120 Mph

by Jevenna Willow

  As Christian’s tongue battled hers, and the bulge in his jeans grew hard while pressed firmly against her middle, Sara struggled with what she wanted against what Christian needed from her. He wanted redemption of the soul. He wanted a reason to go against God. He wanted this reason to be her fault, not his.

  Sara could not let that be. She could not let a man do this to her—again. She could not—would not—let another take control of her life or place blame where blame was unwarranted.

  Yet how could she possibly prevent such a thing from happening? How could she settle this man’s heart, and still get what she desired out of the dangerous mess?

  His hands moved from hers and slid to her ass. His strong fingers dug into pliable flesh beneath her jeans as his mouth fought a war she was only too willing to lose.

  She wanted him. By God, she dearly wanted this man! However, not like this, not here, and not while both so desperate for another’s touch, that without it, they might not survive the night.

  Nor did she want his lovemaking to be while they stood in front of the grave of his dead wife, shunning her every desire by ghostly presence and little more.

  The second she was going to tell Christian how she felt, he pulled back, checked his body’s violent needs, and gave her a gentle smile to ease the conscience.

  “Perhaps you should go back to the house now, Sara,” he informed her.

  Sara could only nod. A quick glance at his face, she hurriedly slipped from his embrace and started to make her way over the wooden bridge. One darted glance at the grave checked her breath.

  No! I can’t be.

  The moon was high above their heads now. The entire woods eerily lit by its filtered light. Or was it sudden shame that made the unusual glow around the headstone?

  On the other side of the stream, Sara heard through a deafening roar in her ears Christian asking across the gurgling moonlit waters, “Sara?”

  She responded with a simple, throat-strangling, “Yes?”

  Dear Lord! Her entire being was suddenly trembling from head to heels.

  Shoving his hands deep into his pocket, Christian stated without pause, “Please lock your bedroom door tonight.”

  Reverend Christian Mohr gave her the reason why with a wry smile. And for one brief moment, one brief second of mortal being, while she dragged her wavering sight from a headstone to stare hard across the moonlit stream at a man fraught with internal conflict over what he wanted, against what his God wanted, she truly felt both her feet disintegrating into that infamous pile of Biblical salt. Guilt? No, Sara had more than simple guilt inside her body. Sara Ruby was filled with dread. So much so, she could barely speak.

  She wanted the man who stood across the stream more than life itself, and if getting him . . . it could well cost her the rest of her soul.

  Sara turned on heels quickly, then made her way back to the house. Once inside, she headed straight to her appointed room and locked the door—as told. To put temptation at one’s hand, even put an ounce of thought to it, would be to take the forbidden fruit from the tree and tasting its sweetness when the belly already full.

  Right now, neither needed that problem above all else.

  Right now . . . Christian and Sara had to get past a moonlit night and wanting each other so badly it could be tasted on the tongue, than put more worry to if they even had a future with each other.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Christian stood beside Beale’s grave for a full half hour before he found the strength to head through the tangling woods and back into the stillness of his house.

  The longer he’d stayed near Beale’s final resting place, the easier it was to control his body into behaving as it should, and not as it wanted to.

  Christian had to find a way to get over the fact he wanted Sara Ruby more than life itself. Then, perhaps he would be able to sleep through his nights, knowing she was right across the hall, and his not doing something about the woman being right across the hall; something that would send him straight to the gates of Hell, bypassing all viable chance for redemption.

  Praying it did not work this way, Christian certainly aware it shouldn’t work that way, he wasn’t about to test the boundaries if even possible. Not tonight.

  He took a moment to catch his breath at the back door. His body controlled by the long walk; his thoughts were well out of control as his fingers touched the cold knob.

  Once inside the house, from down the hallway that led off the kitchen he could see her bedroom light was still on. Sara was yet awake, still freshly kissed, and much too much of a dire temptation to mortal man needing to sin.

  A fool of a man would have dared step down the hallway, knocked on her door, then walked straight into the open arms of Hell. Christian was not a fool. Nor did he want to face the devil head on this evening, knowing he would lose.

  He, instead, went to his study. Perhaps if he wrote within the journal tonight, and not waiting for the usual time, his thoughts wouldn’t hurt him so much. Perhaps if he let out how he felt in words it would be far easier to fall asleep and stay asleep.

  The study—the room itself—welcomed him into its fold. Christian sat down in the leather chair behind his desk; pulled open the bottom drawer, grabbed the journal out, took pen in hand, then started to write. What came to mind flowed easily onto the page. What needed saying as written word. . . Christian said while in mocking silence.

  The usual page filled quickly, spilled over onto the next, and by the end of ten short minutes, he had five full pages of sin written in script.

  He stared at what he wrote until it blurred the eyes and stung the throat. Seconds later, he tore out the last two pages from the journal and crumpled them up, tossing both into the wastebasket near his leg.

  Never before, and likely never again, had any Reverend in possession of this sacred journal torn a single page from its leather bound, let alone two. This was a first.

  The shame of what he’d done hit him hard—right in the gut and pinching tight. How could he not tear out those damning pages? He just confessed in writing that he wanted to make love to Sara Ruby—tonight and every night until death took him from this world. As well, a written confession made that he was glad Beale was dead, and that he finally had a woman in his life who was warm and caring, instead of a frigid, unfaithful bitch caring nothing at all for him as her husband and coveted his best friend.

  No one but Christian and God should know these things.

  No one, but God and Christian, should make judgment on these things.

  He turned his head, almost afraid to look at what he’d done, and cautiously glanced into the wastebasket where his sins lay. Set atop the other trash, those sins seemed to grow right before his very eyes. They mocked him from the trash. They taunted him. They gave violent need to righteous redemption. They somehow came alive. Therefore, he did only what had to be done. He pulled out the two sheets, carried them over to the fireplace and with match lit the paper to flame, destroying the need and the fury and the hatred he couldn’t find his way past.

  As his eyes watched the sheets burn, then turn into small pile of ash, the pain in his gut grew into something far worse, far more deadly.

  Remorse pushed away the guilt.

  Christian stood, bowed his head, swallowed down his sudden shame, and walked back to the desk. How could he be so selfish? Other men who had possession of this journal confessed their sins without remorse. How dared he think his sins far less than theirs or that he was above the failures of mortal man?

  He sat down, grabbed pen in hand, and rewrote word for word what he’d easily destroyed by flame. If anyone looked inside this private journal, let him or her do so with a cleared conscience. Reverend Christian Mohr was going to clear his own conscience by making it a permanent record. He wasn’t going to hide how he felt about Sara. Nor what he felt about Beale. He was going to script what he must, and come what may.

  It did his soul good to confess these sins. Let that goodness fill his he
art, body, and mind . . . let it take over to where he can be able to release his past and start looking forward to a future.

  Perhaps then he could start to feel alive again.

  Five minutes later, Christian lowered his pen, closed the journal by way of heavy sigh, and gently placed the leather bound pages back into the bottom drawer. An even heavier sigh brought him to his feet.

  He turned and found Sara at the door. As late as it was and due to the circumstances of their evening thus far, he’d thought her to be in bed.

  More in point, he’d hoped her to be in bed.

  She was fully dressed and looked ill at ease. Had she seen what was done in here? Was she ashamed she’d been spying on him?

  No. This did not look to be the case. Sara looked troubled in thought, not caught in deed.

  Christian wanted to move toward her, take Sara in his arms, and tell her all would be good again. Unfortunately, he could not make the initial step forward even if his life depended on it. Something was holding him back from going to her. Something was telling him to give her the space she needed—the space they both needed.

  Something, as well, was telling him that the next five seconds of his life wasn’t going to be tolerable simply by how she stood at his open door, wringing her hands, and her delicate cheeks wrought with an emotion he’d never before seen.

  Sara took a sudden step forward. She came farther into his study by moving slowly until within five feet from him. “I need to tell you something,” she said.

  By the way these six terrible words sounded in his ears, and by the strange way she was suddenly acting, Christian was all ears. He swallowed the lump in his throat, and with his own held breath stared into the most incredible blue eyes a man would ever want to look into.

  He shoved his hands deep into his pockets, responding, “Okay.”

  That one word became the only word produced out of his mouth.

  Sara looked as though she didn’t know where to start. She seemed caught at a crossroad; locked out, due to dire truth, and wanting in by the pure hands of fate alone. One wrong move, one wrong word, and by the will of God she would burst into flame.

  “Do you want to sit down?” he asked, trying to ease her into announcing whatever she had on her mind. There were chairs scattered about the room. Surely, they could sit. His legs were weakening by the second the more he stared at her face.

  Sara shook her head. “No. What I have to say . . . Well, I have to just come out and say it, hold nothing back, then accept the consequences as my due.”

  His brows rose, as did his curiosity.

  “I appreciate that you opened your home to me,” she started. “No one ever has.”

  Christian’s head snapped back, whiplashed by her thanks. His tone turned suddenly crisp. “I thought we were already past this, Sara. You need a place to stay. I have that place. If this is because of what I have done or said when outside . . .”

  “No. This is not because of what you or I have done—or said while outside. And I know there is nowhere else for me to go right now.” She sighed, the sound heavy, then she turned her face from his to hide her tears.

  The muscles in Christian’s legs regained movement only by the sight of Sara wrought with fear. He took a step forward. Then another. “If this has something to do with what happened when we were in the woods, or what I told you, I can explain . . .”

  Sara lurched back. She held up her hand to keep him arms’ reach away. “No. It isn’t that, either. It is, well, when we were in the woods . . . by that grave,” she started, obviously under strong emotional strain he couldn’t quite fathom the reason for.

  Sara’s next words were stalled due to the startling cascade of her tears. Christian didn’t know what could have possibly brought on such a strong outpouring of waterworks, yet those tears drew him like moth to flame. He knew he had to wait until she told him all of what was on her mind else he wouldn’t be able to stop the torrential flow. Nor he to have found the underlying cause of what was troubling her so.

  “Yes?” he asked, trying to prod that reason out of her.

  Sara’s gaze rose. The tears slid down her face unchecked.

  The words, “Your wife? She died eight years ago? August 23rd?” startled Christian beyond anything ever felt.

  Reverend Christian Mohr swiftly realized why that was.

  The actual day his wife died hadn’t been on her headstone. Unless Sara had somehow dug into his history, she would never have known that date. Christian was living in a homemade Hell he could not seem to get out of because of Beale’s affair and death. Moreover, the only way to get past Hell’s entrance without being drawn in was to purposely leave the date his wife died off her headstone.

  Giving a date carved into the marble, as a permanent reminder in permanent form, would have made the truth far too painful to bear. It was certainly on record at the county courthouse. It was not set in stone.

  Sara took a deep breath right in front of him, held it for what looked to be as long as she could, then let it come out as mortally wounding words to his conscience.

  “I may have been the one who killed your wife.”

  After the initial shock to Sara’s rather ill-timed confession, Christians’ feet found ground. He moved forward and grabbed her by both arms.

  “What do you mean . . . may have?” He knew a shotgun blast to the chest would’ve made less of an impact on his body.

  Sara wrenched from his grasp as if his touch disgusted her. He tried to get her back into his reach but she made this quest futile.

  “I asked you a question, Sara.”

  Christian had to hold his breath for the dreaded answer. A breath that was far too painful to keep inside his lungs for more than ten full seconds.

  Sara would not answer him. She turned her back on him, fell to her knees, put her head into her hands, and sobbed uncontrollably on his study floor.

  Christian went down on both knees as well. He turned her into his arms, this time without argument. His mouth set near her ear, he asked again, “What do you mean . . . may have?”

  Every ounce of strength was being yanked from his body. Every thought and incoherent muttering inside his brain jumbled all together. To say he was beyond shocked . . .

  Sara raised her face, the tears fell harder still, and she blurted out, “Oh, God! Christian! I don’t know how to begin or even how to tell this to anyone, or why something is even forcing me too, but I hit a car, August 23rd, and I ran that car off the road. I didn’t do a damn thing about it once it happened. Nothing at all!”

  Truly surprised he could even speak he rasped out, “Where Sara?” The reverend part of his mortal soul was kicking into overdrive. The part that comforted the weak, gave pity to the poor, and shelter to the needy.

  The man part of his being wanted to run and hide, never look back until such a time as when the strangling of his heart faded. The man part of his being wanted quick answers.

  His hands slipped from her and balled into fists at his sides.

  Sara tipped her head up and stared him right in the eyes. In that one single moment, Christian had his answer as if shouted into his ear. Where it had been didn’t matter. Who it had been was going to change his life from this moment forward. A life he never would have expected changed by another’s hand.

  He tried once again to gain answer in the form of confession. “Where Sara?”

  She shook her head. He could see she was not ready to tell him more of her tragic tale. Nevertheless, he had to know if the woman in his arms, the woman he’d opened his home to and was sheltering when no one else would, the woman he was falling hard for in so short amount of time had been the actual cause of his wife’s premature death.

  A careless hit and run driver caused Beale’s accident. He needed to know if Sara Ruby was even capable of such a horrific crime.

  Christian had to be told if Sara was even capable of hiding eight harsh years of her life from all others.

  “Where Sara?” he
prodded again.

  Again, she shook her head.

  “Let it out. Please? You must tell me,” he tried coercing, to no avail his begging falling upon deaf ears.

  All she would let out was more of her tears.

  “If you tell me where this happened, we can somehow work through the consequences of your actions together. We can figure out what next to do. I can help you.”

  His only vice against the icy grip on his heart was to deny what he felt for her for as long as he could.

  Sara shook her head. She tried to stand—only he wouldn’t let her. She tried to push out of his embrace.

  He would not allow her an escape without answer.

  She tried to shame him by glaring at his face; only he was well past being shamed.

  Together, they had come to an impasse in the journey of life, and it was up to both if one or the other would actually survive the crossing. By the amount of furious burning inside his chest, by the look in her watery gaze, and by their held breaths, any chance for survival seemed slim to none.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The moment Sara had viewed the name Beale on that headstone she knew her life was going to change, and not change to the better.

  She’d felt sick to her stomach while waiting for Christian’s return from the dark woods. Sick, wrought with dread, it had been all she could do not to vomit once back in her bedroom.

  The man who had her trapped in his grasp, and was so unwilling to let her go, was the reason Sara’s past hit her so damn hard on her walk back to the house.

  Reverend Mohr didn’t deserve what was about to happen to him. He did not deserve the agony she could see in his eyes, and feel in the warm fingers attached to her arms. Christian didn’t deserve anything but what the truth would give him.

  Nor would he deserve the looks and stares eventually gained, once she brought what happened out in the open. He was a kind and decent person, and she was nothing more than a total fraud. Yet she had to tell him the truth else they could not have a future—and only lies and deceit would then bind them together.