Page 50 of Feast of Sparks (Thornchapel 2)
I feel a rush of tenderness at that. Guilt too. And proprietary delight. And lust. I feel everything, including doubt, but the doubt isn’t enough to stop me from turning and reaching for him.
“You ministered to me,” I say. “Let me lay hands on you.”
Something in him seems to snap. “Fuck,” he mutters, shoving a hand between us to find his belt. Delighted, I move to the side of him, my eager fingers already on the placket of his trousers before he can finish undoing himself. And then he hooks down the waistband of his underwear—as black as his priest’s clothes, as tight as the boxer things Auden wears—and frees his erection. His long, thick erection, with its arrow-straight shaft and dusky-red tip and tight coils of blond curls at the base.
He gives it a long stroke from root
to tip, a hard pull that sends color to his cheeks and a fresh moan to his lips. “Come here,” he says, yanking me close and kissing me once again while his other hand furiously works his cock. “Down on your knees. I need you to suck.”
I get down on my knees. And I suck.
I give him kisses along his shaft at first, though, I slide a hand underneath to cradle the delicate heft of his testicles, I lick at his tip, at the clear pre-cum beading there. And then I part my lips, and for the first time in my life, take a man’s body into my mouth.
His answering hiss is heaven; the low grunt after that hell, because I can’t see the undoubtedly delicious face he makes along with it.
I slide back down on him, relishing the velvety skin against my tongue, marveling at the way it moves around the steel core of him when I wrap my hand around his base. I think I could live off the noises he’s making alone—choked off little breaths and grunts that no scholar should ever make, no philosopher should be able to form. I’ve unwound him, the best of us, the holiest and the kindest, and I’ve stripped away his vows until he’s nothing but a man fucking my mouth in the very church he’s supposed to keep sacred.
He’s not meditative in his pleasure—he’s vivid and zealous. He rolls so that his cock shoves farther down my throat, and he’s making these beautiful noises that remind me of how rich and clear his voice is when he sings during Mass.
“I want to see your face, pretty saint,” he says, pulling my hair up and to the side so he can watch my lips move over his length. “Wicked, pretty saint.”
I’m breathless by this point, my eyes watering from my enthusiastic attempts to draw him deeper into my mouth, but I still manage to smile around him, smile because I’m happy, because there’s more than sadness and anger in the world and it’s in the warm bodies and hearts of the people I love.
“Poe,” Becket warns. “I’m going to—it’s going to—”
As much as I would love to see him climax all over his neat black shirt, to watch him pulse and spend all over himself like the filthy man he is, I also can’t resist the urge to swallow him down, to taste the evidence of what we’ve done together here in the nave of the church, to take him like communion as he took me.
“Sweet Poe,” he whispers, and then he tenses a final time, swells in my mouth and throbs his release. His hands in my hair hold me close, but I’m not pinned to him or forced—not as I fantasize Auden would hold me on his cock—and when I have trouble keeping up with his orgasm, he eases me back before I even realize I need to breathe. Even in his throes, he’s still tending to me.
His last few pulses are spilling out of the corner of my mouth, a warm trickle that feels like blood, and before I can stand, Becket uses his knuckle to wipe his cum away from my mouth. “You’re a miracle,” he says. He says it with awe, he says it like he’s about to write to the Vatican and let them know that he’s found a miracle right here in Devon and it’s my mouth.
I flush, just as happy as he is. I wondered while I was going down on him if he’d feel any regret, if he’d ejaculate and then horror and self-loathing would rush in to fill the void that his pleasure left behind—but not at all. He’s actually smiling a little as we do the awkward and ungraceful business of tucking and buttoning and rebuckling.
When we’re finished, he takes my hand and rubs his thumb along my knuckles. “Will this change anything between us?” he asks.
I don’t know the answer to that. “Do you want it to?”
“Yes.” He turns me so that I’m facing him, and once again, I’m struck with how classically handsome he is, this blue-eyed priest with equal parts philosophy and charm. A girl could fall in love with Father Becket Hess very easily.
Very easily indeed.
Becket cradles the side of my face in his hand, his thumb rubbing the faint concavity of my temple as he does, the motion both strangely erotic and vaguely sacramental, as if he’s marking me for a blessing. “Yes,” he says again. “I want it to change something at least.”
He drops his mouth to mine and gives me a slow, searching kiss, his lips warm, his hand holding my head to his as he explores my mouth. As he tastes me like it’s the last time he might ever have the chance.
Could I love him? I wonder. Do I already? Is there a limit to the people you can love? The people you can share your body with at one time? Is love like planets and stars, everything whirling so fiercely through space that the lesser, cooler loves spin out toward the edges while you keep the vast and fiery ones close?
Can I be in love with all five of the people here at Thornchapel and not be yanked apart by the inevitable gravity of it all?
And is that what happened to my mother all those years ago?
Chapter 16
Proserpina
Present Day
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