...“Tell me,” he insisted, and I recognized in him the desperation to know that he wasn’t alone.

My throat closed up, silencing me. I couldn’t say it. Not here, in God’s own house. Not where someone might overhear, though I knew everyone else was abed and the chances of that were slim. Not to this man, who was an agent of the devil himself and might tell anyone he pleased. The church was the last place left that would take me, and if anyone knew the truth, I would lose that, too.

When I did not answer, he let out a quiet breath that sounded almost like disappointment. “So you see. You do not know anything at all of what I suffer.”

I chewed on the edge of my lip. All I could think of was a verse of scripture, one I had by chance been studying only a few days before. For in that he himself has suffered being tempted, he is able to help those who are tempted. I had come here to try to fight what I was, and overcome it. And now this demon stood before me, wanting to do the same. If I could help him by showing him that he didn’t suffer alone, that I struggled every day just as he did, but I was able to overcome my own nature and resist—it might give him the hope he needed to believe that he could do the same.

“I have impure thoughts,” I said, my voice hushed so it would go no farther than his ears.

He stared at me, then gave a shock of laughter. “That’s all? You don’t understand. If you think lusting over pretty girls is anything like what I suffer—”

“No.” I slapped my hand against the grate, angry that he would make light of something that weighed so heavily on me. “Pretty girls are not my problem.”

He went very still, very quiet. I risked a glance and he was frowning at me, his brows furrowed and puzzled. Slowly, his expression cleared, and understanding dawned. One brow quirked. His golden eyes pierced through me, like an insect pinned to a board.

“You still don’t know. You sit here in church where it’s safe, where no one will offer you what you want. How hard can it be to resist, when you couldn’t have what you wanted anyway?” He let out a long breath, and the air between us clouded as though he’d been smoking tobacco. He kept exhaling, long past the limit of any mortal lungs, and his edges blurred, dissipated, until he was gone and in his place was a dense cloud of smoke that snaked and slithered as no natural cloud ever would.

It came through the tiny holes of the grate, filling the small confessional booth, spiraling like a funnel cloud. I slid back against the wall, trying to get distance between us. As quickly as it had come, the smoke pulled itself up into a tall, man-shaped column, and compressed in on itself until he was back, filling the space with his broad shoulders, much, much too close.

He came toward me like some predatory creature, his gaze intent on me. I strained back into the corner, cursing myself for a fool a hundred times over.

“Do you think it’s so easy?” he asked me. “To deny what you crave when it’s always on offer, no matter where you turn?” He stopped at the edge of the bench, only a breath away from touching me. I had some hope that it would hold him back, but he just climbed up with me, knees planted on the seat, hands braced against the wall, caging me in. “Do you think your strength will last when you’re offered everything you want and there is no one to stay your hand?” he asked, his voice low and tempting even before he touched me. He slid his hand along my jaw. Before I could form a protest, he bent and sealed his mouth over mine.

I stiffened at the sudden contact, my heart pounding so hard it seemed it might burst free of my chest. His mouth was rough on mine, his breath mingling with my own, hands burying in my hair and dragging me forward.

He drew away so he could look down at me, eyes shining. I wedged my hands up between us and shoved at him. “Wait.”

He ignored me entirely as he leaned in. His lips met mine and I couldn’t think at all.