I sat in the front pew of the church, staring straight ahead at the crucified Christ. My vision blurred, and I wasn’t sure anymore how long I’d been there. I needed food and sleep, but I couldn’t move from this spot.

Lina had been taken to FBI headquarters for questioning. I’d tried to go to her this morning once I was discharged but hadn’t been able to get past the reception desk. I’d left a handwritten message for her but didn’t know if she’d get it. If they’d bother giving it to her.

Raphael had arranged for an attorney, so at least she wasn’t alone. And I’d needed to come back here to the church, my mind awash with the events of the night before.

I’d saved Lina, but in the interim, I’d killed a man.

Not only that, I’d beaten him to death.

I slipped a rosary bead from one finger to the next but didn’t say prayers. It wasn’t quite conscious, that. And the beads, they were habit. Years of training. I stared ahead at the altar, at Christ’s dead body, as the fact that I’d killed a man repeated in my brain.

I, Damon Amado, had taken a life.

And I wasn’t sorry.

Not then. Not now.

All I could think of, in fact, was wrapping my hands around Alexi Markov’s throat and squeezing the life out of him.

Was this bloodlust? Was this what happened once you killed? You grew a craving for more?

He’d put Lina on a fucking auction block, muted her with the bridle, bound her with leather and chains. He’d stripped her naked and made her kneel on grains of rice for all to see. He’d ordered her rape. Her gang rape.

A sound came from deep inside my chest, a rumble, like that of an animal. Something feral. And I couldn’t stop thinking about how very differently all of this could have gone. About what could have happened to her.

I had spoken with Father Leonard once I’d arrived at the church. It hadn’t been a confession, though. I’d told him what had happened. How I felt about it. How I wanted to decimate Alexi Markov. How I wasn’t sorry for killing a man. How I would do it again to protect her. I told him that I’d fucked her.

I’d fucked her.

He was either incredibly well schooled at masking his emotions or he hadn’t been surprised, at least not by the final piece. I guess that part was a sort of confession. But didn’t you have to be sorry for it to count as confession? All these years at seminary, and I’d never once considered that.

I wasn’t sorry.

Not even close.

I was angry. No. Not only that. I raged. That bloodlust still burned through my body, and it made my fucking cock hard.

The church doors opened, and I straightened, listening to the footsteps as they came toward the altar.

I knew it was her. It could be no one else. There was no room for anyone else.

She stopped beside me, but I didn’t look up. Instead of slipping into the pew, she knelt before me, turned her face up to mine for a moment, then lay her head down on my lap and wept silent, heavy tears.

I had stitches on my face, just beneath my eye and across one eyebrow. I wore a splint around one wrist, and my ribs were bandaged, but that she wouldn’t have seen. My shirt hid that damage. Blood still stained my clothes, mine and theirs.

At least it wasn’t hers.

I watched her dark head, her hair matted, knotty, needing to be washed, to be brushed. Her body needed to be scrubbed. To take away the filth of that night. To banish any trace of it from her skin. From her mind.

She wore a dingy, oversize gray sweat suit and an ancient, filthy pair of sneakers too big for her feet. I reached to touch her head, stroking her hair. She turned her face up to mine, her eyes ringed with remnants of dark eye makeup. It made them look even more hollowed out. Her skin seemed to have lost the color she’d picked up in Florida. She looked pale and tired instead. The image of her wearing that iron mask, the Scold’s Bridle, flashed across my mind’s eye, and it made me fist my hands.

“Damon.” She must have felt the shift inside me.

I leaned down, took her face in both hands, and raised her to stand as I stood.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, again and again, over and over. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“Lina,” I started, my voice hoarse, dark, as if it weren’t my voice, but someone else’s. I walked her backward toward the altar. She tripped when the backs of her feet hit the first of three steps leading up. It didn’t matter, though, not for what I needed to do. What I would do.

I pushed her to sit on the stair. I squatted down and gripped the waistband of the hideous pants and shoved them down over her thighs, off her legs. The sneakers fell away, too big to stay on. I felt crazed, enraged still, and yet, as I looked down at her startled face, her confused eyes, the slit of her naked sex, all I could think, all I could hear, all I could feel was the blood pumping into my cock, my erection thick and hard and needing, fucking needing to be inside her, to come inside her, here, like this.

“What are—”

I lay her back and undid my pants, shoving them and my briefs down only as far as I needed to grip my cock.

“I really need to fuck you right now, Lina.”

“Damon—”

When she tried to rise, I pressed a hand across her chest and slid inside her folds, tight, not yet ready for me. But I didn’t care. I wanted to hurt her, just like before. Just like when I’d punished her. I wanted to fucking hurt her because I was fucking angry with her. I raged against her.

She made a sound, and I lay my weight on top of her and covered her mouth with my hand.

“Take it. Take me.”

I drew back and thrust in hard. Sweat broke out over her forehead. Her eyes closed, and she panted beneath my hand. I withdrew and did it again, harder, watching her eyes as I took her, as I hurt her.

Her hands lifted to my shoulders, and I drew mine from her mouth, setting them on the stairs on either side of her head. Her nails dug into my sore, bruised flesh as she began to moan, her passage slickening.

“I’m so fucking angry with you,” I said, drawing back, then thrusting to pierce her to her core. To hear her cry out. “It makes no sense, but I’m so fucking angry.” I’d never fucked angry before, and it felt fucking good. Good to own her like this. To know I hurt her. To know taking her like this, it made her mine. That she was fucking mine. That it took that night, that terrible night, for me to finally get it.

I shifted my gaze from her up, up to the altar, to Christ.

Thing was, I’d thought I’d chosen. I’d thought I was doing the right thing. But everything blurred with her. All those lines I should never have crossed—she obscured them. Always.

Lina’s hand touched my face, and I returned my gaze to hers. I rose up a little, took ahold of her right knee, and pushed it back alongside her torso. I glanced down at her cunt, her little asshole, all of her exposed to me. Like it should be. Like it always should have been. I slid out of her pussy, and for a moment, she looked confused. My cock was drenched in her juices and I gripped it, guiding it to her tight hole and pressing there, rubbing against her until she opened and took me. Until I penetrated her.

I met her eyes again. They’d gone a little wide, and I liked it. Liked her panic. Liked her giving this to me despite that panic.

“I don’t care if you come,” I said, pressing deeper into her, the passage so tight and so fucking warm. “I don’t care if you come.”

Her nails broke the skin of my shoulders, her eyes closed, her teeth caught her lip as I claimed more of her, finding my rhythm, fucking her tight little ass until I was seated to the hilt. I stilled for a moment, savoring her heat, the knowledge I was inside her, so fucking deep inside her. She made a sound, and I looked at her. She moved, rubbing her clit against me, and as I watched, she moaned as she came—fuck, it took her moments to come. Her cunt leaked, wet my legs, the walls of her ass pulsed around my cock while I watched her, watched her in ecstasy, memorized her face in this perfect moment, that millisecond before I moved again, pumping, my cock thickening even more until I thrust harder, fucking her deep, taking out my anger on her, on this, all while watching her come again before, finally, I reached my peak and stilled, throbbing, releasing, emptying inside her, filling her with my seed, filling her with me.