PREACHER’S DECREE
PREACHER’S DECREE
Preacher
I’d wanted Parker “Cassidy” Mills from the day I met her, and keeping my hands off her took every ounce of willpower I had.
We’d spent days in a stone cottage outside Beaune, and it was small enough for me to hear her toss and turn on her mattress and the soft noises she made in her sleep.
The water ran in the shower every night while I sat working at the table.
She’d come out afterward and pass behind my chair on her way to bed, and the smell of the lavender soap she’d brought with her from the States stayed in the room long after she left it.
Seventeen years separated our ages, and each one represented a reason I had to keep things strictly professional between us. In the hours I lay awake with nothing but a wall between her bed and mine, I reminded myself of it like a mantra.
I kept my eyes focused on my laptop screen when I heard the floorboard outside her door creak under her feet.
“What are you doing?” Cassidy asked.
“Working.”
The faded gray sweatshirt she wore was one of mine.
I’d noticed it disappeared after I did my laundry shortly after we’d arrived.
The first time she had it on and I asked her about it, she’d offered to give it back.
I told her to keep it. I liked the idea that she wore it to bed every night, as though it was me wrapped around her.
She went over to the sink, filled a glass, and drank half of it. Then she sat in the chair on the other side of the table, pulled her feet up under her, and looked over at the dwindling fire.
I read the same page of a wire transfer record until the numbers stopped meaning anything, because what I was actually doing was listening to her breathe.
She wasn’t doing a single thing to provoke me. That was the worst of it. She sat, her hair drying in loose pieces around her face, and had no idea how being this close to her tempted me.
All I could think about was how much I wanted to pull her onto my lap and ease my hand under that sweatshirt.
I knew she didn’t wear a bra; it was whether she wore panties that I was most curious about.
And if she did, what color? Were they silk or lace?
Bikini or thong? Not that it would matter what they were when I used my teeth to remove them from her body.
After a while, she got up to go to bed, and she came around behind my chair, put a hand on my shoulder, and leaned down to see what was on the screen. She was near enough that I felt her breath go past my jaw.
I took my hands off the keyboard and balled them into fists. “Please don’t do that.”
She straightened, but she left her hand where it was. “Don’t do what?”
“Stand that close to me.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’m a man and you’re a woman, and when you do that, I stop being able to think about anything except what I would do to you if I ever let myself.”
She took her hand off my shoulder. “Why can’t you?”
“You know the reasons as well as I do.”
“I know the reasons you give yourself.” She said it gently, which was worse. “They’ve never once been good enough for me.”
“Go to bed, Cassidy.”
When she didn’t move, I stood up.
I’d spent my career learning when to walk away from something that would cost me everything, and I understood, in the second before I stepped closer to her, that I had no intention of walking away from her.
“I’m going to tell you something, and then you can go into your room and shut the door, and we will never speak about it again,” I said. “I think about you. About us. Every night. Hell, all day too. I’m too old for you, and you know it.”
“I know no such thing.” She reached out and touched my cheek with her fingertip. “Do you think that when I lie in bed at night, I’m not thinking about you? That I don’t spend every minute talking myself out of getting out of my bed and into yours?”
“I’m warning you.” My voice came out rough. “If you don’t go to your room and lock the door, I’m going to act on every desire, every fantasy that has played out in my head since this mission began.”
“If you need to leave, go ahead. I’m tired of walking away from you when every part of my body wants to feel your naked body next to mine, to feel you inside me—”
When my mouth found hers, she fisted my shirt and held on, and I walked her into the wall beside her door and kissed her like my life depended on it. And maybe it did.
“Finally,” she said against my mouth.
“Tell me to stop, and I will.”
“Never.”
I put my hands under the sweatshirt, lifted it to her waist, and finally, after days of wondering, learned exactly how little she wore under it.
Go get your copy.
Preacher’s Decree