by Ava Lore
Her mouth met his, and fire consumed her.
Oh, he tasted good. His body beneath his coat, beneath those strict black clothes, was hard and hot, a lean, demanding thing that she knew would fill the ache inside her, the emptiness. His lips on hers weren't even hesitant, were demanding, seeking, as though he, too, were in danger of drowning in all the sadnesses of the world. Her fingers curled in the fabric of his shirt, his coat slid over her arms, and his hands dug into her back, lifting her up into him.
His tongue sought her, demanded entrance, and she opened her mouth. He tasted of coffee and grief, and she tried to swallow it down. He shouldn't feel sad. He shouldn't feel anything except calm and kind. She had made him sad. She made him worry. She couldn't stand it.
Their tongues danced together, frantic, striving. Teeth clicked, and her arms were around his waist, pulling him into her.
The long, hard length of his erection swelled against her stomach. She wanted nothing more than to take him inside. She needed him, and he needed her. His body, his desperate kiss were enough to tell her that.
Then, as abruptly as it had begun, it was over and he was backing away. His beautiful green eyes were huge in his face, haunted and lost.
"No," he said. "No, Tara, that's... that's not..."
Her blood thundered in her veins, filling her head with a dull roar. She couldn't speak.
He twisted, turned away, like a man ensnared. His body was betraying him. She had betrayed him.
“I need to call you a cab,” he said at last, and that was that.
JJ's Diner. That was where it had happened. She didn't remember the name, and she didn't really remember the outside because in the dark all diners look the same, but she remembered the hideous carpet. They still hadn't changed it. Green, beige and red glared up at her in an infinitely repeating pattern of yuck the moment she walked through the door, bringing snowflakes with her.
For a second, she had a moment of vertigo. Surely Michael remembered this place. Surely he remembered what she had done here, in the back lot. She had tempted him, like Eve in the garden, like her own budding body in front of the men her mother brought home.
No. No, she didn't mean the same thing to him that he did to her. She had to play it cool. She was grown now. Even though sometimes she felt like she had been born old, she was finally mature. She could take it. She wouldn't mention their kiss. She wouldn't think of the lingering hunger.
She would be an adult.
They sat in a booth, though she couldn't say if it was the same one they sat in all those years ago. The waitress came by.
"Coffee," Michael said, "and the lady will have the blueberry pie."
Tara wasn't sure she'd heard him correctly. Blueberry pie. Her limbs went numb. She felt faint. Running on autopilot, she smiled at the waitress, who tromped off, clearly unimpressed.
Silverware clattered nearby, and Tara stared at her water glass, her teeth worrying her lip.
"Did I ever tell you how I was called to this work?
The words startled her and she met his eyes. Ringed in dark lashes, he stared out at her from behind his beautiful face. Wordlessly, Tara shook her head.
The waitress came back, setting down a carafe of coffee and two mugs. With languid movements, Michael reached out and poured them both a cup of coffee. "When I was fifteen," he said, "my sister Nancy ran away from home."
Oh, Tara thought. Of course.
She poured creamer into the dark, hot liquid and watched it curl in the heated convection currents like smoke. She waited for him to continue.
"She was very headstrong," he said finally. "And troubled. I don't know why she left, only that she did."
Tara licked her lips. "Could it have been... like me?
"Like you?" he echoed. "I hope not."
Of course. No one wanted to be like her. She didn't want to be like her.
"But perhaps." His lips, so full and inviting, pressed together, and the skin around them grew white. "Sometimes she came home. She was thinner each time."
Tara could picture her in her head. Beautiful, just like Michael. Long dark hair, luminous green eyes. Drugs and sex and the street would swallow up a beautiful girl as fast as a toad snapping a butterfly out of the air, crushing her down until she was a mangled corpse. She'd seen it happen. She'd almost been it.
Why me? she wondered. Why me?
Why did I escape?
She'd wondered that many times, and as always there was no one to answer her.
"Is that why you went into the priesthood?" Tara asked.
“I became a priest to serve and to save, yes.” He hesitated, then shrugged, and a humorless smile quirked the corner of his mouth. "You told me you were good at keeping secrets a long time ago," he said, his voice low. "Still think you can keep a secret?"
She would have rather cut her tongue out than give away his secrets. She nodded.
For a long moment he appeared to be unable to speak. Then, at last, he licked his lips.
"The truth is, Tara, I don't know why I'm still a priest. I don't even know if I believe."
Tara blinked, shock reeling through her head. "What?" she whispered.
His eyes met hers. The enormity of his confession rocked her. She almost couldn't fit her brain around the idea.
"But..." She trailed off. "You do so much good. You preach every Sunday. Hear confessions. Help the girls. Do... all that stuff." If Michael didn't have faith, what had pulled her from the streets? What strength had lifted her up and helped her out of a life she couldn't continue living?
“I used to believe,” he said. “I used to know. Then I started looking for Nancy, though I didn't find her. I kept hoping word would reach her somehow, that I was there to help. And then I started caring for other girls, trying to help them, trying to keep them safe.” His eyes took on a distant look. “But I never could. They keep dying, or disappearing on me and I just... keep going.”
Tara swallowed around the lump in her throat. She knew it was too late for his sister, and he probably did, too. "Is that why you took interest in me? Because I remind you of her?"
To her surprise, he shook his head. “No,” he said. “When I stopped you on the street that first time...” Beneath his clerical collar, his Adam's apple bobbed.
Adam, apple, forbidden fruit...
“I stopped because you were beautiful,” he said at last.
She stared at him. “I couldn't have been. I must have been a scrawny kid.”
“No.” His eyes held hers. “You were a beautiful, broken thing.”
How many times had she dreamed of hearing him say such a thing to her? Too many times, and each time she had berated herself, telling herself that it was impossible. And yet here she was.
Slowly Tara reached out, but she stopped short of his hand. The distance between them... it was too great. She felt the great gaping chasm between them like a wound, and her fingers fluttered in the air, caught in the void.
“Tara,” he said, and then he was reaching up. Closer and closer his flesh came to hers. She felt the heat of his gaze, the heat of his skin, the heat of his soul.
Their fingers brushed together and the world around her tipped and turned, dizzying as it spun, faster and faster. The tiniest of contacts. The smallest of touches. The sweetest of secrets. The warmth of his hand, the roughness of his calloused fingertips radiated up her arm, over her heart, down into her belly. Her body was alight, humming with the awareness of him. Beneath the table, their legs were mere inches apart. If she pushed her foot forward, she would find his.
"Michael," she said. She had never called him simply Michael before. Always Father, or Father Michael. His name on her lips tasted like straight chocolate, rich and bitter.
"Yes,” he whispered.
The sudden appearance of the waitress at the side of their table had them both starting, hearts pounding, pulling back from each other as though they had been caught in an illicit embrace. Tara couldn't hear anything over the rush of blood in
her ears as the woman set a plate of blueberry pie down in front of her. Tara stared at it, gleaming and sickly in the light of the diner. Her stomach turned at the thought of putting it in her mouth.
"I... I don't think I'm hungry, Father," she said, which was a lie. She simply wasn't hungry for food.
"I understand," he said. Words unspoken floated between them. He put a ten on the table. "Let's go back to the church so you can go home," he said.
No, she thought.
"Yes," she agreed.
The church. St. Christopher's. It had been years since she'd been inside a church, and her mom had been protestant anyway. Lutheran? Methodist? God, she couldn't even remember. It had been forever. And yet here she was, the address on the little white card. She'd kept it. She didn't know why.
Winter was coming, and she was drunk. He'd said to come by whenever she was ready. Well, she wasn't ready, but she had no where else to go now. She'd reached the end, and she was going to throw up all over the steps. It would feel good.
Stumbling, she staggered up the steps and pushed her way inside. She was surprised that the church was open, since it was a weekday—she thought it was anyway—but the doors yielded to her easily. The cooling air chased her inside, blowing little drifts of leaves around her feet as she stepped over the threshold. The stink of smoke and incense hit her nose and she coughed. A disapproving statue stared down at her in the vestibule, but she ignored it. Gulping bile, she lurched forward and entered the sanctuary.
Quiet swallowed her up. The light of the fall day outside filtered through colored glass, Bible stories that she half-remembered from Sunday school, back when her dad was still around. She couldn't have named any of the saints or any of the figures except the familiar face of Jesus, but for some reason she felt better, looking at them. The colors, brilliant, played over her drunk brain like a hallucination. She wanted to sit and watch the light play in the glass. Looking around, she found a pew and slipped in. The wood was old, like the church, and creaked when she lowered herself onto the threadbare cushion. Slumping down, she let her head fall back on the backrest and stared at a strange picture of a large man with the head of a dog carrying a child across a river. She couldn't remember that story. Perhaps she was more drunk than she thought...
"Tara?"
She opened her eyes. The light had changed. She had fallen asleep in the church. She was still drunk, her vision still skipping and sliding around, but the beginnings of a headache niggled at the back of her brain. She was sobering up, and when she did she would regret this. She needed to do it now.
She turned her head and there stood Father Michael at the end of her pew. Michael. Michael. Why did he have to be a priest? Why did she have to want him? Why did he have to care about her? It wasn't fair.
"My mom's boyfriends raped me," she said. “Lots.”
His eyes flickered. "I'm sorry," he said.
She wanted to laugh at that, absurdly. "Yeah," she said. "It sucked."
He seemed to waver where he stood at the end of the pew. She knew he was remembering what she had done in the parking lot. She knew he was remembering how he had responded. She had shaken him.
She didn't want to have shaken him. She wanted to help him. She couldn't stand disappointing him any more.
"I won't bite," she said. "You can come over here. I think I might puke if I move anyway."
"Tara," he said again, but this time she heard the rustle of his clothes, and then he was edging down the pew until he stood next to her.
She stared up at him. He was tall, strong. A port in a storm, a man clinging to the rock of faith, throwing out lifelines to whoever was brave enough to grab one. She imagined him in the lashing rain and wind, screaming at each coward that swept passively by him, flowing out to sea to drown.
He loomed above her. If he bent down to claim her lips, she would give herself over to him entirely. They would strain and fuck, here on the pew, the ancient wood groaning beneath them as he filled her over and over again, as she ripped him from his foundations and used him to feel alive, rode him into a sweet, fleeting oblivion. Love held her back. Fear filled her.
"I don't want to be afraid," she said. "I'm tired of being afraid."
As she said those words, his face softened, though not with tenderness. As though she had swept away some sort of foundation, his face crumpled.
"I will help you," he said, and then she was crying, sobbing, and his arms were around her, and she was spilling her secrets onto his robes, the fear and dread, the pain and loneliness, and beneath her cheek she felt the burning heat of his body, heard the pounding thunder of his heart.
"There, there," he whispered to her. "There, there."
A man of the cloth with no God. What had pulled her from the undertow, if not his steadfast faith? What did his vows mean to him? And why had he told her his secret?
They rode back to the church in silence, and it seemed to Tara as though between them stood a scale, and on the scale teetered two fates, though she couldn't have said what they were, or what actions would lead to one or the other.
Pulling up to the back of the church, they got out of the van and into the parking lot, empty except for her ancient little Honda. Snow was falling harder now, great fluffy flakes sticking to the pavement and the dead grass, covering up the ugliness of the world. In the morning it would all be hidden.
“I've never driven in snow,” she said suddenly. The muffling silence of the falling snow made her words so soft she was afraid Michael wouldn't hear them, and she knew she wouldn't be able to repeat them because they were a lie.
But he did hear them. “Perhaps you should wait in the church,” he said. “Until it lets up.”
Her heart pounded. “Thank you,” she said. “I will.”
Together they mounted the steps, into the vestibule, and the snow followed them in flurries, melting in the warmer air. Once inside, Michael's hand extended toward the holy water. Then he paused.
Then, very slowly, he retreated.
“Tara,” he said, “why did you decide to come back here?”
And that was it. The big question. She could lie and say it was because she wanted to give back, could say it was because she felt indebted to him and wanted to help, could say she felt a tinge of that famous Catholic guilt for living while others fell.
But she didn't.
“I wanted to see you,” she said.
He turned and stared at her.
“I wanted to see you as well,” he said. His brows furrowed, and he suddenly looked older, and sad, and tired. “Did you know that you are the only girl I have saved?” he asked. “Of all the women, in all my years... you are the only one.”
She couldn't speak. Didn't even know what to say. That faith, the faith she was so sure had anchored him, no longer existed. She could feel him being swept out to sea.
She wanted to save him.
And then she didn't know who moved first, only that one moment they stood apart in the vestibule, and the next she was in his arms and his lips were on hers and she was moaning, aching, writhing.
The world melted away, receding as dark recedes from a blaze. The pounding of her heart roared in her ears as he pulled her to him. When she was young, their kiss had been untidy, frantic, but now, with the weight of longing and time behind it, it consumed her.
His hands were everywhere, as though he could taste her in his fingertips, and her lips thrust against his, her tongue flicking over his mouth, begging him to open to her, to let her inside, to let her past the austere priestly garb, the solemn vows, the dark sadness that shrouded him, and with a moan he complied. She tasted him.
She was overcome, overwhelmed. He pushed into her, forcing her back and back, until her body hit the heavy wooden doors with a teeth-rattling jar, and he trapped her in the cave of his body, his mouth plundering hers, drinking from her like a man in the desert dying of thirst. He smelled of coffee and snow. The cold clung to his coat, and as she reached up her chilled fingers grazed hi
s cheeks, sampling the cool skin there.
"Please," she begged him as he broke away, his ravenous mouth traveling down her jaw, tracing a path to her ear. Hot breath curled in her head as he panted against her.
"Tara," he whispered hoarsely. "Tara, I've wanted this, Tara, I shouldn't, please, Tara—"
His words cascaded together, needy, begging, helpless to deny the heat between them. Hitching her hip, she wrapped her leg around his and urged him closer as she buried her fingers in the cold locks of his hair. Snow fell from him as she arched into his body.
"Michael," she moaned. She was drowning in him, in the smell of him, the taste of him, the feel of him. The wood of the doors bit into her back, trapping her against him. Heat rolled from him, heady and intoxicating. Her greedy fingers wandered lower, finding his clerical collar, feeling the rapid beat of his heart flutter against her skin. The collar was stiff, unyielding, and impatiently she tugged at it, her need bowling her over. She wanted nothing more than to rip his clothes off, reveal the person beneath the severe garb, beneath the severe calling, the severe dedication. He was bending beneath the weight of his burdens. She ached to take them from him, let him lay them down, just for one night, relieve him of his cares, as he relieved her when she was scared and alone, when she was dying on the inside and didn't even know it.
"Michael," she whispered. "I need you."
"God, Tara," he said. "God. I can't, I shouldn't—"
"Please," she begged. "If you don't, I..." she didn't know what to say. "I can't stand it. Please."
For a long moment he held himself against her. Then, almost tentatively, he nudged her hips with his, and she felt, once more, the wonderful, hard steel of his erection probe her. Her mouth went dry and her hands abandoned his collar, tracing over the hard chest, scraping over his stomach, feeling the muscles there leap and clench at her touch. Then her hands were on his waistband and she was pulling him against her again, grinding her mound against his hidden, straining cock, and he came apart in her hands.
"Tara," he said, and then she was undoing his belt, her fingers frantic and fumbling as she forced her way past his defenses, conquered his unknown territory.