No Saint

by Ria Wilde

If perfection could be personified, I’d have it in front of me. I didn’t know how I didn’t see it before.

Beauty could be disarming and if I let it, Gabriel’s would ruin me. He was built for corrupting just with his looks alone, high cheekbones with deep hollows and a hard jawline that looked sharp enough to cut. Low set brows sitting above hazel eyes that appeared more gold than anything else, like the color of bourbon and framed by thick, black lashes. He had a cruel beauty.

“From now, leonessa, you are mine. No one looks at you. Touches you. Even speaks to you without my permission. Mine. Are we clear?” Her eyes clear immediately, “Fuck. You.” “I’m sure we’ll get there eventually.”

“Good. I hope I cause you hell, Gabriel. That you never know a day of peace.” “Ah, my wife, the kind of feelings you stir may be considered a sin but trust me, my thoughts on you are so far from hell I may as well be in heaven.”

“You can’t have me,” She declares weakly. But I already had her.

Because when I do, she will be mine. Mine to please and fuck, mine to punish and worship. She’ll belong to me.

He looked like the devil, and he tasted like sin so perhaps it was fitting.

He would take nothing less than my whole heart. And I feared, more than he would ever know, that giving it over would take no time at all.

“Hai il mio tempo, leonessa, sempre.”

“Oh God,” she breathes. Pausing, I drop down until my mouth is at her ear, “marito, husband, Gabriel, call me as it is Amelia. It’s me here, not God. Your husband.”

Words have as much power on a person as actions. They cut just as deep and twice as hard. A physical trauma hurts the flesh, but words, they hurt the soul.

Opposing sides, constantly at war with each other. There was one moment of truce, a moment of peace where we collided but as soon as the sun rose and reality swept it, the colors became clear.

Gabriel Saint would be my undoing. My absolute ruin. The problem was, there wasn’t much of me left to break so when that happens and I shatter into nothing more than shards of a person, there wouldn’t be anything left to put back together.

“They were just words, Amelia.” She smiles softly, a real smile but not one that spoke of happiness, “Words are sharper than knives.”

We all need attention. We strive for it. And she had been starved.

It physically hurt something deep inside my chest to wonder what my dark life would be like without her in it.

Mondo mia. My world. Moglie mia. My Wife. Amore mia. My Love.

“My scars…” “Your scars make you the leonessa you are. They make you a warrior, a fighter, do not ever doubt your strength.”

“As much as I prefer my hand as your necklace, Amelia, I knew it couldn’t be there forever so this was the next best accessory for the woman who held my whole heart.”

I’d never loved anyone before, but I knew it for what it was. My heart beats for him. He had consumed me, devoured me whole and he could keep me.