She shrugged, not arguing. “How long till you’re Father Thorn?”
“I could take my vows right now, if I wanted.”
I dug my fingers into my palm and followed her up the path. After I let her into the house, I would come back out and grab our bags. We’d stopped at her place to grab a few things, but the truth was, she didn’t have much. For the first time in years, I wished I had more money. That I could go out, buy her clothes, and a house, and a car. Everything she needed but didn’t have. Pamper her like a princess. But I grew up in the same poor neighborhood she had and barely had two grand in my bank account, and that was after years of saving up every penny I could.
She stopped walking abruptly. “Wait. What—?”
“I—” Since I hadn’t expected her to stop walking, I bounced off her back, quickly catching her before she stumbled forward and got hurt even more than she already was. I closed my hands over her shoulders, the tips of my fingers resting on the swells of her breasts. I let go quickly. “Fu—I mean, sorry.”
She turned and pressed a hand to her chest, right against the cleavage that I was doing my best to ignore. I was failing. But still. I was trying. “Did you almost…curse?”
“Maybe.” I flexed my jaw. “Okay. Yes. It’s a work in progress. You don’t grow up like we did without having a few bad habits. Cursing is the hardest one to kick.”
A laugh escaped her, but then she winced and pressed a hand to her throat. “I don’t know why this makes me happy, but it totally does. The good and holy Thorn still says fuck when he’s caught off-guard.”
I frowned at her. “Glad my fallibility pleases you.”
“Don’t take it personally. I just think that everyone should have flaws.” She reached up and tugged on my clerical collar. I’d put it on today as a reminder to myself. Being up close and personal and alone with Rose was going to be difficult, to say the least. “No matter what his job is.”
Flaws?
Oh, I had those.
I had more flaws than redeeming qualities, which is probably one of the things that was holding me back from becoming a priest. Knowing what I’d done that night, with Mikey, and the guilt I carried around on my shoulders twenty-four hours a day. The guilt that would never die.
Not even with me.
“What are you looking forward to the most about becoming a priest?” she asked, her voice soft.
“Besides helping the people in Chicago?” At her nod, I sighed. “The possibility of traveling, I guess. I want to go on missions to nations in need, but I also want to see Rome. Do some religious studies there. Visit Europe. Go to a mission and help people there. Build some homes for people who can’t build them for themselves.” I grinned, because just the idea of getting out of this place made my life brighter, even if I never got to do half those things. “Total pipe dreams, of course, but I’d love to meet the pope, too. Shake his hand.”
Wonder crossed her expression, and a soft smile lit up her face. “That would be pretty amazing. All of those things would be.”
“Yeah. Anything to get out of this place, right?”
She swallowed. “Right.”
I tipped my head toward the house. “Ready for that bath?”
“God yes.”
She spun again and headed up the stone walkway. This time, I left more room between the two of us, in case she pulled another quick stop on me. The last thing I needed was to feel her soft butt pressed up against my hardness again. Her hips swung with each step she took, and after allowing myself that small dip south, I forced my gaze to lock in on the back of her head. “Father John said he had the kitchen fully stocked for us.”
She pressed a hand on her stomach and stepped to the side of the door. “Wow. This is all…wow. Giving us a place to stay that’s as grand as this”—she gestured around us—“was enough. He doesn’t need to feed us, too. What is this guy? A saint?”
When she folded her arm like that, I could see the tattoo she’d gotten of a rose on the back of her right biceps. It had only one thorn on it. It was the only one visible when she had clothes on. I knew about the others, though. Our buddy Joe was an artist on the South Side, and he’d done work on her for free. He’d been buddies with Mikey, too.
I hadn’t missed a single session when she’d gotten hers, though I’d stayed in the lobby for her more risqué ones.
“Yeah.” I tore my focus off her tattoo and unlocked the door with the key Father John had given me. When I’d told him who I was bringing here, he’d watched me with an knowing look and asked me to keep him up-to-date on Rose’s recovery. Something told me he knew a lot more about my attachment to Rose than he let on. Maybe even more than I did. “A saint? Yeah, I’m pretty sure he is.”
I gestured for her to go inside before me, and she did, walking close enough that her elbow brushed against my abs. If she were any other woman, I might have thought she’d done that on purpose—touched me to drive me into the abyss of lust that I’d managed to avoid for almost eight years now. But she was just the type of person who innocently got all up in your personal space when she was near you, and always had been.
“Oh my.” She spun slowly in the foyer, grinning despite the pain that was paling her delicate features. Her excitement brightened up her face and made her look younger than her twenty-one years despite the bruise under her eye and her swollen lip. She’d be twenty-two soon. Hopefully the marks would be long gone before that day. “Look at us, two rats from Englewood, living it up by the lake in a mansion.”
I grinned at her excitement. I couldn’t help it. Rose smiling was a contagious thing. It was impossible not to catch it and join in, no matter how far from grace you’d fallen. “I knew it would happen all along. You’ll own a home someday. You’ll see.”
Her smile faded, and the joy crept out of her. “That’s never going to happen, and you know it. Stop blowing rainbows and perfume where there’s only shit and gunpowder. Girls like me don’t live in houses like this.”
“I don’t believe that.” I closed the door behind me, sliding the lock. “I refuse to believe it. I stand by what I’ve said all these years.”
She wrapped her good arm around herself. “Then you’re a fool. I was born in Englewood, I’ve spent my whole life in Englewood, and more than likely, I’ll die in some dark alley in Englewood—one just like last night. It is what it is. I am who I am.”
“What happened to the girl who wanted to grow up and be a teacher?” I asked with a hard edge to my voice, because her refusal to even contemplate the possibility of being something more than her parents had been made me want to punch something. “She curl up and die out in that alley, or what?”
“She’s still here.” Rose lifted her chin, her blue gaze blazing with fury. “She just knows that there are a lot of obstacles in her path. Englewood is my home, and I’m okay with that. Not everyone gets to escape. Not everyone moves on to bigger and better things, like you.”
I rubbed my jaw. “Last time I stopped at Mom’s, I got robbed. The time before that, my car got broken into. And you want to willingly stay in that pathetic excuse for a neighborhood for the rest of your life? Seriously?”
“It’s not like I can afford much else. I mean, I don’t even have a job right now, and when I do, it’s minimum wage at best.” She pressed her lips into a thin line. “I’m lucky if I walk off with a couple hundred a week.”
“What if you had a job somewhere else? And a place in a safer section of town?” I asked slowly. “Would you still want to go back to Englewood?”
“Hell no.” She twisted her lips and pressed a finger to her throat gently before lowering her voice. “But honestly, what’s the point of thinking about the what-if’s of life? What’s the point in thinking about what might be, when right now I’m literally homeless, jobless, and broken?”
I tossed the key onto the counter. “Things change.”
“But people don’t,” she said softly. “I’m an Englewood girl, and always will be. You might have
escaped the slums, but I didn’t. I am the slums. It’s as much a part of me as you are, or Mikey was.”
“That doesn’t mean you can’t escape it, too.” I caught her chin. “That doesn’t mean you have to give up on your dreams.”
She gripped her arm. “Right now, the only thing I’m dreaming about is a bath and a change of clothes.”
I got that about her. I did. But I wasn’t going to stop at giving her that. I was already working on a way to get her out of Englewood, and into a new life. She needed to be safe before I committed myself to the church. I had to know she was okay. She might not know it, and she might never know it, but she was the only real slice of morality left in my bones, after what I’d done.
And I would promise my soul to Satan before walking away from her when she wasn’t settled and safe.
I owed that to Mikey, no matter what she thought.
“Then go on.” I pointed at the stairs nearby. “Find a bedroom, and a bathroom, and make it yours. While you’re bathing, I’ll see if we have the makings of my famous cheese sandwich in this fancy house.”
“Now, that”—she smiled—“I can totally do.”
She practically skipped up the stairs, even though she must’ve been sore, and I rolled my eyes at her childlike enthusiasm. That was another thing about her. She had an unstoppable ability to be honest, to look at things and state the obvious, but she also had an unrelenting enthusiasm that Englewood hadn’t beaten out of her.
If I had anything to say about it, she’d never lose that.
After she rounded the corner, I opened the fridge and checked the cheese drawer. Sure enough, there were freshly sliced cheddar and American cheese. I pulled them out, grabbed the mayonnaise, and shut the door. “Jesu— Rose.”
Her face danced with amusement when I jumped back. “Sorry.”
“Yeah. Sure you are,” I muttered, setting the food down on the counter. She stood directly behind the fridge door, and I hadn’t seen her till I closed it. Her Keds were off, but that was it. “What are you doing down here already?”
“I can’t get my splint wet, and I don’t want to risk splashing it by accident while trying to wash my hair with only one hand. I’d remove it, but it hurts too much if I take it off, and I’m supposed to keep it on for three days before I switch to the Ace bandages they gave me.” She bit her plump lower lip, cutting off the rush of words. “Do we have a plastic bag I could put over it, just to be safe? And, also, I need my clothes from the car.”
Of course she did. Idiot. I was so caught up in my plans for her future, and worrying about my own, that I’d forgotten all about the present. And her clothes. “I’ll go get them right away.”
“Thanks.” She released her lower lip. Small little white marks were visible for a second before her lip pinked up again. “And the bag?”
I opened up some drawers, looking for any plastic bags that might be big enough to cover her bandages and splint, and came up empty. The best I could find was a sandwich-sized baggie. Closing the last drawer, I rested my hands on the counter. “Uh…”
“It’s okay,” she said quickly, her tone light. “I just won’t wash my hair, and I’ll be careful not to get it wet.”
It had been the one thing she was looking forward to, getting clean, so there was no way I was about to make her hold off till we could find something. She still had glitter in her long hair, and that man’s touch, on her. She needed to wash that away. All of it. “I’ll just help you wash your hair.”
“Wait.” She blinked at me, her voice cracking. “What?”
“You can leave a shirt on, maybe one of mine, since they’re bigger, and I’ll wash your hair and help you keep the splint dry.” I scratched my scalp. “Together, we can make this work.”
“Are you sure?”
No. Absolutely not. It’s a bad idea. Horrible. “Of course. I’ve got two good hands, so why not use them? I’ll run out, grab our things, and we’ll get you started. It’ll be fun.”
“Fun.” She gawked at me as if I had lost my mind, and maybe I had. “Okay…”
I brushed past her and headed outside, taking a deep breath the second I walked through the door and out into freedom. I opened my trunk, leaned on the car, and glowered at the suitcases.
“Idiot,” I muttered to myself, glancing toward the house.
She watched me from the doorway, worrying her bottom lip. I forced a smile and waved. She waved back. No matter what I was feeling, or how badly I wanted her even though I shouldn’t, I had to ignore all of that to help her. No matter how tempting her wet, tight body might be….I’d been faced with temptation before, and I’d walked away.
I could do it again, with Rose.
I had to.
When I reentered the house, I found her exactly where I’d left her, looking less than certain about this whole thing. I plopped the bags down on the floor and opened mine. Digging through it, I found the biggest shirt I owned and held it out to her. The more skin she covered up, the better…for both our sakes. “Here. Put this on, and come into the bathroom when you’re ready.”
She eyed the shirt. “You don’t have to do this. I can just not wash my hair and—”
“Just get undressed and put it on,” I snapped. I was already on edge about this whole naked-Rose thing, and she wasn’t making it any easier on me. “You’re getting clean from head to toe, and that’s that. Stop wasting time with the useless arguing, and go get naked.”
Frowning, she snatched the shirt out of my hand. “Fine. God. No need to get all surly with me simply because I’m worried about your virtue.”
I cocked a brow. “I assure you, my virtue is completely safe around you.”
“Wow.” Pressing her lips together, she glared at me. I focused on her lip ring as it moved. “Way to make a girl feel unattractive.”
“You know you’re gorgeous,” I called after her as she walked away.
“Whatever.” Stomping up the stairs, she entered the room to the left and slammed the door shut. Through the door, she called out: “Asshole.”
“Stop yelling! You’re hurting your throat more!” I yelled up the stairs. When she remained silent in reply, I tugged on my tight khakis and imagined her stripping upstairs. My pants instantly got even tighter. She was affecting me in ways she shouldn’t have. Ways I shouldn’t let her. “Get yourself together, man,” I muttered under my breath, climbing the flight of stairs and finding the closest bathroom to the bedroom she picked. “It’s just hair.”
I took everything out of my pockets in case I sprayed water on myself, then turned on the water and held my hand under it, waiting for it to get hot. Behind me, her bedroom door opened, and her soft footsteps approached. She stopped just inside the bathroom. I hadn’t turned around yet, but I could sense her—which was a little bit creepy, but true. No matter how crowded a room was, I always knew the second she walked in. Always had. “Are you ready?”
“Are you sure you want to do this? I’ll be almost naked and wet, and you’ll be touching me. Isn’t that, like, breaking a cardinal rule or something?”
I snorted. “You think pretty highly of yourself if you think you’re on that very particular list.”
“Well, no.” She paused and let out a small laugh. “In all honesty, I don’t want to get you in trouble. You want to be a priest, and I refuse to screw that up.”
“I’ll be fine. I’m not going to be tempted by a wet baggy shirt and soapy, dirty hair.” Turning around, I kept my hand under the water and said, “Trust me, it’ll be like washing—” My sister. That’s what I’d been about to say.
But then I saw her standing there in nothing but a splint and my T-shirt, and the lie died a quick and merciful death in my throat. Her long, thin legs were bare of ink, and the shirt stopped midthigh. Her perky breasts strained against the fabric, bringing the shirt to life in ways I had never imagined even in my wildest dreams.
She leaned on the door, her good arm crossed over her breasts and her hand clasped on her rig
ht shoulder, as if she sought to hide her curves from me. One foot was crossed over the other, and she leaned on the doorjamb with her bright red lower lip caught between her teeth again. Her tongue played with her lip ring in an absentminded fashion. She was literally temptation in human form, and I was going to fall under her spell. Nothing, and no one, could save me from going under.
“Shit,” I said out loud.
Chapter 4
Rose
My jaw dropped. The way he was looking at me, his heated eyes paired with a possessive smirk, did things to me. Things that I shouldn’t allow to happen, because no matter how he looked at me, or what I thought I saw, it really was nothing. He didn’t want me.
He couldn’t.
I bit down harder on my lip, swallowing past my aching throat. “Thorn? Are you okay?”
“Yeah. The water was too hot,” he said quickly, yanking his hand out of the water and shaking it off as he turned his back to me.
He slowly rolled his sleeves up, which sent a shaft of desire piercing through my stomach. I’ve always had a thing for muscular arms, and his were the best of the best. How unfair is that? It’s not as if God cared how tight your muscles were if you were a priest. The least he could do would be to let himself go a little bit. Put on a little bit of padding.
It would be the kind thing to do.
“There. It’s better now.” He faced me again. “Get in.”
I crossed the room, holding on to my shoulder as if it would take the embarrassment out of this situation. It didn’t. Nothing would. I was practically naked in the same room as the man I had had a crush on ever since I was old enough to know what a crush was…but he barely even noticed me as a woman. Just the mere thought of his hands running through my hair, massaging my scalp, and spreading soap all over my body made me tremble and ache for him to do more. To take me in ways only he could take me. To make me scream and come—
“Rose.” He pulled the shower curtain back and raised a brow. “You coming, or what?”
Lust Is the Thorn Page 4