by Sosie Frost
He hadn’t before, but I’d learned to live without it. “Just who is this devil woman?”
Miley pointed behind me, warding himself with the holy book tucked under his arm.
“There’s the grinch,” he said. “She’s all yours.”
A confident, devastatingly feminine voice finally corrupted what remained of my soul.
“So…Varius Payne.” Her words were a seduction and punishment blended into a forbidden whisper of my name. “You’re Butterpond’s wayward pastor?”
Had I been a praying man, I would have begged for mercy. But I’d lost my faith, and with it, the last shred of my hope.
It was her.
The woman cursed my dreams and blessed my nightmares, but now that I saw her once more in the flesh, there was no doubt.
Glory was the most beautiful creature to escape Eden…and the most dangerous woman this side of Hell.
God help the man who’d claim she came from a rib and not Heaven itself.
Glory’s smile tempted temptation. Her body teased damnation. Her kiss promised redemption.
In her, I’d created a new paradise.
And that was why I’d left.
But Glory said nothing as she offered her hand, hiding a purple cast on her other wrist behind her back.
“Nice to meet you.” Her words burned my blood. “I’m Glory…Hawkins. Butterpond’s pageant coordinator.”
We’d never exchanged names.
Never revealed secrets.
Never thought we would meet each other beyond the sanctity of our hotel room.
I took her hand and pretended the pure sin of her touch wouldn’t drive me to insanity.
“Varius Payne,” I said. “Call me V.”
“Welcome back to Butterpond Community Church, V.” Glory held my stare, a challenge I had no right to accept. “I heard this was once your home.”
She was right. But even a home could become a hell.
I just never expected Glory would be angel sent to save me from the eternal torment.
3
Glory
Well…I was going to hell.
It was good to have that foreknowledge. Felt like I was ahead of the game.
I’d fucked a minister.
I’d fucked a minister without knowing his name.
I’d fucked a minister after months of sexy dances, sinfully explicit games, and begging to suck his cock.
I had to be the most terrible, wicked person in the world. No redeeming this sinner. There was only one place a woman like me went when the dancing stopped, music silenced, and thigh-high boots unlaced.
At least if I went to hell, that gorgeous bastard would meet me there.
For Christ’s sake, why didn’t he tell me he was a minister?
And now, his entire congregation awaited my command.
It’d taken a good two weeks of strict, remorseless discipline before I had the cast of the Butterpond Community Church in any shape for rehearsals. My choreography had become one-part dance lesson and one-part Alcoholics Anonymous session. A million different crises had delayed practices, from a selection of children’s songs threatening the sanctity of Christmas to the cast’s road trip to the hospital for rabies vaccinations upon discovery of a bat colony in the supply closet.
I had one good arm, five weeks until the pageant, and absolutely no forgiveness for the man I’d allowed to break my heart.
I’d spent the last month trying to forget him. Why the hell did he have to be as mouthwatering in person as he was in my guilty fantasies?
Pastor Miley let the doors slam behind him. The crash echoed in the chapel, and the choir broke into a chorus of Hallelujah. Unfortunately, after twenty hours of hunger strike, both sopranos went hypoglycemic. They managed to get to the Lu before collapsing. They offered jazz hands instead.
Great. We were screwed.
And I was left to wrangle Varius Payne all alone.
“So.” My eyebrow’s waggle said everything that wasn’t polite to share in a church. “You’re a minister.”
“Ex-minister.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
If he didn’t look the least bit ashamed, why the hell did I feel so terrible?
I’d never once allowed myself to doubt any of my decisions. Even on stage, I knew my value, and I got the best deals I could from each and every hundred-dollar bill men stuffed into my panties.
Life was too short for regrets, but it sure as hell made the time for tall, dark, and sexy complications.
Varius’s voice rumbled low. Not soft, but gentle. Like he knew everyone in the church would strain to hear his words. Including me.
But I’d listened to his lies long enough.
“I’m not the minister anymore,” he said.
“Good, because we have a lot to discuss.” I crossed my arms. “And you’re not calling in favors from the big guy above to get out of this.”
“What I did before we met is irrelevant.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
“It’s…complicated.”
His vibrant green eyes had dulled since we’d last touched, and he looked like he hadn’t slept since he’d shared my bed.
Good. Neither had I. And it wasn’t for lack of trying. Or wishing. Or imagining him beside me again.
Wondering why he hadn’t called.
Fearing the worst for a man so lost he’d come to me for help.
And knowing the truth about his decision.
Varius got what he’d wanted. Took me to bed. Fucked me like I’d never been fucked before. Then he left, without a word.
I had my own share of sins to wrangle, but it’d be a cold day in Hell before I forgave him.
“So, V…” I kept my voice cool. “You’re the minister who left his church, abandoned his flock, and let a rotating cast of rent-a-ministers get chased off by the demons you call a congregation?”
He met my gaze, unflinching. “Then you’ve heard of me.”
“I can’t believe you’re a minister.”
“Imagine how surprised I am that our pageant coordinator is a strip—”
I wasn’t a woman who panicked. I prevented problems before they started.
My raised hand was the only interruption I needed. V silenced.
“I’m the choreographer and production coordinator.” And that was all that needed to be said. Of course, I was also a stripper with a painfully broken wrist, running on four hours of sleep, hiding an applesauce stain on her leotard, and struggling to teach a narcoleptic Santa Claus his lines. “That is all Butterpond needs to know about my resume, V. You get me?”
He nodded. “Your secret is safe with me.”
“Sure.” I brushed past him. “Because you’re a man worth trusting.”
I attempted to return to the rehearsal. No more fires, so that was an improvement. Now the only thing more blasphemous than Joseph concocting a new baby Jesus out of lunchmeat was the return of the town’s one and only true savior—Varius Payne.
And I thought strutting through the church in a skintight leotard turned heads.
All eyes were on him.
And I hated myself for glancing back.
The preschoolers yielded the stage for Mrs. Mulligan, the only member of the choir capable of hitting the high A in O Holy Night. Unfortunately, the hunger striking choir took great offense to Mrs. Mulligan accepting the solo. While the busybody preferred the word diva to scab, her newfound leading lady status had caused great consternation in not only the churches woman’s group, but Mr. Bartholomew’s weekly poker game. She sang like an angel, bluffed like the devil, and used her newfound fame to schism both the choir and Butterpond’s card club.
Tensions ran high, and the rehearsal was only made worse with the sudden departure of Pastor Miley.
And, just my luck, Varius had yet to leave my side.
I hated how I warmed lingering so close to his broad shoulders, his proud stance, the hardened muscles of his biceps flexing under h
is sleeves.
I lived my life on the stage, and I’d cultivated the perfect persona to ensure I walked out of the club with more tips, and more phone numbers, than any other dancer. But life in Butterpond was a hell of a lot harder than twirling around the pole. I didn’t need to be a part of the church to realize congregational gossip was the only force powerful enough in this world to destroy my future. I didn’t need the little old ladies peeking from under the brims of their hats only to catch a glimpse of my trembling hand.
With one broken wrist, this job was all I had, and the money was already tight enough between hotels, food, and babysitters. I wouldn’t allow anything to jeopardize it.
Including Varius Payne.
I pointed to Mrs. Mulligan. “No one leaves. I still have another hour of this rehearsal. Run through the song. I’ll be back after I take care of this…” I refused to look at the man whose body I’d memorized long ago. “Visitor.”
The supply closet turned costume department was hardly the comforts of our luxury hotel room. I slammed the door behind us, but I didn’t let him speak. First the earrings had to come off. Then I could kick his ass.
“Glory—”
His voice was pure, sticky heat, and it filled me with layer upon layer of silken frustration. I interrupted him before every muscle in my body tensed. Desire? Anger? It all tickled the same.
“I don’t want to hear it,” I said. “As far as I’m concerned? We’re strangers. This is the first day we’ve met, and after what I’ve heard about you? I want nothing to do with a man so eager to abandon his responsibilities. Been there. Done that.”
And that mistake had turned violent long before I’d decided to leave.
His jaw tightened. A hard, sculpted angle that begged for kisses and the gentle caress of fingertips.
“I’m sorry, Glory.”
“You don’t get to apologize.” Not that it would make a difference anyway. I’d spent enough time wondering, waiting, wallowing in how stupid I was to let myself get so close to a man who hadn’t even told me his last name. “We can’t take back what we did.”
“I’ll never regret what we did.”
“Great. Then maybe you can put in a good word for me at the Pearly Gates. Pretty sure that’s gonna be one club too exclusive for me now.”
“I told you, I wasn’t a minister when we met,” he said.
Like that made it any better? “When we first met, you came to my club just to put a thousand dollars down at my feet for a private dance. And then you spent the entire night talking to me instead of letting me perform.”
“Glory.”
“You spent the next week coming in, night after night, just to talk to me.”
“I never intended to deceive you.”
“It wasn’t until I let you buy me that first drink that we went to a hotel room, and I gave you an actual private dance.”
His lips twitched. That shadow of a smile I’d wished to forget. “How could I resist someone so beautiful?”
“Easy!” My voice rose. “By telling me you were a minister! By telling me the truth before we kept meeting in that same hotel room, spending the nights together, having sex until the sun rose!”
“We only had sex once.”
Was he in that much denial, or did he just want to see me sweat? “We only had sex once, sure. But what about the dozens of other times you touched me and I touched you? We spent hours together, V. Wrapped around each other. Can you even count how many times we sixty-nined?” I covered my face. “You were a minister, and I sucked your cock.”
He didn’t let me rush out of the supply closet, standing in my path.
“I didn’t want to think about my past when I was with you,” he said. “It didn’t matter who I was or what I’d become after…during those nights, it was all about you. And that’s all you needed to know.”
How could a man so broken have so much confidence? It was like he knew what he did was wrong, but he had no remorse, no guilt, no nothing. He was vacant. Void of emotion. Like he wouldn’t deny his behavior, nor would he try to fix it. He had no reason to explain himself.
He wasn’t a minister anymore.
He wasn’t anything anymore, except empty, lonely, and lost.
And it was worse than anything I’d ever imagined.
“I put in my resignation long before I met you,” he said. “I wasn’t preaching when we spent time together.”
I wasn’t religious, but I also wasn’t stupid. “You can’t just stop being a minister.”
“I did.”
I hadn’t moved, but the walls of the closet closed around me. “Why this? I thought you were just married or something.”
“You wanted me to be married?”
Sure as hell would have made this easier. “I knew you had a secret, V. You weren’t subtle. Something had destroyed you from the inside out, and you used me to feel better about yourself. I got that. But this…”
“It doesn’t change anything.”
No. It didn’t. He was still the bastard who broke my heart, and I was the fool who let him.
“So, what was I to you?” My voice rose, but I preferred that to the heated breath that twisted in my lungs. “You were some wayward minister, set loose in the secular world? Thought you’d find some strippers to seduce you?”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“Bullshit. You came to me for a reason. What was it? Did you want me to blow you? Fuck you?” My words sharpened as he reached for me. I batted his hand away, but the heat of his touch remained. “Was I supposed to introduce you to a world of sin? Show you what you’ve been missing?”
His voice lowered, a sensuous, completely hypocritical rasp. “Yes.”
“Jesus.”
He took my hand. I knew better, but I met his stare, his eyes were greener than money and far more honest than the way I usually earned my cash.
What was it about this man that enraged me, hurt me, and left me quivering for more?
I’d made this mistake with him before, trying to understand the sexy, extraordinary man with the body of a god, the voice of an angel, and eyes shadowed with grief and loneliness.
In my line of work, I met plenty of men. Most were alone. Nearly all of them were miserable. And they all had one thing in common.
They came to watch me dance so they could have a moment to escape.
But Varius hadn’t wanted to run.
Varius came to me to find himself.
And in him I had found something far more frightening, infinitely more worrying, and utterly stupid.
And I couldn’t let it break me.
I shouldn’t have let him touch my face. Shouldn’t have let his comforting, calloused fingers stroke the angle of my cheek.
His voice lowered, a soothing, pulsing growl. “Do you really think I’ve been chasing you for six months, just trying to get you into bed?”
I swallowed, hard. “You’re a minister. Apparently, they have an abundance of patience.”
“And you believe the only reason I wanted you was to bed a stripper?”
The insults were nothing new. Neither was the presumption of shame. Fortunately, my business was my own, and I was damned good at it. I didn’t need a preacher’s judgment on my career choice. Hell, in two weeks, I’d made more money dancing than his congregation could collect in a year. High-heels paid better than halos, that was certain.
“Well, you succeeded, didn’t you?” I said. “Glad to know I made you work for it. Wouldn’t have been as fun if I was a random fuck off the stage.”
I pushed passed him, planning to make a memorable exit. However, I yanked the doorknob a little too harshly. The copper knob wrenched from the wood, and I stumbled backwards.
Great.
I slammed the knob back into the hole and twisted.
Nothing.
“Fuck me.” I glanced at Varius. “Forgive me, Father. It was a profanity, not an invitation.”
Varius didn’t flinch. “Can I help?”
Not unless he could reverse time six months and wander into some other hole-in-the-wall strip joint to find his muse. I jiggled the knob again, but it didn’t catch the latch. A quick shove with my shoulder did nothing. And no one was going to hear the slap of my palm against the frame while Mrs. Mulligan sought and destroyed an entire scale octave on her quest for the song’s elusive high A. And after her, the Greenacres Retirement Home warmed up, eager to begin their Christmas burlesque spectacular.
“What happened to your wrist?”
I’d planned to be in a wrist brace by now, not the cast. But the break was bad, and I couldn’t rush the healing. I had to come back stronger than ever. Always earned more doing the fancy acrobatic shows than by shaking my ass.
At least the booty was in working order.
Varius didn’t like my silence. “When did you break it?”
I wasn’t in the mood for an explanation, and I certainly didn’t owe him one. What else was there to say? The cast was heavy, awkward, and made dancing impossible. It also did nothing for my mood.
“You know, life of the stripper.” I arched an eyebrow. “Surprisingly, the club doesn’t offer short-term disability. I had to find a quick job that was less strenuous while I healed.”
“Do you need help?”
“Screw you.”
His brow furrowed. Not the look of concern that I needed, wanted, or welcomed. “I had no idea you’d gotten hurt.”
I laughed. “Well, you were the one who stopped calling. I texted. You ghosted.”
“Had I known…”
“Save it. I don’t need your pity. The best thing you can do for me is to keep your mouth shut. I took this job because I needed the money, and I will not have you jeopardize it.” I gestured behind me. “Those people out there will not tolerate a pole dancer teaching them jazz hands to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. They know nothing about where I came from. And for all intents and purposes, neither do you.”
“Is that why you’re…”
His gaze lingered over my body. Usually, I would’ve rewarded such bravery with a shimmy, a bump of my hips, and sly smile. Not today. Not now. He didn’t deserve it, and I couldn’t allow myself to be flattered or seduced by his appraisal.
