Page 6 of His Solace

“You mean kill them?” He nods once. “Not Daia.” I lean back in his hold to look him in the eye. “She’s the only friend I’ve ever had.”

“She’s not on my list.”

“Or Maura. She’s misguided and afraid but not a terrible person.” Even though she got me in trouble aplenty.

“She’s on my list.”

“But she didn’t do anything,” I try to argue.

“She broke a child’s neck by shaking him because he wouldn’t stop crying. Shook several more children. They had to stop leaving them in her care.” I feel sick again.

“Oh.” Leaning my chin on his shoulder as we reach another floor and he opens the door, I realize we’re in a hotel. “How will you know it’s Daia? Anyone could say they’re her if you ask their names.”

“I have pictures of everyone on my list.” I feel him reach into his pocket for something, and the next thing I know, another door opens and shuts behind us. Entering the large room, which is twice the size of my sleeping quarters, he puts me down. “Don’t move.” Standing in the middle of the space, he leaves to another room as I hear church bells ring in the distance.

Turning, I stare out the wide window and see a cathedral church. The grandiose bell tower captures my attention as I watch the bell sway back and forth as it rings, signaling the noon hour. Closing my eyes, church bells are the only thing I’ve come to enjoy about the Lord’s house over the last several years.

“Arms up.” Pace’s voice startles me into complying, and soon, I feel the shirt he put on me earlier, lifted off my body. Completely naked, I have no idea what to do with myself. Nobody but Father Cassio and the sisters have seen me nude before. Picking me up by the hips, he places me on a bench seat, pushing my upper body to lay flat as I straddle it. “Relax,” he grits out, and I do as he says.

When I feel him sit behind me, his thick thighs cradling mine—he’s still got his pants on—I feel relieved. Until he pulls me closer to his body, my backside nestled against his groin. My eyes widen as I bite my lip to prevent myself from saying anything that will embarrass us both. Although, I get the feeling he wouldn’t embarrass easily.

I hear him unzip something before silence commences. Being at his mercy has my body shaking. I thought him my savior, my solace, but now I’m questioning why I trusted him so easily. The things he said, threatened with, should have had me running not begging him to take me away.

“Nice and easy now,” is the only warning I have before feeling a cool dab on my back then stinging pain. I arch away from the sensation as he places a hand on my lower back, where his fingers graze across the top of my buttocks. “The cuts aren’t deep, but they need to be cleaned. They should heal in time.” He’s so calm, it’s maddening, when I feel like a wreck.

“You have other scars,” he states. The fingers of his free hand trace across some of the more pronounced ones.

“It’s not the first time I’ve had a lashing.” I shudder as I think of the other times. Far too many over the course of my childhood.

He’s quiet, contemplative, as he gently tends to the cuts on my back. “There never should have been a first.” Glancing back at him, I’m struck at the way he watches me. His eyes are hooded, his bottom lip caught between his teeth, and the muscles in his chest ripple with each breath. He looks constrained. A tick in his jaw and the way his pulse pounds in his neck makes me nervous.

Riveted to the way he moves, my eyes close when I feel the fingers of both hands glide across my shoulders and down my arms. It feels like we’re in a trance. A bubble that only encapsulates the two of us.

Is this attraction? Lust?

I spent my life being schooled by the nuns, learning more of the Bible than the world. I was certainly never taught about why Adam and Eve stole an apple from the Garden of Eden. Nor about the way a man can make a woman feel and vice versa. I don’t know what’s happening to my body around Pace. I find I quite like it, however.

“Soft,” he utters as his fingers reach my thighs and move up and across my butt to my back again. My breathing picks up, my ears ring. My skin is on fire. “Like silk.” He sounds amazed. As though he doesn’t believe it. His fingers continue their upward momentum until he reaches my neck. His hands are large, and the rings on his fingers help to cool my overheated flesh as he wraps one hand around the front of my throat and drags me up so my back hits his bare chest.

Clutching my jaw in a firm grasp, he turns my head to face him. My eyes open to meet his intense stare. Brows furrow like he’s angry, his eyes darken to nearly black with need as he lowers his mouth over top of mine. It’s hesitant at first, soft, a light touch, meant to entice.

“Pace.” I whisper his name, and his eyes flick up to mine, searching and finding what he wants because he draws me closer. One hand on my jaw, the other on my belly, holding as tight as he can as he fuses our mouths together.

A match strikes, and suddenly, we’re in an inferno of passion and fire. He devours me, claims me. Steals all the thoughts from my mind and commands my body to obey his silent demands. Biting my bottom lip, I gasp, and he flicks his tongue out to touch mine. Licking inside my mouth as his fingers flex on my stomach.

I grow dizzy with the desire overtaking my senses. Overwhelmed, confused, anxious, I grab onto his arms, inching the one on my stomach farther down my body, in a direction where I don’t know what will happen. Jumping when I feel his fingers touch something that weakens my entire body. I pull away from his kiss, needing a lungful of air.

Pace takes that opportunity to stand and strip off his pants. I’m half frozen, half fascinated at the way his sculpted body moves so agilely. Swinging a leg over the bench again, he stands formidably behind me. His large erection prominent and intimidating as he uses one hand to stroke it and the other to gently encourage me to lie flat on my front, exposing my most intimate parts to him once again.

Goose bumps cover my body, and I close my eyes as he moans out long expletive words before I feel the warmth of his chest covering my back as kisses pepper across my shoulders and along my neck.

“I’ve waited my entire life for you,dolce, my whole fucking life.” He sounds positively primal.

“Pace.” I breathe out his name as I feel his hands on my hips, lifting me up into a position more suited to his needs.

He’s so large, and I’m so small in comparison that he can do whatever he likes to me in order to get what he wants. What I’m realizing I also want. Even if I don’t know exactly what that is.

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