Carmelita and Santiago followed up the last of the line, warm and open smiles on both of their faces. “Where’s the rest of the family this evening?”
Santiago was twisting the ropes that hung long on my vestments as his mother spoke. “My boys are down sick, so Padre Juan is watching them. And mi Margarita—” she brushed closer, hand at my elbow “—she went back to Havana. Country life is not for her, she decided.” Carmelita winked. “I’m glad. One less mouth to feed. She’d get bored and cause trouble for me anyway.”
I held back my chuckle, only wishing the best for both of them.
“Come on, Santi,” Carmelita instructed.
The boy gave my leg a quick hug before sprinting down the cobbled stone path that wove to the dusty red road. “See ya, Padre Castaneda!”
“Adios, Santiago!”
His mother caught his hand, setting sun lighting his dark hair like a halo.
I watched them get smaller and smaller until they finally turned the bend in the road and were out of my sight.
With the heavy feeling settling, I spent the next few minutes locking up the small church and readying for morning Mass. The sun was already below the horizon by the time I was shuffling back to my rectory, the before-bed ritual I’d become accustomed to already warming my skin in anticipation.
Locking the door behind me, I paused for a moment at the small window carved into the stone hovel. Shades of navy and obsidian played tricks on my eyes, warm wind whispering on the palm leaves, only a few brave avian souls singing a staccatoed birdsong in the distance. And after a minute, even that grew silent, romance and mystery clinging to the soft breeze.
A small, satisfied grin lifted my lips as I made a mental note to emblazon this moment in my mind.
It felt like I’d already walked a lifetime in the shoes my God had given me for this life, but I appreciated the lessons learned each and every day, even if they were hard wrought.
I closed the thin curtain, still enjoying the way the breeze lifted it to twirl and dance, adding levity to an admittedly stifling room.
I unbuttoned the top few buttons at my neck before pulling the shirt from my waistband and yanking it over my head. My pants followed before I was on my knees, hard wooden floor biting into unforgiving bone. I turned my eyes to the window and the few slivers of moonlight that shone through the curtain.
I began the string of prayers I used to repent for the wicked desires in my mind as I took the soft licks of leather in my hand, running it through my knuckles and enjoying the way the grain warmed against my flesh. The natural touch made the bite less shocking, though it’d been my experience that it tended to make the welts worse. I’d trained myself not to wince anymore, so that was something.
With a soft flick, I used the action of my wrist to cut this evening’s first lash across the expanse of my back.
The speed of my words increased as I surrendered in prayer to his holiness for forgiveness.
“Forgive me, Father,” I whispered in English before continuing on with the Lord’s prayer in Spanish just under my breath.
My second lash was diverted midway by a soft knock at the door.
A knock so soft, I wasn’t sure I’d even heard it.
I waited, prickles of sweat already nipping at my neck and hairline, skin at my back stinging nicely.
Two more soft knocks and then silence. I rubbed a palm over my head, neck corded and muscles jumping under the skin as anxiety swept through my bloodstream.
I dropped the belt at my knees, sliding it under the edge of the bed, and stood.
I waited, hovering at the door and thinking what a fool I was being because it wasn’t at all uncommon to have a parishioner stop by after sunset. It was only uncommon that I was standing here, nearly naked, with a belt in my fists. I could play it off that I’d been asleep, or just out of the bath.
I pushed a hand through my hair, steadying myself before opening the door and plastering a pleasant smile on my face.
Darkness clung to every corner, my eyes adjusting poorly to the dark night, focusing fully only when someone stepped out of the shadows.
Her.
Blood red seeped into the corners of my vision as my head began to pound, the pleasant sting at my back fast becoming an unbearable colony of fire ants crawling out of every pore.
My eyes were undoubtedly playing tricks. This tiny country parish had finally sent me straight over the cliff into the seas of insanity. And then her chin tipped up, shadows giving way to cool, silvered light. Cheekbones high and more angular than I’d remembered. Lids opening to reveal eyes a deep shade of chestnut. I sank my teeth into my bottom lip, blinking my eyes open and closed as she stood before me, a mirage.
My dove.
I stretched out an arm, heart galloping at a wild speed within my rib cage as I took my first steps to her.
She licked her lips once, eyes locked with mine in a raw embrace of our very souls.
“Tressa.” Her name snaked past my lips like a sacred prayer.
Her eyes shuddered closed a moment before she took one tentative step over the threshold of my room.
I brushed the side of her wrist with my fingers, pleading for more of her with my eyes.
Whatever she was willing to give, like a starving man, I would take.
“I…” Her chocolate eyes welled up. I took her other wrist in my hands, pulling her closer.
“I’m happier to see you than I can even say.” I held her face in my hands, eyes hovering inches apart.
Her head fell, conflicted emotions warring in her eyes.
“I…” The truth clung to her throat, my own desire to wrap myself in the memory of her voice coaxing the words from her like a greedy bastard. I assessed the soft planes of her face with my gaze. She was older, skin a darker shade of cocoa, hair longer and the same rich hue of a coffee bean. My fingers itched to plow through the soft waves of silk, drown myself in everything I’d been missing. The very dream that’d kept me awake night after night.
“I’ve missed you,” I finally admitted, pulling her a few steps farther into my tiny room and closing the ancient door.
We were alone.
My palms prickled with anticipation.
I watched the sweet hollow of her succulent throat swallow before her eyes cascaded up my body, bare feet to naked thigh, boxer briefs to bare chest. “I don’t know why I came,” she finally blurted, eyes watery. “Only that I had to.”
My heart splintered, arms crushing her to me, soft sobs finally releasing as she buried her face in my chest.
“I didn’t know… I wasn’t sure…after all this time…” She whispered on repeat, words stuttering out of her between tears. “I thought maybe what happened between us was something that you’d done before, that what you and I had was…common.”
My own pain rose like a bubble to the surface, tears slipping past my eyelids and soaking into her hair. I wove my fingers deep into her tresses, both of our chests shuddering to the same heartbroken rhythm, and somehow—someway—with her, I came back to life.
“There’s never been anything common about us, dove.”
She wiped at her eyes. “How many times do I have to apologize for landing on your doorstep crying?” She breathed a giggle that touched me in places it shouldn’t have.
Hearing her lips wrap around a full sentence was like hearing an angel at the end of a long, dark night. One gloriously full sentence out of her gloriously beautiful mouth was enough to set my heart at ease for another lifetime.
“God, I missed you,” I said again, caging her in my arms and thinking I might possibly refuse to ever let go. Keeping her hostage here would be a crime, but I was pretty confident I could get away with it for at least a little while before the authorities showed up. And still, it’d be worth every minute with her.
“I heard your Mass.” She pushed me away, inches separating us now. “Heard all of it.” She shook her head, eyes welling up again. “I’ve agonized for so long about whether it
was a good idea for me to come here. At one point on the flight from Miami, I told myself this was the worst decision I’d ever made in my life. Then I reached the cathedral I thought you might be at, only to be told I’d need to head deeper into the mountains.” A frown danced across her features. “And then I heard that Mass, and I was sure I’d done the wrong thing.” She swiped at more tears, this time a little more angrily. “I almost turned and left again. I thought you’d moved on, would resent me for even showing my face here, but I couldn’t come this far without…” Her gaze clung heavily and weighted to mine. “…without hearing your voice one last time.”
I crossed the inches, hands clasped at her elbows to hold her to me. “I’ve tried to move on. I can’t tell you how I’ve tried. But I could never resent seeing you.”
“Then why this, Bastien?” She was slipping around me, fingertips trailing over the raised muscles of my bicep, over my shoulder blades, finally landing at the fresh welt on my back.
I winced when she touched the tender, broken skin.
“How could you do this to yourself?” Her words cracked, tears lacing every syllable.
I didn’t think I could handle her pain on top of it all.
Hell, if only I’d known she would be back, I’d never have taken leather to my skin at all. I’d have endured, biding my time, waiting until now.
“I’ve allowed carnal lusts to corrupt my faith. I need absolution.” I breathed, intent on the truth, no matter how much it hurt.
“How can I fight your God when he is not mine? Filled with more vengeance than redemption, more retribution than forgiveness? You know what I think? I think to love is to die a little. To not love is to exist a lifetime in purgatory.”
She regarded me shrewdly, logic written on every feature. She was a contradiction, faithfully detached, committed and still free. She gave love freely but to no one at all. Gentle and tough and passionate and refreshingly predictable in her unpredictability, just being near her light brightened mine.
Left to generate my own light, my world had gone dark.
“Bastien,” she finally uttered. “You’ve been torturing yourself.”
Her eyes cast across the room, the chrome of my belt buckle glinting from under the bed. “I heard the first strike.”
I closed my eyes abruptly, thinking of the sickening sound leather made when it met flesh.
A sound I’d never forget, and now, because of me, neither would she.
“No.”
Her palms were holding my face, lifting my gaze to meet hers.
Every ravaged day spent apart was etched on our pupils.
“You don’t know what I’ve done,” I finally murmured.
“I don’t have to to know corporal punishment isn’t an appropriate form of penance.”
“It’s not like that. The Jesuits have a practice—”
“I don’t care about the goddamn Jesuits. If you only saw yourself through my eyes, if you loved yourself as much as I love you.” Her eyes broke with emotion. “Then you would never raze your own flesh.”
And that was all it took.
With those few words, she pieced a broken man back together. Stitched my heart whole, assembled my soul to a capacity fuller than it’d been before. Like a sorceress, she used her magic to expose all the unseen parts of me. The parts I’d been hiding from myself.
“You are a good man, Bastien Castaneda. No number of lashings could make you any better in my eyes. Tell me, how much good can you bring to the world if you’re ravaged and beaten and bloody on this bed?” Her gaze was accusatory now, reason rearing its ugly head. “Don’t you think all the beautiful gifts you’ve brought to this world far overshadow the few moments of unbridled passion you’ve allowed yourself?”
“That’s not what the Church would say—”
“Fuck the Church, Bastien!” She pressed closer to me, up on her tiptoes, our noses hovering just out of reach, her lips right there. “You contaminate and condemn the most beautiful and complex love of my life, and you think I want to know what God would say? I want to know what you would say.”
My mind warred, good and evil, pleasure and pain, sin and sacrifice, all battled fiercely before she did the one thing she could do to calm the chaos.
She kissed me.
TWENTY-FOUR
Bastien
“I missed you so fucking much.” I confessed on her lips.
She grinned, mumbling against me. “This rugged holy man thing you’ve got going on works well on you.”
She tugged at my overgrown stubble as she teased. I captured her wrist, pulling her down onto the bed beside me. “If you like it, I’ll keep it.”
“Ha!” She laughed, and just like that, we fell back into that thing we did so well together. “Giving up your power already?”
Her banter almost brought me to tears.
I’d missed her more than I’d allowed myself to admit.
“I left all my power in your hands.” I could hear the lusty frustration lacing my own words, my hands greedy as they traveled her body, stroking her curves and lifting the layers of loose clothing she wore.
I gulped when her body was bare and gleaming in the moonlight, damp skin already hot with anticipation as I caged her in my heavy arms. Collapsing on top of her, I melded our lips, tasting her, touching her, getting reacquainted with my favorite everything all over again.
“I don’t know how I stayed away from you.” I kissed her deeper, not allowing a response or even a breath, our bodies working up a feverish rhythm before my fingertips were touching the wet skin between her legs and sheathing themselves in her warmth for the first time.
Again.
I groaned, her fingernails raking across my shoulder blades as she clung to me, our lips rarely disconnected as we rediscovered the love in our formerly hopeless love story all over again. All the misaligned pieces of me fell back into place as if pulled by an invisible magnet, the very force she held over my true nature incomparable to anything else in my life.
Love.
What a funny little emotion.
“Bastien?” Her lips grazed my ear and sent a thrill down my spine, grounding me in this moment. In her.
“Say it again.” I sucked at the sweat trickling down her neck, collecting at her throat, driving me wild as it beaded between her breasts. I sank into her body, thrusting with deft strokes as we fucked and kissed and touched the livewire that’d always throbbed hot and needy between us.
“Say what?” Her laugh made me crazier for her.
“My name.”
Her grin fell a notch, warmth pooling in her eyes as she cradled my jaw in her palms. “Bastien.”
My lips glided along hers, smile lifting farther as I kissed and teased at the delicious little bow. “You are music to my ears.”
“I don’t know about that.” She tugged at the length of stubble on my chin. “But what I wanted to say was that I’m not on birth control now…or anything.”
“No birth control, huh? How very pious of you.”
A devilish grin widened her cheeks.
“So beautiful,” I whispered, clutching her face in my palms and kissing her like I’d been wanting to, like I’d spent so many nights losing sleep over with her rustling in all four corners of my brain. “So very beautiful.”
Our eyes on fire with simmering emotion, we exploded like dying stars against a lonely black sky, our passions violent, our love pure. Chaos and order, sin and virtue, every bit of us together made no sense at all—and perfect sense just the same.
A beautiful sin, our greatest catastrophe.
In that moment, I allowed myself to admit I loved her far greater than I’d known.
I just wasn’t sure what to do about that come morning, the same anxieties of our last incarnation plaguing me.
“Life is in God’s hands. I’ve always believed that.” I captured her wrists as I spoke, thrusting them above her head so her chest was angled up to me, pebbled nipples begging for my attention. “
Birth control or not.”
With my last sentence, I pushed deeper, feeling her muscles tense and resist my intrusion in her soft body before, with soft moans and gentle coaxing, she opened up. Accepted all of me.
Just like she’d always done.
From the start, it felt like Tressa had seen the man behind the collar, my position as a holy disciple of no consequence to her.
A forbidden thought intruded in my head then, the glint of the belt buckle under the bed luring me to chain her here—to my bed—some temporary and twisted psychological relief that she was here to stay.
“Do you trust me?” I nipped at her lip.
“Always,” she said clearly, eyes interested.
I slid the belt from under the bed, working it against her wrists delicately before looping them behind the posts.
“Kinky, Father.” Her dark eyes danced with mischief.
“Say that again, and you don’t want to know what comes next.”
She bit down on her lip even harder. “You know I just can’t let that one go.” She wiggled, breasts dragging against the hair of my chest, hips writhing against mine, eliciting a groan of intense frustration. “So, you wanna get kinky, Father Bastien?”
My eyes about burst from my skull, the very idea that this woman was underneath me right now, that I was inside her as she wiggled and called me by my holy name…
“In the mood to dance with the devil tonight, Tressa?”
I plucked at the angry little tip of her breast, a squeak bursting past her lips as I rubbed the soft sting away.
“You ready?” My teeth at her ear was the only warning I gave before grasping her hips and flipping her, my cock already slamming back inside her before she could adjust to being without me again.
“I plan on keeping you addicted to this every day if that’s what it takes to keep you from leaving.”
In one swift move, I pulled off the cross and chain that hung around my neck, the one I never took off, thumbing the tiny worn edges of precious metal before pooling the chain at the dip of her spine.
She arched against the heavy weight of it, my fingers gliding the chain along her skin, dangling the cross over her decadent curves like a sacred pendulum. My mouth watered, hips going deeper on gentle thrusts as I skated the tip of the cross up the length of her spine and then back down the side of her torso. My eyes ate up the silky flesh I’d been so long deprived of, every charged moment leading to another and then another, before I looped the chain around her neck, allowing the medallion to dangle between her full breasts, home.
REBEL PRIEST Page 17