Beauty and the Blitz (40 page)

A
ll of our
sins were committed in the dark. Why did my angel shine brightest during the night?

She entered St. Cecilia’s, slipping through the vestibule and into the sanctuary which awaited a service just for her. I locked the church behind her. She tip-toed to the altar. The door to the nave closed behind us.

And we were alone.

Honor turned, lingering before the altar as though she thought she would be cast upon it.

Not yet. But soon.

She studied the work I had done. Candles lit the sanctuary, bright and flickering. The light reflected from the stained glass and bounced in dark hues of reds, blues, and greens over the white linen folded over the altar. The incense teased in the air. Dusky. Sacred.

It was the first time I felt comfortable in my own church in a week, and it was because I dressed it for my angel.

“Father?” Honor wore only a soft dress, modestly hugging her curves. Her eyes widened. “What are you doing? This is…”

Blasphemous.

And it was meant to be.

The thoughts tortured me for too long. The guilt became a constant burden, and the shame an unrelenting companion.

And so I let it go.

I let too much of myself go.

I reached for her, my fingers tangled in my rosaries. I brushed my finger first over her lips to silence the questions.

“If I am to sin…” My words blessed and cursed us both. “I would celebrate it, just as I celebrate my faith.”

I kissed her, delighting in the honesty of those words.

I could take her. I could have her. We could be together, if only for this moment, if only in this one declaration of complete and total spiritual anarchy.

I’d give of myself to join with another. And I’d lose my soul for a single moment to taste, touch, and feel the gifts of her body.

What was mine would be lost and damned if only so I could praise her.

Her lips quivered, soft and hesitant. She murmured soft words against me. A prayer.

“What’s happened to you?” she whispered.

I tangled my hands in her hair, across her curves, along her softness. Nothing compared to the press of her body against mine.

This was a sin worth reverence.

“I want you,” I said. “Here. Tonight. I need to make you mine in every way—our bodies, our souls, our hearts. I want to own you.”

“I do too…” Honor brushed her fingers along my cheek. She wasn’t meek or mild, but she was just as gentle. Too gentle. It’d only make me take her harder. “But you don’t belong to me, Father. I can’t let you destroy yourself. This is a sin.”

“Then it is the sweetest sin.”

I kissed her again, trapping her against me, losing myself in her candied apple scent and silken touch. She was smaller than me. Fragile. Beautiful. She closed her eyes as I touched her and surrendered with my kiss.

She had always been mine. Tonight I’d prove it.

“Take off your dress.” My command rolled a shudder over her body. “Kneel before me.”

Her fingers teased the straps of her dress, silken material that marked the end of something righteous and the beginning of our own destruction.

The dress fell away, and her panties slid to the floor. My Honor stood before me, naked, trembling, and gazing over the church with a bitten lip.

“
Here
, Father?” She looked over the church. “Are you sure?”

For weeks I’d struggled against my desire. Harsh and vile and all-consuming.

I’d prayed. I’d fasted. I’d sought comfort in old books and exercise and charity. None of it helped. Nothing eased my desperation to take her, rut her, seize her within a display of utter sacrilege.

If I was to violate her, then I would violate myself and everything that made me. My desires would not save me, and so I would worship the object of my lust.

Honor drove me to madness.

Only my angel would save me, sating those perverted desires with her own sacrifice.

She knelt before me, naked and
beautiful
. Every curve dark and rich. She shivered. Not fear, but in lust. Desire. The same heat and passion which tore through my body and mind.

I stood before her, savoring the
power
coursing through my veins.

I didn’t remove my cassock. This night wouldn’t honor the man beneath the collar, but the one who wore it. The last of him. A baptism of sin as I felled an angel with me.

I left it on and unbuttoned just enough to expose my hardening cock for her. The rosaries dangled too close. She kissed them.

Honor stared up at me, her eyes wide. Her lips already parted for that sinful offering, a body I wished for her to consume.

“Are you frightened?” I asked.

She swallowed. “I’m…nervous. We’re in the
church
, Father.”

I guided my cock to her with a confident hand. She waited upon her knees and took me in her mouth without protest, without complaint.

She
submitted
.

She mewed a
gracious
sound and savored me. The softness of her lips, the heat of her mouth, and the devotion of her tongue wracked me in pleasure, but I hadn’t realized she would enjoy it as well.

“Do you know the story of Saint Teresa of Avila?” I twisted a hand in her hair. My head fell back, and she welcomed me deeper. “She was a nun in the sixteenth century…and she was granted visions from God so powerful, so intense she would be wracked with pains, pleasures, and overwhelmed in religious ecstasy.”

Honor opened her eyes. She did not take my cock from her mouth, nor would I have permitted it. I shuddered, deep and heavy. Everything tightened within me already.

Too soon. Not soon enough.

“She claimed an angel had visited her, one with a golden arrow he used to pierce her body again and again. Every thrust dragged through her in great pain. But she whispered stories. Said the sensations were so great, she was forced to moan. She did not wish to be rid of that feeling.”

Her lips dragged over my shaft, my own golden arrow which would tear through her. The flick of her tongue stole my breath. I clenched my teeth.

“It’s called the Devotion of Ecstasy. When the body and soul are connected in sweet pain. When it happened to her, Saint Teresa would swoon. She’d go weak, faint, and wake in beautiful tears. She was made comfortable in a passionate union with God.”

I twisted her hair, sinking her deeper upon my cock. Honor groaned. Her throaty whimper vibrated along my shaft. I tensed, but I wasn’t ready to experience that ecstasy yet.

Not when I had her.

Not when I might have experienced it
in
her, because of her, drawn from her. My hands tightened, body strained, and my cock hardened more.

Honor waited before me.

Madonna or whore of Babylon? Or simply my angel, my beautiful and pure salvation who offered so much for me to take and destroy.

I drew from her mouth, and her shivered gasp nearly had me pump every last drop of my desire upon those lips.

But I was a proper Catholic. No sense disavowing all tradition.

I pulled her to her feet only to cast her in my arms. She tensed as I lowered her upon the altar. I rested her on the linens, surrounded by the candles, drenched in the sweet light of salvation.

“Father, this is…”

“The altar.” Where I had imagined her every minute of every day since she first walked into my church. “It is where you belong, my angel.”

“This is wrong. Are you sure you want to do this?”

Nothing would stop me.

“Do you know what altars were once used for, Honor?” I circled her, observing her body, her writhing, the sweet goosebumps which prickled over her flesh as her bared skin accidentally touched cold stone. “The altar was a place of
sacrifice
.”

“Oh, God.”

“I’m sure He’s here.” Or would know the instant I fell further from His grace. “You are my perfect sacrifice, Honor. You’re beautiful. You’re gentle. Innocent. You possess every virtue I’ve lost. If I have faith in one thing in this world, it’s the words you speak, the breaths you take.”

“You haven’t lost your faith.”

I lost enough of myself to worship my desire. I studied her, committed her to memory. Why had I ever resisted her?

“I want to consecrate your body,” I said. “Make it holy before I destroy us in this sin.”

“Father, you’re not destroying me or yourself.”

“I already have.”

I prepared for this moment. The oils awaited my hand, and the holy water stilled in a gold chalice. I needed no prayer for this. Honor was as blessed, as beautiful, as pure as any woman gracing this earth.

But I could worship her in my own way. Adore and ruin. Bless and profane.

I sprinkled the water first, watching as the chilled droplets dripped over her curves. They ran in tears, rivulets of chill that teased her skin. Her nipples budded hard, and I followed every rolling bead of holy water as it trailed between her breasts, over her waist, and finally, dipped to the wonder between her legs.

She shivered.

So did I.

“You are so beautiful,” I whispered. “I almost hate to defile you this way.”

“You aren’t defiling me.”

She spoke too much. I silenced her with a kiss, reaching for the oils we kept under a lock and key, safe from everyone but me. I reserved only a small portion for tonight, knowing how precious and rare it was.

“This is a special oil. Chrism.” I breathed slowly, dipping my fingers into the vial and spreading it over my hands. “I cannot bless it. It is consecrated only one day a year, Maundy Thursday, Holy Thursday, and only by a bishop.”

A position Benjamin wanted for me. A role I would never accept. Not now. Not after this.

“Should you…waste it?” Honor asked.

“This is no waste.”

I lowered my fingertips to her body, watching in amazement as she arched to meet my hand.

Was this how it should have been?

A body arching to feel a touch?

For so long, I only knew to fear a touch. I lived because of the instinct to duck, flinch. Pray for it to pass.

My fingers dragged over her skin. Down. Over. Forming a cross over her chest. The oil was intended for foreheads, lips, breast over the heart.

This woman was my heart. All of her. Quivering. Shaking.

Longing for my touch.

The oil slickened her body. She gasped as I blessed every part of her, sliding my hands along her dark skin, over her breasts, rubbing against the budded nipples that strained and begged for more than perfumed oil.

I touched lower, following the holy water. My hands tensed as I studied where her legs parted for me. She wanted me to touch that sacred mystery of mysteries. Her body twisted. She licked parted lips and breathed heated sighs.

Just as I had yet to feel that ecstasy, I would withhold it from her.

For a moment.

Just a moment.

I prepared her for it instead.

“I don’t know what I’ll do when I take you.” I warned her with a shamed growl. “Your body is so pure, so innocent, so fragile. I fear my strength.”

“Don’t, Father.”

“You don’t understand the urges I have.”

“They’re natural.”

“They’re evil.”

Honor stared at me as she twisted her hands in the linen beneath her waiting body. “You want me, Father. You can have me. You won’t hurt me. You won’t destroy me. You won’t lose me.”

“The things I want are…so twisted.”

“It’s
passion
, Father.”

“It’s dominance.”

“Then I submit.”

I laughed. “You have no choice.”

“I have every choice, and I choose to give myself to you.”

This misguided girl. I took her innocence, but she still suffered the delusion. Sex was not the passionate, loving embrace she imagined.

It was primal. Wicked.

Meant to overpower.

I hated the thought of corrupting her, but I’d shield her from my perversion of faith.

I untangled the rosaries from my hand and held out the beads. Honor lifted her head, accepting the gift. It wasn’t right to wear the rosaries as a necklace, but the instant the chain struck her flesh, the silvered cross lying between her breasts, I knew it was the most beautiful and sacrilegious and blessed vision I had the privilege of seeing.

I pulled her legs to the end of the altar, pressing a hand to her chest to prevent her from rising.

This was what I’d wanted to see.

What I’d dreamed of.

Honor defenseless, aching, naked. Waiting on the altar for the moment of utter sanctity when I’d rend through her with every perverse and befouling desire that hardened me for sin.

My innocent angel slickened for me. She had no idea the dangers that awaited her.

I stepped to the altar, wrapping her legs around my waist. Her breasts rose and fell in quick, harsh breaths. I clenched my jaw and pumped my cock. My soul threatened to tear me apart if I didn’t seek relief in her body.

“Forgive me,” I whispered. “I can’t fight this temptation.”

“It’s okay, Fath—”

I thrust inside her, one solid and demanding strike. My cock forced itself in, rutting to the hilt and grinding flesh against flesh as I sheathed my impossible length within her delicate slit.

I expected her to cry out.

To squirm. Fight. Beg.

I thought she’d try to run…as I had so often fought to escape.

Honor arched instead. Her whisper cried my name in
sweetness
.

And her body shuddered in shivers of delight.

I withdrew, each inch without the comfort of her molten slit a pained and terrible punishment. I pulled to end and teased my cock with the agonized shudders that wracked my spine.

Nothing compared to this feeling. This tightness. This squeezing and unrelenting tremor that enveloped my body from the clenching of hers.

I sliced through her again, filling her, stretching her when her body tensed over me. I made the room I needed for my own pleasure.

And Honor groaned for me. She clutched the altar. Her breasts. My hands.

It didn’t hurt her. She
liked
this.

I gripped her thighs and positioned her where I could slam myself inside her, where every undulating squeeze of her softness rolled me in pleasure, panic. So tight. So perfect.