My heart clenched in my chest, wondering just what kind of view he’d had from the choir loft and if anyone else was with him. “Hi, Ronnie John.”
“Ms. Tressa.” He winked once as a second boy came down the stairs, a wild laugh accompanying him, before he reached the bottom step and high-fived his companion.
“Hey, Ms. Tressa. We’re lookin’ for Father Bastien. Did you just come from the sacristy?”
I couldn’t reply, convinced they knew exactly where I was coming from and whom I was with. Could they smell my attraction to him? Was arousal from Bastien’s touch stamped on my face like a crimson A?
I nodded awkwardly when I realized they were still waiting on my reply, waving my hand over my shoulder to indicate Father Bastien was, in fact, in his innermost sanctuary, the very place I’d just come from.
They thanked me, buzzing by and down the silent pews of St. Mike’s, beelining for the holy man who’d just given me my first orgasm under someone else’s hand.
The hand of God, in this case.
I suppressed an audible groan at my own cliché.
This brand of pleasure felt crushing.
I pushed through the front door of the cottage a few minutes later, waving at Lucy with only a little bit of shame over everything that’d been unraveling around me these last few weeks.
Without a word, I sidestepped into the kitchen, opening the small pantry door to get another bottle of wine down from the shelf where I’d obtained the last.
White, this time.
Didn’t want to send my liver into total shutdown with red another night in a row.
I hadn’t drunk since…
Well…
I clamped down on my bottom lip, pulling a wineglass from the shelf and turning to find Lucy, arms crossed, one eyebrow arched and aimed at me.
“Hey,” I said breathlessly.
“Evening.” She smiled, glancing down at my prizes. “Celebrating something?”
“Nope.” I shook my head, skirting around her and down the hall to my room.
“Maybe.” Lucy was hot on my heels, hand snatching the wineglass from my hand before I could even begin to pour. “Just maybe we should rethink a second round.”
I tossed the white on my bed and shrugged out of my coat. “You have no idea what happened tonight.”
My cheeks thawed, and I rubbed my hands together, wishing we could turn up the heat in this place. But the leaks were plenty and the budget for the church was abysmal, so we froze most nights.
“So, enlighten me on today’s events.” Lucy plopped down next to me, crossing her legs, ready for girl talk.
“I’d rather not.” I reached for the glass, smiling politely when I wrested it from her sober little fingers.
“You should talk to someone.”
“Oh? Maybe I should go to confession, then?”
Her eyes widened, the impossibility of that option running like cold fire through my veins.
I huffed, unscrewing the cap on the bottle and sniffing, the sharp smell of vinegar strong, but not something I couldn’t handle.
I had an entire love affair to get over, after all.
“You know you’re not alone.”
