: Chapter 34

His arms around me speak an entirely different language than the words of his body in the woods. Hands hold on to me in a new, unexpected embrace. Comforting. Almost gentle and protective.

Aero is carrying me to the bathroom of one of the strangest cabins I’ve ever seen.

I wouldn’t define it as a cabin. The word cabin to me implies something old, rustic, and warm. This is a sleek shell of modern. With its linear architecture, the exterior boasts high-end craftsmanship, echoing that same design in the interior. Nothing but black walls, granite floors, furniture that’s practically scraping the floor with its low height, and floor to ceiling windows facing an entirely hidden forest behind us.

This looks like a billionaire’s getaway, not a homeless stalker who fucks his conquests in the woods, smashing their face into the earth beneath them.

What we did out there was animalistic. It was organically primal. The raw passion of his unrelenting need stirs my internal femininity into a cyclone of desire. Needing him to claim me as his in his woods, craving his release on me like some sort of marked property. I realized I enjoyed the submission during sex. I loved to feel owned and belittled in order to open myself to feeling that freeing release. It was oddly cathartic for a woman who fights wars for equality on a daily basis.

The orgasm I experienced out there in that dirt defies everything I should want out of sex and intimacy, and yet, it terrifies me entirely, because I don’t think I can see the act any other way now. Becoming one flesh is what He intended for us. Sex is its own form of worship, and what we did was nothing short of honoring this newfound religion we’ve created. If it’s not that type of primal passion, that spine-tingling demand of his body inside the deepest part of mine, I don’t want it.

Exhaustion is taking over, and my eyelids are growing heavy. He sets me on the counter of the expansive and sleek bathroom as he starts up one of the largest walk-in showers I’ve ever seen, returning to me with a small white hand towel.

Going to pick me up again, I grab his forearm, stopping him. Steam billows above the black granite floors, and I turn my back to Aero to look at myself in the mirror.

Mud and dirt cover the right side of my face where I was held down. There’s foliage in my hair, and I note the presence of smeared blood near my mouth from his wound. My shirt is ripped open and my breasts spill over the edge of my bra. My skirt is covered in dirt and my knees are black from the wet soil. I look ravaged. I look raw in my reflective form. The furthest thing from beautiful, and yet, with the flush in my cheeks, the swell of my lips, and the belly twisted with never-ending lust, I’ve never felt more ethereal.

“For we are God’s masterpiece…” he quotes near my ear, staring into my eyes in the reflection before us. “Your beauty is my chokehold.”

“Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised,” I retort, pulling a stick from my hair.

His eyes stay locked on mine as I take in the mess of paint smearing off his face.

“Do you see it now?” he asks, circling me to grab the hand towel. He wets it with water from the sink near me before ringing it out and standing behind me again. His hands brace the counter around me as he leans over me, his chin practically resting on my shoulder as he speaks into my ear. “How they try to tame the wild in you? How they focus on detaining His own natural creation in its purest, most exquisite form? We are created in His image, are we not?”

He takes the towel and wipes the dirt from my cheek. I gaze at my image. The woman before me, made in His image. The one who seeks freedom in the expression of her body, the opening of her soul to another. Yes, there is no marital union between us, but does that make what we’re doing of any less worth? Are we idolizing all the things the Lord himself asks us to deny? Is my God a truly jealous God?

“For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous,” I recite, the words falling from my lips from years of studying the word. But these words: disobedience, obedience; they fill with new meaning, a new understanding as the man behind me looks on.

Aero reads me in my reflection.

“Never fall in line with the disciplines of men who restrict the freedom of thought. It encourages immorality rather than reducing it. They assume utopia rather than expecting realism. Your religion is a man-made institution that uses fear and intimidation to maintain power over you. But the true power resides in you, Briony. It resides in you, and it resides in me. For we are of this earth, not some dreamed illusion of men who came before us.”

I swallow as he holds the warm cloth at my cheek, gazing into my eyes in the mirror. This inevitable, universal truth lays its weight over me. Everything he’s declaring comes from a man scorned from the exact teachings he’s professing. But where in that lies the faith? I may not agree with all the teachings of my school and my religion, but I hold steadfast to my beliefs in something greater, whereas this man has lost any semblance of faith.

“There is right and there is wrong. There is good and there is evil,” he continues. “But their definitions bend for those who wield the ability to manufacture their own fate. The words distort for them. Conform to what they need to hold tight the power over naivety. But in this life, Briony, the disadvantaged either break or build from the shards of their own shattered bones. The weak hit a darkness so low that existence becomes secondary to revealing the pragmatic truths.”

My legs tremble while my stomach churns uncomfortably at the words spilling from his tormented soul. He’s revealing a version of his own story, somehow effectively aligning it to mine because, as he assumes, we are one and the same.

“And what is that truth, Aero?” I ask cautiously.

He sighs, the powerful muscles of his chest stretching his sweatshirt taut while flexing his jaw beneath the paint. Grabbing the towel from the counter where he placed it before me, I turn to face him. His hazel eyes burn through mine as he continues to lean over me. He removes his sweatshirt with one hand behind his back, letting it fall to the floor beside us before gazing back up at me. His hair is a mess of dark, intertwined locks hanging loosely across his forehead. With one hand, I push it back, taking the other hand and cupping his coal-covered face.

He reluctantly allows my touch. Basking in his discomfort, he raises his chin. I feel him attempt the impossible. Submitting himself over to me.

I study him with cautious eyes as I slowly remove the paint, his gaze never once deterring from mine. Then tension is thick, the energy of the room around us charged, as he lets me clean him, washing the remnants from his eyebrow where that large, fleshy scar comes into view. I continue running the cloth along his lips, peering at them as his warm breath leaves his parted lips, the tension increasing with every swipe of the cloth. I continue until his face is clean enough to get the full view before me.

The air feels taken from me. As if there’s an invisible weed climbing its way into my body, wrapping itself around my lungs, constricting their expansion, stripping me of oxygen. How could it be?

“You’re…” I shake my head, my face distorted with pure confusion.

I see it now. The resemblance is uncanny.

“But, h-he only has one…so you have…” I shake my head, squinting my eyes before blinking them open to face him again. “Saint is your…” My mouth is as dry as a desert as I try to cope with the fact that the man before me is practically a spitting image of the opulent, most powerful man himself.

Callum Westwood.

The father of Saint.

The man who couldn’t stand the idea of his son’s ceremony coexisting with a woman’s.

The man who practically funds the town, the church, and everyone residing here with his wealth and high status.

His pristine and squeaky clean status.

With the long strands of dark hair pushed back, the strong cut jaw, these high, defined cheekbones, the slope of his nose, all of it resembles that evil, powerful man. All except the stunning swirls of emerald and amber in those daunting hazel eyes.

“Half-brother,” he says casually as ever, still staring directly through me. “Technically speaking.”

“But then that would mean…”

“Fornication. Extramarital affair. Yes, darling, the prestigious man himself fucked a woman that wasn’t his wife and knocked her up.”

My jaw hangs loose, and words are lost to me.

“Can you think of a more heinous crime for a man so polished?” he says, leaning forward again. “Because I can think of a few others.”

The scars on his face. The slash across his eye to the top of his cheekbone, the scar near his lip, and the one lining his jaw. Jagged scars that scream of improper healing.

“What has he done to you?”

“That’s the best part,” he answers carefully, studying my eyes. “He hasn’t done anything to me.”

“W-what do you…mean?”

“Men, like himself, don’t get their hands dirty with the crimes they commit. No trails left behind for the admirable.”

“Your mother…” I begin, my hand suddenly shaking at my side. “Where is—”

“Dead,” he replies flatly.

The tone in which he says it signifies a caged rage that’s brewed beneath the surface from years of restrained torment. A tone that can only signify causation. Callum had his mother killed?

He pushes off the counter before raking his fingers through the hair at the top of his head. His bare chest heaves with a tremendous sigh, the muscles of his abdomen tighten, and I see the tick of his jaw flex again. I can barely wrap my head around this. How does no one know?

How has Aero slipped through the cracks and remained this man, hidden in the shadows? And how could Callum Westwood subject his own flesh and blood to this kind of life of blatant disregard while his other son, Saint, lives like a king awaiting his kingdom?

I understand the hatred now, the jealous aspects he’s been internalizing. He’s had to sit and watch his half-brother live the life he wasn’t allowed. They killed his mother? I can only imagine the horrors he’s somehow survived.

Lightheadedness takes over while my body numbs, and I slump to the side. Aero slips between my thighs, catching me in his arms and sitting me upright again, his forehead suddenly wrinkled with concern.

“Bri,” he whispers, grasping the back of my neck with one hand, his other arm wrapping around my waist.

Darkness threatens to close in on me, but with a few deep breaths, it retreats from my vision. I’m overwhelmed by this realization. Yet, another man they have forced me to look up to as the epitome of moral perfection, a broken and crumbling castle of privilege. The dedication to his church, the town, the dedication to his family. The fucking endless lies.

He hands me a glass from the sink, filled with water. “Drink.”

I hold it with two shaking hands, sipping slowly before setting it beside me. He’s watching me cautiously, studying my movements before my eyes trail up his tatted and scarred body. So many messages scrawled across his flesh. A biblical revelation all his own; stories of struggle and strength covering the muscles rising and falling with each breath he breathes in the world he fought to survive. A world that wouldn’t allow these undeniable truths to live on. My gaze trails back up to the bloomed rose on his neck before finding his face again.

It’s eerie—seeing his father in his bone structure. Seeing the resemblance of Saint in his full lips, the bottom one that sits out slightly further than the top. I begin to wonder if Saint knows about his brother. If he’s ever known. So many questions race through my head.

“How old are you?” I slur in my disoriented state.

This makes his lips curl into a smile. A true, genuine smile that literally melts away any negative thoughts I’ve ever had about this man. It’s a beautiful smile. A shame he’s ever felt the need to cover it up with masks and shadows.

“That’s the first question you ask me after what I’ve revealed to you?” His eyebrow cocks as part of his dark hair falls back into his eyes.

I lift my hand and brush it back again so I can view him entirely. I don’t think I’ll ever feel satisfied enough by looking at the work of art that is him. He’s simply stunning. Cut from a cloth of modelesque beauty, coated in his own edgy grit. He grips my wrist as if my touch hurts him, pulling my hand away as that strong jaw flexes again, his nostrils flaring.

We may have connected intimately, but it’s obvious this man has no idea how to receive a gentle embrace. He knows control. He knows strength, but he knows nothing of love. Not in its purest, most organic form. He knows a love filtered by sick obsession. By pain. By vengeance.

“Twenty-nine.”

My eyes scour over every part of him, as if by simply examining and taking him in, I’ll be able to understand the impossible. I knew he had to be older than me, but that’s so many unaccounted years. I can only imagine the horrors of this dark revelation. How detrimental it would be to the entire Westwood dynasty. Aero’s resilience and determination kept him alive, but other than the complexities of vengeance, what truly drove this man to survive?

“Where have you been all this time?” I ask breathlessly.

I see the roll of his throat as he steps in closer to me, my legs spreading open on the counter to accommodate him. His palm plants behind me as the other cups the side of my neck. He towers over me again, the intensity of his stare paralyzing me. He gazes down at my lips before his tongue dips out and licks his own. Eyes of fire set themselves ablaze before me, pulling me into his feverishness.

“Finding you,” he whispers against my lips, as if there was no other reason for his existence. “The Devil’s Doll.”