Page 11 of Sin (Salvation #1)

Cassidy

“Put to death the sinful thing within you.” I’m sitting in the front pew at the Citadel, and Gideon is at his pulpit for his regular Sunday sermon, but this time he seems only to be speaking to me. I look around, and the entire congregation is staring at me.

My attention returns to Gideon, whose voice fills the room with his fiery recriminations. “Lust is a crime. It’s fire that will burn all the way to hell.”

The room begins to fill with flames, but then Sin appears and holds his hand out to me. “Come on. Let’s take a joy ride.”

Then we’re lying back in the truck bed of Betty Jo as the sun bakes into our skin, drying our soaked clothes. Sin rips off his shirt, and I can’t help letting my eyes longingly travel over his tanned muscles.

Too late, I realize Sin is lazily watching me watch him. He turns on his side so we’re facing each other. “Do you like what you see, Cassidy?” He brings his hand over the muscles of his chest, pausing at his nipple, which he pinches, causing me to let out a whimper.

“Give me your hand.”

I hesitate, and he becomes impatient. “Give me your hand,” he demands.

Slowly, I reach my hand toward him. He takes it and places it on his chest, directing it over the strong swell of his muscles and the tangled softness of golden blond chest hair, to the nipple he pinched earlier, and roughly rubs the palm of my hand over it, again and again.

“That’s good,” he says, releasing a sigh.

His praise lights me up and makes me brave, and I’m the one who begins to guide my hand down over his six-pack stomach, but as I reach the waist of his boardshorts, my bravery runs out, and I stop my exploration.

“You like the fire, don’t you, Cassidy?” he asks.

It’s a truth I’ve tried burying so many times, but I can’t lie to him any longer. “Yes,” I whisper.

“Then,” he says, bringing my hand down lower, “follow the fire with me—all the way to hell?”

“Wake up, Cassidy.”

I bolt up and for a second I’m disappointed that I’m not in the back of Betty Jo next to Sin. Then, as I start to wake up more, I realize I’m at home, in the library, and Sin is staring down at me.

I must have fallen asleep next to my laptop after finishing tutoring my last client.

Between a heavy load of classes at Thurston and taking on additional tutoring students to pay my bills and save up to move out, I haven’t had much time for sleep.

I’d barely been able to keep my eyes open through my last tutoring session.

I’m wide awake now and a strange combination of turned on and disturbed from the dream I just had.

The images replay in my head, a weird reimagination of yesterday’s events.

A mix of Gideon’s fiery sermon and the afternoon I spent riding around with Sin in Betty Jo—minus the X-rated part of the dream, of course.

It's more than just images of the dream flashing through my mind. As Sin stands over me, I remember how it felt to touch him, almost as if it had been real.

“Must have been some dream.”

I go still. Was I sleep talking? Did I call out his name in my dream? “ What makes you think I was dreaming?”

He shrugs. “I slammed the library door when I came in, and you didn’t stir at all. You were tossing and turning, and then you stopped, and a big smile showed up on your face.”

Thank God he didn’t realize I was dreaming about him.

“Want to tell me what you were dreaming about that made you so happy?”

“I don’t remember my dreams,” I lie. I actually remember most of them, especially the ones about Sin.

They’ve been a constant since I was fifteen, and meeting him set off both a wicked crush and my teenage hormones.

I’d been pretty sure I was gay before meeting Sin, but I knew it as a fact from the first moment he gave me a sullen head nod, and my heart almost beat out of my chest.

Only to be told seconds later that he was my stepbrother.

I knew it was wrong to lust after him. That he’d be disgusted if he ever found out. It didn’t stop my dreams, though. I eagerly went to bed each night waiting for my subconscious to take me to a place I could indulge in all the fantasies about Sin that tormented me during the day.

Then he had his father send me to Bellmore. Three years and thousands of miles away from him, I’ve tried to tell myself that his coldness had done away with my silly crush, but my dreams are still an almost nightly reminder that I still want him.

“Shame,” he says. “I could use a distraction.”

Something in his tone hints at more than just boredom.

I twist to get a better look at him. His eyes are icy gray, which happens when he’s angry, and his muscles are tense like they’re ready for a fight.

“You said you slammed the door when you came in. Were you angry?” I ask, though I’m pretty sure of the answer.

“My father called me into his study to ream me about a video I posted showing me dancing with Elodie Summers and Ezra Griffin, I took the last time I was in LA.”

I’d seen the video he posted at least half a dozen times. Unable to stop watching the footage of him bare-chested, chugging a bottle of Clase Azul, and dancing between the indie artist couple as the three of them bucked against each other to the beat of the techno music playing.

“I take it he didn’t give the post a like then?”

“No, but I expected that. Counted on it, honestly. Trying to ruin his day is kinda my hobby.”

“Then what made you so mad?”

“I’m pissed off at myself for letting two innocents get hurt in the war between my father and me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“My father threatened to call for a boycott of their music, so their label dropped them.” Sin runs his hands through his thick hair in frustration. “At least I managed to fix my dumbassery.”

“How?”

“I called up Smith Gentry and offered to underwrite both of their next two releases if he signed them on. Smith is music royalty and he’s too powerful to worry about what my father’s followers can do to his bottom line.”

“That’s good, right?”

“Yeah,” He lets out a long breath. “In the end, it didn’t turn out too bad. Smith is happy to acquire Elodie and Ezra on his roster, and they’re beyond thrilled to be working with him. Plus, I made a pretty good investment.”

“Then why are you still upset?”

“Because I know better.” He starts to pace the room. “I just didn’t think. Usually, I’m careful not to put anyone in the line of fire between my father and me, but I’ve been distracted.” He gives me a strange look.

“Distracted?”

“There are only two easy targets for him to go after to punish me. Mercer is as rich as me, and though he’s not into the power games of the rich and powerful, Devlin is, and he’d cut off my father’s balls if he even looked at Mercer wrong.”

“Who’s the second person?”

“What?”

“You said that there were two easy targets. If Mercer is one of them, who is the other one?” I ask, desperately wondering who else owns a place in Sin’s heart.

“It doesn’t matter,” he says, clearly not willing to tell me. “What’s important is they’re safe from him right now.” He stops his pacing and comes to stand directly in front of me, his jaw set, his eyes fierce. “I’ll burn the world down to keep it that way.”

I’m caught by his intensity. My head echoes with the words from my dream.

“Follow the fire with me—all the way to hell?”

Suddenly, my body is as hungry as it was in my dream. I want his fierceness, his intensity, for my own and to have it solely focused on me.

But I’m his stepbrother.

And even if I wasn’t, from all the social media posts and TMZ reports, Sin is attracted to a wide variety of beautiful women and men.

Though he has never declared his sexual preference, the media is obsessed with it, while the Citadel’s publicity team denies him as anything but a straight, God-fearing male.

Whatever his preferences truly are, I know it’s not virgins who’ve never been kissed.

But I have to know. “Sin?”

“Yeah?”

“There are all sorts of rumors and opinions about you, but even I know you can’t believe everything you read and see, so?—”

Sin quirks his head to the side. “What are you asking me, Cassidy?”

Only the deep, burning need to know conquers my shyness to ask my question. “Sin, who are you attracted to?”