The man standing outside Dree’s door was blond and blue-eyed, a man Dree would have thought was the most handsome man she’d ever met, except that she had seen Maxence.
Isaak Yahontov was standing one step away from her door, his hands clasped behind his back. He said, “Perhaps this isn’t the right time or the right place to say this, but we’ve spent a month together, and every day, my admiration for you has grown. You are a beautiful woman, an exceptional nurse, an excellent engineer, and the most wonderful human being I’ve ever met. I would like to see you again after this project is over, spend some time with you, and see if the future could hold anything for us.”
Okay, that was not what Dree had expected.
Dree stammered, “I had no idea you felt like this.”
Isaak shrugged. “My apologies. I’m bad at this. I’ve never had to tell a woman I’m interested in her before. Usually, they’re climbing all over me. All I have to do is open my hands, and they fall into them.”
Dree laughed. “I don’t know what to say.”
“From what I understand, you are in some unusual circumstances, and I don’t know if you have a phone. Thus, I will leave you with my contact information. Send me a text or however you want to get in touch with me.” He held out a business card to her, but he looked up. His bright blue eyes caught hers. “Or, I’m taking a helicopter back to Kathmandu tomorrow, where my plane will be waiting to take me back to Paris. Come with me. No strings attached. We’ll just have some coffee and talk. If that works out, then a few meals, maybe a walk through the Tuileries. Nothing else.”
The option of leaving Nepal and Maxence boiled through her.
Being near Maxence wasn’t good for her. It was like walking around with forbidden fruit in her pocket. Eventually, she was going to bite it.
Her hand reached across the infinite space between them, and she took his card. “I’ll think about it. Thank you, Isaak. I’m not sure what I’m going to do tomorrow, but I appreciate your offer.”
“As I said, no strings attached. Wait, one string. I would like a cup of coffee with you. We can sit in a lovely Parisian café on the sidewalk, outside, and talk about ourselves and our lives. That’s all. One cup of coffee, that’s all I ask.”
A smile pinched her cheeks. “And where would I be staying?”
He waved his hand in the air. “I will get you a hotel room, if that is what you would like. I will pay for it for as long as you would like to stay there. One cup of coffee, that’s all. Other than that, consider it a free ride on an airplane that’s going to Paris anyway.”
“Okay,” Dree said. “Okay. I’ll think about it.”
They said goodnight, and Dree closed her door and locked it again.
She leaned against the wood and bonked the back of her skull against the door.
Well, that was unexpected.
The world tipped and felt off-kilter after finding the wrong man outside her door.
Maybe Isaak wasn’t the wrong man. Maybe Isaak or some other guy would be the right guy, because Maxence obviously wasn’t the right guy for her.
She stood there until the world felt right on its axis, a world that wasn’t centered around Maxence but was centered around other possibilities.
Getting on a plane out of Kathmandu with Isaak for the price of only a cup of coffee was a perfect idea. Even if she ended up back in Phoenix, even if she ended up back on the sheep ranch in New Mexico, even if she called Sister Annunciata and begged for another mission to Chile or The Congo, she needed to leave Nepal and soon.
Isaak might leave Chandannath by helicopter early the next morning to meet his private plane in Kathmandu for the flight back to Paris.
To a girl who grew up on a sheep farm in New Mexico, that thought sounded so weird in her head.
But if she wanted a ride on his plane, she should tell him right then.
Dree took a deep breath and decided that yes, she wanted to walk away while her mind and her heart weren’t shredded, and she needed to go with Isaak on his plane to Paris the next day.
Dree turned, twisted the lock and knob of her bedroom door, and flung it open.
Maxence stood outside, his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, and he looked at her with dark fire smoldering in his eyes.
Her hand reached out before she could stop herself, grabbed a fistful of his white tee-shirt just below his throat, and yanked him inside her bedroom.
His mouth found hers before the door slammed behind him, and he caught her waist with his hands to crush her against his chest.
She hadn’t kissed him since Paris despite their furtive touches in their tent, and she was starving for him. His tongue pushed into her mouth, stroking hers, and his groan matched her hunger.
Maxence shoved her legs with his muscular thighs, walking her backward to the bed. If he had been anyone else, the insistence and the strength he used to compel her might have scared her, but they had denied themselves for a month. Her body hungered for him from the inside out, wanting to feel his silken curls in her hands, his skin pressing her body into the bed, his cock in her mouth and throat and filling her up inside.
All the reasons she should stop weighed on her, but she yanked the shoulders of his tee-shirt. He contracted his chest and ducked as she pulled it off over his head, baring his shoulders to her palms. His skin was satin and velvet over the iron of his muscles, and she dropped his shirt on the floor.
The backs of her legs hit the bed frame, and she climbed onto the mattress and kneeled on it, making her several inches taller.
His lips captured hers again, and he slipped his hands under the hem of her shirt and found her waistline.
His fingertips stroked her flesh, and she inhaled.
He kissed lower, sucking her skin under her jawline. She arched backward, curving her whole body to press her breasts against his chest but let him mouth her throat. His arm behind her back crushed her against him. His other hand roamed, grasping her breast and teasing the tight point of her nipple through her shirt, and then kneading the soft flesh of her ass.
With almost a snarl, he grabbed her clothes and pulled them away, dragging her shirt over her head and her jeans and panties down her legs. In seconds, she was naked in the cool room, and he grabbed her and squeezed her body against him. His head bowed to her shoulder. His hands were relentless as he explored her body, touching, squeezing, pinching her if it seemed she was paying too much attention to her explorations of his firm, rippled body.
She dragged her fingers over his broad shoulders and the flat ripples of his abs, and he hissed as he inhaled through his teeth. His next bite on her shoulder was more savage, so she wrapped her hand around his muscled ass and gripped the denim-over-steel of his backside.
That earned her a hard pinch of her nipple and a strong push back onto the bed, where she almost bounced, but his hands on her thighs and his mouth between them held her down.
He parted her folds with his tongue and devoured her, sucking and rubbing as her back bowed. She reached behind her head to grab the quilt and hang on. She couldn’t scream. The walls might be thin.
When she’d scooted on the bed too far for his famished attack, he grabbed her ankle and hauled her back to his mouth.
She whipped her head back and forth, trying so hard to be silent. Her body was tightening, the muscles of her hips straining. She couldn’t restrain one soprano whimper.
Another hard yank on her leg pulled her entirely off the bed, and she landed on her knees on the cold floor.
Maxence grabbed a fistful of her hair and yanked her head back. His jeans were already open, and he shoved his massive cock into her mouth and down her throat. She grabbed the bottom of the bed behind her butt for balance.
He whispered, his voice gravelly, “Hands behind your back.”
Dree did.
She clasped her hands behind her, pushing her breasts out, and complied with what he told her to do because she couldn’t imagine doing anything else. If he couldn’t
give her his whole life, if he could only give her that night, she was going to take it.
He rocked his hips forward, shoving his cock into her mouth, pinning her back against the side of the bed and her head between his fist and his cock. Her nose neared the black mat of hair above his root, and the aroma of his clean male body, soap, and the spice and burning oak of his cologne filled her nose and mind.
He jerked, shoving it deeper down her throat, and a tear ran out of the corner of her eye. The rough denim of his jeans scraped her chin.
This wasn’t a blow job. This was claiming every part of her. It wasn’t for his pleasure but for his power.
And her gaping mouth was empty.
She coughed with the openness of her mouth and throat.
He hauled her up by her shoulders and shoved her backward on the bed. He pushed his jeans down his legs, stumbling and leaning on the bed, bending the mattress under her, but then his magnificent body was naked and gleaming in the light from the nightstand and crushing her beneath him.
His mouth grabbed hers again, and his fingers rubbed her clit that was raw from his mouth as he found her opening and guided himself into her.
She bit his shoulder, whispering, “Please, please.”
With one violent thrust, he shoved himself hard into her, and she almost flew off the bed from his invasion of her body. He had her by her shoulders, though, and she couldn’t move. He had impaled her with his cock, slamming her hard, and her fingers found his shoulders. She shouldn’t scream, couldn’t scream.
Her hands curled on his skin and dug in.
His voice in her ear was a growl, “More, more or I’ll fuck you harder.”
“Yes.” She was arching against him, desperate for more of his skin and his body and the rich scent of his cologne like fire, crushed herbs, and natural musk overpowering her. “God, yes. Do it.”
His rough body scraped her clit and inside her, pushing her harder as he shoved her back on the bed, climbed on with his knees, and forced himself deeper into her.
Her head was spinning, and she was breathing too fast, and she clung to him with her fingernails as he barreled into her, crashing his body into hers as she tightened and spiraled higher.
Her mind screamed because her throat couldn’t.
She bucked under him, almost crying, and that last scrape of friction broke through. The orgasm crashed through her, a blast that ripped through the tension and broke her apart, and her hands dug deeper.
Maxence was gasping against her shoulder, a choke in his throat, as the last instinctive jerks ran through his body. His arms tightened around her shoulders.
Dree curled her arms and legs around him because this moment might be all she had.
He didn’t move, but his breath was restless.
She held on.
After a few minutes, he pulled away, the sweat of their coupling running down her sides. She thought Max might just pull on his clothes and leave without a word because the conflict in him must be tremendous, but he held his hand out to her.
She took it.
He led her into the bathroom and washed her body, taking care of her like she was a doll he’d abused.
As he crouched to wash her legs, warm water from the shower rolled over the dark red parallel lines from her nails that crossed the tattooed feathers in his skin. The black silk of his hair clumped as water flowed through it.
She touched his shoulder, and he looked up at her, his dark eyes watching her. She let her fingers trail under his chin, and with just the gentlest pressure, guided him to stand.
He kissed her gently as water covered them, and then he dried her off and carried her to the bed, where he wrapped his body around hers.
Still, he didn’t say anything.
And he left the light on, like he might need to see when he put on his clothes to leave her.
She let the silence drag on because she didn’t want to drive him away with words, any words.
Finally, the pain of not speaking overpowered the fear of driving him away.
She said, “You want to save the world, not just every woman who’s in danger, but everyone.”
His skin moved under her palms as he shrugged.
“You want to be a priest,” she said.
“A Jesuit.”
“And so, there’s no future for us,” she said.
“There is,” he said, and he took her hand, laying their clasped hands on the velvet skin of his chest. “I saw you working out there, pouring your spirit and your life into this project and this country and the people you cared for. You’re an angel sent to Earth to save it. You belong out there with me.”
“I’m not an angel,” Dree said. “I’m a woman. I want a husband and a family. I want to be a wife and a mother to my own children, as well as to be a nurse. I want that love around me all my life, and I don’t want to give that up.”
Maxence’s body tightened under her hands. “I see.”
“You want to be a Jesuit. You want to dedicate yourself to something bigger than yourself, and you—” She sighed. “I saw you at the pulpit. That wasn’t an accident. That’s what you are meant to do. You and I have no future together. You have your future, and I know what I want in mine. They aren’t the same.”
He lifted her hand and kissed her fingers, then the back of her hand, then the inside of her wrist. “We could meet sometimes.”
Dree shook her head. “You’ll break my heart.”
He pressed her hand to his chest between the rounds of his pecs. “You’ll always have mine.”
She wrestled the covers and her body around to push herself up on her elbows. “You don’t seem to want to live the life of a priest.”
“Of course I do,” he said, his eyes drifting away from her.
She didn’t have to confront him on that. It wasn’t her place, or this wasn’t the time. “I’m not going to be the woman you run to for an easy lay when you can’t take it anymore. I’m not your temptation, and I’m not going to wait for the rest of our lives for you to change your mind.”
He nodded, still looking away from her. “But we have the rest of this trip.”
She shook her head. “Tomorrow, I’m going back to Kathmandu and then Paris.”
His muscles tensed under her hands, not like he’d almost jumped up, but like she’d landed a punch to his gut. “You’re burned out.”
“It’s not burnout. I’m a nurse in an inner-city hospital. I work eighteen-hour shifts all the time. I’ve worked forty-hour shifts with a four-hour nap during crises, and I’ve done that for weeks on end when the need is great. I can’t do this with you. I can barely stand the thought of leaving tomorrow. If we did this for two more weeks, I don’t know what I’d do when we had to walk away. I know addiction when I see it, and that’s what’s happening to me. You would tear me apart. My mom always said that when you find yourself in a hole, the first thing you do is stop digging. I have to stop digging myself deeper into this whatever-it-is with you. I need to leave, and I need to leave tomorrow.”
He didn’t say anything for a few long minutes.
Instead, he kissed her slowly, his mouth taking its time to plunder hers, and then he did the same thing with his body.
And she held him in her arms, cradling him as he moved gently in her, their souls melding as their breath mingled in the night.
In the early morning, he dressed and kissed her, saying, “I’ll meet you downstairs before you go to the airport. The first helicopter flight to Kathmandu isn’t until ten.”
Dree curled her arms and knees around a pillow after he left, crushing it so she wouldn’t cry. If she let herself cry, if she allowed the gaping emptiness within her to coalesce into tears and flow through her, she might not leave.
And she had to leave.
Showering again and throwing herself and her backpack together took just a few minutes, and she walked downstairs, feeling a little guilty, to see if Isaak was there yet to take her to the airport with him.
; Before she made the last turn on the stairs, male voices from the lobby rose into the stairwell.
Maxence’s voice said, “No. I renounce. I renounce it all.”
Was Father Booker there, and was Maxence renouncing his deacon vows?
Horror at her influence and exultation warred in Dree—Yes, he was going to walk away from the priesthood, he was going to be hers, they had a chance, there was a path for them.
And then the timbre of his voice leaked through her hopes.
Anger harshened his voice in the way men express terror as outrage.
Dree ran down the stairs.
Chapter Sixteen
Renunciation
Maxence
Maxence’s mind roiled as he stepped down the stairs, his motorcycle boots stomping on each tread.
God grant me sobriety and chastity, but not yet, St. Augustine had prayed.
Please, Lord my God, I beg you as I have begged you for many years, hollow me and let me become an empty shell. Let me have no desires, no senses, no future, and exist without time. Let me want nothing and feel absolutely nothing with all my heart. Allow me to move through the world, soulless and empty, and my husk will do Your work because I cannot stop. My soul is shredded. I want to go with her more than I want to live, and my brother, Pierre, may kill us both if I walk away from the Church and become a threat to him.
Max’s backpack swung against his spine, and he walked into the lobby. His mind was so turned inward that his eyes did not see except to step around the table and benches where they had eaten supper the previous night.
Last night, Dree had been sitting beside him in that booth. The side of his face had been bathed in her warmth, and the occasional brush of her soft clothes against his had drawn lines of sparks over his skin beneath.
And now she, too, would walk away from him.
As she should.
He was a target at the bottom of a pit, surrounded by enemies pointing weapons down at him. Dragging someone else down there was not an option for him. That’s why all of his “slips” were during times when he had eluded his security detail and was free.
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