Page 35 of The Hitman's Prince

I’d committed so many sins in that church, in my life before the church, and even more now standing in front of Vince and lying to him about who I was and why he’d found me there to begin with. I was in too deep now, though. It was even more perilous to come clean. I had nooptions than to hope that when the time came, he would show me the same grace he’d offered Orion for his own indiscretions.

“When are you required to be at the church?” Vince asked.

It felt like a change of subject, and I had to think hard on the answer.

“Sunday all day,” I told him. “Wednesday afternoon and evening.”

“Is that all?”

“The bare minimum.”

“If you’re not there, you’re here,” Vince said. There was no question in his words, no suggestion, no argument to be had. “You do not come and go without letting me or Orion know first.”

“I…I don’t understand.”

Vince tapped his desk, the echo of finger against wood deafening.

“Kneel,” he demanded, and I did. Without thinking, without questioning. Realization must have flashed in my eyes because Vince looked smug and Orion looked like he wanted to throw me out a window. “Now do you understand?”

I did and I didn’t.

The way Vince made me feel was complex. Orion, even more so.

Both attractive and both cruel in their ways, the two of them were the exact kind of men the church was meant to keep me away from. And instead of takingthat sanctuary, I’d willingly walked right into their home, taken off my shirt, and gone to my knees. I wanted Vince Angelini in ways I couldn’t explain, and with my knees digging into the pile of his expensive-looking carpet, I wondered for the first time if maybe I didn’t have to. My entire life was explained and mapped out for me. Couldn’t this one thing just be mine because I wanted it? Because I liked it?

“I want you here,” Vince said again, clearly taking my silence as confusion. “So you’ll be here. And when I don’t want you here anymore. What happens then?”

The thought of his rejection was enough to make my skin crawl. “Then I’m not here.”

He smiled at me like a proud father. “Right.”

There were people I would have to answer to for this, but under the pressure of Vince’s cool and calculating stare, I found all of them less intimidating than the man in front of me.

“And let me be clear, Priest?—”

“Jacob,” I interrupted.

“Let me be clear, Priest,” he repeated, and I bit my lips between my teeth to hold back another protest. “This means I want to fuck you. I want Orion to fuck you. I want you to fuck him.”

Orion blinked hard, jaw tense, but Vince’s fingers were still curled hot and sure around the back of his neck and he didn’t say a word.

“And while all of that is happening, I want it to hurt. But more than that, I want you towantthat. I want you to consent to all of it. Everything.”

Precum beaded on the tip of my cock, the friction of the wetness against my underwear enough to bring me embarrassingly close to the edge without even being touched.

“What Orion did to you with the whip? That’s nothing.”

My breathing hitched and I managed a nod, a whispered, “Yes.”

I didn’t have the words to tell himthank you. To tell him, this was the only thing I’d wanted in my entire life. The power to give up my control, to be allowed this kind of release. Vince was dangerous for a dozen different reasons, and consenting to what he asked of me was most likely going to get me killed, but I understood Orion so clearly in that moment.

Whatever came after Vince Angelini, even if it was death…

It would all be worth it.

Chapter 26

Caspian