Page 20 of Midnight Mass (Priest 1.50)
I smoothed my jacket down and subtly adjusted myself as I moved forward, and then I stopped. Poppy had so arrested my thoughts that I hadn’t noticed whom she was standing next to. Not just standing next to—she had her arm around his waist and his arm was strung casually over her shoulders, a lingering side-hug as they laughed with a pair of donors and she gestured with her champ
agne glass.
Anger balled in my stomach, anger that I had no right to feel, but felt anyway. Here I was on the spiral again, except I couldn’t be scholarly or enlightened about my continuing struggles with jealousy, not now. Not with Fucking Anton touching my wife so casually, so familiarly, as if they held each other like this all the time.
As I started walking again, my hands practically burning with the urge to throttle Anton, I remembered a picture from my children’s bible growing up. It was an illustration of Jesus chasing the moneylenders and merchants out of the Temple courts, one hand scattering a pile of coins to the ground while the other was raised high. In that hand, he’d held a whip poised to rain brutality on the defilers who’d polluted the most sacred space in Jerusalem. There had been overturned tables and broken stools and people fleeing and scattering, and all of that sounded exactly like what I wanted right now. To be flipping tables and lashing out in anger, to drive away the bastard who was touching my wife—my sacred space.
Poppy turned to say something to one of the donors and then froze as she caught sight of me stalking toward her. Several emotions flitted across her face—shock and anger and relief and worry—and then her good-breeding and expensive education whirred to life, replacing her raw expression with a controlled and elegant mask.
When I reached her, all I wanted to do was pick her up and drag her off. I wanted to toss her over my shoulder or grab her by the neck or any number of possessive actions that would show Anton—and Poppy—whom she belonged to. Who owned her.
But while all of those things were sexy and consensual in bed, they were shitty and misogynistic in public, especially at an event like this one, the culmination of years of hard work and one so full of influential donors. And I wasn’t so consumed with jealousy and possession that I’d forgotten the difference between the bedroom and the outside world.
It was a close thing, though. Even as I shoved my hands into my tuxedo pockets, even as I deliberately stopped out of range to make sure I didn’t cave to my urges and physically pull her away from Anton.
She’s a grown woman. They’re only friends. You’re just being jealous.
And besides, you are the one in trouble right now.
All of that was hard to remember with Anton hugging her. I dragged my eyes away from the spot where his hand cupped her shoulder and met my wife’s gaze.
“Good evening, Poppy. Anton. Sorry I’m late.”
I knew, even before I finished talking, that I had not successfully scrubbed the jealousy from my words. I knew that my expression surely betrayed every conflicted emotion that I felt. All of this was confirmed when the two donors mumbled excuses, and left Poppy, Anton and me alone.
That was fine. Because now Anton looked supremely uncomfortable, dropping his arm from Poppy’s shoulders and clearing his throat. “Hello, Tyler.”
I studied him. He was a few years older than I was, with light brown hair and amber eyes, several inches shorter than me, and—I noticed this with terrible, selfish glee—he was a little soft in the stomach and thin in the arms, something that even his well-tailored tuxedo couldn’t hide.
He didn’t seem abashed or flustered, at least not in the way that someone who had done something wrong would seem abashed. His discomfort seemed to come from a place of supreme shyness. In fact, he was offering me a shy smile now, and I hated the fact that he looked so handsome while he did it.
“Anton, do you mind if I speak to Poppy for a few minutes?”
“Of course,” Anton said hurriedly, already moving away from us. “See you in a bit, Poppy.”
He left and the band finished their song, the loft drifting into a tide of quiet chatter. Poppy and I stared at each other for a minute, me hungry for her and her angry with me, and then finally she stepped forward, so close that her dress brushed against the fabric of my tuxedo trousers.
“I don’t want to talk here,” she said firmly. Her heart-shaped face was tilted up to mine, that sharp chin defiantly set, and I couldn’t help it, I reached up to touch her jaw.
There it was: a flutter of the eyelashes, a small intake of breath. She was as hungry for me as I was for her.
“You’re mad,” I said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes. And I meant what I said—I don’t want to talk about this here.”
“What I want right now has nothing to do with talking.”
The moment I said it, I knew it was the wrong thing to say, but I didn’t fucking care. Everything felt like it was closing in on us—on me—and I couldn’t breathe for the stress and loneliness and anger rolling off my lamb in hot, metallic waves. I was furious and aroused and it didn’t matter that I was the one who had been late, that I was the one to let her down, I only knew that my chest felt like it would burst with all the conflicting feelings inside of it. I only knew what I needed. And right now, I needed her.
If she had been a different woman, she would have slapped me. As it was, I could see spots of color blossom high in her cheeks and the lines of her neck stiffen as the band struck up a new song.
“If you think,” she said in a dangerously low voice, “that this is going to end with me fucking you, you are severely mistaken.”
“Will you at least listen to me? I am sorry I’m late, but—”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “Whatever you have to say, it won’t help us right now.”
I pressed my lips together, not trusting myself to speak because the only words that came to mind were indignant ones. Defensive ones.
