And so did he, especially when he saw the difference in the lives of so many children, ones the same age he was when that darkness seized him. He loved knowing he could help those in the parish, even if he wasn’t wearing the collar.
The keys scraped his lock, and the little metallic twist thrilled me. I hopped onto the counter and waited to welcome my husband-to-be to our future home.
I bit my lip as he entered. He’d traded his cassock for a classy black suit and looked no less intimidating. He grinned as he saw me, though his smiled faded as he stared at my legs, crossing and squirming under his inspection.
“Hey,” I said.
I still trembled for him, especially when he gave me that hungry look. He stood still and uncompromising in his suit. Broad shoulders. Thick chest. I remembered what hardened under it.
Still imagined it.
The wedding couldn’t come soon enough.
He had spoken, but I missed it all.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?” I asked.
His eyebrow arched. Rafe approached the counter, his steps deliberate and heavy.
“I wondered if you had waited long?” The teasing edge to his words might have sliced through the pretty dress I wore…picked specifically because I knew we’d see each other tonight. “I guess so, or my angel wouldn’t be so distracted.”
He drifted too close, his hand tickling over my arms, down my hands, to the lovely diamond ring he’d placed on my finger just a few months before.
“Long day,” I whispered. “Classes and getting everything ready for the wedding.”
“Right.”
His kiss teased a mew from my lips. It was a mistake to touch him, but my fingers drifted within his suit coat, stroking the hard muscle that strained against his dress shirt. He liked that, and a low growl rumbled from his throat.
“Careful, my angel.” His warning was just another tease, an invisible stroke against my cheek, my chest. Lower. “We still have another month until our wedding.”
I swallowed, hard. “I know. It’s just…”
“Are you tempted?” He leaned close, his lips pressing my temple. “What are you thinking?”
He did it on purpose, these little games. But I felt the hardness stiffen against me. We teased each other for the past five months. Look, but no touching. A kiss goodnight pressed against the wall, but nothing more. He burned me from the inside out, but I knew how to scorch him.
“None of my thoughts are pure, Rafe.”
“Can you resist them?” His hands tickled over my side, gripping my hips in the way I remembered. “Can you deny these feelings?”
“I must.”
He hummed, low. “I’d hate to think that my bride-to-be is suffering such…torment.”
The thought slayed me. I kissed him, flicking my tongue over his just how he liked it.
I murmured over his lips. “I can wait another month.”
“I can’t.”
I squealed as he lifted me from the counter. He swung me into his arms and carried me from the kitchen to drop me onto his bed.
He groaned as his lips kissed a path over my neck and lower. I tried to hide my smile.
“But it’s wrong…” I grasped his arms, his hair, and arched into his bite. “We aren’t married yet. We can’t give into this temptation.”
“I’d surrender to these sweet sins.” His kiss drifted lower. “There is not a force in this world or the next that’s holier than my love for you, Honor.”
He pulled my clothes off, and his touch, kiss, and worship cast me over the edge too many times in too many ways. I shuddered for him, calling his name and begging for the sweet mercy of his body within mine.
We joined, moved, breathed as one.
Pure.
Unified.
Together.
No temptation, no sin, would ever destroy what we surrendered in love.
The End