CHAPTER 23
Julian
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He could have crossed those inches before his next heartbeat. Instead he held her gaze.
“May I kiss you?”
“Yes.”
The word had barely left her before she caught the front of his coat with her left hand and drew him down.
Her mouth met his.
Twelve years of order broke at her mouth.
The first pressure was careful because her lip was healing. Clara made an impatient sound and angled her head, opening to him. He tasted rain and tea. His right hand lifted, then stopped beside her waist.
She broke the kiss by a fraction. Their breath mingled in the cold.
“You can touch me,” she said.
“Where?”
Her gaze held his as she took his hand and set it against her right waist, away from the bruising along her left ribs. “Here.”
His palm closed over wool. The curve beneath it was warm and living, offered rather than taken. He bent to her again.
The second kiss stripped care of any resemblance to distance.
Clara’s fingers slid into his hair, and her mouth opened under his.
He tasted the soft inside of her lower lip, heard the catch of her breath, felt her body settle against his without pressure on her injured side.
His other hand cupped the back of her neck below the healing cut.
Every adjustment was a question. Each time, she answered by drawing him closer.
She kissed with the same intelligence she brought to a threat. She tested, learned, changed the angle, bit lightly at his upper lip when he tried to slow her. The small rebellion sent a hard pulse of need through his body.
“Clara.”
“That sounded like a warning.”
“It was meant to be your name.”
“Try it again.”
He kissed her before he said it. She leaned into him beside the plane tree, and his hand stayed firm at her right waist so her bruised ribs bore no pressure.
Rainwater cooled the shoulder of his coat.
Beneath it, his body burned with twelve years of unused knowledge.
Celibacy had not erased memory. It had sharpened every boundary around it.
Clara’s hand moved down his chest. Her fingertips found the white square of his collar and stopped there.
The touch went through him like pain.
She felt him tense and withdrew at once. “Too much?”
He caught her hand before she could lower it, holding it between them without returning it to the collar. Her right palm bore new pink lines where the cuts had closed.
“Too true,” he said.
She searched his face. “Do you want me to stop?”
Duty offered him the familiar answer. Desire offered another. Neither was enough.
“I want to know what I choose when I am not using punishment to make the choice for me.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“No.” He pressed his mouth once to the center of her injured palm, where the skin was whole. “I don’t want you to stop. I am going to stop us anyway.”
Her body turned rigid against him. Hurt appeared before she covered it with wit. “How nobly efficient.”
“Listen to the reason.”
“I’m listening.”
He lowered their joined hands but did not release her.
“Thomas moved your pastoral care. That removed one authority I held over you. I am still a priest. I still live here because of that office, and you are still sheltering under a roof entrusted to me because of it. Another priest celebrated for this parish today while I stood behind a door. I need to decide what that means before I ask you for more.”
“You think kissing me requires leave?”
“I think what I want after kissing you requires honesty I have not yet given the Church or myself.”
Her attention dropped to his mouth, and the frank desire in the glance nearly broke the restraint he was trying to explain.
“What do you want after?” she asked.
He tightened his hand at her waist, once. “You know.”
“I know the conclusion. I want your unredacted version.”
The garden offered no cover from the truth. The storm had scrubbed every surface clean.
“I want you in my bed,” he said. “I want your clothes on the floor and your hands on me without a collar beneath them. I want enough time to learn every way you ask and every way you answer.”
Color rose along her throat. Her grip closed on his coat.
“That,” she said, “was considerably better than an indictment.”
Her eyes stayed on his. “You’re fourteen years older than I am, and somehow you still sound surprised that I know what I want.”
“I am surprised by how much I want to give it to you. Your age has nothing to do with your authority.”
“Good. I like the older man. Doesn’t mean I plan to obey him.”
The answer tightened every disciplined place in him. “Then we understand each other. Desire is not obedience.”
“It was also a reason to stop.”
“For now.”
“For now.”
She looked toward the open kitchen door. Her route remained clear. He made himself step back and give it to her.
“I will request administrative leave,” he said. “Before I ask you for anything more.”
“Don’t do it for me.”
“Clara—”
“No.” Her voice stayed level. “I will not become the romantic excuse you use to abandon a life and then resent me for the wreckage. If you take leave, it has to be because you cannot serve honestly while deciding what you want. It has to remain your choice even if I move to Ward’s placement tomorrow. Even if this ends here.”
Julian’s fingers loosened at his side. The garden gate stood visible beyond Clara’s shoulder.
“You’re right,” he said.
Surprise crossed her face, followed by suspicion. “That was quick.”
“I have been accused of clarifying available facts.”
Her laugh came low and unwilling. It eased something between them without undoing it.
He continued, “I will request leave because I cannot keep standing between vows and desire while pretending silence is integrity. I will do it whether you stay or go. I won’t present the decision as a gift, and it will purchase nothing from you.”
“Better.”
“Sufficient?”
“Ask me after you’ve done it.”
She stepped close once more, rose onto her toes, and kissed him with deliberate brevity. A seal placed on no contract he could enforce.
Then she moved away.
“I’m going in first,” she said. “You can stand in the rain and examine your conscience for another minute.”
“The rain has stopped.”
“Then your conscience will have to work without atmosphere.”
She crossed the stone path and let herself into the kitchen. The key flashed once between her fingers. She did not look back before the door closed.
Julian stayed beneath the dripping plane tree until the distance between them became bearable again.
Security had not changed. Ward held the evidence. Vincent knew the parish’s weak points, and Adrian had wealth, patience, and a public version of Clara’s disappearance ready to deploy. Bruises marked her ribs. The danger beyond the garden wall had lost none of its reach.
Yet she had walked outside alone and invited him to meet her. She had kissed him because she wanted him, then defended his choice from the easy corruption of calling it hers.
He had spent twelve years treating deprivation as proof that his promises were sound. Clara had asked for a harder proof: a choice made without forcing either of them to pay for his fear.
He returned through the garden door and locked it behind himself. In the kitchen, the empty teacup was gone. Clara’s footsteps crossed the floor above, moving toward the guest room under her own power.
Julian went upstairs by the narrow rear stair. He passed her closed door without slowing and entered his bedroom alone.
At the dresser, he unfastened the white collar from his black shirt. The strip of plastic rested across his palm, light enough to carry and heavy enough to order a life.
He set it on the dresser.
At eight tomorrow, he would put it on again. Then he would write the request that began with temporary leave and could end in permanent departure.