Page 36 of Hollowed

He pulled me against him like he meant to pray.

Like he meant to undo the prayer he’d already spoken too loud.

We didn’t fuck again.

We stayed like that. Held. Sweating. Breathing.

And I felt it. The shift.

He didn’t want to ruin me anymore.

He wanted to be ruined by me.

And he already was.

ChapterSeven

He didn’t touchme the next day.

Not once.

Not when I woke beside him on the stone, bruised and slick with the memory of his mouth. Not when I stretched, wincing at the delicious pull between my legs, hoping his breath might hitch when I did.

Not when I stood.

Not even when I walked across the chapel, bare, to the basin. When I cupped water in my palms and let it fall over my skin like I remembered his fingers had done.

He just watched.

He always watched.

But this time, it wasn’t with heat.

It was with reverence.

And it felt like absence.

I dressed in silence. Not because he asked me to, but because I couldn’t bear the way his gaze held me when I was naked. Like I was scripture he’d already read too many times and couldn’t bring himself to deface again.

When I tied the shift at my waist, I thought he’d move. Come to me. Drag it down my arms and remind me what it meant to be claimed.

He didn’t.

He turned away.

And it broke something in me I didn’t know was still unbroken.

I sat at the edge of the altar, feet bare, toes curling against the cold stone.

I waited.

For his voice.

For his hand.

For the press of his body behind mine.

But all I got was silence.

---