Page 47 of Chapel at Ender’s Ridge (Ender’s Calling #1)

Laurie’s lips twitched. “I’ve made a habit of sharing a bed with not-complete-bastar—” Decker’s fingers twisted deeper and strung him into a low groan, and his hand slipped from his back and down the dark hair of Decker’s stomach until he reached him, hard and aching.

Laurie stroked, hesitant, then firm, flashing an elated smile.

You’d be the death of me if we weren’t already dead .

Decker withdrew and snatched the bottle from the floor. Laurie’s hand slicked his cock, eyes on him when Decker settled between Laurie’s thighs, the hard wood biting into his knees.

Laurie’s teeth sank into his lip as he eased closer, ankles locking behind his back.

Decker was gentle, hands splaying over muscled thighs, pressing him open with practiced reverence.

Easing forward, nudging, coaxing, Decker sank into him and Laurie tipped his head back against the pew, his hips arched towards him. His sweet, strangled groan was muffled by Decker’s mouth moving against his, distracting.

Laurie melded to him, opened to him, and god, he was beautiful like this, every ragged breath echoing in the chapel like the hum of a choir.

Decker tasted, nipped at him, kissed him until Laurie’s body went lax. He shuddered, sinking in until hip-bones rested flush against the backs of his thighs.

“Sweet god, Laurie,” he whispered, head falling back, resting there as pleasure coiled and flared. Decker brushed a hand through his curls, across his damp temple, down to parted lips.

Long-overdue words spilled out of him, ragged and true. “I will hold you close to me and you will be my only, until you tire of me.” His hips rolled gentle, then sharp. He bit back a groan, breathy and low.

They shall be one flesh.

Laurie’s breath rushed out of him and he dragged him down, clutching at his jaw, his face, speaking like a sermon written for one. “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you. ”

His hips moved flush, hard, needy and aching, and Laurie moved with him.

Bastardized verses fell from Laurie in a senseless jumble. “Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck—” he gasped sharply, eyes blown wide and fangs glinting as his head slammed back.

Decker tasted him, baptized in the pleasure rushing in his veins, consuming the sounds his lover made, strokes faltering against his hips. “You are my prayer not even—not even your god will hear—” he gasped feverishly, a moan curling from the back of his throat.

“My beloved is mine, and I am his—” Laurie came shaking, crying out, nails cutting half-moons and leaving raised stripes across Decker’s back.

Heat bloomed between them, sticky and sweet and filthy, and Decker’s hips rolled, snapping, faltering, wild. He shuddered, grasping at the pleasure rushing through him, lips parted and body flush against Laurie as a final tremor dragged him down

into his arms.

This is my beloved.

The night was quiet.

Leathered wings circled the chapel, dodging snowflakes and chasing the last of the late-autumn insects, and feathered wings ruffled softly in the rafters .

Laurie found Decker’s hand in the darkness, touch tracing over each knuckle and circling his wedding band. They shifted on their sides, legs tangled against each other. Impossibly close.

“It’s snowing.”

Decker mumbled a dazed response. His back ached on the hard pew, but they made no move to leave.

“Decker,” he said softly, tapping against his hand.

He cracked one eye open.

Better be good, preacher.

“I’m going to remake the chapel.” Laurie searched for words, brow furrowing. “Different, this time. A meeting house—Safine will create wards, and we’ll have somewhere safe. All of us.”

Decker’s expression softened and he leaned forward, pressing a gentle kiss to his mouth. Laurie tilted his head to the side as Decker’s lips grazed down his neck, tasting the bruising marks he’d left. “Laurie’s chapel, meeting place,” he murmured.

“And I—” Laurie nudged him away, looking at him. “I don’t want to kill.”

Even now, even through the things he’d witnessed, Laurie could only sink so far into depravity before he caught himself.

“You won’t have to. Once Safine figures out Whitton’s invention, you won’t go hungry, and until then you have me.

I’ve gone too long denying myself,” Decker said carefully.

It was time to live, fully. Hunting, reveling in the night instead of suffering in the day.

He embraced his mundane life while quiet eagerness for the future burrowed in his chest. “If you don’t wish to hunt with me, you won’t have to.

I’ll be able to feed without making kills, like you did with me. ”

Someday, he would enjoy the thrill of a hunt next to Laurie. Even though the thought of feeding no longer disgusted him, relief settled at the knowledge that killing could be in his past.

Laurie made a small sound of understanding.

“I don’t quite trust my strength. It’s not my place to judge who should live or die.

But—” He searched for the right words. “There’s always been creatures like us.

People like us. We are his creation, like I am yours.

We succumb to our nature, human or otherwise, and we will be accordingly rewarded or condemned.

Judgement will be passed, but it will be just, weighed against our heart not our nature. ”

“You believe that?”

“I do.”

“And the killing I’ve done?” The senseless, entirely preventable deaths like bloody footprints behind him.

“Decker, there is good in you. You are good.”

Your faith is evergreen, even now.

“When you came here you were afraid,” Decker said. “And then you weren’t afraid of me, but you were afraid of how you felt about me. Yet you still hold your faith. Through it all.”

Laurie smoothed his hand reverently along his jaw.

“When I’m with you I feel the kind of peace I’ve only felt in scripture.

John—the disciple whom Jesus loved, David and Jonathan.

God did not forget us,” he whispered with such devotion Decker believed him.

“I was so occupied searching for what was wrong with me, I forgot to see the beauty in it all. The beauty he formed us with, knowing this is what we’d create with it. The Bible…it’s only a book.”

Only a book .

That book shaped the world as they knew it, the rise and fall of empires, conquests, and still the world carried on, nature oblivious.

There was a beauty in it all. The natural cycle of the wheel, rising and falling. Decker and Laurie both were a part of the cycle now, keeping the order of the world. There was a stark, raw, bloody beauty to it, but they’d found their place.

Their home.

“I have something for you,” Decker said. Laurie cocked his head and Decker nodded at the rectangular box he’d left at the door.

Laurie got to his feet and languidly stretched. Decker admired the moonlight illuminating soft lines, the curve of his ass, and the lift of his shoulders as he straightened them, utterly unashamed of his nakedness. Their Garden of Eden, where they could be undeniably who they were in their bones.

Laurie, in his bones, was swiftly becoming a pain in Decker’s ass. He pounced on his gift. “What is it?”

“Open it.” A smile flitted about Decker’s mouth and he sat up, stretching in place.

Laurie lingered, fingers tapping on the box. “I’ve got somewhere more comfortable than a church pew for later.”

“The single mattress on the frame you built? If we both use it, we’ll be on the ground before I have a chance to seduce you again.”

Laurie gave a dramatic sigh and finally cracked open the brightly-painted lid. Old tobacco wafted up from the book nestled in a new, red-patterned handkerchief.

Decker joined him, hands skimming down his waist and head resting on his shoulder. “The girls and I just finished it tonight. ”

Wax softened under Laurie’s fingertips as he traced over gold lines and leather. A thin layer of beeswax and tallow painted each page. Tiny scars scattered across Decker’s hand, each failed attempt at encasing the holy book engraved on his palm.

“It’s not perfect. There’s some—”

Laurie spun and kissed him. Deep, aching, the gift crushed between them. Decker thought he could believe this was how God loved humanity once. How humanity, monstrous or otherwise, was meant to be loved.

“Thank you,” he said when they broke apart, his eyes gleaming. “I thought I’d have to memorize the scriptures and never be able to read them again.”

“It was Safine’s idea,” Decker said, knowing damn well he’d been the one burning his hands on melted wax. “There’s others like us out there that live easily. We’ll find a way, find others. Strength in knowledge,” Decker said.

They’ll have better ideas than lumpy, tallow-soaked pages.

A smile flickered to life. “The old professor I told you about, Bishop Fontaine, could be like us—” Laurie lit up, his thoughts coming out in fragments.

“Just like Sister Inez’s little sister; we’ll bring them here, where it’s safe,” Laurie said, his touch trailing along Decker’s arms with an unbelieving, holy reverence. “Where everyone is safe.”

“A new life,” Decker promised, drawing him in for a kiss.

High above, the pigeons burst into flight, arcing out of the broken stained glass window.