Page 97 of Savior

The last egg gets into my bucket, and he charges, sending me into an all-out run for the coop door. Screams rip from my chest, and pure fear claws my nerves.

“Sloane!” I hear Luca call as I exit the coop and slam the door, closing the Psycho rooster inside.

“Fuck!” I squeal, bending over and laughing as adrenaline courses through my veins.

“Are you alright?” Luca asks, straightening me out and looking me over for blood.

I sniffle, trying to stop laughing as I shove the bucket toward his chest. “You owe me a foot rub.”

He counts the eggs, looking up at me in astonishment. “How the hell?!”

“Dealing with mean men is easy. Gotta blow a little smoke up their asses and make them feel at ease,” I tell him, smirking wickedly as I make my way through the mud and falling rain back toward the porch.

“That or you’re just as mean as he is, and he recognized a kindred spirit.”

I turn back, pinning him with a dry glare. “Watch it, Father Russo. You didn’t bargain for how long you’d have to give me that foot rub. I’m in control of your fate.”

Something flashes across his face, too quick for me to recognize the emotion before it’s gone. “Sorry, little dove. Please, go easy on me, will you?”

Slipping out of my boots, I laugh. “I’ll consider it.”

It’s the lightest moment we’ve shared, yet it’s the one that makes me the most nervous.

The more we have these brief moments, the more attached I will grow to him and him likewise. We’re playing a dangerous game, and I think I just realized how dangerous it is.

To think it’s all because of a dickhead of a rooster, too.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

LUCA

Her feet are dainty, like the rest of her. Her toes aren’t painted, and I feel Sloane isn’t as girly as most her age are, solely because of her upbringing and the need for her not to be. There’s a small, almost micro tattoo on the outer edge of her foot, a semi-colon.

I brush my thumb over it, lotion swirling over the flesh with the movement.

She shifts to the other end of the couch, where she’s draped with a book.

“What is this?” I ask her, rubbing lotion into her foot as I knead it with some pressure.

She clears her throat, her cheeks showing a pink tinge as she lowers her book.

“A tattoo,” her sassy mouth answers.

My lips thin into a hard line. “Obviously. What does it mean?”

She swallows, and the delicate way her throat moves reminds me how breakable she is despite how tough she portrays herself outwardly. She’s had to erect walls that are nearly impenetrable to get over to protect herself, and it’s hard for her to peek overthem at people on the outside, even when she’s comfortable with them.

“It means the sentence doesn’t end. To continue. It’s for suicide awareness. I would’ve put it on my wrist, but I don’t know, I liked it there,” she says softly, turning her foot and making a pointed arch as she looks it over. “Hurt like a son of a bitch, though.”

As I massage her foot, I can feel the tension slowly ebbing away. With each gentle stroke, she sinks deeper into the couch, her defenses dissolving like sugar in warm water. Moving onto the other foot, I try to remain neutral about how touching her makes me feel.

I’m a man who’s lost his way lately, and I can’t say that I don’t like it.

I’d be a liar.

Everything with her, every touch, every moment, feels new and exciting. But that’s not how it should feel. It should feel damning.

She places her book down on her lap; pages splayed upward. “You don’t act how I’ve ever imagined a priest should act,” she blurts, stopping my hands in their tracks.

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