Heat flooded my cheeks, my inexperience infusing my veins with nerves. But I could not take my eyes from Rider’s mouth on my finger. I was mesmerized. Warmth filled my every muscle. Rider pulled back his mouth, only to use his grip on my hand to pull me closer, my chest moving to hover over his.
My heart beat a loud drumming rhythm. I felt Rider’s heart beating just as loudly and quickly below mine. Rider licked along his lips, tracing the outline of my own with his finger.
“Have . . . ” he began, his voice low and raspy. He cleared his throat. “Have you ever been kissed before, Harmony?”
Finding my lost voice, I answered, “No. Curseds are never kissed. Our taste and touch is thought to taint a pure soul. To corrupt a saint into a sinner. To capture a heavenly soul for the devil to collect.”
Rider’s eyebrows drew together. “I am a sinner, Harmony. If your kiss damns pure hearts, then it is too late to affect mine.”
Rider’s mouth moved toward me and I let him take the lead. I had no idea what I was doing, but I wanted to try. In that moment I wanted it more than anything else. Rider was the first man to ever make me want anything remotely close to affection . . .
Then Rider’s lips were pressing against mine, soft and gentle, flesh against flesh. I waited for him to show me what to do. When his lips began moving ever so slightly against mine, I followed his lead, Rider’s taste bursting on my tongue. I moaned breathlessly as his hand slipped through my hair and grasped the back of my head. Our lips pressed harder against one another’s. Rider’s touch consumed me. He consumed me. The fallen destined prophet, touching me with a gentleness that made me weak.
Rider’s mouth broke from mine, and we both fought for breath. Rider tipped his forehead to mine and closed his eyes. I brushed his freshly washed hair from his face, and a smile pulled on his lips. “You cleansed me?” he asked.
“Yes,” I replied, a new, foreign lightness engulfing my heavy heart.
“You . . . cared for me?” His voice held an echo of disbelief.
“Yes,” I replied and felt him relax. “Lie down,” I said and, drawing back, guided his large body toward the stone floor.
“The guards,” he said, trying to resist. “They will return. You can’t be here. You’ll be punished.”
“It is okay,” I said. His face molded into a confused frown. A confession was on the tip of my tongue, but I held back from expressing it when I saw his eyes drop with tiredness. Instead, I said, “Brother Stephen and Sister Ruth will warn us before they come back.”
My answer seemed to appease him. Rider didn’t release my hand as he lay down. I joined him on the floor. Rider wrapped me in his strong arm, my head falling onto his hard chest. It felt so strange to lie in such a way. But I allowed it. I felt myself wanting it more than anything.
In this cell, with the true prophet of our faith, I was home. I knew there was no other place I would rather be. The strangest of circumstances.
I glanced down at Rider’s arm, at the inked markings on his skin. My finger traced the demonic pictures. “Rider? Why do you wear such haunting images on your skin? Who put them there?”
Rider’s body stiffened. “There are things you don’t know about me, Harmony. Bad things . . . sinful things that I have done. Places I’ve been.”
A shiver of fear and unease crept down my spine. Raising my head, I stared at Rider’s conflicted face. I too had a past that I could not, and did not want to, divulge. But there was one question I had that would change my feelings for Rider, or not. “Have you . . . did you ever awaken a child, Rider?”
The resounding shock was clear on Rider’s face. “Never. I . . . ” He ducked his head, as though embarrassed, and added, “I am pure, Harmony. I have never lain with anyone. I have barely been touched by a woman.” His stunning features hardened. “And I would never take a child. It is immoral and wrong. No God I could ever believe in would condone such a thing.”
A weight I did not even know I was carrying was freed from my shoulders. Spurred on by his confession, I shifted my torso up until my mouth hovered above Rider’s lips. I was taken aback by the admiration I saw reflected in his eyes. I knew I would remember that look for eternity. “You are good,” I whispered. “You may have sinned in your past, but you are redeeming yourself now.”
Rider shook his head. His mouth opened to argue, so I stopped the words from flowing with another kiss. Rider tensed beneath me, but it was not long before he relaxed and his lips moved softly against mine. When I withdrew, the affection in Rider’s eyes warmed me like nothing ever had before. “I . . . I like kissing,” I confessed, and I was rewarded with a smile—a true, genuine smile.
The sight stole my heart.
“Cursed” was a title only a woman could hold. But if there was such a title for a man, Rider would have it. Everything about him was beautiful. I could see he did not believe it. In fact, I could see the raw self-hatred in everything he said and did. I could see it in his haunting dark eyes.
But as I laid my head down on his chest, Rider’s strong arms holding me close, I simply let myself feel this. This care from the man who tried to kill his only brother so I could be freed from his abusive hand and spared the public joining.
That was the future that awaited me. I had always known my fate would not be one of joy—it was never in the stars for me. So for right now, I would bask in this feeling, the comforting arms of this man. Before it was too late.
The only man that had ever shown me such affection and honor.
The pure prophet with the conflicted heart.
A heart I believed could be saved.
Even if mine was already damned.
Chapter Nine
Rider
My body wanted to me sleep, but my mind kept me awake. Plus, as I looked down at Harmony sleeping, draped over my chest, I knew I would never close my eyes. I never wanted to move from this spot. The outside world could wait, for all I cared it could fade to oblivion . . . as long as we got to stay here, just like this, undisturbed.
I stroked Harmony’s long blond hair. My heart swelled as her breathing hitched at my touch. I felt my lips spread into a ghost of a smile. Then it disappeared as I thought of what lay ahead of her. Judah. The ceremony. The joining . . . a life of servitude and horror.
The sudden surge of anger I felt was almost too much to contain. I fought to keep my body still as wave after furious wave built in my stomach.
I had no way to stop him.
I didn’t kill him when I had the chance . . . I would never get that chance again. I fucked up my chance at saving her.
She would be taken from me, and I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. I held Harmony tighter. My mind suddenly drifted to Styx and Mae. I felt sick as I thought of my time with them, months and months ago. This was what Styx must have felt when I took Mae from him and brought her back to the commune. This helpless fucking feeling, the feeling that you might lose the one that resided in your heart.
No wonder he wanted to fucking kill me.
No wonder Mae didn’t want me.
I ran my hand down over Harmony’s cheek. I knew now what this type of connection felt like. And I couldn’t fucking lose it. I wouldn’t cope if I did.
I was still staring at Harmony’s beautiful sleeping face when the cell door began to sneak open. I straightened, preparing to fight whoever was coming through, convinced it was the guards returning. Whoever it was held a candle in their hand, the soft flame illuminating the room better than the bright moon outside, whose rays were spearing through the small window.
I forced my eyes to adjust to the new light. It was the man I often saw out in the hallway. I relaxed some knowing this man was Harmony’s guardian, a man she trusted. A man she seemed to treat almost like a father.
He came closer to us, quietly, so as not to disturb Harmony. He glanced down at Harmony on my lap, and his face softened. He looked to be somewhere in his fifties. He had jet-black hair and brown eyes. He looked familiar to m
e for some reason, but I was sure I had never seen him before.
The man—Brother Stephen, Harmony had called him—met my eyes. Besides the candle, he held something else in his hand.
I frowned as he crouched down and placed the candle on the floor by my side. He leaned forward and placed a file in my hands. I glanced down at Harmony; she was sleeping soundly.
I opened the file and, in the dim candlelight, looked at the first page. My stomach fell. An old picture of my uncle, Prophet David, stared back at me. It wasn’t the fact that it was his face that shocked me, but the type of picture it was. I had lived amongst the Hangmen for five years. Each one of my former brothers had one of these pictures hanging on the wall in the clubhouse.
A mug shot.
My uncle was staring up at me from the page in a fucking mug shot. I squinted my eyes to study the picture further. He was holding up a board containing his personal information. My face blanched when I read the name.
Lance Carter.
I shook my head, struggling to comprehend what it all meant. A finger landed on the file, and I looked up at Brother Stephen. “Read it,” he mouthed. “All of it.”
“The guards,” I mouthed back.
“Do not worry about them,” he said, and left the cell.
I waited for him to close the door, but he didn’t. Was this a trick? I waited for the guards that should be stationed in the cellblock to burst in and frame me for having this file. But none came.
My pulse sped up in confusion. I had no idea what the fuck was happening. I was too tired to think about it too much. I took a deep breath and opened the file again. I leaned over toward the light of the candle and began to read.
With every sentence, my stomach sank further and further to floor. It was information on my uncle . . . information on his life before his mission.
Lance Carter, born in Little Rock, Arkansas . . . typical life, until he was found guilty of child sexual abuse . . . two counts of rape of eight-year-old girls . . . jailed for twenty years . . . served twelve.
Vomit traveled up my throat. My uncle, the leader of our faith was . . . was motherfucking convicted pedophile . . .
I gripped the paper in my fists as I fought to control my anger. I read on further, each new piece of information slicing its poisonous dagger deeper into my heart, into everything I had ever fucking known, deeper and deeper until there was nothing left.
Lived alone in rural Arkansas with other convicted pedophiles whom he had met in prison . . . quickly drew in more men when Lance Carter, then renamed Prophet David, claimed to have received a revelation on a pilgrimage quest to Israel . . . in truth, he had never left the United States.
The commune, which preached the oncoming End of Days and a free-love doctrine, grew in such vast numbers that it needed to relocate . . . Carter bought land in the rural outskirts of Austin, Texas . . . Carter announced within the coming years that God had ordered him to send his people to other countries to recruit new followers to The Order . . . In truth, he was being investigated by the ATF for arms dealing to finance his commune and needed to store his money and gun stock overseas . . .
My eyes raked over page after page of information about the men who had founded the faith along with my uncle. Every one of them had a history of sexual violence.
My uncle had created the commune to engage in sexual acts against children. He had created it all, manufactured a past, to build a faith founded on pedophilia. Attracting fellow sexual deviants to its cause until children were born and raised in the faith.
I closed my eyes, but all my mind would show me was the Lord’s Sharing, the videos Judah had shown me of young, naked girls dancing for their prophet. When my eyes opened, I looked down at Harmony.
The Cursed . . . the most beautiful girls from the entire collective communes were sent to Prophet David’s place of residence to be kept for his use. To be ‘schooled’ by the disciple guards—in reality, raped. To be used as vehicles for the guards’ celestial cleansing.
My uncle had used the excuse of the young Cursed girls’ beauty for his own sick pleasure. He had wanted them, thus created an elaborate tale so the people of the faith would leave them alone, fear them . . . so he and his closest men could have them all to themselves. Men with desires such as his.
“Harmony,” I whispered in utter disgust and dropped my head to hers, holding her just that little bit closer. Tears of frustration slipped from my eyes as I let all that I had learned sink in. It was all false. Everything was utter bullshit . . . and I had been part of it, integral to it . . . I had promoted it.
I had killed and betrayed and caused pain for so many people for a lie.
Rage, so thick and so pure, clogged my heart. I needed to get up. Despite my wounds and aching limbs, I needed to get the fuck off this floor. I gently guided Harmony’s head off my lap and down onto the floor, supporting it with a dry towel she had not used. I pushed myself to my feet, taking the candle and file in my hands.
On weak legs, I staggered to the open door and peered outside. Light was coming from near the building’s entrance. Letting my rage carry me forward, I went looking for Brother Stephen. If the guards returned and caught me, I would welcome their attacks. Right now, with my head pounding and venom pumping around my body, I wanted to fucking draw blood. I wanted to take every cunt in this place down.
I needed to make some pedophilic pricks hurt as much as I did.
As I approached the entrance, I heard a few low murmurs and a single female voice. I blew out the candle, walked around the corner and stopped dead in shock. Brother Stephen and the dark-haired woman Harmony had called Sister Ruth were sitting with the two new guards that had guarded the cellblock of late.
The taller of the guards jumped to his feet. He held his gun in his hands, and my fists clenched at the sight. What the hell was happening? Why the hell hadn’t they come to take Harmony out of my cell?
The guard glared at me, clearly welcoming any kind of threat. But Brother Stephen got to his feet and stood between us. He held up his hands and took a step forward. “Cain,” he said placatingly.
The sound of my name coming from his mouth stopped me dead. I hated that name. “Rider,” I hissed. “My name is Rider.” Raising the file, I snarled, “Is this true? Is what’s in here fucking true?” My body swayed, still feeling the effects of today’s beating. I forced myself to stay standing. I needed to get these fucking answers more than I needed rest.
“Yes,” Brother Stephen replied. He meant it. I could see it in his dark eyes. I expelled a long breath and dropped the file to the floor.
“Shit!” I spat, shame at being part of this place surging through me.
“Rider,” Brother Stephen said and moved closer.
“How did you know?” I asked.
“I heard you telling Harmony who you were. We have never met the prophet—your twin—in the flesh; we did not know you shared the same face. Our guards did not recognize you under all the matted hair.” I turned to face the dark-haired woman who had answered my question. She was looking at me with tears in her eyes. I didn’t know why, but the way she stared made me feel awash with an indescribable sadness. It confused me more than anything else had this night.
“Sister Ruth,” I said.
She nodded her head, casting me a shy smile. “Yes.”
“So you know Judah is now the one in charge?”
“Yes,” Brother Stephen replied.
I looked at the guards. They were staring intently, listening to everything that was being said.
“You are disciple guards,” I said. “How . . . what . . . ?”
Brother Stephen held my gaze. “They are our friends.”
“Our?” I questioned.
Brother Stephen turned round and brought another chair to their makeshift circle near the guards’ desk. He held his hand out, gesturing for me to take a seat. Unable to support myself anymore, I moved to the chair and sat down. My eyes were like a hawk’s as I met the eyes of each o
f them, promising them without speaking that I would kill them if they tried to take me down, if this was some kind of sick ruse.
If they tried to take Harmony from my cell.
Brother Stephen sat down. The bigger of the two guards checked that the door of the building was locked, then re-took his seat, his gun held firmly in his hands.
“Speak,” I demanded, my voice displaying every morsel of the anger that was consuming me inside.
“Cain, have you ever wondered what happens to defectors of the faith?”
His question caught me off guard. “They are punished,” I said, picturing the Cursed Delilah. I winced, knowing that her treatment was all for fucking nothing. “They are made to pay in flesh or isolation for the sin they have committed. They are encouraged to repent. It’s in our scriptures.”
Brother Stephen nodded his head. “And afterwards? Where do they go? What if they do not repent?” He paused. “Have you ever noticed that the sinners rarely re-enter the commune?”
I stared at the older man in confusion. “I don’t know what the hell you mean. I was raised away from our people. I was kept away in seclusion with Judah in Utah. Up until a few months ago I had never set foot in the commune. It”—I ran my hands down my tired face—“it overwhelmed me. And Judah . . . Judah was the Prophet’s Hand. He was the inquisitor of the sinners. He doled out the punishments.” I shook my head. “What are you getting at? Who the fuck are y’all? And I want the motherfucking truth!”
I was over pussyfooting around. I needed these people to be honest with me, honest and straight to the point. I was done with trying to be polite and prophet-like in this delusional cesspit of a faith. My anger was in the driving seat right now. I had learned long ago to control it, to let the calmer Cain shine through.
I gave zero fucks about that anymore.
Prophet Cain was dead. That cunt was done.
Brother Stephen looked to Sister Ruth, then the two guards. They all nodded their heads at a silently asked question. “Our small commune was in Puerto Rico. We had been mostly left alone by the prophet’s men until recently.”