Vespers. He asked if she regretted it. She thought about it and said she didn't think she was. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
That was the first time she went to his confessional. She'd done something cruel to someone who loved her and she couldn't sleep. Usually, she'd have just gone to a bar, but it was seven in the morning and the church was the venue that was open, so she wandered into the box, just needing somewhere to put it all.
She hadn't expected his voice. Low and unhurried and caring in a way that made her say more than she'd planned. She told him what she'd done and he listened without interrupting and when she finished he sat with it for a long time before he asked the question. She gave him her honest answer and he said he appreciated it. He gave her penance and she left.
She went back the following Saturday. She just wanted to hear his voice again in that dark little box where he couldn't see her and she couldn't see him and the only thing between them was a lattice screen and whatever he believed was watching. She hadn't planned on saying anything real. But he asked her what brought her back and she heard herself telling him she'd been having thoughts about someone she couldn't have.
He was quiet. She could hear him breathing on the other side of the screen. He asked if she'd acted on them. She said no. He asked if she intended to. She said she didn't know yet.
He gave her penance. Three Hail Marys. His voice didn't waver.
She recited her prayers. Then she went home and thought about his breathing and the long pause before he answered. She put her hand between her legs and came harder than she had in months. Just to the silence of him deciding how to respond to her.
The third week she told him she'd been touching herself and thinking about a man of God. She said it plainly.
The pause was longer this time.
He asked if she understood the nature of what she was confessing. She said yes, Father. He asked if she understood that this was a serious matter. She said she wasn't bringing it up lightly. That it was the heaviest thing she was carrying. He spoke faster than usual, giving her penance. Five Our Fathers and an act of contrition.
He wanted her out of the box.
She came back every Saturday. She told him everything. She wanted the specific details of her desire to live inside his head all week the way his voice lived inside hers. She wanted him lying in his narrow bed in the rectory at night staring at the ceiling with her words playing back while his body responded to things his faith told him to refuse.
She was never vulgar. She just told the truth. That she thought about his hands when she touched herself. That she wondered what his lips on hers would feel like. That she'd started timing her visits so she could watch him walk from the rectory to the church in his cassock, and the sight of it made her ache in a way she couldn't pray away. She told him she'd tried praying, but it only made things worse because every time she knelt and closed her eyes she thought of him.
He stopped giving her penance. He'd just listen and then there was the silence, and it would stretch endlessly, and then he'd say something quiet like I will pray for you and she could hear in those five words how much trouble he was in.
It finally broke. She came in and knelt and said bless me, Father, for I have sinned, my last confession was one week ago. And then said nothing. She let the silence fill the box. She could hear him breathing. Waiting. She heard him stand up on his side of the confessional. She heard the door open. His footsteps coming around to her side. He opened the door and stood there looking down at her where she knelt.
He was tall. She knew that from watching him for so long. But this close, in the dim light, in his black cassock with the white collar, it was different. His face was drawn and pale and his eyes were dark and his hands were trembling at his sides.
He said you need to stop coming here.
She looked up at him from her knees.
He reached down and took her face in both hands. She could feel his fingers trembling against her jaw. He tilted her head back and looked at her the way you look at something you're about to lose everything for, making sure you'll remember why.
He kissed her slowly. His hands moved into her hair and the sound he made against her mouth was grief.
She stood and pressed her body against his and she could feel him hard beneath the cassock, rigid against her stomach, his whole body shuddering when she pressed into it. He pulled back and his eyes were ruined. Wet and wide and terrified. He said I won't and his hips pressed forward while he said it.
She reached down and gathered the fabric in her fists, pulling it up slowly. The black cloth rising to reveal his pale thighs, the muscles taut and trembling. He watched her hands and did nothing to stop them.
She took him in her hand. His forehead dropped against hers. She stroked him once and he moaned. It came from somewhere behind his faith, behind his vows, behind everything he'd built his life around. All of it was worth less than her hand on his cock. He said God forgive me and she said He's not here right now. Almost tenderly. Giving him permission to set something down that had been crushing him.
He fucked her in the confessional. On her knees, bent over the small wooden bench where she'd knelt to confess to him every Saturday for months. His cassock bunched around his waist. His hands gripping her hips hard enough to leave bruises that would last until she was back again next week.
Every thrust had twenty years of celibacy behind it and the desperation of a man who knows this is the thing that undoes everything. It was a ruthless pace, trying to get it over with, but also like he never wanted it to end. Driving into her hard while his breathing came apart into broken sobs that might have been prayers or might have been her name.
He pressed her face against the wood of the bench and she could smell the polish and the old incense embedded in the grain. She could feel his cock stretching her open in a place built for the forgiveness of sins and she clenched around him so hard he stumbled.
When he came he went completely silent. His whole body locked rigid as she felt him pour inside her, deep heavy throbs, and his hands gripped her hips and held her there while his body emptied itself into her. He stayed inside her for a long time afterward. His forehead pressed against her back. His breathing ragged and damp against her skin. She could feel him softening and his cum leaking out around his cock and dripping down her thighs.
When he pulled out and stepped back she turned and looked at him. His cassock was wrinkled and stained. His collar was crooked. His face was flushed and his eyes were somewhere far away, trying to understand what he'd just become.
She straightened his collar for him while he reconciled with himself. Gently, with both hands. His eyes were closed.
He was at the altar the very next day. Sunday. He performed the Eucharist with the same hands that had gripped her hips. He spoke the words of consecration in the same voice that had broken apart against her back. He held the host up to God with steady hands as she sat in the pew and stared at him. He did his very best not to stare back.
