Pure & Sinful (Pure Souls) - By Killian McRae Page 0,9
Dee’s lips. “Kinda makes me wonder what you saw in the guy, if you fought all the time. To tell the truth, that is.”
“Well, Jerry… He was just… I don’t know. He was funny, and flirty, and liked all the same music and movies and even the same bars as me. I mean, that was probably a game, looking back. You know, to keep me engaged with the glamour? But, damn, he was really, really good in…” The two men across the table eyed her with knowing smiles as she blushed, finding her fingers mysteriously tracing down the valley of her chest. “Canasta.”
“Right, canasta.” Dee finished off the beer in one long pull before pounding it on the table and pivoting in his seat. Leaning against the counter across the pizza joint, Blondie couldn’t rip her eyes away. “Think I might like to play a hand or two of that right now, and I bet she’s a great canasta partner.”
Marc let out a huff and added under his breath, “Sure as hell beats playing solitaire.”
As Dee sauntered away, Riona focused on the priest’s expression. He wasn’t in his collar and coat today, but always carried the air of the clergyman within to some degree, like he wore his collar on the inside.
“How did you end up here?”
She took in the rugged cut of his jaw, the stubble that showed he hadn’t shaved in a day or two. He wasn’t bad looking by any measure, and he probably could have been quite the heartbreaker if he wasn’t a man of God. His eyes weren’t brown, they were black, and glistened like onyx pendants. A firm jaw and supple lips were likely often employed more for battling the fires of Hell than fanning the flames of lust. Nevertheless, the tools were there to be used, if he so desired. For a man of the cloth, he sure cut that cloth fine. The priest rose to what she considered the perfect height, had a body not too muscular, but hardly milk toasty, and a swagger in his walk that would make a lady think he could move his body in all the ways the good Lord intended.
If only his collar and his personality weren’t pressed with double starch.
“Paolo’s is the best pizza in town. Trust me on that, I’m Italian.” Sarcasm wasn’t his most attractive trait, but it was one of the most prominent.
“Don’t deflect the question,” Riona commanded with a click of her tongue. “I mean being one of the Pure Souls. I know how you found me…”
“… secured in a straitjacket and pending shipment to a cushy psychiatric facility?”
She crossed her arms and grimaced, wondering suddenly if the hex she’d learned to give demons jock itch would work on humans. “Look, you walk through the steel wall of a meat locker and try to explain it to the police in a way that doesn’t get you 5150’ed, and then you can talk. But, I mean, a priest? Isn’t the Catholic Church, you know, kind of not kosher with the whole magical powers and battling goblins thing?”
“Technically, the Catholic Church isn’t kosher with anything,” he returned. “Kosher’s a Jewish thing, not that I think the people of the book are anymore approving of mortal combat with the spawn of Hell. I was born into it. Magic is a birthright, you know. It shows up in my family every couple of generations. Just like being a priest — like my father before me, and his father before him.”
He gave her a sly little wink as he sipped up the last of his iced tea.
“Hardy-har, har,” Riona snapped back.
“What about you? You didn’t know this was in your gene pool?”
It was the first time Marc had ever asked her anything so personal. The feeling clutched at her, like a new sweater in the store that just didn’t fit right.
“Must have been from my father’s side,” she returned with a shrug, studying her half-empty mug o’ Miller. “Mom never said anything much about him. He’s sort of a big question mark.”
“I see.”
The silence fell between them. She was glad for it, glad that he didn’t ask any more details about the whys and why-nots. But she wasn’t quite ready to let a more-easy-going Marc slip away so soon. “You’re joking about your father being a priest, right? I mean, aren’t priests supposed to be celibate?”
He leaned in and spoke across the table in a conspiratorial tone that made heat boil beneath the surface of her