Page 65 of His to Keep
“Shh,” he hushes me. “You’ll wake up Maisie.”
“Please don’t say her name,” I groan, trying not to let the doubt ruin this moment. Though it melts away when he pushes into me again, filling and stretching me far deeper than he’s ever been inside of me before.
“Do you want me?” he asks as my body quivers and writhes beneath him.I arch my hips, eager for more of him. And like he can read my mind, he picks up the pace, no longer careful or holding back.
Burying his face into my neck, he gently bites down, causing me to put my hand over my mouth to stop from screaming. Instead, a muffled sound of pleasure comes. And like always, I come undone so suddenly, I feel like I’ve fallen off the earth.
Convulsing and squirming beneath him, Callum’s moans fill the silence as he continues pumping inside of me hard. “Ava…I’m…I need to…”
It’s too late when he comes inside of me, filling me with him as his hips jerk into mine. Then, he collapses on top of me, breathing heavily into my neck.
“I love you,” he breathes out. “I always have from the moment I saw you.” Lifting his head, he grabs my face and whispers, “And I have a plan. You need to listen to everything I say. Because it’s not going to be easy.”
Chapter Thirty-Four
The plan was concrete. Risky. The punishment, if we failed, was death. When Callum whispered to me his plan in the bathroom, I was terrified. It was reckless. Dangerous. And our only hope.
“You’re going to have to seduce him, Ava,” he’d said with certainty, like he’d already thought about it for hours. “When you get him alone, make him believe you want him. He’ll be too caught up in you; he won’t see me coming.”
“H-How far do I go?”
“All the way.” He kissed my forehead. “I’ll sort out everything else.”
“But the door…The gate? We haven’t thought this through—”
“I have,” he tried to reassure me. “They’ll be open. I’ll make sure of it. The moment I tell you to run, you do. And don’t look back.”
“Okay.” But what if something happened to him? What if he needed my help?
“Ava.” He grabbed my face with his hands, eyes dark and serious. “Swear it on my life that you’ll keep running.”
My heart broke when I said it. “I swear.”
He’d kissed me and said he better go before Father Aaron gets back from town. Maisie hadn’t woken when we went back into the bedroom, and I wondered if she was okay.
“I’ll come back and destroy that bed,” Callum declared, glaring at it.
I hugged him from behind, and he left. My heart in my throat and my life in his hands.
* * *
It’s just me,Father Aaron, and Penny when dinnertime rolls around. Callum stays away, and while Father Aaron thinks it’s because of his injuries from his punishments, I know better. Like Father Aaron promised, John disappears when he tells him he can take Maisie to his room for the evening, who had refused to come downstairs to eat after we both took the morning after pill.
It’s silent as we eat. I’m not hungry and woodenly chew on a piece of dry chicken. The only difference is that Penny watches me behind her hair, and it’s stomach-churning witnessing how much hatred comes off her. I almost want to yell at her that I’d rather be her than me right now, knowing it’s because Father Aaron has completed the ceremony, which means he no longer wants her. But the words I want to shout are now in a box buried.
“Come, Ava,” Father Aaron says the moment he clears his plate, the excitement in his voice hard not to miss. When Penny stands, he scowls at her. “Stay.”
Letting out a wail, she runs from the dining room, and I watch her go, hoping she stays away. Grabbing my arm, Father Aaron takes me upstairs and back to his bedroom. Despite the numbness, my heart bounces off my chest when he throws me inside and slams the door.
“Now to pick up where we left off.” He backs me up until we’re at the bed. Flipping me around, he goes to bend me over like how he did yesterday at the ceremony when I fight against him.
“N-no, my Lord. Must it be that way?” His lips push together. “I want it like how you said.”
“Then undress your Lord.”
Lifting my hands, I undo his buttons one by one, steadily. Pretending my hands aren’t shaking when they are. I guess I’m good at hiding it now.
My gaze drops, and he watches me closely as I push his shirt over his shoulders, dragging the fabric down his rigid, veiny arms. Traces of scars like Callum’s, though long since healed, hide beneath the wiry hair across his chest. Noticing me looking at them, he smiles. “Self-punishment is self-discipline. An old practice that I became quite fond of when I was with the Brotherhood. You may have heard me mention Brother Joseph before—”