The wine rested near us. I broke the kiss with Honor to hold the wineglass—my chalice—before her.
The symbolism was not lost on my angel.
I tipped the wine as the glass touched her lips. She stared at me as she took the smallest sip. Her quiet, timid, reverent swallow stirred something almost sinister in me.
I tipped the glass again, accidentally spilling the wine. She gasped, but I was there, leaning in to capture the precious droplets in a kiss. The dry punch of the wine blended the dark sweetness of the cake with her natural, addictive flavor. The contrast enthralled me.
Honor trembled, her hands at her sides, eyes lowering as though she feared how high her dress had crept upon the perfect swell of her thighs.
My cassock did not belong so near the softness of a virgin’s flesh—of any flesh. I was fit, muscular, and she was forced to spread her legs wide to allow me this close. I drifted near her sacred, special place.
The holy of holies.
The sin of all sins.
“What else tempts you, my angel?” My voice turned to gravel, a raw and rumbled prayer for her honesty. “I want to know what desires control you.”
She pressed against me. I feared I’d be scalded in the heat trapped between us.
“Everything tempts me, Father. I can’t sleep at night. I can’t think. Every day I lose myself in thoughts of you.”
If only my lust was sated with words of her desire. “Have you fought these thoughts?”
“Yes.” Her voice hardened, as though she’d prove her faith to me then and there. But my angel was a more delicate and complex creature than that. “But it hurts. I live in constant agony. I wake in the middle of the night and I’m so…” She licked her lips. “Maybe I should bind my hands when I sleep.”
The thought hardened me more. I leaned close, my forehead on hers. We breathed each other, and my silent prayers tasted of her, chocolate, and rich wine.
“Do not fear your desire,” I whispered.
“I can’t let myself indulge it. I can’t go over that edge.”
“Do you fear losing yourself to lust?”
“Don’t you?”
Every minute of every day. The difference was, I knew my limitations. I understood my temptations.
Honor did not.
And it was my responsibility, my only purpose in this life, to give her that confidence.
“Let me prove how strong you are.” My fingers might have trembled had they not grasped her knee with such demand. “I know you have the strength to resist.”
I teased her leg, and the velvet darkness of her skin forever shrouded my mind in sin.
Her breathing caught as the tips of my fingers slid beneath the hem of her dress. The material bunched up, up, up, exposing the most intimate and hidden and beautiful of her secrets.
She breathed too fast, too hard. Her body stiffened as the pink hint of her panties was exposed to me.
The crest of her legs—the perfect sin—the hallowed hollow of her virtue.
Hidden from view with a pair of thin, cotton panties.
“Father…” Honor warned me.
“Sex is about power.” This lesson was the most important. “Power over ourselves…and power over each other.”
Honor sighed as I brushed higher on her thigh. I held my breath as I gently stroked the softness hidden from my sight by those sinfully pink panties.
And here I thought red was the color of debauchery.
Honor arched as my finger pressed over her core. She gasped. I hated that I was forced to choose between studying her parted lips or the crest of her legs where all my immoral decisions hid.
“Look at how easily your body responds, Honor. You quiver. You flinch. You groan.”
I had no doubt of my control over her, but I feared her dominion over me. She mewed as my fingers stroked a natural and raw heat. It beckoned me close, demanded I submit to my urges, to her lovely and delicate release.
And I might have.
The challenge was real. Hard. Painful.
And that was why I chose to fight it.
“Lust binds your soul,” I whispered, my finger moving in a constant and steady pace. I imagined what wetted beneath, dampening her panties. “If you surrender, you’ll lose yourself. Is a momentary pleasure worth the destruction of your virtue? Would you willingly submit to this primal violation?”
Honor shook her head. “You’re wrong, Father. Sex isn’t that…destructive.”
“No?”
I stroked harder, faster, capturing the little nub that swelled as I teased her. Honor bit her lip, and I longed to cause that sharp sting myself.
“Sex is an animalistic intrusion,” I said. “It’s power and strength exerted upon another. Even now, simply touching you, I control you. I’m stronger than you, bigger than you, more powerful than you. I can manipulate you with a single flick of my finger.”