Page 73 of Saint
“I’m not lonely now,” Elijah says, his voice low and graveled. “I suppose it must get lonely for you, though. Here. With only God for company.”
I put my hand down on the blanket, next to his, our fingertips brushing in a way that could be accidental.
“I have been lonely,” I admit, one of those things that’s true both inside the game and outside of it. “Although they say that God comes to us in the form of strangers.”
“Do they now?” Elijah replies. His hand shifts on the blanket the tiniest amount, and now our fingers are touching. “How strange. I was thinking that God must be using his faithful to speak to me while I’m here. That maybe God would come to me in the form of a monk.”
“Maybe we could be God for each other,” I say as I lean forward. “Just for a little while.”
His lips when they meet mine are warm and slightly sweet from the honey beer, and he holds still for me as I plunder his mouth, like it’s been years since we’ve kissed rather than hours. Like I really am a lonely monk looking for God in the body of a stranger.
He lets me push him down to the blanket, lets me pin him in place with my hands on his wrists while I hunt over his throat and jaw and face for places to kiss. While I browse for new sage-scented hollows and sweat-dampened nooks.
This was so much of our year together, I remember, as I lick a spot on his throat and he tenses beautifully underneath me. Him allowing me to crawl all over him and learn his body. Him teaching me, him letting me learn. Maybe it is a strange thing that a lover can be a teacher too—especially since I’d been thirty-one at the time and fairly certain I had nothing left to learn—but it had been exhilarating too. Sexy.
His legs fall open as I suck on his neck, and I insert myself easily between them, pinning his hips down to the blanket with my own. My uncaged erection surges as I press against him, as I findhiserection and grind down as we kiss.
“Yes,” I breathe. “That’s it, that’s it. God, it’s been so fucking long.”
“How long has it been?”
“Years and years,” I say, pressing my face into his neck and breathing him in. It doesn’t even feel like I’m pretending for the sake of the game; it might as well be the truth. “It feels like it’s been my entire life.”
I realize that I’m holding him to the blanket with most of my weight, and I make to readjust so that I’m not pinning him down like some kind of sex villain.
“Wait,” he says quickly, breathing fast. “Wait. You can—you don’t have to move.”
I look down at him, searching his face. When we’d been together, it had been easy to let him take charge, because he was older than me, and experienced, and I was generally easygoing and horny enough to go along with whatever meant I got to have sex.
Which isn’t to say that our games didn’t encompass all sorts of fantasies and power handoffs, but only that in a lot of ways, I’d defaulted to him, looked to his lead physically and emotionally. I’d been so scared of fucking things up with him, of fucking things up altogether, that I’d never asked myself if he’d wanted to hand off power more often—or more emphatically.
I turn this over in my mind for a second, and then ask, “You like how we are right now?”
“You mean do I like it when you’re Mean Daddy Monk?” he asks, and he sounds amused and horny at the same time, which is no small feat. “Yes, Aiden.”
Well. No complaints here. “Snap your fingers if it gets to be too much,” I tell him, leaning back down to kiss his neck. He nods as I give his collarbone a long, lingering suck.
“I will,” he says, and I’m already lost in our game, already letting my kisses turn less grateful and more selfish. I press my hips harder against him as I retake his mouth, and he responds almost immediately, arching up against me, panting.
“You’re so beautiful. It’s like you’re so beautiful for me, just for me,” I tell him, reaching between us to find the button of his shorts, the zipper underneath. I want to see him, feel him, I want all of him available to me, and I grunt with satisfaction once I find the thick heat of him inside his shorts. “No underwear,” I remark in a low voice, my fingertips exploring the taut, silky skin of his erection. “It’s almost like you came out here expecting this.”
“Maybe I did. Maybe I’ve seen you looking at me during prayers,” Elijah says, his hips straining against my touch. “Maybe I’ve hoped...”
I get to my knees and pull up my habit enough to bare myself to the air, using my left hand to stroke myself while I reach for the satchel and pull it closer. Condoms and a small bottle of lubricant are right at the very top.
“Looks like you did more than hope,” I say, tearing off a condom one-handed.
“God helps those who help themselves,” Elijah murmurs, his throat working.
“Or maybe he’s helping me right now. You know how long it’s been since I had a proper fuck?” I ask, my voice more growl than speech now. “And now you’re here, all stretched out for me with your cock out and your mouth looking so pretty. It’s enough to break a man.”
Elijah slowly shakes his head on the blanket. “Maybe I want to see you break.”
I tear open the condom packet. Once upon a time, I could do this one-handed in the dark while I steered my old Lexus through post-game stadium traffic, but I’m out of practice. It takes me a minute to see which way it’s rolled and then to get it properly pinched and ready. But Elijah doesn’t seem to mind; his stare is hooded and sultry as he watches me, and his hips move restlessly between my knees as I work the latex down my dusky erection in preparation for fucking him.
Soon I’m sheathed, the clear latex making my cock shiny in the sun, and I don’t even care that I must look ridiculous in my habit and scapular with my cock out, I don’t even care that a monk’s habit is the furthest thing from sexy, because I’m breaking, I’m already broken. If I wasn’t already in love with this man, if I hadn’t already fractured my vows, I would be reaching for the bottle in the satchel anyway. I would be growling at him to flip over for me.
With a noise that sounds helpless and surprised both, Elijah does, moving to his stomach while I’m still straddling him, and he places his head on his arms, his face down in the blanket.
