Vicious (Sinners of Saint, #1)

by L.J. Shen

She was naked. She was mine. This was happening.

“I don’t do shirtless,” I whispered. It was the truth. No shirtless. No dates. No relationships. These were the rules.

She shook her head no. There was something almost violent about that movement. “You’re not going to have me unless the shirt comes off.”

I didn’t budge. I didn’t want to tell her to fuck off. For once in a very long time, I didn’t want to deal with the consequences of being an asshole. But...

“I don’t care about your scars, Vicious,” she stressed, searching my eyes...

She moaned, encouraging me to go on, stroking my marred flesh. Yet she didn’t make me feel like a freak. Not Emilia. She never made me feel that way.

“It can be a date,” he muttered from the bedroom, and my head swung toward him.

“What did you say?” I hated that it made my body feel like I’d just gotten off a rollercoaster.

“I said it can be a date if you want it to be.” He still stare...

He was toxic, poison, and he was going to kill everything beautiful in my life if I let him. He was the storm to my cherry blossoms.

Lust is when you want the person to make you feel good. Love is when you want to make the other person feel good.

You were always mine. —Black

He called me Em.

“I want you,” he said simply. “Just you. Nothing else. Only ever you,” he breathed out in pain, closing his eyes. “Fuck, Emilia. You.”

“I thought you’d try to take me home.” I arched a playful eyebrow.

“You thought wrong. Your pussy doesn’t interest me right now. Your heart does.”

Fuck, this one just hit me straight in the feels!

Not only did she paint me (and arguably gave me a better nose than the one I was born with), but it was also what I was doing in the painting that made me smile like a sleaze ball. I was holding a joint and laughing into a non-existent camera—though my eyes were still mine, kind of sad and dark and fucking scary—and I wore a simple black T-shirt that said “Black” in white. The background was stark, stupid pink.

I was her black.

And she was m...

All I wanted was for her to be mine, but I kept thinking—believing—that I wasn’t enough. That something so broken couldn’t possibly deserve someone so whole.

I pressed my lips against hers, and they were warm, and they were right, and they were mine. We kissed under the cherry blossom tree until I felt our lips were seconds from cracking before she pulled away, blinking at me. I got up and offered her my hand. She took it. She fucking took it.

She untangled my fingers from my glass of wine and placed it on the kitchen island as she linked her arms around my neck, and that’s when I realized that all this time, all this fucking time I was chasing her, I was actually loving her. I loved her when I hated her. And I loved her when I didn’t want anything to do with her. I was so crazy about her, the lines had blurred together. Feelings were mixed, emotions twisted together. I was stealing her pens and pencils, when actually, I was desperate for her words. All of them. Every letter and syllable. Every silly doodle. It was clear to me then, in a generic white kitchen I didn’t particularly like, in a city I hated, in an apartment I was supposed to vacate in three weeks’ time, that I was in love. A love that was worn and old, but still burning.

“Not possible.” He kissed me hard, his tongue sliding into my mouth. Then he leaned back. “I loved you since you told me your friends called you Millie. Even then, when I caught you eavesdropping, I knew I wasn’t gonna call you that, because you weren’t going to be my fucking friend. You were destined to be my wife.”