Page 7 of The Priest

“Marie,” I whisper. My forehead presses to the screen that divides us.

“I’m sorry,” she says, her voice breaking. She jumps to her feet. “I can’t do this. I knew I couldn’t do this.”

I’m on my feet as well, stepping out of the confessional only a moment behind her, blocking her path. Her eyes are wide and stunned and wet with unshed tears. I pull her against me with a groan, mouth locking on hers. Not tentative the way it was the last time, but fierce and urgent.

My hands slide down to her waist, curve around her hips. She feels tiny in my grasp, easily broken, and when she arches against me, my gut clenches hard with desire.

“I’ve never wanted anything in my entire life the way I want you,” I tell her, my lips frantic, eager to press to every inch of her skin.

“Edouard,” she says. My name rolls of her tongue like a prayer, and it’s the most erotic sound I’ve ever heard. Her head falls backward, exposing her lovely neck, and I move there, creating a trail to the top button of her dress.

My brain is far ahead already—picturing taking her against the wall of the confessional. I haven’t been with a woman in nearly a decade and yet instinct has taken over. I know exactly what I will do and how it will happen. One fist crushes the fabric of her dress in my hand. The index finger of the other slips inside the bodice, above her cleavage.

She gasps. Responsive, just as I’ve dreamed she’d be. But it stops me at the same time. This is all new to her. So new that a fingertip along her collarbone is enough to leave her weak and pliant in my arms. If we keep going the way we are, I will take things I’m not meant to.

I move my hands to her hips to keep myself still and let my forehead fall to hers, breathing heavily as I try to regain some control. It’s useless. I’m never going to get over her. I’m never returning to the man I was before I touched her a week ago.

“We need to do this the right way,” I tell her. “I shouldn’t have...I shouldn’t be...I want you like I’ve never wanted anything before, but when it happens, it will be as your husband.”

“My husband?” she asks.

She sounds so astonished by the suggestion that I can only give a small, pained laugh in response.

“I suppose I should have asked first. Or told you that I love you, that I’ve loved you for years and years. I guess I assumed you knew it.”

Her eyes grow so wide and hopeful that it hurts. It’s what we’ve both wanted since we met. Why did I resist it for so long? I kept looking for a sign when it was there the entire time: the sign was her.

“I can’t imagine anything better in the entire world,” she says. “But are you sure? It would mean giving up everything. Your vows, all your training...”

My lips press to hers and hold there. ““You say it as if I have a choice. I’m not capable of staying away from you. But I’ll need some time,” I tell her. “I need to be released from my obligations here first. And I suppose I need to find a way to support us as well.”

Her hands slide up from my chest to wrap around my neck. “Does that mean, then, that I can ask you to kiss me again?”

“Marie,” I say, my voice hoarse with longing, “we’ll need to be careful.”

She tilts her head. “I know, but we’re the only two here.”

“That’s not what I mean.” My eyes drop to her mouth. “Don’t let me take things too far. Because I will. God help me, I already know I will.”

I’m moments from doing it even as we speak.

6

Marie

For the next three weeks, I exist in a feverish dream that feels real. Or in a feverish reality that feels like a dream. I can hardly tell what it is at this point. From the moment I rise until the moment I go to bed, my thoughts are only for Edouard. I think of his hands on me and his lips on my neck and the way it felt to have him pressed against me—throbbing there in a way that shocked and thrilled me all at once. The way it felt when his finger stole beneath the seam of my dress, that warning hum of electricity, seconds from bursting into flame.

It’s a struggle to hide it. Especially when I can’t glance up without finding his gaze on me, when every time our eyes meet his mouth will move, just a hint...a smile doing its best to escape.

Irene is always hovering nearby so it’s nearly impossible to be alone with him, but he often manages to slide a note into my coat pocket, and those notes become my life when I can’t be with him. They’re how I know that he’s written the bishop about being replaced here, that he’s applied for a teaching position in Manchester. They’re how I know that he dreams of a life with me somewhere far away, where he can hold my hand and introduce me as his wife without being judged.

I arrive to serve Saturday night dinner. Edouard’s head turns toward me from across the room—his eyes drifting over my face, his mouth tipped upward—and then he begins to move, crossing the room to reach me though he should not. “You shouldn’t come over like that,” I tell him, though I’m smiling.

“I can’t help it,” he says. “It’s impossible to stay away from you, now that it’s decided.”

Irene suddenly appears in front of us both. She used to greet me but no longer does, and tonight she fixes me with an ugly look before she turns to Edouard. “I could use your help,” she says abruptly. Edouard’s smile and my own fade at her tone.

If this is too much for her, I can’t imagine how she’d react if she saw us the way we were outside the confessional. Or the way he kissed me last Monday in one of those rare moments when we happened to be alone.