by Logan Fox
Despite my trembling fingers, I force the drive into its slot.
Zachary’s next groan drags my gaze back to him.
This time, I can’t look away.
His head moves back, mouth parting. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows. Then he grabs Gabriel’s head, his fingers sinking deep into the man’s dark hair.
He grunts as he forces Gabriel to move faster over his cock.
All the time glaring at me from across the room, lips parted, his whole body moving with each furious breath.
His jade eyes glitter with hatred. But none of it’s focused on the man giving him head.
Every ounce of that rage, that revulsion…that disgust…
Look what you made me do, little girl.
His eyes flutter as he lets out a deep moan. As if that sound triggers the memory, his promise fills my head.
Christ, we’re going to enjoy making you bleed.
I don’t dare stay any longer in Gabriel’s room, so I creep out while they’re busy. I can only hope Zachary manages to take out the thumb drive without Gabriel noticing.
It shouldn’t have been possible, but somehow—despite everything—I manage to fall asleep a few minutes after I get back to my room.
And not only do I sleep…I dream.
In my dream, Zachary’s stalking me down the halls of Saint Amos.
I know it’s him because when I turn my head fast enough, I catch a glimpse before he ducks away behind a column or an open door.
When I try to run away from him, I quickly realize my top speed maxes out at a fast walk.
Which means it’s only a matter of time before he catches up with me.
When I face forward again, Gabriel is waiting at the end of the hall for me. I come to a stop but the hallway keeps moving as if I’m standing on a conveyor belt.
Whether I like it or not, I’m headed straight for him. He opens his arms—a handsome, charismatic, modern-day Jesus with his short hair and dark eyes. His clothes flicker—priests robes, jeans, slacks—and then he’s just wearing a loincloth.
His body gleams. Sweat? Oil?
A crown of thorns appears on his head.
They pierce deep. Draw blood.
A hot breath warms the back of my neck. I turn around. Now the hallway streams backward and it’s Zachary I see. But I’m racing away from him, and he’s reaching for me.
I’m a sinner.
I hear his voice even though his mouth doesn’t move. In the blink of an eye, his face contorts into that of a maniac’s—mouth twisted in a sadistic laugh, eyes wild—before smoothing into the mask of a saint.
Just like you, little girl.
Terrified, I spin around and start running away. The hallway zooms past in a blur.
Gabriel streams toward me. Dark, wet blood masks his entire face, the whites of his eyes too pure in contrast.
He tends to his flock like a shepherd. He gathers the lambs in his arms and carries them close to his heart—
I try to scream, but the sound stays lodged in my chest, burning.
Burning.
Gabriel’s skin catches alight. He doesn’t seem to notice. The only thing he cares about is holding me.
Comforting me.
Bringing me to the light. But if I so much as touch him, I’ll be consumed in flames.
Zachary breathes on the back of my neck.
I spin around, body convulsing with horror.
He reaches for me, face flickering from saint to demonic sinner a thousand times a second, until it’s nothing but a smudgy blur.
A hand clamps over my mouth, and muffles my terrified yell.
My eyes fly open.
A dark figure ducks down and slowly transforms into Apollo.
“Shh,” he murmurs, putting a finger over his mouth. “It’s just me, pretty thing.”
I watch him with my heart thundering away in my chest.
He crouches beside my bed and puts his head close to mine, nuzzling the side of my throat.
But I can’t shake the feel of Zachary’s hot breath on the back of my neck, and that leaves me paralyzed.
“About that raincheck?” Apollo whispers into my ear.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Trinity
Maybe I’m still dreaming. I must be, because Trinity the Wimp would never follow Apollo anywhere in the middle of the night.
Never in a million years.
Right?
Because rational me knows that he’s trouble, despite the cheeky grin he keeps sending my way, despite how he looks like he’s bursting to tell me something juicy.
So I’m dreaming then. Which makes all of this much easier to process. Like when he says he hears someone coming, and suddenly presses me against the wall like we’re in a spy movie and this is just an excuse for him to kiss me?
Well, don’t think I don’t know what he’s trying to pull. His lips barely touch mine before I’m convinced this whole thing is an elaborate ruse.
But then I don’t care anymore, because he’s kissing me, and fuck my life, he’s a good kisser.
We’re partially hidden in one of the alcoves on the ground floor. I think he was leading me to the kitchen courtyard, even though I’m sure it would have been way too cold to be out in the open this time of night.
He barely gave me enough time to grab my slipper-boots, and all I’ve got on is a thin sweater and a pair of yoga pants that have started wearing out at the hems how I’ve stepped on them countless times before.
“I didn’t hear anything,” I murmur in lieu of a protest when he starts kissing my neck. “Are you sure there’s someone—?”
He presses two fingers against my lips, silencing me as he grins down at me. “Nah. Just wanted to kiss you.”
My tummy flips over at that. I bite the inside of my lip, and he must take it as a sign, because he ducks down again and captures my mouth with his.
When he kisses me, it’s as if we only have seconds left to live.
His hands slide down my hips, caressing my ass through my thin pants. But he never squeezes, never gropes, never shoves anything anywhere. It’s like he’s exploring a foreign new land he’s only ever heard of in fairy tales, and is determined to drink it all in.
But despite the fact that all we’re doing is kissing, despite how I’m sure that’s all he wants, my body responds to him like he’s announced he’s going to pop my cherry.
When his hands skim up my waist and begin exploring my breasts, my nipples instantly harden to tight buds.
He stops kissing me and leans back, staring down at my breasts like he’s never seen a pair in his life.
Right—and he never looks through any of those porno mags in the Brotherhood’s lair. As if.
His warm breath chases shivers through my body as he slips his hand under my sweater and scoops my breasts into his hands, weighing them in his palms.
My head falls back. I sigh as he strokes my skin and moan when he ducks his head and sucks one of my nipples into his mouth. But as soon as it disappears into his hot, hungry mouth, he pulls back and glances down the hallway like a double-agent sure he’s been caught in the act.
“In here,” he whispers, and drags me into the small prayer room where I first met Reuben.
I’m sure Reuben told them what had happened—they tell each other everything, after all—and my suspicion is confirmed when Apollo stops in his tracks and glances back at me with a sheepish grin on his face. “Is this cool?”
I don’t know what comes over me. Maybe it’s the fact that these four boys have been toying with me since the day I arrived. Maybe it’s all the fucked up shit that’s been circulating through my head the past few days.
It makes no sense, but suddenly I want nothing more than for Apollo to descend on me like a bird of prey on an unsuspecting rabbit.
I surge forward, grab his face in my hands, and kiss him as hard as I can.
In response, he circles my waist with his arms and spins me around and around until we bump into
the altar.
He lifts me. My ass thumps onto the hardwood a second later. I wince into our kiss and he must suspect that he hurt me, because he darts back almost a yard and holds out his hands, palms out, like he’s trying to fend off arrest.
“I’m so sorry. Shit. That was so stupid of me. Did I—?”
I’m almost fucking panting, and he has the nerve to run away? I shift closer to the edge of the altar and deliberately spread my legs.
He just stands there, looking like he’s trying really hard to remember if he left the stove on.
So I beckon him like he’s beckoned me so many times before.
That works.
He surges forward, smiling into our kiss. But then he deepens the kiss and urges me backward. I expect a hard wood floor beneath me, but he grabs one of the pillows reserved for pious knees and tucks it under me.
My heart wants to burst open at that simple gesture. When it seems everyone only ever wants to fuck you or spank you, someone giving you a pillow seems like the kindness of the century.
He lays on top of me, light and wiry compared with his brothers, but he more than makes up for it with passion. His lips scour mine, his tongue eager and demanding and gentle all at the same time.
When I start panting against his mouth, my body working overtime to try and process the delicious sensations he’s wringing through me, his lips skate over my cheek and brush my ear, the side of my neck, my collarbones.
“Fuck,” I murmur as my hands disappear into his hair.
I forgot how silky it was.
He grazes one of my nipples through my sweater, and I arch from the pillow. The fabric is already damp from his mouth, and when he moves to my other nipple, it grows cold in the tiny chapel’s brisk air.
So I slide my hands over his shoulders, trying to keep him close so I can absorb the heat cascading from his body.
Which is when I feel his hard-on pressing into my leg.
And for the first time, that feeling doesn’t freak me the fuck out. Instead, it flabbergasts me.
How can I do that to him? Does he really find me that sexy, that hot, that…fuckable?
I squirm under him, willing him to touch me somewhere other than my breasts. My nipples are already as tight as they can go—that pleasure turns into almost-pain.
When he doesn’t move, when he keeps nibbling at my nipples like we have all night and he’s existed without sleep for centuries…well, I guess I feel I just have to take charge for once.
I grab his hand and mesh our fingers together.
Somehow, he takes that as a signal to start kissing my mouth again. He presses our interlaced hands above my head, pinning me as he forces his tongue between my lips and steals my breath away.
Which is all fine and well, but his kisses are only aggravating the now heavy throb emanating between my legs. I clamp my thighs together, but that doesn’t help.
So I open my legs again and wrap them around his waist.
That, finally, gets his attention.
Apollo stops kissing me. He pops up onto his hands like he’s doing push-ups and stares down at me with a look akin to panic on his face.
“No, shit, Trinity…”
“What?” Wow, why is my voice so hoarse? “What is it?”
“We can’t do that, pretty thing.”
“W—what?” My head’s spinning from his kisses, and it takes a second for me to realize what he’s saying. “You don’t want to…you don’t want to have sex with me?”
“No.”
And then it’s as if he’s stomping on my fucking ribcage.
My legs fall away from his body, my feet thumping on the altar’s wooden floor. I pull away from him and immediately start wriggling out from under his body, my cheeks on fire.
I don’t think I’ve ever been this embarrassed in my whole fucking life. And I had to tell Father Gabriel that my mother caught me masturbating in the bathtub, so the bar’s pretty fucking high.
“Hey, wait now, I didn’t mean it like that.”
“No, really, it’s fine,” I mutter. I stumble to my feet, pushing him out of the way when he jumps up and tries to stop me from leaving.
“You don’t understand,” he calls out. “I can’t!”
I come to a stop, head low and curtained by my disarrayed curls. “Can’t, or won’t?”
And then I wait for whatever vague, bullshit excuse he expects me to accept. Because that’s how it is with the Brotherhood. They’re so caught up in their own shit, they don’t realize that the people around them have a right to know what’s really going on in their heads.
Even if it’s tragic. Or horrific. Or downright psychotic.
You can’t trust a stranger. And they’d always be strangers to me until they actually started telling me the—
“It’s…kinda complicated.”
And there it is.
“Yeah, well, I’ve had enough complicated to last me a lifetime, thanks,” I call out behind me without turning around. I storm to the little prayer room’s door, fumbling for that special spot—
Apollo grabs my shoulder and turns me around. “But if you have a minute,” he says quietly, “I can try and explain.”
It takes longer than a minute, but fuck does he do a lot of explaining.
I sip at my hot chocolate as I peek at Apollo from under my lashes. He brought me to the bell tower after fixing me the drink so we could talk. He’s wearing a puffy bomber jacket, and I’m cuddling into a blanket.
One of the things he told me was that he wasn’t allowed to fuck me.
Girls, sex, money, clothes, parties, sports, movies, games—they were all distractions.
The Brotherhood had sworn an oath to each other. And nothing—nothing—was as important as that oath.
“So…none of you have ever really dated anyone?”
I’m more than a little tired. It’s exhausting just kissing Apollo—having him explain the intricacies of the relationship between four friends who met in a sex dungeon when they were kids…
I’m too scared to tip my head to the side in case all that information pours out of my ears.
At least he made me hot chocolate. And it’s fucking delicious. And at least, tonight, we can see the view. Which is fucking spectacular.
But the Brotherhood’s personal life?
I. Can’t. Even.
“I guess.” He tugs at his cigarette and exhales a plume of smoke into the black night. “Although, Cass once brought home this chick—”
“Home? Where?”
He flicks ash from his cigarette. “Virginia. Zach rented us a house. We only stayed six months or so.” He takes another drag. “But it was home while it lasted.”
“How old were you?”
He lifts the hand holding the cigarette and squints as he scratches his head. “Shit. I dunno. Sixteen? Seventeen? Zach might have been nineteen already. But anyway, Cass was still getting fucked up back then, and when he went out to go score, he picked up this random chick. Think she was fucked on heroine too, I can’t remember. Anyway, he brought her home, back to us.”
My body goes rigid. I’m not sure I want to hear what happened to the fucked up girl. And Cass did drugs? It’s like I’d need an encyclopedia to keep track of these guys.
“…and then she was all like, you don’t have to pay me, I’ll just take the dope—”
“But Cass tried to fuck me,” I cut in. “More than once.” I turn to look at Apollo. “Why do you let him get away with it?”
Apollo flinches, maybe because I sound so fucking bitter, but what? Am I supposed to be nice about the fact that Cass can assault me when his brothers aren’t even allowed to touch me?
“He can’t help himself,” Apollo says.
I laugh. “Are you for real?”
“He has impulse issues.”
I frown over at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You take psych, don’t you?” Apollo shrugs. “We all got our issues. Cass can’t keep it in his pan
ts. It’s like he blacks out or something.” He waves a hand, smoke trailing erratically behind his cigarette. “Zach can explain it better than me.”
“So that’s it? He has issues, so he can get away with whatever he wants?”
“Yeah, no,” Apollo murmurs. “On that count, you’re very fucking wrong.” He stands. “Anyway, you have school tomorrow. You should get back to bed.”
I stand and quickly drain the last of my hot chocolate.
“Just leave it there,” he says, waving in the general direction of the cup as he walks past me. “I’ll come fetch it tomorrow.”
My eyes skip past him. The door he took me through yesterday is hidden behind the massive bronze bell. If I had X-ray vision, I would have been able to see that incriminating photo through the bell and the wall.
I hurry to catch up to Apollo. “Did you find anything?”
“Hmm?” He flicks the butt of his cigarette over the balcony and glances down at me a second before he slides his arm over my shoulder and hugs me closer. “Oh, yeah. Fuck. I totally forgot to tell you.”
I stop walking.
He turns, frowning curiously as he faces me. “What now?” he asks through a laugh.
“What did you find?”
“You sound surprised. Did you think we wouldn’t?”
“Apollo!”
He shrugs. “We found what we were looking for, Trin.” When I scowl at him, he uses a thumb to smooth down my brows. “Sorry, but it’s not my place to tell you.”
“Then whose it is?”
Another shrug. “Speak to Reuben. Maybe he’ll tell you.”
“And if he won’t?”
Apollo bops my nose with a knuckle. “Then I guess you’ll just have to keep asking until you find what you’re looking for.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Trinity
Reuben isn’t in morning prayers. I wolf down my breakfast and hunt around the campus for him, but without being able to ask anyone where he is, it’s no surprise when I turn up empty-handed.
Gabriel said he was the same year as me, but I haven’t seen him in any of my classes. I could see if he’s attending one of the others this morning. So I head out early to the classroom block and stalk the halls like a petite, poop-colored version of Death.
