I sat enamored as his voice thickened and he continued. “St. Francis of Assisi said ‘We should all realize that no matter where or how a man dies, if he is in the state of mortal sin and does not repent, when he could have done so and did not, the Devil tears his soul from his body with such anguish and distress that only a person who has experienced it can appreciate it.’”
My heart skidded to a halt, breaking with the realization that Bastien held himself to the fire. He wasn’t blaming me for tempting him—not at all. He was cutting himself for being tempted. My thoughts, along with my face, fell, Lucy’s hand patting my knee for a moment, just enough of an emotional outreach that tears welled in my eyes.
What had Bastien been through in his early years to have such a sense of…self-loathing? I tuned out the remainder of Mass, going through the motions as we sang the final hymn, then filed one by one down the steps of the church.
Except, I went out the back door while all eyes were turned elsewhere. Lucy probably hadn’t even noticed I’d disappeared behind her until it was too late and she was shaking hands with Father Bastien.
My first instinct was to track down Bastien and tell him he was out of his mind delivering that particular liturgy during this time, but then I thought it wasn’t my business. None of it was.
We were nothing, after all.
Despite what Bastien might think, we hadn’t gone further and never would.
All of this dancing around each other was only serving to drive me mad.
And I had so many more things I could be doing.
Like organizing some winter community events.
Or taking a few classes.
Maybe getting on with my life.
I bundled the chunky scarf around my neck a little snugger, staggering headfirst into the biting winter wind, when two heavy hands clamped around my elbows, sliding me along the side of the church, back to brick, lips hovering just out of reach of mine.
“You have to stop doing this in public,” I begged.
“But this is acceptable in private?” His hand slipped down my sleeve, twining our fingers and ushering me back into the side door of the church. He pulled me behind him, the broad shoulders enveloping me in his shadow until we stopped in the darkest corner of the sanctuary. Behind the pulpit where he’d just been speaking, a hand-wrought cross enveloped in fresh evergreens shielded us out of view from any other vantage point.
We were suddenly so alone in a space that’d been so full minutes ago.
“I’ve found myself at a bit of an impasse, my Tressa. See, I can’t lose you, but I can’t keep you either.”
My heart strummed as if his fingers played its heartstrings, adrenaline coursing through my veins when his second hand brushed my thigh, a fresh wave of addiction sending me a little higher.
Lucy was right.
I’d been a horrible fool thinking I could keep myself from falling.
The damage was done, and the only way out would be through the darkness.
“Bastien.” I sucked in a breath as his fingers tightened at my thighs, pulling me a little closer to him. His lips at my throat singed my nerves, butterfly-light kisses trailing down the hollow and hovering just at the top of my neckline.
“My beautiful Héloïse. You and I destined for discontent from the start, and I your darkest sin.” His tender words, lilted with his literary language and pulling emotion from my eyes. I knew the story he referenced Héloïse was a French nun, fated to spend a lifetime loving her very own philosopher and holy man, Abelard, from afar. I’d read their love letters in high school, the depths of their devotion and desperation still profoundly haunting to this day.
“You’ve been doing your best to avoid me, and I’m supposed to pretend I don’t notice?” His tone turned firm, commanding. “Are you prepared to repent?”
I swallowed, drugged by this touch. “Are you?”
His thumbs worked my delicate skin, which grew more and more sensitive as he moved closer and closer to my core. “Don’t test me. I’ve already desecrated the sacred sacrament. By the edicts of the church, I am no longer in a state of grace.” The pad of his thumb brushed the seam of my pants, the damp heat beneath proof of how much my body craved him. “I’m already damned, precious dove.”
I ducked my head, one of his palms spanning the expanse of my back before he pressed his hard body against mine, sliding us both against the cool brick walls and ensuring I felt every hard, raw inch of him.
“Broken love is more dangerous and more intoxicating than any other kind.” His thumb dragged across my temple with slow precision. “Just the thought of you shreds me open, I don’t know if I spend more time dreading your proximity or desperate for just one touch. You’re a dangerous addiction for my heart, one that leaves me feeling ravaged and raw—like I’m walking around with a wound that I never want to heal.”
There was no mistaking how Father Bastien felt.
And I certainly couldn’t pretend I didn’t think of him every waking moment of my day.
“I just…” he whispered against the heartbeat at my throat, “I can’t see a way out of this that doesn’t involve eternal destruction.”
His head bent, and my fingers stroked through the threads of his loose hair before he dropped to the floor, clutching at my thighs and pressing his lips against my abdomen.
My strong lion, reduced to his knees.
“Trust me, I’ve tried. I’ve tried to imagine a thousand different scenarios, but none of them are good, Tressa. And none of them involve you and me riding off into the sunset.” His voice was gravelly, delicious. I hummed because I didn’t know what else to do to keep my hips from bucking against his.
“I’m not the shepherd in this scenario.” Desperate eyes held mine. “I’m the wolf.”
I gulped, a spray of emotion webbing into my chest as I thought about how very wrong he was.
He was my everything.
I, the dark angel, and he, the saint who accepted without judgment. The man who’d fed me and sheltered me and brought my bruised heart back to life. He gave me purpose and he gave me motivation to be better, and for that, he would forever be priceless.
I pressed my lips together, uncomfortable with the cascade of emotions welling inside of me, willing the levee to hold back my heartbroken tears before Bastien’s lips were on my skin.
Littering my cheeks and temples with kisses, hovering atop each of my eyelids in perfect time. There’s a certain beauty in this forbidden submission he’s forced me into, at least, in the way he slowly inflicts his mark upon me with each sweep of his tongue, each stroke of his hands. Soon, he has me coming undone beneath him, unraveling into something I hardly recognize. My mind and body lost their sense of sin in favor of giving myself to him in crashing waves of unconstrained bliss, the shockwaves lasting long after his touch.
Lucy was right.
So was Bastien.
I was the one who’d so wrongly misjudged this situation.
My heart fell, slivered into pieces on the floor at our feet. His touch is a failed fuse struck with a white-hot match. We possess all the potential in the world with a permanent expiration date hanging over our heads. We are our own lost cause, doomed before takeoff.
I would never recover from Bastien. Even I knew that in love, only so much can be sacrificed before there’s nothing left to give.
“Tressa, if there were a way out for me…” He gulped at my neck, one hand digging into my waist, desperation running through his taut muscles. “If I could find a way to make this work…”
My lips began a slow tremble.
This.
We’d been reduced to a this.
Such a small word for such a big feeling.
Loving him was a sin, and I was his prisoner.
I pushed my hands against his wide chest, forcing my watery eyes to meet his for a moment.
A quiet nod of knowing before I slipped out of the cage of his dominant arms and ducked through the door that led into the nav
e of St. Michael’s, quieter than a church mouse.
Just as I approached the vestibule doors, one of Bastien’s older catechism students barreled down the stairs from the choir, eyes locked on my approaching form with a wicked teenage boy grin.
My heart clenched in my chest, wondering just what kind of view he’d had from the choir loft and if anyone else was with him. “Hi, Ronnie John.”
“Ms. Tressa.” He winked once as a second boy came down the stairs, a wild laugh accompanying him, before he reached the bottom step and high-fived his companion.
“Hey, Ms. Tressa. We’re lookin’ for Father Bastien. Did you just come from the sacristy?”
I couldn’t reply, convinced they knew exactly where I was coming from and whom I was with. Could they smell my attraction to him? Was arousal from Bastien’s touch stamped on my face like a crimson A?
I nodded awkwardly when I realized they were still waiting on my reply, waving my hand over my shoulder to indicate Father Bastien was, in fact, in his innermost sanctuary, the very place I’d just come from.
They thanked me, buzzing by and down the silent pews of St. Mike’s, beelining for the holy man who’d just given me my first orgasm under someone else’s hand.
The hand of God, in this case.
I suppressed an audible groan at my own cliché.
This brand of pleasure felt crushing.
I pushed through the front door of the cottage a few minutes later, waving at Lucy with only a little bit of shame over everything that’d been unraveling around me these last few weeks.
Without a word, I sidestepped into the kitchen, opening the small pantry door to get another bottle of wine down from the shelf where I’d obtained the last.
White, this time.
Didn’t want to send my liver into total shutdown with red another night in a row. I pulled a wineglass from the shelf and turning to find Lucy, arms crossed, one eyebrow arched and aimed at me.
“Hey,” I said breathlessly.
“Evening.” She smiled, glancing down at my prizes. “Celebrating something?”
“Nope.” I shook my head, skirting around her and down the hall to my room.
“Maybe.” Lucy was hot on my heels, hand snatching the wineglass from my hand before I could even begin to pour. “Just maybe we should rethink a second round.”
I tossed the white on my bed and shrugged out of my coat. “You have no idea what happened tonight.”
“So, enlighten me on today’s events.” Lucy plopped down next to me, crossing her legs, ready for girl talk.
“I’d rather not.” I reached for the glass, smiling politely when I wrested it from her sober little fingers.
“You should talk to someone.”
“Oh? Maybe I should go to confession, then?” I snarked.
Her eyes widened, the impossibility of that option running like cold fire through my veins.
I huffed, unscrewing the cap on the bottle and sniffing, the sharp smell of vinegar strong, but not something I couldn’t handle. I had an entire love affair to get over, after all.
“You know you’re not alone.”
“Excuse me?” I poured the first glass to the halfway mark, thinking I’d take it easy on Lucy’s advice. At least while she was monitoring me with that eagle eye.
“You’re not the first woman to fall in love with a priest.”
“Lucy!” I spat out the wine. “I’m not. That’s not what… I don’t think that’s the appropriate sentiment for what we are.”
“Ha!” She laughed, pointing like a silly detective. “But there is a we.”
I sighed, taking another long swallow. “There’s definitely a we.”
Instead of smiling, she frowned, patting my knee with her hand before standing. “Just Google it, that’s all I’m saying.”
“I’m not going to Google it. That’s ridiculous, Lucy.”
She arched her eyebrow in what was now becoming her infamous look before backing out of the room, door closing quietly in her absence.
I sighed, finishing the rest of the glass in my hand and then pouring a new round, to the brim this time.
“This shit is terrible,” I sighed, already feeling a little buzzy in my head. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.” I took a sip. “My last confession was…” I sipped again, pressing the rim to my lips as I thought back to the last time I’d confessed to Father Martin. The last time I saw him.
My memory was hazy, partly because of the wine, mostly because I’d blocked out that period of my life.
While I couldn’t remember much of anything around that time, my memory of that last confession was razor-sharp.
It was late on a Sunday afternoon, sun just dipping under the horizon on Halloween night.
I was dressed up as a witch, cheap tulle and a face mask.
I’d only made it to the end of the block trick-or-treating, the October wind far too cold for me, when I realized I’d left the keys to our house in the house, and I’d have to wait until Mom was off work before I could get in.
I’d wandered into St. Michael’s for the warmth, sliding in beside the few parishioners seated outside the confessional as I waited for Father Martin.
After the last confessor had come and gone and Father Martin still hadn’t left his booth, I wandered in, more curious than anything else.
He’d greeted me kindly, pretending not to know who I was, and behind that intricate woven screen, I felt freedom. I took off the witch mask and became myself. For the first time, I felt like I could admit all the things I hadn’t wanted to say out loud.
I told him about the previous weekend, when mom’s boyfriend had woken me out of a dead sleep by getting into my bed in his underwear, asking me to get him another beer.
I could tell he was sleepwalking, or so drunk that he might as well have been, but still, I’d felt more of a man’s body that night than I ever had before and had a zillion questions the morning after, starting with the male anatomy.
When I told Father Martin I’d felt his sword, I hadn’t meant literally so much as…brushed against it.
It wasn’t at all horrifying to say out loud, but thinking back on it, I could understand Father Martin’s alarm.
When Mom had come wandering in after eleven that night, Father Martin had taken her into the rectory while I sat in a pew, eyes on the twelfth Station of the Cross.
The resurrection of Christ.
“Every time I let you out of the house, I regret it.” Mom stomped out of the rectory a moment after she’d entered, snagging my hand and pulling me along behind her and out of the doors of St. Michael’s. Father Martin stood on the top step, watching us as we scurried home in the cold night.
I hadn’t known then what the problem was.
But when Mom forbade me from ever going to St. Michael’s or seeing Father Martin again, I knew perfectly well what had happened. He’d expressed concern for my wellbeing.
So she made sure I’d never see him again.
TEN
Bastien
Sheets of rain coated the windows of the sacristy, the light of stained glass bending and changing form as the rivers of water forged their path. I slipped the velvet folds of the vestments through my fingers as I settled them into their wooden box after I’d finished blessing them with prayers, my traitorous thoughts still on the exchange between Tressa and I just moments ago.
She was right, I couldn’t keep cornering her in public places and confessing my greatest sins to her, but I just couldn’t stop doing it either. When I’d been in school with the Jesuits, they’d taught many tools for practicing the vow of order and silence, overcoming the mind to achieve greater clarity and closeness with God and self—but the Jesuits hadn’t met Tressa Torrado.
So young and naive and tender to life—so in need of a guide to love her through life’s hard knocks.
And then my heart sank as I caught my mind chasing impossible dreams.
And poor Lucy, caught between it all. I had faith that Tress
a wouldn’t divulge the private drama simmering between us, Lucy was a perceptive young soul—I was sure she could feel the tension bouncing between our eyes from across the nave.
I groaned, lifting my eyes back to the watery stained glass just as a bolt of winter lightning streaked the sky, a tall figure, shadowed in dark light, sped down the foggy path in front of Tressa’s cottage. My heart leapt into a triple rhythm before I moved on quick feet through the sacristy, down the wall near the stations of the cross, and out through St. Mike’s vestibule doors.
I was about to call out into the night at the stranger, but they were gone, and instead I found Tressa, her arms cradling her body as she pushed through the doors of her cottage and sped down the path the figure had just been on.
I shook my head, sliding deeper into the shadows as I wondered if I’d really just seen a figure at all—it was impossible that it could be either Lucy or Tressa—this figure was broad-formed and hustled with the unmistakable gate of a man.
Before I could worry myself about that disappearing act, Tressa paused near the big evergreen that rooted the corner of the church yard and looked up, hands swiping at her face as if icy tears were freezing her skin.
I should stay away, everything in me should do the right thing and return to my place in the sacristy—head bowed in prayer. But instead I crossed the icy path to her, firstly afraid that she wasn’t out here alone—secondly I was worried that she wore no jacket, and thirdly—the shades of utter distraught helplessness lining her features made it impossible to turn away.
She shoved her hands in her jean pockets then, moving around the edge of the street to walk further down the sidewalk—further away from St. Mike’s. Had she seen the stranger lurking in the shadows just like I had and that’s what had brought her out? Or was it something else? A revelation? Something about her father?
Her feet sped up, sheets of thick rain crackling like fourth of July sparklers against the snow as it landed and disguising my footsteps a dozen yards behind. When she turned the block and followed along the back of the church property and into a neighborhood that wasn’t well-lit nor had a reputation for being safe late at night—a stray moonbeam caught the angles of her heart-stopping face and I realized what I was seeing: devastation.
REBEL PRIEST Page 7
