Total pages in book: 122
Estimated words: 120475 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 602(@200wpm)___ 482(@250wpm)___ 402(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 120475 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 602(@200wpm)___ 482(@250wpm)___ 402(@300wpm)
I left my past behind.
Then she walked into my church.
Once, I was Bane Blackwolf—heir to a legacy of blood and sin. A monster in the making. Instead, I chose the cloth over the crown, buried my name, and became Father Blackwood.
For years, I was in control of my darker nature. Until her.
Moira.
The woman with a sinner’s mouth and a body made for worship. The woman who doesn’t know it was me behind the mask that night—me who had her on her knees, begging.
Now she’s here, whispering confessions that twist the knife deeper. Tempting the man I pretend to be and the beast I’ve tried to bury.
I vowed to be a good man. I vowed to never take what doesn’t belong to me.
But Moira is mine.
The moment I touched her, I knew—I’d never crave anything the way I crave her. She’s the only thing that silences my demons and makes me forget the weight of my sins.
And I’ll be damned before I let her go.
TWs: Please note this is an intense dark romance with characters dealing with mental illness, abuse, and trauma. A full list of trigger warnings can be found on the author’s website.
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Platlist
Uh Oh Neoni
Morally Grey April Jai and Nation Haven
Me and the Devil Soap&Skin
25 Rod Wave
Behind The Scenes TEYA
No Mercy Austin Giorgio
Take Me to Church Hozier
Gasoline Halsey
Boy Toy by Halle Abadi
Bad Apples Pussy Riot
Breaking Down I Prevail
Beggin' by Måneskin
Mess It UP Gracie Abrams
Please Please Please Sabrina Carpenter
Heathens Twenty-One Pilots
Pony Ginuwine
Popular Monster Falling In Reverse
Toxic Love SZA and Kendrick Lamar
Serotonin Girl in Red
Beautiful Things by Benson Boone
ONE
FATHER BLACKWOOD
I’m a monster, but as so often happens with monsters, I’ve got everyone snowed into thinking I’m a good man from the outside.
The priest’s collar around my neck helps.
No one knows about the shattered glass and spilled blood. No one knows about the floggers and leather and the countless women I’ve put on their knees and ordered to call me Lord—just like my father always said they ought to.
I’m an Episcopal priest, not a Catholic one, so I’ve made no vow of celibacy. But that doesn’t mean my bishop would approve of me going to a club like the one I did on Friday, putting a woman in chains and making her beg, cry, and take everything I gave her until I came home with a Bible soaked in her juices from spanking her pussy with it.
I am a sinner of the worst order.
The kind who wears the cloth of a saint.
I stand at the altar, arms raised for the opening prayer, eyes cast downward in hypocrisy.
A half-full church full of elderly faithful sits before me. A congregation that believes in me. Trusts me.
I might never have meant to betray them, but depravity is my birthright.
My mouth shapes the familiar words of prayer, each syllable smooth and practiced. But my mind? My mind is still trapped with her.
I smell her phantom scent—cinnamon, vanilla, and sweat. I feel the silk of her hair as I twisted it around my fist. Taste the salt of her skin and hear the rasp of her broken moans as she took what I gave her. As she craved it.
My hands tremble with the memory.
It only took walking three blocks to throw away everything I’ve built.
A priest never should have set foot in a place like that. Carnal. But the sign was a beacon to my profane soul. A glowing, blood-red promise that I could indulge—just once—before snapping myself back in line.
I could blame it on the letter from my father. But a weak man can always find something or someone else to blame, can’t he?
Three years of silence, and now this, him summoning me like the errant heir he always knew I’d be. The Blackwolf family crest stared up at me from the letterhead—a seal I swore I’d never look upon again. I should have burned it.
Instead, I read every word.
You can run, but you’re still a Blackwolf. You can’t escape what you are.
The echo of my father’s voice coils around my chest like barbed wire. I thought the vows, the collar, and the church—all of it—could change me. Redeem me.
But last Friday, I felt the truth in my bones.
I am my father’s son, and I always will be.
I fought for years—years—to strip myself of Bane, the monster I was raised to be. And yet, in a single night, I let him loose again. I hid my face behind a black cloth skull mask, concealing the priest and letting the sinner run free. I thought it was protection. But that wasn’t the truth. It was permission.
I bow my head and whisper, “Amen,” keeping my voice steady. The congregation responds in kind, and their unwavering trust cinches the barbed wire tighter.
The opening hymn begins. Off-key voices fill the high, arched ceilings, but the sound barely registers. The air is thick with candle wax, the age-old scent of polished wood, and the bite of Mrs. Blanchard’s whiskey-laced coffee that she thinks no one notices. My vestments feel heavier today, a noose instead of a yoke.
“Now, for a moment of contemplation and silence as we gather our hearts for worship,” I say, my voice calm despite the storm inside me. I roll the mallet around the singing bowl, the low hum filling the silence.
I begin the count in my head. Sixty seconds to hold on to the calm. Sixty seconds to convince myself that I am still in control.
I am Father Blackwood, I chant inwardly. Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three. I have dedicated my life to serving others. Thirty-nine, forty, forty-one. To bring hope to the hopeless.
Fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty.
I roll the mallet again, the sound dissipating into the vaulted rafters.
I open my eyes, my hands lifting as I prepare for the next prayer. The congregation waits expectantly.
And then I see her.
Her.
Oh, fuck. All the air in my lungs freezes as she slips in through the heavy arched doors at the back of the church, hesitance in every line of her body.
The woman who’s haunted me for forty-eight agonizing hours.