Saving Sins (Forbidden Erotic Romance) Read online

  Nodding, Tara stared at the dashboard and tried to steady her heart. Her hands felt weak and useless at the ends of her arms. She was back.

  *

  Carrollton Ridge. You cold pick up a streetwalker here any time of day, any day of the week. It and Pigtown were ground zero for sex work. Blocks of run-down rowhouses glared down at cracked, potholed streets, and people got shot with regularity. It was just the way life was here. When she'd run away from home, she'd ended up here. It was dirty and disgusting, but honestly? It had been better on the streets and in the flophouses than back at home.

  Her first night squatting in an abandoned house, she knew would never have to go back home again. She could always crash on a mattress somewhere. If she had to, she could always turn a trick.

  No. No, you don't have to. Not any more. You don't have to live like that no more.

  Tara swallowed around a lump in her throat. She'd been through years of therapy, but it was a lot different, talking things out with a headshrinker, than coming back to your old stomping grounds, hoping to drag another girl kicking and screaming out of the underworld.

  All that was long ago. You're a different person now.

  And it was true. Mostly.

  Next to her, Father Michael popped his door open, and together they slid out of the van and into the frigid night air.

  Opening the back doors of the van, Michael reached in and grabbed a heavy brass bell. Tara smiled.

  Hefting the heavy weight over his head, he began to ring it. "Food!" he yelled. "Blankets! Tea! It's Father Michael!"

  A gaggle of girls a block down began to move toward them, and Tara held her breath. When he'd come through her section of town the very first time, he'd picked her up in his car. The second time she'd seen him, he had the van setup, but the bell was new.

  She hung back, just around the corner, against the cracked brick of an abandoned rowhouse. The do-gooder priest was back, handing out shit to any girl who wanted something.

  He was an idiot. Half these girls could afford that shit on the money they made in a night. They didn't necessarily spend that money on blankets and shit, but who cared about that? Dope kept you warm, and so did clients. Whiskey did it, too. She had her own bottle stowed away in the flophouse, hidden under some junk. She was pretty sure no one was going to steal it. Besides, who needed blankets in August?

  Dumbass, she thought.

  "God keep you," she heard him say to Kairi, one of the girls Tara had started to get to know. Kairi was sweet, but only when she wasn't high. When she was chasing her fix, or strung out, she was a totally different person entirely, full of drama and crazy shit. The last thing Tara wanted in her life was more drama. She had enough to deal with.

  Kairi blew the priest a kiss and Tara felt a shot of jealousy. But he didn't react, merely turned to the next girl. Ladonna. "What do you need tonight, my child?"

  Tara turned away and walked in the opposite direction. She didn't need anyone calling her child. She'd been child enough for one life. She was a woman now. She was on her own. She was going to survive. And if she didn't... well, it wouldn't be so bad.

  That's what that priest didn't understand. There were fates worse than death.

  She'd lived them.

  Girls gathered around the van, and Tara found herself tongue-tied.

  "Ooooh, Father, have you got a girlfriend?" one of them asked. With hard eyes, they probed her, perused her. Sized her up. Old shame and fear welled up in her, and Tara turned to the trays of food and busied her hands, trying to look preoccupied.

  "Oh, she's shy!" one of the other girls squealed. "Come on, you can look at us. We ain't catchin'."

  Mortified, Tara tried to decide what to do. She didn't want them to think she thought she was too good for them. She wasn't. She was just like them. Except not any more, was she?

  "Be gentle with her," Father Michael said. "It's her first night on this side of the equation."

  It took a moment for them to catch on. "Whaaaaaaaaat?" the first one said. "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "Means she was a street kid," a third one said. "Come on, I'm hungry."

  Biting her lip, Tara pulled the foil back from the trays and selected a few sandwiches.

  Next to her, she felt Father Michael lean into the back of the van with her. "Don't worry," he whispered. "You know as well as I do that they're harmless."

  They weren't. They could wound just as effectively as any knife. Every harsh word, every girl who ever got in her face and screamed her down, they all came flooding back, knocking her over, pulling her under. Too many memories. Too many things she'd done. She'd stolen. She'd kicked and bit and scratched. She'd seen what you could do with a stiletto heel.

  She wasn't any better than these girls. She was worse, because now she was back, trying to pretend that what had happened to her could happen to them. She'd been young. Most of these girls were in their twenties. It was too late, she couldn't help them, there was nothing she could do, she was a hypocrite, a terrible hypocrite...

  Then his hand alighted on the small of her back and Tara felt one roiling turmoil inside her still, while deep in her belly another deep, hungry storm stirred.

  No, she thought. That's not allowed. You aren't allowed to feel this way. He's a priest.

  But she couldn't deny what she felt. She'd felt it for years and time and distance had not dimmed it. Glancing at him, her heart leaped.

  Green eyes glittered at her. Compassionate. Kind. And something else.

  His rundown car, pulling up next to her again.

  “Stalking me, Father?” she said. “And in broad daylight, too.” The sun beat down. Unseasonably warm in September.

  “Are you keeping safe?” he asked her from the depths of his car.

  She waved a hand at him. “Safe enough,” she said. She almost asked him if he wanted to try her out, but she didn't. It seemed too crude. She still hadn't worked up the courage to try selling herself again “How about you?” she asked.

  From the cool shadows inside his car, she saw his eyes widen.

  “I am fine,” he said after a moment.

  She couldn't help but quirk a smile at him. “No one asks how the shepherd is doing, do they?” she said.

  He shook his head. “No. They don't.”

  She leaned down, propping her arms on the door. “Well, you can tell me,” she said, her voice low. “I keep secrets real good.”

  In silence they studied each other. She noticed, for the first time, that the muscles around his eyes were tight, that his jaw was strong but tense. He kept a lot of things inside.

  She wanted to let them out.

  “Perhaps some other time,” he said at last.

  She backed away, and he drove off into the ripples of the hot, late summer afternoon.

  His gaze was arresting, but she somehow summoned the strength to yank her eyes away from his. Straightening, she plastered a smile over her face, then turned and held the sandwiches out.

  "'Bout time," the first girl said, snatching both of them from her hands. "Hey, Father, I need some needles too."

  “Of course,” Michael said. “I have some in the back seat. Anyone who needs to trade needles with me, come around the side. Tara here will help you with whatever else you need.

  The thought of being left alone with these women sent a bolt of fear through her and Tara tried to send him frantic ESP signals that she was not ready, not ready at all.

  His piercing green eyes pinned her again, and Tara froze like a butterfly in amber. Then he gave her a nod and a wink and disappeared around the corner of the van, and Tara was left alone to face her past by herself.

  Her fingers were numb as she handed food out. She felt the girls circling, sensing easy prey, though she knew if any of them got a whiff of the cops they'd scatter to the four winds. Too bad she was just a student. She had no power over them.

  What would Father Michael do? she thought. She was moments away from being heckled and losing face, and on th
e streets your reputation was everything. Think! Think!

  “Do... do any of you need anything?” she asked, and her voice came out as fragile and thin as the skin of a falling leaf.

  The ladies giggled to each other, their gaudy jewelry and glitzy tops flashing in the flat yellow light of the streetlamps. One of them reached out and plucked a sandwich from her tray. “Can I have two?” she said.

  Tara had to swallow hard around the lump in her throat, but somewhere, deep inside, she dredged up the old reflexes. “Hell no!” she said. “Don't get greedy, we gotta make these last.”

  “Ooooh!” the woman said, curling her fingers at her. “Meow. Father Michael's kitten has some claws.”

  “I could use some cigarettes,” one of the other girls said. “You got some cigarettes back there?”

  Tara shook her head. “Now why would we have cigarettes? We have blankets, we have hot drinks, we have needles, we have food, we have condoms. You want something else go to the ShopMart.” She felt her body take on the straightened spine and tiny head-waggle she remembered using way back then. Give attitude, never get attitude. Get pushed, push back. That was the way it was out here. She'd learned the rules by heart, and they stayed, even when they weren't useful any more.

  Too much dope. Too much. Was there such a thing as too much? She was feeling sick and definitely about to tip over and pour out all over the pavement. No one would notice or care, of course. Just another street kid lying in their own sick. The gentle breeze of the night, cooler now that it was September, caressed her face, lifting her hair from her heated cheeks. The sounds of someone fighting somewhere in the neighborhood scraped over her ears, too loud to her doped up brain. The occasional car that passed by made her wish she could swaddle her head in cotton. The best she had was her hoodie.

  Maybe it would help. With exhausted movements, she slowly maneuvered her arms out of her thick sweatshirt and shivered a little when cool air hit her skin, but when she pulled it up over her head she felt better. The black fabric blocked the light, and her headache subsided.

  I gotta stop shooting up, she thought to herself, but it was an idle thought, an in-the-moment thought. She thought it a lot. And yet after two weeks, or one, or a few days, she scraped enough money together to get high again. The only reason she wasn't riding that freight train straight to oblivion was because she hadn't forced herself to cross the line yet. She hadn't sold her body yet.

  It was only a matter of time, though. She knew it. She knew it.

  Groaning, she slumped against the pile of junk she'd taken refuge in. She needed new digs. The last place had the cops crawling all over it after a deal gone wrong, and she didn't need anyone noticing her. She'd been out on the streets for a while and she knew the score: keep your head down, don't tell anyone anything. No snitching. Keep your head, even when you went out to lose it.

  And don't try to cheat the dealers. That had been Johnny. Johnny tried to cheat the dealers and he was dead now. She'd known him. He'd tried to teach her some things. Tried to get in her pants, too. He was a sleaze, but he was just a junkie sleaze. Bone-thin arms and ragged hair and snaggled teeth you didn't normally see this side of meth country. Too high most of the time to even make sense. Didn't matter, though. She was a girl alone, and he was a man, and everyone assumed. They just assumed.

  Now he was gone and she'd taken the last of their stash and shot up in the alleyway. Dangerous. Very dangerous. Terrible to do it in the open. Should have found a new spot, a new place first. Couldn't even get her sweatshirt off. Something was poking her in the side, but she was too drugged to bother moving. Maybe she was stabbed through the side. Bleeding out everywhere. Blood on the ground, something sharp in her guts.

  Hoped it was something rusty...

  Warm hands, and she started awake, panic bolting through her. Blind white fear flashed across her brain, too much, overloading her senses. The edge was wearing off and whatever happened to her now, she was dead, it was over, she was going to get raped, going to get worked over and dead. This was it. She was done for.

  No, she thought. No, not yet.

  The thought, so small, startled her enough to give her pause. No? But she didn't want...

  "You're alive."

  A voice, full of relief. Tara stilled. Her aching ears recognized it, but she couldn't place a name or a face.

  Gentle fingers helped her pull her sweatshirt back down over her face, and then the cold night air hit the skin of her cheeks and she found herself sobering slightly, staring at the handsome face of the priest who had picked her up last month.

  "Oh," she said. "It's you."

  Something dark flickered across his features, a phantom shadow, then it was gone. "Can you stand?" he asked.

  Tara scowled and pulled away. "Not that it's any of your business, but no," she said. "I'm dead."

  He frowned. "Dead?"

  "Bleeding out. Aren't I?"

  He glanced down at the ground, and a small smile alit on his lips. In the harsh shadows of the alleyway, he was painted in darkness and yellow glow. He was breathtaking. "I don't think so," he said gently.

  Over her protests, he helped her get to her feet. She didn't want to be on her feet. She just wanted to be left alone.

  But it wasn't in the nature of nosy busybodies to leave people alone, and he was no exception. "You need food," he told her, and wouldn't listen to her protests that dead people didn't need food. Instead he gently guided her to his van and loaded her into the passenger's seat. She didn't have the strength to fight him. And he was a priest, right? Very rare that they turned out to be mass murderers, right? And they usually liked little boys. She knew from her mother's boyfriend that she didn't look anything like a boy. He'd made sure she'd known it.

  Tara let her forehead fall against the van's window. She dozed in the passing of the streetlights.

  The van slowed, but it was later. They were somewhere else.

  Her muscles clenched. She didn't recognize this place. This wasn't her part of town. It almost looked like—

  "No!" Her hands were scrabbling at the van door before she even thought about it. The door popped, and she would have tumbled onto the still-moving pavement if she hadn't fastened her seatbelt. Confusion and fear struggled for dominance, and she fumbled with the seatbelt lock.

  "Wait!" the priest said. "Wait, I won't harm you."

  "Don't take me back!" The words were out of her mouth, falling loud and hard between them before she could choke them back.

  Her eyes caught his.

  He sat very still, his hands up, and over his shoulder she saw the glowing lights of a drive-through speaker. One of the nicer ones, out here in the suburbs where it wouldn't get trashed, like everything else did in the city.

  That's right. He'd wanted to feed her. He was taking her to get food.

  "I won't take you anywhere you don't want to go," he said quietly. "But I couldn't leave you in the street and I ran out of food and there's nowhere in Carrollton Ridge that goes 24-hours."

  "Gas station. Bodega, maybe," she said, but it was a numb, automatic response.

  Again that small smile, curling the edges of his lips. The hint of a grin that could decimate the strongest of hearts. "You really think I'd give you gas station hot dogs?" he said.

  She shrugged. "Didn't know a priest made enough money to spring for MacDonald's," she said. "Seems awfully hoity toity. Don't you take a vow of poverty?"

  His eyes softened. "Yes," he said, "but there is money enough for this. What do you want?"

  She opened her mouth to say she wasn't hungry again, but suddenly she was. She was ravenous. And she had a sucker willing to pay for her right here, didn't she?

  "Three double cheeseburgers and a chocolate shake," she said.

  To her shock, he laughed, and when he did, he was transfigured.

  His face, beautiful and alluring with only a small smile, was practically mesmerizing when he laughed. "I thought you weren't hungry?" he said.

  "You're
paying," she snapped by way of explanation.

  The laugh faded, but the smile remained. "Get while the getting's good, right?"

  "Only rule there is," she told him.

  She expected him to say that it wasn't, that there were many rules, and he had them all in a little black book and he'd tell them to her and then she'd be saved, but instead he just shook his head, leaned out the window, and ordered for her.

  He let her eat in his van, the warm air blowing from the vents. It smelled like gas, but it felt good, and he didn't try to get her to talk, which was good because she really was hungry. She wolfed her first two burgers and forced herself to eat the third. When she was done he drove her back to Carrollton Ridge.

  "You still have that card I gave you?" he asked as she slid out of the car.

  She shook her head.

  "Here." He reached into his pocket and took another one out, handing it to her.

  His hand brushed against hers, and a wave of dizziness and longing rocketed through her. Inside her something woke, hungry.

  "Next time I see you I'll have more in case you lose that one, too,” he was saying.

  She barely heard him as she licked her lips, her fingers closing over the little cardboard rectangle. "Right," she said. "Next time."

  He drove off.

  In her palm, the card was still warm from the heat of his body.

  This time, she tucked it into her bra and tottered down the dark streets, walking until sunrise.

  When at last the laughing, glittering girls were done taking and had gone on their way, Michael rounded the van again. "Are you doing all right?" he asked.

  Tara had no idea. Her knees were shaking with adrenaline, but none of the girls had tried to challenge her at all. The pent up energy she'd produced wandered around her body, like lightning restlessly seeking a place to ground itself. "I... I think so."

  Again he touched her shoulder, the pressure of his hand enough to send forbidden thoughts racing through her mind, her nerves tingling with electricity. She tried to keep herself perfectly still and not move. In the light of the streetlamps, his soft lips begged to be touched, to be caressed.