She dug the toe of her purple pump into my ribs before stepping easily over me. "I'm going to the church now to help them mix the batter. I'll be sure to help Miss Danforth get settled if I see her before you get there."

She left and I peeled myself off the floor, taking a minute to clean the sweaty torso-print with paper towels and a cleaning spray. And then I went back and showered.

It ended up being surprisingly easy to stay focused at the breakfast itself. It was so busy, and I tried to make a point to sit down at every table over the course of the morning and get to know the people who visited. Some had children who I could send home with backpacks stuffed with school supplies and peanut b.u.t.ter, some had elderly parents I could refer to local eldercare services and charities. Some just were lonely and wanted someone to talk to-and I could do that too.

But every so often, I'd see Poppy out of the corner of my eye, smiling at a guest or bringing a fresh stack of trays out, and it was hard not to notice how at home she looked in this environment. She was genuinely kind to the visitors, but she was also efficient, focused and able to ladle scrambled eggs at a rate that made Millie declare her an honorary granddaughter. She seemed so at peace, so unlike the troubled woman who had confessed her sins to me.

I ended the morning batter-splashed (it was my job to carry the giant bowls of batter over to the stove) and finger-burned (ditto with cooking the bacon) and happy. While I probably wouldn't see any of these people at Ma.s.s anytime soon, I would see them again two weeks from now, and that was the important thing-it was about filling bellies, not winning souls.

I told Millie and the other two grandmothers to go home and rest while I cleaned up, not seeing Poppy and a.s.suming she'd already left. I hummed as I folded up the tables and stacked the chairs, and as I wheeled the mop bucket out onto the floor.

"How can I help?"

Poppy was at the foot of the stairs, tucking a piece of paper back into her purse. Even in the dim bas.e.m.e.nt light, she looked unreal, too rare and too lovely to gaze at for longer than a few seconds without pain.

"I thought you'd left?" I said, moving my gaze back to the very safe mop and bucket in front of me.

"I went up with a family earlier-I heard the mother mention some issues with late taxes and since I'm a CPA, I offered to help."

"That was really generous of you," I said, again feeling that frantic, squeezing feeling that I'd felt yesterday, that feeling like I was losing my footing with her and starting to flirt with something much worse than pure l.u.s.t.

"Why are you surprised that I did something nice?" she asked, stepping toward me. The words teased and joked, but the subtext was clear. Don't you think I'm a good person?

I immediately felt defensive. I always a.s.sumed the best of people, always. But I guess I was a little surprised at the depth of her earnestness to help-I had been when she'd told me about Haiti too.

"Is it because you think I'm some sort of fallen woman?"

I dropped the mop in the bucket and looked up. She was closer now, close enough that I could see where a small cloud of flour had settled on her shoulder.

"I don't think you're a fallen woman," I said.

"But now you are going to say that we are all fallen sinners in a fallen world."

"No," I p.r.o.nounced carefully. "I was going to say that people who are as smart and attractive as you don't typically have to cultivate skills like kindness unless they want to. Yes, it surprises me a little."

"You're smart and attractive," she pointed out.

I flashed her a grin.

"Stop it, Father, I'm being serious. Are you sure that it isn't because I'm a smart, attractive, advantaged woman that you don't feel that way?"

What? No! I had been one cla.s.s short of a Women's Studies minor in college! "I-"

She took another step forward. Only the mop bucket was in between us now, but the bucket couldn't stop me from noticing the elegant curve of her collarbone under her sundress, the faintest suggestion of cleavage before the bodice began.

"I want to be a good person, but more than that, I want to be a good woman. Is there no way to be both completely woman and completely good?"

s.h.i.t. This conversation had gone from taxes to the darkest corners of Catholic theology. "Of course, there is, Poppy, to the extent that anyone can be completely good," I said. "Forget the Eve and the apple stuff right now. See yourself as I see you-an openly loved daughter of G.o.d."

"I guess I don't feel so loved."

"Look at me."

She did.

"You are loved," I said firmly. "Smart, attractive woman that you are-every part of you, good and bad, is loved. And please ignore me if I f.u.c.k up and make you feel any differently, okay?"

She snorted at my swearing and then gave me a rueful grin. "I'm sorry," she said softly. "I didn't mean to corner you like that."

"You didn't corner me. Really, I'm the one who's sorry."

She took a step back, like she was physically hesitating about telling me what she was about to say. Finally she said, "Sterling called me last night. I think...I guess I maybe let it f.u.c.k with my head."

"Sterling called you?" I asked, feeling an irritation that was way beyond the scope of professional concern.

"I didn't answer, but he left a voicemail. I should have deleted it, but I didn't..." She trailed off. "He repeated all those things he'd said before-about the kind of woman I am, where I was meant to be. He said he's coming for me again."

"He's coming for you? He said that?"

She nodded and red rage danced at the edge of my vision.

Poppy evidently saw this, because she laughed and put her fingers over mine, where they'd been gripping the mop handle so tightly that my knuckles had turned white. "Relax, Father. He'll come here, try to woo me with more stories about vacations and vintage wine and I'll reject him. Again."

Again...so like last time? Where you let him make you come before you made him leave?

"I don't like this," I said, and I said it not as a priest or a friend but as the man who had tasted her just one flight of stairs away from here. "I don't want you to meet with him."

Her smile stayed but her eyes changed into cold shards of green and brown. I suddenly appreciated what a weapon she would have made in a boardroom or on the arm of a senator. "Honestly? I don't think it's any of your business if I do meet with him or not."

"He's dangerous, Poppy."

"You don't even know him," she said, removing her hand from mine.

"But I know how dangerous a man can be when he wants a woman he can't have."

"Like you?" she said, and the mark was so ruthlessly and perfectly aimed that I nearly staggered back.

The weight of the overtones collapsed onto us like a rotten ceiling-Poppy and Sterling, yes, but Poppy and me, my childhood priest and Lizzy.

Men wanting what they shouldn't: the story of my life.

Without another word, Poppy turned and left, her strappy sandals clacking on the stairs. I forced myself to take several deep breaths and try to figure out what the f.u.c.k had just happened.

Knock.

Knock.

Pause.

Knock knock knock.

"Stop," I muttered, rolling out of bed, sleep making me slow and fumbling. "I'm coming, I'm coming."

Knock knock BOOM.

The deafening thunder and preceding flash of light did nothing to alleviate my disorientation, and I stumbled into the table, the sharp corner burrowing into my hip. I swore, blindly reaching for a t-shirt (I was only in a loose pair of sweatpants) and groped my way down the hall to the living room where the front door was. I was just awake enough that I was beginning to register that someone really was at my door at three in the morning, and it was either a police officer coming to tell me that Ryan had finally rammed his car into a tree while texting or one of the parishioners needing last rites. Whatever reason they had for coming to the rectory, it probably wasn't good, and I steeled myself for tragedy as I opened the door, awkwardly also trying to tug my t-shirt over my head.

It was Poppy, rain-soaked with a bottle of Scotch in her hand.

I blinked like an idiot. For one thing, after our fight this morning, the literal last thing I expected was Poppy at my door in the middle of the night bearing gifts. For another, she was wearing what I a.s.sumed were her pajamas-a pair of dancing shorts and a thin Walking Dead t-shirt-and the rain had thoroughly wetted both. She wasn't wearing a bra and the rain had made her thin shirt almost transparent, her nipples dark and hard under the fabric, and once I noticed that, it was hard to think about anything else than those wet b.r.e.a.s.t.s, probably pebbled with goose b.u.mps, and how that cool flesh would feel against my hot tongue.

And then I came back to myself and for a terrible moment, I warred between two impulses: shutting her out into the rain or shoving her to her knees and making her swallow my c.o.c.k.

Flee the temptations of youth, we'd read at the Bible study earlier tonight. Pursue righteousness. I should shut the door and go back to bed. But then Poppy shivered, and a lifetime of respect and politeness intervened. I found myself stepping back and gesturing for her to come inside.

Pursue righteousness, the author of Timothy said. But did righteousness carry a bottle of Macallan 12 in her hand? Because Poppy did.

"I couldn't sleep," she said, stepping into the living room and then turning around to face me.

I shut the door. "I gathered." My voice was gravelly from sleep and something less innocent. Predictably, my d.i.c.k started to swell; despite everything that had happened, I hadn't seen her b.r.e.a.s.t.s yet, and they were more tempting than ever under that wet shirt.

f.u.c.k. I didn't mean yet. I meant never. I was never going to see her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Accept it, I mentally chastised my groin, which refused to heel, and instead kept sending these painfully vivid sense memories back to my brain, like how it had felt to grope Poppy's t.i.ts when she was bent over the church piano.

Her eyes dropped to my hips, and I knew my sweatpants were not doing a very good job hiding my thoughts. Clearing my throat, I turned away from her to walk over to the kitchen. "I didn't know you liked The Walking Dead," I mentioned lightly, sliding my hand over the switch. A pale yellow glow wafted from the postwar-era light fixture, casting angled shadows into the living room.

"It's my favorite show," Poppy said. "But I don't know why you act surprised that you didn't know. We haven't known each other that long, and most of our conversations have involved me telling you my darkest secrets-not what's on my Netflix queue."

She had come up to me and extended the bottle of Scotch, which I took, moving into the kitchen to search for gla.s.ses, trying to piece together a response-any response-but I literally couldn't think of a single thing to say.

"It's a peace offering," she said, nodding towards the Macallan. "I couldn't sleep and I wanted to say I'm sorry for our fight today and I thought maybe whisky..." She took a deep breath and for the first time, my still sleep-fogged brain realized that she was nervous. "I'm so sorry for waking you up," she said quietly. "I should go."

"Don't," I said automatically, my mouth operating on instinct before my mind could catch up. A gratifying flush spread up her cheeks, and something clicked in my mind, and now I was fully and completely awake. "Go to the living room," I said-not asked. "Turn on the gas fireplace and sit on the hearth. Wait for me."

She obeyed without question and that simple act of obedience stirred up the old me, the me that was known on campus for a certain type of experience in the bedroom. I couldn't help it, it felt so d.a.m.n good to have a woman pliant to my demands, to see a woman as smart and independent as Poppy let me take care of her, trust me to direct her in exactly the right way. And then I felt like an idiot. I gripped the countertops, remembering my women's studies cla.s.ses in college, the feminist nun at the seminary who outlined every painful instance of misogyny in the Church's history. I was being a pig, for more reasons than one. I needed to regain my control, go out there and tell her that after her drink, she needed to go. I would be honest about my struggle and hope that she would understand.

Even if she hated me for it.

Because I deserved her hatred.

But first, the drinks. While I enjoyed Scotch, I usually drank it alone or with my brothers, so I didn't have the right gla.s.ses for it. In fact, I didn't have any drinking gla.s.ses at all. So I brought the Scotch out in two chipped coffee mugs.

Be good be good be good, I told myself as I approached her. Don't jump her bones. Don't fantasize about f.u.c.king her t.i.ts. Be a good priest.

I offered her the Scotch. "Sorry about the mugs."

She grinned. "But they're so cla.s.sy."

I rolled my eyes and sat in the chair next to the fire, which was a bad idea because it meant that she was basically sitting at my feet and that was just reinforcing all the bad thoughts.

Now or never, Tyler, I told myself. You have to do this.

"Poppy-" I started but she interrupted.

"No, I'm the one who needs to apologize," she said. "That's what I came here to do, after all." She tilted her head up to meet my eyes and the fire glowed through her hair, showing where it was drying into messy waves. "I feel terrible about this afternoon. I'm f.u.c.ked up from what happened with Sterling, and for some reason, when you got all protective of me this afternoon, I panicked."

You and me both.

"And I'll be honest-since I am talking to a priest after all. It's complicated by the fact that I can't stop thinking about you all the G.o.dd.a.m.ned time, and it's killing me."

Everything in me lit on fire, because these were both the first and last words I wanted to hear, and I flinched.

She cast her eyes down in a wounded way that knifed through my ribs. She thought I was rejecting her attraction, rejecting her. s.h.i.t, nothing was further from the truth, but there was no way to explain that without making things more tangled than they already were.

"Anyway," she continued in a small voice, "I'm sorry for lashing out at you this afternoon. And I'm also sorry for what happened last Monday. I took advantage of you. I have all this s.h.i.t in my life and I inflicted it upon you because you were here and you were kind."

I leaned forward, trying to summon the strength to say what needed to be said. "I'm glad that you came here and that you're sorry-not that you should be sorry, because the blame of what happened after your last confession rests squarely on my shoulders. But I'm glad because it means that you understand why it can't happen again. I have a vow to uphold, to honor G.o.d by honoring his children, his lambs. You came to me for help and instead I-" I stopped, unable to utter the words. But the heat rushed to my groin anyway, as words from that one afternoon shot through my mind like bullets through ballistic gel. c.u.n.t. c.l.i.t. c.o.c.k. Come. I didn't need to look to know that my sweatpants were dangerously close to revealing these thoughts.

"-I took advantage of you," I finished instead.

She pressed her lips together. "You did not take advantage of me. Yes, I've got some s.h.i.t going on in my life right now, but I am my own person, capable of making my own choices. I'm not damaged, I didn't grow up unloved. I'm not a blank slate for males to exert their agency on. I chose to sleep with Sterling. I chose to let you go down on me. I wanted those things, and you don't get to tell me that I didn't. You don't get to tell me that I was nothing more than an unwilling bystander."

She stood, the red in her cheeks not just from the fire. "Don't worry. I won't bother you with my body again. I'll respect your vow and your outdated chivalry along with it."

That stung. That stung like h.e.l.l, actually, because I had just been trying to summon up all of my postmodern, feminist ally thoughts, trying to squash down the part of my brain that fantasized about making her crawl naked across my floor with a cup of single-malt balanced on her back.

And that's why-I think-I grabbed her arm and tugged her between my legs. She gasped, but she didn't pull away. I was at the perfect height to sit up and suck on her nipple through her shirt, which I did. Her hands laced through my hair as she moaned.

"I thought-you just said-" She writhed as I bit gently down and then resumed my sucking.

"You're right," I said, pulling back. "I shouldn't do this."

Her face fell ever so slightly, but she nodded, pulling away, and then I grabbed her hips and tugged her down so that she straddled my thigh, her p.u.s.s.y immediately starting to grind against me in an adorably needy way.

"I shouldn't put you over my lap and spank your a.s.s for being a brazen little s.l.u.t and coming here without a bra," I growled in her ear. "I shouldn't twist ropes around your wrists and ankles until your c.u.n.t is exposed and then screw you until you can't walk anymore. I shouldn't flip you over and f.u.c.k your a.s.s until your eyes water. I shouldn't drive you down to the strip club and f.u.c.k you in the back room, so that you'll forget all about Sterling and the only name you'll remember to say is mine." I lightly bit her nipple again. "Or G.o.d's."

I tucked two fingers into the waistband of her shorts and pulled down, the elastic stretching and giving me a peek at what I had already suspected. There was the smooth rise of her pubic bone, her c.l.i.t visible as a tiny, soft bud of flesh, a bud just begging to be touched.

"Why did you come here tonight, Poppy?" I asked as I palmed her breast, quietly groaning at the feeling of its unsupported weight in my hand. I kept my other hand where it was, still staring at her bare c.u.n.t. "Did you really come to say sorry? Or did you come here, in the middle of the night, without a bra or panties, to tempt me? That's a sin, you know. Willfully leading another person into wrongful action or thought. No, don't pull away now."

She had started to twist away, and I knew I was sending signals so mixed that they were beyond confusing, they were blended, incomprehensible, but then I murmured, "One more. Give me one more."

One more what? I wondered even as I spoke. One more o.r.g.a.s.m? For her? For me? One more chance? One more glimpse, one more taste, one more minute to pretend that there was nothing in the way of us being together?

And then I blanched. That was a stupid way to phrase it-being together-as if my attraction to Poppy Danforth was more than three years of celibacy encountering the s.e.xiest woman I'd ever met. As if there was some secret part of me that wanted to do more than f.u.c.k her, it wanted to take her to dinner and make her breakfast and fall asleep with her in my arms.

She was staring at me the whole time I thought this, staring with hungry hazel eyes and a hungry mouth and those t.i.ts so perky and soft under her shirt.

"Tonight," I told her. "We have this. Then no more."