Saving Sins (Forbidden Erotic Romance) (3 page)

Her fingers were numb as she handed food out. She felt the
girls circling, sensing easy prey, though she knew if any of them got a whiff
of the cops they'd scatter to the four winds. Too bad she was just a student.
She had no power over them.

What would Father Michael do?
she thought. She was
moments away from being heckled and losing face, and on the streets your reputation
was everything.
Think! Think!

“Do... do any of you need anything?” she asked, and her
voice came out as fragile and thin as the skin of a falling leaf.

The ladies giggled to each other, their gaudy jewelry and
glitzy tops flashing in the flat yellow light of the streetlamps. One of them
reached out and plucked a sandwich from her tray. “Can I have two?” she said.

Tara had to swallow hard around the lump in her throat, but
somewhere, deep inside, she dredged up the old reflexes. “Hell no!” she said.
“Don't get greedy, we gotta make these last.”

“Ooooh!” the woman said, curling her fingers at her. “Meow.
Father Michael's kitten has some claws.”

“I could use some cigarettes,” one of the other girls said.
“You got some cigarettes back there?”

Tara shook her head. “Now why would we have cigarettes? We
have blankets, we have hot drinks, we have needles, we have food, we have
condoms. You want something else go to the ShopMart.” She felt her body take on
the straightened spine and tiny head-waggle she remembered using way back then.
Give attitude, never get attitude. Get pushed, push back. That was the way it
was out here. She'd learned the rules by heart, and they stayed, even when they
weren't useful any more.

Too much dope. Too much. Was there such a thing as too
much? She was feeling sick and definitely about to tip over and pour out all
over the pavement. No one would notice or care, of course. Just another street
kid lying in their own sick. The gentle breeze of the night, cooler now that it
was September, caressed her face, lifting her hair from her heated cheeks. The
sounds of someone fighting somewhere in the neighborhood scraped over her ears,
too loud to her doped up brain. The occasional car that passed by made her wish
she could swaddle her head in cotton. The best she had was her hoodie.

Maybe it would help. With exhausted movements, she slowly
maneuvered her arms out of her thick sweatshirt and shivered a little when cool
air hit her skin, but when she pulled it up over her head she felt better. The
black fabric blocked the light, and her headache subsided.

I gotta stop shooting up
, she thought to herself, but it
was an idle thought, an in-the-moment thought. She thought it a lot. And yet
after two weeks, or one, or a few days, she scraped enough money together to
get high again. The only reason she wasn't riding that freight train straight
to oblivion was because she hadn't forced herself to cross the line yet. She
hadn't sold her body yet.

It was only a matter of time, though. She knew it. She knew
it.

Groaning, she slumped against the pile of junk she'd
taken refuge in. She needed new digs. The last place had the cops crawling all
over it after a deal gone wrong, and she didn't need anyone noticing her. She'd
been out on the streets for a while and she knew the score: keep your head
down, don't tell anyone anything. No snitching. Keep your head, even when you
went out to lose it.

And don't try to cheat the dealers. That had been Johnny.
Johnny tried to cheat the dealers and he was dead now. She'd known him. He'd
tried to teach her some things. Tried to get in her pants, too. He was a
sleaze, but he was just a junkie sleaze. Bone-thin arms and ragged hair and
snaggled teeth you didn't normally see this side of meth country. Too high most
of the time to even make sense. Didn't matter, though. She was a girl alone,
and he was a man, and everyone assumed. They just assumed.

Now he was gone and she'd taken the last of their stash
and shot up in the alleyway. Dangerous. Very dangerous. Terrible to do it in
the open. Should have found a new spot, a new place first. Couldn't even get
her sweatshirt off. Something was poking her in the side, but she was too
drugged to bother moving. Maybe she was stabbed through the side. Bleeding out
everywhere. Blood on the ground, something sharp in her guts.

Hoped it was something rusty...

Warm hands, and she started awake, panic bolting through
her. Blind white fear flashed across her brain, too much, overloading her
senses. The edge was wearing off and whatever happened to her now, she was
dead, it was over, she was going to get raped, going to get worked over and
dead. This was it. She was done for.

No
, she thought.
No, not yet.

The thought, so small, startled her enough to give her
pause. No? But she didn't want...

"You're alive."

A voice, full of relief. Tara stilled. Her aching ears
recognized it, but she couldn't place a name or a face.

Gentle fingers helped her pull her sweatshirt back down
over her face, and then the cold night air hit the skin of her cheeks and she
found herself sobering slightly, staring at the handsome face of the priest who
had picked her up last month.

"Oh," she said. "It's you."

Something dark flickered across his features, a phantom
shadow, then it was gone. "Can you stand?" he asked.

Tara scowled and pulled away. "Not that it's any of
your business, but no," she said. "I'm dead."

He frowned. "Dead?"

"Bleeding out. Aren't I?"

He glanced down at the ground, and a small smile alit on
his lips. In the harsh shadows of the alleyway, he was painted in darkness and
yellow glow. He was breathtaking. "I don't think so," he said gently.

Over her protests, he helped her get to her feet. She
didn't want to be on her feet. She just wanted to be left alone.

But it wasn't in the nature of nosy busybodies to leave
people alone, and he was no exception. "You need food," he told her,
and wouldn't listen to her protests that dead people didn't need food. Instead
he gently guided her to his van and loaded her into the passenger's seat. She
didn't have the strength to fight him. And he was a priest, right? Very rare
that they turned out to be mass murderers, right? And they usually liked little
boys. She knew from her mother's boyfriend that she didn't look anything like a
boy. He'd made sure she'd known it.

Tara let her forehead fall against the van's window. She
dozed in the passing of the streetlights.

The van slowed, but it was later. They were somewhere
else.

Her muscles clenched. She didn't recognize this place.
This wasn't her part of town. It almost looked like—

"No!" Her hands were scrabbling at the van door
before she even thought about it. The door popped, and she would have tumbled
onto the still-moving pavement if she hadn't fastened her seatbelt. Confusion
and fear struggled for dominance, and she fumbled with the seatbelt lock.

"Wait!" the priest said. "Wait, I won't
harm you."

"Don't take me back!" The words were out of her
mouth, falling loud and hard between them before she could choke them back.

Her eyes caught his.

He sat very still, his hands up, and over his shoulder
she saw the glowing lights of a drive-through speaker. One of the nicer ones,
out here in the suburbs where it wouldn't get trashed, like everything else did
in the city.

That's right. He'd wanted to feed her. He was taking her
to get food.

"I won't take you anywhere you don't want to
go," he said quietly. "But I couldn't leave you in the street and I
ran out of food and there's nowhere in Carrollton Ridge that goes
24-hours."

"Gas station. Bodega, maybe," she said, but it
was a numb, automatic response.

Again that small smile, curling the edges of his lips.
The hint of a grin that could decimate the strongest of hearts. "You
really think I'd give you gas station hot dogs?" he said.

She shrugged. "Didn't know a priest made enough money
to spring for MacDonald's," she said. "Seems awfully hoity toity.
Don't you take a vow of poverty?"

His eyes softened. "Yes," he said, "but
there is money enough for this. What do you want?"

She opened her mouth to say she wasn't hungry again, but
suddenly she was. She was ravenous. And she had a sucker willing to pay for her
right here, didn't she?

"Three double cheeseburgers and a chocolate
shake," she said.

To her shock, he laughed, and when he did, he was
transfigured.

His face, beautiful and alluring with only a small smile,
was practically mesmerizing when he laughed. "I thought you weren't
hungry?" he said.

"You're paying," she snapped by way of
explanation.

The laugh faded, but the smile remained. "Get while
the getting's good, right?"

"Only rule there is," she told him.

She expected him to say that it wasn't, that there were
many rules, and he had them all in a little black book and he'd tell them to
her and then she'd be saved, but instead he just shook his head, leaned out the
window, and ordered for her.

He let her eat in his van, the warm air blowing from the
vents. It smelled like gas, but it felt good, and he didn't try to get her to
talk, which was good because she really was hungry. She wolfed her first two
burgers and forced herself to eat the third. When she was done he drove her
back to Carrollton Ridge.

"You still have that card I gave you?" he asked
as she slid out of the car.

She shook her head.

"Here." He reached into his pocket and took
another one out, handing it to her.

His hand brushed against hers, and a wave of dizziness
and longing rocketed through her. Inside her something woke, hungry.

"Next time I see you I'll have more in case you lose
that one, too,” he was saying.

She barely heard him as she licked her lips, her fingers
closing over the little cardboard rectangle. "Right," she said.
"Next time."

He drove off.

In her palm, the card was still warm from the heat of his
body.

This time, she tucked it into her bra and tottered down
the dark streets, walking until sunrise.

When at last the laughing, glittering girls were done taking
and had gone on their way, Michael rounded the van again. "Are you doing
all right?" he asked.

Tara had no idea. Her knees were shaking with adrenaline,
but none of the girls had tried to challenge her at all. The pent up energy
she'd produced wandered around her body, like lightning restlessly seeking a
place to ground itself. "I... I think so."

Again he touched her shoulder, the pressure of his hand
enough to send forbidden thoughts racing through her mind, her nerves tingling
with electricity. She tried to keep herself perfectly still and not move. In
the light of the streetlamps, his soft lips begged to be touched, to be
caressed.

That was old Tara
, she thought firmly. And he'd let
her know exactly what he'd thought of that.

"I'm proud of you," he said, catching her off
guard. "You held yourself well."

She shook her head. "It was weird."

He quirked an eyebrow, rakish and sexy, if it weren't for
that damn clerical collar like a noose around his throat. "How so?"

Forcing herself to concentrate on his chin—his dumb, sharp
chin—she took a deep breath. "I don't know. I don't... maybe I shouldn't
be here."

He waited patiently. Father Michael had infinite patience.
It made her hate him sometimes. She didn't deserve that kind of indulgence. She
tried to explain. "It just felt like I was being the old me," she
said. "And I didn't like being the old me."

His hand still rested against her arm, and she felt his
thumb move, stroking small, gentle circles she was sure he meant to be
soothing. "The old you," he said, "is still you. You are simply
more now."

She pressed her lips together, a sudden and treacherous
sting of tears creeping across her eyes. Hurriedly, she blinked them back.
"I suppose."

"No, it's true. You are still that young woman I met
five years ago, but grown. That's all. You still have the tools you needed back
then, and in the future you may need them again. Don't forget that. The trials
we face serve a purpose."

Tara hated it when people talked about purpose. It seemed
stupid. Except when Michael talked about it, it never seemed quite as dumb. He
never told her her suffering was for a higher purpose, just that it uncovered
parts of her that she otherwise would not have known about.
As the sun
serves a purpose,
he said.
As the rain and wind serve a purpose. Perhaps
there is will behind them. Perhaps not. But without them there could be no
life. Take the gifts they give you and be at peace.

Swallowing, she nodded.

For a long moment he studied her, as though he were trying
to decipher a strange language written across her face, but then he dropped his
hand and backed away. For a moment, he seemed awkward, and he cleared his
throat.

"Shall we move on to our next corner?" he asked.

Tara nodded and followed him back into the van.

She woke shivering, drenched in sweat, a scream coiled in
her throat, ready to strike. For a moment she was lost, disoriented. The dream
clung to her, like seaweed, threatening to pull her down, down.

She sat up, and all became clear. She was not in her bed
at home. Not there, not there. She was bigger. There was a knife in her hand.
She kept it on her at all times now. She was on someone’s couch. Whose? Ah,
right. The dealer. She’d traded a hummer for a hit. It wasn’t prostitution, not
really. Just… favors for favors. He’d let her crash on the old, beat-up sofa and
she hadn’t slept in days. Just snatches, here and there, so when the
opportunity presented itself, she passed out.