Page 34 of Intimately Faithful

“I think he’ll kill me,” she said rocking the baby gently. “And then he’ll hand this little one over to a nanny and not care a dot about her again. She’s a thing, not a child to him. I never once saw him hug her or hold her with affection.”

Violence was so long ago in his past it almost seemed like vivid daydreams, sometimes hard to recall just how he would spend his days using his fists. But the surge of violence rushing through his arms to bunch his hands was very much real.

So much so he nearly called on the big guy to give him strength.

“No one is taking your baby from you, Aoife.”

She looked up and the expression in her eyes jolted a thrill through his torso.

“Look, I should tell—”

The shrill of his phone interrupted and a few minutes later he told her. “They’re going to see about getting your things. At least this way it would appear you’ve left the country and you can just lie low here until we can get you on a plane.”

“I don’t have a passport for Misha. They’re not letting me leave the country with her, Danny.”

Jesus Christ almighty.

It was going to be one roadblock after another, and he knew he couldn’t take too much more exposure to Aoife.

On one hand, he fucking loved it.

Having her sassy, tempting green eyes on him again like he was the only living, breathing man on earth for her. And on the other hand, it killed him having her eyes on him, to know what was lost—thrown away.

But he didn’t know if God was putting this second chance in his path again or testing out his faith.

His body felt alien crossing the floor.

Like his bones didn’t belong to him and the closer he got, the greater his skin buzzed with reawakened sensations they’d made between them.

She was right in what she said.

The second they’d kissed; he’d been right back in that moment of needing …cravingto be close as possible to her; skin to skin. It was the only way he could calm down back in the day, after one of his fights, Danny would be so fueled on adrenaline, almost as if he could take on the world. Aoife would tell him to take off his clothes.

Not always for sex.

Mostly for sex.

But then she would do the same and just hold him and the warmth of her skin and the feel of her beating heart would return him back to normal.

Slack lips and his jaw unlocked he went down on his haunches in front of her. Both girls looked at him. One more curious than the other and he jiggled the bare little foot but addressed Aoife. “No one is killing you or taking this one from you. But you need to cooperate, okay? This isn’t like before, Aoife, where you’d bargain with me. This shit is serious.”

“Are pastors allowed to say shit?”

He arched an eyebrow and the flame-haired temptress grinned at him. Before he could stop himself he moved a long strand of her hair. His fingers grazed her cheek and they both sucked in a breath.

“I say a lot of things I shouldn’t. Cooperate, okay?”

She nodded. “I will. I don’t know how this will get fixed, but I’ll do everything you say, Danny.”

He heard her say those exact words but in her much younger voice and it boiled his skin. He had to stop thinking of things that had no business being thought about.

The universe must hold a grudge against him, he assumed. Because that delicate, complicated, barely-there pressure of her fingers when she reached out and touched his fingers still on top of her daughter’s foot, felt like a fist slammed between the rungs of his ribs.

In that sincere moment of connectedness, something silently passed between them.

A soulful acknowledgment?

A peek at feelings that should have died out?

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