Blood Red by James A. Moore Read Free Book Online Page A

everything.
    Ben sat silently and listened. He nodded from time to time, but otherwise, he said nothing at all until she had finished crying herself numb. She rested her head against his chest and he wiped at her tears, missing a few but getting most of the trails off her face.
    Then he leaned down and kissed her temple with the same sort of affection her father had always shown her when she screwed up colossally.
    “So, I’ll get it all back.”
    “What?” She sat up fast, the world getting fuzzy for a second as she looked at his face. Ben was looking across the park, his eyes tracking a couple of crows talking smack to each other in a language that only crows know.
    “I’ll get it back.” He said the words so calmly, so matter-of-factly, that she could almost believe he meant them.
    “No, Ben.” She shook her head, visions of what Brian Freemont would do to a kid the size of Ben dancing in her mind. “He’d tear you in half.”
    Ben got a strange little smile on his face and shook his head. “I didn’t say how I’d get it back.”
    “Ben, I mean it. He’d probably kill you as soon as he’d look at you.”
    Ben finally looked her way and shot her a quick wink. “Just shows what you know, Danni.” He stood up and stretched, his narrow waist exposed to the cold air as his shirt lifted.
    “Ben, seriously. Thanks for everything, thanks for being here and listening, but I don’t want you to get hurt.”
    That little smile again and then he was walking, looking over his shoulder for a second to shoot her another wink. “I’ll get it back.”
    He seemed so calm and that was what scared her. Ben was maybe too calm; the sort of calm that always precedes the worst storms.

VI
    Maggie leaned forward, her forehead resting against the interior door of the confessional, her eyes half closed as she stifled a moan. Father Flannery sat behind her, his hands on her waist, barely moving. He gasped and then rested his head between her shoulders. His skin felt like warm marble as she moved, slowly, gently rocking back and forth, making the moment last as long as she could. There was something almost sweetly innocent about the man she seduced and wickedly delicious about the act they were engaged in. For the first time in a very long while, she felt something more than merely physically active.
    His teeth scraped the back of her neck, and his breaths lashed at her skin. His hands were actually trembling, his fingers clutching at her sides as she continued to slowly increase the tempo of their dance.
    Just on the other side of the vestibule door, she could hear people moving, and through the small crack that separated the door from its jamb, she could make out three parishioners walking down the main aisle of the church, heading for the pulpit.
    Flannery’s body was almost perfectly rigid under her, and she knew he heard them, too. Despite the gravity of the situation, or maybe because of it, she felt a smile playing at her lips as she moved his hand from her waist until she could nibble on his index finger. His other hand moved of its own will and cupped her breast through the simple white blouse, so reminiscent of the uniforms she’d worn back at Sacred Hearts.
    He said a small blasphemy as she pushed herself back against his body and started moving faster, in short, tight circles over him. Getting him into the confessional for a different sort of activity had been amazingly easy. One look, three sentences, and a condom in her hand, and he had been putty.
    She just hadn’t expected to enjoy this anywhere near as much as she was. Forbidden fruit was sweet, after all.
    His teeth clamped down harder and for the first time he started moving in reaction to every motion she offered. His actions were frantic and she knew he was about to come.
    Maggie bit down harder on the priest’s finger, sucking at the skin caught between her teeth as he bucked beneath her, whimpering and sweating and maybe dying a little.
    She bit harder