Priest (6 page)

But the trade-off for my self-respect was a cold bed and an over-used vibrator, and it was starting to wear thin. Not to mention all the things I just talked about—the husband and the kids and all that. I began to miss my old life. Not the monotony or the hypocrisy, but the guarantee at least. If I had stayed, I would’ve never been alone. I would have been married by now, possibly pregnant. And what if I’d made the wrong decision? What if I’d ruined my chances at a happy life, because let’s face it, what man is going to marry a stripper—no matter where she came from or who she is?

And that was when Sterling came to the club.

Sterling Haverford III. Yes, I know it’s a ridiculous name, but where we came from, it was par for the course (especially if your estate had its own golf course.)

I was doodling Mrs. Sterling Haverford in my flimsily locked diaries ever since I could remember. He was my first kiss, my first cigarette, my first orgasm. Of course, I know now that I wasn’t his first anything, and that even while he was dating me, he was fucking other girls. But at the time, I was convinced we were getting married. That he loved me.

I was convinced of it right up until my parents got the invitation to his wedding. To Penelope Fucking Middleton.

We’d been off and on, for sure, but I thought it was the distance and how dedicated I was to school and charity, and fuck, I’m crying now, I’m so sorry. I’m not even sad about it, I’m just
pissed
still, that I’d given so much time to this asshole, and then when I was feeling so low about everything, he had the nerve to show up at the club.

I assumed he was in town for a business meeting and that maybe a potential client had brought him to the club for a little extra wooing—not an uncommon scenario where I worked, especially when it came to the private rooms in the back. And of all the girls that could have been working that particular room that night, it was me.

It was fucking me.

I had on six-inch heels and a bright blue wig and he still knew me the moment I entered, just as I’d known from one glimpse of his profile that it was him.

“Jesus Christ,” he said, his words carrying like a poisonous melody over the throbbing music. “Is it really you?”

I stood in the door, having no idea what the fuck to do. I knew I could go find Mark, explain to him that I knew the client and couldn’t dance for him—Mark would understand. But even three years after he’d dumped me via wedding invitation to another girl, I still couldn’t force myself to walk away. Or stop listening when he started talking.

He said he couldn’t believe it—everyone had thought I’d absconded off to Europe or someplace exotic and all the while, I had been
here
. He gestured to me, to indicate the skimpy outfit I wore, to indicate all the things that came along with
here
, the dancing and the alleged disgrace, but I saw the moment he was done making his point, the moment his pupils dilated and he took in my nearly naked body.

He’d married Fucking Penelope but he was here and he was here for
me
, and fuck it all, I wanted that. That moment where he chose me over her. No matter how wrong it was.

“Come inside,” he said, and I did.

Will God forgive me for that? Because I could have left. Without any consequences. I could have found another girl and left the club without another moment spent with Sterling Haverford III. But deep down, I wanted to stay. Deep down, I wanted what I knew would happen if I stayed.

I closed the door behind me and crossed my arms, and then told him exactly how much of an asshole he was. To his credit, he didn’t deny it.

He asked me to come closer. It was a command, and Lord help me, I’ve always responded to commands. I walked over to him, and he ran a hand up my flank to where my skirt hung just below my ass. His wedding ring glinted in the low neon light of the room. His fucking wedding ring from his fucking marriage to Penelope Fucking Middleton.

I tried to pull back, but he reached up and grabbed my arm.

And then he said, “You know why I didn’t marry you, Poppy?” He was caressing the inside of my thigh now and I couldn’t help it, I took a tiny step to the side, just to widen my legs the smallest bit.

He smiled and went on. “It’s not because I didn’t want to be married to a Danforth. God knows that with your family and your money and your brains, on paper you would have been the perfect wife. But we both know better, don’t we, Poppy?”

His fingers finally found what they were looking for, my lace thong, and he curled his fingers around the fabric and ripped, the flimsy material tearing easily, granting him access to my cunt.

“Deep down,” he said, continuing his earlier train of thought, touching me, touching me so much now, “deep down, we both know that you’re a little slut. Yes, with a perfect background and a perfect education, but you were made for being a whore, Poppy, not a wife.”

I told him to fuck off, and then he said, “Do you think I just showed up here accidentally? I’ve been looking for you for three years. You’re mine or have you forgotten?”

How could I be his when he had a fucking wife? I asked him that.

And he responded that he didn’t give a shit about her—which is probably the truth. But he told me he married her because he needed someone proper, someone he wouldn’t worry about his clients wanting to fuck.

And then he said that wasn’t me. Said I screamed sex with my tits and my mouth, and not only did I always want it, but I always
looked
like I wanted it. And he couldn’t have that in the precious Haverford family portrait.

The worst thing was, I knew he wasn’t saying it like an insult. Those were just the facts. People like us weren’t supposed to be this way. We were supposed to be reserved and cold. Thin and bloodless. Sex was either a necessity or a calculated affair. And now Sterling wanted
me
to be his calculated affair. I had loved him and he wanted to keep me as his pet mistress, in a box that had no place for real love or a real future.

But while I was thinking all of this, he was unzipping himself, and he was so hard, so mouthwateringly hard, and I couldn’t help it—I knew he was married, I knew he was an asshole, but it had been so long, too long, and I had loved him once…

Are you judging me right now, Father Bell? Are you thinking about what a dumb bitch I am? I know you aren’t, you aren’t like Sterling and me. The words “dumb” and “bitch” have probably never even come out of your mouth in the same sentence. But I was thinking it then, just like I’m thinking it now. I was stupid. But I was also lonely and heartbroken and so fucking wet it was dripping down my thighs.

Then I let him fuck me. Because he was right, I
do
like it, I
do
always want it. And as he slammed into me over and over again, I told him to tell me the fantasy, this life he was offering me. And he did, goddamn him, and it all sounded so perfect coming from his lying businessman’s mouth. He told me about the lazy afternoons we’d spend together, the expensive restaurants he’d take me to, the orgasms he’d give me on top of smooth Egyptian cotton sheets. He told me about the flowers and jewelry and vacations in Bora Bora and expensive cars and everything else that would fill up our illicit life together, all while I ground myself on his cock, ground myself towards the best orgasm I’d had since college.

He was cursing by this point, folding me over the bench and driving into me from behind while he pressed my face against the leather and I felt the cold metal of his wedding ring against my hip. It was degrading and terrible and I came almost immediately.

And then I came again.

“And that’s my real sin,” Poppy finished. “That’s my real shame. I can’t sleep at night knowing that I let him—let myself—” She broke off and there was a moment of silence which I didn’t interrupt, both out of respect for her and also because I didn’t trust my voice. Her confession had been so raw—so fucking detailed—and I was filled with rage at this Sterling asshole and sorrow for her and also a fierce, unshakable jealousy that just weeks ago, he got to be inside her and he didn’t deserve it, not one bit.

But mostly I was so fucking hard I couldn’t think straight.

“I let myself come,” she said finally, in a quiet, sad voice. “He is a married man and he cheated on me for years and he wasn’t even
sorry
, but I still not only fucked him, but I came. I came twice. What does it matter that I made him leave right after it happened? What kind of girl still does that?”

I needed to say something, needed to help her, but fuck, it was so difficult to focus on anything other than the image of her face pressed into the seat as she gasped her way through multiple orgasms. I was going to hell for even thinking this, especially since I wanted to punch Sterling in the windpipe for acting on it, but it was almost unbearably sexy that those rough kinds of things got her off. Because they got me off too, and it had been so long since I’d had a woman whimpering under my touch…

You’re no better than him,
I castigated myself.
Fucking get it together. Feelings, focus on her feelings.
“How did it feel?”

“How did it feel? It felt amazing. Like he was claiming me from the inside out, and when he came inside of me, it felt like he was marking me as his property, and it was his climax that made me orgasm again. I can’t help it—a guy coming is the hottest fucking thing, especially when I can feel it inside of me…”

My head fell back against the wood of the booth with an audible
thud
. “I meant—” I said in a strangled voice “—how did it feel
emotionally
?”

“Oh,” and then the breathy little laugh, and then fuck it, I’d go to hell, because I couldn’t not rub myself now. I was so hard that I could feel every ridge and slope of myself through my pants. My other hand toyed with my zipper as I stroked, trying to keep my breathing silent. Could I unzip myself quietly enough that she wouldn’t hear? Could I jack myself right here in the booth without her knowing?

Because there was no way I could live without it at this point. Her words were carved into my mind, and they would be there forever.

“I guess it made me feel like Sterling was right. I am a whore, aren’t I? I had a debutante ball and my family was listed in the Social Register and I have dressage trophies—but that doesn’t change who I am on the inside. I think deep down, I always knew that Sterling didn’t really love me, but I was willing to accept sex in lieu of love because I wanted that just as much as I wanted the romance, and what woman thinks like that, Father? That I’d rather have sex without love than have no sex at all? So what do I do now? How do I carry the shame of all this while at the same time knowing it’s a fundamental part of who I am?”

Shame. Yes, I knew that feeling; I was feeling it right now, in fact. I forced my hands to my thighs, well away from my erection.
Concentrate
, I told myself.
And when you’re alone, you can take care of your…problem.

“God made us as sexual creatures, Poppy,” I said, wishing my words sounded more soothing than they did. With my choked voice and barely controlled breathing, they came out sounding like a dark threat. A dark, imminent threat.

“Then He made me too sexual,” she whispered. “Even now, I—”

But she stopped.

“Even now, what?” And I was using that voice again, and there was no mistaking the danger now.

I could hear her shifting in her seat. “I should go,” she said. I heard her reaching for her purse and then the door handle clicking open, but I was out of the booth and over to her side in an instant, standing there as her door swung open. I braced my hands on either side of the door (what in the actual fuck was I
doing
?) blocking her escape because I had to know, I had to know what she was going to say, and if I didn’t, I would go crazy.

She looked up at me looming over her, her hazel eyes growing wide. “Oh,” she breathed. We stared at each other for a moment.

It could have ended right there. It would have, even with her red lipstick and her bright eyes and her nipples in tight little points under the thin silk blouse she wore. Even with my wide shoulders blocking the door to the booth, even with the surge of power and satisfaction and lust that came from positioning my body against a woman’s in this primal, dominating way.

It would have, I swear.

But then she bit her lip, those slightly-too-big teeth digging into her full lower lip, all pure white digging into the sharpest, bloodiest red imaginable, and then she rubbed her thighs together, a tiny noise coming from somewhere in the back of her throat.

I stopped seeing a penitent.

I stopped seeing a child of God.

I stopped seeing a lost lamb in need of a shepherd.

I saw only a woman in need—ripe, delicious need.

I stepped back, drawing a deep breath, some valiant part of my conscience trying to flicker back online, and she took a tentative step out of the booth, her eyes still pinned to mine. I let her walk past me, but it wasn’t because I wanted her to leave or because I wanted this temptation to end. No, it was more like I was giving her one last chance to escape, and if she didn’t then Jesus help her, because I had to touch her, I had to taste her and it had to be right the fuck now.

She backed up a few paces until she bumped against the baby grand piano set below the choir platform. She still didn’t speak, but she didn’t have to, because I could read every tremble of hers, every breath, every goose bump. Her teeth still bit her bottom lip and
I
wanted to bite that lip, bite it so hard that she would squeal.

I advanced on her, and she watched every step of mine with a hunger that was beyond palpable, it was oppressive, it was ferocious.

“Turn around,” I ordered her, and fuck if she didn’t comply right away, turning and bracing her hands against the edge of the black wood. She was still rubbing her thighs together when I reached the piano and stood directly behind her. I ran my index finger from her hand to her shoulder, feeling every pebbled inch of skin on her arm. “Now what were you going to say in the booth?” I asked her in a low voice. “And remember that lying is a sin.”

She shivered. “I can’t say it. Not here. Not to you.”

My hand reached her shoulder. She’d worn her hair up in a loose twist, exposing the ivory nape of her neck, and I caressed it now, wanting to devour every shudder, every hitched breath. And then I placed the flat of my palm in the space between her shoulder blades and pushed her down against the piano, so that she was bent over, the side of her face pressed against the glossy wood. She was so petite that she had to stand on tiptoe, her leather ballet flats tugging free of her heels, her calf muscles bunching into tight balls.

She’d worn a high-waisted pencil skirt, and once she was bent over, the slit rose high enough to expose a narrow glimpse of pink flesh.

“Poppy,” I said dangerously, “did you come here without underwear?”

My hand was still on her back, my fingers resting against her neck, and she nodded.

“Was that on purpose?”

A pause. Then another nod.

The crack resounded through the sanctuary, and she jumped at the feeling of my hand smacking her ass. Then she moaned and pushed her ass up farther.

I didn’t spank her again, although Lord knows I wanted to. Instead I ran my hand from her shoulder to her hip, feeling the curve of her breast where it was pressed against the piano, the dip of her waist, the firm swell of her ass. And then I repeated the action with both hands this time, letting my hands drift down to the hem of her skirt. She drew in a breath, and then I abruptly yanked it up to her waist.

I knelt down behind her and spread her legs, spread them so that her cunt was gloriously bared to me. “My little lamb,” I whispered. “You are so very, very wet right now.”

She was, wetness slicking almost every part of her. Her pussy wasn’t just wet either—it was fucking
quivering
, pink and soft and quivering right in front of my face.

I grabbed her ass in my hands and dug my fingers in, leaning forward so that my breath tickled her sensitive flesh.

She whimpered.

“This is so wrong,” I said, moving my mouth even closer. I could smell her, and she smelled like heaven, like soap and skin and the delicate female scent that every man hungered for. “But just one taste,” I murmured, talking more to myself than to her now. “God wouldn’t punish me for just one taste.”

I traced my way from her clit to her cunt with my tongue and (forgive me, my God) but no communion wine, no salvation had ever tasted sweeter than this, and one taste would not be enough.

“Please,” I whispered against her skin, “just one more.” I flattened my tongue against her clit and sampled her again, my dick now so hard that it hurt.

She cried out against the wood of the piano, and I almost died, because those noises and
fuck me
that taste. I dove into her like a man possessed, my fingers burrowing into her ass cheeks to hold her open for my assault. I fucked her with my tongue and my lips and my teeth,
eating
her, eating her like a starving man. Her cunt was exactly as perfect as I’d imagined all those nights in my frozen showers, that time I’d shot off thinking about doing this very thing.

She
would
come, I decided right then. I would make her come on my face, and just the thought made my balls draw up and my dick jolt in my pants. It was a very real possibility that I myself might orgasm without even touching my cock.

I let one finger drift over to her pussy and then I slid it inside, crooking it down to find the soft, textured spot that would push her over the edge. She was shamelessly grinding back into my face now, her fingernails scratching against the piano wood, little sighs and moans issuing from her throat.

All I could breathe and taste was her, and then I looked up and saw the crucifix at the front of the church—a tragic, agonized god hanging in sacrifice—and my heart lurched. What the hell was I doing? Anybody could walk in right now, walk in the front door, and see their priest with a woman bent over the piano, kneeling as if he was praying to her cunt, kneeling with his face buried in her ass.

What would they think? After I had worked so hard to repair this town’s hurt, after I’d finally helped this community trust the Church again?

And more than that—what about my vow? A vow I had made before my family and God? What does an oath mean to me if only three years after swearing chastity, I’m shoving my tongue up a woman’s wet cunt?

But then Poppy came, her cry the most beautiful hymn I’ve heard in my life, and everything else vanished except her and her smell and her taste and the feeling of her clenching around my finger.

Reluctantly, I pulled back, wanting one more orgasm from her, wanting to bury my face in her ass again, but knowing I couldn’t, I shouldn’t, and then I stood and saw her looking over her shoulder like I was the most wondrous thing she’d ever seen.

“No one’s ever done that to me before,” she whispered.

Tongue-fucked her in a church? Bent her over a piano and licked her until she couldn’t stand anymore?

My eyebrows drew together, and she answered my unspoken question. “No one’s ever made me come with their mouth before, I mean,” she said. There was still a flush high on her cheeks, creeping down her neck.

I didn’t understand. “No guy has ever gone down on you?”

She shook her head and then closed her eyes. “That felt so good.”

I was shocked. How could she have never received oral?

“That’s a shame, little lamb,” I said, and I couldn’t stop myself, I pressed my covered erection into her ass. “No one’s taken care of you properly before.” I dropped a hand down and around to find her clit again, groaning inwardly when I found that it was still a swollen, hot button of need. “But I won’t lie. It makes me hard as fuck knowing that I was the first man to taste you.”

I heard the words as I said them and suddenly reality slammed back into me.

What the fuck was I doing? What the fuck had I done?

And why had I done it here, of all places?

I stepped back, breathing hard, no thought in my mind other than to get away, somewhere else, before I was laid low by guilt and regret.

Poppy spun around, her skirt still bunched around her waist, her eyes flashing. “Don’t you dare,” she said. “Don’t you dare check out on me now.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I…I can’t.”

“You can,” she said, stepping forward. She pressed a palm to my erection, and I looked down to see her unbuckling my belt.

“I can’t,” I repeated, still watching as she drew out my cock. The moment her fingers brushed over my bare skin, I wanted to die, because I hadn’t exaggerated how good that felt in my memories and my fantasies, no, I had not.