Priest by Sierra Simone Read Free Book Online Page A

jizzing all over my desk.)
    Luckily, she took the chair opposite me before I lost all control and broke my vows in front of everyone in the coffee shop.
    “What are you working on?” she asked, nodding at the laptop.
    I breathed a silent thank you to God that she hadn’t noticed—or at least was willing to overlook—my lack of reply, and then another thank you for the very safe topic of budget spreadsheets.
    “We are working to raise money to renovate the church,” I told her. “And we’ve already had a few bids put in for the job, it’s just a matter of allocating the funds in the right places, after we meet our initial goal.”
    “May I take a look?” she asked, canting her head toward the screen.
    Before I’d even nodded, she’d already slid the laptop over to her side of the table and was scrolling through my sheets. A small smile creased the corners of her red mouth, making her look sexy and knowing and mischievous all at the same time.
    “What did you go to school for, Father Bell?” she asked, still scrolling, pausing to click every few seconds.
    “Before my mDiv? Classical languages. Si vis amari, ama. ”
    “I’m guessing they didn’t teach you a lot about spreadsheet formulas in Latin class.”
    “I was usually busy in the other kind of sheets.” I’d meant it as a lighthearted quip, but it came out lower than I’d intended, more intense. It came out like a warning.
    No. It came out like a promise .
    Her hazel eyes flashed up to mine, and she drew in a breath when she saw my face.
    Fuck, what was wrong with me? Why couldn’t I keep any interaction with her normal and well away from implications of sex? “You were saying about the formulas?”
    “Um, right.” Her eyes flicked back to the screen, and she swallowed. Her smooth throat moved with the motion, and I wanted that throat arched up in offering to me.
    I wanted that whole body arched up in offering to me.
    “Doesn’t the church have real book-keeping software?” she asked, stopping to fix a row of data that I’d accidentally cloned.
    “Yes, our office manager does, but I don’t know how to use it.”
    “So you can quote Seneca but you can’t use Quicken.”
    “You knew that was Seneca?” I smiled despite myself. I didn’t meet very many people who even knew who Seneca was, much less who were able to recognize a quote from one of his letters.
    “My parents paid a lot of money when I was a girl to make sure I knew all sorts of useless things.”
    “You think it’s useless? Non scholae sed vitae. ‘We learn not for school, but for life.’”
    “But si vis amari, ama ? ‘If you wish to be loved, love?’ I tried that once. It didn’t work out so well.” Her voice was bitter.
    I put my hand on her wrist. It was pure instinct, to comfort someone who was hurting, but I hadn’t counted on the heat rippling up from her hand, on the way that my touch would send goose bumps crawling up her arm. I hadn’t counted on how perfect her delicate wrist would feel with my fingers wrapped around it, as if God had made it for the sole purpose of me holding.
    I should let go. I should apologize.
    But I couldn’t. And I couldn’t stop myself from saying, “Maybe you loved the wrong person.”
    Because who wouldn’t love this gorgeous creature? This over-educated, over-sexed woman who oozed intelligence and sensuality? This woman of white skin and red lips and a brain built for running financial empires?
    She met my gaze again. “Maybe you’re right,” she whispered.
    We stayed like that a moment, our eyes locked, my hand gripping her wrist, and then— may I be forgiven —I slowly ran a thumb along the underside of her wrist, a motion that nobody could see, but that she definitely felt because she took in a shuddering breath.
    Fuck, she was so smooth, her skin so silky. I wanted to kiss that part of her wrist, press my lips against her pulse point, right before I tied a rope around it. In fact, I got as far as lifting her wrist