Page 75

He set down his spoon. “Right then. I’ll go first.”

Hands gripped my shoulders, pulled my back to his chest, and legs straddled my sides. His breath teased my nape.

My reaction was to explode in a whirlwind of attacking limbs, but it only came out as a flinch and a sputtering broken heart. Never mind days of pent-up anger. It was comforting to be close to him. I reprimanded myself but didn’t pull away. I missed him and that was that.

“I den’ regret making love to ye. It was brilliant, amazing. Sacred.” He sucked in a breath. “I will never forget it.”

My chest constricted. “That sounds…final.”

His brow touched my shoulder. “I’m still a priest.” A heavy sigh. “A priest in love with a beautiful woman. I broke me vow. Doesn’t make it go away. I just have to try harder.”

Every muscle in my body tensed. In love? Had I become so greedy as to try to turn him away from his god or prevent him from being the man he wanted to be? But I’d felt his desire, he’d been there with me, every step of the way. “So the ladybugs, the song, the magnetism between us…that means nothing?”

His arms snaked around me, squeezed. “It means everything. Wha’ we have…” His hand pressed against my chest. “This bond won’t go away. I can’t stomach the idea of not holding ye, laughing and fighting with ye, kissing ye—”

I shoved his hand away. “Kissing me?”

“Friends kiss.”

Friends. “So I let you kiss me and paw me and pretend your steel hard dick—which is currently stabbing my back—doesn’t exist?”

He groaned. “Aye right.”

I spun in his arms and raised a brow. “And I can prance around naked, use my bullet in bed beside you as long as fiery, sweaty sex remains off the table?”

A bulge bounced in his throat. “Ye wen’ make this easy, em? The answer’s the same.”

I climbed to my feet, a heaping dose of doubt fortifying my stance. “Problem is, Father Molony, we’ve moved beyond friendship. The little ditty you brought to light—you know, the shivering dance of electricity you feel under our friendly touches?—I can’t ignore that. So, while you’re clinging to your celibacy, remember one thing. I took no such vow. You being unavailable makes me available to others.”

The thought made me sick.

His gaze drifted up, eyes insoluble despite the wetness there. “I told ye. I den’ expect the same in return.”

I wasn’t sure if I was more hurt by his rejection or the fact that he accepted me sleeping with another man. The agony of it pivoted my boots, sent me tearing through the pelting rain.

Lightening illuminated a rapeseed field in a golden glow. The protection of the rain ensured no aphids. I took advantage of the respite and ran through the sodden stems, leaves clinging to my jeans. On and on I went. My legs softened, and my body shook with chills.

Eventually, exhaustion won. I found myself trudging toward the truck, slumping behind the wheel and fighting sleep as the miserable fucking night forced itself upon me.

Tap-tap.

I shivered awake. Curtained by the night sky, stars speckled through the windshield. The rain had moved out, which meant the aphids would move in.

Hard muscle curled around me. Oh, hell no. How had I not heard him climb into the truck?

I tugged his arm from under my shirt and turned it over to read his watch. I blinked and read it again. Almost sunrise. I tossed his arm.

Though his breaths hiccupped, his rigid jaw—which had been locked for days in resolution—was at ease under the pull of gravity. Whiskers shadowed the perfect sculpture of his face. I reached out. Just one stroke—

Tap-tap. Tap-tap.

A fingernail on glass. I scrambled up Roark’s chest and away from the driver’s side window. Darkness hovered on the other side.

I shook his shoulders. “Wake up.”

The smooth pace of his breaths in sleep didn’t falter.

I shook him again. “Roark. Roark?”

His head lolled against the back of the seat.

I turned back to the window. Yellow-green eyes glowed over the door.

Come away, O human child:

To the waters and the wild with a fairy, hand in hand,

For the world’s more full of weeping than you can understand.

William Butler Yeats

My pulse kept its frantic beat as the glowing discs dimmed and melted into the dark. I hauled the carbine sling over my head and climbed out. Roark didn’t stir.

The black sky fused with the black landscape and seemed to drain the winter chill from the air. My socks warmed against the dry ground. Dry? How could that be?

I called out into the night, “Aaron?”

“Mama?”

I spun back to the truck.

Annie sat on the hood, legs stretched before her. “You came.”

“I-I didn’t…” I swallowed past a burning lump. “Sweetheart, you came to me.”

She looked around. I followed her eyes, scanning the darkness that enveloped the bluff. Beyond the rush of my breaths, there was no twittering of nocturnal critters. No ruffling plumage of ducks hunkering in the wetlands. No wind whispering through the frost-laced grasses. No life.