Priest: A Love Story
: Chapter 6

“And that’s my real sin,” Poppy finished. “That’s my real shame. I can’t sleep at night knowing that I let him—let myself—” She broke off and there was a moment of silence which I didn’t interrupt, both out of respect for her and also because I didn’t trust my voice. Her confession had been so raw—so fucking detailed—and I was filled with rage at this Sterling asshole and sorrow for her and also a fierce, unshakable jealousy that just weeks ago, he got to be inside her and he didn’t deserve it, not one bit.

But mostly I was so fucking hard I couldn’t think straight.

“I let myself come,” she said finally, in a quiet, sad voice. “He is a married man and he cheated on me for years and he wasn’t even sorry, but I still not only fucked him, but I came. I came twice. What does it matter that I made him leave right after it happened? What kind of girl still does that?”

I needed to say something, needed to help her, but fuck, it was so difficult to focus on anything other than the image of her face pressed into the seat as she gasped her way through multiple orgasms. I was going to hell for even thinking this, especially since I wanted to punch Sterling in the windpipe for acting on it, but it was almost unbearably sexy that those rough kinds of things got her off. Because they got me off too, and it had been so long since I’d had a woman whimpering under my touch…

You’re no better than him, I castigated myself. Fucking get it together. Feelings, focus on her feelings. “How did it feel?”

“How did it feel? It felt amazing. Like he was claiming me from the inside out, and when he came inside of me, it felt like he was marking me as his property, and it was his climax that made me orgasm again. I can’t help it—a guy coming is the hottest fucking thing, especially when I can feel it inside of me…”

My head fell back against the wood of the booth with an audible thud. “I meant—” I said in a strangled voice “—how did it feel emotionally?”

“Oh,” and then the breathy little laugh, and then fuck it, I’d go to hell, because I couldn’t not rub myself now. I was so hard that I could feel every ridge and slope of myself through my pants. My other hand toyed with my zipper as I stroked, trying to keep my breathing silent. Could I unzip myself quietly enough that she wouldn’t hear? Could I jack myself right here in the booth without her knowing?

Because there was no way I could live without it at this point. Her words were carved into my mind, and they would be there forever.

“I guess it made me feel like Sterling was right. I am a whore, aren’t I? I had a debutante ball and my family was listed in the Social Register and I have dressage trophies—but that doesn’t change who I am on the inside. I think deep down, I always knew that Sterling didn’t really love me, but I was willing to accept sex in lieu of love because I wanted that just as much as I wanted the romance, and what woman thinks like that, Father? That I’d rather have sex without love than have no sex at all? So what do I do now? How do I carry the shame of all this while at the same time knowing it’s a fundamental part of who I am?”

Shame. Yes, I knew that feeling; I was feeling it right now, in fact. I forced my hands to my thighs, well away from my erection. Concentrate, I told myself. And when you’re alone, you can take care of your…problem.

“God made us as sexual creatures, Poppy,” I said, wishing my words sounded more soothing than they did. With my choked voice and barely controlled breathing, they came out sounding like a dark threat. A dark, imminent threat.

“Then He made me too sexual,” she whispered. “Even now, I—”

But she stopped.

“Even now, what?” And I was using that voice again, and there was no mistaking the danger now.

I could hear her shifting in her seat. “I should go,” she said. I heard her reaching for her purse and then the door handle clicking open, but I was out of the booth and over to her side in an instant, standing there as her door swung open. I braced my hands on either side of the door (what in the actual fuck was I doing?) blocking her escape because I had to know, I had to know what she was going to say, and if I didn’t, I would go crazy.

She looked up at me looming over her, her hazel eyes growing wide. “Oh,” she breathed. We stared at each other for a moment.

It could have ended right there. It would have, even with her red lipstick and her bright eyes and her nipples in tight little points under the thin silk blouse she wore. Even with my wide shoulders blocking the door to the booth, even with the surge of power and satisfaction and lust that came from positioning my body against a woman’s in this primal, dominating way.

It would have, I swear.

But then she bit her lip, those slightly-too-big teeth digging into her full lower lip, all pure white digging into the sharpest, bloodiest red imaginable, and then she rubbed her thighs together, a tiny noise coming from somewhere in the back of her throat.

I stopped seeing a penitent.

I stopped seeing a child of God.

I stopped seeing a lost lamb in need of a shepherd.

I saw only a woman in need—ripe, delicious need.

I stepped back, drawing a deep breath, some valiant part of my conscience trying to flicker back online, and she took a tentative step out of the booth, her eyes still pinned to mine. I let her walk past me, but it wasn’t because I wanted her to leave or because I wanted this temptation to end. No, it was more like I was giving her one last chance to escape, and if she didn’t then Jesus help her, because I had to touch her, I had to taste her and it had to be right the fuck now.

She backed up a few paces until she bumped against the baby grand piano set below the choir platform. She still didn’t speak, but she didn’t have to, because I could read every tremble of hers, every breath, every goose bump. Her teeth still bit her bottom lip and I wanted to bite that lip, bite it so hard that she would squeal.

I advanced on her, and she watched every step of mine with a hunger that was beyond palpable, it was oppressive, it was ferocious.

“Turn around,” I ordered her, and fuck if she didn’t comply right away, turning and bracing her hands against the edge of the black wood. She was still rubbing her thighs together when I reached the piano and stood directly behind her. I ran my index finger from her hand to her shoulder, feeling every pebbled inch of skin on her arm. “Now what were you going to say in the booth?” I asked her in a low voice. “And remember that lying is a sin.”

She shivered. “I can’t say it. Not here. Not to you.”

My hand reached her shoulder. She’d worn her hair up in a loose twist, exposing the ivory nape of her neck, and I caressed it now, wanting to devour every shudder, every hitched breath. And then I placed the flat of my palm in the space between her shoulder blades and pushed her down against the piano, so that she was bent over, the side of her face pressed against the glossy wood. She was so petite that she had to stand on tiptoe, her leather ballet flats tugging free of her heels, her calf muscles bunching into tight balls.

She’d worn a high-waisted pencil skirt, and once she was bent over, the slit rose high enough to expose a narrow glimpse of pink flesh.

“Poppy,” I said dangerously, “did you come here without underwear?”

My hand was still on her back, my fingers resting against her neck, and she nodded.

“Was that on purpose?”

A pause. Then another nod.

The crack resounded through the sanctuary, and she jumped at the feeling of my hand smacking her ass. Then she moaned and pushed her ass up farther.

I didn’t spank her again, although Lord knows I wanted to. Instead I ran my hand from her shoulder to her hip, feeling the curve of her breast where it was pressed against the piano, the dip of her waist, the firm swell of her ass. And then I repeated the action with both hands this time, letting my hands drift down to the hem of her skirt. She drew in a breath, and then I abruptly yanked it up to her waist.

I knelt down behind her and spread her legs, spread them so that her cunt was gloriously bared to me. “My little lamb,” I whispered. “You are so very, very wet right now.”

She was, wetness slicking almost every part of her. Her pussy wasn’t just wet either—it was fucking quivering, pink and soft and quivering right in front of my face.

I grabbed her ass in my hands and dug my fingers in, leaning forward so that my breath tickled her sensitive flesh.

She whimpered.

“This is so wrong,” I said, moving my mouth even closer. I could smell her, and she smelled like heaven, like soap and skin and the delicate female scent that every man hungered for. “But just one taste,” I murmured, talking more to myself than to her now. “God wouldn’t punish me for just one taste.”

I traced my way from her clit to her cunt with my tongue and (forgive me, my God) but no communion wine, no salvation had ever tasted sweeter than this, and one taste would not be enough.

“Please,” I whispered against her skin, “just one more.” I flattened my tongue against her clit and sampled her again, my dick now so hard that it hurt.

She cried out against the wood of the piano, and I almost died, because those noises and fuck me that taste. I dove into her like a man possessed, my fingers burrowing into her ass cheeks to hold her open for my assault. I fucked her with my tongue and my lips and my teeth, eating her, eating her like a starving man. Her cunt was exactly as perfect as I’d imagined all those nights in my frozen showers, that time I’d shot off thinking about doing this very thing.

She would come, I decided right then. I would make her come on my face, and just the thought made my balls draw up and my dick jolt in my pants. It was a very real possibility that I myself might orgasm without even touching my cock.

I let one finger drift over to her pussy and then I slid it inside, crooking it down to replace the soft, textured spot that would push her over the edge. She was shamelessly grinding back into my face now, her fingernails scratching against the piano wood, little sighs and moans issuing from her throat.

All I could breathe and taste was her, and then I looked up and saw the crucifix at the front of the church—a tragic, agonized god hanging in sacrifice—and my heart lurched. What the hell was I doing? Anybody could walk in right now, walk in the front door, and see their priest with a woman bent over the piano, kneeling as if he was praying to her cunt, kneeling with his face buried in her ass.

What would they think? After I had worked so hard to repair this town’s hurt, after I’d finally helped this community trust the Church again?

And more than that—what about my vow? A vow I had made before my family and God? What does an oath mean to me if only three years after swearing chastity, I’m shoving my tongue up a woman’s wet cunt?

But then Poppy came, her cry the most beautiful hymn I’ve heard in my life, and everything else vanished except her and her smell and her taste and the feeling of her clenching around my finger.

Reluctantly, I pulled back, wanting one more orgasm from her, wanting to bury my face in her ass again, but knowing I couldn’t, I shouldn’t, and then I stood and saw her looking over her shoulder like I was the most wondrous thing she’d ever seen.

“No one’s ever done that to me before,” she whispered.

Tongue-fucked her in a church? Bent her over a piano and licked her until she couldn’t stand anymore?

My eyebrows drew together, and she answered my unspoken question. “No one’s ever made me come with their mouth before, I mean,” she said. There was still a flush high on her cheeks, creeping down her neck.

I didn’t understand. “No guy has ever gone down on you?”

She shook her head and then closed her eyes. “That felt so good.”

I was shocked. How could she have never received oral?

“That’s a shame, little lamb,” I said, and I couldn’t stop myself, I pressed my covered erection into her ass. “No one’s taken care of you properly before.” I dropped a hand down and around to replace her clit again, groaning inwardly when I found that it was still a swollen, hot button of need. “But I won’t lie. It makes me hard as fuck knowing that I was the first man to taste you.”

I heard the words as I said them and suddenly reality slammed back into me.

What the fuck was I doing? What the fuck had I done?

And why had I done it here, of all places?

I stepped back, breathing hard, no thought in my mind other than to get away, somewhere else, before I was laid low by guilt and regret.

Poppy spun around, her skirt still bunched around her waist, her eyes flashing. “Don’t you dare,” she said. “Don’t you dare check out on me now.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I…I can’t.”

“You can,” she said, stepping forward. She pressed a palm to my erection, and I looked down to see her unbuckling my belt.

“I can’t,” I repeated, still watching as she drew out my cock. The moment her fingers brushed over my bare skin, I wanted to die, because I hadn’t exaggerated how good that felt in my memories and my fantasies, no, I had not.

“You are a good priest, Father Bell,” she said, her hand moving down to explore lower, cupping me. “But you’re also a good man. And doesn’t a good man deserve a little indulgence every now and then?”

She gripped me tighter, started to stroke in earnest now. I watched her hand moving up and down my shaft like a man hypnotized. “We won’t have sex,” she promised. “No sex, and then it’s not really breaking any rules, right?”

“You’re equivocating now,” I said raggedly, closing my eyes against the sight of her pumping my dick.

“Then how about another confession,” she said, dragging her fingernails from my pelvis to my navel, making my abs tighten. “After the first day I talked to you, I looked you up online. I couldn’t stop thinking about your voice, like I could still hear it in a way, echoing in my mind. And then I saw your picture on the website and you looked…well, you know how you look. That was the first time I got off thinking about you.”

“You’ve touched yourself thinking about me?” The last remaining shred of my self-control frayed, threatening to snap.

“More than once,” she admitted, still running her fingers over my abs underneath my shirt. “Because seeing your body that first time we met while running…and then your face the last time we talked. God, your face, it was so damn dark, like you wanted to gobble me up right there…I had to fuck myself three times before I could focus on anything else.”

There it went, any self-discipline that remained, and all that was left was a male—not Tyler, not Father Bell—but something more primal and more demanding.

“Show me,” I ordered.

“What?”

“Lie down on this floor, spread your legs and show me what it looks like when you fuck yourself thinking of me.”

Her mouth parted and her cheeks reddened and then she was laying on the carpet, her hand on her cunt. I stood over her, fisting my cock, giving in to it all, giving in to everything, as long as it ended in her covered in my climax.

“Why didn’t you wear underwear today?” I asked, watching her trace circles around her clitoris.

“The last time, when we talked, I got so hot talking to you. I thought if it happened again today, it would be easier if I didn’t wear panties. To…take care of it. And it was easier.”

I knelt down between her legs and then took her slender wrists in my hand. I stretched out over her, pinning her wrists to the floor above her head, my dick brushing against her pussy and her bunched-up skirt. “Are you telling me,” I asked, “that you were masturbating in the booth next to me?”

She nodded fearfully. “You make me so wet,” she said. “I can’t stand it.”

It took everything I had not to shove into her right there and then. Every time I rocked my hips, my dick slid against her folds, and they were so warm. So wet.

I dropped my head, burying my face in her neck. She smelled like clean skin and the barest hint of a lavender perfume—something that probably cost more than what I made in a month. For some reason, this excess, this possible decadence, fueled my need to tear her apart. I bit her neck, her collarbone, scored her shoulders with my teeth, all while I ground my cock against her clit and palmed her breast, driving her to a second orgasm as if I were punishing her with pleasure. Punishing her for showing up here and knocking my carefully constructed life over as if it were a house of cards.

She squirmed underneath me, panting and gasping, her hands flexing uselessly against the floor as I kept them pinned there with only one hand. She was so wet, it would be so easy, just a slight change in angle, and then I could thrust in.

I wanted to. I wanted to, I wanted to, I wanted to. I wanted to fuck this woman more than I’d ever wanted anything in my life. And perversely, the fact that I couldn’t, that it would be wrong on every single level—moral, professional, personal—made it even hotter. It made the image, the imagined feeling of it, a single bright point of obsession, until I was mindlessly rutting against her, sucking and nibbling at her as if I could burn out this need by devouring every inch of her skin.

“Oh God,” she whispered. “I’m going to—oh, God—”

I would have flogged myself every day for the rest of my life if I could have been inside of her right then, felt her tightening on my dick, felt her shuddering convulsions from the inside out. But being on top of her was almost as good, because I felt every seizing, jerking breath, every wild buck of her hips, and when I met her eyes, they were fierce and penetrating, but also surprised, as if she’d been given an unexpected gift and wasn’t sure if she should be grateful or suspicious.

But before I could delve further into that look, she’d arched her back and unseated my balance, tipping me so that I rolled to my back and she was on top of me.

Without hesitation, she tugged my shirt up so she could see my stomach, and I didn’t miss the way her jaw clenched and her eyes flared. She scratched my stomach—hard—as if furious that it was firm and muscled, as if angry that it turned her on. (And I’d be lying if I said that didn’t turn me the fuck on.)

She sat on me, her slick cleft sliding against the underside of my dick, and then she started stroking me that way, as if she were jacking me off with her pussy. I raised up on my elbows so I could watch it, watch the way her flesh pressed against mine, the way her bare cunt allowed me to see her ripe clitoris peeking out. It was so goddamn wet, and with all the pressure, her full body weight pressing against my cock, it was such a close approximation to the real thing, maybe too close, but it still wasn’t technically sex, I lied to myself, maybe it wouldn’t count, maybe I wasn’t sinning.

But even if I was, holy fuck, I was not stopping.

It was so dirty, the way her skirt was still hitched up to her hips, the way my pants were yanked down just far enough to free my balls, the way the old carpet abraded my ass and lower back. The way she shamelessly angled herself so that my shaft would press on her in all the right places, the way it was just our arousal lubricating us and nothing else, and God, I wanted to marry this woman or collar her or cage her; I wanted to own her, make her, take her; I wanted us on this old carpet forever, with her hair coming undone and her nipples hard and her naughty pussy milking my dick for everything it was worth.

“Come,” she told me hoarsely. “I have to see you come. I need it.”

My jaw was too tight to answer, because it was close, something more intense than I’d felt in years gnawing at the base of my spine and rending its way through my pelvis.

“Don’t hold back,” she begged now, pressing down even more, and fuck, there it was. “Give it to me. Give me every drop.”

Shit, this woman was filthy. And perfect. And it was pure instinct that made me grab her hips and work her harder and faster over me, my mind filled with the sight of her straddling me and her pale pink clitoris, still plump and needy, and the memory of her taste and smell on my mouth and face, and then it flooded through me—no, it burned and chewed through me, and she let out a low moan at the sight of my come spurting onto my stomach. There was so much, and it felt like hours instead of seconds that I was suspended in pulsing, total-body release.

And at that moment—at the peak of my high, at the peak of her greedy triumph—our eyes locked and we surged past every barrier—stranger and stranger, priest and penitent, Tyler and Poppy. We were simply male and female, as God had made us, Adam and Eve, in the most elemental and fundamental form. We were biology, we were creation incarnate, and I saw the moment she felt it too—that we were fused somehow. Irrevocably and undeniably fused together into something singular and whole.

My climax abated, but I could barely breathe, barely process what the fuck I had just felt, and then Poppy bit her lip and dragged one finger across my stomach, coating it in my orgasm, and then brought it to her mouth. My cock jumped as I watched her suck it off her finger.

I rested my head back against the floor, overcome with the sinking realization that I would probably not ever be able to dig this woman out of my system. She was the kind of woman that could make me hard over and over again, the kind of woman I could spend a week fucking nonstop and then still want more, and that was bad news for my self-control, which was slowly resurrecting back into life, along with my defeated, gnashing conscience.

“Will it drive you crazy,” she asked after a moment, “knowing that I’ll be touching myself, just inches from you, every time I come in to confess?”

I groaned. Fuck yes, it would.

“Poppy,” I said, but then stopped. What could I possibly say in this moment that would have any value? That would encompass the rushing torrents of shame and guilt, and also express how deeply this woman had gotten under my skin?

“I know,” she whispered. “I’m sorry too.”

She stood and rearranged her clothes as I wiped my stomach with my shirt and sat up. Had it been only a minute ago when the entire universe had shrunk to just me and her, to our noises and our sweat, our fucking without really fucking? And now the sanctuary seemed vast and hollow, a cave with only the overtaxed air conditioner to chase away the dull silence.

The church was empty. The townspeople weren’t gathered in the narthex, ready to throw stones at me or exile me. I’d gotten away with it.

And somehow that made me feel worse.

Poppy and I didn’t say goodbye. Instead, we looked at each other, rumpled and damp, reeking of sex, and then she left without another word.

I slowly made my way back the rectory, sticky and hard again and hating myself relentlessly.