Chapter 7
SEVEN
Zephyrine
Our position is awkward. He's lying on my bed, each arm sprawled out in the direction I tied it, and I'm straddling his lap as I look over the tattoo on his neck. I had a suspicion, one that wouldn’t stop haunting me in the shower, but I needed more evidence to confirm it. This was the only way.
My eyes follow the curve of the horseshoe down as it dips under his collar.
I catch a peek of more just below it. I slip my fingers under the material to get a better look, lifting it until I see the hint of other tattoos down his chest. They might have more answers about who Father Levi is.
Maybe he has entirely valid reasons for his tattoos, a life before he committed to his vows, but I need to know what story they tell.
If he’s even a Father at all, or if the tingling nerves at the back of my neck that I can’t seem to shake are warning me about danger instead of attraction.
These little peeks of skin won’t do. I’ll have to strip him down, and the faster I work, the better.
In an ideal world, I'd have him untied and tucked in with an alibi when he wakes up. I plan to tell him he passed out from exhaustion. I’ll say I just let him sleep it off not wanting to disturb him after his heroic effort.
A tinge of guilt slips over me for repaying him this way. But I need answers.
My fingers work over the buttons, still slower than usual but with none of the egregious trouble I had before.
The further down the shirt I go, the easier it is, and the more of his privacy I feel like I’m invading.
I’d been curious, even imagined what he might look like with his shirt off in the wee hours of the morning.
But even my wildest dreams hadn’t been this creative.
He’s a work of art—even more beautiful in sleep where I can take it all in.
The sharp curves of his cheek and jaw, the scruff shadowing the valleys of his face, his thick lashes covering his normally strikingly pale blue-green eyes, and his lush, full lips are pressed together in sleep-bound silence.
His neck contracts as he swallows, his Adam’s apple bobbing with the movement, and it draws my eyes down over his throat and chest, back to the tattoos and the job I’m supposed to be doing.
Undressing a priest. I don’t know what I did to get myself in this position.
That’s not true. I know exactly what I did.
I was born into the wrong family, and with it, I inherited the mess that is my family, for better or worse, with all the consequences of a politician for a father who will do anything to ensure he stays in power for as long as humanly possible.
In my former life, I agreed to be whoever and whatever he needed me to be.
There was a time when I was young that I even wanted to live up to that family name, make him and my mother proud of more than just my brothers.
At least until the convent changed everything.
But as I sit here, I can’t help but feel like I’ve absolutely lost the plot at this moment in my life.
The black-and-white truth of what I’m doing stares back at me.
Me, months away from final vows as a nun if things go my way, with a priest wedged between her thighs, tied up on her bed while she undresses him after she poisoned him. A man who may very well be innocent.
But I don’t have time to question my morality or my ethics right now.
I only have time to act. Because if I’m right, and he’s not a priest, I have a precious few minutes to find out who he is and do something about it.
I get back to the work of undoing his shirt.
I make easy work of revealing more skin with each slip of a button from its hole.
Until I push the fabric aside. My fingers stop. My heart skips. There’s a thick, raised scar, one that starts in the middle of his chest and spreads out in both directions.
It’s a brand. He’s been branded like he’s cattle.
It’s well healed, and the ridges are a pale pink, just a few shades off his regular skin tone.
The trauma was something he experienced years ago, but I can’t imagine the pain it must have caused.
The weeks, maybe months of healing. I hold my breath as I touch it.
My fingers trace the edge where the skin is glossier and smoother, following the soft borders of the healed wound.
“Who did this to you?” I ask out loud, looking up at him while he’s still unconscious but steadily breathing. The rise and fall of his chest brings the ridges up to the pads of my fingers and then drops them away again.
I study the brand, pulling back from my close-up view.
There are distinct letters. A B and two Rs that merge together to form what looks like an upside-down cattle skull.
I spent summers in cattle country, but I grew up in the city.
I have no idea what ranch it represents.
But I know it does. If I can find that out, I can likely find out where Father Levi came from, and with it, more information about his past.
I pull my phone from under the mattresses. It’s a burner I keep for emergencies. Considering I lost my real phone in the lake and have a man tied up in my bed, I feel like this counts. I barely get to bring up the search for cattle brands before I stop dead in my tracks.
I hear a low groan that’s barely audible, followed by the sound of Father Levi licking his lips. There’s a deep sigh, and I look up just in time to watch his tongue dart out and run over his lush lower lip.
Lord, help me.
I’m distracted by it, and I can’t afford to be.
The pull this man has on me, despite everything that should stand between us, it's like he knows me.
Like he can see past the blushing innocent facade I try to keep up around here, to the parts of me that are still left over from my past life.
A flash of how close we were before I fell to my near-watery grave. The dare in his eyes. I shake my head.
Maybe I couldn’t handle this investigation on my own.
I might need to call for backup, see if someone can come here and help me deal with him.
Assuming it is what I think it is, and he’s not some innocent priest. I want him to be.
But too many puzzle pieces about him weren’t fitting right.
And if I’m wrong about him, things could get complicated fast. Way more than I can handle as just one little old nun. But who would I even call to help me?
No. I can’t think like that. I made it this far.
I can handle this. I’m a little rusty from life at the convent.
It’s worn down my sharper edges, but I can absolutely put them back to rights.
I was a Schaefer. This was supposed to be its one benefit.
The ruthlessness. I can handle one man. I’m not about to let some cattle hand who’s escaped the pasture and wandered too far from home put all my hard work to waste.
I can’t, and I won’t.
His lashes flutter, and I ditch the phone, quickly tucking it back under the mattress and shoving the corner of the comforter back down. There’s another soft groan, and he starts to reach for his forehead before the rope stops his movement.
“Fuck…” He lets out a low curse.
Fuck is right. Definitely not a priest. How could I have been so dense not to see it?
His lashes flutter faster, and he tugs on the binds again. Then he rolls his hips until he’s restricted by my weight. He wiggles underneath me. But I don’t budge. He’s not at full strength yet, still too dazed to be formidable, and my thighs hold him in place.
“What the fuck?” He groans, and his lids slowly slide open, blinking and trying to focus on me before his eyes dart over to one of the restraints around his wrist. I hope the knots hold. I was in such a panicked hurry; I don’t know if I tied them tight enough.
There’s another roll of his hips, like he’s absently testing to see if he can buck the weight of whatever’s on him, and I press my hands to his chest to keep from being thrown to one side or the other.
It unnerves him. The muscle in his jaw ticks in response.
His focus drifts back to me, slower than it should, thanks to the drugs.
He tries to make out my form through what I assume must be bleary vision, given the way his lashes flutter irregularly under his glasses.
“Fucking hell is this? What are you doing?” he grumbles.
He says it almost like he recognizes me and is perplexed by the fact that I’m straddling him. He shifts underneath me again, and this time he’s stronger. I lose my purchase on his chest, slipping back slightly and square onto…
Oh hell. He's enjoying this a little too much.
I can’t think about that right now.
“Who are you?” I ask sharply.
“Sister Mary?” he mumbles. His eyes go to where our bodies meet, and his brow slowly rises higher. “What are you doing?” The accusation lies thick in his tone.
“Tell me who you are. I know you’re not a priest, Father Levi.”
That gets his attention. His body goes rigid for a moment, and then it’s like a switch flips. He’s trying hard to clear the fog now. Blinking and shifting. Tugging on the binds around his wrist. Trying to sit up while I press down on his chest, my nails biting into this skin.
“Did you tie me up?” He asks a question that has an obvious answer. “And take my clothes off?” An even more obvious answer as we both stare down at his bare chest.
“You seem to like it well enough,” I taunt him, blustering my way through this with more confidence than I have.
I need him to believe it though. He doesn’t know that I’m out of practice and a little too soft to deal with a problem like him on my own right now. I should have run the second I realized he wasn’t a priest. But now I’m committed.