Page 79 of Viper

I’m in that incense-laden room with candles and too much sin.

“You’ve lived with this sin inside of you for far too long, boy.”

“It’s not a sin to love,” I tell her, but I don’t look at her face. I’m not allowed. I keep my gaze on her feet. On the plain black flats as she removes them.

“Kneel and repent.”

My knees hit the cold stone floor. She’s naked now. Bared to me, but I keep my eyes down as I’ve been taught. When she hooks a finger under my chin, forcing my head back, her touch burns like acid. My eyes land on the hair on her mound. She shifts, and her long brown hair sways around her hips, falling well past her ass.

I reach into my pants to free myself, prayers slipping past my lips in whispers, until they become pained pants.

“Look at me.”

When I do, her features twist, bones contorting and melting under her skin until it’s too agonizing to witness, but when I close my eyes, she demands I open them again.

“Look at what you did to me,” she screams, but it’s inside my head. My eyes open and her lips part in a silent scream. Black liquid oozes out. It spills down her chin, between her breasts, and falls to the floor.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

She bends forward, looming over me like the monster she hides beneath her sweet, soft smile. I open for her, drinking it in, choking on the smoky black as it sticks in my throat.

I can’t swallow it all. I can’t breathe.

I sit up with a gasp, my hand clawing at the clog in my throat. My bedroom door flings open, and Breaker rushes in.

“What the fuck?” Breaker says, hand dropping from the doorknob. He enters the large room I claimed as mine, stopping at the end of the bed. It’s dark in my room, so I can only see his silhouette in the doorway, the pale blue lights from outside the windows washing over his large body. “You were screaming.”

“I’m fine,” I say, tossing back the blanket and sitting up on the side of the bed, my feet planted on the smooth wood floor. “Just a dream.”

“Nightmare?” he asks, the bed dipping as he sits next to me. “It’s been a long time.”

It has. I haven’t had a nightmare in years, especially not one about that evil place.

Or about her.

“Just a weird dream,” I tell him.

He makes a sound in his throat like he doesn’t believe me.

He shouldn’t.

“Do you want me to stay?” he asks after a minute.

I glance over at him, and for a second my breath ceases. In this room, framed by pale moonlight and the white gauzy material draped over the four-poster bed, he’s angelic. So like the boy I sold my soul to protect.

It’s been years since Breaker has come to me in the middle of the night. It’s usually me, feeling disconnected, uncomfortable in my skin, that has me seeking him out after dark. When no one knows, and no one can see I’m not myself.

When no one knows that it’s him I want. His touch. His demands and praises. Everything he’s made of that’s clean and worthy, so I can bask in all that makes him so sweet and good. And for a few moments, I’m those things too.

Just a few moments, though. Because you can’t scrub some stains away.

Ripping my eyes off him, I pinch the bridge of my nose, exasperated with myself and him. I’ve been here seven full days, and we’ve barely talked about anything that really matters. We could blame it on nerves, the inability to chance talking in this massive home where the staff can’t be trusted, even though we sweep for bugs daily, or that we’ve been so busy slipping into our roles, it’s just easier to forget who we were.

I’m not sure if it’s me or him who’s been more silent. That’s not true. It’s me. It always is. I’m the one who puts distance between us. I’m the one who can’t hold anyone close for too long.

“I’m fine,” I say. “Just hate sitting around, waiting. It’s making me antsy. And I don’t like not being able to see Cora.”

My dream flashes through my mind. Rune’s been the cause of so much of her heartbreak. More than the idea of her being anywhere near him, I hate to think about the fact she’s being forced to endure him. Having to face your tormentor every single fucking day wrecks a person.