It was too much.
It was all too much.
So he hauled her up onto her toes and brought her even closer to him, then crushed his mouth to hers.
HIS KISS WAS MUCH, much worse than she remembered.
It was hotter. Wilder.
Better, something in her cried.
But this time she knew how to kiss him back.
He had taught her. Six years ago he had taught her how to light the world on fire. How to burn so hot and so bright that she hadn’t much cared if he was turning her to ash in his wake—she’d wanted only to keep getting too close to the flames.
Cecilia would have sworn that she couldn’t remember any of it. A moment ago she’d have been certain that all those memories had been swept away in the trials and joys of motherhood. That it was all dim recollections of warmth and nothing more.
But it turned out, she remembered everything.
She remembered his taste, and the way he cupped the back of her head with one big, hard palm, guiding her where and how he liked. She remembered the wildfire that scared her and excited her in turn, roaring through her and lighting her up. Everywhere.
She remembered how to angle her head. How to move closer. How to press her body against his until she was all fire again. Fire and need, passion and desire.
Kissing him was like traveling back in time.
She remembered her own innocence. How she’d given it to him, and how carefully, how gently, he had taken it and made her sob with joy and wonder.
She remembered the first time he had kissed her, there in that whitewashed room where he’d spent his convalescence. How he’d pressed his lips to hers, smiling as he’d coaxed her. Taught her. Then tempted her beyond endurance.
She had always imagined, before then, that a kiss would take something from her. And over the past six years she’d told herself rather darkly that she’d been all too right about that. But the truth she’d forgotten—or she’d made herself forget—was that his kiss had made her feel…bigger. Better. Brighter and more powerful than she had ever been before. Like some kind of shooting star.
Here, now, was no different.
She could feel herself shooting wild across a dark night sky, lighting up the world with the force of her longing.
He kissed her, and she kissed him back as if she’d been waiting all this time for him to come back. As if she’d wanted this. And with every scrape of his tongue against hers, she felt that same light. That heat.
Cecilia did the only thing she could. She poured all her lost hope, all her misery and worry, anxiety and loneliness, into the way she kissed him back. She kissed him with all the pride she’d stored up inside her for the little boy he’d never known. The love and the odd moments of gratitude that Pascal had come into her life and left her the greatest gift, no matter the cost.
Everything he’d missed. Everything she’d wished for. She kissed him and she kissed him; she poured it all into him, and got passion in return.
Passion and intensity. Greed and delight.
His hands moved, tracing their way down her back as if he was reacquainting himself with her shape. Her strength.
She shifted, her palms moving down the front of his shirt to find him harder. More solid. And even hotter than she’d let herself recall. It wasn’t until she found her way to his belt buckle that she remembered where they were.
Not just in this valley, not far from the abbey that had been her childhood home and where she would never, now, be the nun she’d always imagined she would.
More than that, they were standing in the church where she’d learned how to pray.
She was defiling herself all over again.
Cecilia wrenched herself back, tearing her mouth from his and pushing against his wall of a chest with her hands. But he was so much bigger and tougher than he had been six years ago, and she only managed to create about a centimeter of space between them.
Still, it was enough for reality to charge in and horrify her.
“That will never happen again,” she managed to say.
She thought he would laugh, or say something arrogant and cutting. But all Pascal did was gaze down at her, an odd expression on his starkly beautiful face.
“I’m not so certain,” he said after a moment.
She pushed against him again, and this time he let her go. And she didn’t have it in her to explore the reasons why that made her heart clench. She felt the end of the pew behind her and gripped it. As if anchoring herself here could save her. As if she hadn’t blasphemed in every possible way.
Again.
When she knew better.
“Thank you for reminding me that the chemistry between us is dangerous and upsetting,” she said, and she made herself meet his gaze when it was the last thing she wanted to do. “It leads nowhere I want to go.”
“I had convinced myself I’d imagined it,” he said. And she might have taken offense at that if he hadn’t sounded so…disgruntled. “I told myself I was weak. Out of my head with pain and recovery and healing. That was the only explanation that made sense.”
He lifted his hand to his face, but this time, instead of running his fingers over his scars, he ran them over his mouth. Which reminded Cecilia that she could taste him on her tongue.
Damn him. And damn her for surrendering so easily once more.
Pascal was still studying her as if she’d turned into a creature he couldn’t name, right there before his eyes. “But it turns out you’re more potent than I gave you credit for.”
“I do not wish to be potent,” Cecilia managed to get out. “And I do not want any credit. What I want is for you to forget me. The way you already have, for years, before you came back here.”
That mouth of his twisted. “But that’s the trouble, cara. I did not forget.”
Cecilia hated this. Him. And most of all, herself.
Because she should have been better prepared for something like this. She’d been on edge when those other men had come and sniffed around the abbey asking questions about Pascal Furlani’s famous car accident, but she hadn’t really believed that Pascal himself would follow. She’d assumed that if he sent anyone else, it would be more emissaries of the officious variety. Attorneys, she’d supposed, to make her sign documents that would renounce any claim to him she might have had. She’d been ready for that. She prepared stinging speeches that she could deliver to his men, making it clear that she wanted nothing from him and never
