Page 37 of Saint
As it is, my cell is the only one that borders his, and so I’m the only one who gets to hear this. I’m the only one who gets to hear Elijah Iverson make himself come.
I stroke my fingers along the base of my cage as I listen, wondering why Elijah needs to jerk off. Did Jamie get him all hot and bothered, and then leave him hanging? Did they mutually agree to be grown-ups and not fuck around in the parking lot of a Catholic monastery? Ordidthey fuck around in the back seat of his Jeep, and it was so hot that Elijah can’t even sleep afterward without getting off again?
Another soft groan, and I press my forehead against our shared wall, caressing myself shamelessly now. My cock strains against the bars of the cage, and my balls are trying desperately to draw up tight to my body, and I’d forgotten howfucking goodit feels to touch myself. Even with the cage making everything tight and just a little bit miserable, it still feels so powerfully good. To stroke and fondle and squeeze.
I haven’t done this in nearly five years. I’ve been tempted—sorely tempted—often, but I’ve never broken down and done it. Until tonight. Until I had to listen to the quiet stroke of Elijah’s fist on his cock. Until I heard his choked-off noises of pleasure.
I want to get the key to the cage, which hangs from the post of my bed when I’m not wearing it around my neck. I want to unlock myself and wrap my entire fist around my cock. I want an orgasm like I used to have—full and uncaged.
But I don’t move to get the key. If I stop, then that will be long enough for the doubt to creep in, for myconscienceto creep in.
Monks aren’t supposed to beat themselves off. Period.
And while only I would know...Iwould still know. I would know that I was weak, that I caved to a gratification that helps no one else, that doesn’t even help me. The point of celibacy is to sublimate sexual energy altogether, to transform ourselves, and if we feed our lusts by masturbating every time we feel like it, then that transformation is incomplete. I don’t want an incomplete transformation; I came here to be changed utterly and entirely.
But...but I’ve been so good. I’ve been so good for so long, and surely no one else could resist this right now, no one else could resist the sound of Elijah fucking his own hand and grunting softly and—
It’s been so long since I’ve come while awake that I’m almost surprised by it. My stomach tenses; my thighs lock, and then a grunt escapes me as the orgasm crests and then breaks, ruined by metal banding my flesh. My cock tries to surge against the cage and can’t, and ejaculate leaks out in slow, dripping pulses, and it’s nowhere near as good as an unlocked orgasm because I’m still so desperately aroused after.
I almost feel worse than before. Hornier. Achier.
I stand there with my dick dripping, my muscles shaking, my chest tight. From the other side of the wall, I hear the sharp intake of breath which I’ll recognize until my dying day. Elijah has just come too.
Into his fist? Onto his belly?
I close my eyes and imagine it for one minute. One minute before the shame and the guilt creep in, one minute before I have to clean myself up and pray and make plans to confess.
One minute where I can pretend that the only thing which separates us is the humid night air, and that we have the rest of the night for sin.
22
from the notebook of Elijah Iverson
The incessant quietand the nonstop introspection are having an undesired effect on me. I am becoming self-aware. I am beginning to realize that I’m not only here for the beer and the anti-capitalism.
I keep thinking about that key around his neck. About what might be around his dick.
I can’t stop. I can’t stop.
I don’t want to stop
Here’s a thing that I don’t think anyone knows but me: I have been painfully aware of Aiden Bell since he was eighteen. It crept up over time, I think, little moments of realizing he was getting tall, that he needed to shave, that his voice had deepened, but those things were fragments of observations, swimming in a sea of memories of him as he had been, which had been indelibly Sean’s little brother. There had been moments—brief ones—when I caught him looking at me, when he trailed around behind us, moments that maybe any other older brother’s best friend would’ve ascribed to an adolescent crush.
But there was no keeping Aiden Bell away from girls—from the time he was old enough to flash his dimples even—and so I thought I must be imagining it. I felt relieved at the time, grateful there wouldn’t be any awkward fallout from having to gently shut down this newly-not-a-baby.
Five years. Five years between us, and I was in college by that point anyway, making up for lost Catholic time by having as much energetic sex as I could.
But here’s the thing about five years: the numbers stay the same, but the equation changes. And when I went over to the Bells’ one night and saw Aiden out by the pool, I realized that the equation had changed somehow, without me knowing it. Because in the year since I’d seen him, since I’d graduated college and he was about to start, he’d changed enough that five years felt like barely any years at all.
I remember I couldn’t stop watching him through the glass patio door while Sean dithered about what shirt to wear and kept squirting more gel into his hair. I couldn’t stop watching Aiden’s body, his face, his constant motion, jumping, diving, swimming. Hauling himself out of the water with newly spread shoulders and a leanly muscled back.
He was swimming in boxers instead of swim trunks, and they clung everywhere—to the curve of his ass, to the swell of his thighs, to his dick—and the waistband dragged down enough that I could see where the dark line of hair running down his stomach met the hair above his cock.
Water ran over the new muscles in his arms and dropped off a carved jaw. It streaked down the cords of his throat, it stuck his dark hair to his forehead and his neck. It gathered in his flat navel before spilling out.
And the way hemoved.All of his body, all of his strength, wholly bent on whatever he did. Diving, flipping, not doing it to show off because there was no one to show off to, because he didn’t know I was watching. He was doing it for himself. For the sheer joy and thrill of it.
I left the Bells’ that night with a secret. A secret with a name.Aiden.
