Free Saving Sins (Forbidden Erotic Romance) by Ava Lore

Saving Sins
     
    Ava Lore
     
     
    Tara Fawkes stared up at the church facade. It dominated the
skyline, huge and imposing. The statues adorning the outside might have looked
judgmental to a stranger, but to Tara she finally felt a sense of relief,
though it ran in tandem with apprehension. Tonight she was going back out on
the streets. Tonight she was going full circle. Tonight she was wrapping up her
unfinished business. They said that God never closed a door without opening a
window, and while she didn't believe in God, she was ready to close a door
forever. She wanted that window.
    Running up the steps, Tara shook her hand out of the pocket
of her heavy winter coat and placed her gloved fingers against the great wooden
doors. Even through the thick soft fleece she felt the chill of the day, and it
was going to get worse. Night was falling on Baltimore, and there was work to
be done.
    Pushing the door open, Tara stepped inside the church and
breathed deeply. The smell of incense and burned candles met her nose, acrid
and familiar. Just like all those years ago when she first came to the church,
though back then the scent had seemed cloying, suffocating her where she stood.
Not that it mattered, of course. Back then, her whole life had wrapped around
her neck, weighing her down, wringing the very breath from her, so the smell of
the church had been a minor annoyance at best. Now, however, it comforted her.
And stirred memories.
    She hadn't been back for almost four years, but in her
chest, her heart skipped a beat, and for a moment Tara found herself huddling
into her coat, fear and doubt curdling in her stomach. Then it retreated as
quickly as it had come on—just a ghost of her old self, passing her by.
    Squaring her shoulders, Tara swallowed, then nodded to the
statue of Mary as she passed through the vestibule before slipping into the
sanctuary. Stone walls loomed above her, and the windows, stained with color,
filtered the last of the dying winter light through them. It was supposed to
snow tonight, and Tara felt the oppressive weight of the ice-filled clouds
moving in. When she was younger...
    But that was then.
    Taking off her gloves, she rubbed her hands together and
peered around. "Hello?" she called. "Father MacEnroe?"
    A rustle and footsteps off to her right. Tara turned.
    Her heart stopped.
    Piercing green eyes set in a chiseled face regarded her from
the doorway leading off the side of the sanctuary, back into the church
offices. Brown hair, always messy because, as she recalled, he never stopped
running his hands through it, fell in thick dark locks against a clerical
collar. For a moment she thought he didn't recognize her. Then his full mouth
broke into a brilliant smile.
    Her heart ached. Michael.
    "Tara?" he said.
    "Father," she breathed. She broke, running across
the stone floor and flinging herself into his arms. "Father!"
    He laughed, his deep voice resonating through her as he
picked her up and swung her around—a little different now that she was a
well-fed twenty three instead of drugged-out eighteen, but thrilling all the
same. "Sweet mother Mary," he said, setting her down. "Let me
look at you."
    She stood dutifully before him, though her cheeks hurt from
grinning so much. He looked just as beautiful now as he did when she had first
met him. Even more so, actually, because now she knew what he was capable of.
Now she was one of his flock, if not in the strictest sense of the word, then
in the most important sense. Without Father Michael, she'd be dead. Or worse.
She would do anything he asked. Even swallow her most secret feelings. She owed
him. She owed him so much...
    Oblivious to the buried turmoil she barely let herself feel,
Michael placed his hands on her shoulders and looked her up and down. "My
goodness, you've... grown," he said. "And you grew your hair back
out."
    Suddenly shy, Tara reached up and touched the long blonde
locks that had taken almost three years to stabilize. "Yeah,"