Chapter 7: The Taste of Penance

Chapter 7: The Taste of Penance

The sound that ripped from Magnus’s throat was not of this room. It was not the sound of a priest, nor even of a man. It was the elemental, guttural cry of a predator that had been starved for a lifetime and just had the scent of its destined prey shoved in its face. It was the sound of utter, catastrophic failure of will.

He had dragged her from the chair with such force that she stumbled, the hard, unforgiving edge of the mahogany desk biting into the backs of her thighs. The air left her lungs in a shocked gasp. His grip on her wrist was gone, but she was not free. His hands were on her waist now, great weights of heat and strength through the dark green fabric of her dress, holding her fast. Trapping her against his desk. His altar.

She stared up at him, her heart a frantic, trapped bird. The game was over. She could see it in his face. The cold, calculating Confessor was gone, incinerated in the inferno she had so carefully stoked. The mask of piety had melted away, and the man beneath was terrifying to behold. His sharp grey eyes, once tools of intellectual dissection, were now black pools of pure, undiluted hunger. A fine sheen of sweat coated his brow, and the muscle in his jaw clenched and unclenched in a frantic, losing battle for control.

He was wrecked. And she had wrecked him. The realization was a dizzying cocktail of triumph and terror. She had won the game so completely that she had destroyed the board and shattered all the pieces.

His hot, ragged breath washed over her face, smelling of nothing but desperation. “You let him…” he began, his voice a raw rasp, the words broken. “You let that… boy… defile what was meant for—” He couldn't finish. The sentence broke apart under the sheer weight of his fury and a jealousy so profound it was shaking his powerful frame.

His hands slid from her waist, one moving up to clutch her shoulder, the other tangling brutally in her long, dark hair, tilting her head back, baring her throat. She whimpered, a small, involuntary sound of fear and surrender. He was no longer playing. This wasn't a punishment or a test. This was need. Raw, unrestrained, and cataclysmic.

And then, the world inverted.

He didn't fall. He sank.

With a groan that seemed torn from the very foundation of his soul, Magnus Blackwood, the proud scion of an untouchable dynasty, the feared Father of St. Jude’s, collapsed before her. His knees hit the cold stone floor with a dull, final thud. The black fabric of his cassock, the very symbol of his sacred vows and unassailable authority, pooled around him like a spreading stain of ink.

The confessor was on his knees before the sinner.

Elara’s mind reeled. The image she had painted for him, the one she’d used as a weapon—Liam kneeling before her—was a pale, childish fantasy compared to this. Liam had knelt in a game of seduction. Magnus was kneeling in an act of total, unconditional surrender. He was abdicating his power, his pride, his God, all for her. In the lamplight of the study, surrounded by the ghosts of saints and scholars, he looked up at her, his face a mask of exquisite torment and profane worship.

Her breath hitched. A thrill so sharp and potent it was almost painful shot through her. This was what she craved. Not the weak submission of a boy, but the utter breaking of a powerful man.

His gaze dropped from her face, tracing a path down her throat, over the curve of her collarbone, to the swell of her breasts beneath the green dress. He knew the story. He knew the path. He was a pilgrim following a map she had drawn for him in the language of sin.

“He worshipped you,” Magnus ground out, the words thick with loathing and a desperate, agonizing envy. “Let me show you what true worship looks like.”

He leaned forward, his purpose absolute. His hot mouth found her, not on her lips, but on the swell of her breast, right through the dark silk of her dress.

A gasp tore from Elara’s throat. The heat of his mouth was a brand, instantly soaking the fabric, searing her skin beneath. It was a shocking, possessive intimacy that stole the air from her lungs. He wasn’t kissing her; he was claiming her. He was tasting the very sin he had forced her to recount, trying to exorcise the ghost of Liam by overwriting the memory with the sheer, undeniable force of his own presence.

His hand that wasn’t tangled in her hair came up to cup her other breast, his thumb stroking over the peak, which hardened instantly into a tight, aching point against the lace of her bra. A low groan vibrated from his chest, traveling through his mouth and into her skin. He nuzzled against her, his mouth moving greedily, his scruff scraping gently against the fine material of her dress, a delicious, maddening friction.

This wasn’t salvation. It wasn’t even damnation. It was a new religion being founded in the ruins of the old one, a religion of flesh and need, and he was its first and most fervent convert.

All the fight, all the defiance, drained out of Elara, replaced by a wave of pure, molten heat that started low in her belly and spread through every limb. Her mind went blessedly blank. There was no more game, no more past, no more Liam. There was only this. The weight of his hand, the heat of his mouth, the humbling sight of this powerful man brought to his knees before her.

Her own hands, which had been frozen at her sides, came to life. She didn't push him away. She didn't slap him. Her fingers threaded into his short, dark hair, clinging to him. It was an echo of the gesture she’d described with Liam, but the meaning was entirely transformed. This was not an act of grief-stricken passion. This was an acceptance. A consecration.

He suckled her through the fabric, a desperate, hungry sound that spoke of years of starvation. He was tasting her story, her sin, her penance. And in doing so, he was making it his own. The past and present had not just collided; the present was consuming the past, burning it away until nothing else remained.

The game was over. The ruin had just begun.