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I can’t help it. The moment I see her eyes start rolling back, I need her. I kept my promise. I didn’t move my hand. But I didn’t say anything about kissing her.

Her lips are just as soft as I thought they’d be, and I want to fall into them every moment of every day. I try to remind myself to be gentle. Her lip was split earlier that night, but the moment I lick the wound, I’m fucking feral, devouring her. Her tongue is like honey, and I want to swallow it down and make it mine.

June’s wet, hot come coats my hand, and I make the painful decision to not have a little taste I so desperately want. Why have a sample, when I can have the entire feast later? And anyway, right now, I can’t pull away from her lips.

I kiss her and kiss her, and kiss her. I kiss her as easily as breathing. I kiss her like kissing her is breathing, and I cannot survive without it.

I hoist her up, cupping her ass, and she wraps her legs around me, grinding into my hard cock with that shaved, tight pussy.

God, I want to fuck her.

But I said I wouldn’t.

Like a fucking idiot.

I take June back to the couch and sit her down, slowing the kiss. She tastes fucking delicious, she feels incredible, and I would give anything not to stop.

But I also know she’s covered in fresh wounds, should eat, and has had a long fucking night.

Unwrapping my tongue from hers, I give her a final, long kiss before pulling away from her. Her eyes are still closed, her cheeks an adorable pink, her lips red.

My songbird bats those long lashes open and looks up at me. Out of breath, I smile at her. “I just found out what my paradise in Heaven would feel like.”

June’s beautiful doe eyes are wide, and her pink cheeks only become a deep crimson. I chuckle and stand, moving to pick up her clothes and the ointment long forgotten.

“Ointment. Food. And then we can talk more, okay?”

June’s chest rises and falls quickly still, her beautiful fucking tits bouncing with each inhale. It took everything in my power not to bury myself between them earlier when I first took her shirt off, everything not to stare at her naked body and ogle at everything God created.

“Okay,” she breathes, still catching her breath. I chuckle and kneel in front of her again, working first on her thighs.

“Want me to change the channel?” I ask, dabbing the cream on her thighs.

She shakes her head. “Nah. I like these dumb ghost shows.”

After the ointment, I help her back into my clothes, and then make her one of my childhood favorites—scrambled eggs, chopped up hot dogs, white rice, and ketchup. June eyes it skeptically at first, but her eyes light up the moment she takes a bite. We eat together in silence, save for the little moans and happy dances she does after each bite.

At some point, Diablo snuck out of his hiding place, and now sits at her feet as June sneaks him pieces of hot dog.

“You can take my room,” I say between bites. “I’ll sleep out here.”

June blinks at me, then nods.

I considered sleeping with her, but just because I let her fuck my hand doesn’t mean the girl needs some space. She’s had a traumatic night, and the last thing I should be doing is presuming anything.

After we eat, I quickly wash our dishes and clean up as June carries Diablo to the couch and flops back on it.

“Can we watch a movie?” she asks as I pull the bag of frozen veggies from my freezer and walk over to her on the couch.

“Yeah, what do you wanna watch?”

She taps her chin, puckering her lips. “Mmm. Can we watch something scary?”

I arch an eyebrow at her. “You like horror movies?”

June’s cheeks redden as she shrugs. “Yeah. I can’t watch them whenever my mom is home. She thinks they transfer the spirits or whatever to the house through the TV.”

Bullshit.

“Wait, you’d know!” she says quickly. “They don’t, do they? I never believed her, but if she was—”

I chuckle. “No, it doesn’t really work that way. Just like watching these shows,” I point at the ghost hunting show still somehow playing in the background, “can’t summon the Devil to your house.”

“Knew it.” She scratches Diablo between the ears, who has now become more of a liquid croissant than a cat. “Anyway, I’ve always loved movies. But . . . movies were weird at my house. We always watched them as a family, and usually whatever my mother chose and approved.”

“Which meant no horror movies.”

June shakes her head. “But, in the third grade, I stayed home sick from school and Mother couldn’t skip work, so she left me alone for just a few hours. It was eleven a.m. and some channel I wasn’t supposed to be on was playing Creature from the Black Lagoon .”

“Good choice,” I say, leaning back.

“I remember thinking how dumb the girl was in it—to not love the creature back.”

My girl’s a damn monster fucker. Hot.

“Right after that, the original House on Haunted Hill came on. And I don’t know . . . I was so young, but it made the house a little less lonely that day, and it distracted me from my cold. Since then, horror has been sort of a comfort for me. It’s been impossible since Daren has moved in to watch anything, but before him, it would often be my go-to whenever the . . . whenever this became too much.” She taps her forehead.

Horror as a coping mechanism. That’s not so hard to believe. I mean, the adrenaline from the movies might overwrite adrenaline from anxiety, watching someone else’s life be fantastically awful—it creates the illusion of your life being pretty okay compared to the teen boy getting axed by a masked killer or the family being haunted by demons infesting their house.

“I usually just smoke a pack of cigarettes and go for a drive. Both of which are very bad.”

June squints at me. “How is driving bad?”

“Because,” I shrug, “if I want it to be a coping mechanism, I usually go forty over the speed limit.”

She huffs a laugh and leans back, too. I can feel her warmth, but our bodies don’t touch, and I can’t help but feel like she’s too far.

“When did you start smoking?”

Grabbing the remote, I click to a streaming app and start scrolling the movies absently as I tell her, “Since I was fourteen.”

June whistles. “Wow. And they didn’t ask you to quit when you took your vows?”

I chuckle. “Oh, they did. They still do. But, and this may shock you, songbird, I’m not a very good priest.”

“Ya know,” she laughs, “I’m starting to see why. Maybe it has something to do with the stalking?”

“The mask is . . . a whole other thing.” I sigh. A whole other can of decrepit gross worms that I really don’t want to get into right now. “The stalking? They probably wouldn’t think too highly of that either.”

From the corner of my eye, I see June picking at her thumb.

“And . . .” Her eyes stay locked on Diablo’s sleeping black mass. “What about what you did a little while ago? Or . . . when you said you’d touch me, vows be damned. What do they think of that?”

Leaning over, I place a hand on her cheek and force her to turn to me. “If you’re asking if I’ve done that with any other woman, or anything of that nature, no. I have not even thought of touching another woman since I met you.” Her cheeks heat under my palm, but I continue. “I’m a priest for the sole intention of being an exorcist, June. I have a relationship with God, but it isn’t how the Catholic church wants it to be. It isn’t how the Bible wants it to be. And it sure as Hell isn’t how your mother would want it to be. My faith in Him is my own, and my ideas of what he wants for me are by what I feel as a priest. I have always believed the vows to be ridiculous, and I have always believed the church to be a bunch of power mongering idiots who believe they are the voice of authority because they are closer to God. But that is not me. I don’t think he would want me to stop feeling love. I don’t think he would create our bodies to feel such pleasure and then devoid it of such. I do not believe he would want us to hate each other for the sins we have or haven’t committed. If it comes down to it, I’m fine revoking my vows—the politics of it all are too much, and it’s never been why I’ve invested myself into an organization I don’t truly believe in. But I do believe in protecting the world from evil, and I will always be an exorcist.

“So, no,” I breathe, looking at June’s plump lips again as she sucks them between her teeth. “They don’t know I want to worship your body with my tongue and praise your mind as I learn more and more about its intricacies. They don’t know I want to fuck you, day and night, till you scream my name instead of God’s. They don’t know I want to kill anyone who even touches you or that I want to steal you away and never let go.”

I stare into June’s eyes as a sharp inhale rakes her body again. Her cheeks are a crimson so deep, it almost looks like a crime scene.

“Now, do you believe me when I say I’m a fucking awful priest?”