by Selena Kitt
“I am,” she insisted, looking up at him, hopeful. “Does this mean… are we… can we…?”
He smiled at her hesitation, but didn’t help her out.
“Are you going to train me?” she whispered.
“What do you think I’ve been doing?” He laughed, shaking his head. “You don’t need the fancy joint and all the equipment you know. As a personal trainer, I could train anyone, anywhere, using anything. I can do the same as a Dom.”
“Well don’t tell that to Fitness Craze.” She smiled, nuzzling her cheek against his chest, her heart soaring, but then she thought of something that hadn’t occurred to her before. “But… what about… do you have any other… you know… clients?”
He frowned, lifting her chin so he could look into her eyes. “You’re not a client, Katie.”
“No?”
“No, you’re my…” He hesitated and she watched him struggle, waiting. “You’re my kitten.” He seemed satisfied with that, and so was she, and he embraced her tightly. “I guess this means my basement is all for you now. Starting tonight.”
“Tonight?” Her eyes widened.
“Oh yes.” Liam nodded, his smile grim. “You’re going to be punished for interrupting me at work when I told you to wait.”
“Ohh…” Her ass clenched at the thought. She looked at him, considering. “You’re really going to do this… only with me? Are you sure?”
“Yes.” He pressed his lips to her forehead and she felt his breath, warm and sweet. “Life doesn’t throw naked, crying submissives at my feet every day, you know.”
She flushed. “So you knew from the beginning?”
“I knew when I asked you to show me, that night in the car, and you did.” He caressed her cheek and she took his hand in hers, turning it over and kissing his palm, just like she had then.
The knock on the door made them both jump.
“Damnit.” He kissed her again, quickly this time, but hard. “My place. Tonight. The basement.”
“But… I don’t know how much of a deterrent punishments are, really, to being a brat, when so far, the punishments have been so…” She sighed happily.
He chuckled. “You’ll learn.”
Liam let her go, striding to answer the door and as Katie watched him, she knew he was absolutely right.
She’d always been a quick study.
Emily and the Priest
Whenever it was Father Mark’s day in the confessional, the line of girls stretched around the corner and into the vestibule. Most of them would wait all day to see him if they had to, and Emily thought it was amusing Father Mark probably didn’t know he was the one many of the girls were talking about when they confessed to “lustful thoughts.”
Emily knew she was just as guilty, and she would have to admit her thoughts in the confessional on Saturday, but she was unable to stop herself, even when he was wearing his cassock and collar. Emily wondered if Jenny, her disgruntled roommate sitting rigidly beside her, was having the same problem. The two of them sat across from Eve and Alexis, Father Mark closing their semi-circle. Alexis was crying, and she wouldn’t look at anyone, even her own roommate, Eve, sitting on her right.
“Sometimes things that cause us heartbreak at first are really blessings in disguise.” Father Mark handed Alexis a Kleenex and looked at Emily. She felt her heart lurch in her chest when she met his dark green eyes and he smiled at her bemused look. “How are you feeling about all of this, Emily?”
“Oh… uh…” She stammered, looking around at the girls’ faces, now all focused on her. “To tell you the truth? I don’t mind so much.” She glanced over at the blonde sitting beside her, the girl who had made fun of her since the beginning of the year, from the very first day Emily had put her “unfashionable” bedspread on her bed, the one her grandmother had crocheted. From the start, Emily had been judged and labeled too awkward and a little too chubby to keep up with her tall, athletic roommate.
She couldn’t prove it, of course, but she suspected it was her roommate who had been pestering her since the beginning of the year, resetting her alarm clock so she was late for classes, gluing her bottle of shampoo closed, putting baby powder in her blow dryer, and replacing her toothpaste with Orajel. Her mouth had been numb all morning from that little stunt. The truth was, the news that Jenny wanted a new roommate hadn’t been a shock—it had been a welcome surprise.
“See, Alexis,” Eve piped up. She was a leggy blonde as well—she and Jenny could have been born twins—and she liked to show it off, her uniform skirts always looking far shorter on her long, slender legs, especially when she crossed them, like she was doing now. “Emily doesn’t mind. I don’t see what you’re crying about.”
Emily spoke up, talking to Alexis, but she looked directly at Eve. “Just because someone doesn’t want to hang out with you, doesn’t make you a bad person. I think it says more about them than it does about you, to be honest.”
“Eve and I just get along better, that’s all.” Jenny snorted and rolled her eyes as Alexis burst into new sobs, covering her face with her hands. “We have way more in common, you know? We’re just more the same type of girl. It’s that simple.”
“Yes, you are.” Emily agreed, and Eve sighed, shaking her head and making a face at Jenny. Father Mark caught the look, frowning, but didn’t say anything. Emily traced the lines on her plaid uniform skirt. “I think you guys would make perfect roommates.”
“That’s very generous of you, Emily.” Father Mark reached for another Kleenex and handed it to Alexis, who hid her ruddy cheeks and nose behind it. They were almost as red as her frizzy, crimson hair. “And it’s okay to be sad about it, Alexis. Change can be difficult.”
“Honestly, I think…” Emily took a deep breath and just said it. “I think it could be fun.”
“Fun?” Alexis looked up from her tissue, surprised. “Rejection is fun for you?”
“Well, no.” Emily wasn’t about to tell her how used to rejection she’d become since starting her freshman year of college. “But why would I hang around where I’m not wanted? And from what I know of you, I think you’re pretty awesome. I’d be happy to be your roommate.”
“Really?” Alexis sniffed, pushing a frizzy mass of auburn hair out of her eyes. She offered Emily a tentative smile.
“Yeah, really.” Emily smiled back, and she knew in that moment that they were going to be roommates.
It took another twenty minutes of talking and “processing” for Alexis to come to the same conclusion, but in the end, that’s exactly what they decided. In fact, Jenny and Eve left looking kind of let down and confused by the way Emily and Alexis smiled and talked about moving all of Emily’s stuff into Alexis’s room. Eve would be moving into the room Emily had miserably shared with Jenny since the beginning of the year.
“Oh, Emily, can I talk to you for a minute?” Father Mark touched her shoulder and she looked back at him, her heart instantly threatening to stop. Jenny and Eve exchanged looks, whispering together as they took off down the hall.
Emily waved a reluctant Alexis on, back toward the dorms. “I’ll meet you at your room!”
“Our room,” Alexis corrected her loudly, clearly for Jenny and Eve’s benefit. They were still whispering at the end of the hallway. Alexis had obviously caught on to the fact that, while the two blondes wanted to live together, they evidently didn’t want their rejected roommates to feel happy about it.
“Have a seat.” Father Mark closed the door of his office behind him, nodding at the chair Emily had just vacated.
“Am I in trouble?” She sank slowly down, looking at him across his desk with big eyes as he settled into his chair.
He smiled, shaking his head, and Emily visibly relaxed. “No, I just wanted to catch up.”
She and Father Mark had semi-weekly talks. She’d started going to him after the pranks began—he was the school psychologist—but she’d refused to tell him her suspicions about Jenny being the culprit, and their conversation
s had eventually turned to other things. She enjoyed them immensely, and she had a feeling he did too.
“But I did want to tell you your mother called me. Again.”
“What now?” She sighed. Her mother had come to him with one concern after another all year long, even though Emily had stopped telling her about all the mean tricks the girls had continued to pull. Emily suspected her mother just liked chatting up Father Mark. Not that she could blame her.
“She’s just concerned about you.” He leaned forward, looking concerned himself. “I know what it’s like to have an overbearing parent, trust me.”
“Your mom too?”
“My dad.” He leaned back in his chair, putting his feet up on his desk. It had been strange at first, seeing him so casual in his cassock and collar, but she was used to it now. “Some day you’ll look back and realize your mom just loves you and wants the best for you.”
“So you and your dad get along now?”
Father Mark hesitated. “Unfortunately, I haven’t talked to him in years.”
“Well, gee, Father, that was some pep talk.” Emily snorted in laughter.
He shrugged. “We had a falling out. We’re both very stubborn people.”
“But he’s your dad!” she protested. “Whatever it was, you should call him. Talk to him. Even though my mom’s a pest, I can’t imagine cutting her out of my life.”
“It was the other way around.”
“Oh.”
He smiled and dropped her a wink. “But see, now you feel better about your mother don’t you?”
She did. “Sneaky.” She stuck her tongue out at him.
He laughed. “So… be honest. Have there been any more incidents?”
Of course, she lied. “No.”
She wasn’t about to tell him about last week’s prank—someone had put her name and number on the bathroom wall at St. Luke’s offering free blowjobs to all interested parties, apparently, because her cell phone hadn’t stopped ringing since, asking for service. She’d let the battery die and hadn’t recharged it, realizing at that moment she’d probably missed her mother’s weekly calls. But she wasn’t going to tell her, or Father Mark, anymore. She’d learned to keep her mouth closed, because no one could do anything about it. Telling people—from their dorm mother, Sister Francine, to Father Mark, who told her he’d talked about it with Bishop Avery, who ran the school—hadn’t stopped the pranks. In fact, they’d gotten worse. So she had just decided to ignore them as much as she could and hope it would go away.
“I have a feeling, now that you’re switching roommates, there won’t be any more issues.” He gave her a pointed look and she flushed. She wouldn’t confess her suspicions about her roommate, but he seemed to know anyway.
“Maybe.” Emily shared the same hope, and although she hadn’t been the one who initiated the roommate change, she was grateful. She and Alexis had a world religions class together and although they didn’t sit next to each other, they got along well enough. Maybe she was finally seeing a light at the end of the tunnel.
“How are you doing otherwise? How are classes?”
“Good. I’m loving my art classes, as usual.” She smiled at his interest. Father Mark was always so kind. She had wanted to go to the College for Creative Studies, and had been accepted, but her mother decided that a catholic college would be better for her than art school. Emily hadn’t had much of a choice, since her mother was paying for it all. “Thanks for loaning me the book on Catholic saints, by the way. It was just what I was looking for.”
“So are you going to tell me which saint you were researching?” He tented his fingers and looked at her. Sometimes when he looked at her, she felt almost naked, like he was seeing not just through her clothes, but fully into her somehow.
“Oh, it wasn’t for a class.” She flushed. “It was just for me.”
He cocked his head at her. “Which one called to you?”
“Saint Lucy.” There was no point not telling him. She knew he’d get it out of her eventually. He had a way of making her want to confess things, even when she wasn’t in the confessional. He nodded, just waiting, somehow knowing she was going to continue, and she did. “She’s the patron saint of the blind. I had a dream I was going blind.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Scary?”
“No, actually. I dreamed I was going blind, but I could see everything. I was just seeing it…from inside.” She glanced at him, seeing the quizzical look on his face. “It’s hard to explain.”
“I think I understand.” He leaned forward, putting his feet on the floor, elbows on his desk. She could see the dark hairs covering his forearms. “Do you know how Lucy lost her sight?”
“Yes. She plucked out her own eyes and sent them to the man who was in love with her.”
“Why, do you think?”
Emily shrugged. “Well, the book said it was because she wanted to give her heart to God, not to a mortal man. So when her admirer said she had beautiful eyes, she plucked them out to prove her beauty wasn’t external, and she was devoted only to God.”
“Why do you think she did it?”
“I think…” Emily looked up, meeting his eyes fully. “I think she was afraid.”
“Afraid? Of what?” Father Mark looked surprised. “Doesn’t it take a great deal of courage to pluck out your own eyes?”
“I think it was cowardice.” She bit her lip, watching his reaction. “I think she was afraid of love.”
Father Mark stood, pacing for a moment, contemplative, then coming around to the other side of the desk to lean against it in front of her. “But Lucy loved God.”
“Yes,” Emily agreed, looking up, up, into his handsome face. “But she was afraid of men. Of the way they looked at her. Admired her. I think she wanted to make herself ugly, so no one would notice her.”
He seemed to contemplate this, and she noted the way his gaze fell to her hemline, where she was playing with the edge of her uniform skirt.
“But God restored her sight,” he reminded her.
“Yes, and made her eyes more beautiful than ever.”
“Proving that no matter what you do, you can’t hide inner beauty.” He smiled, reaching out to tuck a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “You’re a very beautiful girl, Emily. There’s just no hiding it.”
Emily’s heart swelled in her chest, even though she knew she shouldn’t be feeling what she was. He was so close she could smell him, a clean scent, like soap, and something else, masculine and heady. She was intoxicated by his dark green gaze, fixed in her chair, all of their long conversations constellated in that moment, hours spent in this office talking about everything from school and her scholarship to one of the most prestigious Catholic girls’ colleges in the country, to her overprotective mother and her long-dead father whose image glowed like an angel in the distance of her memory.
“I don’t try to hide it with you.” She turned her face so his palm was cupping her cheek, relishing the touch of his skin against hers. Was this really happening? “You make me feel beautiful.”
“You are. You really are,” he whispered hoarsely, his thumb moving along the line of her jaw, sending little shivers through her.
“I love you, Father.” Emily turned and kissed his palm, eyes closed, breathing in his scent, her confession bubbling up without thought. “I love you.”
The silence stretched between them and she didn’t need to open her eyes to feel his shock; she could see it clearly enough with her eyes closed. But he didn’t move his hand from her cheek, didn’t withdraw. Instead, his hand moved down to her shoulder, his finger moving along the sensitive area of skin over her collarbone, tracing it under the open V of her blouse. She held her breath, waiting, hoping, praying, not daring to move.
“Emily…” He whispered her name and the sound was heaven. “Oh God, help me…”
He kissed her and the sensation carried her skyward. She wrapped her arms around his neck, standing to meet him, reveling in the hot pre
ss of his lips, the way he gathered her to him, pressing his hands to the small of her back so her hips met his under his robe. There was no mistaking the hard steel of him pressed against her pelvis.
And then he was letting her go, gasping, apologizing, waving away her attempts to reengage him. She couldn’t believe what had just happened—and clearly he couldn’t either.
“Please,” he begged, turning toward the window. She saw his hand trembling as he lifted it to his pale face, covering his eyes. “Please you have to… you have to go.”
She did as he asked, her heart still pounding, her mouth warm from his kiss. She floated back to the dorms, unmindful of the cutting October wind and the fact she wasn’t wearing a coat. Jenny and Eve had already thrown her stuff into boxes and left them outside the door. Even that didn’t dishearten her. Nothing could, not anymore. She had seen the truth in his eyes before he turned away. He loved her too. She was sure of it. She just didn’t know what it meant, what they were going do about it.
Emily dragged her boxes of stuff down the hall and knocked tentatively on her new roommate’s door. Alexis, still red-nosed and red-eyed, stood there blinking at her for a moment before offering a smile and swinging the door wide. She had changed out of her uniform and was wearing a pair of pink flannel pajamas.
“Hey.” Emily smiled back, tugging one of the boxes into the room. She was trying hard to forget what had happened in Father Mark’s office, and moving all her stuff into her new room seemed like a good distraction. “You ready for a new roomie?”
Alexis sniffed, grabbing the lip of another box and dragging it in. “Jenny’s such a bitch.”
“Yeah, well, they deserve each other.” Emily eyed the stripped twin bed in the corner, butted up to an empty desk.
“I guess you’re right. But I think Eve was just influenced by Jenny’s evil. It’s like she’s crossed over to the dark side or something.” Alexis sat on her bed, watching as Emily started making her bed. “Do you like American Idol?”
