Lessons in Sin by Pam Godwin

CHAPTER 17

MAGNUS

Everything inside me heated at the familiarity of my name on Tinsley’s lips.

She looked like a broken angel, kneeling in the brutal storm, hair like gold gossamer around her ethereal face, and shattered blue eyes staring up at me, so trusting, so needful, so goddamn beautiful.

Nine years ago, I would have dragged her into the shadows and fucked her like this—drenched, shivering, heartbroken, ass reddened with my marks, uniform shoved up and twisted about her waist, face smashed into the mud, and my cock a hard lesson that some things should never be coaxed out of hiding.

I was no longer that monster. But I knew, in the sick workings of my mind, that I couldn’t be trusted. Not with Tinsley. Never again.

“Someone killed Jaden and Willow.” Her chin quivered, and she locked her jaw tight, anger leaking into her voice. “Someone killed them! You can punish me for breaking curfew. Do whatever you want to me. But please, Magnus. Please, help me.”

I’d received calls from both Daisy and Miriam explaining the situation. Someone had left the dead opossums in a shoebox on Tinsley’s bed. When I found that someone, there would be hell to pay. But right now, I needed to get her out of the rain.

My gaze lifted to the residence hall at a distance behind her. Dark windows, lights out, the students would’ve been sent back to their beds. I couldn’t send Tinsley back in there like this. She’d run for a reason. She’d asked for my help, and by that, she meant comfort.

She needed me to console her.

I wasn’t the right person for that job, but I would figure it out because, dammit, I didn’t want anyone else holding her.

“Let’s go.” I reached for the shoebox.

With a snarl, she yanked it against her chest and curled her shoulders around it, refusing to let go.

“All right.” I crouched, hooked my arms beneath her back and legs, and lifted her featherlight weight, cradling her against me.

As I turned and carried her toward the center of the village, she burrowed closer and buried her face in my neck. It felt astonishingly, horribly right.

“Why would someone kill them?” She wept quietly. “I don’t understand.”

There were depraved people in the world. I knew that too well. I was one of them. But I would’ve never believed any of my students were capable of killing an animal. Some of the girls could be ruthless, but this was psychopathic behavior.

“Evil is inexplicable.” I bowed my head over hers, trying to shield her from the rain. “But it won’t go unpunished. Not in this life or the next.”

I took her to the closest building to protect her from the elements. Perhaps it was the one place I could protect her from me.

With the key from my pocket, I unlocked the towering arched doors of the church and carried her inside.

The familiar scent of incense and candle wax perfumed the air. A single aisle ran down the center, separating twenty rows of wooden pews on either side. I flicked on the dimmest light, illuminating the fourteen floor-to-ceiling stained glass windows, each illustrating one of the Stations of the Cross.

Straight ahead, at the end of the aisle, stood the altar.

I could lock the doors, spread her over that marble slab, and fuck her until she forgot all about the opossums. The simmering heat in my blood demanded it.

But there was also guilt, thick and cold, congealing in my stomach.

This was a church. I never allowed my depraved thoughts to desecrate these walls. She was safe from me here.

I carried her to the first row and lowered into the pew. We were soaked from the rain, quivering uncontrollably, and dripping water all over the place. As I shifted to set her beside me, her arm stiffened around my back, wordlessly demanding I not let go.

“Tinsley.” I held her on my lap and gripped the soggy cardboard. “Give me the box.”

“No.” Her head shook rapidly, her gaze waterlogged and devastated. “I can’t.”

“You can.” I injected steel in my voice. “Do as you’re told.”

Her fingers sprung open, releasing the shoebox, and a sob tore from her throat.

“Good girl.” I set it aside and pulled her against my chest.

She was so small, her lissome limbs curled into a ball on my lap, her head tucked beneath my chin. We needed towels, dry clothes, but that would require going back out in the rain.

So I gave her my body heat and removed the phone from my pocket. After sending off a few quick texts, I set the device aside. Then, under the guise of keeping her warm, I gave into the urge to touch her.

Slowly, agonizingly, I circled my palm across the silky wet skin of her thigh, torturing myself. If I wandered a few inches higher, I would reach heaven.

She’d gifted me a clear, unhampered view of her glistening slit this afternoon. With her bare ass perched in the air and the belt she’d so naughtily earned leaving stripes of angry red flesh, I applauded myself for not impaling her from end to end.

But I wasn’t a saint. In fact, I was still reeling from the hungry, violent sensations that had thrashed through every nerve in my body. She’d left my classroom, but not my mind. Not for a single moment. And now, with her irresistible backside pressed against my swelling cock, I felt sex-crazed and out of control.

I wanted to see her welts. I wanted to feel them, bite them, and add more.

So rather than offering up prayers for her emotional pain, I offered up my hand beneath her skirt and fantasized about spreading her wide and spearing her virgin holes. She would beg me to stop, which would only make me fuck her harder, more viciously, until she begged me to make her come. If she took it like a good girl, I would—

“Magnus?” She shifted, deliberately pressing down on my erection as she squinted at me, her lips a grim slash of accusation. “You’re not thinking about my opossums.”

This gorgeous woman. Always calling me out on my shit. Even when she was grief-stricken.

“No.” With a groan, I gripped her hips and dragged her against my hardness. “I’m a wretched man.”

“The worst.” She dashed a hand against her wet cheek, her eyes swimming with pain.

I stilled, and my toes flexed in my wet sneakers. I needed her off my lap so I could comfort her appropriately.

“Oh, Magnus.” A sob escaped her. “It hurts so much.”

She shivered in her wet clothes, watching me with hurt in her eyes. Making my chest implode. Christ Almighty, I would cut off both my arms if it would take her pain away.

“What do you need, Tinsley?” I touched my thumb to her cheek and traced the path of her tears. “Tell me.”

“I need…” Her throat worked as she bravely tried to contain her emotion. “Oh God, this is hard for me to admit.”

She was a magnetic force, the pull to her unstoppable.

My entire being drifted closer, my hands to the back of her head, my lips to her quivering jaw. “Trust me.”

“I—”

“Trust me.”

“What I really need is…” She released a tremulous sigh, rested a palm on my chest, and met my gaze. “You. The way you are in this moment. I feel like it’s okay to be sad with you, like I can let down my guard in your arms.”

Every intake of oxygen carried the scent of lemon from her skin. It scrambled all reasonable thought, leaving me unbalanced and aching for the one thing I couldn’t have.

It was dangerous enough to crave the things I did. But to crave them with Tinsley? I couldn’t.

She shouldn’t ever let her guard down with me. Especially not with those tears tracking down her face.

Need shimmered through me, possessing me like a seductive demon. My lips gravitated to her cheek, sipping the salty moisture, tasting her grief, and offering the only comfort I knew how to give.

My mouth didn’t usually deliver pleasure, but I knew how to kiss a woman into mindlessness.

Angling my head, I grazed my breath across her cheekbone. Ran my tongue over the curve of her earlobe. Nipped along her graceful jaw. Lingered at the corner of her full pouty lips.

“Whimper for me.” My command hovered on that almost-kiss, dancing from my tongue to hers.

She swallowed, whimpered, and parted her lips a hair’s breadth from mine.

Exhales chasing inhales, we breathed together, suspended in the space between a kiss and not-kiss. I only needed to ease a millimeter closer, and I could take her, devour her, and never let her come up for air.

Her huge eyes watched me, her body canting, trying to claim my mouth.

I gripped her hair, stalling her movements. Reminding her I was the one in control.

She lifted her hand from my chest. With her mouth so close, I shut my eyes, willing her to touch me again, even the slightest, most innocent contact. I ached for it. But none came, and when I opened my eyes, she was staring at the shoebox.

“Will you bury them?” Her gaze flitted to mine, seeking.

“Yeah.” I couldn’t picture myself doing such a thing, but for her, I would do anything. “Yes.”

“Thank you.” She cupped my face, her expression overflowing with gratefulness.

As she leaned toward me again, I caught her throat in a warning grip, warding her off. Fighting with myself.

“Tinsley.” I grasped the last threads of my sanity. “We can’t.”

“I know.”

The door opened, and we flew apart.

She tumbled into the pew as I stood, turning toward the entrance. I knew we were going to have company. I’d texted the groundskeeper when I carried Tinsley in here.

Then I’d lost all my brain cells.

Felix lumbered in, wearing a heavy raincoat and carrying a duffel bag.

He was one of those old men who lived in denim overalls and jumped at the chance to help anyone in need. He was the first person I’d hired nine years ago.

Over the past six weeks, he’d kept an eye on Tinsley and her wild companions, watching the opossums for signs of rabies and other diseases.

In my text, I’d given him a heads-up on the shoebox and asked that he collect it and bring blankets or towels.

“Father Magnus,” he said in greeting and gave Tinsley a soft smile. “Miss Constantine.” He set the bag down beside the front row and lifted the lid on the box, peeking inside. “Oh, dear. This must’ve been an awful thing to find. I’m sorry for that.”

Nodding jerkily, she pressed a hand to her mouth and looked away.

“Here’s the thing, Miss Constantine.” Felix unzipped the duffel and removed a wooden box. “I found these out in the rain near the north wall.”

He lifted a hinged door on the top, and two white faces instantly popped out.

My chin jerked back.

She gasped and flew off the pew as the young opossums scurried from the box. Swooping them up in her arms, she laughed, a gloriously musical sound that coursed warmth through my chest.

The opossums climbed to her shoulders and clung from her wet hair, leaving no doubt that these were the critters she called Jaden and Willow.

A shocking amount of relief settled over me as I met Felix’s cloudy eyes.

“I have a theory, Father.” He handed over the duffel bag and grabbed the shoebox, tucking it under his arm. “But you’re not going to like it.”

“I’m listening.” I removed a blanket from the bag and draped it over Tinsley’s shoulders.

Her gaze stayed with the opossums, but I knew she was listening, too.

“There’s been a lot of roadkill between here and the neighboring towns. Lots of opossums.” He stared at his wet boots and grimaced. “Seeing how it’s Monday and the students had visitors over the weekend, it’s an easy assumption that someone collected what’s in this shoebox and brought it onto the campus. Looks to me like these”—he tapped the shoebox—“were hit by a car.”

“I know who put it in my room.” Tinsley growled in her throat. Hot-tempered without being vindictive. Soft and fierce and elfish. Enchanting.

“We’ll talk about it when I do a full investigation.” I turned to Felix. “You found her opossums near the north wall?”

“Yeah. They’re trying to get out but don’t know how to breach the electric fence. Opossums are travelers, never sticking around the same place too long. I know you’ve grown attached, Miss Constantine, but we can’t keep them here.”

“I know.” She gently stroked the creatures, smiling.

I’d never seen her demeanor in such a state of calm serenity. I didn’t want to chance another death with those animals and watch her go through what she’d suffered tonight.

“Do you think they’d be safe in Cypress Lake State Park?” I asked Felix.

“That’s where I would take them. It’s far enough away from the main roads. They’ll head into the mountains.”

“Thanks for your help, Felix.”

He wished us goodnight and left the church with the shoebox.

I met Tinsley’s eyes. “You up for a drive?”

She returned a look of surprise.

I’d never taken a student off the property. Her mother expressly forbade it, and the rulebook stated that no student could leave without approval.

Since I was that approval and Caroline had put her in my charge, all else was moot.

“Yes.” She grinned mischievously. “I’d love that.”