Chapter 25 Hera

• Everything changed when Hera woke, not with a jolt, but with a slow, agonizing slide back into the cold reality of her room around three am in the wee hours of the morning.
• For a delicious, fleeting second, the warmth was still on her skin, the memory of rough, familiar hands on her hips, the strong, undeniable presence of Father Richard pressed against her. The vision was so vivid she could only reimagine the sharp angle of his jaw against the pillow, the way his breath had hitched when she whispered his name, and the startling, electric clarity in his eyes that wasn't spiritual or paternal, but fiercely, humanly desirous.
• She blinked, the image dissolving like morning mist under the sun. Her room was bare: a cot, a crucifix, and the faint silver light of the moon filtering through the narrow window.