“Ssss! My back! What the … ?”
“Are you alright?” The note of concern in his voice was perfect, and he leaned forward, gripping the back of the pew.
“It … it stings. Father, I … will you look at my back? Tell me if something’s wrong?” She gave him her most urgent, pitiful gaze yet.
“My child, I don’t know if —”
She was up and coming around the end of the pew before he had time to complete an objection.
“Please. Just see if there’s a mark or anything.” Serah wedged herself into the available space on the bench where the flustered priest sat, and put her back to him. She dragged the clinging rope of her wet hair away from her neck and snaked a wrist around to the lower hem of her shirt, lifting it slightly away from her body to prompt him. “It feels like it’s right between my shoulder blades.”
She felt a puff of uncertain breath from the man as he took up the damp fabric. The hesitant way he lifted it made her want to chuckle, but she managed silence.
Your innocence is quite amusing, Priest. Enjoy it while you can.
The shirt came up in the back at a tedious pace, and Serah knew the moment he saw the angry welt she’d put there for his benefit. There was a gasp and the material was yanked up out of the way.
“What is it?” she asked, her voice timid. “Is it bad?” He said nothing for a moment and she pressed him. “Father? Tell me!”
“Who did this to you?” His tone was lower, with an ungodly note of threat to it now.
Yes. Wrath is a fine sin as well, David Kent.
“I … I can’t say.” A little bit of mystery would draw him in. “Is it bleeding?”
“No, but …” She felt the first swell of temptation overtake him. He brought tentative fingertips to the welt and traced along its path. The first hum of arousal stirred in her then, and not because of the physical contact. It was because her priest had crossed his first boundary. His touch was not medical or disinterested. When his fingers brushed her skin, they were as a man who knew want. He tried to put himself back on the straight path with questions.
“What made this mark?” he asked, voice full of concern.
“I can’t say,” she repeated, taking her own hold on the shirt and tugging it back into place before she turned in her seat to face him, making sure to have her knee come in contact with his thigh. “Father,” Serah fixed him with a pleading gaze, “may I stay here? Not for long. Just a while. Maybe if it stops raining …”
“Of course you can.” His training, she knew, would not permit him to deny her shelter, at least not without making him feel ashamed. And Serah was hoping to burden him with thoughts of what he had done, not what he hadn’t.
Just a taste tonight. Enough to occupy his mind and have him primed for next time.
“Thank you.” She brought her fingertips to rest on his forearm and leaned her body toward him at a subtle angle. He swallowed, throat moving above his collar, and turned his own shoulders to better face her.
“Tell me your name,” he said, his voice more intimate than was appropriate for a man of his position.
“Serah.” She let it come out as an aside, not wanting words to interfere with the intense hold she had on his eyes.
“Granddaughter of Jacob?” he murmured. This man had clearly paid attention in seminary. She needed his attention in the present, though. Serah gave him half a smile.
“That’s the one. And you are?”
“D— Father Kent. Serah, where is your family?” He nearly slipped, nearly introduced himself by his first name. Go on, Priest. Forget your place. Let go. She needed far more physical contact. Now.
Serah let her eyes well up and her chin quiver. As soon as she saw his expression splinter with worry, she burst into tears, grabbing at his shirt and burying her face in his neck. Great wracking sobs shook her and a small torrent of unintelligible denials fell onto his collar. Tension rose in her chest, but then … relief. Arms came around her, and with them, the reassurances she knew would follow.
Success.
“Shh,” he hushed her, stroking at her damp hair, speaking against her temple in quiet earnest. “I’m sorry. You don’t have to tell me. Please.”
She allowed him to hold her for a time, and her sobbing to diminish. The priest had several uninterrupted moments where he couldn’t fail to recognize that a ripe, wet, feminine form was huddled against him. When she felt just the right shift in the tension of his arms and chest, Serah pulled back, sniffling, to look up at him.
It wasn’t difficult. He was young for a member of the clergy, possibly not even thirty, and undeniably attractive. Pleasing angles of a clean-shaven face drew her attention to rich brown eyes in search of answers. The hunger she saw there straining against the shackles of celibacy was an intoxicant. Serah wet her lips with her tongue. Playing this part would be no trouble at all.
“I’m sorry,” she said, holding his gaze as if she were holding his hand and guiding him along. “I had nowhere else to go.”
She let her eyes wander down to his mouth and settle there in the universal indication of desire.
Kiss me.
They were already very close, his right arm still on the back of the pew behind where she sat, her left side still smashed up against him. He was making no attempt to avoid her, and the air in the space could have been plucked like a bow string. She tilted her jaw and brought her lips up just to brush his.
Now.
Warmth. The press of a mouth over hers, of noses and chins aligning into a perfect fit. She felt him shudder. Had he not done this before? Certainly, celibacy after his commitment to the priesthood, but not before, either? The sudden intake of breath when her tongue flicked out to tease at his upper lip had her mind singing in confirmation.
An actual virgin. The corruption would be that much more delicious.
She could already taste it in his response. Her doomed priest seemed to figure things out on his own, at a surprising rate. He imitated her movements in an eager pantomime, his tongue chasing hers back into her own mouth after she’d sampled him in the same way. Her hand came up to rest on his chest, and she draped her thigh more fully atop his.
Before he could stop himself, his fingertips were brushing her jaw, and small noises of need and discovery were vibrating up from his throat. The priest’s first kiss carried electricity with it, and Serah was wet now as images flashed through her mind of what other firsts she could offer him.
She took hold of his hand at the side of her face and coaxed it gently down over her throat, her collarbone. When she brought his fingertips to the side of her breast, she let go. His urges did the rest. Without thought he was cupping her flesh through the thin layer of still-damp fabric, pushing her breast high with the same hand that delivered blessings, held the rosary.
It was her moan at his touch that ended it.
It was as if he’d awakened from a dream and couldn’t believe where he found himself. He drew back, staring down at his palm, now overflowing with womanly flesh, before flicking wide eyes up to meet hers.
The priest snatched his hand away as though he’d been burnt and gaped at her.
“What have I done?” he rasped. She held very still. This was not a disaster yet. There were ways she could salvage it, depending on his reaction.
He scuttled backward on the pew, putting distance between them before he stood. Once on his feet, his erection was obvious, straining against his black trousers.
Oh, I have you, Father Kent. Whatever happens now, this night will haunt your dreams. You’re mine.
“Please, Father,” she implored him, standing, reaching out a hand in his direction. “I didn’t mean to —”
“No!” The horror was on his face, but not from anger at her. It was complete disbelief for his own actions she saw there. “This isn’t right. This should never have happened.”
The man all but scurried now out from between the pews and was backing away from her down the aisle toward the sanctuary. H
e didn’t turn his back as though she might attack him if he did, but Serah merely sat and watched him flee from his own desires.
“… should never have …”
She heard him repeating his denials until he disappeared out of sight through a door to the left of the pulpit.
Her body released its tension at his exit and she slumped back into the pew. Their first meeting had been a success. Sure, it had ended with him beating a hasty retreat into the safe recesses of the church, but she’d accomplished the first of her goals: give him a taste.
She’d be on his mind now. He’d wake up with an erection the next morning like every other man alive, and he’d think of tonight. Of their kiss.
Hell, she was thinking of it right now and, unlike the priest, it was far from her first. The joy of giving him something new to experience, and the thirsty way he drank it up had her humming with need all over again.
An idea struck her and a wicked grin curled her lips. Serah was sure The Fallen would approve of this wholeheartedly. Her hands slid to the waistband of her clinging trousers.
Here? In a church? Oh yes.
The sounds of her pleasure were tiny within the grand space of the nave. She wasn’t dramatic about it, but went quickly to the sort of strokes she knew would serve her purpose, surging finally over the edge at an image of herself performing the same act while sitting on David Kent’s lap, with him watching, helping to splay her thighs apart with his palms.
A lazy chuckle rolled from her throat as she pulled herself back together. These walls had better get used to hearing sounds of pleasure. Serah was not done here. Not by a long shot.
She stood and left, paying no heed to the rain. An alley on the same block as the church served as a suitable dark, hidden corner for her to call forth a thin place in the veil and step through. Her task would be far easier if she was able to watch Father Kent from the other side.
The only thing left to do now was select the most opportune time for her return.
Despite the unsettling events of the night of the power outage, David was afforded no time to mope about fretting and wringing his hands. The next morning found him presiding over a funeral, and each day after was filled with the business of the church until he managed to look up and see that an entire week had passed. Mass, catechism, meetings with the other two parish priests, a baptism …
A week since the kiss.
He frowned as he busied himself about his room in the rectory, stripping linens off his bed. The tingle in his lips, the tightening in his chest: they returned each and every time he let his mind wander back to that moment. And lower. Yes, he was still a man, vows or no, and he had to come to grips with the idea that his body would react this way to thoughts of a woman.
Not just thoughts, David. You let her kiss you. Didn’t pull away. Had yourself a handful of tit for Heaven’s sake!
They didn’t actually have intercourse, but surely this counted as breaking a vow, didn’t it? He yanked a pillowcase off its pillow and tossed it on the pile of sheets to be washed.
Of course it counts. Your cock was hard as algebra, my friend. You’re not fooling anyone.
David grunted and flopped himself across the width of the unmade bed, staring up at the outdated flush-mount lamp that shone from the ceiling. It was dusk and his duties were done for today, and now was the time when all of his doubts came home to roost.
No one had pressed him to enter Seminary. He’d wanted to be a priest since his early teens. The shining example set by Father Reynolds, the priest at his family’s church, had put the idea in his head. He’d wanted to do what his mentor had done. To help, to guide, to comfort. To light the way with the Word.
But women had always, always been a problem. How hard could it be, he thought, to control himself? David’s chest heaved with something between a low laugh and a harrumph. Was it this much of a challenge for the others? His peers hardly ever seemed to talk about it: if they struggled, they kept it to themselves. Either way, he was about to wear his rosary out.
The kiss! Oh, the kiss.
And those lips, that red hair — even plastered to her face by the rain! Big, pale green eyes, and her shirt was soaked through, her breast pressed into his palm as her thigh rested on his. He could still feel all of it, even now. Heady. Forbidden.
Serah. Her name was in his dreams. He would call it out on the other side of sleep where he had no control at all. Where kissing was the least of the things he did with the tempting young woman.
David groaned. He was swollen, thumping against the inside of his trousers, and it was all he could do not to take it in hand and sin in deed as well as thought.
He flailed himself into a sitting position and shoved his hair back into some semblance of order with a frustrated hand.
Get it under control, David. You’ve got to do this for, oh, fifty, sixty more years?
He eyed the pile of bed linens. The laundry wasn’t going to do itself. Bending to gather up the modest pile of sheets and pillowcases, David set about bringing himself back to center the best way he knew how.
“Our Father, who art in Heaven …”
Dark again, but not raining. A perfect evening for phase two, Serah thought, as she faced the entrance to St. Luke’s from her spot on the bus bench across the street. Time keeping watch from the other plane had shown her the priests’ routines, and tonight Father Kent would be alone again.
But the mundane duties of the clergy here were not all she’d seen, oh no. The Initiate of The Fallen had also been able to watch her priest at her leisure, and was perhaps a bit disappointed that he’d been such a good little boy and successfully wrestled himself away from any sort of physical release.
She took it as a challenge, aside from her primary goal, of course. The next time she left him, Serah expected stroking, pulling hands, vows broken within a day. Two weeks had been just long enough. Their first meeting was still on his mind, she knew, but the priest thought himself out of the woods by now. Thought he’d seen the last of her.
What he’s seen is the last of his self-control.
It was time.
She rose from the bench and made her way across the street. Her heels clicked up the wide steps to the doors of the church and her skirt swished around her knees. Tonight she’d corner Father Kent somewhere with less room for him to panic and retreat, and more of a chance he’d be seen if he tried.
A set of doors yielded to Serah’s push, and then another. She stepped out of the night and into the quiet interior of the church, turning to head up the outer aisle on the left hand side of the nave. Where the walls opened up at the transept a smile curled her lips as her venue of choice came into sight.
Confessionals. And a light was on above the central compartment of the furthest of the three. A priest was available. Her priest. If she’d bothered to wear panties, they would have been damp already.
Here we are again, Father Kent. Are you ready?
She stepped in to the adjacent booth, pulled the curtain shut and knelt.
“In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” Serah began as she heard the panel slide back, “Amen.” He said nothing yet, but she knew it was him. How long before he recognized her voice?
“Bless me Father, for I have sinned. It has been … a very long time since my last confession.” She smiled at this. ‘Very long time’ was an understatement. Serah continued.
“I have not been chaste in thought or word, Father.” Her voice lowered and she brought her mouth near the lattice. “I’ve touched myself. And thought of you.”
“What?” he blurted, against all propriety.
She sent a husky giggle through the screen. “Oh yes. Right here in this church. Right after you left me.”
There was a pause, but then …
“Serah?”
A grin split her face. It was way, way out of line for him to have spoken her name like that. And he said it in hushed tones, as if the name alone, overheard, would spill his s
ecrets into public view. The man was a mess: just as she needed him to be.
“Did you miss me, Father Kent?”
Serah stood and stepped out of her side of the booth. And opened the door to his.
The look on that handsome, if inexperienced face was priceless as his eyes snapped to the door and to the woman suddenly joining him in the tiny compartment.
“You can’t be in here!” he protested, but she was already shutting the door behind her.
Give him no time to think.
In a fluid motion, Serah threw her left leg over the priest’s lap and came to straddle him. He rocked back in the single chair and his hands came up, clearly wanting to fend her off, but not sure where he could grab or push that wouldn’t be an entirely new problem.
“Serah!” he hissed, eyes darting around as though anyone could see them hidden away in the enclosed space. “Have you lost your mind? We can’t do this! I can’t do this!”
“Oh, but we can.” Her hands slid up over his arms and shoulders, grazing up the sides of his neck to cup at his jaw. “We are.”
She was already humming with arousal sitting astride his legs this way, but those frantic brown eyes sent the unusual urge to comfort him singing through her chest. She brushed it away.
“Please, you don’t understand.” The words tumbled out of him, desperate, on edge. “I’ve taken a vow, Serah. I cannot just —”
“Shh, David. I know all about vows.” Her fingers combed through dark brown hair, mussing the tidy way the priest kept it combed. She smiled down at him with her thumb and forefinger cradling the base of his skull.
“How do you know my name?” He was very still now, looking up at her, as though any movement might provoke her to some further assault against his chastity.
“It was on the bulletin, silly man.” She batted his paranoia aside, leaning close, framing his face with the fiery curtain of her hair. Eyes pleaded with her through a net of confusion and denial. Their faces were close enough now that the steam of breath could be felt over slightly parted lips. They were in that wavering moment; surface tension holding water just above the rim of a glass.
The Darker Side of Love (A Dark Erotica Boxed Set) Page 25
