Page 48 of Savior

The dirty place my mind just went to when he said he was going to bring me a treat is going to be my ticket into hell.

“Sure. That sounds fun.”

“You’ll need to get dressed, of course.” He swallows, and the action calls my attention to his throat, where thick veins run the length like…

I shake away from the thought.

“I’ll be out in ten,” I tell him, escaping with my coffee to the solitude of my room, where he isn’t looking how he does, taking up all the oxygen in the fucking room.

The issue is that hypersexuality doesn’t mix well with a sexy priest who’s taking vows of chastity, especially not when all my toys that help with this very issue are back home.

The thought of closing the door to get myself off makes my chest tighten, a side effect of being held in a dark basement for weeks. And Luca has already proved to me he has no issue bursting into my bathroom.

There’s no illusion of privacy in the rectory, as there shouldn’t be.

I’m on consecrated ground.

Shit, can one masturbate on church grounds?

I hate myself for the throb that moves through my body, exciting me more.

Shoving into jeans and a T-shirt and topping the look off with a messy bun and jacket, I decide that’s enough. After all, no one can see me, right? Even when I attended Mass, I had to sit up top.

“Ready?” he asks, looking me over.

I nod. “How will we get in with no one seeing us?”

He smirks as he leads me to the side of the cathedral. “I have my ways.” When he winks at me and holds the door open, my stomach does an indecent flip before heat blazes in my center.

Luca leads me up a winding staircase that spills into the top pews. When he closes the door behind us, a sneaky little hidden door remains.

“I’ll be down there if you need me. Once the crowd clears, I’ll sneak back up here.”

He grins, and a dimple on his right cheek pops out as he opens the hidden door and disappears.

A table near the apse set up is covered in baked goods. Mary greets Luca with a big hug as he approaches, and I settle in to people-watch.

Watching Luca from afar only solidifies that I don’t belong here. Not because I’m some awful person and he’s a saint, but because our worlds are so different.

I dance on a stage for a living, all while he’s feeding the poor and selling muffins.

But this nagging, petty part of me wants to be more like him, wants to be near him. To siphon some of his goodness.

Before I knew it, there was only Betty and Luca below, and he excused himself, but not before paying for a few items.

When the hidden door opens, I’m antsy in my seat to be near Luca, with so much uneasy energy flowing through me.

“What did you get?”

He looks down at his arms. “Pumpkin cream cheese muffins and chocolate chip cookies.

“Score!”

Dropping beside me in the pew, he sets the baked goods between us, like a pumpkin muffin is going to referee this buzzing power.

“Good sales?”

He sighs and sits back. “Enough to fix some issues with the roof and fund a field trip for the youth group.”