Page 52 of Saint
But then we’re in the middle of the clearing, and the trees are moving, and there’s a faint tinkling from the mossy well nearby, and he says, quietly, “I always think about them.”
I turn to face him head-on, and he’s closer than I thought. Close enough for me to see the small cleft in his chin under his stubble. Close enough for me to see the lighter threads of amber and dark gold in his eyes, for me to see how his pupils have blown wide in the shade of the ancient forest.
He is, simply, beautiful.
“Me too,” is my even quieter reply.
His lower lip gets pulled into his mouth ever so quickly, his teeth sinking into it for just a moment. “What do you—” He clears his throat. “If we were here then. Or if we were still...”
“Still...?”
“If we were still together,” he says quickly, “and we were here in these ruins, what kind of game do you think we’d play?”
My caged shaft gives an almighty kick as my pulse thunders through my veins. It’s like he’s just put his fingers in my mouth. Like he’s just sunk to his knees.
A single question from him, and I’m undone.
I swallow, my mind already swimming with every filthy thing I’ve ever dreamed of doing with him, with every fantasy I’ve had since making my vows.
“I—I can think of a game we’d play,” I say. My voice is rough and rushed, because if I don’t say it all at once, right now when he’s looking me like that, then I’ll remember all the reasons I shouldn’t say it, all the reasons I should stop this.
But it’s one thing to stop when you think you’re alone in wanting it, when you think you’re the only one with desire scorching up your thighs and searing the inside of your skin. It’s another thing entirely to stop when the man in front of you is sinking his teeth into his lip and also giving you that eyebrow. The eyebrow that says...well then?
“I would pretend to be a monk,” I say.
His voice is pure gravel when he asks, “Yeah?”
“Yeah,” I breathe. “And it would have been years and years since I’d been able to fuck. I’d be desperate.”
“How desperate?” he asks. His chest is heaving, but his arms and hands are still, like he can’t bear to make any movement that might break the spell.
But I’m beyond spells now, I think. I’m speaking prophecies and parables, whispering a game I’ve thought of so many times. “So desperate that I can’t take it anymore. Not after I see you. You’re so beautiful, and I think I could ask you...”
“Ask me what?” Elijah prompts.
“If I could kiss you. If you’d let me remember what it was like to be kissed. If you’d let me touch you and hold you and then make you come.”
Elijah’s whiskey eyes are almost all black now, a ring of amber around a circle of onyx. “And if you did ask me, and if I said yes, what would happen then?”
“Then I’d start at the end,” I say, trembling all over. “I’d start on my knees, needing to taste you. And then after you’d used me, I’d ask to be kissed. Kissed until the bells ring for prayer.”
Elijah takes a short step forward and then stops himself. He looks like he’s shivering too, like holding himself still takes all the willpower he has. We are both caught in the same web, strung together on the same silk.
What if...
I sink to my knees. Slowly, and with all the practice I’ve had doing it in a monastery for almost five years. I don’t let my eyes leave his—not when my knees touch the ground, not when he takes that final step forward. Because at any moment he’s going to turn away, step back, bring up Jamie and my vows and all the other reasons why we can’t play this game. Why we can never play a game together again.
But he doesn’t do any of those things. Instead, he reaches out his hand—slowly, slowly—and cradles my face, his fingers pushing through my hair and his palm pressed against my jaw.
I think he might speak; his lips part like he’s going to speak. And never have I felt such dread and such excitement coupled at once, pinned together on the same moment—
His lips press together, leaving whatever it was he had been about to say unsaid, and disappointment crashes through me.
Right until I see his other hand drop to the fly of his shorts.
His eyes still on my face, he unzips himself and then pops open the button of his fly. On the edge of my vision, I see him hook down the waistband of his boxer-briefs, I see him take hold of himself. He stares down at me, and with his thumb rubbing gently at my temple, he presses the head of his sex to my lips.
He’s already hard, and when I open my mouth and lap at him with my tongue, I taste the slick salt taste of pre-cum. He’s been hard for a while.
