I shivered, suddenly aware that I was still in a towel, still dripping all over the floor, hair wet and makeup free and so, so enamored of everything about the man standing across from me.
I was under his spell, and I resented him for it.
“Perhaps you’d like to change into something more…?” He arched an eyebrow.
“I wouldn’t. Can I help you?” I crossed my arms, defiant.
“You left your jacket earlier, I thought I’d return it,” he answered, passing me my winter coat robotically.
“Oh.”
His eyes darted across the room, taking in the small space and the few items I’d added it to make it more a home. “Looks cute. Everything.”
“Thanks.”
Bastien’s eyes swung back around to mine, a new defiance simmering in his cocoa irises. “I wouldn’t have come, but I thought…” He paused, thrusting a hand through the dark waves of his hair. “I thought maybe something was wrong, or I’d done something…”
I stood, the conflicted look on his face causing my heart to open up a little further to him. My hands stretched to his forearms, eyes pleading for him to understand that this wasn’t personal. “When I saw the cardinal, I just froze. Every fear flooded my veins. I know we haven’t done anything, but…”
“I wouldn’t sayanything.” Bastien’s rogue eyes cut to mine, grin deepening on one side and getting as close to a cocky grin as I’d ever seen on him.
“Well, not really.”
“Really?” His eyes twinkled with satisfied amusement. “I would definitely call it something.”
I shook my head, stubborn to the core.
“Isn’t that why you’ve been avoiding me? Because of that night we didnothingin the pew at the foot of my confessional?” He lunged, a beast freed of its tether. “This is my confession.” His lips grazed my cheek. “It felt like the veryoppositeof nothing to me.”
His words acted like a sword, severing my vocal cords and causing waves of arousal and anger to converge. “Bastien…” My gaze lingered on the thick, roped veins lining his forearms, black cotton rolled to the elbows. And that virgin-white collar at his throat. My thoughts about Father Bastien were anything but virginal.
Memories of writhing on that damn pew still haunted me, forced my hands beneath my underwear to relieve the ache born of him.
“Don’t look at me like that.” His voice, lowered at least an octave, slammed straight into my stomach.
My palms prickled, heart throbbing, nipples pebbling to raw peaks. “Like what?”
“Like you’ve got a secret,” he murmured, lips dancing closer to the curve of my neck. “A secret you’re begging me to take from you.”
And then my chest cracked wide open and I fell. I fell so hard and so fast for Father Bastien that I didn’t have time to catch myself. The damage done before I’d even hit the floor at his feet.
“That visit from the cardinal… How do you know he wasn’t called? That we weren’t reported by someone?”
Bastien didn’t miss a beat. I felt the smile of his lips against my neck, tremors of promise spiraling slowly out of my system like a spider web. My attachment to him tenuous. My heart caged by silk threads.
“Sweet, sweet Tressa.” The pad of his thumb slid down the hollow of my throat and ghosted the top edge of the towel tucked into my damp cleavage. “The cardinal made a routine visit. My reaction to you, though, it’s anything but routine. And hearing you dismissing it as nothing isn’t something I was prepared to confront tonight.”
“Tonight,” I uttered, “or ever?”
Both of Bastien’s hands circled my neck, fingertips settling at my nape before his mouth touched the hollow of my throat.
His lips curved into a deft smile before he pressed a thumb where his lips had been.
His fists working back and forth at his waist as he backed out of the kitchen, stepping toward the door and away from me. Away from me. How had I lived without him in the air the last two days?
Would it be wrong if I chased him back to the rectory? Back to his bed? To uproot his life? To ruin everything good he’d worked to create?
I swallowed back a wave of tears before breaking Bastien’s gaze and turning, heading back along the hallway I’d come down dripping wet not thirty minutes before, tipsy and bitter.
