I can’t have Elijah Iverson.
I can’t have him because he’s my older brother’s best friend. I can’t have him because I broke his heart five years ago; because he’s now engaged to someone else—someone kind and dependable who deserves his whiskey eyes, his soft mouth, his fierce intellect.
I can’t have Elijah because I’ve chosen God instead.
The Bell brothers, though . . . well, we don’t exactly have the greatest track record with vows. But I’m determined to do this monk thing right—to pledge myself to a cloistered life and spend the rest of my years in chastity and prayer. But now Elijah’s here. He’s here and he’s coming with me on my European monastery road trip, and between the whispered confessions and the stolen kisses and the moments bent over an ancient altar, my vows are feeling flimsier by the day.
And vows or not, I know in my heart that it would take more than a good and holy monk to resist Elijah Iverson right now. It would take a saint.
And we all know that I’m no saint.
This is the third full-length M/M standalone in the Priest Collection, featuring Father Bell’s brother, Aiden Bell. You do not have to read Priest or Sinner to read Saint.
Have you read the other books in the Priest Series? I loooove this series BIG TIME!
There are many rules a priest can’t break.
A priest cannot marry. A priest cannot abandon his flock. A priest cannot forsake his God.I’ve always been good at following rules.
Until she came.
My name is Tyler Anselm Bell. I’m twenty-nine years old. Six months ago, I broke my vow of celibacy on the altar of my own church, and God help me, I would do it again.
I am a priest and this is my confession.***Priest is a standalone, full-length novel with an HEA. For mature audiences only.***
We are told that God will punish the wicked. That sinful men will reap what they sow. We are told to scourge our souls with prayer and pain to become clean once again.
Well, here I am. Wicked and sinful. Desperate to become clean…even though it feels so good to be dirty.
But even I never expected what came next.
Even I never expected my punishment to come so soon.
***Midnight Mass is a novella and a sequel to Priest. It’s intended for mature audiences only.***
Did you read Sean’s Love Note to Zenny? It’s amazing!
I’m not a good man, and I’ve never pretended to be. I don’t believe in goodness or God or any happy ending that isn’t paid for in advance.
What do I believe in? Money. Sex. Macallan 18.
They have words for men like me—playboy. Womanizer. Skirt chaser.
My brother used to be a priest, and he only has one word for me.
Sinner.
Aiden is seriously too perfect for words…
Keep reading to see the full Love Note!
February 14th, 2022
Elijah,
A year ago today, I was in a cold Kansas monastery trying not to freeze my dick off while we read our daily prayers. You’d think with as big as we Catholics are into saints and feast days that we’d be all about St. Valentine on February 14th, since Valentine is one of the few saints that everyone actually knows….but no. The Church doesn’t even give him a feast day anymore—something about murky historical documentation—and we celebrate the feast day of Saints Cyril and Methodius instead. And their day doesn’t even come with cheap teddy bears and tiny, rocklike hearts with words printed on them. Just homilies about Old Church Slavonic.
But even though that day wasn’t about St. Valentine at all—which I suppose makes sense, because what reason do monks have to care about Valentine’s Day—there was one verse that still felt like an arrow right to the tender places of me that still loved you. Not a cutesy Cupid arrow, by the way, tipped with sugar and fletched with hearts—but an arrow made for martyrs and saints. An arrow like the ones that pierced St. Sebastian all over, and it found its mark without error, drilling right into my chest, tearing flesh and breaking bone on its way to my heart.
The pain it left behind had a shape, and that shape was the curve of your smile on a Sunday morning.
Awake, my soul;
awake, lute and harp;
I myself will awaken the dawn.
Awake, my soul. As if I’d been asleep all this time and living without you had been a dizzy, dangerous dream.
Awake, my soul. As if I’d forgotten how it felt to be with you, to see the world through your compassionate, too-smart eyes. To hear your voice whispering wonderfully filthy things in my ear.
Awake, my soul. As if I’d forgotten how it felt to be wanted by you, chosen by you. How it felt to love you so much that even looking at you hurt sometimes.
The psalmist is awake to love, and they cannot help themselves, they must sing about it; they must, in the most elemental human sense, worship. Perhaps their love for God is so strong that it makes the night feel short and easy.
Perhaps their love for God is so strong that it is always dawn where they are.
And in that cold sanctuary, on that even colder day, that sort of love felt so far away from me; it felt like I’d traded the actual dawn for some psalms about dawn instead, and now there would be nothing left to do but endure my choice. I’d had my reasons for making it, and yes, the reasons had been good ones, and I loved being God’s and God being mine. But—
But.
I suppose you already know the rest.
And here we are this Valentine’s Day. You woke me up with sex this morning—deep, toe-curling sex—and after you finished inside me, you coaxed me into the shower, where we made love again. Tonight, I want my mouth around you, your hands in my hair, and I want you to lock me in my cage and only let me out once I’m panting and miserable.
Right now, you’re in your study doing journalist things over Zoom; I have the day off from Sean’s non-profit. I’ve indulged in all the tacky treats the grocery store had to offer: heart-shaped boxes of forgettable chocolate, Hershey’s kisses that manage to shed little foil flecks all over the counter, even Valentine’s-themed Peeps, which made you sigh so hard that you blew the foil bits littering the counter every which way.
But even though we’ve exchanged small gifts, big kisses, and messy orgasms, even though we’ve had the kind of Valentine’s Day couples usually have, this one is important. Important and special because I’m here, with you. For you. Because I have somehow awakened the dawn with my love, and because you have done the same, and there is something breathtaking about that. We’ve made it through the night, you and I, and we kindled the dawn into being.
I now no longer feel those fateful words like an arrow, but like the first rays of morning, soft and golden, reaching into the sky and caressing the earthbound of us with hope. And all the things that come after the end of our night—love, marriage, an entire life of dawns with each other—start with this one simple, stunning command.
Awake, my soul.
You are my soul, Elijah.
And now I am awake.
Happy Valentine’s Day. I love you.
– Aiden
Sierra is a voracious reader of all things including the smuttiest smut, young adult, piles of non-fiction for research, and everything Bill Bryson (especially on audio).
She loves writing the dirtiest things that she can think of, King Arthur, sparkling water, Tarot, coffee, leggings, and learning new words daily.
Her previous jobs have included firing ceramics, teaching living history lessons in one-room school house in full, 1908-approved school marm attire, and working as a librarian for several years—not in that order
She lives in the Kansas City area with her husband, two children, and two giant dogs. (And two cats, but they’re so naughty we don’t talk about them.)
The social media she cares about the most are Spotify and Instagram. Following her in those places is a true love language, indeed.
Sierra is represented by Rebecca Friedman of RF Literary; foreign rights are handled by Bookcase Literary. You can reach her at thesierrasimone@gmail.com, rights inquiries can be directed to Rebecca Friedman at Rebecca@rfliterary.com.
Holy sigh! I don’t know if I could love these two more if I tried.
Really beautiful.