“How do you stay so…faithfulin the face of so much sin?”
He nearly barked out a laugh, one hand rubbing over the already dark shadow of his jaw and then hovering at the white collar at his neck. “Faithful, huh? Most days, I feel anything but.”
“Oh?” I couldn’t help my reply. His eyes flicked from my face, down the line of my neck, and then up again, as if catching themselves on the path to sin.
“Faith is a practice, Tressa.” His throat moved as he swallowed, as if tamping down something uncomfortable. “Even for me.”
“Well, what do you do when you feel like…” I didn’t have the words. I didn’t even know what exactly I meant to say, but I knew I wanted his answer.
Silence hung heavy between us, my eyes darting around like a pendulum, unsure and unsettled.
Finally, voice lowered an octave, he spoke. “Some days, practicing faith is a matter of avoiding temptation. Some days, it’s all I can do.”
I couldn’t process his words for the chaos swimming in my ears. My heart rattled my rib cage, fighting its way out of my throat, tingles cascading over my nerves, skin on fire. “That sounds…”
Bastien’s warm eyes darkened. “Hard?”
I nodded, swallowing under his rapt gaze. Bastien moved closer, one fingertip grazing the shell of my ear and trailing down the soft hollow of my throat.
Was I making this moment up? Had I fantasized it into existence? Or was this a hallucination?
Either option seemed equally plausible.
My eyes darted below the line of where his belt would be behind the sacred vestments he wore during Mass. I swallowed the ball of pain settling at the base of my throat, crushing my thighs together like a vise as I willed every sinful thought boiling over in my rebellious brain to cease and desist.Cease and desist, for the love of all that is holy,I attempted to exorcise him from my thoughts.
I blurted the first rational thought to cross my cerebral cortex. “If I had any sense of avoiding temptation, I would leave St. Michael’s and never look back.”
The words filled the air with tension.
Tension unspoken, but tension felt in every bone of my body.
“Oh?” His dark eyes widened, jaw clenching into something harder than marble as an inner battle waged behind his eyes. He cleared his throat, as if suddenly aware his hands were on me and that his touch alone violated some ancient vow between man and woman. “Tressa, I couldn’t bear to think, through any fault of my own, that I had any sort of…” His eyes scanned mine, searching for something deeper. “…swayover you.”
I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t find a single coherent word.
“No matter how many times I’ve prayed that my thoughts go ignored, I see that they haven’t…”
Father Bastien kneeled between my thighs, his eyes clinging to mine like a life preserver. His gaze blinked me away then, one palm giving my knee a soft squeeze, so soft I could have imagined it, before he stood. “I see your desire to save people, Tressa. I see it because it’s in me.”
He slipped his fingers around my wrist, pulling me gently from my place in his seat until my body was hovering just out of reach of his. Focused on his breathing, I counted the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest, willing my heartbeat to align with his.
“That desire to save people, Tressa—” his thumb skated along the underside of my wrist, a tsunami of arousal swirling in my bloodstream with just his scant touch “—it’s a blessing, and it’s a curse.” He leaned in closer then, lips whispering just out of reach of my ear, close enough to arouse me with his breath. “And it says more about you than you know.”
Then he stood, walking from the room and leaving me alone, my heart pounding as it begged for more of his phantom touch.
FIVE
Bastien
I woke the following morning with a hard-on from hell and an uncontrollable need to feel her, all of her, against every hard inch of me. I grunted as I heaved out of bed, my head foggy, not from lack of sleep, but lack ofqualitysleep. Even after I’d closed my eyes she’d been on my mind, the need tohelp her—heal her—feel herconsuming me. I flipped the water for the shower to the coldest temperature, ridding body of the hot cotton I’d slept in until I was naked—visions of her creamy skin slipping against mine and making my head dizzy.
I thrust myself into the cold spray, cringing as the cool drops hit my heated skin, raining in rivulets down the solid muscle of my stomach. I fisted my thick erection in my hand, leaning my forehead against the cold wall as I pumped long and slow, thoughts of her circling in my head. The way she’d tipped her head last night when my fingers had brushed hers. The soft little mewls as she worked her hips back and forth invisibly. The scent of her aroused pussy, so hot and wet just for me.
I nearly broke, starting to pant as sweat beaded on my forehead despite the cold water soaking my hot body. The soft berry shade of her delicate lips…sweet Heaven, so soft and full, made to be wrapped around my shaft. I groaned, the thought of her here with me now taking over my system as a volcano of sensation shot through my balls and jetted through my throbbing cock. Hot jets of semen spilled from me, my muscles quaking with the overwhelming release—my first release since before I could remember.
I’d taken well to monastic living, until now.
Until her.
