Page 3 of Sinner
She pushed his chest with a flat hand but he didn’t budge. A well-aimed jab to the carotid would drop him, but she couldn’t remove her palm from his chest, or tear her gaze from his.
Electricity zipped through her as he lifted his free hand to cover hers.
Stop me if you dare,his dark eyes challenged, eyebrow arching confidently.
Her own arched back.I dare.
Slowly, painfully, gloriously, he slid their joined hands down the hard slabs of his chest. Her fingers rippled over his ribs, then his abs. Down. Down. Desire bloomed in her belly, pooling low and, heaven forbid, she wanted to explore further, but…mission first.
She snatched her hand back, and he released a throaty laugh.
What cheek! What nerve. For all he knew she was a bona fide nun. It was one thing for her to flirt, but it was another to physically cross the line. “You are… the rudest… most—” She blinked, unable to get the words past the lump in her throat.
“Lost for words, Sister?” He kissed the air. “Most what? C’mon, tell me what you really think. Let’s stop our secret dance.”
She flattened her lips.
“No?” he added with a snort. “You want to be a nun as much as I want to be a ballerina.”
“You’re insane.”
“No, I’m perceptive. The other nuns don’t even know I’m alive, but you… you give me those sultry bedroom eyes, and that mouth full of sass, and I go hard. Every damn time.”
Her eyes widened.
“Admit it, Sister. You like getting me hot and bothered, don’t you? It gives you some sort of sick pleasure to arouse a man who can never have you… unless…” He rubbed his beard, contemplating. “Rethinking your calling? Is it my devastating good looks? My charm? My beard?”
“Your massive ego? Sure. Sure it is. Ugh. You genius types are all the same.” Her words came out, but her mind was stuck on the fact he’d said he got hard when she looked at him.
He smirked. “So it’s my mind.”
“It’s none of your business, that’s what it is. If you think you know the first thing about me, you’re sorely mistaken.” She couldn’t believe it. Things had never gone this far between them. Never escalated to physical, but always stayed verbal. It was just the kind of wake-up call she needed.
“C’mon, Sister. Give me something. This tension is killing me.” He frowned as he dipped his head, all playfulness gone. “I’m tired of this no-man's-land we live in. I want more.” When she didn’t reply, he pulled away. “Okay. Whatever. Be a nun. Don’t be a nun. Act sexually frustrated around me, act pious around them. I don’t really give a shit. I got my own issues.”
He adjusted his satchel over his shoulder and turned to face the front.
“That you do,” she said, and hit the button for her floor again.
God, she hated her job sometimes. Why couldn’t she have been born normal, without psychic powers? Why couldn’t she meet boys, make love for days at a time, and worry about the world later? Why was this lift so goddamned slow?
A long shuddering sigh escaped her. Perhaps she should have added something about him doing penance, but she wasn’t quite sure of the rules. Her time as a Sisterhood novitiate was filled with combat training rather than praying for forgiveness.
The silence stretched as they watched the light climb through the numbers. Mary could almost feel Flint’s urge to speak, and when he opened his mouth and shut it again, she wasn’t surprised. She didn’t need a vision to know he wasn’t finished with her.
Her prophetic visions had ripped her from an idyllic childhood in Mexico. She remembered the moment her mother turned on her with a burning clarity. Mary had been at a family gathering to celebrate her grandfather’s birthday. Crowded into the clay brick courtyard for the festivities, she’d felt faint. So much noise. So many smells. The mouth watering spices. The cheerful dancing and music. But the heat she had felt rise in her body that day wasn’t from the sun. The sharp needles that stabbed behind her eyes signaled the onset of a vision. Her first. She’d fainted dead on the floor, and when she had come to, she couldn’t help crying in anguish that her grandfather was about to die. She’d pointed at him, whimpering, “El abuelo morirá.”Grandfather will die.
Initially, her mother laughed and joked. “Not yet,Mija. Not yet.”
But within the hour, her grandfather had suffered a heart attack.
She was infamous overnight.Bruja, they called her.Witch.
They thought she’d cursed him.
But her father figured out she could predict the future. They took her from psychic circuit to psychic festival. Round and round the country they went. She had only been ten years old, yet she remembered like yesterday. She had no friends as they were always moving about, and the costumes her parents made her wear did little to make her fit in. All the money she made went to them while she was left to scrounge in the trash for food.
There was one good thing her gift gave her, it put her in the path of the Hildegard Sisterhood and gave her the resources to be a part of something bigger. The Sisterhood’s secret mission to promote the rise of women to power instead of a corrupt male government couldn’t exactly come to fruition with a bunch of innocent God-fearing women. No. She was the Sisterhood’s dirty little sinner, their necessary evil, and she had a higher calling than raising the Project children.
