Page 106 of Broken

When the final confessor has faded onto the bitterly cold streets, leaving us alone in the church, Savio doesn’t exit the booth.

Instinct has me shuffling to my feet.

Slipping into the other side of the confessional, I take a seat. “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.” His only response is a sharp breath. “It’s been…” I grimace. “…a very long time since my last confession.”

“Tell me your sins, child, so that we can purge your soul of them,” he rumbles.

“What if I don’t repent them all, Father?”

“You must come to me with an open heart.”

“My heartisopen. Well, it was. It closed yesterday. The man I love claimed me as his own. Can that be a sin? Can love ever be that?”

“Andrea—”

I ignore his interruption. “—I don’t think it can, Father. I think love is exactly what God wantsfromus andforus. I don’t repent falling for a man of the cloth, not when that cloth is strangling him. Not when his house on earth ignores my soul mate’s struggles and shunts him from parish to parish, abandoning him within the alleged bosom of their office.”

“It was my choice,mon ange,” he says thickly.

Mon ange.

The link between us arcs through the grooves in the booth and, without another word, I stand, pushing the curtain away. A glance around the church confirms we’re still alone, so I step from my side and enter his.

“Andrea, what are you?—”

“Worshipping the man I love,” is my answer.

The close-quarters scent of him. Soap. That intangible musk I want to bathe in. The detergent he uses. But with so little space, it’s normal that the temperature increases.

Right at the beginning of our journey, I came across a couple in a confessional…

I hit the fire alarm in my teenage outrage.

How naive I was.

I drop to my knees once the door clicks to a close.

His nostrils flare. “Andrea?”

Settling my hands onto his thighs, I slide them higher, feeling the heat of him beneath me, the tension of his muscles that flinch with every stroke of my palms as I gradually shift toward his groin.

He doesn’t stop me.

Nor does he when I shuffle between the thighs he parts to allow me more access to him.

My heart’s pounding and the arousal I feelisa sin beneath this roof, but love is love is love and I refuse to allow Savio to suffocate within these confines where depraved truths are purged onto him, the weight of which he bears for all to see. I need to shift his focus from the horrors of his past to the hope the future brings with it.

Wishing to liberate him, I find his fly. The sound of the zipper lowering is unsurprisingly loud in the haunting silence of the church, but not so much as his gasp when I delve between the folds and tug his cock free of his boxer briefs and pants.

Tension locks him in place. Every joint frozen but his gaze on me glitters in the dim light. His breathing is harsh. Sweat beads on his upper lip.

Eye contact held, I lower my head.

I expose the tip and swipe my tongue over it. A harsh exhalation noisily escapes him, but it’s sucked back in with an immediate:

“Forgive me, Father, for I am sinning in Your house.”

He repeats the litany like the plea it is as I twirl my tongue around his shaft, sampling for the first time his musky flavor,drenching him in saliva before I slip him between my lips and suck him.

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