Page 359 of Bad for Me

I could help this woman plant some fucking trees without sporting a boner. And I couldcertainlybe her spiritual guide without wanting to bend her over and plow into her after the Sunday Mass–

Fuck, no, don’t think in that direction.

She rose from her position as the root ball of her tree fell into place, and shoved the dirt back into the hole around and on top of it. I watched her meticulously attach the staked ties to the tree trunk, one after the other, her hands wrapping easily around the diameter of it.

Hell, the tree was hardly as big around as my cock–

No. Stop.

Bad Judas.

“Hey there! Thought you might like some help,” I called out as she turned to spot me. Hopefully she recognized me out of my Sunday robes. Surely I didn’t look all that different, did I? “You were the only one signed up for this job, so I decided it was time to get my own hands dirty.”

And with that sentence, we got to work. She directed me to the bigger jobs, and I tackled them with the eagerness of youth, relishing the familiar feel of hard, physical labor. It took my mind off the urges I’d been wrestling with, but every time I looked up and spotted her across the way, struggling with her own sapling or bending over to affix anchors, the war raging inside me stoked right back up again. At this point, I was more angry than anything.

Angry with myself. With the world at large. With the church. With God.

We finished up with a bit of small talk, but the whole time, I could feel the tension radiating off her like physical waves. She oozed anxiety in spades, but there was literally no reason I could think of for her to be in such a state today.

I would have hoped everyone in my congregation trusted their priest.

Maybe she had anxiety around men–no, that couldn’t be it. I’d seen her interact with other men in the congregation with no such symptoms. But when she was speaking to me, it was like she was all too eager to have it end. Like she wanted to be anywhere but around me.

Like a scared rabbit trying to flee.

I mulled it over the whole way back to the church until I concluded she was just embarrassed about her confession. I hadn’t seen her in the box since that sputtered-out, cut-off confession, and it stood to reason she was avoiding it or perhaps still suffering from anxiety over the whole thing.

Perhaps she thought I’d try to convince her to reveal the name of this man she was having impure thoughts about. Or maybe she thought I was a prude, just like all those other stodgy, old men who stepped into the priesthood. Unlike a lot of them, though, I wasn’t so far removed from my sexually active youth that I had forgotten what it was to struggle with those feelings.

I was back at the church well before her, and after about a half hour of waiting around, I assumed she stopped somewhere to change, maybe even for a coffee. So I left a note on the tool shed door where I knew she’d be putting her shovel when she got here and headed inside to grab a shower.

I figured I had time. I could get in, get out, and be ready to approach her about the situation she confessed to.

I just wanted to offer her some guidance and perhaps help her through it with some of my own coping mechanisms. There were no ulterior motives whatsoever.

Not a one.

In the shower, I scrubbed away the dirt from today’s adventure, watching the brown remnants swirl around the drain, mingling with the suds I rinsed from my body with little interest. Just like my life, the dregs of the dirt clung to the edges, refusing to completely give up until I toed them into the hole with a satisfied grunt.

Stubborn. Just like the Irish in me.

My cock had tamed itself on the ride home, and as I stared down at it, disappointed that it had awakened after all this time, but regretful that I couldn’t do anything about it.

But you technically can,a voice somewhere deep inside me whispered temptingly.Who’s gonna know if you touch yourself?

The Vatican had a completely different view on self-mutilation than their American counterparts. While it wasn’t an ex-communicable offense, they frowned on this sort of thing. American priests, on the other hand, were encouraged to do what they must in the privacy of their own homes to ensure they didn’t stray from the righteous path.

With the knowledge that I was now an American burned into the front of my brain, I took myself in hand, closing my eyes to relish in the sensations I’d denied myself for so long.

Fuck, stroking my own cock felt like coming home after a long war.

I squeezed the shaft and groaned, conjuring the image of Scarlett in my mind as I’d seen her the very first time.

She’d been wearing a yellow sundress with a cute little frilly hem that blew around in the breeze that Sunday. I’d been talking to a visiting pastor from across town who’d stopped in to see how I was settling into Covenant Hollow, when she and the gaggle of ladies volunteering at the homeless shelter that weekend hustled by. Their perfume was cloying, heavy, and off-putting, but beneath the too-heavy floral scent was one more understated, but so much more appealing to my olfactory senses.

She smelled like vanilla and cinnamon on a hot summer day. Like sunshine and smiles, delicious innocence that made me salivate. And when she spun around to face the crowd at the sound of her name, I caught a glimpse of the most beautiful eyes I’d ever looked into. Freckles dotted the bridge of her nose; long lashes fanned over her cheeks as she batted those big beautiful things at a nearby older woman, and her smile–fuck, it could melt the coldest of hearts.

I felt drawn to her, enchanted. But there was something beneath that exterior, I could feel it. I knew there was more to the woman before me than met the eye, and I wanted to peel back her layers of goodness and find the secret creature within.

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