Sinner (Priest, #2)

by Sierra Simone

emergency. I wish that I could just be happy that I landed this Keegan deal, that I have obscene amounts of money and a sleek new penthouse, and a nice body and an even nicer dick and hair that does a thing. But it turns out there are some things money and great hair can’t fix.

In this light, I can finally see her face properly, and I see that she’s not just pretty. She’s stunning; she’s incredible. She’s the kind of beautiful that inspires songs and paintings and wars.

God, I should walk away. Stick to my usual buffet of socialites and strippers. But even though I straighten up to go, I can’t actually make my body move away from her. Those copper-tinted eyes. That luscious mouth. It wouldn’t hurt just to talk, right?

I’ve been the one to do it. I’ve been the one to bear the brunt of Mom’s illness and Dad’s stress because Tyler’s too far away and Ryan’s too young and Aiden’s too flaky and Lizzy’s too dead.

A god I don’t believe in, a god I hate, a god who let one of his priests hurt my sister over and over again, and then instead of comforting her, let her cinch a noose around her nineteen-year-old neck to escape the pain. A god who’s now killing my mother in the slowest, most dehumanizing way possible. Fuck Tyler and fuck his god, I don’t need either of them and neither does Mom.

It tangles us up in intellectual knots when intellection isn’t the point. We have philosophy for that. Religion is for ritual, for practice. For moral action.”

Of course I’m only joking that I want to spend the rest of my life with the most beautiful, fascinating, sexy woman I’ve ever met. It’s all a joke. Ha ha ha. Hilarious. Oh my God, I’m so fucked.

It’s too soon, but I love her. She’s Elijah’s little sister and much too young for me, and she only wants me for sex, but I love her. And she’s going to leave me for her God, but I love her.

God, the fucking irony of a sinner loving a nun.

it’s a flickering, inconstant revelation to think that God could be here too, in the same way. That sex isn’t apart from God, it’s not separate, that somehow the God that’s prayed to and sung to and served by charity and love can also be a god that’s inside of sex and exists just as much inside fucking as He does inside a prayer or a nap or a meal or anything else a human might do in a human body.

But there will be no child, and there is no claiming. God claimed her first.

If Zenny can be brave enough to reveal how she feels in the face of this, then I can be too. I can set her free. And I’ll never recover, sure, because she’s it for me; she’s all a sinner like me gets—my one and only chance flashing like a firefly in the dark, too high up to catch. I’ll spend the rest of my life hurting with wanting her, missing her with swift and fierce aches. I’ll spend the rest of my life jealous of God, no matter what fledgling truces He and I have struck. But I don’t want that for her; I don’t want her to waste any of her precious heart on an old sinner like me. I want her to live free and happy and full. Without me.

“It was always going to hurt, Zenny-bug,” I whisper against her lips. “Always.” I soak in a last vision—dark, shining eyes and a tart, little nose and a sweep of lush, ticklish curls—and then I surrender her to the hands of God and her sisters. I close the door to the waiting room behind me, effectively slicing our love apart for good, and as I do, my heart breaks one last time.

“Don’t lose your joy,”