Priest

by Sierra Simone

  I fell asleep with Lizzy’s rosary woven between my fingers, somehow feeling further away from my own life than ever.

  I hadn’t seen Poppy at Mass that morning, so the last thing I expected after Rowan’s confession was for her to slide in the other side of the booth.

  It could have been the hesitant creak of the door or the unmistakable rustle of a dress against soft thighs or the electricity that immediately crackled across my skin, but I knew it was her without her even saying a word.

  Her door closed and we sat in silence for a while, her breathing quietly and me anxiously tapping my thumb against my palm, hating that I was already half-hard just being next to her.

  Finally, I asked, “Where have you been?”

  She exhaled. “Here. I’ve been right here.”

  “It didn’t feel that way.” I was embarrassed at how bitter and wounded I sounded, but I also didn’t care. Tyler Bell at twenty-one would have never let a girl get under his armor of pride, never shown a girl that she’d hurt him. But I was almost thirty now, and well past college, and what would have meant next to nothing to me then meant a lot more to me now.

  Or maybe it wasn’t me who had changed. Maybe this was the effect that Poppy would have on me at any age, in any place. She did something to me, and I thought (a little petulantly) that it wasn’t fair. Wasn’t fair that she could just sit there and not be as torn up as I was about us, whatever us meant in our case.

  “Are you angry with me?” she asked.

  I leaned against the wall. “No.” I reconsidered. “A little. I don’t know.”

  “You are, then.”

  The words forced their way past my lips. “It just feels like I am risking everything, and you are risking nothing, and you are the one who’s walking away and it doesn’t feel fair.”

  “Walking away from what, Tyler? From a relationship we can’t have? From sex that will destroy your career or worse? I’ve spent the last three days beating my head against the wall because I want you—I want you so badly—but if I have you, I’ll ruin your life. How do you think that makes me feel? Do you think I want to shred apart your livelihood, your community, all for my sake?”

  Her outburst lingered in my mind long after she’d stopped talking. This hadn’t occurred to me—that she would feel guilty, that she would feel culpable. That she would want to avoid me because she couldn’t bear the guilt of taking part in this thing that would ruin me.

  I didn’t know what to say to that. I was grateful and confused and still hurt all at the same time.

  So I said the only thing that came to mind. “How long has it been since your last confession?”

  An exhale. “So this is how this conversation will go?”

  I didn’t care how this conversation happened as long as it happened, as long as I got to keep talking to her. “If you want it to.”

  “You know what? I do.”

  Poppy

  Premarital sex is a sin, right? And I’m sure having sex with a priest is a sin. And probably altar-fucking isn’t anywhere in the Papal Encyclicals, but I’m guessing it’s a sin too. So I’ll confess those. I’ll confess about how delirious I felt on that altar, having you between my legs. Finally coaxing you into letting go. We were more human than ever—more animal than ever—but somehow I still felt so close to God, like my entire soul was awake and alert and dancing. I looked up at the crucifix, at Christ hanging from the cross, and I thought, this is what it’s like to be torn apart for love. This is what it means to be reborn. I stared at it over your shoulder, and you were piercing me, and Christ had been pierced too, and it all seemed like one secret and shimmering mystery—profound and acroamatic. I feel like we did something unfathomably ancient, stumbled onto some secret ceremony that fused us together—but how can I relish that feeling, how can I celebrate it, when it comes with such a high cost?

  I told you I feel guilty, and that’s true, but it’s wrapped up in so much else that I can’t tease apart the guilt from the joy and the want. Every moment I think I’ve come to a decision—that I am going to tell you that we must abide by your vows and choices, or that I’m going to tell you that we must figure out a way, any way, that we can still see each other—I change my mind.

  Worry is a sin, even I know that, yet I am more than just a lily of the field. I’m a lily that’s been plucked from the ground and laid at your feet. When it comes to you, I’m rootless and helpless and at your mercy for sunshine and water. And I’m not even supposed to be yours. How can I not worry?

  Last night, I wanted to respond to your message so badly, but I didn’t know what I could say, how to distill my thoughts into two or three cohesive sentences. I wanted to come over to your house and talk, but I knew if I did, then I wouldn’t be able to keep myself from touching you and fucking you, and I didn’t want to make things any more complicated than they already were.

  But then I kept looking at your text, wondering exactly how you were thinking about me, and I wondered if you were thinking about the way I felt when you were inside. About the way I moved underneath you. I wondered if you were remembering your kitchen and both of us looking down as you pushed into me.

  So here’s my final confession. I knelt on my bedroom floor like I was going to pray, but instead of praying, I spread my legs and fucked myself with my fingers, pretending it was you.

  And when I climaxed, I hoped to God that you would be able to hear me calling your name.

  People might judge me for the way my breathing sped up. For the way I palmed myself through my slacks. But the image of Poppy on her knees, eyes closed and mind filled with me, all while her fingers played with that beautiful cunt, was too much to resist.

  “Poppy,” I said, unbuckling my belt. “Tell me more.”

  I knew she could hear the belt. I knew she could hear the zipper. Her breath shuddered in and then shuddered out.

  “I used one hand to touch my breasts,” she whispered. “And the other to work my clit. I wanted your dick so much, Tyler, it was all I could think about. How it stretches me. How you make it hit that perfect spot every time.”

  Still leaning back, I freed my cock from my boxer briefs and gripped it, moving my hand slowly up and down.

  “What were you thinking about when you came?” I asked. God, I wanted it to be dirty. I wanted it to be so fucking dirty.

  Poppy didn’t disappoint. “I thought about you taking my ass while you fingered me. About you pulling out to come on my back.”

  Shit. I was hard before, but now—now I was practically concrete. Who was I kidding with this? I needed to fuck her again and I was going to do it right here in the church in the middle of the day.

  “My office,” I said through gritted teeth. “Now.”

  She scooted out of the booth and I followed, tucking myself back in but not bothering to zip up. As soon as we were in the office, I shut and locked the door and rounded on her at the same time she rounded on me.

  We came together like two storm clouds—a crash of separate beings that immediately become one entity. We were hands and lips and teeth, we were nips and kisses and moans, and I guided her backwards, meaning to put her over my desk, but our legs tangled and we fell to the floor, my arms a cage around her.

  “Are you okay?” I asked, worried.

  “Yes,” she said impatiently, grabbing my collar to yank me back down to her lips. Her kisses drove me into a frenzy, the softness of her mouth echoing the silken heat below her skirt.

  “I have to fuck you,” I managed between kisses. It was a statement of fact. A warning. I slipped a hand down and found that once again, she was without underwear.

  “Filthy,” I said. “Fucking filthy.”

  She twisted under my touch, tilting her hips up to grant my fingers better access, and I kissed her neck as I jabbed two fingers inside her cunt. She was so wet already, and my rough treatment of her only seemed to arouse her more, because her hands fisted in my shirt and she panted as I continued my assault, awful words coming out
of my mouth, cocktease and slut and you want it, you know you want it.

  She moaned, my words teasing her more than my fingers ever could, and part of me was ashamed at how much it aroused me to say these degrading things to her and another part of me was telling that part to shut the fuck up and just do it already.

  I sealed my mouth over hers as I yanked my boxers down far enough to free my dick, and then I blindly shoved my hips forward, burying myself in one rough stroke.

  She wrapped her legs around my waist and her arms around my neck, her scorching mouth everywhere, and it was like holding a live wire, the way she moved and squirmed under me as I rammed into her, letting every doubt and jealousy and fear possess me. I would fuck her until she felt like she was mine. I would fuck her until she couldn’t walk away.

  I would fuck her until I couldn’t walk away.

  Every thrust brought me closer and closer, but one thought wouldn’t let go of me and I pressed my body into her and ground down against her clit, feeling her writhe and coil around me. She was close.

  “Let me put it in your ass, Poppy,” I said. I ran the tip of my nose along her jawline, making her shiver. “I want to fuck you there.”

  “Oh God,” she whispered. “Yes. Please.”

  There was no time to think the logistics through, no time to even consider relocating to a more prepared place. I had something only a few steps away that would work, and I wasn’t going to waste any time looking for something else.

  I pulled out, my cock so hard it hurt, and stood. “Stay,” I ordered, and I tucked myself back inside my boxers to make the short walk to the ambry in the back of the sanctuary, the small cabinet where we kept our sacred oils.

  My hands shook as I opened the door. These were oils that had been blessed during Holy Week by my bishop, oils used only for sacraments like baptism and confirmation and the anointing of the sick. I selected a glass vial of oil—the Oil of Chrism—and went back to Poppy, studiously avoiding the crucifix and the tabernacle with my eyes as I did.

  She’d stayed on the floor, her skirt still bunched up around her waist, her cheeks flushed. After I’d locked the door again, I stood over her and pulled at my collar, trying to take it off.

  “No,” she said, her pupils large and dark. “Leave it on.”

  My dick surged. Dirty girl.

  “You’re going to kill me,” I told her as I knelt down. I flipped her over on her stomach, so that her delicious ass faced me and also so that she could rest her head on her arms if she needed.

  I unstoppered the vial and drizzled some of the oil on my fingertip, which I then used to paint a slick circle around the tight rosebud of her ass. She quivered under my caress, involuntarily tensing every time my touch grazed her there. But her pussy clenched too, and I could see how she was starting to press her hips into the floor, trying to alleviate some of the ache building in her clit.

  I added more oil to my fingers and started teasing and testing at her rim, massaging her, loosening her. The smell of balsam—an ancient, churchy smell—filled the room.

  “Do you know what this is, Poppy?” I asked.

  She shook her head against her arms.

  “It’s a sacramental oil. It’s used for baptisms and ordinations. It’s even used to anoint the walls of a church when it’s built.” I ran a hand down the smooth, firm slope of her back, feeling her sigh against my touch, and at that moment, sliding a finger inside.

  She gasped.

  “I’m anointing you now,” I informed her. “I’m sanctifying you from the inside out. You feel that? That’s my finger fucking your ass. And in just a minute, it will be my cock. It will be my cock consecrating you. No, don’t touch yourself, sweetheart. We’re going to get there together.”

  I took her hand, which had been sliding underneath her stomach, and put it up by her head, all while I kept working her ass with the oil and my finger. Her channel was so damn snug, and just knowing my dick would take its place in a matter of minutes was enough to make me into a wild man.

  I couldn’t wait any longer. I poured a healthy amount of oil on my palm and then fisted my cock, the view in front of me and my own slick, strong hand pushing me close to the edge.

  “Tyler,” Poppy said, looking back at me. “I’ve done this before. But never with someone your size.” She looked a little worried, but she was also still grinding herself against the floor, desperate to be fucked.

  I wanted to tell her I’d be gentle with her ass, but I also didn’t want to make a promise I didn’t know I could keep (because fuck, I could barely hold it together just looking at it.) Instead, I told her, “You tell me when to stop and I’ll stop that very instant, okay?”

  She nodded and laid her head down, canting her hips up to meet me. I leaned down, one hand guiding my cock to her entrance and the other reaching for the oil, pouring more over her ass and over my dick until we were both slippery as fuck.

  I set down the vial and then started caressing her back as I pushed against her tightness, feeling her open gradually to me, slowly welcoming me in.

  The head of my dick pushed and pushed and finally eased past the initial resistance, and all of a sudden, I was inside and her ass was gripping me in a tight heat unlike anything I’d ever felt before, even with the other girlfriends I’d done this with. I had to hang my head and take several deep breaths, counting to ten, before I could be sure that I wasn’t going to lose it too early to savor her properly.

  I pushed in a little more. “Oh lamb, this is going to be a tight fit,” I warned.

  And it was.

  The moment I sank all the way home, I paused, giving her a moment to adjust to my size. She breathed in and out, and then sucked in a sharp, needy inhale as I found her clit and began working it. I didn’t move for several long moments, simply let her feel the fullness of me while I exploited all that tension I’d built up in her, leading her to the precipice so we could jump off together.

  I wanted to ask her if she was ready for more, but I knew how frustrated she got with Good Guy Tyler always asking for permission, so instead I moved slowly, waiting at every movement for her to signal that she needed time or that she needed to stop.

  I lifted her hips, guiding her to rest up on all fours. Pause.

  I straightened my own body as I kept rubbing her clit. Pause.

  I withdrew just an inch and then pushed in just an inch. Pause.

  And bit by bit, she went from adjusting to wanting, pushing back into me like the greedy kitten she was, whimpering in protest whenever my hand left her clit. And I gave her slightly more and more, until I was pulling out to the tip and gliding back in, still unhurriedly—calmly even—but building steam now.

  The whole time, I stroked her legs and back and rubbed her clit, I told her what a good girl she was, such a good little slut for letting me fuck her sweet ass, my own obedient little slut, and she belonged to me, wasn’t that right? She only wanted me inside her, she only wanted my dick and my fingers and my mouth.

  She nodded at my words, all of them, and she was trembling as I fucked her, covered in sweat and shivering like she had a fever. I had meant to hold her back until the very end, but seeing her like this drove me crazy, obsessed me with the thought of her coming while I was in her ass, and so I finally settled in on her clit in earnest, pressing the pad of my middle finger against it and circling her in the hard, fast way that she liked.

  Within seconds, she was crying out, pressing her ass against my hips so that I was buried to my balls, her fingers scrabbling at the carpet and wordless grunts tearing from her throat.

  I watched her come apart, the carefully coiffed and sculpted pieces of Poppy Danforth falling away like scaffolding, leaving behind a shuddering, incoherent creature of want, and then she ground out one word, and that was it, I was lost. Lost to my control, to my vows, to anything other than the need to mark this woman in the most primitive and the basest way possible.

  One word.

  Yours.

  I went
rough now, gripping her hips and slamming into her, grunting myself, chasing my release as she gasped her way through the aftershocks of hers, and her ass was so damn slick, so damn tight, everything squeezing me and gripping me, and then it took me like a tidal wave of darkness, the real frenzy, pounding and growling as it imploded up through my spine and my balls, and fuck, I was coming, coming, coming, and there was black crowding at the edges of my vision and I was going to pass out as I pulsed, pass out or just keep coming and coming like it had no end.

  I’d pulled out at the very last moment so I could watch as my orgasm laced her ass and back with cum, drops and rivulets like some kind of rain, dripping down the pleated rose of her entrance and over the curves of her back and hips.

  As my vision cleared and my senses returned, I could admire my handiwork, the panting, trembling woman in front of me, covered with me.

  Poppy stretched back out on her stomach, somehow making the movement elegant, erotic. “Clean me up,” she commanded like the little queen she was, and I rushed to obey. I washed her with a wet towel and then I kept her on the floor while I massaged her hips and thighs and back and arms, murmuring the sweetest things I could think of in Latin and Greek and quoting Song of Songs as I covered every inch of her skin in kisses.

  And I could tell from the way she smiled to herself, the way she closed her eyes every now and again as if to push back tears, that this was something Sterling had never done. He’d never checked in with her after sex, he’d never petted her and praised her and rewarded her.

  I didn’t even try not to feel triumphant about that.

  And then after she was cleaned up, she and I sat down and worked on our fundraiser. She helped me set up for the men’s group and then she went to the women’s group at Millie’s house. And all the while I could smell the balsam on her skin and on mine, and nothing short of being with this woman every minute of every day would be enough to stop the yawning hunger low in my belly.

  Or, even more dangerously, stop the hunger in my heart.