Page 36 of Intimately Faithful

“I don’t know if I can handle taking a trip to the past, Aoife. It killed me the first time. I would never throw you away, it’s just self-preservation. But I’ll hear whatever it is you want to say.”

Her bottomless green eyes filled, and he felt like a piece of shit for making her cry.

Like any man in the face of his girl,not your girl, Danny, and her tears he was a weak-weak man and was about to offer her his own head on a spike even as his groin tightened, when she visibly brought herself back together in seconds.

“Stop being such a big baby, Danny-boy. It’s me who should be crying into my cornflakes not you. I screwed up and I’m here to make it right. So, no more nonsense. Now, unless you’re about to kiss me,” his cock jerked this time and he internally cursed and let his hand fall. “Then I should take this little girl to bed or she’ll be up all hours of the night wanting to play.”

Danny moved and turned his back, hands shoved down in his pockets, mainly so his body could get back under control.

A hand stole up his spine and he trembled from her slight touch.

“I wish so many things, Danny-boy. But the thing I wish the most is having never hurt you.” Silence, he swallowed through his returned grief. He was about to turn and take her into his arms … after that he didn’t know, but she’d already silently padded out of the room.

Divine intervention again? He didn’t know.

But when he exhaled it was a loud noise in his kitchen and he set his eyes to the ceiling. Unsure if he was looking up to God, or the women just beyond that floor in his bedroom.

“What are you doing to me?” He murmured.

Again, he was unsure who he directed the question to.

Maybe both of the mystical beings that at two points in his life had shaped the person he is today.

Because Danny felt as if he were being tested for something and pulled in all directions.

Only as yet, he didn’t know where.

His heart thumped, reminding him how very much alive he was, and he liked being that way.

He liked breathing and knowing he was inhaling every moment of the day.

He liked his head being clear and not fogged down by the veil of drugs.

He hadn’t asked for that flamed-haired vixen to crash land back in his life again.

If he had, he would have been more prepared.

He would have had his raging cock under control if nothing else.

Reaching down, Danny heeled over his hardness and willed the thing to go away. The ceiling above creaked with Aoife’s footsteps and like clockwork his shaft ached as if attuned to her every noise.

As with all free will, he knew God wouldn’t step in and give him a hand.

Nah, he would watch Danny sink or swim.

With Aoife, he’d always dove in head first regardless of the consequences. That was the problem. He wasn’t thinking like a man of faith around her. The man to always have people’s solutions to their problems.

He saw only one solution and he didn’t think climbing into bed beside her would help with the mess she’d brought with her.

Being celibate by choice had never bothered him all these years. Having never connected with the few women he’d dated.

Being under the same roof with his past lover and love of his existence for the last two days, Danny felt like his body belonged to a stranger.

A fucking horny stranger.

He grabbed his thick leather-bound bible from the counter and headed out of the back door, trekking across the snow-covered lawn to the open door of the church.

He needed to clear his head and there was no better way than reading about his favorite passage in the scriptures.

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