Page 56 of Priest (Priest 1)
Her words tugged at that ribbon, jerking against my heart, and I pressed my eyes closed. I could so easily fuck her like that, because I did want her to be mine—forever. We’d only known each other six weeks, and I wanted her for the rest of my life.
I was such a fool.
I pulled her closer, stabbing into her narrow opening over and over again, watching her crest and peak as she continued to beg me to make her mine, and how could she not see that she already was? That I was already hers? We belonged to each other, and as I watched her cunt pulse with her orgasm, as I sank up to the hilt and shot my load inside of her, I realized that there was no undoing that, no untangling what had become so tangled over the past month and a half.
As we both came down, we stared at each other, and whatever solace I had managed to eke out vanished in an instant. I got up to get a warm washcloth, and when I came back, Poppy was watching me thoughtfully.
“Tyler.”
“Yes?” I sat on the bed and started cleaning her.
“I don’t know how long I can do this.”
I froze. “What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean,” she said, and there was a quaver in her words. “I want to be with you. I want to claim you. I’m in love with you, Tyler, and the fact that there’s no future for us is killing me.”
I finished cleaning her as I thought of a reply, tossing the used towel onto a nearby chair. “I don’t know what the future looks like,” I finally said. “I know that I love you…but I also love my job and my life. Poppy, what I have here…it’s more than just charity or prayer. It’s a way of life. I get to live my entire life for my god, every minute of every day, and I don’t know if I can live without that.”
We both avoided the fact that these past few minutes had hardly been lived for God, that they’d been for us and us alone.
“Don’t you think I know that?” she said, sitting up. She didn’t bother to cover herself with the sheet, and I forced myself to look away from those perky tits so I could focus on what she was saying. “It’s all I think about. I can’t make you give this up—I can see that you love it. Hell, it’s what I love about you. That you are passionate and giving and spiritual, that you’ve devoted your life to God. But then I worry—” and there were real tears now “—that you’re going to give me up instead.”
“No,” I whispered. “Don’t do that to yourself.”
But I didn’t tell her what she wanted to hear. I didn’t know if I would give her up or not, because while it would kill me, being discovered and losing everything I’d fought for would kill me too.
I could see the moment she realized it, that I wasn’t going to tell her that we would stay together, and before I could say something else—I don’t know what, but something—she laid back down, turning on her side so that her back was to me.
“I want you so badly that I can taste blood when I think about it. But I won’t be the reason you lose your life,” she said, her voice reverberating like a bell in my mind. “I won’t be the reason for any regret. I don’t think I could bear it…looking at you and wondering if there was a part of you that hated me just a little bit for being the reason you laicized.”
She even knew the right word for it…she’d done her research. That heartened me at the same time it saddened me.
“I could never hate you.”
“Really? Even if I made you choose between me and your god?”
Fuck, that was stark. “That’s not all there is, Poppy. Don’t do that.”
She took a breath, the kind of breath that usually presaged a sharp retort, but then she seemed to freeze. Instead she said, “You should go home. It’s getting close to morning.”
Her tight voice killed me. I wanted to comfort her, hug her, fuck her. Why did we have to talk about these awful things when we could keep pretending? “Poppy…”
“I’ll see you later, Tyler.”
Her tone was as definitive as any safeword. I was dismissed.
I walked across the foggy park, hands in my pockets and shoulders hunched against the September-night chill, trying to pray but only finding snippets of thoughts to send up instead.
She wants a full life, I told God silently. She wanted a life with marriage and kids, a life where love could be just as present as work and family and friends, a life where she didn’t have to hide. And who could blame her?
What am I supposed to do?
God didn’t answer. Probably because I’d broken my sacred vow to serve Him, desecrated His church in all manner of ways, and repeatedly committed a litany of sins that I barely regretted because I was so infatuated. I’d made an idol out of Poppy Danforth, and now I would reap the consequences of finding myself isolated from God.
Repent. I have to repent.
But not seeing Poppy any more…even the mere idea tore a hole right through my chest.
