Page 242 of The Devil's Thorn

He didn’t move. Didn’t speak. He just pressed his mouth to the side of my throat, lips parted, breath ragged. And then, in the quiet between echoes, he whispered— “I warned you,dolcezza. I don’t take what isn’t mine… And now?” A pause. A kiss, right below my ear. “You’ll never be anything else again.”

My knees hit the stone floor hard enough to echo. But I didn’t flinch. The cold seeped into my skin, sharp and grounding. My breath was ragged, chest rising and falling like I’d been pulled from the bottom of the sea.

The silence after was deafening. No more bells. No more whispers. Just the fading ghost of his voice in my ear.

“You’ll never be anything else again.”

I didn’t feel owned. I felt claimed. Like territory marked. Like a secret no one else would ever know how to read.

My arms were still tied behind me, wrists sore from pressure, muscles trembling from release and restraint. But I didn’t ask him to undo it. I didn’t ask for anything. I’d given what I wanted to give. Taken what I wanted to take. That was the difference.

Behind me, I heard the soft scrape of his belt being threaded back through the loops, the faint shift of fabric as he adjusted himself. There was no shame in it. No flinching or fumbled movement. Just precision. Control, sliding back into place.

Like nothing had changed. Except everything had.

He stepped around me, his shadow brushing over mine. Then—he knelt beside me. His hands reached behind me without a word, loosening the knot. The silk slipped from my wrists slowly, cool and damp now with sweat, and I let my arms fall forward. They tingled, blood rushing back in waves.

I didn’t look at him. Not right away. But I felt his eyes on me.

“You’ll bruise,” he said, like he was stating the weather.

I flexed my fingers, then looked up at him, breathing through the lingering ache in my muscles. “Good,” I said. “Let it remind me.”

A flicker of something—approval, amusement—passed behind his eyes. But he didn’t speak. He stood, and I followed the movement with my gaze.

Then, without ceremony, he shrugged off his jacket and dropped it around my shoulders. It smelled like him—clean, expensive, and dark. Not cologne. Justhim.

I didn’t thank him. He didn’t expect me to. The edges of the ruined shirt still hung from my arms, sliced down the middle, useless. But the jacket was heavy and warm. It swallowed me.

I slid my arms into it and stood slowly, the leather creaking as I zipped it closed, the lining brushing over bare skin and lace.

It wasn’t comfort. It was cover. Protection that came with a price.

I felt his eyes track every movement, the subtle shift of muscle beneath skin. Not possessive now. Just watchful.

I straightened, brushed a hand through my hair, and met his gaze head-on. “So,” I said, voice calm, level. “Do we pretend this didn’t happen again?”

He didn’t smile. “No one would believe it if we tried.”

I stepped past him, boots silent on the cathedral floor, the weight of everything lingering behind me like smoke.

He followed. Of course he did.

The light near the altar had dimmed now, candles burning low. The silence stretched between us like velvet pulled too tight.

“You knew I’d come here tonight,” I said, not looking at him.

“I always know where you’ll go,” he answered. “The question is whether I’ll let you leave.”

I snorted softly. “You think you could stop me?”

“No,” he said simply. “But I think you’d let me.”

That settled between us heavier than any silence.

We passed the pews without speaking, the echo of our footsteps chasing us up the aisle. The stained glass no longer threw color across the floor—just faint shadows.

My hands still tingled. My skin still buzzed. But my head was clear. There was no shame in what happened. There was power in it. In the way he touched me like I was his and I let him. In the way Iwantedit.