Saving Sins (Forbidden Erotic Romance) (5 page)

She heard him get out of the booth behind her, but she
was already barreling toward the door, full of shame and a sudden, deep fear.

Was she going to die like Misti? Would anyone but some
nosy priest give a shit?

She didn't want to see Father Michael all of a sudden. He
had to care about her. It was his job. His calling. She didn't want to be
anyone's job. Her mother had made it clear just how much of a problem she was.

Slamming her hands into the glass door, she burst into
the cold night. The air slapped her face, and she wanted to run and run and
run.

"Tara!"

His voice behind her. She picked up her pace. She
couldn't catch her breath. She couldn't see straight. They were in a weird part
of town. She didn't even know which way was home, or what home was, or if she
wanted to go back to any home she had ever known. She just wanted to crawl
under a rock and sleep away the fear.

He caught up with her behind the restaurant, just before
she managed to slip behind the broken fence and into the alleyway of some
low-rent neighborhood. "Tara," he said, and his hand landed on her
shoulder.

She whirled around. "What do you want?" she
said. She meant it to come out defiant, but it just came out small and
shattered.

The moon was full above them, and the wind rustled in the
branches of the trees in the alleyway behind them. The world was turning toward
winter, and the leaves were falling.

He was so beautiful in the moonlight. She wanted to throw
herself into him, let him hold her up. She was tired, and tired of running. She
wanted to worm her way into his clothes, draw strength from his warmth, fill
herself up with him, feel alive, feel wanted, feel loved.

He was full of love. But she didn't know how to accept
it. Like a vessel, broken and badly repaired, she couldn't hold what he wanted
to give her, could only take what he couldn't give. Her mother's boyfriend had
seen to that.

"I'm sorry," she said again.

“So am I,” he said, and then he was reaching for her, his
arms sliding around her shoulders.

It was a mistake. A slip. She shouldn't have lifted her
face to his. She shouldn't have crossed that gap between them. But she did.

Her mouth met his, and fire consumed her.

Oh, he tasted good. His body beneath his coat, beneath
those strict black clothes, was hard and hot, a lean, demanding thing that she
knew would fill the ache inside her, the emptiness. His lips on hers weren't
even hesitant, were demanding, seeking, as though he, too, were in danger of
drowning in all the sadnesses of the world. Her fingers curled in the fabric of
his shirt, his coat slid over her arms, and his hands dug into her back,
lifting her up into him.

His tongue sought her, demanded entrance, and she opened
her mouth. He tasted of coffee and grief, and she tried to swallow it down. He
shouldn't feel sad. He shouldn't feel anything except calm and kind. She had
made him sad. She made him worry. She couldn't stand it.

Their tongues danced together, frantic, striving. Teeth
clicked, and her arms were around his waist, pulling him into her.

The long, hard length of his erection swelled against her
stomach. She wanted nothing more than to take him inside. She needed him, and
he needed her. His body, his desperate kiss were enough to tell her that.

Then, as abruptly as it had begun, it was over and he was
backing away. His beautiful green eyes were huge in his face, haunted and lost.

"No," he said. "No, Tara, that's... that's
not..."

Her blood thundered in her veins, filling her head with a
dull roar. She couldn't speak.

He twisted, turned away, like a man ensnared. His body
was betraying him. She had betrayed him.

“I need to call you a cab,” he said at last, and that was
that.

JJ's Diner. That was where it had happened. She didn't
remember the name, and she didn't really remember the outside because in the
dark all diners look the same, but she remembered the hideous carpet. They
still hadn't changed it. Green, beige and red glared up at her in an infinitely
repeating pattern of yuck the moment she walked through the door, bringing
snowflakes with her.

For a second, she had a moment of vertigo. Surely Michael
remembered this place. Surely he remembered what she had done here, in the back
lot. She had tempted him, like Eve in the garden, like her own budding body in
front of the men her mother brought home.

No. No, she didn't mean the same thing to him that he did to
her. She had to play it cool. She was grown now. Even though sometimes she felt
like she had been born old, she was finally mature. She could take it. She
wouldn't mention their kiss. She wouldn't think of the lingering hunger.

She would be an adult.

They sat in a booth, though she couldn't say if it was the
same one they sat in all those years ago. The waitress came by.

"Coffee," Michael said, "and the lady will
have the blueberry pie."

Tara wasn't sure she'd heard him correctly. Blueberry pie.
Her limbs went numb. She felt faint. Running on autopilot, she smiled at the
waitress, who tromped off, clearly unimpressed.

Silverware clattered nearby, and Tara stared at her water
glass, her teeth worrying her lip.

"Did I ever tell you how I was called to this work?

The words startled her and she met his eyes. Ringed in dark
lashes, he stared out at her from behind his beautiful face. Wordlessly, Tara
shook her head.

The waitress came back, setting down a carafe of coffee and
two mugs. With languid movements, Michael reached out and poured them both a
cup of coffee. "When I was fifteen," he said, "my sister Nancy
ran away from home."

Oh
, Tara thought.
Of course.

She poured creamer into the dark, hot liquid and watched it
curl in the heated convection currents like smoke. She waited for him to
continue.

"She was very headstrong," he said finally.
"And troubled. I don't know why she left, only that she did."

Tara licked her lips. "Could it have been... like me?

"Like you?" he echoed. "I hope not."

Of course. No one wanted to be like her. She didn't want to
be like her.

"But perhaps." His lips, so full and inviting,
pressed together, and the skin around them grew white. "Sometimes she came
home. She was thinner each time."

Tara could picture her in her head. Beautiful, just like
Michael. Long dark hair, luminous green eyes. Drugs and sex and the street
would swallow up a beautiful girl as fast as a toad snapping a butterfly out of
the air, crushing her down until she was a mangled corpse. She'd seen it
happen. She'd almost been it.

Why me?
she wondered.
Why me?

Why did I escape?

She'd wondered that many times, and as always there was no
one to answer her.

"Is that why you went into the priesthood?" Tara
asked.

“I became a priest to serve and to save, yes.” He hesitated,
then shrugged, and a humorless smile quirked the corner of his mouth. "You
told me you were good at keeping secrets a long time ago," he said, his
voice low. "Still think you can keep a secret?"

She would have rather cut her tongue out than give away his
secrets. She nodded.

For a long moment he appeared to be unable to speak. Then,
at last, he licked his lips.

"The truth is, Tara, I don't know why I'm still a
priest. I don't even know if I believe."

Tara blinked, shock reeling through her head.
"What?" she whispered.

His eyes met hers. The enormity of his confession rocked
her. She almost couldn't fit her brain around the idea.

"But..." She trailed off. "You do so much
good. You preach every Sunday. Hear confessions. Help the girls. Do... all that
stuff." If Michael didn't have faith, what had pulled her from the
streets? What strength had lifted her up and helped her out of a life she
couldn't continue living?

“I used to believe,” he said. “I used to
know.
Then I
started looking for Nancy, though I didn't find her. I kept hoping word would
reach her somehow, that I was there to help. And then I started caring for
other girls, trying to help them, trying to keep them safe.” His eyes took on a
distant look. “But I never could. They keep dying, or disappearing on me and I
just... keep going.”

Tara swallowed around the lump in her throat. She knew it
was too late for his sister, and he probably did, too. "Is that why you
took interest in me? Because I remind you of her?"

To her surprise, he shook his head. “No,” he said. “When I
stopped you on the street that first time...” Beneath his clerical collar, his
Adam's apple bobbed.

Adam, apple, forbidden fruit...

“I stopped because you were beautiful,” he said at last.

She stared at him. “I couldn't have been. I must have been a
scrawny kid.”

“No.” His eyes held hers. “You were a beautiful, broken
thing.”

How many times had she dreamed of hearing him say such a
thing to her? Too many times, and each time she had berated herself, telling
herself that it was impossible. And yet here she was.

Slowly Tara reached out, but she stopped short of his hand.
The distance between them... it was too great. She felt the great gaping chasm
between them like a wound, and her fingers fluttered in the air, caught in the
void.

“Tara,” he said, and then he was reaching up. Closer and
closer his flesh came to hers. She felt the heat of his gaze, the heat of his
skin, the heat of his soul.

Their fingers brushed together and the world around her
tipped and turned, dizzying as it spun, faster and faster. The tiniest of
contacts. The smallest of touches. The sweetest of secrets. The warmth of his
hand, the roughness of his calloused fingertips radiated up her arm, over her
heart, down into her belly. Her body was alight, humming with the awareness of
him. Beneath the table, their legs were mere inches apart. If she pushed her
foot forward, she would find his.

"Michael," she said. She had never called him
simply Michael before. Always Father, or Father Michael. His name on her lips
tasted like straight chocolate, rich and bitter.

"Yes,” he whispered.

The sudden appearance of the waitress at the side of their
table had them both starting, hearts pounding, pulling back from each other as
though they had been caught in an illicit embrace. Tara couldn't hear anything
over the rush of blood in her ears as the woman set a plate of blueberry pie
down in front of her. Tara stared at it, gleaming and sickly in the light of
the diner. Her stomach turned at the thought of putting it in her mouth.

"I... I don't think I'm hungry, Father," she said,
which was a lie. She simply wasn't hungry for food.

"I understand," he said. Words unspoken floated
between them. He put a ten on the table. "Let's go back to the church so
you can go home," he said.

No
, she thought.

"Yes," she agreed.

The church. St. Christopher's. It had been years since
she'd been inside a church, and her mom had been protestant anyway. Lutheran?
Methodist? God, she couldn't even remember. It had been forever. And yet here
she was, the address on the little white card. She'd kept it. She didn't know
why.

Winter was coming, and she was drunk. He'd said to come
by whenever she was ready. Well, she wasn't ready, but she had no where else to
go now. She'd reached the end, and she was going to throw up all over the
steps. It would feel good.

Stumbling, she staggered up the steps and pushed her way
inside. She was surprised that the church was open, since it was a weekday—she
thought it was anyway—but the doors yielded to her easily. The cooling air
chased her inside, blowing little drifts of leaves around her feet as she
stepped over the threshold. The stink of smoke and incense hit her nose and she
coughed. A disapproving statue stared down at her in the vestibule, but she
ignored it. Gulping bile, she lurched forward and entered the sanctuary.

Quiet swallowed her up. The light of the fall day outside
filtered through colored glass, Bible stories that she half-remembered from
Sunday school, back when her dad was still around. She couldn't have named any
of the saints or any of the figures except the familiar face of Jesus, but for
some reason she felt better, looking at them. The colors, brilliant, played
over her drunk brain like a hallucination. She wanted to sit and watch the
light play in the glass. Looking around, she found a pew and slipped in. The
wood was old, like the church, and creaked when she lowered herself onto the
threadbare cushion. Slumping down, she let her head fall back on the backrest
and stared at a strange picture of a large man with the head of a dog carrying
a child across a river. She couldn't remember that story. Perhaps she was more drunk
than she thought...

"Tara?"

She opened her eyes. The light had changed. She had
fallen asleep in the church. She was still drunk, her vision still skipping and
sliding around, but the beginnings of a headache niggled at the back of her
brain. She was sobering up, and when she did she would regret this. She needed
to do it now.

She turned her head and there stood Father Michael at the
end of her pew. Michael. Michael. Why did he have to be a priest? Why did she
have to want him? Why did he have to care about her? It wasn't fair.

"My mom's boyfriends raped me," she said.
“Lots.”

His eyes flickered. "I'm sorry," he said.

She wanted to laugh at that, absurdly. "Yeah,"
she said. "It sucked."