Page 18

Chapter Seventeen

Elias

I gripped the steering wheel, my knuckles aching from the pressure. The road ahead was empty, but inside the car, everything felt suffocating. I could feel the heat of the ice on my skin still burning on my lips, my body…my cock.

Every moment since then had been a slow burn, an irritation I couldn’t shake. I didn’t want to feel this, but there it was, gnawing at me, reminding me of the boundaries I’d just crossed.

I glanced at Ronan, sitting stiffly beside me, his eyes locked on the trees outside the window as though he could ‘will’ the world to stop spinning if he stared at them hard enough. I wanted to say something, anything, to fill the heavy silence.

But what is there to say? It’s not like either of us can pretend this wasn’t a colossal mess.

I didn’t even want to be near him right now, not like this. It was too much, too complicated. I hated that this had happened, hated that he had made me forget all the rules I’d built my life on…again!

But most of all, I hated the fact that I could still feel the cool touch of the ice warring with the heat of his mouth on my body. Every part of me screamed that it shouldn’t have happened…but it did. Despite the cage against my sex, I came for him.

I sinned for him.

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat and finally broke the silence. My voice was rough, and the unspoken tension was creating shortness in my tone. “We shouldn’t have?—”

“I know,” Ronan interrupted, his tone sharp, more clipped than usual.

He turned his head to look at me for the first time since it happened, his eyes dark with frustration and exasperation.

“But I’m not in the mood to hear you fucking reject me again, Elias. My mom’s in the hospital. Let’s just get there, okay? Bitch at me later.”

I could feel the air shift, his words hitting me like a slap in my stupid face, but I couldn’t stop the irritation rising in my chest, making me feel hot for a different reason.

Of course, his mom was in the hospital. I was making this about myself when Missis Saint Clare needed him right now. Shame swarmed in my gut like anger.

“Yeah, well, this—” I gestured between us, unable to stop the pain, guilt, and anger from spilling out. “This can’t be ignored, Ronan. You think I’m just going to forget what happened? You think I can just?—”

I stopped myself, the anger burning a hole in my gut.

“I’m a priest. I took vows. This…this shouldn’t have happened. You should have never touched me. I shouldn’t have let you.”

Ronan’s jaw tightened. He didn’t even flinch. Of course, he wouldn’t. Not when he was proud of making me finally break. My control was a thinning veil ever since he walked into my confessional. The man in me won tonight, and so did the raw, primal human part of my body I couldn’t cull.

“I’m not asking you to forget it,” Ronan’s voice was cold now, guarded. “I’m not asking you to do anything, okay? I didn’t touch you, Mon Pur. No rules were broken. It was fucking biology, so get off your fucking high horse for once and remind your holier-than-thou ass that my fucking mother is in the hospital. Or does that matter? Do you think she’s a lost cause to your god, and so she isn’t worth the mercy?”

His hand clenched into a fist at his side, his frustration palpable.

“My mom is…fucked in the head in so many ways but unlike your cushy life with perfect “Brady Bunch” family, I have never had that. I have one fucking person. Miranda. And tonight, I failed her. So just fuck off with your guilt, Elias. I can’t entertain your back-and-forth bullshit. I am focused on what’s actually important.”

I bit back the words that wanted to come out, the ones that would make everything worse. I was the one who got his mom to the hospital, the one who was there to get her help.

Me, not him.

He left to go be a fucking stripper!

I held onto my words.

The ones that blamed him for this mess, for all the feelings I never asked for. He had no idea what it did to me, what it meant to me. But I wasn’t going to say it. Not now. Not like this. He was right. Miranda was the priority right now. Not me. Not us.

The silence dragged on, more suffocating than before. My irritation was still bubbling under the surface, but I could see Ronan’s hands clenched so tightly, his short nails leaving harsh indents in his palm, and his eyes losing focus.

He was fighting a battle inside himself, which somehow made my own fight feel smaller and less important.

“Let’s just get to the hospital,” I muttered, my voice quieter now, even though I still felt the anger gnawing at me. “What’s done is done.”

Ronan didn’t respond immediately, but I saw the relief in his eyes. He didn’t want to talk about this either—not now, not with everything else weighing on him.

So, we drove in silence, the weight of what we had done hanging between us, and neither of us knew how or if we could ever truly escape it.

The road stretched on, but my mind wasn’t on the miles ticking away beneath the tires. It was back at that damn club.

The slow, sensual music, the dimmed lights, the heat of his body so close to touching mine. I could still taste him through the ice, feel his lips parted, inviting me in despite knowing better. The memory played in my mind like a broken record—sharp, disorienting, impossible to escape.

Ronan didn’t need to say anything to know my thoughts were plagued. I could see how he gripped the door and struggled with his own memories.

I could feel it all over again.

The way he hovered above me stripped me down to where I was so exposed. The air was a cruel caress. The sudden, reckless way we’d moved toward each other in the dim light. The mirrors around us had magnified the sin in front of me in too many angles.

Those slow flashing lights on the pole in the center didn’t help. The way the colors bounced on his body as it was above me…and then, the ice…that goddamn ice.

I didn’t want to think about it. But the image of his face, the heat of his skin, the intensity of the pain of my cage, yet the insane amount of pleasure from his presence…it was everywhere now.

The warmth was still there, in the back of my throat, and thrumming from my spent cock. I hated myself for it. I wasn’t supposed to feel this way. I wasn’t supposed to let myself get lost in the moment, let my guard down, forget who I was.

But in that room…I had.

And now here we were, sitting in this car, heading toward his mother’s hospital room, and I couldn’t stop thinking about how tight his abs constricted with his effort to keep his body so close to mine but just on the cusp of keeping his loophole intact of not touching.

I couldn’t even look at Ronan. I kept my eyes on the road, pretending like it didn’t matter, but it did. My heart raced when he was near, and my chest tightened every time I thought about what we had just done.

It wasn’t just the kiss from the forest. Or the secrets in the club. It was everything that came after it. The way we’d stood there, breathless, both of us unsure whether to step away or pull each other in again.

The music from the club was still playing in my head—loud, pounding, alive. And then Ronan’s lips. His fingers had gripped my pants, ripping them off my body, and for a second, I thought I might lose myself in him. But the ice, the dance, my orgasm—it had been too much.

We both knew it.

“We shouldn’t have,” I muttered again under my breath, like somehow saying it over and over would make it true, would make it go away.

But it didn’t. It just made it worse.

Ronan’s voice cut through my spiraling thoughts. “It is what it is, remember,” he said, his words slower now, as though he were choosing them carefully. “It probably shouldn’t have. But it did. So just move the fuck on, Elias. Please.”

He wasn’t wrong.

We both knew it. We both knew that what happened at that club, what happened between us, wasn’t something we could just pretend hadn’t happened.

It had changed things.

I could feel the tension coming off him, like he was struggling with the weight of his own emotions, but I couldn’t help myself. I kept drifting back to those moments, the way his lips had felt against mine. The heat, the urgency, the need that we had both given in to. I wanted to scream at myself,

Why couldn’t you have stopped? Why didn’t you just pull away?

But I didn’t.

And now, as we drove in silence, my mind kept pulling me back to that damn club, to the kiss, to the pull of Ronan’s presence. I wanted to hate it. I wanted to blame him. But the truth was, I didn’t.

I was angry at myself. I was angry that I had let myself want something I couldn’t have, something I shouldn’t have wanted. But that ‘something’ I craved with every fiber of my being. I needed him, and for that, I hated myself.

“You are so fucking selfish, Elias,” Ronan’s voice pulled me back to the present.

His words were quieter now, but they cut deeper. “My mom’s in the hospital, for fuck’s sake. You think I’m not dealing with that? I guess that hasn’t changed no matter how many years you still only think about yourself.”

I could feel his gaze now, even though I wasn’t looking at him. His words, his anger, his hatred—they carried a weight I wasn’t prepared for. He was right. He was carrying more than enough on his shoulders, and I was just a stupid priest getting lost in my own guilt and confusion.

I tightened my grip on the wheel, my fingers aching. “I know. I know, Ronan. But that doesn’t just…disappear,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady, even though the words felt like they were getting caught in my throat.

“I can’t just pretend that everything is the same. That I am not a hypocrite in these damn robes! You think I don’t want you? You’re wrong…but unlike you, I’m the one who’s going to have to live with this. With the fact that I kissed you. That I came for you. That it meant something I can’t?—”

I stopped, cutting myself off before I said too much, before it became too real, and that I would taint my soul forever.

Before I admitted that, part of me didn’t want it to stop. Even though I knew better, that part of me had wanted more of that kiss, more of him. Even though I had sworn, I would never let this happen.

Ronan’s voice softened, but the bitterness was still there, just beneath the surface. “I’m not the devil, Elias. I am just a man. Same as you. You’ve erased me before like I didn’t exist. I could never do that. What the hell else am I supposed to do? You want me to pretend it didn’t happen?

I can’t.”

I could feel the weight of his words hit me, and for a moment, I couldn’t answer. What was there to say? It had happened. And no matter how much I tried to convince myself otherwise, it had changed things between us. My walls continued to spider with cracks, the time coming closer to when they would completely shatter.

I glanced at him finally, just a quick look. His face was tense, and his brow furrowed in the way it always was when he was trying to hold it together. I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t stand the distance between us, how I had caused it, how everything felt like it was falling apart around us.

The way that, yet again…I was losing him.

“I don’t know what to do,” I admitted, the words finally spilling out. “I can’t just pretend this didn’t happen. That I didn’t love every damn second of succumbing to you…but I can’t…I can’t let it happen again either.”

Ronan was quiet for a long moment, the kind of quiet that stretched like a rubber band, ready to snap and harm us both in the aftermath.

“I don’t know either,” he finally muttered. “I don’t have time for this…this mess right now, Elias. I need to focus on my mom.”

And just like that, the moment passed. The kiss, the confusion, and the tension were still there, hovering between us. But now, it was buried beneath the weight of something bigger, something that I couldn’t push aside. If nothing else, I could get him back to his mother. I could fix one thing in the web of issues in my life.

We both sat in silence, the road still unwinding ahead of us, neither of us knowing exactly what the future would hold for each other—but somehow, knowing we were going to have to deal with everything when we got to the hospital. Together. Or not.

The truth was, neither of us could outrun what had happened. Not in that club. Not in the forest. Not now. Not ever. I had to find my path, and I had to commit to the pain that it offered.

Whether that was with Ronan…or my God.