It’s here. It’s live. It’s officially on Amazon.

I know, I know—I’m a tease. To celebrate my latest dark obsession hitting the shelves, I’m posting a new free chapter right here on the blog. Consider it a little hit to get you through the night. If you’re into red flags that look more like wrist ties, you’re in the right place.

A Little Treat for My Reviewers

I want to hear all your dirty thoughts. If you leave a review on Amazon and email the link to me at anacalin@theromancetrove.com, I’ll send you the next e-book for free as an ARC. How about that?

Read Responsibly

Before you dive in, remember: this is a Dark Romance. It’s messy, it’s intense, and it’s meant to be a bit disturbing. Please check the trigger warnings before proceeding (such as Graphic Physical Violence, Childhood Trauma, Non-Consensual Situations, Psychological Torture, Cursing, Explicit Content and others).

Now, go enjoy that free chapter. I’ve left the light on for you 🙂

***

Priest

Hailey stands in front of me, eyes blazing. It’s written all over her face—she knows. Or she thinks she does, because she lunges at me, her fists pummeling my chest. I stare down at her, seeing her, hearing the sounds, but unable to react.

I’m paralyzed by the pain in those hazel eyes, her brow furrowed in a plea for this to not be true, tears clinging to those long eyelashes.

“You son of a f***** bit**,” she screams at me, or at least that’s the first sentence that I register. “You f*cked her! You f*cked her with a bunch of other guys, you vile, nasty piece of—” she chokes on a sob, her fists sagging against me, waves of caramel hair tumbling over the sides of her face. She shakes her head like she can’t even look at me anymore.

I grip her wrists, intending to drop them and then gently push her away, but I don’t. I just keep them in place, breathing in the scent of her hair and wanting nothing more than to bury my hands in it.

But I hold back. My body is rigid, unflinching, because a storm whirls inside me, and I have no idea how to handle it. Moving a single inch might be a step too far.

“You f*cker,” she spits out among sobs. “You damn monster. I loved you! I f*cking loved you!” Her shattered cry breaks me.

She loved me.

The words seep into my brain like poison, making me crave more while it spreads death all through me.

Lust, I expected from her. Fascination, yes, the inability to stop wanting me even though f*ck knows she tried. But love?

This changes everything.

All this time, while I kept my distance, I wasn’t only punishing her. I was trying to get used to the separation and, maybe someday, to her indifference. I was getting ready to leave her once my mission was accomplished. A part of me wanted her to hate me, but I was f*cking lying to myself.

She claimed she hated me for killing those guards, and I believed her. Even if they weren’t the innocent husbands and fathers she thought they were, and had nasty plans for her, I did kill them gruesomely.

Because I’m a murderer.

A serial killer.

One bred in hell by gargoyles and history’s most evil souls, as Sextus used to say.

But, secretly, perversely, I took comfort in knowing she still wanted me. She put on a strong front but, deep in the night, she craved me. I knew, because I was there, hidden in the shadows when she slipped her hand into her panties, arching into her orgasm and whisper-screaming my name. I fisted my c*ck in the darkness, pumping myself to her pleasure. It was easier to resist her when I knew she yearned for me. Now, as I witness love draining out of her and pure hatred replacing it, I realize I’m not ready to lose her.

On the outside, I remain cold as ice. On the inside, my mind is calculating at dizzying speed. By the time she rips her wrists out of my hold, I’ve made my decision.

“I’ll help you discover why you were sent to protect me,” she declares with a finality that I won’t let her hold up. “I’ll help you find whoever shot at the Studios’ windows, and stop the fire within The Order before it spreads. But then, we’re done.” She scoffs. “What am I talking about, of course we’re done. We’ve been done since the night I went to meet Bobby at Parada, and you almost watched me s*ck him off.”

The memory twists a knife in my gut. My cheek twitches. Hailey usually notices these small telltale signs, but now she’s blinded by fury and hurt, or maybe she just doesn’t care anymore.

Despair swells in the pit of my stomach, and it’s all I can not to grab her. My control hangs by a f*cking thread.

I watch her walk away, her steps sharp with finality, her fists balled at her sides.

A few steps in, she whips around.

“I hoped, Priest! I hoped that, if what we had was gone for good, if we’d hurt each other beyond repair, then maybe we could at least hold on to the ghost of us. Not even God could judge us for it. In the end, doesn’t God give murders and whores a chance at redemption?” She opens her arms and then slaps her hands against her thighs in defeat. “I was delusional, but I’m starting to see the f*cking light.”

Clerics and staff hurry past, all of them pretending they’re not seeing this. Hailey turns away only to spin around one more time, pointing a finger at me.

“Mark my words, Priest, I will be free of you one day! Even if I never leave this mansion again, even if you lock me up in the basement, put me in chains, in my head I will be free.” She thrusts her chin out in reckless defiance. Hurt and rage are written all over it, and it’s gutting me. “I’m going to finger myself and fantasize about someone else,” she twists the blade. “Any goddamn celebrity.” Then, looking around for something that will cause even more damage. “Or maybe even one of your own Clerics.”

That’s it. I reach her so quickly she doesn’t know what hit her when I yank her to me and grab a handful of her hair. I hold her in place, her face angled up at me.

There’s so much pain in her eyes she looks manic, and I drink it all in, wishing I could experience it in her place. My c*ck swells uncontrollably.

“Who told you?” I demand evenly. “Give me the name, or I’ll start torturing people to find out.” She should know better than to defy me now.

Her eyes shimmer with tears. “What does it matter? It’s true, isn’t it? Or are you denying it?”

“Depends what I’m being accused of.”

“Of participating in a ******************!”

“I didn’t participate.”

“You were in that room with her,” she forces out while she tries to shove me away. I don’t budge an inch, my arms a cage around her.

“I. Didn’t. F*ck. Her,” I grind out. “And you should stop trying to push me away, for both our sakes,” I warn her. I can tell she’s deciding to sever our connection, which makes me f*cking ballistic.

“You were in Bobby’s old bedroom with her, Priest, you and a bunch of other men. What were you doing in there?” she demands, yet flinching away like she’s afraid of the answer.

“Watching.”

“Watching,” she repeats, stilling for only a moment before she struggles to get away from me again. I hold her tighter. “You bastard, you son of a f*cking—” she stops before she calls my mother a b*tch again, even though that’s what she was.

“Stop struggling,” I say coldly, though on the inside I’m a goddamn furnace. “It won’t get you anywhere.” Then quieter, the threat vibrating in my chest, “It’s not like you can run away from me.” I can feel the darkness pooling in my eyes, my hands roaming her body while keeping her prisoner. The hunger grows, a desperate need to claim her and remind her exactly who she belongs to.

“F*cking let me go,” she cries out, fighting the lock of my arms as I keep her flush against me. She’s mad, but what she should be is scared. The monster is slipping its leash, a hollow, gnawing hunger in my gut. My c*ck is stone hard, and it f*cking hurts.

She shoves me as hard as she can, showing me just how badly she wants to get away from me. I let my arms fall, but not because I’m letting her go. Like hell I am.

“Don’t you ever put your hands on me again, Priest Ward.” Her eyes blaze into mine. “I was an idiot to believe I was the only woman you wanted. You f*cking played me, and Kelly, and God knows how many women before.” She takes another step back with every word. “You’re a vile asshole, and you like it that way. You’re at home in your own sickness. You f*cking bask in your trauma, and I, like a stupid f*cking idiot, hoped I could save a goddamn monster.”

She stops, looks over my shoulder, and laughs bitterly. I don’t need to turn around to know that Kelly stepped out from the master bedroom behind me.

“Never again, Priest,” she vows, her voice laced with betrayal. “I’ll never fall for your games again.”

She spins on her heel and walks away, but this time I’m on her heels. I follow her, not giving a f*ck about Kelly watching behind me, staff members stopping to make sense of this picture.

I don’t care anymore. The whole world can go to hell.

I close the gap in seconds, but don’t grab her just yet. She can feel me behind her like a shadow she can’t escape, but she just chooses to increase pace, trying to put more distance between us. I close it every time, even when she grabs the banister to give herself leverage to pivot out of reach and down the stairs. She tears down the stairs around the birdcage elevator shaft until she reaches the ground floor, only from here there’s no place to go.

She stops and glances around: guards at the door, Clerics patrolling, staff moving about the large halls from the receiving area, to the library, to the dining hall.

“F*ck’s sake,” she pushes out through her teeth, sensing me behind her, looking around for a way out.

“You can curse all you want,” I say, close, too close. Closer than she expected, because her back stiffens. “It won’t save you,” I add in a quiet voice that I know scares her more than a scream.

“You won’t dare to do this.” I can hear it in her voice: she knows exactly what’s coming at her.

“I would only be taking what’s already mine.” I walk a step lower, so close to her now that my thighs brush her buttocks, but I don’t reach for her yet. I just wait.

She waits, too. The staff hurry past, and the Clerics obey my silent command, clearing the place, and taking the guards with them. Within seconds, we’re alone, nothing but silence in the humongous halls. Hailey breathes faster, her back still to me, her knuckles white on the wooden banister.

“You can’t run away from me, Hailey,” I tease wickedly, watching her like a hawk, breathing in her scent. It’s still intoxicating, like everything about her, going straight to my cock. “There’s nowhere to hide.”

She’s shaking now, but I don’t think it’s fear or frustration that she can’t break my hold.

“I wish I could hate you,” she murmurs. “For being a lying bastard, a killer, a schemer, a psycho who thrives in the gore, a—” she bursts out crying, hard, like a dam has just broken.

“I’m guilty of all that, but I never lied to you,” I tell her, not touching her, but aching to reach for her as she heaves with sobs.

“No, you just omitted to tell the truth,” she grinds out.

“That’s not the same.”

“Like hell it isn’t. And the worst part?” She turns around slowly, as if to keep her reactions in check when our eyes meet. Resentment shimmers in hers as tears roll down her face, clinging to her chin.

I want to f*cking whip myself for hurting her. Her nails dig into the lacquered wood, and I wonder if she wishes it was my face.

“The worst part is that I don’t even want to resist your games. How f*cked up is it that it took a monster to finally see me, accept me, want me for who I am? I’ve been lonely all my life, and yet you somehow fill that void, you’re a ghost in every one of my memories. Even with Irma, the way you stood up for me, it’s…it was the first time I felt protected. ” She shakes her head, the wreckage on her face like a thousand knives in my chest. “I’m scared of how I feel about you. You suck me in like an evil black vortex, and yet nothing has ever felt better. I need to get away from you, my sanity f*cking depends on it.”

She tries to turn away, but I catch her arm.

“I am an evil black vortex,” I declare, my voice as dark as the words. “And you are all I’m hungry for.”

A shiver runs through her, the accompanying sigh telling me it’s not one of discomfort. If anything, she leans slightly back into me, as if seeking the heat of my body, but then rips herself away.

“No, I won’t let you do this to me,” she grinds out before she breaks into a run.

I watch her bolt through the grand entrance doors, giving her a generous head start before I leisurely start walking after her. Now that I know for a fact she still wants me, and that she’s fighting a losing battle against her feelings, there’s no stopping me.

I follow her into the dark expanse of the gardens, fully aware that I should just let this happen. Let her go, abandon the mission, and return to my duties as Brother Superior far away from her.

A possible scenario plays out in my head as gravel grinds under my boots while I hunt her down in the garden maze—slowly, methodically. I would finalize the operation, leaving her with this mansion, the studios, Bobby Saintpatrick’s whole empire and her dreams fulfilled. I’d get to see her free and happy, laughing in the sun before I retreated from her life, taking all the death and rot with me. But then, as soon as I’m out of her life, a man steps into the picture, and the light dies. The sky bruises, the air turns cold. My fists ball, jealousy and violence burning through my veins.

I would return to stick a white-hot iron down his throat. I’d make her watch, too. I’d tear him limb from limb, and then f*ck her while still painted in his blood, reminding her who she belongs to. She’d stare at me, appalled, and I’d just keep f*cking her because I’d have no other way to deal with the madness. The raging monster would be out without a leash, and I’d never regain control again.

The hedges rustle to the left, and my head snaps to them. I approach slowly, listening, every step flattening the grass. The thicket flutters again, a small sound escaping from it. A corner of my mouth lifts, my vision tunneling. My nostrils flare as I pick up her scent: fear, but also a little something that smells like arousal.

She wants this to happen, and it isn’t working in her favor.

“Run, little cat,” I let out in a guttural voice engineered to make the fine hairs on her neck stand up. “Because if I catch you—” I stop in place, sniffing the air for her scent. “I f*ck you.”

KEEP READING.