Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Farah
G uess I’ve lost my touch.
The word thief rings in my ear as I run through the various groups of well-heeled men and women in the marketplace. There isn’t a sympathetic face among them. Only pity or outrage that I would steal something that doesn’t belong to me. Believe me, I wish I could pay for it with money. I wish that option was available. Don’t they wonder why I’ve stooped so low as to pilfer chocolate for my lunch?
I’m starving.
I also make bad choices, apparently, because chocolate isn’t really a substantial meal, is it? Bread would have been the more nutritious option. But it has been so long since I’ve had anything sweet. I was desperate.
I am desperate. Always. It’s my default state.
“Come back here, you filthy piece of street trash!” shouts the man, who is rapidly gaining on me. One quick glance over my shoulder causes my blood to turn icy. A sword is being wielded over chocolate?
Tears sting my cheeks, the wind freeze-drying the patterns on my face. I take a hard right into the field behind the market, keeping to the shadows of the clustered, stone buildings, mentally begging my pursuer to give up. I don’t have the strength to keep running and I can’t get caught. If I’m in jail, my aunt will have to use the last of our money to bail me out and then we’ll truly be destitute.
We’re on the verge of being destitute, regardless.
Unless I marry Mr. Tandy.
Mid-stride, I shiver, thinking about the older man who visits the shelter every day, asking to bring me on walks or leaving me expensive trinkets. At first, I accepted the gifts, bartering them for food later. When I realized Mr. Tandy expected physical affection in exchange for his gifts, I stopped accepting them. He persists, however, claiming he’ll marry me and bring me and my aunt to live in his big house. The very idea of sharing a home with the smarmy man makes my skin crawl and my aunt refuses to let me sacrifice myself.
But we grow more and more destitute each day, her illness not allowing her to work, and no local businesses are willing to hire a shelter girl who has no proper clothes.
Mr. Tandy is beginning to look like the only viable option.
“When I catch you, I’m going to chop off your hand!” bellows my hunter, his sword clanging off one of the stone walls. “That’ll teach you.”
Oh God, that last vow was made so close to my back, I’m as good as caught. This is it. I’m going to have my hand severed from my arm in a field and no one will care, save my aunt. Just another street urchin casualty. And I didn’t even get to taste the chocolate.
A hand fists in the material of my scarf, yanking and choking me where I’ve tied it around my neck. I’m jerked to a stop and thrown down into the grass, pain going through my elbow on impact, my noggin smacking off the hard packed earth, disorienting me.
“Please, don’t hurt me,” I cry, rolling over on my back and holding my hands up. “I’ll give it back. It’s in the pocket of my dress.”
He looms over me, a maniacal look in his eyes. “Too late. You’ve already gotten your filth all over it. No one will buy it now.”
“Please. I can work to pay for it.”
The man does nothing but laugh, but my exposed legs seem to catch his eye, and the mirth turns to something else entirely. No. Please, no. I know what that sick light in his gaze means, the tightening of the skin around his mouth. It’s lust. It’s the way Mr. Tandy looks at me. A mixture of discomfort and interest. Anger at my body for putting them in a state of discontent.
Considering the fluttering hem of my dress, he taps the sword against his outer thigh. “The question is, do I cut your hand off before or after I have my way with you?”
My heart squeezes up into my throat and I scramble backward, my feet slipping in the slick grass. “Just let me go, please. I have a sick aunt and she’ll be wondering where I am. She needs me to—”
“Shut up,” he spits, dropping the sword in favor of unfastening his pants. “You should have thought of that before you stole from me. Now you’ll serve your penance.”
Run.
Find some strength and run .
I flip over onto my hands and knees, crawling several feet, surprised to find my vision is cloudy. From hitting my head or lack of sustenance, I have no idea, but his hand claws into my hair now, twisting, making my sob in pain.
“Stay still,” he hisses—
There’s a loud oof sound, accompanied by the thump of an impact. A grunt. I’m no longer impeded by a hand in my hair. I’m free. My pursuer’s shadow no longer looms over me, and I’m surrounded by sunlight. Run . I must take the opportunity to run, but I can’t help but stop and look behind me, needing to know what or who saved me.
The last thing I expect to see is a priest holding my attacker by the throat.
Two feet off the ground.
I gape at the imposing figure, my apparent savior, the fury etched in his interesting features. Yes, interesting. Not classically handsome, more hardened. Weathered. Rough. He’s far from a typical priest. For one, he’s young. Maybe in his late twenties. And he’s humungous. Barrel chested with raw, visible strength and…my goodness, his hands. The one holding my attacker by the throat is more like a mitt.
“I sincerely hope you weren’t forcing yourself on this young girl,” the priest says through his teeth. “No amount of confession would absolve you of that.”
The man makes a choked sound, his feet kicking in the air.
“How does it feel to be at someone’s mercy?” asks the priest, tightening his grip. “Someone bigger and stronger than you. How does it feel to be powerless?”
His response is to turn purple, eyes bugging out.
“Remember how it feels to be powerless the next time you want to use your strength against someone smaller.” I watch in shock as the vendor is thrown several feet into a heap on the ground, gasping for oxygen. “Do not go near her ever again. Or I’ll finish what I started.” He bares his teeth in a mirthless smile. “No one would suspect me.”
“Y-yes, Father,” wheezes the man, stumbling to his feet and fastening his pants. He starts to pick up the sword, but the priest steps on the weapon, keeping it pressed to the grassy earth.
“Do I look dumb enough to let you pick up a weapon?”
“No, sir. Father, I mean. Sorry.” The man backs away cautiously, cowering in the shade cast by the giant priest. “I’m going now. I’m going.”
“Good.”
Neither one of us moves as the man quite literally runs for his life, as satisfying a sight that I’ve ever beheld. I’m safe. I’m not going to be assaulted or have my hand cut off. I can’t believe it. I’m not accustomed to good fortune, but it appears to be smiling down on me today.
I look up at my hero as he approaches me, his height obscuring the sun momentarily, until he crouches down in front of me…and…
And all I can do is stare.
Into the most compelling pair of eyes I’ve ever seen in my life.
They’re a hue of green I’ve never encountered. A shade from an exotic rainforest. Almost jewel toned. Amidst that painfully masculine face, they’re even more arresting.
“What kind of priest are you?” I whisper.
“The good kind, I hope.”
His voice, up close, causes my nerve endings to rattle happily. It’s so deep. A husky balm to my invisible wounds. “I can safely say you’re a good one.”
Something akin to doubt flickers in his eyes. “Did you manage to preserve the chocolate?”
My lips curve. “If even a priest caught me, I need to work on my game.” I dig the hunk of sweetness from my pocket, holding it between us, shivering a little when I feel the priest’s warm breath on my knuckles. “Would you like to share it with me? I can’t possibly eat all this by myself.”
“Don’t lie to a priest, sweetheart.”
There’s a zingy little tug beneath my navel when he calls me “sweetheart” that I’m not familiar with and I don’t understand. There are goosepimples rising on my arms, my bare thighs suddenly like jelly. I feel fluttery and ticklish. Do I have a concussion?
“Fine, I can eat probably twice this amount by myself,” I say, tone light and breathy. Flirtatious, some might say, but they’d be wrong, because what self-respecting woman flirts with a priest?
“As you should.” Do I imagine the way his attention wanders down to my throat and breasts, before ripping back upward? “What is your name? How old are you?”
“Farrah. And I’m eighteen.”
“Farrah. Eighteen,” he rasps, before clearing his throat, seemingly taking a moment to find his voice again. “I’m Father McDaniel. Rune…to those who are familiar with me.”
“Rune.” He watches my mouth as I say it. “Thank you for saving me.”
He nods once, as if his intervention was a given.
As if I’ve ever been shown such regard by a man in my whole life.
“Thou shalt not steal is a commandment,” I murmur, hoping he’ll lean in closer to hear me better. “Shouldn’t you be punishing me, Father?”
Briefly, his Adam’s apple bobs above his black and white collar. “I’d rather watch you eat your chocolate in the sunshine.”
Oh. Oh my.
With my pulse fluttering in my veins, I bring the chocolate to my mouth, lapping at it once to test the flavor, then I close my eyes and bite off a small chunk, moaning as the dopamine wiggles into my nerve endings, the salty-sweet taste imploding my taste buds.
Before I know what I’m about, I flop back on the grass with a dopey grin, basking in the sun and happily sucking on my chocolate, grateful to be uninjured and have something, anything, to fill my empty stomach.
The priest remains kneeling near my bare feet, his chest lifting up and down, the sound of his breaths mingling with my suckling sounds and happy gasps. At first, I feel a sense of relief and camaraderie, but quickly I begin to feel other sensations. The priest is sitting in a position that looks right up my dress, and the hem is too short for me to do much about that. But he isn’t supposed to look. He wouldn’t.
Only, he does.
He looks .
That green of his eyes becomes obscured by the black dilation of his pupils, his hands fisting where they rest on his knees. What a picture we must paint. Me, in my short dress, lying in a field eating chocolate while the giant priest kneels in silence, staring at my simple, threadbare panties. Probably seeing right through them.
I don’t know what possesses me to open my knees a couple inches wider.
But he reaches down and tears at the earth, his head falling forward. “Lord, forgive me. Lord forgive me.”
“For what, Father?” I whisper into the breeze.
He exhales shakily. “My sinful thoughts.”
“Everyone has sinful thoughts,” I say, a pulse beginning to thrum low in my tummy, lower even. “Right?”
I hear him swallow. “Do you?”
“Not until now,” I whisper, wanting to open my legs another inch, but I…I shouldn’t. I mustn’t. It’s bad enough that I’m talking to a priest with such familiarity. That my body seems to be responding to him the way a woman responds to a man when she’s ovulating. My aunt has explained the whole process to me. Is this what she calls “spring fever”? Being in heat? If so, I should be ashamed of myself. He’s a man of God.
“Farrah?” he says, voice low-pitched.
“Yes?”
His gaze flickers to mine, danger lurking in their depths. “Close your legs, before I shove them open them all the way.”
I don’t mean to do it. I don’t mean for my thighs to spread like the pages of a book, but they lose all power in the wake of his…confession? Threat? My whimper carries across the field as he looks upon my flesh, the cotton stretched tightly over my pussy.
Features rapt, taut, he dips his face between my open thighs, his mouth open and panting—
“Father McDaniel!” exclaims a voice behind him.
It’s another priest. A much older, visibly appalled one.
“I’ll have you defrocked for this.”