Saint (A Dark Mafia Romance)(73)

I pull away, my hand sliding up to cup her jaw. The gasp hitches in her throat — her lip twists and half-catches between her teeth and I fucking growl.

I want this, consequences be damned.

Her being off limits be damned.

Her being promised to someone else be damned.

The fact that she’s way too pure, way too good for me, and way too good in general be damned. In no rational world should I be talking to a girl like this, much less between her thighs with her legs around my waist and my cock poised to claim her innocence.

But then, we left rational behind long ago.

“Please,” she whispers, begging me, like I’ve fucking dreamed of her doing.

My pulse jumps, my hand tightens in her hair, and the hunger roars up inside of me as I somehow hold myself literally inches away from her sweet heaven.

“Last chance, angel,” I growl into her ear, groaning when she gasps at the ferocity in my voice. “Last chance before there’s no coming back.”

She nods, her fingers tightening against my skin, her body arching to meet mine, and her eyes burning into mine.

“I need you to fuck me, not give me a lecture.”

My eyes narrow as her eyes glint fiercely and mischievously up at me. She knows what she’s doing. She’s baiting me. Pushing me. Tempting me.

Fuck, she’s been tempting me since the day she walked into my life.

“So, are you going to? Or are you just going to keep talk- oh…”

Her words fail, and the moan catches in her throat as I press against her — not inside, but right there, waiting to slip in.

She swallows, her eyes wide and that sass from a second earlier failing her.

Our eyes lock, and she nods. “Do it.”

Her legs around my waist, the silver cross between her breasts, the pure innocence on that face — it’s more than I can handle, and it’s more than I can resist.

I brace myself, ready to slide all the way in.

Ready to take her.

Ready to claim her, and mark her as mine.

“Oh God, Rowan”, she breathes into the darkness, like a whispered prayer.

Muscles tense as I ease my hips forward, the head of my cock grazing against the sweet, slick heat between her legs…

And that’s when I hear the metallic click of the hammer being drawn.

That’s when I feel the cold steel of the gun against the back of my head.

And that’s when it all comes crashing down.





Chapter One





Evangeline




I shouldn’t be here.

I need to be here, of course, to get the key so that we can get into the rental house when my father gets back from the church. But that doesn’t mean I should be.

I shouldn’t be anywhere near a place like this, actually.

I look at the single key in my hand, poised at the lock, and then glance up at the front of the dingy building I’m standing in front of. It’s red clapboard, with white trim, and large sign that reads “O’Donnell’s” across it, with a little green shamrock where the apostrophe should be. It might’ve been charming in some past era, but the dinginess of the sign, the general dirtiness of the building, and the grime on the windows takes any semblance of that away.

O’Donnell’s is, as they say, a dive bar.

I wrinkle my nose at the smell of stale beer, glancing down at the smashed glass on the sidewalk beside my sandaled feet. I shift over a few inches, careful not to let the hem of my white dress brush against the dirty wall of the bar.

Again, I shouldn’t be here. Sandaled feet, white sundress — father-approved of course in both length and modesty — the silver cross my mother gave me three years ago for my eighteenth birthday hanging by a small chain around my neck.

‘Out of place’ doesn’t quite cut it.

But again, I’m here for a reason, and it isn’t to stand outside here wrinkling my brow at all the reasons I’d never be caught dead in a place like this. I slip the key into the door lock, turn it with a click, and step into the dim interior of the bar.

And I thought the outside was dirty.

The inside is a dump. I gingerly step over another smashed bottle, side-stepping a puddle of something that smells like rubbing alcohol as I glance around the empty bar.

“Hello?”

There’s no response, so I call out again.

“Hello? Hi, Rowan? I’m here for the key?”

The key to the rental house. That’s all I need here and then I am getting myself away from this place as quickly as possible. I pocket the key that the Reverend Jacob Hammond — friend of my father’s and the whole reason we’re here — gave me to his son’s bar.

I shake my head. A reverend’s son who owns a bar? One that looks like this?

Now that’s an interesting one.