Page 28 of Sinner (Priest 2)
But then the knock comes again, and reality clears up the hormone mist a little. Realistically, it’s probably just a grocery delivery or the cleaning company coming early, but if there’s even the slightest chance it could be about Mom…
With a pained grunt, I zip myself back up into my pants, try to arrange myself so that my boner isn’t stupidly obvious (it still is) and go to open the door without bothering to check who’s on the other side.
And I open it to find Zenny standing there in her postulant’s jumper and bright yellow flip-flops, a nervous smile on her face.
Chapter Eight
My mind buzzes with panic.
Fucking PANIC, man.
And I shut the door right back closed.
“Uh, Sean?” I hear her say from the other side, but I’m too busy pacing in circles right now to answer. And I’m not even thinking, I’m just panicking, turning in circles like a dog walking into a room where the furniture’s been rearranged. All of my normal confidence is gone, all of my normal contingency-thinking, all of my charm and problem solving, it’s just fucking gone.
All that?
?s left is wanting Zenny and knowing I shouldn’t want her, and oh yeah, this idiot erection I have that is refusing to relent. If anything, my body and my dick are thrilled that Zenny is here in the flesh.
“Sean, I know your mother raised you better than this,” Zenny calls through the door, sounding amused. “Let me inside, please, or I’ll tell her how rude you were.”
Like Elijah, Zenny was somewhat exempt from the Bell-Iverson schism, and I can’t actually be sure that she wouldn’t tell my mom about this, so I spin around and yank open the door before I can think about it any longer.
Zenny gives me a sunny smile and pushes by, leaving that delicate rose scent in her wake. I have to fight myself not to sniff the air like a wolf after she walks past me and props herself against the back of my sofa. I pick up my crumpled suit jacket off the floor and hold it in front of my crotch, a move straight from the Adolescent Boy Playbook.
You’re thirty-six, not thirteen, I have to remind myself. Fucking act like it.
Luckily, Zenny doesn’t seem to notice my odd jacket pose. Instead, she seems taken with my apartment, gazing with large eyes at the clean, minimalist space. I look around myself, seeing it as she would—the stained concrete floors and giant windows, the long, low lines of the furniture—and I feel a spike of pride. It is a pretty nice place, even though it’s really nothing more than a convenient place to sleep and shower before I go back out to conquer the world.
“Nice, huh?” I say all cool and cocky like, and she looks back at me with an arched eyebrow that would have made a 1930s Hollywood starlet jealous.
“You know it’s nice already; you don’t need me to tell you that,” she says. “And I was really thinking it was kind of sad.”
“Sad? The two-million-dollar loft with an amazing view?”
“A two-million-dollar loft that looks like a model home. There’s no pictures or books or mail on the table, nothing personal at all. It makes me feel lonely for you, actually.”
Well, fuck, now I feel kind of lonely for me too.
“Anyway,” she says, straightening up, “I didn’t come by to see your apartment. I came by to talk to you.”
Okay. Okay. I can do this.
I can talk to her—just talk—without kissing her and without accidentally coming in my pants. And this is a good thing anyway: I can explain to her about the shelter replacement and I can warn her the fuck away from Northcutt. This will work, it will totally work, and this conversation will end without me betraying my promise to Elijah.
I gesture her over to a seat and then I offer to get her a drink, an offer she accepts. And it’s while I’m in the kitchen getting her a La Croix—carefully angling my body so she doesn’t see the heavy erection still pressing against my pants—when I causally ask, “So what is it you want to talk about?”
And just as casually, she responds.
“I want you to have sex with me,” she says.
Well, shit.
A few minutes later, she’s drinking her La Croix and I’m sitting on the chair across from the sofa, watching the hypnotizing clench and shudder of her throat as she drinks.
She finishes drinking, sets the can down, and dabs gently at her bottom lip with her knuckle. A simple act that has my cock throbbing.
“Okay, so,” I say in a choked voice. It’s the first I’ve spoken since she dropped her giant, nun-sex bombshell. “Obviously the answer has to be no.”
