Page 32 of Chapel at Ender’s Ridge (Ender’s Calling #1)

Silence answered him and Laurie picked at his fingers before burying them in the quilt next to him and glancing up.

“It was me. The manuscripts I could get my hands on condemned us, and I was a fraud. Even abstinence wouldn’t have been enough to hide my shame.

I left.” Laurie turned distant, voice pitching lower.

“I took my things while he was at class. There was no way for me to know he’d gone to the dean about our—my— affinities .

” The word nearly edged into a sneer, a thorn-prickle amongst his steady faith.

“When I arrived home, my father received word of Aunt Beatrice, and I took the will as my sign I was doing the right thing. Perhaps I could keep my faith if I fled across the country.” Laurie’s gaze shuttered.

“My father received a second letter before I left. My dismissal from seminary.” His fingers ghosted over his delicately crooked nose. “He didn’t take it well.”

Would’ve expected nothing less with how you were when you arrived here.

“Did you love him?” Decker asked.

Laurie gave him a bitter smile. “How can you know you love a man, when you’re raised with humbleness? When looking in a mirror is vanity and taking pride in yourself is a mortal sin?”

Wounds opened raw, and Decker saw him as he was. Prying like a knife in the edge of a rusted can, he gave him no reprieve. “So you’ll stay in Ender’s Ridge and continually deny yourself happiness?”

“I am happy.”

“You’re repressed.”

He flushed, lips settling into a thin, stubborn line again, like if he opened them, the repression would burst into a fit of rage.

Decker made an attempt at sympathy. “I’ve run my whole life from what I am, who I am. At least I am my greatest enemy, not a god who stays silent.”

“Have you ever listened? Have you wondered how you survived out there for years before you came here? God is the balance,” Laurie said with pulpit-ready conviction.

The classes he finished at seminary served him well and Decker nearly believed him. But not quite.

“What God would want me?”

“The God who made you as you are. The God who saved you from death in a fallen world, no matter the cost,” Laurie whispered harshly .

Decker gave him a wan smile. “At least you’ve kept your faith. Your faith will keep you warm at night, laugh with you, mourn with you. Faith, your only companion.”

“You have a wife you don’t love. You’re an expert on companionship.” The room was suddenly too cold and Laurie swallowed hard, his gaze flicking away.

Decker pulled his damp clothes off the grate, and it rattled against the stone. “I love Safine, more than anything. Do you know what that’s like, Laurie? Wanting so badly for someone to be happy, yet unable to provide the love they need, the love they deserve ?”

“I feel it when I see you.”

Decker’s damp pants scraped heavy canvas across his thighs as he yanked them up. “And yet we’re at a draw.”

“I can’t love you. I won’t,” Laurie said.

“Good. People who love me tend to die. I wouldn’t ask that of anyone.”

“Do you love me? Do you want to love me?” Laurie’s voice wavered, losing its bite as his fingers clenched a hole into the quilt.

Decker laughed.

Laurie frowned, his chin lifting as Decker moved closer. “I don’t see what’s amusing.”

“You.” The lie slipped between Decker’s teeth as smooth as expensive whiskey. “The only thing that interests me is your blood.”

Laurie stood, eyes snapping under damp curls. “Have you ever bitten someone without killing them?”

No. Always bloodless-pale and cold, lost in the hunger.

“Perhaps.”

“Do it.” Laurie stood chest to chest with him, cheeks flushed and heart slamming into his ribs tightened with a held breath, and Decker suddenly felt he was the one being hunted.

He leaned forward, the amused smile still playing at his lips as he braced one hand on the bedpost between them. “You would let me feed from you— beg me to feed—yet your thoughts of me still disgust you.”

“Thoughts of you?”

“You’ve thought of my teeth in your neck.” Decker raised a hand, brushing against Laurie’s chin as he tilted it to the side and pressed two fingers against the vein pulsing at the side of his neck. “Here. I’d wager more than once.”

His pulse throbbed under Decker’s fingers and something glimmered in Laurie’s eyes, hungry and desperate. Starving. He moistened dry lips and leaned into his touch.

“You haven’t just thought of my teeth in your neck.” Decker trailed his hand down his throat, lingering above the deadly silver cross in the hollow of his neck. Fangs pricked at his lower lip and desire intertwined with primal need until it was indistinguishable. “Laurie,” he breathed.

Laurie’s heart jumped, hammering against his ribs as he pressed into him until Decker felt his heart pounding into his chest.

“I came out West to rid myself of these thoughts,” Laurie forced out, his voice a thread stretched thin with need. “And then you were here and you saw me, and I forgot why I ever tried to run.”

His hips were hot under Decker’s hands, and he ever so slowly angled them towards himself, Laurie’s sigh ruffling his hair.

Laurie didn’t touch him. Didn’t do anything but bite back a shuddering sound as Decker mouthed against his neck and pressed against him, as hard and unyielding as his need to prove to Laurie he didn’t have to live like this.

“Why would you give yourself to me in that way,” he whispered, “when you refuse this?”

Laurie’s hands unclenched from his sides, skimming up his skin as softly and reverently as folding a burial shroud. Laurie finally touched him, his shoulders, his arms, his back, as if Decker was a rope of salvation dangling into a dark pit he was trapped in.

“My blood is the only part of myself I can give to you.” Laurie’s words, the whispered pinnacle of faith.

Another soul lost to a dead religion made for them and then rewritten to condemn them. Decker couldn’t lose someone else he was starting to love.

Was love the way Laurie moved against him, as if in a trance, his lips faintly grazing over Decker’s collarbone, leaving gasped breaths behind him?

Or was love the way his body felt under his hands, his fevered stretch of skin and coiled muscle an oath more ancient than the Bible lying discarded in his pocket?

Decker caged him against the end post of the bed.

Laurie’s body arched into his hips and shaking fingers slipped through Decker’s damp hair. He tilted his chin back and the pulse in his neck became more prominent, begging, raging, wanting.

Just a taste.

Decker didn’t want his blood. No, he wanted all of him, wanted to consume him so thoroughly he would be Laurie’s salvation.

Was love how Laurie’s breath caught, and the stiffening of his hand on Decker’s back that told him this wasn’t what he wanted, even as he offered himself ?

Decker grasped his chin, forcing him to look, as wild and panicked eyes finally fluttered open. He leaned closer, soaking in the hard lines of his body against his own.

“When I have you, I want all of you, Laurie Lane.”

“I can’t—” Chin quivering under Decker’s hand, Laurie dragged in a shallow breath. His nails sank into the flesh of Decker’s lower back. “I can’t—it’s all I can give you.”

Decker memorized the feel of him, the pain and the untapped anger swirling in the depths of those eyes, and the catch of his hand against his hip when Decker backed away. Wind rattled against the window from outside, a harsh reminder of why they were there.

Ender’s Ridge needed them. They weren’t here so he could be another man’s secret, so foul it was never spoken in the daylight.

Decker ripped his shirt off the hook and yanked it on, buttons straining against his wrists. “You don’t want me. You want your god.”

Laurie’s face crumpled. “I didn’t choose this. You don’t understand.”

“I understand I loved a man like you, once. I laid him to rest next to his wife . Is that what you want, Laurie?” A button snapped off in his hand and he cast it to the side. “To be a faithful husband who shields his eyes and heart so you are pure in the eyes of God?”

The preacher flinched as if the words struck him like his father. “I would never be a husband to a wife. Men like me are meant to stay devout to the Lord, to dedicate our lives to Him—”

Oh, Laurie donned scripture like a suit of armor against the thoughts, the touch, the feelings Decker knew he’d brought to life inside of him .

“So, you will stay as you are. And we will stay as we are.” Decker yanked on his river-soaked boots. “Neighbors.”

“Neighbors?”

“Neighbors. Maybe friends, if we survive this.” Decker straightened. “But if you ever tell me what you want from me again, I will be as true to my promise as God casting them out from the garden. You will not survive if I feed from you and I’ll be glad to be rid of you.”

“You think I’m a coward for keeping part of me hidden yet you only feed when you’re near death. You keep no company with others like you. You masquerade as human when you are the furthest thing from us. We are not so different,” Laurie whispered.

Decker’s footsteps towards the door slowed. “I still indulge. I know the feeling of giving into my desires. Do you?” He cast a look back.

Laurie’s lips flattened into a thin, stubborn line, and he had no answer.

He didn’t ask him to stay.

So Decker didn’t.