Page 89 of Crossed

I bow my head and close my eyes, straining to hear a resolution. An answer. Some guidance. But instead of His voice, I’m left in the bitter cold with nothing but silence.

Maybe my passion for Amaya has pushed me too far from God. After all, I hadwantedAndrew’s death to be messy. Seeing him with his hands on her body sent fury racing through me, wanting to humiliate him in front of the world, wanting his name plastered across the news and on the front of papers, shamed and disgraced.

But I had never imagined it would come back onher.

A foolish mistake.

She’d hate me if she knew the truth.

How I wish I could hateherinstead. But my feelings for her grow stronger every day. Toxic, twisted, andgreedy.

She came to me first.

My chest pinches, the way it does every time I realize what she was going through the night I fucked her with my fingers, then used her mother to cut her down.

What could I, a priest bound to his faith, do for her other than offer her prayer anyway?

Parker has money, he has power, and as much as I hate to admit it to myself, he’s the better choice.

They have history. But the thought of him kissing her lips, of him feeling her perfect cunt squeezing the life out of his dick, makes me violently ill.

Has she moaned his name the way I ache for her to scream mine?

My jealousy rears up at the thought. The same way it did when I watched them together this morning in his conference room, when his possessive touches and condescending looks made me want to flip the table and gouge out his eyes with the bones I would rip from his fingers.

I shouldn’t have been there in the first place, but I couldn’t stay away. I needed to find out as much information as I could, and selfishly, I wanted to watch them together, to soothe my green heart by recognizing she’s only marrying Parker because she’s in trouble.

Amaya’s taping up a box and wiping beneath her tear- stained eyes, and I press myself closer to the window, wanting to break inside and gather her in my arms. To apologize for being the reason she’s crying.

To try and take away her pain.

My heart fractures as more tears slide down her cheeks.

You did this to her.

It’s sick what I’m doing here, what I’vebeendoing, watching her most vulnerable moments.

But I know she likes it. And I’m desperate for more of what she’ll give, even if it’s just despair.

She turns around, standing up and pulling her long, wavy dark hair off her face and securing it with a fluffy purple band. Her shoulders drop, but then, as though she can feel me, her gaze snaps up and locks on mine.

My stomach somersaults, wishing I was next to her.

Would her breathing stutter and her pouty lips part? Would the heat of her skin tempt me with its warmth, making me ache to sink inside her until I’ve ruined her for everyone else?

She walks up to the window, and nowmybreath hitches, my cock throbbing against the zipper of my pants. I lick my lips as she slips her delicate fingers beneath the spaghetti straps of her purple nightgown. It glides down her body like a waterfall, and she steps out of it, tossing it to the side with her foot. She’s standing so close, her nipples graze across the glass, the cold turning them into stiff peaks, begging me to wrap my tongue around them and tug on them with my teeth.

I want her in my mouth.

On my cock.

In my bed.

She doesn’t touch herself, not like she has all the nights before, and I don’t relieve myself either. But I soak her in slowly, wishing my eyes could feel the same way as my hand.

She presses her fingers to the window, and I mimic her motion, my palm engulfing hers. My stomach flips even though there’s a thick pane of glass between us. She exhales slowly, her breasts rising and falling like she’s being lulled by the ocean, and then she smiles before turning her back and walking away.

My chest cracks right down the middle, and my hand curls into a fist as I press my knuckles to the glass.