Chapter 5: The Breaking of Rules

Chapter 5: The Breaking of Rules

Elara’s question, “Was that a specific enough sin for you, Father?” echoed in the suffocating stillness of the study. It wasn't a question; it was a gauntlet thrown down, the velvet glove of her purring voice hiding a fist of iron. She had taken his sacred space and turned it into her personal stage, recasting him from judge to a spellbound member of the audience.

The effect on Father Magnus Blackwood was seismic. He looked like a man being flayed alive from the inside out. The image she had so artfully painted—Liam on his knees, stripped of will, worshipping at the altar of her body—was a heresy that went far beyond theological doctrine. It was a personal, visceral blasphemy against his own nature. Magnus was a man born to rule, to command, to possess. His entire life, from the cold boardrooms of Blackwood Industries he’d fled to the unyielding pulpit of St. Jude’s he now occupied, was built on the foundation of his own dominance.

And she had just described giving that ultimate power to another man. A weaker man. The boy his family had swatted aside like an inconvenient fly.

Rage, black and profound, warred with a searing, possessive jealousy. He wanted to smash the memory. He wanted to erase Liam from the scene and insert himself. He wanted to be the one on his knees, not in submission, but in conquest. He wanted to take that control she so clearly reveled in and shatter it into a million pieces until she knew only one power, one authority: his.

The air crackled. The polished desk, the silent, watching saints in the window, the very walls of the study seemed to strain under the pressure of his suppressed violence. His carefully constructed rules for this "confession"—his detached observation, his position of power—were revealed for what they were: a pathetic shield against the storm she represented. A shield that had just been obliterated.

Words were no longer enough. The game she was playing required a response he could not give from behind his desk.

He moved.

It wasn't a choice so much as a surrender to instinct. In two long, silent strides, he closed the distance between them. The scent of him—clean soap, old paper, and something else, something uniquely masculine and dangerously aroused—enveloped her. Elara’s breath caught in her throat, her triumphant smirk faltering for the first time. The caged panther was loose.

She was still leaning forward in her chair, her hand resting on the carved wooden armrest. Before she could react, his hand closed over hers.

It was nothing like the gentle, feather-light touch she’d described from Liam. This was a brand. Hot, heavy, and absolute. His grip was like iron, his fingers wrapping around hers, pinning her to the chair. It wasn't a caress; it was an act of capture. A punishment that sent a bolt of pure, unadulterated pleasure through her system. This was the response. This was the proof of her penance, made terrifyingly, thrillingly real.

His touch was a sin. A priest, in his holy study, laying hands on a parishioner not in blessing, but in a raw display of possessive fury. They had crossed the line. There was no going back.

Elara stared at their joined hands, her own looking small and pale under the shadow of his. She could feel the hard calluses on his palm, the sheer strength in his fingers. A tremor ran through her, a vibration of fear and exhilaration that traveled up her arm and settled deep in her core. She had wanted to see the man behind the priest. Here he was, in all his dark, unrestrained glory.

His thumb moved.

Slowly, deliberately, it slid from the back of her hand to the tender skin of her inner wrist. He pressed down, finding the frantic, fluttering pulse point where her lifeblood beat a panicked rhythm against her skin. Thump-thump-thump. He held it there, his thumb a circle of heat, monitoring the frantic beat he was causing, his touch a vile and intimate violation.

He leaned down, his face so close she could see the flecks of charcoal in his stormy grey eyes, could feel the heat of his breath on her cheek. His voice, when he finally spoke, was a low, guttural growl that bore no resemblance to the controlled priest from moments ago. It was the voice of a man hanging on by a thread.

“You will not stop,” he commanded, the words rough, torn from him. It was an order born not of authority, but of desperate, undeniable need. “You will finish your story.”

The game had changed. His touch was no longer just a response; it was now a part of the board. An instrument of the penance. He was forcing her to continue her tale of dominating another man while he physically dominated her, his thumb stroking her pulse, a constant, tactile reminder of who was truly in control. It was a torment of exquisite cruelty.

A wave of heat washed through Elara, so intense it made her dizzy. He thought this was a punishment, a way to reassert his power. And it was. But it was also the most profound reward, a testament to the power of her words. She had made the man of God break his own sacred rules. She had driven him to this raw, physical need.

She lifted her eyes to his, her dark gaze filled with a mixture of defiance and dawning submission to this new, terrifying dynamic. The air was thick with their mingled scents, their ragged breathing the only sound. The story of Miss Kitty and her kneeling lover felt like a pale imitation of the raw, dangerous reality unfolding between her and this fallen priest.

She had to finish the story. He demanded it. And a deeper, more treacherous part of her wanted to. She wanted to feel his grip tighten, to feel his thumb press harder against her racing pulse as she pushed him even further over the edge.

Taking a shaky breath that did nothing to calm the wild bird fluttering in her wrist, Elara prepared to speak. Her confession would no longer be a memory relived, but a sin committed, word by word, under the scorching brand of his touch.