As soon as the horse picked up pace, Adam put his hands under Emil’s arms and around his waist. The man’s skin was a layer of wet cotton away, and only the decency buffer of the bag between them saved Adam from the hellfire already licking his skin.
He’d never thought much about what his ‘type’ was, since he shouldn’t have had one. It was better to avoid thinking about such things, but if he were to ponder it long and hard, he doubted he’d ever consider a long-haired metalhead with a bump on his nose the go-to fantasy. But sitting behind Emil, touching him, Adam couldn’t imagine having a type other than him.
There wasn’t even a type in Adam’s mind anymore. Only Emil.
Which was insane, since he’d just met the man, and they’d barely exchanged a few words.
Adam’s thoughts caught up with reality when he realized Emil slowed at a crossroads in the fields, but the sight before him pushed indecent thoughts back to the darkest corners of his mind.
Virgin Mary’s face remained in the shadows of the tiny countryside shrine, but for a brief moment, he feared that she might step out of the safety of her home and scold him for the images that passed through his mind since he first saw Emil.
“So…” Emil’s voice startled Adam out of his petrified state. “Church is that way.” He pointed to the right. “My house is that way.” He pointed to the left.
Adam’s mind went blank. Why was Emil telling him this?
“Good to know,” he said, confused until the reality of Emil’s statement sank in. Was this guy inviting him over?
“You could dry your clothes and stay the night. The church will be closed until morning anyway.” Emil looked over his shoulder, searching Adam’s face, but the glint of canines in his smile was the wakeup call Adam needed. He hadn’t been saved but hunted down by a wolf in human skin.
And Adam’s body wanted to offer his flesh for chewing so very much.
His breath hitched as he struggled against a pull he’d never experienced before. Like hunger, it turned his stomach into a bottomless pit of greed, and made him focus on the place where damp hair clung to Emil’s bare neck, tempting him to sink in his teeth. Emil smelled like the rain, like the damp ground, and leaves in the summer. Irresistible. It was as if he had taken a pheromone bath, and the aroma it left on his skin rendered Adam powerless.
But he still had his brain. He was not an animal to just do as his hormones urged him in any given moment.
“Thank you, but the pastor is waiting for me.”
Emil gave a deep sigh but nudged the horse to the right. “Shame.”
Adam didn’t even know how to answer that, so he kept his mouth shut as Emil directed Jinx away from the shrine and toward the imposing form of the church, which Emil noticed when lightning illuminated the night again.
Perched on top of a mild slope, its single tower loomed above a thatch of trees, but it was a small building at the back where Adam was actually heading. He couldn’t wait to get away from the handsome stranger who offered him things no man ever should to another.
Adam didn’t wait for Emil’s help, and threw his bag down as soon as they reached the gate to the church yard. “Thank you for the ride,” he said and slid off the horse, his toes curling when Emil grabbed his arm to guide him off the huge animal.
At least going by the upside down cross on Emil’s T-shirt, Adam wouldn’t be seeing the man in church.
Emil watched him from the back of his enormous mount, majestic like a prince watching a lowly servant toil the fields. A cocky smile crooked his mouth, as if he somehow knew Adam’s thoughts. Damn him.
Adam went straight into the yard in front of the church.
Wind blew into his face the moment he passed under the cast iron arch above the gate, pushing him back toward Emil, as if God knew his thoughts too and didn’t want him to shepherd the flock of Dybukowo. But Adam clenched his teeth and braved the ugly weather until he passed the church and reached the steps leading to the front door of the white building behind it. It wasn’t as large as the parsonage he’d lived at until yesterday and was definitely much older, but it looked welcoming, with flowers in the windows, even if all its lights were off.
Painfully aware that nobody expected him tonight, he hung his head and knocked.
He did it two more times before the wooden door opened. An elderly woman showed up, frowning at him, as if she weren’t sure she recognized him or not without the glasses she surely wore at her age.
“Who’s dying?” she barked, touching the helmet of gray hair and blue rollers, as if she feared she wasn’t presentable enough to accept callers. Her eyes were set so deeply shadow hid them from Adam’s view, and the bottom half of her face appeared sunken in suggestion she’d already removed her artificial teeth for the night. In the faint light of the moon, her features appeared almost too angular, too much like a skull straight from a label on a bottle of rat poison, and Adam braced himself for a flood of acid.
“No one.”
“Only the devil walks out there at this ungodly hour,” she said, stepping outside in leather slippers, as if she were the guard dog of this parsonage. “Who are you?”
Adam was way too tired for witty remarks. “I’m Adam Kwiatkowski. The new priest. I know I’m here a bit early—”
“A bit? You were supposed to arrive tomorrow. Oh well, I guess you’re here now, so that’s that,” she huffed and stepped aside to let him in. “I’m Janina Luty, the housekeeper. The pastor should have come down here himself, but he’d slept through the racket, as he always does,” she grumbled, and Adam made a note of her attitude. If he wanted to fit in, he’d need to learn what made the most important people in the village tick, and in his case, the housekeeper might be of even more importance than the pastor.
“I’m very sorry,” he said, wiping the soles of his shoes on the doormat] before taking them off. The tiled floor was like ice against his damp feet, but at least he was out of the rain. The woman looked at the wet imprints he made and shook her head with a low exhale. It only occurred to Adam then that she hadn’t offered him food, clearly not amused by the insolence of someone disturbing her sleep.
“The room’s ready for you,” she said and led the way down a neat yet old-fashioned hallway with religious pictures hung on white walls and wooden beams on the ceiling. Adam was glad to discover his new quarters were close to the bathroom, but the room itself greeted him with a blow of frosty air.
“We will speak about this in the morning,” Mrs. Janina said and handed him a towel. “This parsonage has rules.”
Adam had no doubt ‘don’t wake up Mrs. Janina, ever’ was at the top of the list, but he thanked the housekeeper profusely, apologized once more, and sat in a wooden chair with a deep sigh as soon as she left him.
So this would be his new home. Two single beds on either side of the small space. A chair and a desk. A framed picture of Pope John Paul II, yellowed from sun exposure. And, of course, an old-fashioned tiled stove, which looked as if it had been borrowed from the set of a historical movie, but so far, hadn’t offered him a warm welcome.
He opened his backpack to remove the laptop, only to see that the box of chocolates had been squashed.
Helplessness sank its bony fingers into Adam’s flesh, and he rubbed his face, not even ready to take off his clothes yet. Warmth might have been too much of a temptation after… after being so close to another man while Jinx had carried them to the parsonage.