I shift my hips. Deliberate. Into him. Letting him know I feel it, want it, am not even slightly afraid of what's happening between us. Even though that's a lie. I'm terrified. But the fear and the want are so tangled I can't separate them anymore.
His mouth moves to my neck and I have to bite back a moan. His teeth graze my pulse point and my hands find his hair—thick, dark, perfect for pulling. I tug and his response is to press me back against the wall, his body caging mine, and for a fewperfect seconds we're just heat and hunger and hands that can't stop moving.
His mouth tastes clean, like fine wine. The detail is so human, so real, that it makes everything else more intense. This isn't a fantasy. This is Gabriel Delgado kissing me at his sister's gala while two hundred people drink champagne thirty feet away, and any one of them could destroy us with a single photo.
His hand at my throat tightens slightly—not enough to hurt, just enough to remind me that he could. That underneath the priest costume lives a man who knows exactly how to apply pressure. The danger of it, the threat and promise tangled together, sends heat pooling low in my belly that has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with recognition.
Then he stops.
One second his mouth is on my throat and his hands are in my hair and I'm about to suggest we find somewhere more private, consequences be damned. The next, his palms are on my shoulders, pushing me back. Firmly. Creating distance where I don't want any.
The look in his eyes—I'll carry it forever. Devastated. Dark. The expression of someone who just confirmed their worst fear about themselves. Not desire—he knew about that. But that when the control finally broke, it broke like this: explosive, public, completely without restraint.
He steps back. Once. Twice. His hands drop to his sides and I watch him rebuild the walls in real time, brick by brick, while his breathing is still ragged and his jacket is wrinkled where I grabbed it and we both know he's still hard.
He just looks at me with those destroyed eyes and turns and walks away, leaving me against the wall with my lipstick smudged and my pulse hammering and the taste of wine on my tongue.
My legs won't hold me. I put a hand on the wall, steadying myself, trying to understand what just happened. The difference hits me suddenly. Julian controlled me because he needed to own things. Gabriel just lost control because he couldn't stand not touching me one more second. One is a cage. The other is a door flying open. And I don't know which one scares me more.
7 - Gabriel
Idrive until the road runs out.
Twenty minutes since I left her against that wall. Twenty minutes since I kissed her like a fool and fled like a coward. Her lipstick is probably still on my mouth. I can still taste her—champagne and something darker, hungrier. My cock is still half-hard in these expensive pants, and every shift of the fabric reminds me of how she felt pressed against me, how she made that small sound when she felt how hard I was.
The Miami waterfront spreads before me, black water meeting black sky, the city's lights bleeding into both. My hands grip the steering wheel even though the car's been in park for five minutes. The bespoke Italian suit feels like it's strangling me, every thread a reminder of what just happened. Her mouth under mine. Her body pressed against me. The way she said my name—not Father, just Gabriel—like she'd been waiting to taste it.
I get out. Walk. Check the shadows automatically. The seawall stretches ahead, and muscle memory takes over. This path, these stones, the small chapel at the end where my mother used to take us before dawn mass on Sundays. Before the money got complicated. Before she got sick. Before I killed someone and ran to God.
The chapel's unlocked. Always is. Too small to steal from, too old to matter. Just a room with six pews and a crucifix and windows that face the water. I haven't been here in nine years.
I kneel.
The stone floor is cold through the suit. Good. I need to feel something that isn't her mouth, her heat, the way her whole body responded when I gripped her throat. My hands find each other, fingers interlacing in the prayer position I've held ten thousand times.
"I kissed her." The words echo in the empty space. "I want her. I want to fuck her. I can't stop thinking about what she'd feel like under me. Tell me what to do."
Silence.
Not the pregnant silence of God listening. The empty silence of God having better things to do. Traffic hums from the causeway. A boat horn sounds somewhere in the dark. The city continues its Saturday night fever while I kneel on stone begging for guidance about a woman who makes me want to tear off my collar with my teeth.
Then: jasmine.
Faint at first, carried on the breeze through the open window. The small white flowers that grow wild along the seawall, blooming at night when no one's watching. But close enough to her scent—that warm sweetness she carries—that my body doesn't care about the distinction. My pulse spikes. My cock hardens fully, pressing painfully against my zipper.
I'm on my knees in a chapel begging God for guidance and the only answer is a flower that smells like the woman I'm begging about.
I almost laugh. Would laugh, if it wouldn't sound like crying. Either God has a sense of humor or God has stopped listening.
I stay until the jasmine fades. Until my knees go numb. Until the city quiets toward dawn. My cock stays hard the entire time, throbbing with each heartbeat.
At 4 AM I’m back in the rectory, the crucifix watching over my narrow bed as I try to sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I see her. Not just her face—her mouth, pink and swollen fromkissing. Her throat where my thumb pressed. The way her nipples were hard through that dress, begging to be touched.
I give up fighting it. My hand moves under the sheet, gripping my cock with punishing force. I fuck my fist to the memory of her pressed against that wall, imagining what would have happened if I hadn't stopped. If I'd hiked up that dress and fucked her right there, made her come with two hundred people on the other side of the wall.
No sleep comes. Just her taste and jasmine in my memory and my cock that won't stop aching for her.
Sunday mass is the worst performance of my career.
