Saving Sins (Forbidden Erotic Romance) Read Free Page B

inside.
    She wanted to let them out.
    “Perhaps some other time,” he said at last.
    She backed away, and he drove off into the ripples of the
hot, late summer afternoon.
     
    His gaze was arresting, but she somehow summoned the
strength to yank her eyes away from his. Straightening, she plastered a smile
over her face, then turned and held the sandwiches out.
    "'Bout time," the first girl said, snatching both
of them from her hands. "Hey, Father, I need some needles too."
    “Of course,” Michael said. “I have some in the back seat.
Anyone who needs to trade needles with me, come around the side. Tara here will
help you with whatever else you need.
    The thought of being left alone with these women sent a bolt
of fear through her and Tara tried to send him frantic ESP signals that she was
not ready, not ready at all.
    His piercing green eyes pinned her again, and Tara froze
like a butterfly in amber. Then he gave her a nod and a wink and disappeared
around the corner of the van, and Tara was left alone to face her past by
herself.
    Her fingers were numb as she handed food out. She felt the
girls circling, sensing easy prey, though she knew if any of them got a whiff
of the cops they'd scatter to the four winds. Too bad she was just a student.
She had no power over them.
    What would Father Michael do? she thought. She was
moments away from being heckled and losing face, and on the streets your reputation
was everything. Think! Think!
    “Do... do any of you need anything?” she asked, and her
voice came out as fragile and thin as the skin of a falling leaf.
    The ladies giggled to each other, their gaudy jewelry and
glitzy tops flashing in the flat yellow light of the streetlamps. One of them
reached out and plucked a sandwich from her tray. “Can I have two?” she said.
    Tara had to swallow hard around the lump in her throat, but
somewhere, deep inside, she dredged up the old reflexes. “Hell no!” she said.
“Don't get greedy, we gotta make these last.”
    “Ooooh!” the woman said, curling her fingers at her. “Meow.
Father Michael's kitten has some claws.”
    “I could use some cigarettes,” one of the other girls said.
“You got some cigarettes back there?”
    Tara shook her head. “Now why would we have cigarettes? We
have blankets, we have hot drinks, we have needles, we have food, we have
condoms. You want something else go to the ShopMart.” She felt her body take on
the straightened spine and tiny head-waggle she remembered using way back then.
Give attitude, never get attitude. Get pushed, push back. That was the way it
was out here. She'd learned the rules by heart, and they stayed, even when they
weren't useful any more.
     
    Too much dope. Too much. Was there such a thing as too
much? She was feeling sick and definitely about to tip over and pour out all
over the pavement. No one would notice or care, of course. Just another street
kid lying in their own sick. The gentle breeze of the night, cooler now that it
was September, caressed her face, lifting her hair from her heated cheeks. The
sounds of someone fighting somewhere in the neighborhood scraped over her ears,
too loud to her doped up brain. The occasional car that passed by made her wish
she could swaddle her head in cotton. The best she had was her hoodie.
    Maybe it would help. With exhausted movements, she slowly
maneuvered her arms out of her thick sweatshirt and shivered a little when cool
air hit her skin, but when she pulled it up over her head she felt better. The
black fabric blocked the light, and her headache subsided.
    I gotta stop shooting up , she thought to herself, but it
was an idle thought, an in-the-moment thought. She thought it a lot. And yet
after two weeks, or one, or a few days, she scraped enough money together to
get high again. The only reason she wasn't riding that freight train straight
to oblivion was because she hadn't forced herself to cross the line yet. She
hadn't sold her body yet.
    It was only a matter of