Page 20 of Hollowed

That would’ve been easier. If it had been urgent. If he’d been wild or frantic or overcome. But there was nothing frantic about the way he peeled the robe from his shoulders and laid it down on the stone for my back. Nothing careless in how he brushed my hair away from my eyes before lifting me—lifting me—onto the cloth, onto him.

My thighs ached from kneeling. My throat was raw from silence. My chest still wore the shape of the basin’s cold. But none of that mattered. Not now. Not with the way he looked at me.

Like I had already been broken.

And he intended to build his vow from the pieces.

I lay back. Not in surrender. In offering.

He hovered over me. Bare-chested, his sigils catching what little light the chapel held, his skin marked with words I hadn’t been taught to read. I didn’t ask what they meant. I didn’t need to. I felt them.

And I knew.

He was not here to take.

He was here toclaim.

He braced his weight on one arm. His other hand found my wrist and lifted it. He didn’t bind it. He didn’t force it. He just guided it above my head. Then the other.

And I let him.

Because there was power in obedience when the choice was mine.

He pressed a kiss into the center of my palm.

Then lower.

To my breastbone. He licked my nipple until the skin puckered and want filled me.

To the soft dip of my stomach.

To the crease of my hip.

Each one a sentence.

Each one a vow.

When he moved over me, I felt the shape of him—hard, heavy, sacred.

My body arched.

I didn’t mean for it to.

But I needed the weight.

I needed to be reminded I was still made of flesh.

“Look at me,” he said.

I did.

He pushed forward.

Not all at once.

Just enough for my breath to catch and my mouth to fall open.

The stretch burned. It felt like something coming undone. Not pain. Not exactly. More like pressure. A deep pull in my core that said you were not meant to be empty forever.

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