The Original Sinner: The Saint Part 26

"G.o.d, you're a sn.o.b."

"Guilty. Now stop cleaning."

"Why?"

"Because I said so, and I never once said you were freed from your vow to obey me. So obey me."

"Can you please order me to punch your face? I'll obey that order."

"Later, perhaps. I have nothing but respect for your s.a.d.i.s.tic side."

With a growl Eleanor dropped the bag on the ground and put her hands on her hips. She hated how much she loved his orders, how much she'd missed them.

He took her wrist gently in his hand and placed her hand on his shoulder.

"What are you doing to me?"

"Dancing with you. Not drunken reception dancing, real dancing."

He took her other hand and led her in the first steps of something like a waltz. He took her on one turn around the dance floor before stopping midstep. He studied her face, his gaze penetrating and intimate.

"She's gone," S0ren said, his voice soft with wonder.

"Who?" Eleanor asked.

"The girl. All of her is gone. Where did she go?"

Eleanor gave a tired half laugh.

"I killed her," she said without apology. "You said grow up. I grew up. She's gone. I'm here."

She held out her hand for S0ren to shake. Instead he raised her hand to his lips and kissed the back of it before turning it over and pressing a kiss into the center of her palm. She felt the impact of that kiss all the way to her toes.

"A pleasure," he said, seemingly amazed by the change he saw in her.

Eleanor pulled her hand away. Not because she wanted to but because she didn't want him to know how much it affected her.

"So ... you know how to dance?" Eleanor asked as S0ren led her on another slow turn.

"I do."

"Is this something they teach in seminary?"

"No."

He gave her a subtle smile as he let go of her hand and spun her gracefully.

"You know this song is about adultery, right? You shouldn't be dancing to it," she teased, trying to hide how much she relished the touch of his hands on her.

"Eleanor, I've committed adultery. Safe to say I can handle a song about it."

Eleanor stopped dancing.

"Wait. You committed adultery? When?"

S0ren said nothing for a moment. He lowered his hands to his sides as Eleanor pulled away from him.

"When I was eighteen, Eleanor. When I was married."

Eleanor lost all powers of speech. She took a step back from him, and S0ren turned the music off.

"You were married?"

"Yes. Briefly and unhappily."

Eleanor's knees went weak on her. She pulled a chair out and sat down.

"Tell me everything," she ordered.

S0ren pulled another chair out and sat a foot across from her.

"The first thing I'll tell you is that my marriage, such as it was, should never concern or trouble you. It's simply a fact of my past. I have no reason to hide it and several good reasons to reveal it. This is what I wanted to tell you."

Eleanor didn't have to ask what reasons he meant. S0ren telling the church he'd been married to an adult woman would be like holding up a big sign that said I'm a Red-blooded Straight Male. As suspicious as people were of the Catholic clergy these days, she couldn't blame him for wanting to spill those particular beans.

"My marriage will be common knowledge in time, and I wanted you to hear about it from me and no one else."

"Go on."

"It's a long and fairly sordid story, so forgive me for giving you the bowdlerized version. My best friend in school was half French. His parents had died in an accident outside Paris when he was fourteen. He came to Maine to live with his grandparents. They sent him to the school I attended-a Jesuit boarding school. His older sister, Marie-Laure, was a ballet dancer in Paris. Brother and sister missed each other terribly. Neither of them had any money between them. She couldn't come to America. He couldn't go live in Paris again. This might come as a shock to you, but my father had a great deal of money."

"Shocked. Stunned. Flabbergasted."

"I had a sizable trust fund I'd inherit when I married. I wanted my friend to be able to see his sister again. She wanted to live in America. Marrying her meant I would receive my trust fund, which I planned to give to them. Money and citizens.h.i.+p-I thought that would be enough for her. Everyone would win."

"What happened?"

S0ren's lips formed a tight line. A shadow pa.s.sed over his eyes.

"n.o.body won. Money and American citizens.h.i.+p weren't enough for her. I had warned Marie-Laure in advance that ours would be a marriage in name only. I had no romantic interest in her whatsoever."

"Why not?"

S0ren sighed and gave a low mirthless laugh.

"Let's save that answer for another time. Suffice it to say she wasn't my type. And I won't speak ill of the dead."

"She's dead?"

"She is. She said she was in love with me. I don't think she was. I think she considered my lack of interest in her a challenge. She pursued me obsessively and failed in her pursuit. She saw me kiss someone else and ran away in anger. She tripped and fell and died. Her brother thinks she committed suicide. I don't believe she had it in her to destroy herself. She loved herself far too much. Either way, she was gone, and I was a widower mere weeks after marrying. Her brother took her body back to Paris to bury her near their parents and never returned to school. I traveled Europe the summer of my eighteenth year and in the autumn I started seminary. That is the story-as much of it as I can tell you tonight."

Eleanor leaned into her hands and breathed. She had no idea how to react to this news.

"So you know how to waltz because of her?"

"I tried to distract her from her painful attempts at seducing me by asking her about ballet, about dance, about anything that interested her."

"You never had s.e.x with her?"

"The marriage was unconsummated."

"Your own wife."

"I barely knew her when we married. And she was the sister of my closest friend."

"Still, it was legal Catholic f.u.c.king. And you said she was beautiful, right?"

"When I realized how strong her feelings were for me, I considered it. I didn't want to, but she was my wife for better or worse. I felt duty bound to make her happy. I failed. And it's for the best. I'm not the sort of person who can engage in s.e.x simply to pa.s.s the time. The one person I was intimate with as a teenager loved me deeply and made sacrifices to be with me. I exact a certain toll on a person."

"I'm almost eighteen, S0ren. You got married at eighteen. Stop acting like I'm too young for you."

"My reticence has little to do with your age and everything to do with me being a priest who has no desire to drag you into a relations.h.i.+p that will dangerously complicate your life."

"I want you so much."

"Eleanor, I could barely breathe watching you walk down the aisle today. Do you know how much it hurt knowing you will never walk down that aisle to me?"

Tears burned her eyes.

"It hurt me, too," she confessed, and blinked the tears away.

He took her chin in his hand and tilted her face up to meet his eyes. When she looked in them she saw no mercy, no compa.s.sion, no love, no kindness-only the cold, bitter truth.

"Little One, to be with me is to hurt."

"To be without you would hurt more. It did hurt more. You won't scare me off. I'm not afraid of you."

He released her chin and Eleanor took a deep breath. Learning the truth about S0ren was like fighting the Hydra. Every question he answered sp.a.w.ned three more questions. The more she learned the less she understood, the harder she had to fight.

"I'll let you get back to your cleaning." He stood up and Eleanor, still sitting, reached for his hand.

"Don't go," she said. "Please. We don't have to talk. Stay a while. It's been so long and I missed you so much...."

He threaded his fingers through her hair and she rested her head against his stomach.

"I missed you, too. Every day. But I can't stay, Little One." He caressed the back of her neck. "I have company."

She turned her face up to him and tried to smile.

"Hot date waiting for you?"

"He wishes."

"Don't we all?"

"We'll talk again soon. Once I've sobered up and recovered enough self-control to be alone in a room with you without thinking the things I'm thinking."

"Do they involve us breaking the gift table?"

"It never stood a chance."

Eleanor heaved a melodramatic sigh and stood on top of a chair.

"What are you doing, Eleanor?"

"I wanted to look down on you. This works." She slid her hands over his broad back and wrapped her arms around him. She rested her chin against his shoulder and closed her eyes.

"You owe me this," she said. "You dumped me. Now you owe me."

"I'll make it up to you in time," he promised. His arms tightened around her, tight enough she knew he meant it.

She started to release him, but he wouldn't let her go. Smiling, she clung to him even harder, relis.h.i.+ng the feel of his large, strong hands on her back and his arms holding her so close to him not even G.o.d could slide between the cracks. Her body temperature spiked from the heat of him against her. A thousand dark and beautiful images flashed through her mind-him pressing her against the wall, capturing her mouth in a kiss, clothes coming off seemingly of their own will and him on top of her, inside her, claiming her as his own all night long.

"Why are you a priest?" She dug her hands in the back of his hair. Such soft hair and pale as spun gold.

"I love being a priest. It's who I am. And it's who I am because G.o.d wants me to be a priest."

"Are you sure?"

"If I had any doubt in my mind, do you think you'd still be a virgin?"

"Who said I was?"

S0ren pulled back long enough to give her a dirty look.

"Oh, stop glaring and hug me, Blondie."

Laughing, he pulled her close again.

"You promised me everything," she whispered.

"And I will keep my promise. But not yet."

"Don't worry about it. I told you I can wait, and I'll wait. I know this is a big deal."

"What you want from me, what we want from each other ... it's forbidden, Little One. If I'm caught, if we're caught...."

The warning tone in his voice gave her a chill.