Page 80 of Sinner (Priest 2)
Strictly speaking, jerking off through a co
ndom is not something I’d normally enjoy, but it doesn’t matter now. With Zenny next to me, her perfect tits hanging forward as she leans in for a better view, and her lovely, fascinated face in profile with her button nose and long eyelashes, it doesn’t take much. I only need to pull on myself a handful of times before my erection swells inside the condom and starts pumping out my release.
It’s raw somehow, raw and almost unclean feeling—which is surprising given that it’s perhaps the cleanest sex act one can perform—but it’s something about how it traps my cock inside its own leavings, something about how much it puts my grunting, rough release on display.
It’s enough to make a man hard again.
Which is how we end up having sex a third time, this time tangled together on our sides, one of her legs over my hip and my arms tight around her. It’s slow and languorous and when she comes, it’s nearly silent: a caught breath and then the telltale contractions on my dick.
I jack off a final time—yes, into a condom once again, I really can’t refuse Zenny anything—and we clean up and crawl into bed like two tired children coming home from a theme park. Exhausted physically, exuberant mentally, sleep a fuzzy, earned embrace waiting for us the moment we close our eyes.
“Thank you,” Zenny murmurs, tucking herself into me. “It was everything I wanted. More than I could have wanted.”
“No, thank you, darling.”
And I almost don’t ask, because the night has ended so perfectly, so sweetly, but I have to. “Zenny, what happened with Northcutt today?”
She yawns, and I relax the tiniest bit because I don’t think she’d yawn if something terrible had happened. “He met with me and the Reverend Mother, tried to convince us to issue a follow-up statement to the news outlets that Valdman and Associates has been nothing but helpful, it was all a misunderstanding, yada yada. We said no.”
Relief rolls over me at the same time as delight. “You told him no? Just like that?”
“Well, the Reverend Mother did. And he started to be shitty and then she asked him to leave her office and he did. She’s very intimidating when she wants to be.”
I picture the scene, with stupid Northcutt fleeing the office with his tail between his legs, some old lady in a giant winged nun’s hat scolding him as he goes. It’s a very nice scene to imagine.
“So you’re okay? She’s okay? I was so fucking worried when I heard.”
“We’re okay,” Zenny says sleepily. “Believe it or not, we can take care of ourselves without Sean Bell coming in to save the day.” She pats my chest as if I’m a tamed bear who thinks he’s ferocious, but is only a harmless old lump instead.
“I know, I know…I just want you to be safe, is all. I—” wrong word, Sean! “—care about you.”
“Mmm. I care about you too. And I like that you care about me.”
She says it simply, dozily, and it’s the last thing she says before she falls into sex-exhausted sleep.
But me? I stay awake for a long time, my brain still spinning and reeling with this new thing, this new love. This new love that I can’t ever, ever keep.
***
The next week passes in a blur of sex and work. We find a rhythm that feels impossibly right—sex in the morning, then work for me and classes and rotations for her. In the evening she has her shelter shifts and I start going with, because I can’t stand to be apart from her (of course, I don’t just get to hover around her and steal kisses when no one’s looking; she puts me to work in the kitchen). And then we come home and fuck late into the night. Her curiosity knows no bounds, it makes her brave, and she tries the jeweled plug for the first time and loves it. We fuck in every position she wants to try, every position I can think of, we sneak a fuck in my office and one in the corner of an expensive restaurant. We snuggle and watch movies and I burn with this secret love for her and it chars me up inside, it sears me and cracks me. I can’t get enough of it.
I try to make her doubt in earnest.
It never works.
And it’s a stinging thing to note that even as I try my hardest, even as I throw every reason I ever hated God or despised the Church at her, I can’t crack her faith the way her love cracks me. I can’t carve away her connection with God the same way she’s carved a gap into my heart that she refuses to fill.
I can’t bear to tell her I love her. It feels manipulative somehow…and also I’m frightened. I don’t think I’ll survive it if I tell her and she dismisses it. Dismisses me. I can even imagine it, in my worst moments, the way her mouth will soften in pity and her eyes will shine from compassion.
Sean, I’m flattered, she’ll say, and she’ll do something mortifying, like pat my shoulder. But you know I don’t feel the same way. You know I never will.
God, the fucking irony of a sinner loving a nun. It’s agony. I’m dying. And as I’m both alight and aflame with loving her, these splashes of thought keep coming out of nowhere, like raindrops on a sunny day.
Raindrop number one: I’m jealous of Zenny’s relationship with God—not only jealous like a lover watching his beloved with someone else but jealous that she has it. Jealous that she’s mature enough to be angry about all the pain in the world and to accuse God of not doing enough, and then in the same breath, work to change that pain in His name.
Raindrop number two: Zenny reminds me of the things I loved about God. A sense of curiosity, a bravery, a turbulent emotion bundled close with the deepest peace. Things I felt about God once upon a time, and felt about myself.
Raindrop number three: if loving Zenny is even close to the way she loves God, I understand why she’s choosing this life.
