Confess (Sin City Salvation #1)

by A. Zavarelli

  “I shouldn’t be doing this to you.” His voice held so much agony, I couldn’t stand it.

  My fingers wrapped around his face, forcing him to look at me. “I want you to.”

  He searched my eyes, and whatever he saw there ignited the flame inside him again. “Fuck,” he murmured. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t.”

  I braced for the impending rejection, but it didn’t come. Instead, he wrapped my arms around his shoulders and rushed to free his cock and shove my panties aside.

  We were so close I couldn’t see him, but I could feel him. I felt his heat against my skin. I felt how slick with want I was. The inevitable feelings of shame and self-loathing welled up inside me and threatened to ruin everything.

  “Lucian—” My voice fractured.

  He pulled me closer, the heat of his lips caressing my ear as he whispered the thing I needed to hear most. “I want every beautiful piece of you, pet. Even the filthy ones.”

  I buried my face in his neck and nodded against him.

  “Tell her that I’m yours,” Lucian demanded.

  My cheeks heated as I remembered the girl kneeling on the floor in front of us. I’d forgotten she was there until I turned to look at her. The hooded eyes that were filled with lust only moments ago were now overflowing with bitterness and jealousy. Maybe it was sick, but it made me wet knowing that Lucian chose me instead of her.

  “He’s mine,” I told her as he kissed my throat and nimbly exposed my breasts for his pleasure.

  I should have been more modest, probably. But at that moment, I didn’t care because his hands were on me everywhere, and I was burning alive for him.

  “She won’t go until I tell her,” he breathed against my skin. “Do you want her to go?”

  I looked at her again, and some feral part of me made me shake my head. I wanted her to watch. I wanted her to know what Lucian said was true. He belonged to me now, and he would never touch her again.

  Lucian nipped at my throat, his words so low I barely heard them. “You’re going to ruin me.”

  “Please,” I begged.

  I was completely soaked for him and drunk on his touch, and there was no way I’d let him back out now. Not when he was the one who made this mess of me. I hadn’t been with a man in so long, I didn’t know if I could even enjoy it. I’d never enjoyed it before. I was terrified of the idea of him taking me, but I was terrified of his rejection more. I needed him to need this as much as I did. And when Lucian nudged his cock against me, I pushed against him too.

  “Please.” I dug my fingers into his shoulders as he squeezed himself inside me.

  It was tight. He was big, and I was incredibly full. But it felt… good. So fucking good. His face collapsed against my chest as he let out an agonized sigh.

  “Gypsy,” he whispered.

  I stroked his hair, and at that moment, I was the one comforting him. It was like we had crossed some invisible barrier for him, and he knew he couldn’t come back from it. Whatever it was, he was mourning it, and I gave him time to accept that this was really happening. He was inside me. We had crossed a line we both swore we wouldn’t.

  He rocked his hips up into me, making me gasp. “This is going to be quick,” he said. “I just have to fuck you. I’m sorry.”

  I didn’t know what that meant until he grabbed my hips and pulled me against his body, burying his cock deep inside. I couldn’t move at all, and I didn’t need to, because the momentum of his thrusts guided me. Synchronicity found us easily, and I got lost in the feeling of being connected to him in this way. The catch of his breath, the beating of his heart against my chest. His eyes were heavy, his head falling back in pure, strung-out bliss… because of me.

  He worshipped me with his lips, ghosting my skin with kisses that sometimes turned rough between breaths. He drank from my mouth, sucked at my breasts, and whispered the things I needed to hear.

  “You make me crazy.” His fingers wrapped in my hair, and my head fell back. “You have no idea how long I’ve needed this.”

  I drank in the sight of him this way, and it was the most intimate thing I’d ever done. We weren’t just connected, we couldn’t take our eyes off each other. We kissed. He played with my clit and told me to come. I was so close, but I was anxious.

  “Look at her.” Lucian turned my face to see the girl; her eyes lasered in on his cock thrusting in and out of me. “Tell her how good it feels. Tell her that this pussy is the only one for me.”

  “He’s mine,” I snarled again, and the ferocity of the statement surprised me.

  It also sent Lucian over the edge. He grabbed both of my hips and pulled my body down on top of his cock, completely burying himself inside me as he groaned out his release.

  Some of his come started to leak out of me, but he didn’t pull away. Instead, he smeared it over my clit and used it to stimulate me while he was softening inside me. It brought me back from the dead, nerve endings flaring to life that I didn’t even know existed. It was scary and intense, but I stroked his hair and relaxed into his body, letting myself just feel for the first time.

  It felt good. It felt right.

  And when I came around him, it felt a little bit like I had cleansed myself of the filth I’d always believed I was.

  “FATHER.”

  “Lucian?” Cristian cleared his throat from the other side of the confessional. “What brings you here today?”

  The words didn’t come easily. I hung my head and tried to feel even a scrap of the solace I’d once found in this booth, but it wasn’t there anymore. Overnight, I had gone back to old addictions. Sweeter addictions. The kind of addictions that could ruin me if I didn’t get them under control.

  “I think I’ve regressed,” I said.

  Cristian waited for me to explain, but it wasn’t so easy this time.

  “Tell me,” he encouraged.

  “I consummated my marriage.”

  More time went by, and I knew Cristian was struggling with what he should tell me. In the eyes of God and the Catholic church, we were married, so there wasn’t a problem. But it wasn’t that simple for him. He wouldn’t paint my actions in a favorable light just to spare my feelings, even if he didn’t know the worst of them yet.

  During all the years I’d come here to confess, I’d never exposed the challenges I faced with intimacy. It didn’t seem right, considering he was a man tormented by his own constant battle to remain untouched.

  “Was it consensual?” Cristian asked.

  “Yes.” I turned toward the grate. “I would never take her against her will.”

  But the words I spoke so decidedly didn’t ring true to myself. I had already crossed so many lines with her. I tied her up. I poked at her raw wounds. I’d allowed her to feel insecure in my devotion to her because I was too afraid to show it myself. Already, I felt like a failure, and last night only compounded the situation.

  When I took her to that club, there was no coming back from it. I exposed her to a world that she didn’t need to see, and I forced her into a corner where her jealousy was the only catalyst upon which she could act.

  “You’ve told me many times that you have been unable to find joy in your everyday life,” Cristian said. “I’m tempted to wonder if you feel so conflicted because perhaps maybe this time, you felt something else?”

  I stared at the wall, silence my answer. He was right, but I couldn’t bring myself to admit it. For years, every hour had been gray. I’d lived under a cloud of perpetual rain until she came along, and now my life was filled with color. A storm of passionate red. She was changing the landscape of my life, and I didn’t like it.

  “Tell me what burdens you with guilt,” Cristian directed.

  My throat felt too thick, and it was difficult to force the words out. “I never meant for it to happen. In the beginning, you told me I might hurt her, and I said I only wanted to help her. But this path I have taken is a dark one.”

  “It’s not the only one.” Cristian sh
ifted closer, adjusting his voice accordingly. “It’s not too late to change your intentions.”

  I closed my eyes and sank forward. “They aren’t intentions. They’re compulsions. I can only show her what I am.”

  “And what are you?”

  “Pain,” I gritted through my teeth. “To her, I am pain. It’s the only way I’ve learned to suppress my rage.”

  “If you can learn once, you can learn again,” he replied. “Just as you believe Gypsy can change, so can you. How can you ask her to be vulnerable if you aren’t willing to do the same?”

  “She still has her whole life ahead of her,” I argued.

  “And you have the rest of yours as well.”

  He didn’t get it, but why would he? Cristian might be aware of the demons who lived inside me, but he wasn’t intimately acquainted with them. He didn’t live with them every day.

  “Perhaps love is the alternative you are afraid to face,” he continued. “But the one you need the most.”

  “I don’t know how to love,” I reiterated. “I only know how to fuck.”

  Cristian opened the grate between us, eliminating the shadow of secrecy that no longer existed. “If you let hate continue to rule your life and poison anything good, your past still wins.”

  I laughed, and it was cold. “Don’t you understand, Father? She already won. I died long before I ever stood with one foot in the grave.”

  “IT’S TIME TO GET READY for bed, pet.”

  I looked up at Lucian, uncertain what to make of the sudden warmth in his voice. He’d managed to avoid me all day by calling Ace over to babysit instead. But now here he was, puppy brown eyes and a face I couldn’t deny I’d memorized.

  We still hadn’t talked about what happened last night. I wondered if we even would, or if we’d both just go on pretending it didn’t happen.

  “Come.” He held out his hand for me, and I took it after a moment’s hesitation.

  I was tired, but my fatigue was mostly from the uncertainty of what the future held. It was exhausting to try to predict everything so I could feel in control, and with Lucian, it was nearly impossible.

  I followed him down the hall, his hand principal in mine, and we entered the master bathroom. He turned on the shower and tested the water with his palm. His eyes met mine, searching for answers to questions he didn’t speak aloud. Instead, his hands came to rest at the hem of my tee shirt, and he slowly guided it up over my head. With practiced care, he undressed me completely, and then did the same for himself.

  I couldn’t help that my eyes naturally roamed the great expanse of his body and settled on the thick muscle between his thighs. His cock was heavy but not fully hard. He caught me staring, and my eyes shot to his.

  “Come on,” he said. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

  He guided me into the shower, and I couldn’t figure out what was happening between us at this point. But every time he moved, I had flashes from the night before. Flashes of him inside me, fucking me raw like an animal. The worst part was that I’d been wet all day thinking about it. And even though I was sore, I felt empty.

  My eyes fell shut as he soaped his hands and glided them over my body. He washed me carefully and then cleaned and conditioned my hair. There was a gentleness to his touch that I hadn’t ever felt before, and for the first time, I thought I understood why people craved this type of intimacy.

  “Gypsy.” Lucian’s voice broke, and when I looked up at him, I was confounded by the torment in his eyes. “What happened last night, it can’t happen again. Do you understand that?”

  He said this even as his hard cock hung heavy in front of him, and all I could feel was the pressure and heat filling my chest.

  Was he rejecting me?

  I tried to pull away, and his hands shot out to catch me. “It doesn’t change anything between us.”

  “It changes everything.” I turned away from his sorrowful eyes. Everything about this was so fucked up, and I didn’t know how to deal with it.

  “What is your end goal here, Lucian?” I asked. “Why do you want to punish me?”

  “My goal isn’t and has never been to punish you,” he answered.

  “That’s a lie. From the beginning, you told me I meant nothing to you, and you were more than happy to destroy my life. But why? What did I do to set myself in your sights?”

  He relaxed his grip on me, and when he was certain I wasn’t going to flee, he let go altogether.

  “I saw you.” His voice was low, the way I imagined it was when he confessed his sins.

  “What?”

  “You want to know what you did,” he explained. “But it wasn’t anything. I saw you, and that was your only mistake. I saw your pretty, tragic face, and I couldn’t let you go.”

  It sounded like it pained him to admit it, but it still didn’t make sense to me.

  “Where?”

  “Saint Vincent’s.”

  My mind reeled back to the many instances I’d found myself inside that church, confessing my so-called sins. But it was always empty, save for me and the priest. What Lucian was trying to sell me didn’t add up.

  “You couldn’t have seen me there,” I argued. “I would have known.”

  He bowed his head, and for the first time since I’d known him, he looked ashamed. “See isn’t really the correct word. If we’re being honest, then heard is more appropriate.”

  My heart slammed against my ribcage, and I shook my head because it couldn’t be true. There was no way. But when I looked into his eyes, I knew that it was.

  It was pure adrenaline that provoked me to run.

  “Gypsy.” His voice sounded from behind me, but I kept going.

  My reaction hadn’t been a logical one. I was still naked, and I had nothing on me that would be of any use if I did make it out of the house. But I couldn’t face him. I couldn’t face the fact that he’d been listening in on my confessions, my darkest and most intimate secrets.

  I was mortified. Angry. And I knew that I would never want to look him in the eyes again.

  “Gypsy.”

  His voice was closer this time. I was almost to the front door, and I couldn’t look back. But when I wrapped my fingers around the handle, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise that it was locked.

  I shook it anyway, screaming out my frustration as strong arms wrapped around me from behind. I fought him. I stepped on his foot and kicked him in the shin and tried to thrust my head back against his chest before he eventually tackled me to the floor and pinned me down with his body.

  “Stop,” he commanded.

  I didn’t stop. I kept fighting because it was all I had left. But Lucian was stronger, as most of the men in my life had been, and he won. He pinned my wrists above my head with one hand and gripped my face with the other.

  “Take a deep breath,” he said calmly.

  “You’re sick,” I choked out. “There’s something wrong with you.”

  His eyes softened, and his forehead fell against mine. “I know, pet.”

  His dick was hard against my stomach, and his constant torment grew restless. He told me it wasn’t going to happen again, but Lucian had proved himself to be a liar. And he lied again when his lips found mine. It wasn’t an apology when he kissed me, it was possession.

  I hated him at that moment, but I needed him too. Such conflicting feelings were not in my realm of normality. It wasn’t right that fire spread through my body when he touched me. It definitely wasn’t sane when I arched up into him and cried at the loss of him when his lips pulled away.

  For three long seconds, he stared at me, trying to find his morals. His virtue. Whatever the fuck it was he thought could stop this. But like my protests, they weren’t anywhere in this room. My parted thighs were a temptation even the saint in him couldn’t refuse.

  “Fuck,” he growled. “I can’t keep doing this.”

  His lips smashed against mine as he reached down and grabbed his cock and squeezed it inside me. His head
fell back, and his mouth fell open, and he looked like he’d just found his version of Eden inside me. It was beautiful and ugly at the same time, and I’d never felt so torn about wanting something as much as I wanted him. I bit my lip to keep from crying out, and his fingers brushed against my throat before wrapping around the delicate flesh in warning.

  “Be good,” he whispered. “Don’t make the monster come out to play.”

  I stared up into cocoa eyes so filled with torment, I couldn’t believe him. He wanted me to be stronger than he was. He wanted me to say no and push him away. He was huge, and fierce, and dominant, and he overpowered me with little effort, but I felt something with him I hadn’t ever felt with another man.

  I trusted that he wouldn’t hurt me, and maybe that was a mistake. Lucian was a lot of things that I didn’t like, but he was also a protector. An alpha. A guardian. And right then, he was a lover too.

  His hips rolled forward, and my eyes rolled back. I was soaked for him. Our bodies still sticky with soap, our skin filled with goose bumps. He kissed me like he owned me and fucked me like he couldn’t live without me.

  “This pussy is mine now,” he groaned. “I can’t stop, pet. I was lying when I said I could.”

  “I know,” I whispered.

  He kissed me and pulled my legs around him, fucking me into the tile floor. It went on forever, and every time he got close, he stopped to finger my clit. I came twice before he finally buried himself inside me and unleashed his monster with a roar. Hot come flooded my womb and warmed my body.

  He collapsed with his dick still inside me and rolled me over so that I was lying against him, his hand coming to rest on my spine as his other arm wrapped around me possessively. For several minutes, we just laid there like that. Though my anger hadn’t faded, my racing heart eventually calmed, and my breathing returned to normal.