I opened my eyes slowly and rolled over to find myself alone in his bed. The wrinkled white sheet was draped over my naked body and suddenly I felt only shame. Bastien had crept out on me; did he regret last night? Should I get dressed and sneak out the door and sneak back to my cottage? I wasn’t sure of the protocol in this situation. And yet, where shame regularly would have bloomed, a sense of peace permeated all of me. Especially in the places where I could still feel his touch, the soft sting of his bruises on my thighs the most primal reminder of where he’d been.
I bit my lip and looked around the room for my clothes, realizing Bastien had peeled me out of them as he’d carried me to his room.
My eyes darted around the room for something to cover myself with. What a walk of shame this would be. Bastien’s undershirt lay across the chair by the door and I swiped it as I made my way to his small en suite bathroom. I stepped in front of the mirror to access the damage, running my fingers quickly through my hair to get out the tangles then splashing my face with water in an attempt to look fresher. I pulled Bastien’s shirt over my head and stretched it to cover my bottom as much as possible. I didn’t know what I would face when I walked out of the bedroom door, but I had to make at least an attempt at dignity as I gathered last night’s clothes.
The last twelve hours throbbed between my legs as salsa music played on downstairs. I slid my fingers into my hair, every ounce of me hating every bit of myself in that moment. In a countless array of bad decisions, this one took the cake.
Fucking the priest now, eh, Tressa? Way to make ’em proud.
I bent over, gathering my socks into a fist when the padding of footsteps on the stairs landed in my ears.
“Morning.” Bastien walked into the room, naked as the day he was born into this world, every one of my twenty-four years feeling painfully inadequate. He pulled me into his arms, sprinkling kisses across my lips as he held my cheeks in his protective palms. “I brought your clothes up, but don’t be rushed.”
“Hi.”
Bastien registered my awkward arrangement before his hips swayed toward me, the thick curve of his member half hard and growing as he drew closer. My mouth watered, the desire to give up a real life and be his sex slave strong.
“Me enamoré de ti,” he mouthed the words of the song playing from the kitchen downstairs.
My stomach churned, the way he made me feel so warm and loved was addictive.
“Dance with me,” he ordered in Spanish, his eyes hung suspended, glinting with the afterglow of last night’s pleasure. He pulled me closer, fingers on one hand lacing with mine as the other settled at my back as he whispered along to the lyrics, his honeyed baritone curling around his mother tongue and cementing the sentiments in my soul.
He knew I had at least a mediocre understanding. But somehow, when he sang it in another language, it felt less real and yet more real as if, in our little bubble, we spoke in our own love language, a dialect only he and I had the dictionary for.
“And I fell in love with you,”he breathed the lyrics gently, fingertips whispering across my skin as we danced in the dim room, polished wood infused with the holy scent of incense.
I clutched at his bare shoulders, the muscles taut and unforgiving under all that creamy copper skin. It would break my heart to end this, but end it, I would. Before something out of our control could.
“You’re my first dance, sweet dove.”
I peered up into his puppy-dog eyes, shame filling my heart that I’d soon be breaking his. “Your first dance ever?”
Tomorrow.
I would go home, collect myself, have one good night’s rest, then gather all of my things and march over here in the morning.
There would be no next Mass for me.
The deeper we both sank into this cesspool of a love, the better the chance we’d drown in it.
A double love suicide.
“First dance ever,” he confirmed. “To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring upon ourselves.” His forehead dipped catching my lips with his and kissing me tenderly. “I think things that I shouldn’t, want things unavailable to me, dream things that I force me into confession: all because of you.” Bastien spun me into and out of his arms once, eliciting a giggle from my otherwise sad lips. I was plotting to leave him while he wooed me every step of the way. I was his villain. Born to break his heart, shred his soul, and teach him every life lesson he never knew he needed to learn.
I was that girl.
Heartbreak girl.
The armor around my heart grew a little thicker; already it’d been blinded and bound with bad defense mechanisms after Dr. Grady’s office.
Dr. Grady.
I hated that his memory kept attaching itself to these moments. Tainting the time Bastien and I had. We were holy, for lack of a better comparison, and what I had with the professor was muddied with forced innuendo and blind groping behind locked doors. I’d pushed him away a thousand times, but still, for the sake of my scholarship, I’d continued to find myself in close quarters with him.
“I…” The words choked my throat. “My mom sent me to college with a sleeping bag and a birth control implant in my arm.” I rubbed the small scar from its insertion out of habit. “Her way of not repeating bad cycles, I guess.” I caught his eyes. “I just thought you should know you don’t have to worry about me getting…” The word was lodged, an immovable feast in my throat.
Pregnant.
