This thing with Patrick was making her realize how deep that patriarchal bullshit had seeped into her veins. Breaking all the rules—fooling around with a priest instead of the man who wanted to date her and was free to do so—was setting her free. It was making her brave.
But it was not doing the same thing for the man in front of her. She was ruining him, and this had to stop.
“Let’s not be alone anymore.” That was the only way this was going to stop. If they weren’t alone, they couldn’t give in to this.
He nodded.
“I’m going to go.”
He nodded again, and she stopped waiting for him to say something. Still, she walked to the door slowly, in fading hope that he would stop her.
She opened the door and looked back at him. There was nothing left to say. Her body was filled with light, and she’d never felt closer to who she imagined herself to be when no one was watching. But he was devastated, and she wasn’t sure that he would go seeking absolution from his God. She wanted to give it to him, hoped he accepted it, and knew that he probably wouldn’t. Still, she said the words.
“Go forth and sin no more, Father.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
AFTER THE SCENE IN the bar, Sasha called him a few times. To Patrick’s relief, she’d returned to her normal businesslike self. But something had changed inside him the other night. Whenever he heard her voice over the phone, an even stronger hit of possessiveness filled him. He couldn’t control it, and he couldn’t help it when his jaw tightened at her mention of her new boyfriend Nathan’s employer helping out at the carnival by having some of the players—a few of them were Catholics—volunteer to run a bunch of the booths.
Like the bake sale, it would expand their audience beyond the parish and make them a lot more money. He could save the program and then move on with the work of trying to save his job and maybe his soul.
But, even though he shouldn’t, every time he heard her voice, images of her touching herself sitting at his bar assaulted him. And he didn’t have the strength to stop them. She was talking about ring tosses and dunk tanks, and all he could think about was how he’d missed the chance to sink down on his knees and drown himself in the nectar between her legs.
He couldn’t get the scent of her out of his nostrils anyway. What was one more degree of sin? She’d looked like a queen sitting there, coming for him. It had been sacred and profane all at the same time.
And he was changed from it.
Although, after Sister Cortona’s scolding, he’d promised himself that he wouldn’t go any further, he’d let himself get too close. Just talking to Sasha was an aphrodisiac. She was intoxicating to him.
And now, after she’d fallen apart doing his bidding, making him feel all-powerful and so small at the same time, not seeing her again was actually killing him.
He’d tried to wring her out of his bones through exercise, but he couldn’t run far enough or fast enough. He’d tried—running along the lakefront until his heart felt as though it was going to beat out of his chest. He’d hit the weight room at the YMCA until he was afraid that he was going to blow up his quads. After their weekly three-on-three game, Jack had joked about Patrick playing like a demon.
Patrick didn’t mention that ever since that night at the bar with Sasha, he felt as though he were possessed by one. In fact, he said nothing about the night with Sasha. It was a precious, secret sin that he couldn’t get himself to confess. He couldn’t get himself to confess it because it didn’t feel wrong.
That it didn’t feel wrong filled him with the sort of existential angst that he’d become a priest to leave behind.
But directing Sasha as she gave herself pleasure—along with the risk that someone would walk in the bar and catch them—had brought him back to when he was still a layperson. That was exactly what he’d liked to do. He’d liked to be in control.
What he hadn’t liked was the out-of-control feeling he’d always had after sex was over. He’d never liked the idea of watching someone he’d shared that with walk out the door. He’d hated that feeling so much that somehow becoming a priest, thus foreclosing the possibility of losing that kind of control, had been appealing to him.
And he’d succeeded. By giving up choices and shutting out romantic connections, he didn’t have to feel that intensity. Until Sasha.
When he knocked his brother Chris to the ground after they’d both gone up for a basket and had missed, his emphatic push and flagrant foul had been about that anger.
He needed someplace to put that intensity that wasn’t pounding into Sasha’s gorgeous frame. Now that he knew what the core of her looked like, he couldn’t stop thinking about putting his dick there. The fact that it was a sin and violation of his vows—the fact that it put everything he’d built at St. Bartholomew’s at risk—didn’t sink in past the surface of his thoughts.
“What’s with you, dude?” Chris got up and brushed some loose pieces of asphalt off his shorts.
“Yeah, man.” Jack just had to pipe up. “Usually we don’t see this kind of aggression from you.”
Patrick was the easygoing guy that his little brother and his best friend had always been able to count on for a friendly ear or a ride home after a rough night. There was no way that he could turn that all around and sit this on their laps.
“How’s Dad?” He knew it was dirty pool, but Chris was always worried about their dad. Patrick tended not to worry as much because their father had always needed someone there to keep him organized and on track. First, it had been his mother. After she’d passed away, the responsibility had fallen to Patrick and Chris. As the baby of the family, Chris’s help was more in the form of worrying than helping. He just blasted that worry onto everyone else and let them worry about the consequences.
He totally understood why Jack’s sister, Bridget, had dumped his ass, and he hadn’t found anyone else to take him on.
It was a real bitch to be able to see everyone else’s problems clearly, and not be able to solve his own. That must have been why he turned to Jack and said, “I have a lot on my mind.”
“The pre-K program?” Jack picked up the ball, dribbled it, and took a shot that missed. “I thought Sasha had you almost sorted with that.”
“Yeah, she does.” And that was the problem. “It’s bigger than that.” It was hard to say that his own petty problems were bigger than his vocation and his parish. Wasn’t God supposed to be bigger than everything?
Jack certainly looked shocked that he’d revealed something about his inner life. “Whoa,” was his only response.
Patrick felt guilty for laying this on him. Chris had wandered off to practice layups. Patrick’s father was a man of few words, and his brother didn’t have enough range to listen to problems beyond client development that would help him move up the ladder at his law firm, so Patrick wasn’t used to revealing himself. What was the point?