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Sometimes, the way he looks at me, intense and unblinking, like he’s searing a path to my soul, is too much, and I have to look away, and right now is no exception. The vulnerability is unnerving, so I stare at where his cock disappears inside me, shiny with my desire.

We are joined, connected, even when he’s being so rough that the pain briefly outshines the pleasure.

“Do you like what you see?” he rasps. “Do you like how I worship at your altar? You’re mine. This cunt, this arse, this mouth. All of it is mine, Larimar. Every single inch I can penetrate is mine, and if I could penetrate your soul, then that would belong to me too.”

But he can penetrate my soul.

I feel him there, loosening it until it has no choice but to belong to him. He’s not just holding my body captive—he’s holding my heart. And if he ever lets me go, I think my heart will be the last to leave.

“Look at me,” he says through a rough groan. “Look at me, little fish.”

I meet his eyes, and he holds them there with the pure intensity of his gaze.

“Tell me you’re mine.”

“I’m yours,” I say, but the words are raw and whispered.

His lip curls, and he thrusts in harder, punishing me. “Tell me you’re mine and mean it, damn it. Tell me, or I won’t let you come.”

Now he’s being unfair.

“I’m yours,” I tell him.

The funny thing is, I mean it. It’s not because I said I would be bound to him—it’s because I want to be bound to him. And when he’s that deep inside me, I’m not sure how I can think otherwise.

“Fuck,” he says gruffly. “Here I come, Goddess.” His fingers reach down, giving my clit a few rough strokes. “And so will you.”

He knows all that I need. His fingers give me bliss in seconds. I come hard, crying out as he keeps my hands pinned above my head, biting and sucking at my breasts, licking my mouth as I squeeze his cock until his orgasm is torn out of him.

“Yes,” he begs into my open mouth. “Please. God.”

He comes with hard jerks of his hips, his hot seed spurting inside me, filling me up until I think there can’t possibly be more.

And then, finally, he collapses, buries his face in my neck, his skin damp, the room smelling of our sex.

He’s still inside me when he falls asleep.

Chapter Seventeen

PRIEST

Idream for the first time in a century.

There’s not much of a narrative to it, just flashes of images. I see Larimar’s shimmering tail underwater. The dead soldier clawing through his grave. Larimar nailed on a windmill, like the ones from Don Quixote. The moon over the water, impossibly large. Abe dressed as a knight, riding a horse made of bones. Larimar reaching into my chest and pulling out my heart before throwing it over her shoulder because it was still beating.

When I wake, I feel rested and alert, though, judging from the moon coming in through the window, I couldn’t have been asleep for more than a couple of hours.

That same moon is illuminating Larimar, no longer crucified to a windmill, no longer discarding my heart. She is here beside me, hair spilling around her like liquid silver and gold. Her eyes are closed, her face a slate wiped clean. An angel of innocence, even when I know otherwise.

My heart makes itself known, beating wildly in my chest, as if it wants to punch its way through my ribs. All of this from just looking at her.

But I know what’s really making my soul come alive like the soldier in my dream, crawling out of a grave.

It’s because I fell asleep after fucking her.

I dreamed.

And she is still here.