Chapter 37
Thirty-Seven
Cisco
The empty laundry basket weighs heavier than a tombstone as I walk up the stairs toward the dormitories.
It’s getting late. I promised to open the church for reconciliation within the hour, but there’s another promise I must fulfill first, and since I’m leaving for Rome soon, this could be my only chance.
I pause at the third-floor landing and stare at the row of closed doors. I spoke with my team at a dinner I didn’t eat. We ironed out kinks in our plan to find the sword’s missing hilt, and now I am here.
“It’s just laundry,” I murmur to myself, knuckles blanching on the basket’s handles.
I force my feet forward, one step at a time, until I face her door—my old door.
I should be knocking on the door behind me.
If I were truly a man of my word, I would be throwing myself into this prophecy wholeheartedly.
I would get to know Jasmine, finding out if she is the one I felt a familiarity with at the pool hall, and resigning myself to the fact that my attraction to Mercy has been wrong.
I’d thought because she made me feel more like a man that she was the one. But perhaps a man is not what God wants me to be. Perhaps the Cardinal was right all along.
I knock.
No answer.
This was a bad idea. I should go. Maybe I should let her have the night.
But I knock again.
The door swings open, and there she is. Wild hair and bright eyes, she is a vision, and knows it. Her oversized T-shirt is inside out as if she hurried to put it on just now. The logo is reversed over her breast. No bra. My gaze drops to the vibrating toy in her hand. It’s the blue, sparkly one.
“You lost, Padre?”
I stare. I always stare.
“I’m here for your laundry.” I lift the basket.
I am almost forty years old, and I can’t string a sentence together around her.
“The match,” I clarify. “I owe you a prize.”
“Never met a man so eager to get into my dirty clothes before.”
I clear my throat. “I am a man of my word.”
She leans out, scans the hall, then yanks me inside. The door slams behind us, sharp and jarring.
For a moment, we just stand there. My basket is the only thing between me and her bare legs. The faint scent of her—floral and feminine—is in the air. She turns off her toy and plugs it into the charging cord.
While her back is turned, I look about the room. It didn’t take long for her to make herself feel at home. Clothes are everywhere.
“I like what you’ve done to the place,” I tease.
“I’m impressed you’re here.” She starts moving about the room, gathering dirty clothes, scrunching them into a ball, and tossing them at me. I catch them in the basket. “Honestly, I figured you’d chicken out.”
“It’s just laundry.”
Her smirk is a wicked little thing, and I feel it down to my cock.
“Sure, it is. You ever scrub lipstick stains off silk, Padre?”
“Um.”
She throws something made from silk into the basket. I don’t catch what it is because she called me Padre again. It irks me. She knows it.
Mercy gets on her hands and knees to reach under the bed. The T-shirt rides up her thighs. I face the door.
“You know,” she says, voice husky. “This is a blessing in disguise.”
“What is?” I mumble to the wood.
“The sword sparking for Jasmine.”
Every cell in my body rebels at her words, but I don’t let her see it.
“How so?”
“This is the last one. Here.”
I turn, and she deposits another garment into my basket.
“It’s a blessing because it’s what we both wanted.” Her smile doesn’t reach her eyes. “I can go back to fucking anything that walks, and you can go back to being a repressed priest and do … whatever that woman gives you.”
No words come. Only fury.
“Mercy,” I start.
“Oh, I almost forgot.” Holding my gaze captive, she reaches down beneath her T-shirt. A wiggle here and a sashay there, and suddenly her panties are in her hand. “Here. I owe you a prize, too.”
“You owe me a confession, not—”
“Freshly dirtied laundry just for you?” With a wink, she deposits her panties in the basket, opens the door, and pushes me out.
Don’t look at them.
Sweat clings to my back by the time I reach the laundry room outbuilding. The humid air is thick with soap and bleach. A few of the nuns are here, folding linens. They see me and smirk.
They know. For an abbey filled with nuns who vow silence, gossip spreads faster than prayer.
I nod as I walk past and dump Mercy’s basket on a wooden table. I quickly pull out the contents—yoga pants, shirts, socks—and load the machine.
A loud, deliberate clearing of a voice makes me pause. Sister Helena, the oldest, is shaking her head at me. She’s the one who told me in confession that it is her “great honor” to care for the Sinners. She mimes what I’ve done wrong with the laundry. Something about mixing and heat.
“I’m not sure I understand.” I frown.
A huff later, she pulls out Mercy’s laundry from the machine and starts separating them into categories. Then she points to the hand-washing basin, then specifically to the pile of lingerie.
“I must hand-wash them?” I croak.
One of the younger nuns at the next machine offers to take over.
“No, thank you.” I smile tightly. “This is mine to do. I am a man of my word.”
Mercy could have asked for anything. She wanted this.
With a sigh, I start filling the machine with clothes I’m allowed to put in there. The nuns, satisfied, leave me to my privacy.
And that … that is my weakness. I have always been weak when left unwatched. It is why I chose prison. It is why I ran to the seminary.
I run the water into the hand-washing basin and wash them one by one. A black lace bra. A slip of red silk. My scarred and tattooed hands look grotesque against the fragile fabric. My mind flashes to the sparring match, to the feel of her body, all muscle and heat and defiance. All life.
I clench my jaw, plunge the silk into the soapy water, and force the thought away with every scrub. Finally, I reach into the basket and collect the final item. My mind blanks when I see what it is. The lace panties she wore under that oversized T-shirt. The ones she slipped off while I watched.
Freshly dirtied laundry just for you…
My fingers brush the damp silk.
“Dio mio,” I breathe.
They’re wet with her arousal. Before I can think, before the priest can stop the man, I bring the fabric to my nose and inhale.
Musky, feminine, and all her. It invades me, filling every hollow, aching place. The hunger stirs. Wants more.
How is it possible that she has this effect on me, yet there is no us?
Is it just my hunger? Am I confusing this need with something more? Was she thinking the same things about me as she touched herself with her toy, wearing these, making them wet?
Just for you…
The laundry door slams open behind me. I jerk my spine straight. The panties vanish into my cassock pocket as I turn to see who’s here.
Sister Helena has returned. She gives my basket a once-over, then nods, approving of my work. I nod back, my face a stone mask.
She points to her wrist, as if there’s a watch there.
“The time?”
She nods and looks at the door.
I startle. “Confession. I’m late.”
She takes my basket with a smile and ushers me out.
“Bless you, Sorella,” I mutter, and then hurry to the church, to my sanctuary, desperate to ground myself.
The nuns are already here, waiting in the pews.
I apologize for my tardiness, dip my fingers into the holy water basin, and make the sign of the cross as I hurry down the aisle to collect my stole from the oratory.
By the time I plunge myself into the familiar dark of the confessional, I am almost in control. Taking a breath, I slide the lattice cover open and flick on the occupancy light. The red bulb casts everything in a fever glow, reminding me of the place we’re trying to avoid rather than strive for.