Page 5 of Sinner (Priest 2)
“I, ah,” she says, and even in the indirect light, I can see a new rosy hue blossoming underneath the warm tones of her skin. “I didn’t know.”
I can show you, I want to say. Let me take you up to a deserted balcony. Let me show you how to brace your hands on the railing and present your ass to me. Let me show you exactly how a man uses his mouth on a woman from behind.
I don’t say that, though. Instead, I lower my head ever so slightly, just enough to make her lips part even more, a
nd I murmur, “Your turn.”
The rosy hues are even more pronounced now, spreading across the sweet skin along her collarbone and up her neck. “My turn?” she asks breathlessly.
“To be honest. Remember?”
“Oh,” she exhales, blinking. “Right. Honest.”
“No cheating,” I remind her. “I was honest with you.”
“Yes,” she agrees, nodding, her eyes dropping to my mouth again. “You were honest with me.”
I give her a moment, even though all I want to do is crowd her against the cable and rub my aching erection against her silk-clad dress. Even though all I want to do is bury my face in her neck and suck at the sensitive skin there as I ruck up her skirt and cup her heat in my palm.
“Okay. Honesty.” She takes a deep breath and then peers up at me. “I want you to kiss me.”
“Right now?”
“Right now,” she confirms. There’s the tiniest bit of quaking bravado in her voice, and I don’t like it. I mean, I’m halfway to dropping to my knees and begging her to let me see her cunt, but the better part of me wants her to be completely ready and certain. I don’t want her to fake bravery in order to be kissed—I don’t want her to require bravery at all. I pluck her drink from her hands and set it next to my scotch on the ledge, then I hold out my hand for her to take.
She looks confused. “Are you not going to kiss me? I thought—after all you said—”
“I want to kiss you very much. But right now can be as long as we want to make it, right? Maybe it’s the next ten minutes, maybe it’s the next twenty. However long it is, I don’t want to rush it. What if this is the only kiss I get to have from you for the rest of my life? I want to take my time. Savor it.”
“Savor it,” she repeats. And then she nods, relaxing. “I like that.”
She takes my hand and I lead her farther onto the terrace, where a tent with a dance floor has been erected, waiting for the after-dinner crowd to come for drinks and dancing. But it’s mostly empty now, and there’s only a lone employee carrying out trays of waiting champagne flutes and a speaker piping in music from the sextet in the lobby.
“How about a dance first?” I ask.
She looks around the tent, and some of her earlier confidence creeps back into her expression. “Are you sure you’re any good at dancing?”
“I’m excellent at dancing,” I say, nettled. “I’m like, probably the best in the world at it.”
“Prove it,” she dares, and so I do. I do what I’ve been hungry to do since I saw her, and I slide my hand around the dip of her waist, resting it against the tempting dimples at the small of her back and fighting the urge to slide my hand even lower. And then I pull her close to me as my other hand tightens around hers.
She shivers again. I smile.
It doesn’t take me long to find the music and sweep us into a simple two-step. I’m a serviceable dancer—some cousin demanded all the Bell boys take dancing lessons before her wedding, and I’ve managed to squeeze some use out of that exhausting experience at functions like this—and I’m pleased to find that the beautiful woman in my arms looks suitably impressed by it.
“You’re not bad,” she admits. As we move across the empty floor, the city glittering around us and the cicadas chirruping merrily, she meets my eyes with a look I can’t read. It feels like so much, like there’s so much there, history and weight and meaning, and I can almost hear the hymns in the back of my mind, taste the stale-sweet paste of a communion wafer on my tongue.
“You’re not bad yourself,” I say back, but they are just placeholder words, nothing-words, words to fill the air because the air is already filled with something thick and nameless and ancient and my heart and my gut are responding with a kind of keen fervor I haven’t felt in years. And it scares me. It scares me and thrills me, and then she moves her hand from my shoulder to the nape of my neck in a gesture both tentative and determined, and it feels important, it feels adorable, it feels like my body is going to rocket apart from the lust and the protectiveness and the sheer mystery of what I feel right now.
“What’s your name?” I murmur. I need to know. I need to know her name because I don’t think I can walk away tonight not knowing.
I don’t think I can walk away at all.
But something about my question makes her stiffen, and suddenly she’s guarded again, a careful shell in my arms. “I’m about to change it,” she says cryptically.
“You’re about to change your name?” I ask. “Like…for witness protection or something?”
That makes her laugh a little. “No. It’s for work.”
