gruffly.

I wet the cloth again and come around the front, touching everywhere except his cock, which is practically begging for attention. “And if I don’t let you come from that excitement, what then?” I tease.

He growls, practically snarling at me. He’s so painfully aroused that it seems cruel to leave him like this.