“I don’t know about that.” She tugged at the length of stubble on my chin. “But what I wanted to say was that I’m not on birth control now…or anything.”
She looked awkward, like she hated to bring it up.
She also looked more adult.
Setting boundaries, being straightforward, telling me exactly what was on her mind. Not that Tressa had ever really had much problem with that.
“No birth control, huh? How very Catholic of you.”
A devilish grin widened her cheeks.
“So beautiful,” I whispered, clutching her face in my palms and kissing her like I’d been wanting to, like I’d spent so many nights losing sleep over with her rustling in all four corners of my brain. “So very beautiful.”
Our eyes on fire with simmering emotion, we exploded like dying stars against a lonely black sky, our passions violent, our love pure. Chaos and order, sin and virtue, every bit of us together made no sense at all—and perfect sense just the same.
A beautiful sin, our greatest catastrophe.
In that moment, I allowed myself to admit I loved her far greater than I’d known.
I just wasn’t sure what to do about that come morning, the same anxieties of our last incarnation plaguing me.
“Life is in God’s hands. I’ve always believed that.” I captured her wrists as I spoke, thrusting them above her head so her chest was angled up to me, pebbled nipples begging for my attention. “Birth control or not.”
With my last sentence, I pushed deeper, feeling her muscles tense and resist my intrusion in her soft body before, with soft moans and gentle coaxing, she opened up. Accepted all of me.
Just like she’d always done.
From the start, it felt like Tressa had seen the man behind the collar, my position as a holy disciple of no consequence to her.
A forbidden thought intruded in my head then, the glint of the belt buckle under the bed luring me to chain her here—to my bed—some temporary and twisted psychological relief that she was here to stay.
“Do you trust me?” I nipped at her lip.
“Always,” she said clearly, eyes interested.
I slid the belt from under the bed, working it against her wrists delicately before looping them behind the posts.
“Kinky, Father.” Her dark eyes danced with mischief.
“Say that again, and you don’t want to know what comes next.”
She bit down on her lip even harder. “You know I just can’t let that one go.” She wiggled, breasts dragging against the hair of my chest, hips writhing against mine, eliciting a groan of intense frustration. “So, you wanna get kinky, Father Bastien?”
My eyes about burst from my skull, the very idea that this woman was underneath me right now, that I was inside her as she wiggled and called me by my holy name…
“In the mood to dance with the devil tonight, hmm, sweet dove?”
I plucked at the angry little tip of her breast, a squeak bursting past her lips as I rubbed the soft sting away.
“You ready?” My teeth at her ear was the only warning I gave before grasping her hips and flipping her, my cock already slamming back inside her before she could adjust to being without me again.
“I plan on keeping you addicted to this every day if that’s what it takes to keep you from leaving.”
In one swift move, I pulled off the cross and chain that hung around my neck, the one I never took off, thumbing the tiny worn edges of precious metal before pooling the chain at the dip of her spine.
She arched against the heavy weight of it, my fingers gliding the chain along her skin, dangling the cross over her decadent curves like a sacred pendulum. My mouth watered, hips going deeper on gentle thrusts as I skated the tip of the cross up the length of her spine and then back down the side of her torso. My eyes ate up the silky flesh I’d been so long deprived of, every charged moment leading to another and then another, before I looped the chain around her neck, allowing the medallion to dangle between her full breasts, home. The very place my heart yearned to be.
“I see the innocent little demons that dance in your eyes, sweet dove. You can’t hide your secrets from me.” My lips sucked at the sweaty skin of her neck. “You never could.”
I spread my palm over her breasts, sandwiching the tiny cross between her skin and mine like a brand. “You play so recklessly with the matches around your heart—” I nipped at her earlobe “—and the sparks enthrall me.”
Her ass wiggled against my hips, that raw, primal caveman thing I’d thought was long buried since our last night together shaking at the cages. My shame at embracing both my filthy and pious sides evaporating in an instant.
I needed this woman.
“Tell me what you want. You want me to take it from you?”
Her eyes caught mine, blinking once. My cock flexed.
“You want me to desecrate and defile every sweet inch of you?”
A soft hiss of pleasure as she rocked against me.
“We’re bound together, Tressa. I won’t let you forget that anytime soon.”
Rubbing the roundness of her backside with my palm, I pulled myself from her body and teased at her entrance, enjoying the way her hips sought a release only I could give.
Tressa, desperate and needy for me, a notion so satisfying and sweet I could roll around in it for a lifetime. Breaking every vow was worth it to be with her, as was committing every sin my soul’s newfound purpose. Anything to own her, take her, make her mine.
“Patience isn’t your strongest attribute. You may want to think about working on that next Lenten season.” I landed three slaps on her rounded backside.
She jumped, unable to rub at the quickly growing pink handprint on her bottom. I stroked my new mark on her perfect skin, enjoying playing her body like an instrument, attuned to her every movement and need.
“And maybe you can give up celibacy next Lent.” The sarcasm in her saccharine words brought a grin to my face.
“So wet, my filthy dove. I’ve got just the thing to keep that mouth busy.” I spanked her twice more on the other ass cheek as punishment. Pushing a hand up the arch of her throat, I slipped my finger past her lips.
She gulped down another moan, a series of pleas falling from her lips that had me slamming so hard and so deep, I thought I might break her myself.
She’d already broken me.
For so long, I’d tended my flock obediently, never a misstep, hardly a stray thought. But with her, I was the wolf. She needed protecting from me. I wanted to claim her, cage her, force her on her hands and knees, and fuck her seven ways from Sunday. With her, I was nothing but a beast. A man under her thrall, willing to confess at the heart of her altar.
“I thought about using my belt, but I like feeling you, knowing how to hit you with just enough pressure, knowing I can only hurt you as much as I can hurt myself.” I slipped my palms up the undersides of her arms, enjoying the way a trail of goose bumps popped up in my wake.
I released her bindings then, needing to feel her hands on me, to know she was right here with me, of her own will. Our demons played best flesh-on-flesh, scorching sin against damp skin.
I pulled her up to my chest, and she wrapped her arms around my neck and rode my hips. Her soft cries and the tensing of her thighs around my body told me she was crashing over the edge, her hot body sucking me farther in, coaxing my own release from the base of my spine down to the tips of my toes. With tremors of pleasure rippling through us, I emptied into my very own holy grail, tasting life and touching God from the inside out.
I watched her come undone, every carefully held morsel slipping away like drops of holy water, leaving behind a pure and primal shuddering creature of need. The rebirth of two broken souls uniting as one. Kissing her reverently, lips and hands and limbs entwined, I whispered the words I’d buried down deep.
“I kept my days busy when I was without you.” The loneliness of all those moments haunted me even still. “So I only missed you
when the sun went down. When I ran out of things to distract myself, I always found you. I can’t begin to express what you gave to me. That time of my life plays in my memory like a sweet dream.”
She hung her hands around my neck, eyes locked and shimmering with warmth and tenderness in the dim light.
“Oh, Bastien.” She ran two soft fingertips over my cheekbone.
Dropping my forehead to hers, lips grazing, I murmured, “You and I were always poetry, captivating, sweet, and over far too soon.”
THIRTY-ONE
Bastien
“I can’t tell you how long it took me to work up the balls to come here.” She sat propped against my simple headboard later, sheets tucked under her arms. I lay at her side, unable to help the rogue grin, one arm thrown over her belly as my scent clung to her skin.
“How did you find me? I’m sure the cardinal had the file sealed for all eternity.”
She huffed. “He was useless.”
I laughed at her bold statement of one of the holiest positions in the Roman Catholic Church.
“I tried to ask where you’d gone once Luce and I returned from the hospital, but he was as smug and tight-lipped as ever. So I started searching the name of every priest under his order. I didn’t get anywhere for months, and I wasn’t even sure I should be trying at all. I didn’t know what I’d do with the information even if I had it.” She stopped, eyes animated with her retelling. “But then, finally, a few months ago, a newspaper in Havana uploaded some of their older archives online, and a Father Martin popped up. I didn’t know if it was the one I knew, but it mentioned the cathedral in Pinar del Rio, and without even knowing what the hell I was thinking, I started searching for flights to Cuba.”
“Even more courage than I remembered.”
Her fingertips ran circles around the curve of my bicep as she continued on. “I’m so glad I was there with Luce when she had Luca. He’s the sweetest thing. I was there the first time he walked. His first word was doggy.” Tears steeped in her love-filled eyes. “Luce even got her own direct sales business off the ground so she can stay at home with him all day. And she’s the best mom, Bastien. I wish…” She paused, looking unsure of whether she should say the next part. “I wish you could see him.”
I wrapped my fingers around her knee, squeezing. “I hope someday.” I shook my head as I reflected back. “I hated leaving so abruptly. I spent so much time thinking about all of the people I’d grown so close to. The cardinal and bishop were at St. Mike’s within an hour of your going to the hospital with Lucy. I remember thinking once I got things settled down at the church, I’d go to the hospital to see how you both were. But once the two of them arrived, it seemed the steps to transition me out and a new priest in were already in place. The following morning, the cardinal informed me of my transfer and somehow implied I’d made St. Mike’s a target.” I shook my head at the memory. “It was emotional torture not knowing what had become of you and her and the baby and that kid…”
She swallowed, hands seeking mine, fingers twining together. “They tried to bring him to trial, but he just kept acting insane, saying illogical things. I was convinced it was an act, but Lucy wasn’t so sure. She really worried about him.” Her fingers worked back and forth at my knuckles. “Until he sent the letter months after he was institutionalized.”
“A letter?”
She sucked her lips between her teeth, nodding. “It was hardly coherent. It took us a few tries to read it, and even now, there are parts we can’t understand. But he kept bringing up evil and wolves hiding in holy clothing and, Bastien…” She paused. “I think he may have seen us…doing something. He said deceit and sin still run unchecked in the pews of St. Mike’s and that he’d even called the diocese to report a crime, but they didn’t care. He said over and over, they didn’t care.”
I swallowed, understanding snapping into place. I had no words to deal with what she’d just unloaded.
The idea that I’d held this secret close to my heart the last four years a foolish one. Of course, we were caught. We’d lapsed too much, been too risky; it would be unlikely someone hadn’t seen us.
My heart thudded heavily in my chest, a horrible feeling settling that I’d left her there to confront all of this alone.
“Luce and I worked it over a hundred different ways. The only thing I kept wondering…” She frowned, peeling out from under me and tightening the sheet around her body as she stood from the bed and walked to the tiny window looking out on the smoky mountains.
“What?” I sat on the edge of the bed, one hand in my hair, unsure if I was ready for any more of her realizations. She’d had a lot more time to critically think her away around this situation. I was coming in blind to most of it.
“Remember those receipts? The ones you found in the church attic?”
“Yeah.” My mind fought to remember the tiny handwritten slips.
“Do you remember who they were made out to?”
“Eve…somebody.”
She shot me a sarcastic look over her shoulder. “The somebody part is the important part here.”
I caged her in my arms, chin resting at her shoulder as I caught her ear between my teeth and tugged. “Sassy as ever. Forgive me for thinking someone was clever in their cover-up of sins of the flesh by using the name Eve.”
“Right.” I caught her brief eye roll. “No idea on that last name, then?”
“No.”
“Good thing I’ve got this stalker thing down to a science.” She waggled her eyebrows at me. “So after Casey sent the letter, he took his own life. The orderlies checked on him one morning, and apparently, he’d been stashing his pills and doing favors to collect a few from other patients, and he overdosed.”
My eyebrows rose at her admission.
“That’s not the interesting part. What is, happened when we went to his funeral. Lucy brought Luca to the church day care for an hour, and we went to the service. Well, we didn’t stay. There was so much media, and when they recognized both of us…then it wasn’t peaceful at all. I snagged a program, and it just so happened that on that program it said he was survived by his mother, Eve Maniscalco.”
“Maniscalco…” I tilted my head, vaguely remembering the name. “That’s the name from the receipts?”
“Yup. Don’t you remember?”
“Maybe.”
“Well, lucky for you, I’ve been bringing Ms. Watson dinner a few Sundays a month since you left, and that woman is a St. Mike’s fangirl of the first degree.”
“A fangirl?”
“Of you, for starters.” Her eyes twinkled as they met mine. “But who isn’t?”
I slapped her ass through the thin sheet.
“But she’s also been going to St. Mike’s since she was a girl, and I bet you didn’t know she’s kept every single weekly parish newsletter since she started attending with her first husband in 1965?”
I couldn’t contain my laugh. “You don’t say?”
“She’s a charmer, that one, and loves to talk. Even remembers when Casey was a little boy going to St. Mike’s with his mom, Eve.”
“Well, how about that.”
“And she has the series of weekly missals showing Casey’s name as an altar boy under Father Martin.”
My throat cracked.
Heart hammering, I planted both of my hands on the stone alongside Tressa’s head, requiring it and her to support me.
“Fuck, I never should have left.”
“Bastien, no, that’s not why I told you this.”
“Never. I was such a coward. I left so much open-ended.” I’d walked away from what was my true calling at that moment, blind to its very existence.
Regret ravaged me like a hungry demon, sending bile into my throat and adrenaline into my muscles.
“So many secrets.” I shook my head. “And the cardinal knew everything. He left me in the dark, transferred me out of his life, sweeping me under the damn rug just as he must have done all those years ago
with Father Martin.”
“But that’s the thing. We don’t even know what happened with Father Martin. And the main person who could is gone and, really, wasn’t very trustworthy to begin with.” Tressa breathed, fingers at the muscles of my neck, working me down from the cliff.
I allowed her calm to seep into me, urging me back to the bed. “There isn’t anything we can do about any of it. I had to tell myself the one thing that mattered was that Luce and the baby were safe.”
“And you.” I cradled her head in my hands, sighing deeply as I considered all that’d come to pass between us.
“You know what it took for me to come here? To come to you?” She settled beside me, tucking herself into the crook of my arm. “It took me realizing that my life was of my own making. That even when I was in college and working for the head of the department and he was locking the door and pressing himself against me and threatening to take away my scholarship if I didn’t let him jerk off in front of me…” Her eyes sparked with fresh anger.
“I never understood why shitty things kept happening to me. One asshole I dated even told me girls with daddy issues fuck better. So that was it, I was just destined to attract the losers. And I let that professor play his mind games for months, thinking deep down, I must deserve it. That I wasn’t worth anything in my own right. I was surrounded by people reinforcing to me that my worst was my very best, so it was better to give up any dreams now.” She wiped a tear across her cheek.
“Sometimes the person you’d take the bullet for is the person behind the trigger, ya know? But then one day, it just clicked. I was a victim because I hadn’t set that horrible monster straight yet. Because I thought I deserved what he was doing. And finally, the night I stood up to him and leveled that first edition of The Alchemist at his head, that was the moment I decided no longer to see myself from the perspective of a victim, but a badass. I found my backbone. I came to terms with the slow unraveling of my life when I wasn’t looking. I’d been a passive participant, letting life happen to me for so long instead of making it mine. I’ll never do that again. It took me a minute, but I finally found myself. Now, authenticity is my rebellion.”
REBEL SAINT Page 15