Page 19 of Wicked Salvation

Lucian lets out a gasp that’s supposed to sound like a laugh. “Averydangerous one.”

All of a sudden, my clothes feel too tight. The heat burning through the clothes I’m wearing, I want it off—I want everythingoff. Hooking my fingers under the edge of Lucian’s t-shirt, I start to pull. He takes it off with an easy shrug. I can’t help but gawk.

Sure, I’ve seen glimpses of them before—the ink curling just past his collar, or peeking beneath the sleeve of his shirts. But now that his shirt is off, the crackling light from the fireplace casts dancing shadows over his skin, I finally understand.

Lucian’s tattoos aren’t random acts of rebellion.

They’re stories.

His right arm is covered with symbols and patterns winding from his shoulder to wrist. There’s a gothic cathedral, its spires reaching toward his collarbone before it’s lost in a swirl of black smoke. Beneath it, I trace the Latin script inked along the curve of his bicep.

“Fiat voluntas mea,” I whisper.

His hand has slipped below my skirt, moving slowly up my thigh. A moan escapes me—there’s nothing more that I want to do than spread my legs, but he keeps me pinned beneath him, at his mercy.

“Let my will be done,” he murmurs. “That’s what it means.”

The weight of those words settle on my chest. I know this tattoo is anything but sacrilegious. Lucian’s tattoo is a prayer he’s rewritten for himself.

A raven spreads its wings just above his elbow, its beak open in a silent scream. Its feathers bleed into thorns that twist down his forearm—delicate, deceptive, dangerous. I brush my fingers along the ink.

He inches his fingers closer toward the wet heat pooling between my legs. I buck against his hand, eliciting a slow chuckle from him. “Not yet, angel.”

“What do you want me to do, beg?”

He leans down, pressing a kiss to my collarbone. “Yes.”

I’m still in my uniform. If he’s going to keep edging me, the least I can do is make it harder for him—I untuck my shirtfrom my skirt and start undoing the buttons until I’m bare, save for the thin bra that I’m sure he can see my pebbled nipples through.

Lucian’s breath catches. “What are you doing?”

“Leveling the playing field.” I chuckle. His eyes are filled with something close to devotion, the only other time I’ve seen a look like this? When I catch sight of myself in the mirror while saying a prayer.

“Fuck it,” he whispers.

The next thing I know he’s picked me up, slinging me over his shoulder with a firm grip on one of my buttcheeks. And even as I’m hanging upside down while he walks with me toward his bedroom—I’m still looking at his tattoos, like a kid in a candy store.

Across his shoulder blades, in jagged strokes another latin phrase is written. I trace it with my fingers, trying to read it upside down.

“Ex tenebris lux?”

“From darkness, light.”

Black zig-zags down his spine, as if he’s been broken and stitched back together with ink. He has a set of wings—huge, detailed, but torn. It’s not angelic.

No, these wings belong to a fallen thing.

A thing that once knew how to fly.

“Did you come here to interrogate me about my tattoos?” he says with a humorous lilt to his voice as he tosses me on the bed. “Because I’d feel terrible if you’re just tricking me into getting naked for you.”

I press my palm against his chest, feeling his heart beating beneath my fingertips. Lucian doesn’t wear his strength the way Silas does. He wears his defiance, his grief, his untold stories—everything—on his skin.

“No,” I whisper as he slips me out of my shirt, then my skirt. “But I’m learning so much about you.” He smiles.

Maybe it’s because he’s seen me naked before, but laying on Lucian’s bed in nothing but my bra and underwear doesn’t faze me. What has heat coloring my cheeks is the intensity in his eyes. Every inch of my skin gets a lingering look.

He’s still wearing his pants.