by Lana Grayson
Enough was enough.
I couldn’t live in fear of this man’s smile forever.
I met his gaze and thanked him, trying to forget how warm his words were when whispered so near my lips.
If the memory still twisted in him, Father Raphael revealed nothing. I forced myself to look at the confessional. That momentary weakness had come and gone. Even if I still remembered how it felt, even if I dreamt of him at night, I took control. I hadn’t touched myself and sinned since that last time.
That made the restless nights uncomfortable. The unbearable pressure deep in my core hadn’t forgiven me, but at least He could.
I picked a pew in the middle of the church, but Father Raphael sat at my side.
Shoot.
I should’ve taken a better seat. Something up front where everyone could see us instead of five rows back.
Or maybe that would have looked just as suspicious, like they thought we were hiding something.
Were we hiding anything?
Could they tell?
Did it matter? Everyone was already seated. Alyssa and Samantha pouted from the front row.
I had Father Raphael to myself now.
Deacon Smith muttered to himself and tripped on his way to the organ. Mrs. Britters, the ninety-year-old organist, readied to play whatever he placed before her. He spread his papers out and approached the pews with a hand to his forehead.
“I’ve been a deacon here for twenty years,” he said. “And, in my life, I’ve wanted two things. Firstly, to keep my hair.” He tugged on the few strands that remained. “Obviously, this hasn’t happened. However, I’ve dreamed of St. Cecilia’s choir becoming…professional. That means no chewing gum. No requests for Freebird or Like A Prayer. No singing from the hymnals upside down—Aiden, yes, I’m talking about you. I want to create something…beautiful.”
Deacon Smith just needed a sweater wrapped around his neck and a director’s chair, and we’d be one set list away from a production of Godspell. He tapped his clipboard.
“We have twenty people auditioning today for a nine-person choir. Before anyone gets too excited, please make sure you can commit to more practices—we’ll need an hour or so later on the nights after regular choir rehearsals.”
That just meant my summer was now completely booked with church events—just as Father Raphael wanted. At least it would look nice on a resume for a full-time job. Of course, I wouldn’t have a degree, but maybe I’d get lucky.
Deacon Smith already looked stressed as Alyssa and Samantha synchronized the crossing of their legs. He cleared his throat. “You’ll each get to sing one song, and I’ll post the results tonight on St. Cecilia’s Facebook group. If this goes well, we might be able to do a couple competitions or shows and turn this group into something great. So we’ll hear…” He crossed himself, looking at Alyssa and Samantha. “How…it sounds.”
“It should be fun.” Father Raphael called out.
The twenty people auditioning all turned to listen to their priest. I shifted lower in my seat.
Did that make me seem guilty?
Father Raphael welcomed their attention. “I have a couple priest friends who formed choirs from their youth groups and congregations.” He shrugged. “They’ve won trips to Disney. I figured, why not try that here?”
“How…” Alyssa hummed. “Secular.”
Deacon Smith cleared his throat. “Okay. Line up. Who’s first?”
A few hands rose, but not mine. I breathed deep. A mistake.
Why did Father Raphael smell so…divine? Sandalwood and incense and something else. Cedar? A woody, tangible scent that watered my mouth and would linger in my dreams that night.
His voice didn’t help, a quiet admittance only for me to hear. “Are you nervous?”
“Yes.”
“About the audition?”
Sure. That was easier to admit. “I haven’t soloed in a long time.”
“I have faith in you.”
“Do you?” I didn’t know whether to stare ahead at the linen-draped altar or cast a glance to the black robes at my side.
“Of course I do. I have the most faith in you, Honor.”
“How?”
His smile was unexpected but not unwelcomed. “I’d lose faith in myself before you.”
That was what we both feared.
The organ strummed Ava Maria. A loud and sharp middle aged woman took to the stairs, an octave too high and a beat too late.
I thumbed through my duffel bag and pulled out five different songs I’d previously memorized during choir in high school and college. He glanced at the music, made a face, and tossed out Wither Thou Goest.
“Narrowing it down?” I asked.
“Trying to help,” he said.
“You haven’t heard me sing before.”
“Honor, every word from your lips is a song to me.”
I warmed head to toe, but I refused to let his words distract me. I spent too many minutes, hours, days, and now weeks in adoration of him instead of the church. I breathed deeply, ignored his scent, and pretended he was any other man, any other friend, anyone but him.
“Which song is your favorite?” I asked.
“Dream On by Aerosmith.”
I nearly laughed. “I don’t think that will work today.”
“I’ve always liked Pie Jesu, despite the circumstances in which it’s sung.”
“Me too.”
Father Raphael paused as the singer missed a note. I knew he looked at me, but I stared only at the music, wondering how badly I must have been trembling to blur the notes on the page.
“You don’t want to talk with me, do you?” he asked.
That depended. Would it appear too suspicious if we spoke this much? Or would it look worse if we weren’t talking? Did I trust myself enough to have an innocent conversation with him without dreaming of what hardened under his cassock?
I politely clapped as the woman auditioning finished her song. Deacon Smith called for the next audition. The organ once again strummed Ava Maria, and he shrugged. One of the high school tenors sang.
The music filled the sanctuary, and I felt safer speaking.
“Do you know that you have a reputation here, Father?” I lowered my voice. “You’re known as Daddy El.”
He smirked. “I know.”
I figured as much. “Does it bother you?”
“I consider it another challenge to my collar. Believe me, Honor. Your friends are not the first to show some leg in exchange for a little indulgence.”
“Really?”
“Of course. And I’ve resisted each one.” His jaw tensed, a solid and forceful strike of strength across his stoic face. “Except for you.”
“I haven’t asked for any indulgences.”
“Which makes you all the more dangerous.”
The tenor finished his song. The next singer also began Ava Maria. Deacon Smith groaned, his head in his hands.
“Guys, we have more hymns! The church has been around for two thousand years. Please tell me someone knows another song.”
No one moved. Deacon Smith almost tore the rest of his hair out.
“Honor!” He pleaded for me. “Do you have a piece to sing that isn’t Ava Maria?”
The others scrambled over the pews to grab hymnals. I took a sheet of music from my duffle bag.
“Yeah, I have one,” I said, smiling as Father Raphael wished me good luck.
My leg brushed his as I edged from the pew. His fingertips grazed just behind my knee. The warmth cascaded into my core. Quick. Fierce.
I nearly weakened then, my legs wobbling as though they wished to fall to my knees before this man.
But Alyssa and Samantha’s cheers freed me from the chains binding my thoughts. I forced away dark images of writhing bodies and twisting sheets, but I couldn’t fight them for long.
I don’t know why I did it. I handed the music to the organist, and I took to the dais as dread and warmth dueled in my chest.
The first notes of Pie Jesu filled the sanctuary.
I chose the song because of him.
It was a foolish, indulgent idea, but nothing sounded more beautiful than the first note I sang. It rang through the nave, striking so softly, deftly, and beautifully against the stained glass and carved stone that I almost didn’t recognize my voice.
The notes stunned everyone.
Except Father Raphael.
I should’ve looked away.
I should’ve focused somewhere beyond him, away from his sanctifying and desecrating gaze.
I couldn’t.
And in my weakness, the hymn turned from solemn prayer into something dark and seductive, just for him. The song blended the beautiful with the corrupted, and my sultry notes struck with a pure vibrancy.
The scriptures spoke of singing in ecstasy—but this rapture contained nothing holy.
Father Raphael watched me. Every note, every sound, every breath carried for him. His jaw tightened. I hit a perfectly balanced note, so high and lovely it even gave me goose bumps.
But his hands turned to fists. He leaned forward against the pew before him.
I recognized that licentious look—that hunger. It was the same severe devotion to his vows he uttered when he’d captured me in his arms, when he’d adored me more than the Lord.
He had pinned me then. Held me tight and forced me to obey his commands.
This time, it was my turn. I sang, and he was struck as my prisoner. I became a siren, a sinner. My voice warmed, twisted, and seduced within a hidden harmony only he could hear.
It was wrong. Everything I did was wrong.
But he stared at me, bestowing an attention upon me that felt more like a gift than a curse. He didn’t leer at me as other men did, attempting to imagine what hid beneath my clothes. He searched for my soul, for my innocence.
And it trapped us on the precipice of dangerous and illicit pleasures.
I should have stopped the song. Every note forged an intimacy which was forbidden to us. I sang the words and imagined his lips upon mine, correcting my Latin in gentle tease. I breathed between the notes and sighed as every exhale might be twisted into a sigh and groan. Even the shivers on my skin crashed with the melody and teased as if they had been caused by his touch.
Could the choir tell?
Was it obvious?
My song was not a hymn of praise. I seduced a priest and tested his resistance to me.
Every chord ached deeper inside of me. I wetted under his attention. Whatever dark and secret desires knotted within me were released in song. When the music silenced and the choir applauded in amazement, I realized how foolish I’d been.
Father Raphael rose from the pews in silence. He left the sanctuary, his steps cracking against the stone and slamming my heart into my ribs.
The doors closed behind him.
I stepped from the dais and accepted my compliments from the others.
What was I to do?
The next person was called to sing. I walked to my seat, but I didn’t sit. I slipped from the sanctuary unnoticed, following in his footsteps to the adoration chapel.
He waited for me, silent and dark with a consecrated authority.
I stepped inside. The door closed behind me.
It was the first time the doors to the chapel had ever been locked.
And I had no idea what awaited me now that we were alone.
6
Raphael
A hymn of seduction.
A song of a siren.
A cry for my help.
…Or a plea for my sin.
If I hadn’t known Honor came to me as an angel, I’d have feared the deception of the devil. Beauty was so often ruined with immorality, lusts of the flesh instead of praise for their blessing.
Honor enthralled me. Her presence wove through my mind and tangled in my soul.
I’d prayed with the rosaries during her song and beseeched any power—Mother Mary, Christ, my lost self—anyone who might have protected me from the thoughts temptation bred in my soul.
It hadn’t healed me of this obsession.
I trapped her in my church to feed the darkness within me. I no longer recognized myself or my urges, and I had no choice but to fight them. If we didn’t, if I surrendered to my instincts and sacrificed her beauty for my own selfish desires…
I wouldn’t be a priest.
I’d be a demon.
A monster.
And I wasn’t losing my soul, no matter what glorious satisfaction I might have seized.
The chapel darkened, unused for the moment. The red candle in the sanctuary lamp remained unlit. No spirit of Christ to protect us.
Honor slipped away, twisting as she refused to turn her back to me. My angel retreated, each step as deliberate and inviting as a curling finger beckoning me closer.
I twisted my fingers in the rosaries.
Hail Mary, full of grace…
Her lips parted, but she hadn’t spoken, not until she struck the altar.
It had to be the altar.
Why shouldn’t I adore her as I adored all else, set upon an altar as a sacrifice for everything that was me, my life, my vision…
The Lord is with thee…
“Forgive me, Father,” Honor gasped. Beautiful music, a soft song of penance. “The song was a mistake.”
I didn’t recognize the edge in my voice. I closed the distance between us in long strides, but even an arm’s length was too far for my aching body and too near for my fracturing soul.
“Did you sing it for me?”
Her nod was timid. “You said it was your favorite.”
“It is.”
“I should have just sung Ava Maria.” Honor ran a hand through her hair. The soft ebony curls tickled through her dark fingers like the holiest of waters. “I’m sorry, Father Rafe. I shouldn’t have…”
“I know why you did it.” It was the same reason I locked the door to the chapel. The key rested in my pocket. “It’s why we’re here. To answer for this sin.”
“Answer for it?” Honor met my gaze. “Or cause it?”
Blessed art thou among women…
I crossed myself. The truth haunted me, torn from my own confessions with a dire warning.
“You are my greatest challenge…” I motioned for her silence with a finger pressed to my lips. “But that does not make you wicked. It means you are a woman—beautiful and vibrant, honest and kind. Every inch of you begs for sin because it is sanctified by the light.”
I might’ve touched her then—run a hand along her high, proud cheekbones or delighted myself with a brush of her lips against my thumb.
But I resisted.
And I passed that first test.
“If I had not taken a vow…promised myself to a higher calling…” My words breathed in a heated sigh. “I’d cast myself upon my knees before you, Honor. I’d worship you as the angel of seduction that you are.”
Honor closed her eyes, but her voice didn’t waver. “I should go.”
“You must finish your confession first.”
“I…can’t.”
Another step closer. “Why? Afraid of what happened last time?”
We both shivered. I imagined her quiet touches again, the only image I couldn’t purge from my mind, my dreams, my torment.
Blessed is the fruit of thy womb…
Her whisper thrilled me in dark delight. “That’s exactly the reason I should go. These things we’re saying, the desires we have…”
They were ours and ours alone.
“Do you fear it?” I asked.
“Yes.”
She edged past me, aiming for the exit, another easy way to avoid this confrontation. She was stronger than this.
I’d prove it.
I reached the door before her, pushing a hand against it. Honor didn’t look at me. Her fingers trembled on the handle.
I leaned close. This woman was so tiny, so delicate and fragile, and yet…
So powerful.
A woman this lovely and holy would always attract darkness.
“Would you rather live in guilt, harbor this pain, and suffer in secret?” I whispered.
Honor didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I know how badly I want you.”
Jesus.
I shamed myself by blocking her path. She stepped away from the door as my cassock created a wall of solid black, preventing her escape.
“It’s not a weakness to admit it,” she said.
I agreed. One fewer lesson to teach her.
Honor confronted me with the wrong type of confidence. “I don’t trust how I feel. I don’t understand it, and so I will remove the temptation before…anything happens.”
“Has that worked before?” I circled her. “Denying me? Ignoring me? Shielding yourself from me?”
She bit her lip. I stared at the softness, so plump and full, a soft brown that highlighted the gentle femininity of her body. We stood close enough to touch, but still I resisted. I breathed deeply instead.
Sweet apples.
Candied apples.
How could she possess such a dangerous scent? No incense would ever smell as sweet.
Would she taste just as decadent?
“What thoughts have you had, my angel? Confess them to me.”
Honor sighed. “Horrible, beautiful thoughts.”
“Of what?”
Her voice trembled, and I felt the divine warning in every syllable. “You.”
“Tell me.”
“Father, I can’t speak of such things inside a church.”
Holy Mary, mother of God…
“Confess to me.”
“Why?” Honor looked away. “Why confess when I will just think the same thoughts, again and again? I’ve confessed once, and it hasn’t helped.”
I shouldn’t have hardened.
Another reprimand, another penance.
“Have you transgressed again?” The fantasy teased me.
“No, Father. I didn’t do…that.”
A relief…and another challenge. Despite that wicked and unsavory sin, I was yet a man. And a man was vain and simple, requiring the compliment of lust to appease his pride.
“Has the thought tempted you?” I lowered my voice. “Have you wished to touch yourself?”
