Dead Man Walking (The Fallen Men, #6)

by Darling, Giana

  “Here,” she said as she moved into my line of sight, rounding the atrocious pink velvet couch with a mug of steaming liquid in her hand. “Drink this, it’ll warm you up.”

  She placed the mug shaped like a snowman on the coffee table before me.

  It was hot chocolate.

  With little multicoloured marshmallows.

  When I didn’t answer, she shifted on her bare feet and made a little noise of contemplation in the back of her throat that reminded me of the whimpers she made in the graveyard.

  Blood surged to my cock so quickly, I had to adjust myself discreetly in the denim.

  “Okay…I’m going to take a shower. You sit here and warm up. Sampson will keep you company. He’s a doll.” Contrary to her point, the fat cat swished his tail haughtily and turned his back on me to face the fireplace. “I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

  A jiffy.

  Hot chocolate with little coloured marshmallows.

  Pink couches, one-eyed rescue cats, a fucking dove.

  A rosy mouth that tasted like sugared peaches and a pretty, tight, little cunt that’d only ever been touched by me.

  My head reeled, thoughts battling like two boxers in a ring.

  Absently, I was aware of Bea padding off down the hall to her bathroom, but I couldn’t take my eyes of that damn ridiculous snowman mug filled with hot chocolate.

  I was fucking paralyzed.

  The scene was too domestic. A warm house, a cup of steaming fucking cocoa, a woman taking care of me, and a cat with a serious attitude.

  I’d never had that.

  Not. Ever.

  Life with Mam and Pa had never been like a fucking postcard. We’d had a small clapboard house on a few acres of poorly nourished land in southern Ireland. My sisters were kind, good little kids, but they were a lot of work. I had to help my mam as much as I could when I wasn’t in school because Pa was always working the fields.

  We didn’t have family outside of our home, and we weren’t liked in town.

  At all.

  Ireland was such a Catholic stronghold, especially back then, that the pope didn’t even bother to visit. The Irish bled divine blood. They worshipped God zealously, especially in small country towns like ours.

  Everyone loved Father O’Neal.

  And Father O’Neal hated my parents.

  Unmarried, living in sin with three bastard kids.

  We were flagrant aberrations in his parish, and he made sure we were viewed as pariahs. We had none of the help the church reserved for the poor, none of the community enjoyed by his flock.

  Once, when I was just a lad walking into town with my mam, a group of teen boys had thrown tomatoes at us.

  I still didn’t eat them to this day, and the acidic scent of the ripe fruit induced near-instantaneous rage.

  And then, of course, they died, and everything changed.

  I didn’t even have the small comfort of Mam singing in the kitchen, the laughter of Danae and Keely as they played in the garden out back, of Pa coming home and sweeping Mam off her feet.

  Maybe I’d imagined even those instances of peace. Maybe I’d created them to anchor myself to some semblance of joy when they’d gone and left me alone in the clutches of Father O’Neal and his parishioners.

  I could barely recall those moments now. It was more like watching some grainy film on television than any kind of emotional remembrance.

  I didn’t know happiness anymore, if I ever had at all.

  And this…this scene reeked of it.

  My body felt wrong, wrong, wrong in this space that smelled of sugar and peaches, of a girl so sweet I felt the ache of it in my molars.

  I surged to my feet so violently that my knee crashed into the table and sent the snowman cup crashing to the floor, where it sloshed its contents all over the pristine cream rug. My heartbeat was too loud and muffled in my ears, the air around me pressurized so my body moved too slow.

  Automatically, my feet took me down the hall through her girly bedroom with the canopied bed into the bathroom, the door already ajar with steam billowing out like a curled finger beckoning me inside.

  I stopped just inside the room, steam thick in the air along with the scent of peaches. My cock was hard from the fragrance alone, but I wasn’t aroused.

  For maybe the first time in my life, I was fucking panicked.

  And then my eyes found her in the close air, her body all in watercolour pinks and creams behind the foggy glass of the shower door. She was washing innocently, bent away from me to clean her calves, so the shape of her plump ass was an exaggerated curve begging for a firm grip, a short slap.

  All I could hear was the shush of the water falling and the harsh rasp of my breath through my lungs. Music played from a little speaker on the basin, but I couldn’t hear the notes. I could only feel the throb of it mimicked in my dick.

  I was meant to tell her I was fucking leaving. That I probably wasn’t coming back.

  Not ever.

  I’d found I was allergic to pink, allergic to peaches, allergic to all things Bea fucking Lafayette.

  But then she turned under the spray, eyes closed, mouth parted so water spilled out between her lush pink lips, hands raised to all that slicked back hair as suds raced down her body.

  She looked like a statue of a nymph trapped in a fountain.

  And suddenly, irrevocably, I needed to taste the water spilling out of her well.

  I took the time only to shuck my boots and socks then I was stalking across the floral bathmat and entering the shower behind her. She didn’t hear me over the water in her ears and the music pouring through the steam. I relished the idea of scaring her. That was just the kind of man I was, and it sent acid chewing through my stomach lining.

  The boogeyman was in the shower with her, and she didn’t know just how badly I wanted to sink inside her sweet heat and forget every nightmarish thing about myself.

  My hand struck out to wrap fingers around her exposed throat.

  Instinctively, she struggled.

  Instinctively, I held tighter, then pushed her back against the wall past the stream of water. As I moved under it, my clothes waterlogged in an instant, and dirty water circled the drain.

  Her eyes were wide, all dark, all terror as they popped open and fixed on me.

  I bared my teeth at her, unable to articulate the fierce fear and boiling need churning up like a witch’s cauldron in my gut. She’d cast some kind of spell on me, and as much as I fought it, I couldn’t for the life of me resist.

  I watched emotions move across her face, the pinch of fear, the softening of recognition, the high flush spilling from her cheeks to chest as she realized I had her trapped and naked, utterly vulnerable.

  Fuck, she was perfect.

  She loved to be preyed upon so long as I was the predator gnashing his teeth at her throat.

  She loved to be yielded hard in my hand like a weapon and not played softly, tenderly as so many women I’d been with before her.

  She was perfect for me.

  She loved me.

  With a ragged groan that tore up the inside of my chest with rancorous claws, I collapsed in on my impulses and surged against her slight body, plastering every inch of my clothed form to her naked one.

  Then I was kissing her.

  No, not kissing.

  Savaging her mouth with mine. Eating it. Devouring it. Eviscerating it with my tongue, lips, and teeth.

  Her pulse went mad against my thumb.

  She writhed against my hold, half in lust and half in struggle because I knew, even if she didn’t voice it, she liked to pretend non-consent.

  My cock was an angry rod of pulsing flesh trapped in the sodden denim, but I relished the bite of pain as I ground against her, and the zipper bit harshly into my crown.

  “You sore?” I demanded as I ran a rough hand down the notches of her spine to that plump ass. For a small girl, she had the roundest, fucking sexiest ass I’d ever palmed.

  “A l
ittle,” she admitted on a breathy little gasp.

  I arrowed my hand around her waist and down to that soft, wet center. When I sank two fingers into her slick heat, she moaned raggedly as I said, “Good. Wanna fuck your swollen cunt again.”

  Her full-body shiver vibrated her hard nipples against my chest, and for one insane second, I wished we were skin to skin.

  “Take off your clothes,” Bea begged. “I want to feel you.”

  “Right now, I’m the one feelin’ you,” I assured her with a twist of my fingers in her clutching pussy.

  She rewarded me with a groan but then shook her head as if to clear her thoughts. Her little hands went up to my chest and pushed slightly. “No, Priest, please. We’ve been together three times, and I’ve never been able to really touch you. I want…well, I want to see what you look like.”

  “My body,” I drawled, reading the blush in her cheeks. “Or my cock?”

  That blush deepened and spread to her chest so that even her nipples flushed. I tweaked one hard with my forefinger and thumb just to watch her writhe.

  “My cock,” I confirmed. “Fine, you wanna see it? Get on your knees for me.”

  “H-here?” she asked, eyes blown wide.

  “Here.” I arched a brow when she hesitated. “You want my dick, be a good girl for me and get. On. Your. Knees. Wanna see you worship me like you worship at your church. Wanna see how prettily you corrupt for me.”

  With a trembling mouth and eyes gone to black with desire, Bea let out a soft, sweet sigh and sank sinuously to her knees on the tile. Instantly, my cock kicked against its confines, the heat of precum leaking from my tip.

  “Take it out,” I said, my voice rough, so animal it was hard to make out.

  But she got me.

  Her small hands trembled like pale birds as she fumbled with my belt, then my fly, the harsh rasp of the zipper discernable even over the music and the water.

  “Oh,” she whispered when she found I wasn’t wearing anything beneath the denim.

  She looked up at me then, those big eyes so blue under those spiky black lashes. I grinned at her, a feral, menacing smile to remind her that I was more beast than man. I watched a swallow move hard through her slim neck as she bent back to her task, fingers reaching into the fold of cloth to wrap gently, so gently, around my throbbing cock and pull it delicately into the open.

  We both watched as it pulsed in her tender hold, an angry red, the crown so deep a purple, so swollen with blood it looked like a perfect plum aimed at her lush, slightly parted mouth. It was not a pretty cock, nothing that suited the pretty girl on her knees for me. It was thick enough to stretch her lips too wide, to ache in her jaw if she took me too long or too deep. It was ribboned with prominent veins and long enough not to fit in both of her hands.

  She held it like a weapon she didn’t have the first clue how to use, but the salacious curiosity in her gaze as she devoured the sight of me said she was all too eager to learn.

  The base of my spine prickled and tightened, balls drawing up as I thought about how I was going to ruin that pretty, inexperienced mouth.

  “Lick it,” I directed her, my voice the only cold thing in the steamy enclosure.

  Slowly, she leaned forward to press a little pursed-lip kiss to the tip.

  She moved back again, her pink tongue dipping out to taste me on her lips. “Oh,” she said before smiling up at me. “You taste good.”

  A growl rumbled through me as my resolve to go slow cracked down the middle. “You wanna make me feel good?”

  “More than anything.”

  “Hands behind your back,” I ordered as I stepped closer, one hand fisting in the ropes of her wet hair while the other held the blunt end of my cock to her lips. “Open that sweet mouth, now, Bea. I’m gonna fuck your face, and I’m not gonna hold back, you get me?”

  In response, she looked up at me and deliberately opened her mouth wide so I could place my dick on her tongue. I slapped it there once, twice, then slipped it deeper into her mouth. She closed her eyes and moaned all around me.

  To look at Bea was to think instantly of sunshine. She was everything sweet and light, from the tip of her curled cloud of golden hair to the feminine little dresses she wore all in whites and pastels. Her voice was a light lilt, musical enough to seem like the song of the Fae in the Irish hills, and when she laughed, it was just as beguiling.

  The broken hardwiring of my brain compelled me to corrupt her, to bruise that peachy skin, bite the sweet line of that neck brutally until it bloomed, then grip all that hair so tightly she cried.

  She would look even more beautiful, I always thought each time she smiled, if she had tears adorning those smooth cheeks like jewels.

  So, I shed the last vestiges of civilization from my shoulders and gave in to my darkest impulses.

  I fucked her mouth. Firm thrusts over that silken tongue, deep into the grasp of her hot mouth until I hit the back of her throat, and she clenched all around me, then slow drags back out as she sucked hard at my length.

  Such a good fucking girl taking it even when she didn’t know how, eyes weeping, cheeks reddened and slick with tears. She whimpered and groaned and gagged hard at the root of my dick, but not once did she ask for a reprieve. I watched as she slipped a hand between her thighs and played in the wet there and knew my girl loved to be used hard like this.

  “Lose the hand,” I demanded, my voice a harsh whip cutting through the steamy intimacy. I thrust my leg between her spread thighs, offering the denim-clad calf for her use. “You wanna get off, you do it on my leg.”

  Her eyes were twin silvered blue coins as she looked up at me, her lush mouth spread indecently wide around my dick. I flexed my hand in her hair just to see the tears pooling on her lower lids loosen and slip down her cheeks.

  “You wanna come for me?” I asked and waited for her little nod to continue. “You do it usin’ me like I’m usin’ you.”

  She vacillated again, but I noticed the way a shiver bit between her slender shoulders, how her flush deepened to merlot. With a hesitancy that gripped my balls in an iron vise, Bea shifted forward to tentatively press her wet folds into my jean-clad leg.

  “Grind against me,” I told her roughly, the words tearing up my closing throat as I watched her awkwardly start to move against me. “That’s it. Love to see my good girl go dirty for me. Wanna feel you come all over my leg while I use this tight throat, yeah?”

  Her response was a gargled groan, cut off by the girth of my cock.

  Never in my fucking life had I been so damn aroused. And it wasn’t just the scene, Bea’s blond head bent in prayer over my dick, sucking it so well despite her lack of skill that I was already fighting not to come.

  It was this trust she was giving me. The way she pushed past her own boundaries to follow me willingly deeper into my dark and depravities. She kept telling me she wanted me in all my fucked-up glory, and I kept trying to prove her wrong. But she hurdled over every obstacle I threw up in her path without fear and with so much grace it ached in my chest.

  She was moving now, grinding her sweet pussy against my leg harder and harder so I had to brace. Her stuttered, eager breaths around my cock cooled the shaft every time I pulled out, and she groaned whenever I thrust back in. It was as if every stroke of my cock was stoking the flames of her lust higher and higher.

  Sooner than I could have imagined, given her sore cunt and inhibitions, Bea was coming apart on my calf, soaking the wet fabric in the sweet nectar of her climax. She cried out as she came, tears gushing down her cheeks, juices down her thighs, until she was more liquid than woman.

  Those tears, that eagerness, and the reflexive clutch of her throat around my head every time I went just a little too far coalesced as heavy, urgent weight in my balls.

  I wanted to come too.

  And I was going to do it all over that pretty angelic face.

  The thought blew the dam holding my climax at bay. I pulled out of Bea’s mouth as she gr
oaned in protest, fisting one hand tighter in her hair to pin her in place and the other hard around my shaft. Three vicious pulls and I was coming, pearls of it landing on her smooth cheeks, glistening, swollen lips and small chin. I painted her in depravity and sin, glorying in my ability to do so, feeling like Satan must have when Eve took that first bite of the apple.

  “Fuck, yes,” I growled and hissed as I squeezed the last of my seed from the head of my cock, then brushed it over Bea’s parted mouth.

  With low lids and heaving breasts, she stared up at me like a fallen angel, dirty with my seed. I panted, hand still in her hair, the other braced against the wall as the water, now cool, continued to beat down my back, and I waited for her reaction.

  That sweet, little tongue peeked between her lips then tentatively swiped through the cum glossing them so prettily. When she finished cleaning her mouth like a kitten, she raised a pink-tipped finger and collected a drop from her cheek. She studied it, head cocked slightly, rubbing it between thumb and forefinger, and then she ate that too, sucking the moisture from each finger like I’d seen her do once with a peach.

  A shudder wracked my entire body, an echo of my climax.

  “You taste good,” she told me in a fluttery, almost giddy voice. “You taste like I always imagined you would.”

  “Killin’ me,” I told her as I leaned down to pick her up beneath her armpits and haul her easily into my arms. Her legs wrapped around me naturally, her ass cradled in my hands like she’d been made to sit there.

  “Needed that,” I admitted reluctantly. “I hurt you?”

  She nuzzled into my neck, then tipped her nose into my beard and rubbed it there, inhaling my scent. “Mmm, just enough, thank you.”

  A hoarse chuckle left me. “Right. Got it that my Little Shadow likes it rough.”

  “Only with you,” she agreed sleepily, settling into my hold as though she could sleep there.

  A residual cramp of panic seized my gut, but I forced myself past it so I could turn off the water and get us out of the thickly steamed shower. She protested in an exhausted murmur when I tried to let her down to dry her with a fluffy orange towel, so I did a half-assed job of it with her in my arms still pressed to my dripping clothes.