Page 69 of Saint
But for us, it’s like vinegar instead of wine—it stings and it sours and it only makes us thirstier for something we can never, ever have.
* * *
I worrythat perhaps all of this shows on our faces as we sit at dinner. TheI love yous, the sex. Especially the sex. Surely there must be something different about me, about my face, about my voice. Surely the way Elijah and I move around each other—careful not to look too much, speak too much—must give it away.
Ifeeldifferent, and not helping matters is my unbound sex beneath my habit, and even tucked into my boxer briefs, the amount of stimulation that comes merely from the constant press and friction of the fabric is so much more than I’ve had on this trip. And then I move a certain way and feel the ache of where Elijah penetrated me, and my body threatens to awaken all over again.
I feel like I did when we’d just started fucking, and it was all I’d wanted to do. I’d beg him to take days off work, I’d keep him up all hours of the night, like I could make up for all the time I’d missed having sex with him if I tried hard enough.
I feel that way now. And when I catch him looking at me in the refectory with a quick but unguarded smolder, I think he might feel the same way. A plan forms in my mind.
When we walk into the guesthouse after compline—the mysterious priest still unreturned from whatever sojourn he’s on—I close the door behind us and turn to Elijah in the stone corridor.
“What if...” I say and his eyes immediately grow heavy-lidded.
“Yes.”
“You’re spending the night,” I whisper. “With Sean.”
His eyes hood even more. This isn’t a new game; it’s one of our favorites. The older brother’s best friend game.
“And he’s asleep and you’re asleep in the guest room, but I can’t sleep. And I come into your room without knocking.”
He swallows. “Yeah,” he says, his voice sounding dry. “I like that game.”
And about an hour later, we’re each in our own cells, cleaned up and ostensibly trying to sleep, me waiting until I absolutely can’t stand it anymore, and then I finally push out of bed and open the wooden door to the corridor.
In a way, despite the medieval stone and the empty cells, it feels like sneaking through my childhood home while everyone else is asleep. I’m in nothing but my underwear, and so if I’m caught, I’ll have to pretend I was on my way to the bathroom or something. And while I highly doubt getting caught will be an issue, since it doesn’t seem likely any of the monks here would be fussing around the guesthouse during the precious hours of sleep between compline and vigils, it’s a possibility I still brace for as I pad down the hall to Elijah’s cell, walking on the balls of my feet in order to be as quiet as possible.
I might as well be creeping past Sean’s and Tyler’s rooms in order to get to the guest room; I might as well be cursing my own breathing for being too loud as I find the handle for his door and slowly turn it.
It’s unlocked.
The dim light from the hall spills into his room as I quietly open the door and slip inside. Elijah is on his back on the bed, one muscular leg drawn up and one arm flung over his face. He’s wearing nothing but his boxer briefs, and it’s warm enough that the sheet has been kicked down to where it tangles around his waist, revealing the etched expanse of his abdomen and chest.
He’s breathing too quickly to be asleep, or even close to asleep, but I still act like he is, as I close the door behind me and step into the room. And then I creep to the side of his bed, my own breath catching, like I really am a teenager sneaking into an older crush’s room. Like I really hadn’t been able to sleep knowing he was so close.
In the moonlight pouring in through the high window, I watch his chest contract and expand, I watch the faint lifts and lowers of his stomach. I let my eyes linger on his navel and on the narrow line of hair that leads down into the sheet.
We’ve played this game so many different ways—subtler ways, slower ways—but if we only have the next two weeks, I don’t want subtle or slow. I want everything, as dirty as we’ve ever made it. I want the memories to be worth the sins.
I silently get to my knees, and carefully, oh so carefully, lift the sheet that’s resting over his bottom half. Just a little. Just enough so I can see the unmistakable ridge of him in the shadows.
I sip in a long breath as I see it, my own body already swollen in response, my heart beating faster. God, how often my thoughts had turned to his body when I was that age, how much I wanted to see it. His thighs, his stomach. His dick. My thoughts and fantasies had never really gotten past theseeing—if I had seen him, I don’t know what I would have done. I didn’t even know enough to know what possibilities there were.
But I wonder what would have happened that time he came over when I was a college freshman, what would have happened if I’d crept into his room after he and Sean had taxied back from the bars and I’d satisfied my curiosity at last.
I lift the sheet even higher, wanting to see more of him, and that’s when I notice him looking at me from underneath his arm, eyes shining in the half-darkness.
“What are you doing, Aiden?” he murmurs.
I quickly drop the sheet, fake-searching for an excuse. “I, uh. I couldn’t sleep.”
Elijah gives a long stretch, the kind that makes his stomach and thighs flex and quiver, and then tucks his arm behind his head so he can look at me better.
“It’s hard to sleep when it’s so warm,” he says. “Isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” I whisper. “It is.”
