"I had a meeting in Miami. Business." I swallow hard. "It's complicated, and I'm not ready to explain all of it. But I didn't want to lie to you again."
Again. The word hangs there, acknowledging the gallery fiction and whatever else I'm hiding. The partition exists. I'm naming it even if I can't tear it down.
I wait for the interrogation. What business, what meeting, what are you hiding?
Instead, he asks: "Are you safe?"
His eyes scan me, checking for injuries, fear, immediate danger. "Were you followed?"
Not demanding my secrets. Just: are you safe? Were you followed? The same priority as the watch, the deadbolt, his declaration that I'm staying at the rectory. My safety over his curiosity. The Delgado prince making threat assessments a priest shouldn't know to make.
"I don't know," I tell him. "Maybe. There were cars, but…"
He walks toward me. Slow, deliberate. Each step eating the distance between us until he's close enough to touch. Not touching. The space between us hums with everything unsaid. I can see him fighting the urge to close the distance. His hands flexing at his sides, jaw tight with restraint.
"You will be safe," he says quietly, and there's something dark in his voice, the edge I heard in the parking lot. "I'll make sure of it."
Not God will protect you. Not prayers or providence. A personal guarantee from a man who put professionals on their knees. Gabriel Delgado making a promise the priest has no authority to keep.
I kiss him.
Not like the gala, desperate, explosive. This kiss is slow, deliberate. I step forward, put my hand on his jaw, and press my mouth to his. The kiss of someone coming home. Not toa building but to a person. The place where all my masks can finally fall.
His hands find my waist, settling there like he's afraid I'll dissolve. His mouth opens against mine and the kiss deepens, still unhurried, but heat builds underneath like warmth in a pan. Gradual, then sudden, then consuming.
I taste coffee on his tongue, and underneath it, him. That darkness he tries so hard to contain. His fingers tighten, digging into my hips with barely restrained need. I step into the grip, pressing closer instead of pulling away. My fingers slide from his jaw into his hair, thick and soft. His breathing fractures, becomes ragged.
The empty church surrounds us. The confessional where this started, the altar where he knelt for me. Our whole geography of transgression mapped in sacred space. The kiss changes, slow giving way to something more determined. Not falling but walking forward with eyes open.
His hands slide to my hips, gripping harder, possessive. My back meets the cold wood of a pew end, the chill through my blouse making me gasp. He presses against me, solid and warm, and I feel his cock hard through our clothes. The memory of the altar floods back. Him right there but unable to cross that line, the circuit breaker that saved us both and damned us to days of circling each other like wolves.
I pull back enough to see his face. His eyes are dark, completely open. Just the man underneath, hungry and desperate and done pretending.
My fingers find his throat.
The collar sits there, white and absolute. The lock, the barrier, the thing that makes him separate. My fingers rest against the fabric. It's rougher than I expected, sturdy cotton worn soft from years of wear. Underneath it, his pulse hammers like something wild trying to escape. The rhythm of it thrumsthrough my fingertips. Fast, desperate, alive. The question forms in my eyes without words.
Can I take this off?
He goes absolutely still. A man at the edge of something irreversible. Me and whatever comes next. I can feel the war in him through my fingertips. The priest fighting the man, the vows fighting the hunger, everything he's built battling everything he wants.
I wait. This has to be his choice. Not weakness or breaking. A door he walks through himself.
His hand covers mine on the collar.
For a moment I think he'll pull my fingers away, reassert the boundary. Instead, his hand closes around mine with careful deliberation. The permission is silent but absolute.
Then he does something that stops my heart.
He presses my hand closer.
The gesture is small. His palm over my knuckles, pressing my fingers tighter against the white band. But the choice in it is enormous. He's not just allowing this. He's participating. His hand guiding mine toward the answer we both already know.
Under my fingers, his pulse races like something caged finally sensing freedom. The collar that's held him for so long suddenly feels like paper, like breath, like nothing at all.
Neither of us speaks. There's nothing to say that our bodies aren't already saying. The dark church our witness. The sanctuary lamp burning red like a heart exposed.
We're balanced on this moment. Him choosing to stop being Father Gabriel, me choosing to be the woman who helps him. Equal weight, equal want. Neither leading, neither following.
