Page 22 of Harvest of Sighs (Thornchapel 3)
I don’t take my eyes from his face. He looks so wholesome and handsome and holy, and even though I’ve carved out my own lush and forgiving version of Catholicism, I know that’s not everyone’s Catholicism. I know that Becket will face internal and external consequences for what he’s done because of me and Thornchapel, and I’m torn between trusting him and wanting to take care of him.
“I don’t want you to regret this,” I say. “Just because we’ve done things before—just because we were together for Beltane—doesn’t mean we have to do it again.”
“Are you telling me,” Becket asks with a crooked smile, “that it’s never too late to repent?”
I don’t answer him because I don’t really know what I’m trying to tell him. I think it’s presumptuous for one person to try to be another’s conscience; I also think being a good friend means you feel concern for their future as well as their present. I keep searching those flame-blue eyes, and finally say, “I want to be good for you.”
His smile fades into a sigh, but it’s a tender sigh rather than an impatient one. “I don’t believe you could be anything else. Do you love me?”
“Of course.”
“Do you love me like you love Auden? Or St. Sebastian?” Before I can answer, he’s shaking his head, eyes closing as if he’s ashamed. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked that.”
I chew on my lip. “Do you want me to?” I ask. “Love you like I love them?”
The priest drops his forehead to mine.
“Yes,” he admits, voice troubled. “I do.”
He sounds so miserable that I ache for him. I cradle his wonderful face in my hands and lift my lips to his, giving him all the love with my body that I can’t give with my heart. “Please don’t be in love with me,” I beg in between kisses. “Don’t hurt for me. Please.”
“It’s too late,” he whispers back. “But I’ll never ask you for what you can’t give. I just need you to know what these kisses are for me, because they’re not a sin. For me, they are a sacrament.”
And what can I say to that? What should I say to that? As much as I love knowing things, I wish I could unknow this, I wish I could unlearn that Father Becket Hess . . . loves me. Not in the way a friend loves a friend, not in the way an occasional paramour loves a lover, but love-loves. And I want to give him all the love he deserves, I want to love him back with every molecule of my being, but it won’t be what he wants from me, it won’t be the same.
He pulls up and studies my face. “I mean it, Proserpina,” he says gently, correctly interpreting my worry. “Just this—what it is, what you can give me—is something I cherish beyond measure. The last thing I want is for you to feel like I’m waiting for you to give me more or change how you feel.”
“Becket . . .”
“And I’m sorry I said anything at all,” he tells me, running a thumb along my lip and then trailing it down my jaw to my throat. “It’s ridiculous, wanting more when I already have so much. When I’ve already been so greedy . . . ”
His thumb moves farther down, his whole hand, and then he’s palming a breast as h
e gives me another sweet kiss.
I decide something then and there. “You can always say it,” I tell him, meaning it with everything I am. “You can always tell me and show me. You can always let me feel it.”
I find the hand not currently cupping my breast and guide it under my skirt. As per Auden’s earlier request, I’m wearing nothing underneath it, and so the moment I tilt away from his thigh, he encounters me bare and wet and hot.
“Proserpina,” he groans.
“Let me feel,” I tell him, letting go of his hand so that mine are free to slide through his hair. “Let me feel every bit of it.”
The next kiss he gives me is not so sweet. It’s ardent and harsh, and it feels like he’s unleashing weeks and months of longing into me. His lips mold over my own, his tongue strokes against mine. One hand squeezes at my breast as the hand under my skirt searches me relentlessly. From the firm bud at the top to the tightly pleated button in the back, Becket refuses to let any part of me go unexplored. Unprobed. And soon the same fingers I’m pressing against are charting the hidden well inside my folds, pushing inside and sending me to my toes.
“I was here,” Becket murmurs. “Just a couple nights ago, I was right here.”
I part my legs as much as I can while still standing, and he groans again, the hand on my breast now falling to his belt. It’s the work of seconds for him to have his belt undone and his pants opened, and then his hands are under my skirt again, shoving it up to my waist so that there’s nothing but cool library air brushing against me. But he doesn’t push his way inside me. Instead he kisses me again, gripping my thigh to hold it against his hip as he explores my mouth.
The emptiness against my cunt is excruciating.
“Please,” I beg. “Please, Becket—” and the rest is swallowed by another avid kiss—wet and hot and hard.
He breaks the kiss to suck at the pulse pounding in my throat, saying roughly against my neck, “It hurts, doesn’t it? It hurts to want something so much.”
I’m wild by now, trying to climb him, but he won’t help me, he won’t do anything to fix the need I have for him. I twine my arms around his neck; I bite his lips as much as I kiss them—and still he won’t relent.
Made brazen by the ache between my legs, I slide my hands down his chest until I find the hanging ends of his belt, and then I pull at the stiff fabric of his shirt until I feel bare skin. His lower belly is firm and flat, but not ostentatiously sculpted, and there’s a fine trail of hair leading down into his pants. I know without looking that it’s as golden as the hair on his head—I remember seeing flashes of it on Beltane night, made ruddy and copperlike by the flaring firelight, or made silver and pale whenever a wandering flashlight caught it in its beam.
