Page 40 of Saint
“Fuck,” he breathes against my mouth. His eyes aren’t closed and neither are mine, like we can’t stop ourselves from watching, like we have to wring every last second of pleasure from this stolen, reckless moment before we come to our senses.
His hands are so restless all over me, like he’s feeling me for the first time. Like he’s feeling me for the last time.
“Yeah,” I say roughly, pushing my mouth against his again as my hips press against him. “Fuck.” For so long, growing up, he was the older one, thelargerone, and even when we were together, he felt that way to me. But while he’s still the same leanly muscled man he was before, I’m not. And as I’m crowding him against a wall, it’s clearer than ever how much bigger I am now. Big enough that my thighs can cage his, that my shoulders can curl in around him as I brace my forearms against the wall and kiss him breathless.
My cage squeezes my erection down, but it hurts so good, and it’s so sensitive that I know I could get off just by rubbing against him inside my jeans, and that’s even before his hands wander down to explore my hips, my stomach, my ass.
“No one kisses like you,” Elijah murmurs, his eyes closing as I bite his jaw and then his neck. I can feel his dick in his shorts—hard for me, maybe even leaking at the tip for me—and it makes me ferocious. Brutal. I suck and lick around his throat, and then he presses a large palm to my groin.
“Aiden,” he whispers as I kiss his neck. His stubble stings my lips. When I lift my head, I see that his pupils have dilated nearly to the edge of his irises. His mouth is parted, but his jaw is tight. “So youarein chastity.”
“Yeah,” I say, shuddering as his long fingers curl around my caged bulge. “I have to be.”
“Why?” he asks breathlessly.
“I think of you too much.”
We can’t stop looking at each other, frozen but not actually frozen—mouths swollen and chests heaving and hips pressing—but we’re not kissing and my arms are still braced against the wall on either side of his head. His hand still curls possessively over my cock.
“You think of me too much,” he echoes. “You’ve been thinking of me.”
This somehow feels more dangerous than kissing—it’s a more sinful sin than pressing against each other. No longer a mere violation of celibacy, but a flickering threat to my devotion to God. To what is supposed to be a singular and whole offering of my heart.
This feels like admitting my heart wasn’t mine to offer God in the first place.
After a long moment, I speak.
“Yes,” I say. “Not just after you came back. Since I came here.”
His eyebrows lift and knit, and he looks helpless, so helpless as he leans his head back against the wall and offers me his throat again. And he sounds helpless too as he moans after I begin sucking at the warm skin there. Hefeelshelpless, shifting and squirming and panting, his hand still tight over my cage, and he whispers, “Your key, where is your key?”
“In my cell,” I mutter, hardly caring, because my lips are on Elijah and his hands are on me and what does anything else matter?
“But—”
“Shh,” I grunt, pushing him harder against the wall and dragging my mouth over his. “Quiet.”
“Fuck, you’re so bossy now. And so big.Fuck—”
A ringtone splits the air—bright, tinny, manufactured—and after hearing nothing but thunder and rain and our own guttural words, it’s jarring as hell. I half step, half stagger away from him, my skin tingling and my breath coming fast, and he fumbles for his phone in his back pocket. When he finally sees the screen, I see the realization of what we’ve just done slam into him.
And then it slams into me too.
“It’s Jamie,” he says in a voice that’s awful to hear. “Shit.Shit.”
He looks at me and what can I say? Except that I feel the exact same way?
“Elijah,” I start, but he shakes his head, raising the hand holding the still-ringing phone to stop me from speaking.
“No,” he says. “Please. Don’t.” And for the second time this week, he leaves through the hermitage door.
And for the second time this week, I don’t follow.
24
Unlike Elijah,I don’t have to live with the dread of my infidelity being discovered or have to figure out how to tell the person I betrayed. Because God already knows.
I wait out the worst of the storm and then drive the four-wheeler back in the wet twilight, wiping drizzle off my face, and trying to ignore the buzz of panic and shame everywhere in my body and mind.
