Priest (7 page)

“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.

My screen door slammed shut, and I jumped out of my kitchen chair, expecting Poppy or an angry horde of parishioners or the bishop here to excommunicate me, but it was just Millie, her arms laden with frozen casseroles.

She bustled past me into the kitchen, the late afternoon light shining through her stiff, brick-red wig as she started unloading her cargo.

“You are too clean,” she said by way of greeting, scowling at the fastidiously neat countertops. “Boys your age should be messy.”

“I’m hardly a boy, Millie,” I said, walking over to help her move the food into the freezer.

“At my age, anyone under sixty is a boy,” she said dismissively, shooing me out of the way so she could put one of the dishes in the oven.

Millie was approximately one hundred and thirty years old, but she was not only one of my most active parishioners, but the sharp-as-a-tack bookkeeper for the church. She’d been the one to insist that we upgrade to iPads and Squares for our bake sales and Fish Fry Fridays, and the one who spearheaded the installation of fiber optic internet when nowhere else in town had it yet.

She’d also adopted me as a sort of project when I moved up here, new to town and new to living any place other than a trendy Midtown apartment in walking distance to a Chipotle. She’d clucked her tongue at my age and my appearance (her nickname for me was “Father What-a-Waste”) and showing up once a week with food (even though I’d protested a thousand times that I could cook for myself [mostly ramen noodles, but still.]) And after she’d met my mother and they’d spent an hour talking about the best temperature of water to use in piecrust dough, it was all over. Millie adopted my mother as well, along with my brothers, who got packages of cookies sent to their sleek offices in downtown Kansas City every week.

Except today I felt unworthy of her bustling, fussing attentions. I felt unworthy of everything—this house, this job, this town—and I just wanted to sit here at my kitchen table until I died.

No, that was a lie. I wanted to
do
something—run or lift weights or scrub the tile until my hands bled—I wanted penance. Funny how many times I had counseled my flock about the real nature of penance, the real weight of God’s unconditional love and forgiveness, and my first reaction to sinning with Poppy was to punish myself.

Or at the very least, exhaust myself so that I couldn’t think actual thoughts any more.

“Something’s bothering you,” Millie decided, sitting at the table and folding her hands together into a bundle of papery skin and old rings. Someone once told me that she’d been one of the first female engineers in Missouri, doing surveying for the government when they built the interstate system through the Midwest. And it was easy to believe now, with the no-nonsense look she was leveling at me, with those sharp eyes searching my face for every detail.

I did my best attempt at an easy smile. I have a nice smile, I admit. It’s one of my most effective weapons, although I lobby it more against congregants than co-eds these days. “It’s just the heat, Millie,” I said, making to stand.

“Uh-uh. Try again,” she said and nodded back to the chair. I sat again, fidgeting like a kid. (Millie has that effect on me. Our bishop once joked after meeting her that she should have been the Mother Superior at an abbey a hundred years ago, and all I have to say about that is that I would feel sorry for any nun working under her.)

“Nothing’s wrong,” I said, keeping my voice light. “I promise.”

She reached across the table, covering my large hand with her thin, wrinkled one. “The thing about being old is that I know when people are lying. Now, last time I checked, you were in charge of an entire parish. You wouldn’t lie to one of your parishioners, would you?”

If it was about having almost-sex on the sanctuary floor? A fresh wave of guilt flooded through me as I realized that I was compounding my sins now. I was lying (and lying to a good person who’d done nothing but take care of me.) Suddenly, I wanted to tell Millie about this afternoon, about the past couple of weeks, about this new temptation that was the oldest temptation on earth.

Instead, I stared down at our hands and didn’t answer. Because I was prideful and defensive and furious with myself. And that wasn’t all.

I wanted to do it again. I wanted Poppy again. And if I told someone my sin, I’d be accountable. I’d be bound to obey my vows, I’d be bound to behave.

Nothing about Poppy Danforth made me want to behave.

But I’d be risking everything by not behaving, my job and my community and my duty and my sister’s memory and maybe even my eternal soul.

I lowered my head onto Millie’s hand, careful not to rest the full weight against her fragile bones, but desperately needing comfort. “I can’t talk about it,” I said into the table. I wasn’t going to lie. (Except how often did I tell my youth group about lies of omission? When exactly had I started making the sharp left turn into being a hypocrite?)

Millie patted the back of my head. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with the pretty young woman who bought the old Anderson house?”

My head snapped up. I don’t know what my face looked like, but she laughed. “I saw you two at the coffee shop last week. Even through the window, I could see you guys made quite a couple.”

Fuck. Did she suspect? And if she did, did she judge me for it?

“She was looking at the renovation spreadsheets. She’s got a background in finance and an MBA from Dartmouth.” I didn’t mention that she also had a background in seducing wealthy men by dancing on a platform. Or that her cunt tasted sweeter than heaven.

“Maybe she and I will have to get together for coffee sometime,” Millie said. “Since you can barely add two communion wafers together. Unless, of course,” she said, watching my face, “you’d rather keep the meetings just between the two of you.”

“
Rem acu tetigisti,
” I said, sliding my eyes away from hers.
You’ve hit the nail on the head.

“I’m going to assume that means, ‘You’re right, Millie, I am deplorable at math.’”

It didn’t.

“I’ve always said that you were too young and too handsome to lock your life away. ‘Trouble will come of it,’ I said. ‘Mark my words.’ And nobody marked my words.”

I didn’t answer. I was staring at our interlocked hands again, thinking of the silence in the sanctuary after I’d come all over my stomach, the feeling of Poppy’s wet heat pressing down on me. I’d taken two showers, scrubbing myself to the point of pain, but nothing could erase the feeling of her skin on mine. The feeling of warmth splattering on my stomach as she watched with hungry, feral eyes.

“My dear boy, you do realize this is perfectly natural. What was the homily you preached your first month here? That part of healing would be celebrating normal, consensual, Godly sex?”

I
had
preached that. Setting aside the fact that I had enjoyed my share of consensual sex in college (consensual, but not always normal, mind you), I had a firm theological belief in the importance of human sexuality. Almost every variation of Christianity had been in the business of suppressing sex and its enjoyment, but suppressed desires didn’t just disappear. They festered. They created guilt and shame and, in the worst cases, deviancy. We weren’t ashamed to enjoy food and alcohol in moderation—why were we so afraid of sex?

But obviously, I had meant this message for my congregation, not for me.

“What was it you quoted?” Millie asked. “
Mere Christianity
? ‘The sins of the flesh are bad, but they are the least bad of all sins…that is a why a cold, self-righteous prig, who goes regularly to church, may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute.’”

“Yes, but Lewis ends that paragraph with: ‘Of course, it’s better to be neither.’”

“You
are
neither. Did you really think that by wearing a collar every day you would stop being a man?”

“No,” I said, agitated. “But I thought I would be able to control my desires with prayer and self-discipline. It’s my vocation. I
chose
this life, Millie. And am I going to abandon it at the first temptation?”

“Nobody said anything about abandoning. I’m simply saying, my dear boy, that you could choose not flagellate yourself over this. I’ve lived a long time, and a man and a woman wanting each other is by far one of the least sinful things I’ve seen.”

I’d set out the Bible study curriculum for the men’s group at the beginning of the year, so it was nothing more than awful coincidence that tonight was the beginning of our discussion on male sexuality. Despite Millie’s practical advice, I spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening cultivating a very robust form of self-loathing, doing push-ups in my basement gym until I couldn’t breathe or move or think, until it was time to come to the little faux-wood-paneled classroom on the far side of the church.

I knew Millie had been trying to make me feel better, but I didn’t deserve to feel better. She didn’t know how far I’d already gone, how much of my vow I’d already broken. Probably because she would never assume her priest would be so weak as to actually act on his desires.

I rubbed my face vigorously.
Wake the fuck up, Tyler, and figure this out.
It had only been a couple weeks, and I’d completely failed at keeping my shit together. What would I do for the next two months? The next two years? She was here to stay and so was I, and there was no way I could let what happened this afternoon happen again. I mean, if Millie seeing us together once (innocently and in public) had given her ideas, then what would happen if we started actually sneaking around?

I lifted my head and greeted the men as they drifted in. Of all the groups and activities, I was the most proud of this group. Typically, women were the driving force behind church attendance; most men only came to Mass because their wives wanted them to. And especially after my predecessor’s crimes, I knew that the men in particular—many of whom had sons who were the same age as the victim—would harbor a deep anger and a mistrust that would not be overcome by typical methods.

So I hung out at the local bars and watched Royals games. I enjoyed the occasional cigar at the town tobacco shop. I bought a truck. I organized a hunting club at the church. And all the while, I continued to be open about my own family’s past and all the ways that the church needed to—and would—change.

And gradually this group coalesced, growing from two old men who’d been going to church so long that they’d forgotten how to stop, to a group of forty, ranging from recent graduates to the recently retired. In fact, we’d grown so big that next month we were starting a new group.

But what if I had just undone three years of hard work? Three years of toil thrown away for half an hour with Poppy?

If I seemed distracted, nobody noticed or commented on it, and I managed to not choke on my own words as we read through passages in 2 Timothy and Song of Songs. At least, I managed not to choke until we reached one verse in Romans, and then I felt my throat close and my fingers shake as I read.

“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate I do…for I have the desire to do what is right, but I cannot carry it out. What a wretched man I am.”

What a wretched man I am.

What a wretched man I am.

I had come to a town cracked wide open by the vile actions of a predator and I had vowed to fix it. Why? Because when I looked up at the stars at night, I could feel God looking back down. Because I felt the wind as His breath on my neck. Because I had bought my faith with a great deal of struggle and pain, but I knew that my faith was also what gave my life shape and purpose, and I didn’t want the Church’s failures to deprive an entire town of that gift.

And then what had I done today? I had betrayed all of that. Betrayed all of them.

But that’s not what made my hands shake and my throat tighten. No, it was the realization that I had betrayed God, perhaps more than I’d betrayed the people in this room.

My God, my savior. The recipient of my vehement hatred after Lizzy’s death and also the presence that had patiently awaited my return a few years later. The voice in my dreams that had comforted me, enlightened me, guided me. The voice that had told me what I needed to do with my life, where I needed to go to find peace.