“Test what?” My voice was barely audible.
“Make a sound. Let them see what's happening. Watch how quickly they pretend not to notice.”
I shook my head, teeth clenched against the building pressure. “You're wrong.” Thatcouldn’tbe true, I thought, but as I looked around, more and more of what I saw proved him right. I saw Mrs. Tureaud deliberately averting her eyes now that my leg was almost in Judah’s lap, the waiter studiously ignoring our table despite my empty water glass. The realization sent a shiver down my spine that had nothing to do with Judah's touch and everything to do with the terrifying truth of his power in this town.
His fingers continued their relentless exploration, and I felt myself teetering on a dangerous edge. My thighs trembledbeneath the tablecloth as he added another finger, stretching me.
Oh God…I thought, closing my eyes. My whole body jerked forward. I reached for his wrist and he stopped for a moment. Let me breathe, and then — began again.
“This isn't right,” I whispered, even as my body clenched around his fingers.
“Righteousness is relative in St. Francisville,” he replied, his pace increasing slightly. “You're close, aren't you? I can feel it.”
I was. God help me, I was. Heat spiraled through me, my body tightening around his fingers as he worked them deeper. The room started floating, faces becoming indistinct as I fought to maintain composure.
“Look at me,” he commanded softly.
I did. Those grey eyes held mine as my orgasm built to a crescendo beneath the pristine white tablecloth. His expression remained perfectly composed — Pastor Judah Beaumont, respected community leader, methodically undoing me in full view of his congregation.
My fingers gripped the tablecloth as the first wave crashed through me, my thighs clamping around his hand. I bit into my lower lip hard enough to taste blood, the metallic tang mingling with the sweetness of surrender.
A moan escaped me as I shuddered and nobody turned to look.
When I could breathe again, I realized I'd knocked over my water glass. The waiter appeared out of nowhere.
“I'm so sorry,” I mumbled, reaching for my napkin as the water spread across the white linen.
“No need to apologize, Miss,” the waiter said, not meeting my eyes as he deftly replaced the tablecloth without disturbing our place settings. His practiced movements suggested this wasn'tthe first time he'd pretended not to notice something at Judah's table.
Judah's hand withdrew, and I watched with horrified fascination as he casually reached for his own napkin, wiping his fingers with before taking another sip of coffee. The waiter disappeared, and we were alone again in our bubble of false propriety.
The thing about Judah Beaumont on a Sunday was that he meant every little bit of it.
That was what I couldn't get past. Standing at the back of Grace Eternal in a blue dress — something plain, something that didn’t put the letter S on my chest — watching him at the pulpit, I kept waiting for the seam. The place where the pastor endedand the man I knew began. I couldn't find it. They were the same person. That was the problem.
He'd found me before service. In the vestibule, while Darlene was arranging the programs and Sister Ruth was doing her pre-game warmup of squeezing everyone's hands. He'd come through the side door with his jacket on and his Bible under his arm and he'd looked at me across the room and walked straight to me like the twenty other people in the vestibule were furniture.
His hand went to my back.
“You look rested,” he said, his voice warm and pleasant.
“I slept eight hours.” A lie. Six, maybe. I'd spent two of them on the ceiling, thinking about my preacher — like agoodChristian.
“Good.” He pressed his mouth to my temple, lips warm and soft. Right there. In front of Darlene, who became very interested in her programs, and Sister Ruth, who became very interested in us. “Stay after,” he said against my hair. “I want to show you the garden.”
“The garden.”
“It needs attention. I thought you might have some ideas.”
He pulled back and looked at me with those Sunday eyes — the ones that were doing something complicated that I'd stopped trying to decode — and then he was gone, moving through the vestibule, shaking hands, saying names, being the version of himself the town had built its faith around.
Sister Ruth materialized at my elbow approximately four seconds later.
“The garden,” she said.
“Apparently.”
She made a sound that contained an entire paragraph.
