Page 144 of Made for Sinners

He stepped closer. “In the chapel?”

“It’s quiet,” I said, too quickly. “Peaceful.”

His gaze narrowed. “You look flushed.”

“It’s warm.”

“It’s stone and shadow.”

I swallowed.

He kept walking until he was in front of me, his body blocking the light from the stained glass behind him. He looked down at me like he could see through my skin.

“You’re hiding something,” he said softly.

I shook my head. “I’m not.”

“You are.”

He stepped closer. I backed up until the altar pressed against the backs of my thighs.

“You came all the way out here,” he murmured, “alone. Without telling me.”

“I needed air.”

“You needed space,” he corrected. “From me.”

I didn’t answer.

He leaned in, his hands bracing on the altar behind me, caging me in. “You think I don’t notice when you’re restless? When you start pacing like a caged animal?”

“I’m not a prisoner,” I said, my voice sharper than I intended.

“No,” he agreed. “You’re my wife.”

He dipped his head, his mouth brushing my jaw. “Which means when you sneak off to a chapel in the far corner of a dead man’s estate, I notice.”

I shivered.

“Did you come here to pray?” he asked, lips ghosting over my throat. “Or were you hoping I’d find you?”

“I didn’t think you’d come.”

He chuckled, low and dark. “You should know better by now.”

His hands slid to my hips, pulling me forward until I was perched on the edge of the altar. The cold stone pressed into the backs of my thighs, but it didn’t matter. Nothing did. Not when his touch burned hotter than the guilt coiling in my chest.

I shouldn’t have been here. Not like this.

The altar felt wrong beneath me, and yet that wrongness only made it feel more electric. Sacred space, desecrated by the way he touched me. My breath hitched as his fingers brushed the hem of my dress, his hands sliding beneath to push it higher.

I should’ve stopped him. I should’ve told him.

That I’d found the tunnel. That I’d climbed down into the shadows with my heart pounding and the taste of freedom on my tongue. That I was planning to use it.

But then his mouth found my throat, hot and unrelenting, and every thought I’d carried into this chapel dissolved into nothing.

I didn’t push him away.

---