Sweetest Sin: A Forbidden Priest Romance Read Online Free

a man
from beast when words whispered soft, breaths panted, and a body’s heat
threatened to burn the confessional in a sinner’s desire.
    But I was neither
man nor beast. I was a priest.
    And I’d nearly
destroyed myself. I’d failed Honor.
    The devil sent an
angel to tempt me. I didn’t fear it. I’d overcome those weaknesses so I could
protect her, prove she could resist the darkness, the confusion…
    I’d ensure she was
strong enough to resist me.
    The day passed in
a blur of prayer, frustrations, and headaches. I finally slipped from the
church in the late afternoon, and I came to the one man who might have helped.
    But he needed no
more burdens.
    I twisted my
rosaries, but I stumbled over the Hail Mary. I never could concentrate in the
hospital. Nurses hurried through the halls, pushing carts and checking on
patients. It wasn’t a place of rest, and the industrial lighting and
disinfectant in the air set me on edge.
    When I was
ordained five years ago, I looked upon hospitals as a place of great hope. The
sick were healed, the doctors’ earned the Lord’s grace, and lives were saved.
    I didn’t believe
that anymore. Then again, I didn’t wait within the hospital wing. They had moved
Bishop Benjamin Polito to the hospice.
    That was a different
place entirely—a purgatory of morphine and muted televisions, weeping families,
and exhausted men, women, and children waiting for the end. Here, the sick
didn’t fear the priest roaming the halls. They eagerly awaited him. They were
ready to go.
    “Father Rafe?”
    Anne worked most
afternoons. She wasn’t Catholic, but she respected me and the man she looked
after during his final days. Her smile was kind, and her voice bubbly, even to
those who hadn’t had a reason to hope for a long time. Benjamin liked her as
his nurse. So did I.
    “He’s awake now.”
She gestured for me to follow, though I knew the way. I appreciated her support.
Most days, her job wasn’t simply to comfort the patients. She helped those who
walked a half-step behind her, hesitating to enter the rooms. “There’s been no
change in his condition, but…”
    I knew what to
expect. “Thank you, Anne.”
    “Just call if he
needs anything.”
    She left me. I
waited at the door.
    It was supposed to
be easier than this—confronting those who were soon to die. I taught and
believed that this life became the next, and paradise awaited those with a
clean soul.
    And yet I
hesitated outside his room, preparing myself for what I would find.
    That was twice I had
faltered—first with the innocent angel who had needed me, and now for the old
friend who laughed at me from his bed.
    “Rafe, get in
here…did you bring that case again ?”
    Bishop Benjamin
Polito was once a man of life, vitality, and one pepperoni pizza too many. He’d
always joked that it would be heart disease that finally got him. The
pancreatic cancer surprised most of the diocese. It surprised me.
    Benjamin waved an
unfamiliar, skinny arm towards the empty chair at his bedside. The IV clanked
against the bed’s rails, and he muttered under his breath. His laugh rasped
into a cough, and he tugged the saline drip.
    “Had to make sure
it was just the IV…” He winked. “I got tubes coming out of places that’d make
Mother Mary blush, if you catch my drift.”
    Everyone…everywhere…understood
Benjamin.
    I sat at his side.
“Father, are you feeling…”
    “One, don’t call
me Father unless you mean it. We don’t need any formality here, Rafe.
Second…you know the answer to that question.”
    “Are you in pain?”
    “Not at the moment…though
a rough tug on that other wire might finally get me walking again.” The chemo had
taken his hair, but it hadn’t claimed his smile. He batted at me, too tired to
reach my arm. “Oh, laugh once in a while, Rafe. It won’t kill you. Now cancer…that’ll
do it.”
    A laugh felt like
sacrilege given the events of last night and how miserable it was to watch my
mentor waste