Part 12 (1/2)

”More,” she moaned, and I gave it to her.

I heard her heels tumble off and fall to the floor, and the altar cloth was sliding I was driving into her so hard, but I didn't care, I was lost to myself, lost to her and lost to the world and everything except her grunts and squeals in my ear and the wet c.u.n.t underneath me.

It was perfect, and I was f.u.c.king that perfection, and I didn't give a f.u.c.k about anything else but it and my d.i.c.k and filling this woman with my c.u.m, and why the h.e.l.l did d.a.m.nation feel so f.u.c.king good?

I don't even know what I was saying as I rutted into her, Jesus, please and I'm sorry and you're so tight and I have to I have to I have to.

And she was saying words back, words that spilled out in gasps and grunts and pants, right there and harder and close, I'm so close.

Deeper, I had to get deeper even though I knew there was no actual, physical way I could be deeper, and then I took her mouth, kissing her with something violent and furious and wors.h.i.+pful. We could both hardly breathe but we refused to stop and I f.u.c.ked her all the while, feeling her tighten and writhe and finally break underneath me. She bucked, crying out against my mouth, her fingernails gouging red lines of pain down my back, and we rode out her o.r.g.a.s.m together because she was a wild thing, a woman possessed, and it was like having a tigress underneath me, but I kept riding her and then it was there, it was there, it was there and I still had her mouth as I jabbed in a final time and came.

Excruciatingly, I came.

Every pulse of my d.i.c.k was like a pulse of my soul, and every muscle tightening and contracting was like a punch to the gut, and I was so bare with this woman in every way, my nerves flayed raw and my heart wide open and my eternal soul right alongside my bruising hips and thrusting d.i.c.k and the c.u.m that was now spilling everywhere, leaking onto the white altar cloth, and yes, this is why the Church wanted marriage and s.e.x to go hand in hand because I felt as married to her right now as a man could be married to a woman.

I gave a few last thrusts, milking every last throb out of my climax, every last drop out of myself, and then I raised myself up on my hands to look down at her.

She was smiling a lazy, sated smile, and then she said, ”Amen.”

I went into the sacristy and came out with a small rectangle of white cloth, a purificator. It was normally used to wipe the communion chalice after every sip of wine.

Tonight, I used it to clean Poppy.

You might think that having s.e.x on my altar, using sacred things normally meant for rituals of the highest order, meant that I wasn't taking my faith seriously, that I had slid straight past sin and into sacrilege, but that wasn't the truth. Or it wasn't the whole truth, at least. I couldn't explain it, but it was like somehow it was all holy, the altar and the relic within and us on top of it. I knew that outside of this moment there would be guilt. There would be consequences. There would be the memory of Lizzy and all the things I had wanted to fight for.

But right now, with Poppy's scent on my skin, with her taste on my lips, I only felt connection and love and the promise of something vivid and colorful.

After I finished cleaning her, I wrapped her in the altar cloth and carried her to the edge of the stairs, where I sat. I cradled her in my arms, brus.h.i.+ng my lips against her hair and eyelids, murmuring the words I thought she should hear: how beautiful she was, how stunning, and how perfect.

I wanted to say I'm sorry, although my mind and soul still spun in dazzled wonder with it all, so I wasn't sure if I was sorry I'd lost control and gotten so rough with her, or if I was sorry that we'd had s.e.x at all.

Except I wasn't. Because more than the transformative s.e.x that we'd just had, this moment was worth sinning for. This moment where she was curled in my arms, her head on my chest, breathing contentedly against me. Where the altar cloth covered her in long, draping folds, but slips of pale skin still showed through.

She slid her fingers up my chest, resting them on my collarbone, and I held her close, as if I could press her straight through my skin and into my soul.

”You broke your vow,” she said finally.

I glanced down at her; she was both sleepy and sad. I pressed my lips against her forehead.

”I know,” I finally replied. ”I know.”

”What happens now?”

”What do you want to happen?”

She blinked up at me. ”I want to f.u.c.k you again.”

I laughed. ”Like now?”

”Yes, like now.”

She twisted in my arms until she was straddling my legs, and it only took one of her deep kisses to make me hard again. I lifted her up and guided myself inside, groaning quietly into her neck as she sat back down.

Slivers of sensation became known to me. Warmth and wetness. Her a.s.s against my thighs. Her t.i.ts so close to my mouth.

”What do you want to happen next, Tyler?” she asked me, and I couldn't believe she was asking me this now, while she was riding me, but then as I tried to answer, I realized why. She didn't want me to be guarded, she wanted me to be honest and raw and like this, I couldn't possibly be anything else.

”I don't want us to stop,” I admitted. She rolled her hips back and forth over me, and I did press my face in her chest then, feeling my climax building too fast, much too fast. ”I feel like I...”

But I couldn't say it. Not even now, when she had me completely at her mercy. It was simply too soon-and not to mention ridiculous.

Priests weren't allowed to fall in love.

I wasn't allowed to fall in love.

Her fingers twined through my hair and she pulled my head back so she could look at me. ”I'll say it if you won't,” she said.

”Poppy...”

”I want to know everything about you. I want you to tell me what you think about politics, and I want you to read Scriptures to me, and I want to have conversations in Latin. I want to f.u.c.k you every day. I fantasize constantly about us moving in together, living every moment together. What is that, Tyler, if it's not-”

I clapped my hand over her mouth, and in an instant, had her on her back with me pus.h.i.+ng into her.

”Don't say it,” I told her. ”Not yet.”

”Why?” she whispered, her eyes wide and a little hurt. ”Why not?”

”Because once you say it, once I say it, then everything has to change.”

”Hasn't it already?”

She was right. It had changed the moment I kissed her in the presence of G.o.d. It had changed the moment I bent her over that piano. Maybe it had even changed the moment she stepped into my confessional booth.

But if I loved her...if she loved me...what did that mean for all of my work here? I couldn't carry on a secret affair and still crusade against s.e.xual immorality in the clergy-but if I walked away from my vocation, then I would lose the ability to crusade at all. I would lose the man I was.

The only other choice was losing Poppy, and I wasn't ready to think about that yet. So instead of answering her question, I pulled out and flipped her over, driving into her from behind while I slid a hand around her hip and found her c.l.i.t. Only three or four strokes like this and she was there, like I knew she would be; the more aggressive I was, the faster she came.

I followed her over the edge, chanting her name like a prayer and pumping the whole time, as if I could f.u.c.k the future and its horrible choices away.

Oh, G.o.d, what I would give for that to be true.

”I still can't believe how clean your house is,” Poppy said.

We were in my bed after cleaning up the sanctuary and sneaking over to the rectory. I was fingering her hair with a fascination that bordered on reverence, wors.h.i.+ping those long, dark tresses with curls of my finger and brushes of my lips. We'd been talking lazy pillow talk, drifting from The Walking Dead speculations and favorite Latin texts to hushed recountings of all the ways we'd suffered in wanting each other this last month.

I had been about to kiss her again when she'd said that, so I settled for sliding a hand under the sheets and finding her b.r.e.a.s.t.s instead.

”I like things to be clean.”

”I think that's admirable. You just don't see it very often in men like you.”