Page 44 of Of Angels & Absolution

“It’s your choice,” the priest says, his eyes kind behind his glasses. “I am here to guide you. Listen to God, my children. What is He telling you?”

Saint looks from me to the father, and back to me where I wait on my knees, desperate to obey.

“Take off your panties,” he says flatly.

I gulp, my eyes widening, then look to Father Salvatore. He nods once, and relief pours into me. He will tell me what’sright, so I don’t have to guess anymore, don’t have to be punished for years for something I didn’t know was wrong.

I drag my dress from under my knees, lifting it while both men stand watching. I am anchored firmly in my body, unusually present, as if my mind has completely disengaged, leaving my body raw and exposed. My heart is hammering erratically, and a pulsing need is throbbing through me, and every cell in body sizzles with electricity. I can feel the fabric of my skirt dragging against my skin as if the sensation is magnified, can feel the cold air hit my wet, hot flesh when it reaches my cotton panties. I slide a hand under my skirt and draw them down my thighs, lifting one knee and then the other before tugging them over my feet.

“Give them to me,” Saint orders, and I obey as I would obey the priest.

Saint balls the fabric in his fist, then presses it to his nose. His eyes drop closed, and he inhales slowly, dragging in the breath as if it’s painful. I know it is. Breaking that barrier, turning away from the path you’ve always known so that you can follow the righteous path that this father lays out, trusting him to lead the way, is both a relief and a ripping away of all we knew before.

A total surrender.

Saint unzips and shoves his hand into his pants. His forearm flexes as he pumps up and down, up and down. The hunger inside me twists, urgent, seething. I want to see what he’s doing the way he saw me, but I can only see the extensive length that his arm moves with each pull.

It must be long.

My core trembles with fear and excitement at the thought of seeing him for the first time. Will he be pierced like Heath?

Father slides his thumb along my plump lower lip, and I part for him in a gasp of pleasure as sensation rolls over mybody, nestling between my flushed thighs. I can feel slickness beading my skin like dew, the full ache of the place he had me strip bare. It feels like something too big to be contained, a tsunami of churning, burning need that can only be filled by them.

“Open for your brother, my lamb,” Father says, sliding his thumb between my lips.

My eyes meet his, and I see the heat shimmering there like a mirage. My lips close around his thumb, and I suck gently. His eyes blaze, and he slides it deep before drawing it slowly from between my lips. He rolls my lower lip down, his gaze rapturous. When his thumb is almost fully withdrawn, he hooks it over my bottom teeth, urging my mouth open.

I obey wordlessly, breathlessly, my tongue searching for a taste of him on the air.

“Bless her for her obedience,” he commands Saint.

Saint steps forward, and at last, he draws himself free. His cock is thick and smooth, his fingers barely able to close around the girth, with a bell-shaped tip that he drags his hand up and over.

“Receive this communion,” Father says in the same low, worshipful tone he uses when he breaks bread.

I wait, open as I do each Sunday for the sacrament. Saint grips his thick, hard shaft and brings it to my lips. I fight the urge to open wider, to lean in and take him in. Instead, I timidly reach my tongue out barely past my lips, just enough to lick the glistening pearl collected in the tiny slit on his tip.

Saint groans, grabbing my hair in his fist to jerk my head back as his hips jerk forward, as if involuntarily. Thick, warm liquid spurts over my face. I open wider, welcoming the benediction in his sacred essence. He curses under his breath, the next ropes of salty slime shooting onto the roof of my mouth. Another jet erupts, coating my tongue, spreading over it andpooling in the back of my throat. I fight not to gag, my throat closing up, so it doesn’t slide down.

“Very good,” Father says, leaning in to see into my mouth, where the cream is pooled while the rest of it drips is gooey blobs from my chin. Saint’s fingers are still buried in my hair, his member hovering just above my lips. He rubs his thumb over the crown, milking out another drop. It falls onto my lower lip, sliding off the bottom and slowly trickling down my chin. Both men stare down at it, captivated, their eyes dark and unreadable past the blazing of fire I can see in both sets.

“Swallow your brother’s blessing,” Father Salvatore orders, that sinful depth of his voice making my thighs quiver as I obey.

Both men stand over me and watch with rapt focus as the warm, salty puddle in my mouth goes down my throat. I shiver again, the pulsing between my thighs coming quicker at the thought of what we just did. That same stuff that Heath wasted on my belly is now inside it, but it belongs to my brother, not his friend. I have my brother inside me, not in the way I fantasized, but in a deeper, more intimate way.

The secret sits warm as the hot coal of his seed nestled there, and I know I’ll go home and lie in my bed with my hand on my belly, imagining I can feel its hot glow through my skin. He is part of me now, in a way I never even imagined in my deepest, darkest desires. His essence is inside me. Without even touching, we are one in a way I never knew we could be.

We are one, and yet, I suddenly understand that we are condemned to the deepest pits of hell together for what we’ve done here today. My shame returns as the fog begins to clear, ad I realize what we’ve done.

“Release her,” Father says, and Saint obeys as automatically as I do.

I sit back on my heels, my core throbbing with a heavy, unfulfilled need, my head spinning, my heart imploding with the knowledge of what we just did. The fact that I wanted it, encouraged it, instead of Saint pushing me into it fills me with the deepest shame I’ve ever felt. I can’t say that I was forced to do it, that I was protecting someone else. It was me who crawled on my knees to him and begged for his sin.

I am the sinner here, not him. Is this how Eve felt when she swallowed the bite of apple, when she realized what she had done and that it had condemned her to a terrible fate that she could never undo?

“You may go,” Father says to me.

My eyes, my throat, my core ache at the callous dismissal. “Now?” I whisper. “I’m supposed to walk out of here like nothing happened?”

---