Page 9 of Priest (Confessions 3)

His Mr. Mitchell? Hang on… Priest had thought Logan was a one-man kind of guy these days with Tate. Had that changed? Well, Priest wasn’t about to risk a chance at partnership one way or another over some haughty little princess. It was time to extinguish this sizzling tension between them, and the quickest way to do that was to turn lust to hate.

“Excuse me,” Robert said. “But I trust Logan. I don’t know this guy at all.”

“That’s exactly right.” Priest’s voice was terse as unwarranted jealousy, coupled with frustration, made him surlier than usual. “So if you would get down off your high horse for two seconds and actually let me talk, we might get past our first names and be able to move on. Is that okay with you? Or do you need to take a moment?”

Robert snapped his mouth shut and crossed his arms over his chest, and before Priest started to talk again, he heard Robert mutter, “Ass.”

There, mission accomplished.

Any sexual tension they might have had was now officially replaced with a desire to kill one another…

HOW WRONG HE had been, Priest thought, when he woke an hour or so later. As his eyes adjusted to the shadow-filled room, he looked toward the master bedroom to see the door was slightly ajar.

He shifted on the couch, automatically thinking to go and check on Robbie. But then he looked down to Julien, who was fast asleep in his arms, and made out the dark silhouette of someone curled up on the rug beside the two of them—Robert.

He was laid out on his side, facing them with a pillow stuffed under his cheek, and he’d draped Priest’s large robe over the top of him like a blanket as he slept peacefully beside them.

It seemed that even though Robbie had asked for space tonight, he still wanted to be close by.

“Joel?” Julien’s voice was but a whisper. “You okay?”

Priest pressed a kiss to Julien’s head and nodded. “Look,” he said into the quiet room, and Julien turned his head in the direction of Robbie.

“He came out to us…”

“He did.”

Julien sighed as he snuggled back into Priest’s chest. “Whatever will we do with him?”

Priest tightened his arms around Julien and said, “Love him?”

“I already do,” Julien said, and Priest nodded. “You too, oui?”

“Yes. Not that he believes that right now.”

Julien turned in Priest’s arms and said, “Oh, I don’t know. There’s a reason he came out here tonight. He couldn’t stay away. He knows, mon amour. He knows…”

“Maybe,” Priest said, as Julien relaxed back into sleep. But neither of them had had a chance to tell Robbie that yet, had they?

Chapter Four

CONFESSION

It took the love of someone truly unselfish

to teach me how to fully understand another.

First you have to push aside your wants,

and then you have to listen to their needs.

“IF YOU STARE at that door any harder, mon amour, you’re going to drill a hole right through it.”

Priest’s eyes shifted to Julien’s as he stood in the kitchen with a steaming mug of coffee that he wished was another glass of whiskey. He’d been watching their bedroom closely for any signs of movement ever since he and Julien had woken to find that Robbie had moved back in there sometime in the early hours of the morning.

“You’re right,” Priest said. “I just thought he’d come around since—”

“He came out and slept by us last night?”

“Yes.”

Julien sat on one of the breakfast stools and reached for the bowl of fruit. “One step at a time, Joel. The fact he came out at all is a good thing, n’est-ce pas?”

“You’re right,” Priest said. “I’m just annoyed at myself. We could’ve avoided all of this tension if I’d just been upfront with him.”

Julien took one of the plump strawberries in front of him and popped it in his mouth. “Well, it isn’t like you and the princesse haven’t had your fair share of that in the past. Your entire relationship was built on tension, was it not?”

Priest raised an eyebrow. “It’s not the same. This feels…”

“Ten times worse?”

Priest sighed and was about to respond when the sound of the bedroom door opening had him and Julien looking across the living room to see Robbie, who was now standing in the doorway.

Robbie was fully dressed and ready for the day in a pair of baggy black pants and a plain beige pullover, and his thick hair looked as though he’d barely run his fingers through it. His eyes were devoid of any lining, and there was no glossy lip balm applied to his mouth. Even so, Priest couldn’t remember him looking more appealing.

Julien, ever the peacemaker, was the first to break the silence. “Bonjour, princesse. How did you sleep?”

Robbie’s eyes flicked between them as he walked to the island, but then landed firmly on Julien. “Good. And you?”

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