Bastien was married to the man upstairs, and I was his mistress.
Bile nearly choked me.
The idea that I could get certified as a nurse’s assistant suddenly sounded like a better fix than staying here for any longer than I had to.
Watching him. Feeling him in every part of me when he entered a room. Being so close, yet mountains apart. The rules in his world and the rules in mine were different. And his forbade his love for me.
I shifted in the hard wooden chair. Tucked as I was in a corner of the sacristy, ancient holy relics and silence permeated the room.
I stood out in this place.
Gold- and silver-plated items decorated the shelves, memories of evenings after Mass, watching Bastien clean and straighten the precious metals with such care and precision would leave a lasting ache in my heart forever. The way his hands had cradled the items, the bronze of his skin sending lightning strikes of pleasure careening between my thighs.
Father Bastien played a starring role in my dreams last night, like every night, his dark gaze and cocky grin sending spirals of lust unfurling like a snake through my insides. Keeping him off my mind had become a near impossibility, my only choice to power through planning church activities for fear of losing my mind to lust.
My eyes fluttered closed, the ancient quiet of the church walls around me, hundreds of years of faded incense ghosting at my nose, my mind on the only thing that’d come to matter over the last few months.
The man who lit me on fire.
The man who would never be mine.
Two heavy palms spanned my thighs, squeezing softly before pressing my legs apart, allowing him entry into my space.
I sucked in a quick breath, heart firing into a gallop when a thumb covered my lips.
I recognized his scent instantly.
I kept my eyes shuttered, flirting with the dangerous fantasy of this moment, praying it into life, knowing what I felt—his body against mine—couldn’t be real.
Bastien’s fingers nestled into the hair at my neck, drawing me closer to his body, a soft growl rumbling from somewhere in his barrel chest.
Tears pressed at my eyelids as I felt all of him, the sensations bursting like fireworks inside of me.
This was terrifying. This was unforgettable. This was our love.
“I’ve missed that smile.”
A fissure formed down the axis of my heart. His thumb still pressed at my lips, I did the only thing I could think of doing and the very last thing I should have done and darted my tongue across my lips, tasting him on my skin.
Every nerve in my body came alive. Before I could recover, my tongue still tingling from the memory of that bare touch, he pressed the tip of his thumb into my mouth.
My lips closed around his intrusion on instinct, like my body remembered his touch from past lifetimes, a sort of muscle memory—our souls familiar even though our minds strangers.
“Open your eyes.” His voice was raw, raspy in a way I’d never heard.
His fingers untangled from my hair and dusted across my eyelids, over my temple and whispered along my hairline.
A shudder tore through me, my body fracturing with sensations he’d probably never made a woman feel before.
“Show me your eyes, Tressa.” His lips grazed the shell of my ear, and the muscles in my body nearly seized with pleasure. “Don’t hide from me.”
I nodded once, eyes opening to find his gaze stuck to mine like a magnet.
His head angled, he lifted one rakish eyebrow and slipped his thumb out of my mouth and snaked it deliciously down the center of my body before slipping it under the waistband of my pants, hot, greedy skin against hot, greedy skin.“I want to own you.”
“Bastien…you already do,” I breathed before he covered my mouth with his lips, tongue dancing with mine, slowly at first before pushing harder, strokes deep and sweeping as one hand cupped my neck, the other sliding across the outside of my panties. His kisses were feverish, needy, like if he didn’t get his fill now he may never get the chance again. That was the thing about forbidden love: it lasted forever, suspended in moments of bliss and steeped in an impossible reality. Our time together was so limited, but no less bloodless.
One of my arms circled his neck while my other fingertips stroked against the stubble of his jaw. Our bodies aligned, warmth blazing between us before the ridge of his thumb caught the hard nub of my sensitive button.
