Beauty and the Blitz (26 page)

“No, Father. It’s the opposite. I do believe you. Every word.”

“And that is a problem?”

“Maybe.” I edged closer to the screen. “The first time we met…what did you see in me?”

His words edged, hard and forced. “In you, I saw my damnation. It flashed like a prophesy in my mind…before it turned to fantasy.”

A shiver claimed me, but I didn’t fear it. It delighted me with a tickled warning.

Don’t let this happen.

“I should have imagined you with a halo, draped in golden light,” he said. “That’s what you’d prefer to hear. But I’ll always be honest with you…especially about this.”

The tension would tear me apart. I knew it. I had felt it. This wasn’t playful flirting.

This was something far more dangerous.

My whisper was too loud for the silence of the church. “Father, we can’t speak like this anymore. We can’t meet anymore. No matter how innocent we once thought it was…now we know the truth.”

“Which is?”

“I’ve wanted to be alone with you, too many times for all the wrong reasons.”

“You have not sinned.”

“I will not give it a chance.”

He sighed, speaking softly with his infinite patience. “Tell me why you are really here, Honor. What sins have you committed?”

I bowed my head. The confessional was too small, too claustrophobic, too near him. I edged to the screen, not knowing if I sought forgiveness or the chance to feel his heat, hear his breath…to imagine his touch.

Just a graze of his fingers.

A slide of his hand.

The gentle brush of his lips against mine.

My mouth dried, but I feared the soothing flick of my tongue over my lips.

“You are a priest, and it’s wrong to expose you to these feelings. You could lose the church. Your vocation.”

“My angel, those are not your sins. They are mine.”

“They’re shared.”

“It is not a transgression if we speak after Mass, or if you help me carry supplies for the youth group, or if we stay late to clean the nave. These are not sins—unless you have succumbed in another way…”

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. His 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.

N
o 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.”

“For whom?” He let the question hang and then offered a wave. “All right, all right. Come on then. Let’s do it.”

I’d faked a smile, and he indulged the blessing. It was the only kindness we could offer each other now, no matter how ineffective it felt.

I bowed at his bedside, beginning the prayers. Benjamin crossed himself with me, murmuring the words.

“In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit…”

Benjamin knew the process, but he listened intently, smiling as I spoke.

Proud
.

My chest tightened. He was always so proud of everything I’d done, and I hoped he realized it was all because of him. Though the words of the Anointing asked for the Lord to save the sick one’s soul, it was Benjamin who had saved mine.

I sprinkled holy water and bowed my head. “Do you have anything you wish to confess?”

“Not since the last time you asked me,” Ben said. “Not much cause to sin now. It’s not even good entertainment.”

I knew he took the sacrament seriously—when I was a teenager, he had forced me to scrub the steps outside the church with a toothbrush for a similarly flippant answer. He appreciated and welcomed the anointing, but he tried so hard to keep my spirits up.

I wished that one day, I’d be as great a man as he was. It’d never happen, but I could wish.

We prayed, and I anointed him with the oil. Even that extra prayer taxed him. He took communion though his hand trembled to cross himself. The nurses waited as long as they could before they interrupted to place the oxygen at his nose.

Death was ugly and terrible, but my friend, mentor, brother, father met it with every grace a man of God could hope to achieve.

“Thank you,” he said. The nurses left us again, and he patted my hand. “Rafe, why are you here at my bedside? You have better, more important work at the parish. I know for a fact you owe a day at the diocese’s office too.”

“Part of my duties are to attend the sick. I’m attending.”

“You are not. You’re looking for guidance.”

“Aren’t we all?”

“Depends if you’re receptive to the words of a dying man.”

“I’ve always listened to you, Fath—Ben.”

He laughed. Not the scratchy, joyful laugh I remembered, but one only a man facing his mortality could gloat over his closest friend and surrogate son.

“Hardly. You know we have different paths to righteousness. Yours is…” Ben shook his head. “A self-inflicted difficulty.”

“Not to me,” I said, sinking into the chair after I replaced my oils and stole in the case.

“
Especially
to you. You make it so hard on yourself, and you’ve made it harder every day of your life. Save some room on the cross, Rafe. He died to make this
easier
for you.”

“You sure you’re getting enough pain-killers?” I asked.

“You sure you don’t want to anoint me again?” He snickered. “Tell me, son. What is it
you
wish to confess?”

I didn’t react. “Who says I’m here to confess?”

“Right. I’ve only been a priest for fifty years. What do I know?”

I didn’t answer. Benjamin learned his patience during his years at the parish, and most of it was my fault. His temper had cooled as he endured my foolishness, stubbornness, and reckless interpretation of right, wrong, good, evil, and the failures of man.

I was not one who willingly sinned, nor was I a man who harbored it. I strived to confront that darkness and expose it in every aspect of my soul, no matter the earthly consequences. But now?

I never
hid
from temptation. I’d always sought it out. Studied it.
Learned
from it. The only way I could face the light of Heaven was to burn myself on the flames of Hell.

I never met a temptation I couldn’t defy.

Until last night.

Until her.

Until her admission, her whispered confession, and the moment of stolen peace, earned from her trembling fingers
.

I had instructed her to sin.

I should have confessed then. Benjamin was the only priest who wouldn’t have immediately condemned me to Hell for destroying the precious bond between Confessor and Priest.

But to reveal that wicked misdeed, I’d have to share everything
else
.
How it felt when she spoke my name. How my heart raced, blood boiled, and cock hardened with her every baited whisper.

That was my sin, and it was also my delight. The secret wickedness was meant only for me, and that soft, forsaken mew she whimpered within the confessional would forever belong to my soul.

And it was my fault.

If I wanted to save Honor, I had to first master the desires which burned through me. Unfortunately, I had no earthly or heavenly idea how to protect myself from such terrible beauty.

“Father…” This sort of talk necessitated formality, titles, and respect. “You’ve had a long life in the clergy.”

“Yes.”

“How did you learn to deny temptations?”

Benjamin took a deep breath. “Is such a thing possible?”

I was beginning to think
no
. “It must be.”

“Each man is different, Rafe.”

“I know. I thought I understood what made me unique—my personal strengths and weaknesses.”

“Which are?”

“Faith.”

He smiled. “Faith is both your strength and weakness?”

“My faith in the Lord is my greatest strength…but I have no faith in man.”

“Or yourself?”

“I am a man.”

“Yes,” Benjamin said. “You are a very young, very passionate man. This life was never going to be easy for someone like you.”

“But it is my life.”

“Yes.”

“Every day, men and woman are faced with temptations. They fear those uncertainties as much as they want their desires. It is that fear which traps them in sin.”

Benjamin sighed. “Are you so different?”

Yes
. “I see no reason to fear what tempts us.”

“Why?”

“Because I would rather face it. Seize it, understand it. Then I would destroy it.”

He silenced, leaning against the pillow in a quiet prayer. Benjamin eventually looked to me, his eyes hazy with drugs and face jaundiced by the illness raging through his body.

“Do not put your Lord God to the test…” He groaned. “That’s in Deuteronomy. You don’t even have to read far into the book to find that command.”

“I’m not challenging God. I’m challenging myself.”

“
Why
?”

“So I can fight the temptations that endanger the virtue of those around me.”

“
Virtue
?” Benjamin tried to sit up. He didn’t make it, and his grimace of pain rolled through me. “Be careful, Rafe. You are a strong, fierce man, but temptation exists for a reason—to take advantage of those who would fall to their pride.”

“I am not proud of this.” My voice steadied. “Pride means I’d underestimate the danger. I do not. But the only way I will overcome this is if I face it. Challenge it.”

“This is a risky game.”

“It’s the only game that matters.”

And I meant it. Nothing meant more to me than my faith or my soul…except the sanctity of others. While other priests would run to avoid that confrontation, I met it head on.

And so would she.

“I will only say this once…” Benjamin leaned close, taking my hand. “I understand you, Raphael. I have, ever since you were the lost little boy that came looking to join my flock. You are a devoted priest, and every man finds the Lord in his own way. But…” His voice dropped. “You are young. You are attractive. You are a man who would draw attention, even if you were not wearing a cassock.”