THIRTEEN
Tressa
“I’ve been dreaming of that look on your face,” Bastien breathed in my ear. “That soft blush that says you just came beneath my fingertips.” His thumb traced my cheeks. “Rosy little halos of devilish rapture.”
My forehead pressed at his shoulder, thighs still quivering from the aftershocks of my orgasm.
The orgasm Father Bastien had graced me with.
A sigh, equal parts contentment and guilt, settled over me.
I did my best to push back the old dogmatic cycle of shame and guilt. But still, its presence in my life was real and alive and to be reckoned with at every unfortunate opportunity.
Like this one.
With Bastien’s lips against my neck.
“I want to do it again.” His fingers tangled with mine as he pulled me from my place on the wooden chair, energy coursing through his taut muscles. “Only a fool would think a sip could chase you out of the system.” He pulled me against the hard wall of his body. “The joke’s always been on me.” His lips worked against mine, tongue sweeping at my insides and sending waves of pleasure through me. “Because one taste and I’m addicted to you, sweet dove.”His fingers looped with mine, and sliding through the shadows of St. Michael’s, Bastien walked me down the long hallway and past the nursery where Lucy was already finished picking up, lights dim and door closed.
“She’s a hard worker. You should hire her full time.”
“But I have you.” The rasp in his tone chugged like honey through my veins.
“Not forever.”
He opened the door of the rectory and flipped on the kitchen light. “Not if I can help it.”
Brightly lit white walls reflected like a spotlight on our locked hands, hearts hammering in unison as the pleasure he’d just given me raged within me.
Bastien paused in the middle of the kitchen, faded linoleum under his polished leather shoes.
I gulped when his fingers unlaced from my mine, and we stepped back into reality.
We hadn’t been gone long.
“I’ll get a jacket and walk you home.” His voice was firm with staccatoed structure, quiet reservation.
Like a gunshot wound to my heart, his words blasted apart in my chest as we faded back into our normal rhythm without missing a beat.
“Sure.”
Tears welled in my eyes when he slid his tweed and wool jacket over my shoulders.
“After you.”
I nodded, feeling the cool, casual tone and tight smile down to the tips of my frozen toes.
Bastien and I walked side by side down the short walkway to the cottages that dotted the perimeter of St. Michael’s. Shadows hung heavy on our shoulders, amber glow reflecting from the streetlights on our shoes as we walked a path we’d walked at least ninety of the last hundred days.
But this walk was different.
Our footsteps slower.
Our fingers brushing softly, flitting like fireflies over my skin and making me uncomfortable and hot everywhere.
I gulped when I rose the three steps to the porch of my cottage, light already burning softly from the kitchen.
“Thank you,” I murmured. Glad, at least, that Lucy hadn’t flipped on the porch light when she got home and we were shrouded in some small sense of shadow.
