Chemical [se]X (19 page)

“That’s
more
than enough, Sister!” Brother Anselm’s sharp tone dammed the tide of whispers that had risen after Sister Maris Stella’s revelation. He grabbed the cook by one wrist and yanked her close, speaking low, angry words that only she and Agatha could hear. “We have to test her now thanks to what you’ve unleashed, but you’ll suffer the test alongside her. Your memory of the world outside the walls is far too enthusiastic for my taste, and that chocolate looks too fresh.”

He shoved Sister Maris Stella away and hauled Agatha off the floor. “We will have silence for the rest of the night,” Brother Anselm roared. “Dinner is finished. Return to your rooms and pray for those about to endure this trial. Pray for your own souls, too, for deliverance from the evils of gossip. And pray for mine—I need forgiveness for my rage.”

***

Agatha knelt in the darkened chapel, all too aware of every twitch of Sister Maris Stella beside her. Normally, she enjoyed the sanctuary’s honest scents—pine, detergents made from lemon, incense, and the dust of many feet. Tonight, she could smell only sin. Sister Maris Stella’s box of chocolate sat open on the altar, pouring forth its tempting perfume. The heat of Sister Maris Stella’s skin pressed against the outside of Agatha’s arm, and there was a sharp aroma about her, bright and steely, like a knife heated in preparation for a cut.

Searching her heart, Agatha realized she wasn’t sure what sin was, even after years of studying it. She knew sin was supposed to come from the devil. Delights of the flesh would pull her mind from God if she allowed them to, and only the intercession of the Lady of Abstinence could preserve her purity in the face of the dark powers of the world. She expected, being tested, to find herself full of depraved desires, to find her soul split. A sinful woman would want what she knew she should not. A saintly woman would long to be quenched instead by the ever-flowing grace of God.

The trouble was, Agatha didn’t know what she wanted. Bent in prayer, darkness red and warm beyond her eyelids, with each breath she became more aware of the strange adult world she had entered. She felt confusion and emptiness, and little else.

“It’s in me, too.” Sister Maris Stella said.

Agatha raised her head and opened her eyes, adjusting to the chapel’s benign shadows. She wasn’t sure if they were allowed to speak to each other. “What?”

“The sin.”

She shifted. Considering the way the cook had humiliated and berated her in the mess hall, Agatha was surprised by the confession. “I thought the point was to keep away from sin.”

“You think you can do that? With the blood in
your
veins? The sin on the altar is only an idol. It’s a symbol of the false gods we’ve created from our desires.”

Sister Maris Stella’s breathing sounded ragged. Cloth rustled, and the kneeler rocked beneath them. Agatha risked a sidelong glance. The sister’s fists clutched at her plain cotton skirt. She writhed as if in pain, pressing her hands against her lower belly. Then, as if seeking the true source of her discomfort, she slid them farther, her thumbs leaving downward-pointing creases in her garment.

“I can smell it coming off your skin,” Sister Maris Stella whispered harshly. “That chocolate’s a processed form of it, but you’ve got it pure and strong. You make me want to beat it out of you.”

“What?” Agatha was tired of being accused. She was too tall, too distracting, too round, too different—but none of that came from anything she had
done
. She wasn’t a glutton, truly. “What do you think you can beat out of me?”

“It would be better if I put you over my knees so I could hold you in place with one arm. I know you’d try to slip away if not. If I did it right, I’d flip up your skirt and pull off your undergarments so I could mortify your flesh directly, but I don’t know if I could stand the smell… I don’t know if I have the strength to treat you as you deserve. I’d probably have to lean you over a chair and beat you through your skirt instead. Maybe I’d have to keep a clothespin over my nose.”

“What have I done? What am I doing? I don’t understand what’s so wrong with me!” Agatha’s voice rose to a wail.

“What you’re doing is making too much noise.” Agatha had forgotten that Brother Anselm was in the next room, holding a vigil of his own. The whites of his eyes flashed as he blinked rapidly.

“I’m sorry.” Agatha dropped her head.

He sighed. “What trials has the night brought so far?”

“This one exhales the evil from which she came,” Sister Maris Stella hissed. “She smells of jungle spices and peppered sin. You must cast her out of this holy place.”

Brother Anselm pressed at the bridge of his nose. “And yet, Sister, you are the one struggling. I see Agatha in contemplation, and you in a different state altogether.”

“Can you not see what she is doing? I demand the next test.”

“From the look of it, you will not pass.”

“You must expose her for the demon she is.”

He stepped closer to them, his footsteps soft and muffled. “Agatha, what do you say? Is Our Lady with you? Do you feel prepared to face greater temptation?”

“I do not seek it, but I will accept what is given to me.”

He touched the side of her face briefly, and Agatha suppressed the urge to gasp. His touch was tender, but not fatherly as she had expected it to be. The sensation of his fingers lingered beside her ear, as if he had heard her silent wish for his hand to remain in place.

“Then open your mouth, but do not swallow what I put into it. This night is about realizing how close we always are to sin, and learning that Our Lady will protect us always, even from what we carry within.”

Agatha opened her mouth obediently, as if for the sacred Host. The scent of Sister Maris Stella’s chocolate intensified, its rich earthiness stimulating the back of her throat. At first, Brother Anselm inserted only his finger. He rested it lightly on her tongue, its smoky flavor spreading through her. The air during a service tasted just this way, and that knowledge should have brought her closer to God. On the contrary, shame jolted Agatha. She wanted to close her mouth around his finger and suck. It took all her will to stay in place as he had commanded, jaw relaxed.

“Good girl,” Brother Anselm murmured. “You must pray for steadfastness now. Hold the holy words close to your heart. Don’t release them for a moment.”

Agatha began her favorite prayer to the Virgin, but her mind tripped over her awareness of Brother Anselm’s hands so close to her face. The first line of the prayer hitched, repeated itself, then slipped away.

A smooth, hard object brushed her upper lip. Now that the chocolate was upon her, she caught a pungent scent beneath its luxurious facade—cut grass and dry, rotting leaves. Brother Anselm pushed the square of chocolate into her mouth and set it where his finger had been.

“It can’t harm you unless you take it in,” he told Agatha. “It will melt on your tongue, and you’ll taste it, but your soul will be safe as long as you don’t ingest it. You’ll still be a good, faithful, holy girl. Don’t be afraid to let it drip onto your chin if you need to. We’ll clean everything up once you’ve passed your trial.”

Agatha trembled. She was too afraid to nod, and nearly too afraid to breathe. The chocolate burst onto her tongue with flavors that her previous life experience had only hinted at. This was sugar as eraser of all her bitter truths, salt as caustic agent of preservation, cacao as acidic awakening, and that unnamed herb as fertile ground from which all lust could sprout.

The inside of her mouth boiled, making the chocolate slither down the sides of her tongue and pool behind her teeth. Beside her, Brother Anselm fed Sister Maris Stella as well, but used different words. A reflex at the back of Agatha’s throat wanted to swallow, and she clenched every muscle in her neck to battle the urge. Her mouth overflowed. A thick dollop of chocolate dribbled over the left corner of her lower lip and hung suspended. Every breath she took made it quiver, and it filled her nostrils with the scent of the outside world’s sin—and perhaps also that of her true home, the place where her real parents lived.

Now, Agatha wanted something. The melting candy on her tongue offered an opportunity to learn about herself. Was she the savage Sister Maris Stella saw? Was she a fallen woman? What would she do to Brother Anselm if granted the dubious permission of depravity? Why did Sister Maris Stella’s threats make the muscles of her inner thighs tense and thrill?

Brother Anselm had promised Agatha grace so long as she did not swallow the chocolate, but wasn’t knowledge of self also a benediction? Agatha trembled, less certain of her goodness now. She wondered what it would be like to give in to sin. She’d spent her life girding herself against it, and it seemed as if succumbing might bring a few precious seconds of relief.

The chocolate in her mouth rendered her mute. Agatha needed something, but even if she’d been able to speak, she wouldn’t have known which words to use to ask for it. She grabbed for Sister Maris Stella’s hand and was met with an answering grip of iron. She reached for Brother Anselm’s wrist as well, the long sleeves of his shirt rough and woolly beneath her fingers.

Brother Anselm dropped to his knees on the floor, facing Agatha across the divide created by the pew. He smiled and caught the chocolate that hung out of her mouth on one fingertip, caressing her lip as he lifted it away. “You’re a good girl,” he said. “Keep praying, and you will endure.”

Her body burned, though, proving now that Sister Maris Stella had been right. Agatha couldn’t stop admiring the stubbled line of Brother Anselm’s jaw. She felt greedy for the hot, callused skin of Sister Maris Stella’s hand. She had to confess her sinfulness somehow.

Agatha pulled away from the other two and rose on unsteady feet. Her head spun. Chocolate dripped onto the front of her shirt, the toe of her shoe, the unadorned floor. She walked to the altar rail and bent forward, hoping that Sister Maris Stella would understand what she was asking for.

Her heart pounded as she waited, her tensed neck aching and the sweet mass of chocolate putrefying in her mouth. A pew creaked behind her.

“No,” Brother Anselm said. “You stay where you are, Sister. I will see to this.”

Then one of his hands rested at Agatha’s waist, and the hem of her skirt was rising above her ankles, tickling her calves, getting caught at the backs of her knees. Her thighs sang as he exposed them to the chapel’s close air. She had asked for punishment, and he seemed to understand, but the moment felt like glory.

He pressed bunched fabric into Agatha’s fisted hands, making her hold up her skirt for him, then pushed her underwear down to her knees. The cheeks of her ass quivered. Brother Anselm didn’t fear her scent or bare skin as Sister Maris Stella did. Her chest squeezed. Sister Maris Stella seemed to think this could beat the sin out of her, but Agatha worried that she wanted it too much.

“Remember not to swallow,” Brother Anselm told her once more, then brought his open palm down on her ass. The blow didn’t quite hurt. Instead, it twisted through her, making her feel hot and uncertain. Agatha opened her mouth to gasp, splattering chocolate on the floor below the altar rail.

He struck again and again. In each moment of contact, she could feel herself being shaped by him, her flesh molding itself to perfectly fill his palm. Hot sin sprang from deep within her to meet his hand, then cooled into the air each time he pulled away. Her skin tingled, and she wanted to laugh or scream or cry. Brother Anselm hit her at startling intervals, forcing chocolate-flavored spurting cries from Agatha’s throat.

He was cleaning her out, she realized. Her mouth was nearly her own again, and she hardly cared about the chocolate anymore. The entirety of Agatha’s soul was focused on the punishment Brother Anselm administered, and soon a prayer of Our Lady of Abstinence sprang to her lips. Her mouth clear now, Agatha began to speak it aloud, its familiar lines lovely to her soaring mind.

She felt free of past and future, adrift in the sensations of her punishment and test. She spat out the last of the chocolate, and lifted her head.

The sight that greeted her, however, shook her faith to the core. Sister Maris Stella knelt before Brother Anselm, her mouth working frantically at his crotch. Agatha stared in disbelief. She had never seen a man’s nakedness before, but she caught glimpses of thick, dark hair, visible in the dim light by its contrast against the cook’s pale lips. Brother Anselm’s member jammed Sister Maris Stella’s mouth, nearly too large to be accommodated. Sister Maris Stella had worked her hands fully under her clothing. Her shoulders hunched with effort, and she grunted rhythmically. Beneath her skirt, she seemed embroiled in a battle even more serious than her desperate attempt to swallow Brother Anselm’s formidable organ.

Agatha’s cheeks flushed. She had been praying while this happened! She had dared to consider herself free of temptation, and yet, now that she saw what her elders had been about, she realized that her exposed ass made her part of their sin. She released her skirt and stumbled away from the other two, stepping out of her underwear as her outer garment flowed back to its proper position around her ankles. Her white panties, coiled on the chapel’s stone floor, glistened obscenely. Brother Anselm’s spanking had produced sticky fluid at the juncture of Agatha’s legs that now flowed onto the tops of her thighs. She was not innocent.

Brother Anselm shoved Sister Maris Stella away, his swollen erection bare now, pointing at Agatha. She knew she should pray, or run, or do anything but stand still as he approached her, but though her stomach roiled with the knowledge of wrongdoing, her body thrilled as he came closer.

He gripped the back of her neck with one hand and pulled her against him. His hard cock dug into Agatha’s stomach, the wetness from Sister Maris Stella’s mouth soaking through her clothes. “Agatha.” His voice was thick. “You have done well. You deserve no further temptation. But…” He swiped a thumb across her chin and displayed it, chocolate-stained. “I offer it to you anyway.” Brother Anselm’s thumb hovered a hairsbreadth from Agatha’s lips. “You would not preserve your innocence, but allowances could be made. You could know forgiveness, and by it, grace.” His voice deepened. “And I could be the one to show you pleasure. Open your mouth…”