Page 17 of Divine Temptations

I felt Jake’s presence behind me, even before he stepped closer.

“It got found out,” I said, each word dragging pain behind it. “The other deacons, they prayed over me. Told me I was corrupted. Sick. They said if I truly repented, maybe God would show mercy. So I did. I said what they wanted to hear. I begged, and I told myself I’d never do it again.”

Jake’s voice was quiet. “But you want to.”

I turned, fast and flustered. “I haven’t. Not yet. I won’t.”

He stood a breath away from me. Tall, solid, eyes dark with something that wasn’t pity.

“Then why are you shaking?”

He brushed his fingers down my arm, just a graze, but it lit me up like a struck match.

“You think this is sin,” he said. “But what if it’s just real? What if wanting me doesn’t make you broken?”

I exhaled, shaky. “You don’t understand. I’ve already ruined one life. If I do this again—if I fall—I don’t think I’ll get back up.”

Jake stepped closer, close enough that I could feel the heat of him, smell the mix of beer and sweat and leather.

“You’re not falling, Ethan,” he murmured. “You’re finally choosing.”

He cupped my jaw with one hand, rough palm against my stubbled cheek, thumb brushing over my lips like he was blessing me with blasphemy.

My knees nearly buckled.

“Tell me you don’t want this,” Jake said. “Say it, and I’ll back off. But don’t lie. Not to me. Not to yourself.”

I should’ve pushed him away. I meant to.

But my heart was thundering, my body betraying me.

I looked at his mouth. His full, infuriating, gorgeous mouth. I looked into his eyes and saw something there I’d never felt before. Desire, yes, but also something deeper. Gentler. Something that felt dangerously like hope.

“I do,” I whispered, brokenly. “God help me, I do want you.”

Jake’s smile was slow, sinful, and entirely too pleased.

“Then shut up and let me kiss you.”

He didn’t wait.

His mouth crashed into mine, hungry, demanding, everything I’d feared and craved. I gasped, and he swallowed the sound, his tongue sliding past my lips, claiming me like he’d been waiting for this since the second we met.

I gripped his shirt like a drowning man, like I could hold back the tide with my fingertips. But it was too late. The moment our mouths met, something snapped inside me.

All the guilt and the denial. All the self-hatred I’d carried like a second skin—gone. Burned away by Jake’s kiss and the fierce way he held me.

I kissed him back. Harder. Deeper.

There was no prayer in this. Only fire.

And for the first time in years… I didn’t feel damned. I felt alive.

His lips devoured mine again, hot and urgent, and I swear something in me short-circuited. This wasn’t a kiss. It was a spiritual awakening. My heart pounded, my breath came in shallow gasps, and my cock, already thick and aching, pressed hard against the front of my jeans, demanding attention.

Jake moved like a man possessed, like he’d waited his whole life to get his mouth on mine. And maybe I’d been waiting, too. All those lonely nights spent praying for mercy when what I really needed was this. Someone who didn’t ask me to hide, or lie, or shrink myself into something I wasn’t.

When his lips left mine and traveled down the curve of my jaw, I made a sound—half gasp, half whimper—that I would’ve rebuked from the pulpit.