The Angel (The Original Sinners 2)

“It’s just a new sketchbook,” Griffin said as he started to unbutton his shirt. “I saw you’d nearly filled up your other one.”

Griffin tossed his shirt over the back of a chair.

So moved by the gift, Michael could barely speak. It took a few seconds to gather the words up.

“Thank you, Griffin,” he whispered. “It’s awesome.”

He’d never had a sketchbook so obviously expensive and high quality.

Shrugging, Griffin unbuckled his belt and pulled it off. The sight of the black leather belt in Griffin’s hands…Griffin shirtless, his usually perfect hair slightly mussed from the flight…Michael suddenly found it nearly impossible to take a full breath. He kept inhaling and forgetting to exhale.

Griffin stood right in front of him. If a bomb had gone off out in the hallway, Michael still wouldn’t have been able to wrench his eyes away from the flat plane of Griffin’s hard stomach.

“I liked ‘sir’ better.” Griffin tilted his head, raised his eyebrow and looked at Michael.

Michael could only blush.

“You’re welcome, Mick.” Griffin stepped away and sat on the edge of his bed, the belt still in his hands.

“It’s really nice. I’ll go, um…draw.” Michael started to back toward the door.

“Have fun…drawing.” Griffin gazed at him without smiling, without irony, without even the hint of amusement on his face or sculpted lips. In a gesture that seemed both mindless and calculated, Griffin pulled the belt taut between his hands.

“Okay…good night, Griff. Thanks again. You know, for everything.”

Griffin finally smiled but the smile didn’t quite reach his eyes.

“’Night, Mick.”

Michael turned around and headed for the door. He could do this. He could leave. He was going to leave and go to bed. He was going to keep his mouth shut and not say anything because he always kept his mouth shut and he never said anything. He never asked for what he wanted, never confessed what he needed. That’s how it was and how it would always be.

On the threshold of Griffin’s bedroom, Michael stopped as if he’d run into an invisible wall. Slowly he turned back around.

Griffin still sat on the end of his bed, leather belt in hand, watching him.

“Um…Griffin?”

* * *

Suzanne stirred and sat up straight. What the hell? She rubbed her face and looked around. Dammit, she’d fallen asleep in Father Stearns’s rectory. Søren’s rectory, she reminded herself. If her father had been a ra**st, she wouldn’t want any part of his name, either.

Raising her wrist into a patch of moonlight she checked the time—3:53 a.m. Søren hadn’t been kidding when he’d said explaining what Nora Sutherlin was like would take all night. He’d regaled her with story after story of her youth at Sacred Heart…how she’d once asked a nun if she wore holy underwear; how she’d sprained her ankle on a hiking trip after a boy shoved her after she called him a cocksucker for kicking his little sister; how the community service the judge imposed on her for stealing cars changed her from an angry little monster of a teenage girl into a compassionate young woman who wept in his arms when her favorite homeless-shelter resident died of a drug overdose.

“I think I’d like her,” Suzanne had said, smiling into the empty fireplace. “Wonder if she’d like me.”

“Knowing Eleanor and considering you’re investigating me, she’d likely make a pass at you in the first five minutes after meeting you and threaten your life in the next.”

After all their talking, Suzanne came to one single conclusion about Father Stearns—he wasn’t the enemy. She still didn’t know what the possible conflict of interest was and it did concern her. But no way was he a sexual predator. She felt the truth of that in her heart.

Even this stupid situation she found herself in testified to his inherent decency. She’d fallen asleep after hours of talking and one very potent glass of red wine. She’d woken up on his sofa with a blanket over her with her clothes on and her shoes off.

Overhead she heard the squeak of hardwood. She needed to go home, would go home—right now. But she couldn’t just leave without telling him goodbye and thanking him for the blanket. He’d admitted he sometimes had trouble sleeping and usually worked in his upstairs office until dawn. Suzanne folded the blanket, slipped on her shoes and nervously made her way up the narrow staircase to the second floor. At the end of the hallway she saw a pale light spilling onto the floor from an open door. Walking loudly to alert him of her presence, Suzanne came to the end of the hall and inhaled sharply.

Not his office…his bedroom. Next to his four-poster bed, dressed in pristine white linens, Søren stood with his back to her. She saw his Roman collar on the table next to the bed. Watching him, Suzanne froze, unable to move, unable to look away as he slowly unbuttoned his cuffs and let his shirt slide off his arms.

Never in her life had she seen a man with a more exquisite body…every inch of his back rippled with lean muscle, his biceps were ridged with sinewy veins. The long line of his spine was a canyon she wanted to traverse with her lips again and again. She could live and die happy in that broad expanse of smooth skin between his arching shoulder blades. Her hands itched to trace the curve of his rib cage, her tongue ached to taste the nape of his neck. Her fingers tingled, her ni**les tightened and liquid heat gathered deep in her stomach.