Beauty and the Blitz

by Sosie Frost

  I swallowed.

  I had surrendered to something worse. Something damning.

  Something amazing.

  “Bless me, Father. I have sinned.”

  The confessional creaked. His voice warmed and chilled, lashed and comforted. He understood, and yet he demanded more from me.

  I closed my eyes. “My thoughts and actions have not been…”

  “Pure?”

  No one’s thoughts could remain pure around Father Raphael. He was a man who’d convert an unbeliever with the confidence of his smile. The sincerity of his words could bless even the most pious. He feared nothing and no one, and even his confidence was shadowed in humility.

  He was good. He was holy.

  He was completely forbidden to me.

  Why did I want him so badly?

  “I’ve had impure thoughts.” I stared at the floor, the scuffed wood from too many formal shoes bowing before the window. I hadn’t knelt. I didn’t trust myself to fall to my knees before a man like him. “And…sating those thoughts hasn’t eased the desires.”

  “Sating?” His words echoed in a hidden smile. “How have you attempted to sate these thoughts?”

  He could imagine it.

  And, at the time, I hoped he had.

  Last night was the worst of my sins. My needs had become the most insistent. My hands had slipped within my panties before I cast them away. Every silken motion ripped through me.

  I had never been touched by a man, and I tried to deny my own immorality, but nothing eased that haunting, demanding, desire.

  I’d thought of him. I’d imagined him.

  I’d wished I had stayed in the church a little longer, talked a little softer, stayed by his side just for a moment longer.

  And it had been wrong.

  “I prayed last night, Father. Alone and in my bed. The only name on my lips was yours.”

  The silence crackled, a tumult of quiet and judgment. I counted the seconds, my breaths, the soul-destroying memories of the pleasure I gave myself in dark shame.

  Father Raphael breathed deep, a ragged and masculine breath that might have rattled the sanctuary’s stained glass windows if it hadn’t vibrated through me first.

  “Do you understand temptation, Honor?” he asked.

  Now I did. More than most people.

  He continued, his voice low. “It is a powerful force—more powerful than greed, envy, hatred.”

  “And I failed, Father.”

  “No, this is my failure. I haven’t prepared you. I am your priest. I am the man who should protect you from this lust.”

  The word tumbled, shattered, and crashed within the small confines of the confessional.

  Lust.

  That’s what it was.

  Dark and terrible, forceful and wild.

  We lusted, and I feared our only escape was surrender to that conquering force. Arms entwined. Legs spread. I imagined myself naked, exposed, and waiting with stolen words and false modesty as Father Raphael protected me from the sins of lust.

  It hurt. Sin hurt. And that made sense, but I never knew it’d be a physical pain. It was real. Clenching. It twisted deep in my core, pulsing in a quiet rage that tore through me in a quick sweat and parted lips. Everything tingled and warmed, including my chest and the tightening buds hidden beneath my prim and proper blouse.

  I wore the only shirt I owned that was able to be ripped open. I wished I hadn’t thought of it while dressing this morning. I wished it was simply the only blouse I had which matched my black skirt. But I’d planned it, down to the exact detail. This skirt was the easiest to accidentally slip up my leg where it would reveal too much.

  What was wrong with me? I shouldn’t have imagined him tickling my thighs, kissing my skin, or savoring the heat pounding the secret I hid with crossed legs. The thoughts overwhelmed me.

  I sighed, trembling and hot.

  This was all wrong. No matter how many times I practiced the confession in my mind, nothing compared to sitting so close to him, separated by only a thin cherry wood wall and a mesh screen sculpted with tiny Celtic crosses.

  He was there. I could feel him. I could sense him.

  And I wished we had touched.

  The shame overwhelmed me, but I wasn’t a woman who hid from rightful punishment. I accepted my responsibilities and actions. Still, no penance could be worse than speaking this confession.

  “Father, I can’t let this happen again. I can’t go to bed tonight and think of…”

  “Of what, Honor?”

  “Of you.”

  “Do you assume I have not thought of you?”

  “Father, stop.”

  “You think I have not suffered the same desires? Wanted the same darkness? Craved just a moment of indulgence—”

  “We can’t speak like this.”

  “Honor, it is temptation, nothing more.”

  “And I have failed to fight it,” I said.

  “Then I will guide you. I will help you.”

  My heart beat too fast. I couldn’t hear anything over the rumbling authority in his. His words burned through me.

  He’d guide me.

  He’d help me.

  But I couldn’t trust myself to let such a man cleanse me of my sins.

  Even if he admitted to the same feelings. The same thoughts.

  Father Raphael shared my secret. He’d said he imagined me in the dark of night, when prayers faded and holy thoughts were overwhelmed by solitude’s fantasies.

  What had he done when the need overwhelmed him? Had he fought it?

  Or did he share the same weakness as me? What would he look like trapped in the throes of his own temptations?

  I shifted against the bench. The skirt inched higher against my hips. The air conditioners breeze whipped through the confessional, so cool and surprising against my bare legs I hadn’t realized how desperately my body had betrayed me.

  The sin slickened me. It heated and throbbed and craved inside me, eager to fill an emptiness I never knew existed before I met Father Raphael.

  I felt his touch without his fingers, tasted his lips without his kiss.

  I had to leave. It wasn’t a confession if the penitent panted, wetted, and wanted the very sins she admitted.

  My body trembled. Too tensed. Too desperate. I’d have committed every sin in the world to distract myself from the ache within me.

  And I’d have committed just one to ease that desire.

  Did he know? Could he tell?

  Why did I torture myself with thoughts of him?

  As if he sensed my distress, he whispered with a calming command.

  “Absolve yourself, my angel.”

  I trembled. “How?”

  “What will ease that temptation? What would give you clarity of thought, heart, and spirit?”

  At least we were finally honest now. “Nothing, Father.”

  “There is something.” His words growled, ragged. “This is my sin. I have forced this temptation upon you. Relieve yourself, and then we’ll banish this desire.”

  “There’s only one way to do that, Father.”

  His breath raced, a rasp that belonged to a man on the edge, straddling a line of good, evil, and sheer indifference to anything beyond the agony of our flesh.

  “Do as you did last night, my angel. Pray, and whisper my name.”

  “But—”

  “I want you to indulge this temptation. Then I will teach you how to confront this, how to defeat it.”

  “Father…”

  “Now, Honor.”

  As if I could resist his demands. As if I wanted to resist.

  I didn’t renounce my faith, and I couldn’t destroy my soul, but every moment I denied that most inescapable fault of my wicked flesh, I ached in absolute agony.

  He ordered it from me. He listened. He watched. He waited.

  And I surrendered to sin.

  I needed nothing more than the circle of my fingers over the soft cotton of my panties. Hi
s soft, hushed breathing fueled me. I brushed hard against myself, pinching my eyes shut so I could hide from the confessional, the Bible, the bench where I should have knelt before my priest and begged for forgiveness.

  Instead of begging for him.

  I didn’t say the words, the prayer never touched my lips, but I thought it.

  I wanted it.

  Every flick and circle and strike of that sensitive, overwhelmed secret cradled me in a pleasure and fear and a hope that once I had succumbed, I could be free of this. I could have my deliverance. Forgiveness.

  Pleasure.

  Passion.

  Desire.

  I didn’t mean to whimper, but Father Raphael soothed my quiet mew with a soft and comforting hush—so confident and commanding I would have silenced forever if it meant earning another moment of pleasure within his shadow.

  My body tensed without the shackles of morality. I surrendered to his scent of sandalwood, the quiet authority in his voice, and his perfectly still, vigilant silhouette watching as I bucked against my fingers.

  I wasn’t practiced at this, but my hips arched and instinct overwhelmed me. A shudder struck me. Then another. The heat crippled my body, and I held my breath as everything silenced in my own moment of weakness.

  “Now, my angel.”

  I came.

  Panting. Silent.

  Shaking.

  What had I done? I shifted, the heat coursing through me in a release of all tension and pain.

  Except one.

  Shame.

  Father Raphael spoke with a grave authority. “Honor, I will forgive this moment, but you must—”

  “No.”

  I couldn’t stand. My legs trembled, weak and wobbly. I crashed against the confessional door. The door slammed against the wooden frame, and the echo clattered through the empty sanctuary.

  I burst into the pews, my sweat turning to chills. What precious relief I stole was now bathed in dread.

  He followed. I knew he would. I felt him approach.

  “Honor.” Father Raphael called to me, strict and severe.

  I wasn’t prepared to face him. I stared away, down, at anything but the black cassock that draped his form. He stood in that perfect, holy darkness, unbroken in black robes save for the hint of white at his collar.

  I didn’t dare look at his face, share his stare, or stay within his presence.

  “Honor, you will be absolved,” he said. “It is my decision, my choice to forgive you for the sins I have caused.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  I backed away from him, still clenched, still aching from a relief I could no longer give myself.

  Not when it wanted more.

  Not when my body craved him.

  “My angel, I will lead you from this temptation.”

  “You can’t.”

  Father Raphael stepped too close. I pushed from him, stepping away, blinking tears and hating the truth of why I came here tonight.

  It wasn’t to absolve myself.

  Just the opposite.

  “Father, I didn’t confess because I had impure thoughts…” I whispered. “I confessed because I liked them. Because I want to have them. Because I want you in those fantasies.”

  “Honor—”

  “Forgive me, Father.”

  I didn’t let him reach for me.

  I ran from the church.

  His imagined shadow followed me home and lingered in my thoughts, my heart.

  And in my bed.

  Raphael

  No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man - 1 Corinthians 10:13.

  I breathed the passage, lived the scripture, and revered it as truth.

  Those words were the only reason I hadn’t succumbed to temptation long ago, to forces less dangerous and more unworthy than Honor Thomas.

  I hadn’t slept. Hadn’t eaten. My cold shower did little to alleviate the strain which shook my body and nearly destroyed my vows.

  I closed my eyes. I still saw her, heard her, felt her.

  Honor’s beauty was not simply found in the sable richness of her skin, though I imagined she was as lovely as Solomon’s dark Shulamite woman. My angel was worthy of song and praise, poem and touch, from the ebony twist of her curls to the feminine tease of her hips. Her silken skin hid within modest skirts and blouses, and the innocence of her eyes widened the almond roundness into the playful glimmer of something more…something virginal.

  And so very dangerous.

  I’d left the confessional after she ran from the church, but I’d stayed all night in the sanctuary to pray. It hadn’t helped. I ached to hear the twisted and forbidden words which reluctantly tumbled from her lips…lips which deserved the grace of a kiss, not the foul venom of sin.

  I’d prayed for her. I’d prayed for me.

  And now I prayed for the strength to stand without…revealing how dramatically her confession still stirred me.

  All animals suffered from temptation. Restraint was the only trait which separated a man from beast when words whispered soft, breaths panted, and a body’s heat threatened to burn the confessional in a sinner’s desire.

  But I was neither man nor beast. I was a priest.

  And I’d nearly destroyed myself. I’d failed Honor.

  The devil sent an angel to tempt me. I didn’t fear it. I’d overcome those weaknesses so I could protect her, prove she could resist the darkness, the confusion…

  I’d ensure she was strong enough to resist me.

  The day passed in a blur of prayer, frustrations, and headaches. I finally slipped from the church in the late afternoon, and I came to the one man who might have helped.

  But he needed no more burdens.

  I twisted my rosaries, but I stumbled over the Hail Mary. I never could concentrate in the hospital. Nurses hurried through the halls, pushing carts and checking on patients. It wasn’t a place of rest, and the industrial lighting and disinfectant in the air set me on edge.

  When I was ordained five years ago, I looked upon hospitals as a place of great hope. The sick were healed, the doctors’ earned the Lord’s grace, and lives were saved.

  I didn’t believe that anymore. Then again, I didn’t wait within the hospital wing. They had moved Bishop Benjamin Polito to the hospice.

  That was a different place entirely—a purgatory of morphine and muted televisions, weeping families, and exhausted men, women, and children waiting for the end. Here, the sick didn’t fear the priest roaming the halls. They eagerly awaited him. They were ready to go.

  “Father Rafe?”

  Anne worked most afternoons. She wasn’t Catholic, but she respected me and the man she looked after during his final days. Her smile was kind, and her voice bubbly, even to those who hadn’t had a reason to hope for a long time. Benjamin liked her as his nurse. So did I.

  “He’s awake now.” She gestured for me to follow, though I knew the way. I appreciated her support. Most days, her job wasn’t simply to comfort the patients. She helped those who walked a half-step behind her, hesitating to enter the rooms. “There’s been no change in his condition, but…”

  I knew what to expect. “Thank you, Anne.”

  “Just call if he needs anything.”

  She left me. I waited at the door.

  It was supposed to be easier than this—confronting those who were soon to die. I taught and believed that this life became the next, and paradise awaited those with a clean soul.

  And yet I hesitated outside his room, preparing myself for what I would find.

  That was twice I had faltered—first with the innocent angel who had needed me, and now for the old friend who laughed at me from his bed.

  “Rafe, get in here…did you bring that case again?”

  Bishop Benjamin Polito was once a man of life, vitality, and one pepperoni pizza too many. He’d always joked that it would be heart disease that finally got him. The pancreatic cancer surprised most of the diocese. It surprised me.
/>   Benjamin waved an unfamiliar, skinny arm towards the empty chair at his bedside. The IV clanked against the bed’s rails, and he muttered under his breath. His laugh rasped into a cough, and he tugged the saline drip.

  “Had to make sure it was just the IV…” He winked. “I got tubes coming out of places that’d make Mother Mary blush, if you catch my drift.”

  Everyone…everywhere…understood Benjamin.

  I sat at his side. “Father, are you feeling…”

  “One, don’t call me Father unless you mean it. We don’t need any formality here, Rafe. Second…you know the answer to that question.”

  “Are you in pain?”

  “Not at the moment…though a rough tug on that other wire might finally get me walking again.” The chemo had taken his hair, but it hadn’t claimed his smile. He batted at me, too tired to reach my arm. “Oh, laugh once in a while, Rafe. It won’t kill you. Now cancer…that’ll do it.”

  A laugh felt like sacrilege given the events of last night and how miserable it was to watch my mentor waste away in a hospice bed. But a priest wasn’t selfish. Benjamin had taught me that. The collar bound the man inside, and the priest offered himself to the world, his parish, and those he meant to serve.

  I stood and unbuckled the case.

  “You’re anointing me again?” Benjamin coughed.

  “Yes.”

  “There comes a point in a man’s life when he is ready to pass, Rafe.”

  “I’m doing what I can.”

  “If you had it your way, you’d grease me up and slip me through the bars of the Pearly Gates.” Benjamin grinned. “Got news for you, son. I’m gonna be dead soon. I don’t mind waiting for my invitation on the inside.”

  The vials and books clanked in the case. While away from their desk, most men carried their laptop and files from work. I did too, but I also secured holy water and oils, wine and wafers with Velcro to the interior of my briefcase. Mobile Mass, the parish called it. Efficiency in times of need.

  “Don’t you do it.” Benjamin pointed at me. “Put the stole down.”

  I held the silk vestment with a frown. “You don’t want to be blessed?”

  “Not for the third time since I came to the hospice.”

  “It’s a comfort.”