Page 49 of Feast of Sparks (Thornchapel 2)
He touches me. With utter certainty and knowledge, he touches me. He slides a large hand in front to stroke along the undercurve of my breast, to trace maddening circles around my nipple.
Everything is tightening between my legs now, gathering into a knot of heat and want. “Becket,” I whisper. I’m about to say we shouldn’t, but that’s not really the truth. “Maybe you shouldn’t.”
“I think I left the rules behind the night we played Spin the Bottle,” he says, his lips light and warm on the nape of my neck.
We all did, in a way, we all left behind what normal friends did, what normal friends knew about each other’s bodies and mouths. But still . . .
“You didn’t fuck anyone on Imbolc,” I tell him. “I think you’re still—well you’ve only watched and kissed, and maybe that means you’re still . . .” God, I’m no good at this, and especially not with him fondling me. “I don’t want you to compromise your vows for me.”
The hand on my breast—big, so big, with a wide palm and fingers long enough to easily hold a communion chalice aloft—flexes. Squeezes again. My nipple hardens through my thin sweater to press against his touch.
“This is holy,” he says, in a low voice that rolls through every secret place I have. “And isn’t that the point? Holiness?”
I twist so I can look back at him. At his strong jaw and patrician nose and full lips. “Doesn’t holiness require rules? Denial?” But my voice is faint, my words weak. I don’t want to fight him on this. I’m keening for release, starving for it, and it’s so hard to think with that hand on me, on a place that needs so very badly to be touched.
“I used to think so,” he says, looking down at me. His eyes are so blue, a deep sapphire hue like the searing navel of a flame. “I used to think the harsher the rules, the greater the reward. I used to think the answer was smothering the fires that burned inside me, because surely I would be consumed? Surely if I let them burn, there’d be nothing left of me? But after Imbolc night, I knew the answer.”
“What’s the answer?” My breath hitches at the end of answer; Becket’s hand is moving from the curve of my breast to the softness of my belly. And then lower—his fingers find the hem of my sweater and start idling underneath, stroking along the skin above my jeans, popping open their button with a practiced movement.
“The answer,” the priest says, his lips warm against my ear, his fingers sliding under the zipper and into my panties, “is that we are born to burn.”
“Oh.”
His fingertips play over my curls—exploring me, learning me. And then before I can do something truly embarrassing, like whimper for more, a fingertip finds the plump bud of my clit and presses down.
I arch against him, barely able to breathe. After two weeks of only my own hand, this is too much, this is tumbling right off the cliff into lust.
“Is this okay?” Becket asks. He now sounds like any good priest should—concerned, gentle. Except he’s also working two fingers deep into my pussy as he asks. Not like a good priest.
“Yes,” I manage, trying to ride his hand.
“And it’s okay given where you are with Auden and Saint?”
Auden and Saint. Delphine and Rebecca. A month ago, I was a virgin. And now I’m about to have a fifth lover. It would almost be funny if I didn’t ache for it so much.
“We agreed,” I pant. “We agreed it wasn’t cheating.” Although the thought of Auden or Saint doing this with Becket is enough to make jealousy smolder in my belly, and how did my life end up like this? One poly relationship nestled inside a bigger one? I would say I don’t know how to feel about it, except Becket’s doing things to my cunt that make all thoughts vanish, so maybe it doesn’t matter.
Maybe it was always supposed to be like this.
“Good,” Becket says, his priest voice gone. Now he’s all rough, licentious man. “And surely no one would object to me ministering to you. Tending to my flock. You came to me in need and now I’m comforting you. Isn’t that right, sweet little saint?” He pulls out and presses against my clit again. “Hmm?”
“Yes,” I say, my eyes sliding closed. “Yes.”
He keeps fingering me like this—me with my hands braced on the wall and him with his hand in my jeans—and when he dips his fingers lower to play with my wet hole, to curl his touch inside me—I know I’m going to come right here in his church, right here next to the candles, with a bored dog laying on the floor and an unlocked door that means someone could walk in and see us at any minute. See their priest in his collar and everything, masturbating a woman’s pussy in view of the tabernacle.
“Becket.” His name is a prayer, a breathless invocation, and it invokes something in him, something urgent and fierce and full of yearning. He uses his other hand to turn my face back, and he presses his holy mouth to mine. He kisses me fervently, reverently, seeking out my taste, my breath, my barely uttered cries as his hand moves between my legs. And then with blessed relief, my cunt contracts around him as my back bows and my thighs squeeze tight and my fingers scrabble uselessly at the stones in front of me, as if that’s going to hold my body to the earth while every part of it is trying to fly apart.
“Sweet saint,” Becket whispers against my mouth. “Sweet, wicked saint.”
I gasp against him, the flutters still pulling tight in my womb, my entire world a clutch of relief and warmth and incense. “You make me,” I breathe in between kisses. “You make me wicked.”
“Then I suppose I shall also have to absolve you,” he murmurs, and he pulls his hand free as my body finally stills, bringing his fingers up to his mouth to suck on them, keeping his gaze locked with mine as he does. As he cleans his fingers as solemnly as he would take communion.
“You,” I say. “Your turn.”
A flicker of doubt plays over his face. “That was the first—I mean, that’s the first time since . . .”
He doesn’t have to finish. The first time since he took his vows.
