Page 46 of Audacity

I can’t see her smile, but I can certainly hear the pleased note in her voice. ‘I did not. How fitting.’

‘Fitting? Horribly ironic, more like.’

‘Maybe your God has sent me to tempt you. Did you ever think of that?’

‘If he has, then I’m screwed.’ I allow my lips to linger in the hollow below her cheekbone for a moment before turning to face the book. I don’t need it as a prompt, and if I did, its ornate calligraphy would fall well short of easy legibility.

At Terce, I tend to say a selection of lines from The Book of Psalms that I know by heart, lines that bring me comfort and strength. Only, as I recite them today, I feel every word as an admonition, as excruciating as if I were flogging myself as I recite them:

‘Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things.

Turn away the reproach that I dread.

Let my heart be blameless.’

When I set this time aside in an otherwise full calendar, when I turned the handle of this door, my intentions were pure. This was to be my moment, in a life sliding alarmingly towards total secularism, to check in with God. To ask for His grace. To connect with Him, really. And now, with my senses asfull of this naked temptress as my arms are, my prayers sound disingenuous to my own ears.

I want it all. I want to commune with God and His son and His Holy Spirit, and I want to bury myself deep inside Athena’s body, a body that feels extraordinarily sinful and yet has been created in God’s likeness.

It’s a body so beautiful that I could happily never come up for air.

I want spiritual raptureandbodily rapture, it seems.

What would happen if I tried for both? God won’t rain His wrath, His vengeance, down upon me. This ancient manuscript won’t combust into flames. He gave man Free Will for a reason.

‘Keep your hands like that,’ I murmur, sliding mine down over her wrists, her forearms. I move further south, splaying my fingertips over the whisper-soft skin of her stomach and enjoying far too much the way the muscles below it contract under my touch. With my other hand I stroke that silken nook running along the underside of her breast, and it seems to me that she braces for more.

I pinch her nipple. She whimpers, and it’s a rallying cry that has me rolling it, kneading her breast.

‘So we’re “elevating” my morning prayers, are we?’ I ask softly, and she hums her answer. ‘Let’s see.’ I let the hand on her stomach drag south, over the tidy strip of hair that covers her pelvic bone until my fingers find her wetness. ‘Dear me, you have been looking forward to this, haven’t you? Such a greedy girl that you couldn’t let me have my fifteen minutes with God first, hmm?’

‘I wanted to see you praying,’ she gasps out as my fingers work their way past her clit to her entrance.

‘That, sweetheart, is bullshit. You could have done that fully clothed from the perfectly good sofa over there. No, I think you wanted tofeelme praying, isn’t that right?’

I’m so hard now it’s ridiculous, and heryesis strangled as she grinds that delectable little arse against my cock and attempts to impale herself on my fingers.

I continue to recite my psalms as I oblige, jack-knifing a couple of fingers deep inside her body while my other hand tends to her breasts, pulling and plucking at her impossibly stiff little nipples.

‘Instruct me in your statutes, Lord, that I may follow them.’

She’s arching in my arms, trying to spread her legs and getting precisely nowhere because they’re caged in by mine.

‘Fuck me, Athena, you’re making it very difficult for me to concentrate,’ I growl before nipping at her jaw. It’s true. My soul has officially gone offline, and the only thing my chimp brain can focus on is how tight, how slippery, her cunt feels around my fingers.

I absolutely have to replace them with my cock. I pull my fingers out and get unsteadily to my feet before hauling her up and turning her to face me. She gazes up at me, eyes glazed and cheeks flushed, and it once again hits me how extraordinarily perfect she is. If I ever had any doubts that this little minx wanted more from me than just a hefty salary, those doubts are ether now, and it causes me to wonder just how much further I can push her.

How much furthershe wants me to push her.

‘If you want my cock, you’d better get a condom on me, quick,’ I tell her, my fingers flexing around her upper arms.

‘I want your cock,’ she snaps back, and then she’s biting her lip and wrestling my belt and zipper open with none of her characteristic finesse. When she has my erection exposed and free, she rips a foil packet. We both watch as she rolls the condom on, and it takes every remaining trace of discipline I have not to push her down to take it in her mouth.

‘Stand up on the kneeler,’ I command. ‘Bend over—brace your hands on either side of the display case. I need this fast and hard.’

Her face collapses a little at that last part, like it’s the best thing she’s ever heard. ‘God, yes, me too.’

I take a step back, my trousers and boxers around my ankles, so I can enjoy the visual feast that is Athena stepping up onto the kneeler, bare feet apart, before folding herself elegantly forward so her stomach rests on the smooth ledge of the cap rail and her palms hit the table just beyond it.

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