If I were still a priest, this would be the time when I would mouth some platitudes to her about God’s plan–but all I can think of is that she’s here because it made her think of me, because she missed me. I’ve been gone for a few weeks, and though I’m loathed to admit it, I thought of her for every single day that I was gone. I’d seen her at Niall and Isabella’s wedding and stayed back in Boston even after she and Caterina and the rest of the family had gone home.
“I missed you.” She says it aloud, as if she read my thoughts, and then she blushes deeper. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean–it’s just…nice having you around. It’s nice to have a friend. I have Caterina, of course, but--” She bites her lip, trailing off, as if she knows she’s said something she shouldn’t. That need in me grows, the desire to reach for her, to tell her that I know how she feels. That there’s a connection between us that defies explanation, and I’ve felt it, too, since the first day I met her.
“Of course.” I don’t touch her, though I’m aching to touch her hand, to reassure her in some way. Just being near her, smelling the light scent of her perfume and her skin, is turning me on. I can feel my cock twitching with an arousal that was unfamiliar to me before her, forgotten, and I swallow hard, forcing myself to ignore it. I can’t let myself go further, to imagine taking her here, in a place where I shouldn’t even think of such a thing. Filthy thoughts, thoughts that make me harder still, because they’re beyond forbidden. “I missed you, too.”
I shouldn’t have said that, but the way her face lights up is enough to make me glad that I did. “Oh,” she says softly, her cheeks still pink. “Well, I’m glad. I should be getting back–” she stands awkwardly, looking uncertain. “Caterina always gives me the day off, but I know she’s going to need help, and–” She licks her lips nervously. My cock hardens even more, an uncomfortable ridge in my trousers. “I’ll see you at home!”
She can’t possibly know what those words do to me, how they make me think not of Caterina and Viktor’s home, where we both stay, but a home that I could have with her, if things were different.
If I hadn’t taken those vows. But if I hadn’t—would I even have met her? I’ve never thought about what path my life might have taken otherwise, because it was never really a choice. But watching Sasha walk away, her strawberry blonde hair swinging behind her, my hands aching to outline her perfect shape, I want to let myself go down that road. To imagine where I might have ended up, if I’d said no.
If I’d said, I didn’t want to be a priest.
I’d come here to talk to Father Donahue about something, but it’s forgotten as I watch her leave, my mind muddled with heated thoughts of a woman that I don’t deserve and can never, ever have.
I feel ashamed of my arousal, ashamed of what I feel when I’m around her. I do my best to ignore it as I drive all the way back to the small guest house on Viktor’s property that I’ve made into my home here, but as I walk in and throw my keys on the entryway table, my cock is still hard to the point of pain.
Fuck.I strip down for a shower, trying to push Sasha out of my head. Sometimes it works, but more often lately, it doesn’t, and today seems to be one of those days. I think of her back home, in the main house, so close. I think of how I could go to her, say the things in my head, and my cock throbs as I step into the shower. It aches with the need for release, and I grit my teeth.
I was a virgin when I left for seminary. I’d had chances, a girl who very much wanted to get me into the backseat of her brother’s car that she often drove, to try to kiss me one night after graduation.
I’d turned her away. Two weeks later, I left for seminary and the vows of the priesthood.
Vows that I’ve kept, even when it comes to myself. As a teenager, I’d pleasured myself, hot and embarrassed in the shower or the privacy of my room, but when I’d left home, I’d told myself I’d leave that behind. It felt foolish to give in to urges I could never see through beyond that. I told myself that if I stopped allowing myself to seek out even self-pleasure, if I ignored my body’s urges, I would stop wanting it.
For the most part, I was right. Until Sasha. Until I met her, and Iwantedmore than I ever knew it was fucking possible to want.
I reach down, aching to touch my cock. Even one stroke would feel good, a little release, a little pleasure. Something to keep me from feeling as if I’m going mad from wanting her. My fingers hover over my throbbing length, the shaft jerking up, slapping my palm. Even that small touch of flesh on flesh is enough to make me groan, the pleasure rippling through me as my hand starts to clench, envisioning Sasha’s lips, so soft and pink and full–
I yank my hand away, a different vision filling my head, one of a rainy night in an alleyway, a man scrambling backward under a neon sign, a gun in my hand pointed at him.
Please.Please, no!
The report of a gun, the sight of blood. His blood, a shot that missed. Him trying to flee, my knife in his back, his shoulder, his throat.
More blood. More bullets.
Death. A vow broken, a vow kept, and more than one life lost that night.
I clench my fists at my sides, turning into the hot spray of water, but that night isn’t the only one that swims into my mind’s eye. There’s another one, too, in a Russian mountain chalet, a man who screamed as Viktor and Liam and I took him apart, piece by piece. A man I helped to carve, forher. For the woman he’d wronged.
There is too much blood on my hands for them to ever touch her.
I don’t deserve pleasure. I don’t deserve the happy ending.
She does.