He breathed a chuckle, hand grazing down the dip of my spine before landing at my back and urging me at his side. “Find the Holy Grail up in the attic?”
My palms tingled as I suddenly remembered the photos I’d come barreling down the stairs to show him. “A few, actually.”
Bastien’s hand pressed at my back, fingertips dipping lower at my waist and sending tingles in a spray of directions.
“Oh?” A genuine smile lit his cheeks, and my stupid, love-sick heart flip-flopped.
“Some pictures of summer events at St. Michael’s got me thinking. Why don’t we add some winter activities too?”
He nodded, eyes shifting from the desk, his stack of paperwork neatly aligned at one corner, my spray of random photos, smiling faces, and Father Martin covering everything else.
“If Lucy is willing to take over a little more with the younger kids, I can work on planning a few things, check the schedule?”
He nodded as if forcing his attention on the photos, even though his hand still hovered at my back, butterflies continuing to batter the cage of my chest.
“And I found this.” I slid the old album onto the polished wood, flipping it open, a half-smiling, younger Bastien leaping off the page.
His eyes darkened for a moment, bottom lip cut with his top incisor before he pushed the album closed and shoved it into the desk drawer. “Haven’t seen that in a long time.”
“I almost didn’t recognize you.” I probed.
“I was a different person.”
“You look…” I struggled for the right word.
“Younger?” He looked away, his desire to avoid this conversation coating his features.
“Happier, I was going to say.”
“You mistake happiness for rebellion.”
Fading evening light streaked across the room and highlighted the hard muscle under his black clerical shirt. He pushed the thumb of his right hand to his lips, losing himself in thought before he finally said, “My dreams back then were more about changing the system and less about conforming.”
“I wouldn’t call you a conformist now,” I said, watching as he stalked back across the room, darkness slicing his irises, eating up the energy and causing my own chest to rise and fall with intense feeling.
“You wouldn’t?” He nudged closer, one hand falling at my waist, the pad of his thumb brushing under the hem of my shirt and connecting with the soft skin of my abdomen.
I gulped a breath, feeling his touch fully between my legs.
“Not in the least.”
His broad chest made contact with mine, fire erupting in the once hollow space that’d existed between us. As if sensing my willingness to be so close to him, he swept the rest of his fingers under the hem of my shirt, grazing my skin and setting fire to each nerve.
“Some days, I forget the beliefs I stand for, the reason that…drives me.” He edged closer, lips sliding against the shell of my ear, his breath bathing my skin in arousal. I shuddered between my legs, willing the stubborn need thrumming its way through my body to subside so I could form a single thought beyond the way he made me feel with his hands on me.
His broad, sun-bronzed hands covering mine. The rugged cut of his chiseled jaw, tiny laugh lines crinkling the skin at his temples, the way he undressed me with his eyes, cutting to the core of me. Everything about him was aged like a fine whiskey, wisdom steeped with experience, an intoxicating mix. The decade or so of years that separated us never felt more real than right now.
“The pressure is nearly unbearable for any red-blooded human.”
“How…” I gulped, the points of my nipples cutting against the fabric of my shirt, his gaze holding mine suspended with painful precision. “How do you overcome?”
Inches away, his dark jaw was faintly out of reach of my fingertips. A quiet shudder rolled through me when my hand acted on its own and slid over the expanse of muscle dividing his abdominals through the fine threads of his black shirt. Adrenaline swelled in my stomach like a tidal wave when his fingers dipped below the waistband of my pants and caressed my skin.
“It would be wrong of you to assume I don’t sin, Tressa.” He rocked his hips closer, the ridge of his thick arousal pressing into my abdomen. My fingers trailed down the coarse fabric of his dark pants, my fingertips hovering at the cool leather of his belt, heart thumping in my ears as every fiber of my body begged to be just a few inches closer.
Boom.
Echoing footsteps drove us apart, his fingertips still dusting my wrist when the door swung open and a man in crimson vestments swallowed the tiny room.
Oh fuck.
Cardinal Lovello was standing across from me, eyes taking in Bastien and me, shoulder to shoulder behind a closed door.
Did he register the flush on my cheeks? The shallow breaths and wild heart thundering in my ears?
The cardinal’s gaze crawled up my torso with slow precision until he finally landed at my lips and spoke. “I hope my visit hasn’t inconvenienced you.”
