Knock.
Knock.
Pause.
Knock knock knock.
“Stop,” I muttered, rolling out of bed, sleep making me slow and fumbling. “I’m coming, I’m coming.”
Knock knock BOOM.
The deafening thunder and preceding flash of light did nothing to alleviate my disorientation, and I stumbled into the table, the sharp corner burrowing into my hip. I swore, blindly reaching for a t-shirt (I was only in a loose pair of sweatpants) and groped my way down the hall to the living room where the front door was. I was just awake enough that I was beginning to register that someone really was at my door at three in the morning, and it was either a police officer coming to tell me that Ryan had finally rammed his car into a tree while texting or one of the parishioners needing last rites. Whatever reason they had for coming to the rectory, it probably wasn’t good, and I steeled myself for tragedy as I opened the door, awkwardly also trying to tug my t-shirt over my head.
It was Poppy, rain-soaked with a bottle of Scotch in her hand.
I blinked like an idiot. For one thing, after our fight this morning, the literal last thing I expected was Poppy at my door in the middle of the night bearing gifts. For another, she was wearing what I assumed were her pajamas—a pair of dancing shorts and a thin Walking Dead t-shirt—and the rain had thoroughly wetted both. She wasn’t wearing a bra and the rain had made her thin shirt almost transparent, her nipples dark and hard under the fabric, and once I noticed that, it was hard to think about anything else than those wet breasts, probably pebbled with goose bumps, and how that cool flesh would feel against my hot tongue.
And then I came back to myself and for a terrible moment, I warred between two impulses: shutting her out into the rain or shoving her to her knees and making her swallow my cock.
Flee the temptations of youth, we’d read at the Bible study earlier tonight. Pursue righteousness. I should shut the door and go back to bed. But then Poppy shivered, and a lifetime of respect and politeness intervened. I found myself stepping back and gesturing for her to come inside.
Pursue righteousness, the author of Timothy said. But did righteousness carry a bottle of Macallan 12 in her hand? Because Poppy did.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said, stepping into the living room and then turning around to face me.
I shut the door. “I gathered.” My voice was gravelly from sleep and something less innocent. Predictably, my dick started to swell; despite everything that had happened, I hadn’t seen her breasts yet, and they were more tempting than ever under that wet shirt.
Fuck. I didn’t mean yet. I meant never. I was never going to see her breasts. Accept it, I mentally chastised my groin, which refused to heel, and instead kept sending these painfully vivid sense memories back to my brain, like how it had felt to grope Poppy’s tits when she was bent over the church piano.
Her eyes dropped to my hips, and I knew my sweatpants were not doing a very good job hiding my thoughts. Clearing my throat, I turned away from her to walk over to the kitchen. “I didn’t know you liked The Walking Dead,” I mentioned lightly, sliding my hand over the switch. A pale yellow glow wafted from the postwar-era light fixture, casting angled shadows into the living room.
“It’s my favorite show,” Poppy said. “But I don’t know why you act surprised that you didn’t know. We haven’t known each other that long, and most of our conversations have involved me telling you my darkest secrets—not what’s on my Netflix queue.”
She had come up to me and extended the bottle of Scotch, which I took, moving into the kitchen to search for glasses, trying to piece together a response—any response—but I literally couldn’t think of a single thing to say.
“It’s a peace offering,” she said, nodding towards the Macallan. “I couldn’t sleep and I wanted to say I’m sorry for our fight today and I thought maybe whisky…” She took a deep breath and for the first time, my still sleep-fogged brain realized that she was nervous. “I’m so sorry for waking you up,” she said quietly. “I should go.”
“Don’t,” I said automatically, my mouth operating on instinct before my mind could catch up. A gratifying flush spread up her cheeks, and something clicked in my mind, and now I was fully and completely awake. “Go to the living room,” I said—not asked. “Turn on the gas fireplace and sit on the hearth. Wait for me.”
She obeyed without question and that simple act of obedience stirred up the old me, the me that was known on campus for a certain type of experience in the bedroom. I couldn’t help it, it felt so damn good to have a woman pliant to my demands, to see a woman as smart and independent as Poppy let me take care of her, trust me to direct her in exactly the right way. And then I felt like an idiot. I gripped the countertops, remembering my women’s studies classes in college, the feminist nun at the seminary who outlined every painful instance of misogyny in the Church’s history. I was being a pig, for more reasons than one. I needed to regain my control, go out there and tell her that after her drink, she needed to go. I would be honest about my struggle and hope that she would understand.
Even if she hated me for it.
Because I deserved her hatred.
But first, the drinks. While I enjoyed Scotch, I usually drank it alone or with my brothers, so I didn’t have the right glasses for it. In fact, I didn’t have any drinking glasses at all. So I brought the Scotch out in two chipped coffee mugs.
Be good be good be good, I told myself as I approached her. Don’t jump her bones. Don’t fantasize about fucking her tits. Be a good priest.
I offered her the Scotch. “Sorry about the mugs.”
She grinned. “But they’re so classy.”
I rolled my eyes and sat in the chair next to the fire, which was a bad idea because it meant that she was basically sitting at my feet and that was just reinforcing all the bad thoughts.
Now or never, Tyler, I told myself. You have to do this.
“Poppy—” I started but she interrupted.
“No, I’m the one who needs to apologize,” she said. “That’s what I came here to do, after all.” She tilted her head up to meet my eyes and the fire glowed through her hair, showing where it was drying into messy waves. “I feel terrible about this afternoon. I’m fucked up from what happened with Sterling, and for some reason, when you got all protective of me this afternoon, I panicked.”
You and me both.
“And I’ll be honest—since I am talking to a priest after all. It’s complicated by the fact that I can’t stop thinking about you all the goddamned time, and it’s killing me.”
Everything in me lit on fire, because these were both the first and last words I wanted to hear, and I flinched.
She cast her eyes down in a wounded way that knifed through my ribs. She thought I was rejecting her attraction, rejecting her. Shit, nothing was further from the truth, but there was no way to explain that without making things more tangled than they already were.
“Anyway,” she continued in a small voice, “I’m sorry for lashing out at you this afternoon. And I’m also sorry for what happened last Monday. I took advantage of you. I have all this shit in my life and I inflicted it upon you because you were here and you were kind.”
I leaned forward, trying to summon the strength to say what needed to be said. “I’m glad that you came here and that you’re sorry—not that you should be sorry, because the blame of what happened after your last confession rests squarely on my shoulders. But I’m glad because it means that you understand why it can’t happen again. I have a vow to uphold, to honor God by honoring his children, his lambs. You came to me for help and instead I—” I stopped, unable to utter the words. But the heat rushed to my groin anyway, as words from that one afternoon shot through my mind like bullets through ballistic gel. Cunt. Clit. Cock. Come. I didn’t need to look to know that my sweatpants were dangerously close to revealing these thoughts.
“—I took advantage of you,” I finished instead.
She pressed her lips together. “You did not take advantage of me. Yes, I’ve got some shit going on in my life right now, but I am my own person, capable of making my own choices. I’m not damaged, I didn’t grow up unloved. I’m not a blank slate for males to exert their agency on. I chose to sleep with Sterling. I chose to let you go down on me. I wanted those things, and you don’t get to tell me that I didn’t. You don’t get to tell me that I was nothing more than an unwilling bystander.”
She stood, the red in her cheeks not just from the fire. “Don’t worry. I won’t bother you with my body again. I’ll respect your vow and your outdated chivalry along with it.”
That stung. That stung like hell, actually, because I had just been trying to summon up all of my postmodern, feminist ally thoughts, trying to squash down the part of my brain that fantasized about making her crawl naked across my floor with a cup of single-malt balanced on her back.
And that’s why—I think—I grabbed her arm and tugged her between my legs. She gasped, but she didn’t pull away. I was at the perfect height to sit up and suck on her nipple through her shirt, which I did. Her hands laced through my hair as she moaned.
“I thought—you just said—” She writhed as I bit gently down and then resumed my sucking.
“You’re right,” I said, pulling back. “I shouldn’t do this.”
Her face fell ever so slightly, but she nodded, pulling away, and then I grabbed her hips and tugged her down so that she straddled my thigh, her pussy immediately starting to grind against me in an adorably needy way.
“I shouldn’t put you over my lap and spank your ass for being a brazen little slut and coming here without a bra,” I growled in her ear. “I shouldn’t twist ropes around your wrists and ankles until your cunt is exposed and then screw you until you can’t walk anymore. I shouldn’t flip you over and fuck your ass until your eyes water. I shouldn’t drive you down to the strip club and fuck you in the back room, so that you’ll forget all about Sterling and the only name you’ll remember to say is mine.” I lightly bit her nipple again. “Or God’s.”
I tucked two fingers into the waistband of her shorts and pulled down, the elastic stretching and giving me a peek at what I had already suspected. There was the smooth rise of her pubic bone, her clit visible as a tiny, soft bud of flesh, a bud just begging to be touched.
“Why did you come here tonight, Poppy?” I asked as I palmed her breast, quietly groaning at the feeling of its unsupported weight in my hand. I kept my other hand where it was, still staring at her bare cunt. “Did you really come to say sorry? Or did you come here, in the middle of the night, without a bra or panties, to tempt me? That’s a sin, you know. Willfully leading another person into wrongful action or thought. No, don’t pull away now.”
She had started to twist away, and I knew I was sending signals so mixed that they were beyond confusing, they were blended, incomprehensible, but then I murmured, “One more. Give me one more.”
One more what? I wondered even as I spoke. One more orgasm? For her? For me? One more chance? One more glimpse, one more taste, one more minute to pretend that there was nothing in the way of us being together?
And then I blanched. That was a stupid way to phrase it—being together—as if my attraction to Poppy Danforth was more than three years of celibacy encountering the sexiest woman I’d ever met. As if there was some secret part of me that wanted to do more than fuck her, it wanted to take her to dinner and make her breakfast and fall asleep with her in my arms.
She was staring at me the whole time I thought this, staring with hungry hazel eyes and a hungry mouth and those tits so perky and soft under her shirt.
“Tonight,” I told her. “We have this. Then no more.”
She nodded, then swallowed, as if her mouth were dry. I watched her throat move.
“Get on your knees,” I said hoarsely.
She scrambled to obey, kneeling in between my legs and peering up at me through the long, dark lashes that haunted my waking thoughts.
“Take your shirt off.”
She pulled the cotton shirt over her head and dropped it on the floor, and I had to fist my hands in my sweatpants to keep from tackling her and screwing her brains out, because holy fuck, were those breasts perfect. Cream-pale with dark pink nipples, small enough to cover with a fingertip, but large enough that I’d be able to draw them easily into my mouth. I wanted to see my cock slide between those tits, I wanted to jet my climax all over them, I wanted to feel them pressed against my chest while I stretched my body on top of hers.
But there would be no end to the things I wanted to do to this little lamb, no matter how many times or how many ways I had her. She was creating this insatiable pit in me, a yawning chasm of need, and even in my haze, I could see how destructive that would be if I didn’t stop it.
And the stopping would happen soon…just not right now.
I lowered the waistband of my own pants just enough to free my dick, leaving my shirt on as well. I liked being dressed when I fucked, I always had; there was no bigger turn on than having a naked woman climbing all over you, purring at your feet and squealing in your lap, all while you were fully dressed. (And yes, I recognize that’s also fucked up in terms of feminism and all that. I’m sorry.)
Poppy squirmed now, her hand drifting to the thin fabric between her legs, caressing herself.
“You left a wet spot on my leg, lamb,” I said, glancing down to my thigh, where her arousal had soaked through the fabric of her shorts and my pants. “Do you want something?”
“I want to come,” she whispered.
“But you can make yourself come any time you want. You came here tonight because you want something else. What is it?”
She hesitated then answered. “I want you to make me come.”
“But you know it’s wrong to ask.”
“But I knew it was wrong to ask…or to want.”
I let out a breath. It was wrong. All of it, so very wrong.
And Jesus help me, for some reason that made it all the sweeter.
“Lick,” I said, indicating my cock. My hands were still by my thighs; I didn’t bother holding myself for her. Instead, I sat back and watched as she ran her tongue from my base to my tip in one long motion. My fingers dug into the chair, hissing as she did it again. I’d forgotten how good this was too, how smooth and slick and soft a woman’s tongue could be, how perfect it felt tracing lines along the sensitive underside of my dick, tracing delicate circles around the crown.
Obedient lamb, she didn’t do any more than lick, her hand still between her legs, her eyes pinned to mine in the dim light.
“Suck now,” I told her. A quick flash of a smile—a smile that screamed Ivy League and financial analysis and a taste for good champagne—and then her head was nothing but a bobbing mass of dark waves between my legs.
I really did groan now. Was there any sight I’d missed more than this? A head moving eagerly between my thighs? But then I thought of that Monday in the church, her bent over the piano and her cunt the only thing in my vision. Her sitting on me, grinding her clit against my shaft.
There were a lot of sights I’d missed.
My hips and legs were practically vibrating with the suppressed need to thrust into her mouth, and I indulged myself just a little, threading my hands through her hair and holding her down over my cock, pushing up with my hips until I hit the back of her throat, shuddering as I slid back out, lips and teeth and tongue and palate, all of it stroking me, stoking me to further flame. I’d never been harder than this before, I was sure of it, and when I pulled her lips off my cock, I could see every vein, could feel the painfully swollen crest as it flared out then back in to my tip.
That’s when I knew I had to feel her cunt. If it was going to be the last time, if this was it, then I had to. I mean, I was already committing a mortal sin by letting her suck me off. Would it be so much worse if I had her rub her pussy against me again?
Or if I slid just partway inside? That still wasn’t really sex, not really really, and I would pull it right back out. I just wanted to feel it once. Only once.
Shit, I sounded like a teenager. I also didn’t care at that moment, with the hardest dick in the world and with the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen still kneeling in front of me, mouth parted, cunt wriggling in undisguised want.
“Take your bottoms off and get on the counter,” I ordered. She stood, took off her shorts, and walked to the kitchen (where thankfully all the blinds were drawn) and hopped onto the counter.
I approached her slowly, my blood at a low, dangerous boil, because I knew that I was walking oh-so-close to the edge, to the point of no return, but I wanted to, I wanted to fling myself into the unknown if the unknown was Poppy. It was hard to give a shit about anything else.
I smelled her as I stepped up to the counter, a mix of her arousal and clean soap and just a hint of lavender. I spread her legs as far apart as the counter would allow, reaching behind her and scooching her right up to the edge, so that when I pressed myself against her, my cock nestled against her folds.
She licked her red lips as she met my eyes. Licked her lips, as if she were a predator about to devour me, but that was not how this worked, not at all, and suddenly I was obsessed with smearing that red lipstick, still perfect at three in the morning, as if she’d reapplied it before she’d come over. Yes, when I was done with her, that carefully applied color would be everywhere, and she would feel marked, taken.
I leaned forward and kissed her for the first time.
Her lips were as soft as I expected—softer even—but they were firm in a way that I had not expected, not immediately yielding to me. Had I not lived the life I’d lived before the robe, I wouldn’t have understood her reluctance. But I had, and I did.
“You want me to fight for it, lamb?” I murmured against her lips.
She nodded breathlessly.
“You want me to steal it from you?”
Another nod.
“Force it from you?”
A shuddering exhale. And then finally another nod. My little lamb wanted it rough, and what do you know, I wanted to give it to her that way.
My lips became an inexorable force, an act of nature—an act of God—and I gripped the back of her head as hard as I dared, pressing her face to mine. I ground my hips into her, rubbing myself against her, and used my free hand to claim her breast—pressing it into her chest, grabbing it so fiercely that I knew she could feel every fingertip as a bright point of discomfort. Slowly, oh so slowly, her mouth opened up to me, and the first time our tongues slid together in a tangle of silk and promise, I nearly lost it right then and there.
Her mouth was greedy, but mine was greedier, and we fought each other, who would devour whom the fastest, who could take what they wanted first, who could take the most, and before long, she was a writhing form of smooth muscle and soft curves, her hips jerking against mine and her hands fisting my hair and scratching my back.
When I finally, finally broke our kiss, I was satisfied to see that the lipstick was indeed smeared. It matched her smudged eyeliner and her wild hair, it matched her hands gripping my ass like two hot brands.
“I want to be inside you,” I said. “Just a little. Just to feel it.”
“Oh God,” she breathed. “Please. It’s all I’ve thought about since we’ve met.”
“You have to hold really, really still,” I warned her. “Will you behave?”
She bit her lip and nodded, and then I took myself in my hand. I couldn’t believe I was doing this, and in the kitchen of my own fucking rectory—not that it was any worse than the sanctuary floor. But with her legs spread, with her practically whimpering from that kiss, I couldn’t have stopped myself if I tried. And I definitely didn’t want to try.
Holding myself, I pressed the head of my cock against her clit, brushing down past her entrance to her ass. She shivered in a way that told me she had no objection to that either, and I’d have to add that to the things I’d bitterly regret never having. I moved up, again grazing past her opening and up to her clit. She gave me an agonized expression and I wanted to kiss it right off her face—or come all over it, either one. After a few more passes, I couldn’t wait any longer, I had to do it or I might actually die on the spot.
I leaned my forehead against hers, both of us looking down to watch as my tip pressed against her and slowly slipped inside. I stopped when the crest of my cock was in her, and then froze, muscles quivering.
Both of us just stared down at it, this impossible sight: me inside of her, a priest tasting the forbidden fruit and barely able to keep himself from eating it all.
“How does it feel?” she whispered.
“It feels…” my voice was barely more than a gasp at this point. “It feels like heaven.”
She was so tight, her cunt squeezing my tip, and there were no words to describe what that wet, slippery skin was doing to me, because it was rewriting my mind and my soul, my future and my life. It was a sensation so base and primal, so delicious, that I would have killed to feel it, I would kill somebody right now if it meant I could have my dick inside this woman again.
One and a half inches of damnation, and all I could think about was sinking deeper into hell.
She rocked forward the tiniest bit, unable to help herself, greedy lamb, and I grabbed her neck, my legs shaking with the effort not to come from that single little movement alone. “Stay the fuck still, or I’m going to come before I want to, and if that happens, then I will take you over my knee and spank your ass until you learn how to listen,” I said sternly.
My command had the predictable effect of sending goose bumps rippling up her arms. Her breathing was loud and harsh sounding in the small kitchen. “Fuck,” she whispered. “Fuck. I—this—this is the hottest thing I’ve ever done.”
It was possibly the hottest thing I’d ever done too, and I’d done a lifetime’s worth of hot things to many hot women—but none of them had been like Poppy.
Red-lipped and blue-blooded. And fuck, the horniest woman I’d ever met.
“I want to feel you come around me,” I said, my forehead still against hers, our eyes going back to the place where we were joined. I would never forget this as long as I lived, I knew, and I didn’t want her to forget either.
“That won’t take long,” she said and then gave a little husky laugh that made her clench around me. I hissed, grabbing the countertop to keep myself from losing it.
“Sorry,” she whispered, and in answer, I slid a hand over her leg to her clit and began rubbing.
“Stay still,” I reminded her as we watched my large hand, tan and calloused from all the odd jobs I did around the church, pressing into her soft pink flesh, as we watched her quiver around the tip of my dick.
“I’m trying to stay still,” she murmured, and I could tell she was, I could tell she wanted to see herself come around me as much as I did. I increased the strength and tempo of my fingers.
“Filthy girl,” I whispered. “So dirty to let me stick it inside of you. Do you like this, being spread open and used this way? I bet you like being called dirty names too.”
“P-please,” she moaned.
“Please what, lamb?”
She could barely talk now, her head lolling back against the cabinets, her arched back shoving her breasts closer to me. “Names,” she got out. “I like…the names…”
Fuck. She was really going to kill me. Death by turn on. Death by perpetual erection.
“Are you a slut, Poppy?” I bent my head down and sucked on a nipple, loving the feel of it furling on my tongue, stiffening as I sucked. “You’re sure acting like a slut, making me act this way. You’re making me break all sorts of rules, and I hate breaking rules.” I moved to her neck, kissing and biting. “You’ll take it anywhere you can get it, won’t you?”
“I’m—” She inhaled, unable to finish, but she didn’t need to because she was coming now, her body undulating as if to chase the waves of pleasure that rolled through it. Again and again, her pussy clamped down on the head of my cock, squeezing and pulsing, and just knowing that I could make her come with only the shallowest of penetrations made me nearly wild.
She slumped in my arms as she came down, resting her head on my shoulder. “Your turn,” she said against my skin.
I started to pull out but she grabbed my hips and stopped me. “No,” she said. “In me.”
“Poppy,” I started.
“I’m on the pill.” Her jaw set as she looked up at me. “I want to see it spilling out around you. I want it where it belongs—in me. Please, Tyler. If this is the last time, give me this one thing.”
Tyler. She’d never called me that before. And it was there at the base of my spine now, fueled by her dirty words—what woman begged for this? What woman was turned on by it?
But frankly, I would have agreed to anything, no matter how dangerous, so I nodded, my jaw clenching.
She leaned back against the cabinets, bringing her heels up to the counter. The change in her position didn’t move me any deeper inside, but it made her flex and tighten around me, and my climax clawed closer. She slid her hands to the undersides of her breasts, running her thumbs along her still-stiff nipples, pressing her breasts together and moving them apart, highlighting how fucking luscious they were and nearly blinding me with lust at the same time.
God, I needed to pump.
Needed to thrust.
Needed to fuck.
Then her fingers went to her clit and she started getting herself off again, her other fingers going up to slide in and out of her mouth and I was fucking transfixed, those lips, that wicked mouth, the mouth that had gotten my cock from hard as fuck to harder than fuck by the fireplace earlier. And then—naughty girl—she moved her hips ever so slightly, bucking them just enough to push me in and out of her the smallest bit, so wet, so tight, and there it was, stabbing through my balls and up my cock, and we both watched as it happened, as my hips jerked and my stomach muscles jumped and then I ejaculated. My legs could barely support my weight and I could barely breathe as it ripped through me, my first climax in a woman in years, but I forced myself to stand stock still because I wanted to memorize this moment forever, the semen dripping and her pussy so wet and her legs spread in hallowed welcome. The pulsing finally, finally slowed, and she laid her head against my chest, making this happy, contented little sigh, and my heart twisted inside my chest, demanding everything that it wanted now that it could be heard over my rampant lust.
“Shit,” I mumbled, leaning forward and pressing my face into her sweet-smelling hair. “What are you doing to me?”
We stayed that way a long moment, neither of us wanting it to be over, but then the air conditioning kicked on, blowing cold air over us, and Poppy shivered, still naked. I had her stay on the counter while I got a washcloth and cleaned her with warm water, and then I helped her find her clothes and walk to the door.
“So I’ll see you at Mass tomorrow?” she said.
“Poppy—”
“I know, I know,” she said with a sad smile. “Tomorrow, we’ll start fresh. Chaste. Clean.”
“Good, but that’s not what I was going to say.”
Her brows furrowed. “What were you going to say?”
I leaned in and brushed my lips against hers. Last time. Last kiss. “I wanted to say thank you. For the Scotch and for…what just happened.”
She blinked up at me and then her eyes fluttered closed as I deepened our kiss, tasting every inch of her mouth, licking into her as gently and lovingly as I had done ferociously earlier. I never wanted to move from this spot, I only wanted to taste her and breathe the air that we were sharing and feel her body warm against mine—and also pretend that I wasn’t waiting for a tsunami of guilt and a lifetime of penance.
“Goodnight,” she said against my mouth.
“Goodnight, little lamb,” I said.
Stepping away felt like stepping onto shards of glass, and I couldn’t help myself, she was so wide-eyed and so open to my love, and it was instinct more than anything else that led to trace a small cross on her forehead.
A blessing.
And hopefully a promise to do better.
