Page 34 of Sin (Salvation #1)
Cassidy
I sit listening to Sin tell me his story. His jaw tight, and his eyes burning with resolve as he speaks. I’m alternately heartbroken and furious about what Sin had to endure as a child.
I squeeze his hand, which he is still holding on to, almost as if it were a lifeline. “That’s all I lived for until I met you.”
My heart contracts in a burst of emotion at his words.
“From the first day we met, I felt you belonged to me. I wasn’t attracted to you then. I saw you as a kid, but from the first time I saw you, I wanted to protect you and keep you safe. Suddenly, I had another focus besides revenge on my father.”
“I was definitely attracted to you,” I admit to him. “You were my first everything. My first crush. The first guy to set my teenage hormones on fire.”
“More firsts,” he murmurs with satisfaction.
“That first summer I felt so close to you,” I whisper, even though there is no one else around to hear my confession.
It’s like this stolen moment between us is fragile, and any loud noise or sudden movement could break it.
“Like you were always meant to be my family—though thinking of you as my stepbrother never felt right.”
“No, it sure as hell never did,” Sin agrees.
I swallow hard and turn my head away from him so he can’t see the pain of the memory I’m recounting. “Then you told me you didn’t want me around and had your father send me away to boarding school.”
I don’t tell him how leaving the house, I’d only spent a few months in, felt like I was being torn from the inside out, and I could barely breathe from missing him. That he’d been the only person I’d let get close to me since my father died.
Reliving the memory and pairing it with his narrative helps me see the story—our story—radically differently than before. In a sudden rush of clarity, I gasp in a dramatic show of astonishment. “You did it to protect me?”
I look at his shaded eyes and tense body and know the answer. All the times he’d been kind to me and then pushed me away cruelly had been to protect me from his father. My memories, with this added perspective, give depth and contour to my past.
He tells me about how his father withheld my asthma medication and the way Gideon threatened to send me to what basically sounded like a military school to toughen me up.
As much as I suffered at Bellmore, feeling shattered and alone, now I realize how lucky I was. Sin intervened.
“But what I don’t understand is why you didn’t share any of this with me before. Maybe you felt I couldn’t handle it at fifteen, but you could have told me last summer, or at least when I came back a few months ago.”
“You don’t get it, Cassidy. My father wasn’t the only one I tried to protect you from. I kept pushing you away because you also needed to be protected from me.”
“I don’t understand.”
“That’s because you still think I’m the hero of this story.”
“You’re certainly not the villain.”
“Didn’t you hear me earlier, Cassidy? I’ll hurt anyone to make my father pay.
I’ve been orchestrating his downfall for years, but some days, I contemplate killing him instead.
” He pauses, waiting to see my reaction to what he just told me.
Almost like he wants my condemnation. When I don’t reject him or castigate him, he seems frustrated at my lack of judgment.
“Those aren’t the actions of a good man.
I have my father’s cursed blood running through my veins.
You shouldn’t want anything to do with me. ”
“It’s way too late for that,” I tell him. “And you’re wrong about yourself. You are a good man.”
Sin shakes his head. “You don’t see my soul for the rotted husk that it is. I’m not a good man, and I can prove it to you.”
“How exactly do you plan to do that?” I ask him even though I know he won’t be able to come up with anything that will convince me.
“I know you are too good for me. That I should walk away from you and let you live your life and be with someone who deserves you. Who isn’t your stepbrother.
That’s what a good man would do.” The dark, possessive look he gives me should concern me, but instead it sends a thrill through my every nerve.
“But I’m gonna do this instead.” He grabs me by the neck and swiftly pulls me to him and takes me in a kiss so dominant, so filthy, I’m hard in seconds.
He gives my body no choice but to respond to his wicked lips and hands that alternately bring bliss and delicious bites of pain.
Earlier, our coupling had been slow and excruciatingly pleasurable; this time, it’s a high-voltage race to pleasure.
Knowing I’m still loose and open from the last time, his strong hands lift me by the hips and impale me on his cock that ruthlessly pummels into me.
“So damned good,” Sin moans into my neck. “Never gonna let you go.”
The promise revs up my bliss, and it takes one rough stroke of my cock from Sin’s strong hand, and I go over the edge, coming all over his stomach and chest. My orgasm seems to trigger Sin’s. With one violent push, he spills inside of me with a heavy grunt.
He lazily bites me hard on the neck, the sting causing my spent, tired cock to pulse. “If having you like this is bad, I never want to be good,” I tell him truthfully.