“They want lazy priests, and I’m not that. I might not believe what I preach, but I don’t believe in loopholes.”
“Loopholes?”
“When I was in Spain, I was in this tiny town just off Madrid. It was on the commuter belt, but it was still small, and the parish wasn’t that large. A girl came to me, her mother dragging her there because she’d stolen something. We discussed what she stole, then she told me that she only did that because her mother punished her by denying her food.” His throat works. “Sin is everywhere.”
“What did you do?”
“I told her that stealing was bad, and that if she was hungry, she should come to me, and I’d feed her.”
I sigh and can’t stop myself from pressing a kiss to the crown of his head. “That sounds like you were a good priest to her.”
“You’re not getting the point,” he mumbles, but he doesn’t pull away from me. If anything, he tightens his hold on me. “I’m a Bible scholar. I know the ‘rules’ of religion, and wherever I turn, there are these things that nag at me. She stole. She should atone. She wasn’t to blame. Her mother was, yet she refused to atone for denying her daughter food.” A shaky breath escapes him. “In that situation, I broke the seal of confession.”
“I didn’t know that was allowed.”
“It isn’t. I had the girl taken out of the mother’s reach for her safety.”
“If you did it once, why didn’t you go to the cops with the others?”
“Because they needed to pay and that’s why I’m damned forever, because there is no apology in my heart for God to accept. I had the option, and I didn’t take it. I chose my path, and I damned myself forever with that decision.”
My brow furrows at his words, but I run my hands through his hair, loving the way he huddles into me. He’s a broken man. Twisted. Shattered.
But he’s mine, and he needs me.
That’s why I carried on soothing him. Why I didn’t run for the hills. Why I stayed the night, why I spent it at his side.
It’s why I get to experience heaven the following morning when I wake in his arms.
But it was hell, through the night, not being able to touch him how I wanted to.
I’d cleaned up his back and changed the sheets, even though the freak in me had quite enjoyed lying on them. They were sticky and wet, though, so that was less pleasant, but we’d put a towel under his side so that it could catch more of the blood that might shed while he was resting.
He’d fallen asleep in my arms, like a child would in his mother’s embrace, and I sang to him.
“Hallelujah.”
The Leonard Cohen version.
He’d softened against me, drifting away while never being closer to me, and shortly after, I’d drifted off too.
We hadn’t moved throughout the remainder of the night. If anything, we’d stayed closely packed, like sardines in a can, and we awoke that way too.
I almost thought his expression would be filled with hatred when he looked at me, his body stiff with rejection. But he turned his face into my throat, and whispered, “You smell like home.”
My heart thudded in my chest at those words, and it’s why, now, I have no idea what to say.
I can only lie here, staring up at the ceiling, holding him as he dozes in the early morning light.
I smell like home?
Dear God, I don’t think he could have said anything else that might have hit me harder.
His words resonate in me so strongly, so purely, that I can’t contain the happiness rattling around inside me.
I did smell like home, because I am his home.
Just as he’s mine.
Another person might think this is religious mumbo jumbo, soul mate nonsense that belongs in a romance novel, but nothing about this is ideal.
Nothing about this is romantic.
If anything, it’s a stark truth.
This man needs me to stop him from escalating into a serial killer.
Cold.
Hard.
Fact.
Technically, he already is, but I could curtail his habits, limit him.
If ever there’s a man in more need of a means of slaking his emotions, it’s Savio.
Denying him sex, the purest form of release, is like chaining a dog to a wall and not letting him walk.
He’s dying on the inside because he has no means of purging himself of the emotions that drown him.
He needs to drown in me.
And, God, I’m more than ready for the flood.
I shiver as he presses his face between my breasts, and the move is natural, not like that of a player. He breathes in deep, then whispers, “This is wrong.”
“Nothing between us can ever be wrong.”
My words are calm because I feel calm.
I feel at peace for the first time in forever.
And knowing he feels the same?
It’s pure bliss.
He didn’t stir, not once, through the night in my arms, and while I’m not saying I’m a miracle worker...
Okay, wait, maybe I am.
“I’m asking myself if you’re real.”
“Can’t you feel me? Can’t you tell I am?”
He moves slightly, and all of a sudden, I feel his erection against my thigh.
Everything inside me tenses up, then just relaxes, turning molten as need rumbles through me.
The need for him.
The need to connect.
To be at one with him.
I sigh, my breath brushing his hair as he turns his face and rakes his teeth over my nipple. Through the cotton, it feels like heaven, but I know it will be even better when he touches my skin.
I shiver as he nibbles, then when he nips, I squeak, but my hips jerk and I let my legs spread a little.
The noise jolts him and he freezes. Then his forehead pushes into my chest, between my breasts, and he mutters, “I’m a—” He gulps. “I don’t know if I can do this.”
“I’m the Eve to your Adam,” I murmur, repeating what I’d told him last night, tempting him just like she tempted her man. “I was born for this. Born for you.”
Something in my voice, or maybe just the words, has him moving. He doesn’t go far though, thank God. He peers up at me in the early morning light and rasps, “You’re a virgin?”
“I was waiting for you.”
His eyes flare at that. “I swear you’re not real. I’m going to wake up and you’re not here—”
I grab his hand and shove it between my legs. It’s crass and crude, but I whisper, “Do I feel like a dream?”
“You feel like paradise,” he grinds out. I feel sure he’s going to move his hand, but he doesn’t. He just cups me there. Holding me in place.
Then his finger moves, dancing lightly over me, and I moan, unable to contain the sound, unable to contain the desire ramming me between the eyes.
For so long, I wanted this.
For so long, I’ve needed this.
And now he’s here, and I feel like he’s going to give me what I’ve been looking for.
Him.
When he rolls between my legs, I still, not wanting to scare him away. I feel like he’s the one in need of soothing. I’m the virgin, I’m the one who needs to be coddled like a fractious horse refusing to be mounted, but he’s the one who will fly away if I’m not careful.