Priest (A Standalone Bad Boy Romance Love Story) (18 page)

CHAPTER
THIRTY-EIGHT

DAPHNE

The knock on the door startled me. It was
loud and sharp, and for just a second, I was afraid that it was my father
again. Just in case, I looked through the peep hole.

It was Jace and he looked upset, or
worried. I opened the door and as soon as he saw me, he smiled. I loved having
that effect on him, even if I wasn’t supposed to.

“Hi.”

“Hey,” he said. “Can I come in?”

“Of course.” I stepped back to let him in,
and he followed me over to the couch. I hadn’t heard from him since the day we
had sex in the confessional, but that was okay; I had a lot of soul searching
to do over that one. We sat down and neither of us said anything for a long
time. At last, he said, “How do you keep your faith so strong?”

“What?” I was sure he was there to talk
about us and figuring this all out. That wasn’t what I expected. I didn’t
exactly answer. Instead I said,

“Maybe my faith is not as strong as I
thought it was…considering.”

He knew what I was talking about, but he
said, “No, there is something about you, Daphne. Something that is so special
it transcended everything for me. Everything that I ever thought I knew or
believed in. From the first moment I saw you in that bar…”

I felt my face go hot. That whole night of
the bar started this mess and every time I let myself think about it, I felt so
cheap. “I don’t want to talk about the bar,” I told him. “But we do need to
talk about what happened in the confessional.” I didn’t want to talk about that,
either, but we had to. It was taking its toll on us both.

Instead of doing that, he moved in closer
and took my hands into his. Just that small touch set my insides on fire. “It’s
not often, Daphne, that I meet someone your age that just has this…aura of
faith about them. I feel it when I’m with you and it fills me with light. I
need to know more about that. I need to know where your faith comes from
because I feel like I’m losing my own.”

In my experience with men, which was very
limited, whenever one of them wanted to have a conversation with me where we
divulged secrets, it usually ended with him running for the hills.

The only really serious relationship I’d
been in ended that way, the second I told him about my life. Then there were
the ones that wanted to pity me and protect me. They didn’t understand that
although there were times like the night I reached out to Jace that I needed
protection, most of the time, I just wanted to be treated the same as everyone
else. I wanted them to recognize that I was strong in my own right and what my
father had done to me had not made me weak and dependent.

I didn’t want Prince Charming to swoop in
and slay the dragons of my past. I wanted someone who would realize that as
horrible as it was, it shaped the woman I am today. I wanted his respect and
support, not his pity.

I wasn’t sure which man Jace would be, but
I was afraid either way. My gut was telling me not to go there, and I was
usually better off when I listened to it.

I couldn’t bear the thought of driving him
completely away. Something inside of him called to me to, and I couldn’t deny
it any longer.

“Daphne, listen to me, please. I can see
you struggling with how much you want to share with me, but I’m having doubts
about everything in my life—except you. If you’re feeling the same way, then
maybe we can help each other through that. I think we have to tackle that first
before we can figure out where to go from here.”

“I am.” I said with tears beginning to
fill my eyes. “I’m feeling the same way. My faith has been strong for a long
time, but now, the way I feel about you has overshadowed it and I’m not sure
what to do.”

He was nodding. “I feel guilty all the
time about what we’ve done, but there is something still inside of me that
keeps saying it’s the right thing; it’s telling me that it’s my purpose, to be
with you.”

“I know. I feel the same. The guilt
overwhelmed me at first, but this little voice inside of me kept asking what if
you were the one I was meant to be with? What if you were who God put in my
path?

“I wish I knew, but I don’t. All I do know
is that I can’t pretend any longer that you’re just my friend, because you are
so much more than that to me.”

“I’m glad you said that about the path.
That’s what I keep asking God over and over: if I wasn’t meant to be with you
and if this is wrong, then why did He put you in my path and give me these
overwhelming feelings for you?

“There has to be a reason we met. God has
to have a plan for us, and I can’t imagine that plan is for us to have this
kind of intense experience and then just walk away from one another and go on
with our lives as we swallow the guilt.”

If Jace really believes that, if he really
thinks we’re destined to be together, then maybe he won’t run away when he
knows the truth. If I am going to expect him to give up his life’s chosen work
for me, then the very least I can do is tell him the truth and let him decide
what to do with it on his own.

I took a deep, shaky breath and said, “My
faith comes from having nothing else and no one else to turn to. I turned to
God when I needed someone to tell my secrets to because they weighed much too
heavily on my young shoulders. Things I couldn’t tell anyone else…”

His brows were pulled together and he was
looking worried again. “Things like what, Daphne?”

I felt a tear slide down my face. “My
mother died when I was very young. I’m not sure if that’s what prompted it…or
if my father is just a sick bastard who has always been so…”

Jace was giving me that look that other
men had given me—the one that said they may be afraid they asked now. I
swallowed the lump in my throat and went on.

“My father beat me…and he raped me. When I
finally got away, I was sure it was because throughout it all, I had kept my
faith in God. Otherwise, I believe he would have killed me. I needed a stable
parent in my life and God gave me that. I learned that He would love me
unconditionally and would never, ever hurt me, so that was where I turned.”

Jace was staring at me, and I couldn’t
read the look on his face. I reached up and wiped the silent tears off my
cheeks and waited.

If he was going to run, it would be now.
If he was going to pity me, I would see it…and hear it in his voice. He didn’t
do either. All at once, he nodded and said, “That’s it,” in a soft voice.

Confused, I said, “What? What’s it?”

“It’s that strength, that will to survive
that I see and feel coming from inside of you. It’s immense, bigger than most
people and the strongest kind of faith a person can experience. I know this for
a fact.”

I smiled slightly at his analysis. It was
the best I’d ever heard and instead of making me feel like a freak, it made me
feel warm and safe inside. “How do you know it for a fact?” I asked him.

“I recognize it because I feel it. I feel
it because I’ve been there, too.

“My mother was a raging alcoholic. She
went through boyfriends the way she did liquor and each one of them got worse.
My brothers and I were never sexually assaulted, but we were beaten, sometimes
so severely that we had to go to the hospital.
 
We all have different fathers and none of us knew who any of them were; that
was probably a blessing.

“She got into drugs, too, eventually. She
owed a lot of money to her dealers. I think she worked some of it off with her
body and some of it by selling drugs. But apparently, not all of it.

“She was murdered in the house one night
while we were all sleeping. Her boyfriend at the time wasn’t home when it
happened. When he got home, he got high before he called the police.

“Ryan was just starting to pull himself up
at the time. He grabbed a baggie of something off the coffee table and spilled
it all over. He knocked Ryan across the room and then got up and went after him
again. “Max and I got between them, and he beat us both so badly we all had to
be in the hospital for a while. By the time we got out, they had finally
tracked down my grandmother.

“Mom had taken off when Max was born and
never told Grandma where she was. She had always told us that her mother was a
horrible person and if we didn’t behave, she would send us there and Grandma
would torture us like she did her.

“Grandma never stopped looking for Max.
Mom wasn’t supposed to have custody of him because she was already a mess when
he was born. Grandma had kept in touch with the police for years, and when my
mother died, one of the detectives connected the two and called her.

“She was surprised when she found three of
us and not one, but she didn’t hesitate to take us in. Ryan had a lot of
problems after that and that was the biggest reason that he and Grandma ended
up so close. I think it also has a lot to do with how he is still so childlike.
We give him a lot of leeway because of it.”

“I’m so sorry, Jace.”

He gave me a weak smile. “Going to live
with Grandma was the best thing that ever happened to us. She was an amazing
woman and in all of the years I knew her, her faith in God never wavered.

“She was the reason I found mine and also
the reason I began to question it. The night I met you, we had just buried her.
I was drinking because I couldn’t handle the pain and I was questioning why God
would take her.”

“That night, my father somehow got my
phone number and called me. He said some disgusting things; that’s why I was
there.”

“I guess we have a lot more in common than
we thought,” he said.

I smiled. “Sadly.”

He reached for me and pulled me into his
chest. He didn’t run, and he didn’t pity me. He understood me. I looked up into
his eyes. I could see how strongly he felt for me.

I put my hand on the side of his face and
kissed him. Our tongues tangled and our breaths meshed and I knew that he was
right: we were meant to be. “Get undressed,” he said against my mouth.

CHAPTER
THIRTY-NINE

DAPHNE

I stood up and wiggled out of my shorts
and panties, and then I pulled off my t-shirt and bra and tossed then aside. I
leaned down and took his face into my hands. I put my lips against his and we
shared an intense, mind-blowing kiss. As our tongues danced, he moved his hands
up and grasped my breasts, squeezing them firmly.

I gasped and intensified the kiss, trying
to reach my tongue as far down his throat as I could. His hands left my breasts
and slid down my sides to my hips. I broke the kiss after a few minutes. We
were both breathless and I leaned my forehead into his while we both caught our
breath.

His gaze was filled with lust, and his
hands were inching up my back and running across my shoulders, brushing my hair
away with his fingers and tantalizing me and turning me on even more than I
already was.

I put my feet down on the floor and then
dropped to my knees between his legs. I reached up and unbuttoned and unzipped
his jeans. I took hold of the waistband with both hands, hooking my fingers into
his boxers. He lifted his hips, and I pulled them off of his hips and down
across his thighs.

I worked them down to his ankles, and he
slipped his feet out of them as I leaned in and took his hard cock into both of
my hands and let my tongue make contact with the shaft. I watched his face as I
swirled my tongue around he swollen head, relishing the taste of him.

I watched his eyes widen as I slipped my
lips over it and engulfed his entire shaft. I sucked him all the way in until
the head of his cock hit the back of my throat. Reaching down to touch his balls,
I began to gently massage them as I bobbed my head up and down on him.

“Oh my God!” he choked out. His excitement
made me that much more excited, and I started sucking deeper and harder. He
moved his hips up and down and wrapped his hands in my hair, fisting it up and
tugging on it as he thrust his erection in and out of my mouth.

He began to groan and I felt him grow and
swell in my mouth. He used his grip on my hair to pull me off of him and then
he took me by the arms and pulled me back onto his lap.

He gave me another smoking hot kiss as I
reached for the bottom of his shirt and pulled it up over his head. He finished
taking it off and tossed it aside. I loved his taut, sculpted chest. I ran my
fingers across it reverently and leaned down to kiss him along his collarbone.

He took my face in his hands and pulled me
back up to his lips. He kissed my mouth softly and then let his lips move down
along my jaw to my throat. He kissed his way across my neck and as he did, his
hands moved to my breasts and began to caress and squeeze them, taking time to
tweak and lightly pinch my hard nipples.

I moaned as I felt him dip his head down
and flick his tongue across one of my nipples. One of his hands was moving down
between us, and I wiggled my thighs open and whimpered in anticipation of what
was to come. I moaned again as his probing fingers began to explore me, gently
prying my lips open and letting his thumb stroke against my swollen clit.

Suddenly, he flipped me back on the couch
so I was lying down. His mouth moved straight down between my thighs. I moaned
and squirmed in ecstasy as he began to suck and lick on my clit.

I felt him slide one finger up inside of
me and crook it against the walls of my pussy. He moved it around inside of me,
making me want to scream. I put my hands in his hair and pulled on it, opening
my thighs even wider as he sucked my clit into his mouth and teased it with his
tongue.

He reached up with his free hand and
grabbed one of my breasts, while he continued to lick my pussy from one end to
the other. It felt so good. I was grinding my pussy into his face and down on
his hand and shuddering all over when the first gigantic orgasmic wave hit me.

I thanked God we weren’t in a church as I
let myself go and cried out loudly. I didn’t care if the neighbors heard. It
felt too good to keep quiet about it.

He licked me through the orgasm and after
giving me a few seconds to recover, he pulled his finger out and began kissing
his way back up my still quivering body. He licked and sucked my nipples and
then moved all the way up and kissed me hard, letting me taste myself on his
sexy lips.

I felt him take his cock into his hand and
press it up against my opening. I groaned again and wiggled my hips to open my
thighs up even wider. I cried out as I felt him slide into me. As soon as he
was inside of me, I began rocking my hips back and forth, trying to grind my
hips into his.

He grinned. “Slow down there, tiger.”

I giggled, breathlessly. He was right, I
was in a hurry. I just knew how good it was going to feel.

He moved in and out of me slowly for a
while, kissing me and sucking on my neck, raking his hands over my body. I
moved with him and soon we found a smooth rhythm that we kept for a while. As I
felt another orgasm beginning to build, I started moving faster.

He moaned and matched my pace, plunging in
and out of my pussy now as quickly as he could. I lifted my legs up and wrapped
them around his waist, using my feet to drive him into me.

I was writhing uncontrollably beneath him
and I screamed out in ecstasy when the tension exploded into another wild
orgasm. My pussy went into spasms around his cock and once again, I felt his
whole body shudder.

He kept pounding into me breathing
heavier, stroking harder and whispering my name—and something in Latin, I think—just
before he exploded inside of me. He rocked back and forth slowly for several
seconds before at last collapsing down on top of me and gasping for breath.

We were both slick with sweat and he
rubbed his chest back and forth against my breasts before pulling his weight up
off of me. He looked down at me and grinned. I shivered again and we lay there
as he held me and gently kissed the side of my face.

I was surprised as I felt him growing hard
again already against my thigh. He moved his lips to my neck and licked and
sucked there again and then he pressed his lips to my ear and said, “I’m not
done yet, beautiful.”

He sat up, taking me with him. I was on
his lap, and I straddled his hips. He reached down and gave himself a few
strokes before lining up with my lips and pushing up into me. I used my knees
to move myself up and down on his shaft with my breasts rubbing against his
face and his lips. He stuck his tongue out and caught a nipple every so often,
sending an electric shock down my spine each time.

He sucked one into his mouth and nibbled
on my nipple as he clutched onto my hips and I continued to ride him. His
fingers dug into my flesh and he used the sides of his teeth to scrape my
nipples. I felt like my head was going to explode just about the time he pulled
me up off of him.

“What…what?” I gasped. I couldn’t get
enough air to speak and my mouth was completely dry.

“Stand up, baby, and hold onto the back of
the couch.” Jace was getting adventurous. I didn’t complain or even hesitate. I
stood up and gripped the back of the sofa. I felt him move in behind me and his
hands grasped my hips as he slid his cock back up inside of me.

I gasped as he pushed himself into me so
deep that the flesh of his pelvis slapped up against the flesh of my ass. He
didn’t go slowly this time; he started pumping hard and fast. He left one hand
on my hip to hold me in place and he slid the other one up and grasped one of
my breasts and played with it while he continued to thrust into me at a
frenetic pace.

Our bodies were melded together in a wave
of undulating motion, accented by gasping, panting, and guttural moans and
grunts. I felt him clamp his fingers down tightly on my nipple first and then
the swell of his cock and the clamp of my smooth walls around it, just before
we both came together in another mind-blowing, earth-shattering orgasm. Within
seconds, we both collapsed into an exhausted, sweaty heap of satisfied flesh.

We lay there, gasping, until we both
caught our breath and then he said, “I’m not sure if I can continue to be a
priest. I need you, Daphne, and I won’t ever be able to fully commit to
anything that will keep me from you.”

His words filled my heart with a joy that
I’d never experienced before. Not because he said he was thinking about giving
up his vocation, but because he said that he needed me. I needed him, too, more
than I’ve ever needed anything.

I kissed his face and said, “Whatever you
decide to do, I will support. I just want to be with you.”