“You’ve been doing your best to avoid me, and I’m supposed to pretend I don’t notice?” His tone turned firm, commanding. “Are you prepared to repent?”
I swallowed, drugged by this touch. “Are you?”
His thumbs worked my delicate skin, which grew more and more sensitive as he moved closer and closer to my core. “Don’t test me. I’ve already desecrated the sacred sacrament. By the edicts of the church, I am no longer in a state of grace.” The pad of his thumb brushed the seam of my pants, the damp heat beneath proof of how much my body craved him. “I’m already damned, precious dove.”
I ducked my head, one of his palms spanning the expanse of my back before he pressed his hard body against mine, sliding us both against the cool brick walls and ensuring I felt every hard, raw inch of him.
“Broken love is more dangerous and more intoxicating than any other kind.” His thumb dragged across my temple with slow precision. “Just the thought of you shreds me open, I don’t know if I spend more time dreading your proximity or desperate for just one touch. You’re a dangerous addiction for my heart, one that leaves me feeling ravaged and raw—like I’m walking around with a wound that I never want to heal.”
There was no mistaking how Father Bastien felt.
And I certainly couldn’t pretend I didn’t think of him every waking moment of my day.
“I just…” he whispered against the heartbeat at my throat, “I can’t see a way out of this that doesn’t involve eternal destruction.”
His head bent, and my fingers stroked through the threads of his loose hair before he dropped to the floor, clutching at my thighs and pressing his lips against my abdomen.
My strong lion, reduced to his knees.
“Trust me, I’ve tried. I’ve tried to imagine a thousand different scenarios, but none of them are good, Tressa. And none of them involve you and me riding off into the sunset.” His voice was gravelly, delicious. I hummed because I didn’t know what else to do to keep my hips from bucking against his.
“I’m not the shepherd in this scenario.” Desperate eyes held mine. “I’m the wolf.”
I gulped, a spray of emotion webbing into my chest as I thought about how very wrong he was.
He was my everything.
I, the dark angel, and he, the saint who accepted without judgment. The man who’d fed me and sheltered me and brought my bruised heart back to life. He gave me purpose and he gave me motivation to be better, and for that, he would forever be priceless.
I pressed my lips together, uncomfortable with the cascade of emotions welling inside of me, willing the levee to hold back my heartbroken tears before Bastien’s lips were on my skin.
Littering my cheeks and temples with kisses, hovering atop each of my eyelids in perfect time.There’s a certain beauty in this forbidden submission he’s forced me into, at least, in the way he slowly inflicts his mark upon me with each sweep of his tongue, each stroke of his hands. Soon, he has me coming undone beneath him, unraveling into something I hardly recognize.My mind and body lost their sense of sin in favor of giving myself to him in crashing waves of unconstrained bliss, the shockwaves lasting long after his touch.
Lucy was right.
So was Bastien.
I was the one who’d so wrongly misjudged this situation.
My heart fell, slivered into pieces on the floor at our feet. His touch is a failed fuse struck with a white-hot match. We possess all the potential in the world with a permanent expiration date hanging over our heads. We are our own lost cause, doomed before takeoff.
I would never recover from Bastien. Even I knew that in love, only so much can be sacrificed before there’s nothing left to give.
“Tressa, if there were a way out for me…” He gulped at my neck, one hand digging into my waist, desperation running through his taut muscles. “If I could find a way to makethiswork…”
My lips began a slow tremble.
This.
We’d been reduced to athis.
Such a small word for such a big feeling.
Loving him was a sin, and I was his prisoner.
I pushed my hands against his wide chest, forcing my watery eyes to meet his for a moment.
A quiet nod of knowing before I slipped out of the cage of his dominant arms and ducked through the door that led into the nave of St. Michael’s, quieter than a church mouse.
