“Meet me here tonight.” His words were a solemn command. “Midnight. Promise me, my angel.”
“We can’t.”
“You will meet me here.”
“Why, Father?”
“Because tonight…” He looked upon me with such adoration, such fierce possession, I feared what would happen to my own sanity if I denied him this wicked meeting. “I will restore you, Honor. Tonight…I will show you how truly holy you are.”
Chapter Sixteen – Raphael
All of our sins were committed in the dark. Why did my angel shine brightest during the night?
She entered St. Cecilia’s, slipping through the vestibule and into the sanctuary which awaited a service just for her. I locked the church behind her. She tip-toed to the altar. The door to the nave closed behind us.
And we were alone.
Honor turned, lingering before the altar as though she thought she would be cast upon it.
Not yet. But soon.
She studied the work I had done. Candles lit the sanctuary, bright and flickering. The light reflected from the stained glass and bounced in dark hues of reds, blues, and greens over the white linen folded over the altar. The incense teased in the air. Dusky. Sacred.
It was the first time I felt comfortable in my own church in a week, and it was because I dressed it for my angel.
“Father?” Honor wore only a soft dress, modestly hugging her curves. Her eyes widened. “What are you doing? This is…”
Blasphemous.
And it was meant to be.
The thoughts tortured me for too long. The guilt became a constant burden, and the shame an unrelenting companion.
And so I let it go.
I let too much of myself go.
I reached for her, my fingers tangled in my rosaries. I brushed my finger first over her lips to silence the questions.
“If I am to sin…” My words blessed and cursed us both. “I would celebrate it, just as I celebrate my faith.”
I kissed her, delighting in the honesty of those words.
I could take her. I could have her. We could be together, if only for this moment, if only in this one declaration of complete and total spiritual anarchy.
I’d give of myself to join with another. And I’d lose my soul for a single moment to taste, touch, and feel the gifts of her body.
What was mine would be lost and damned if only so I could praise her.
Her lips quivered, soft and hesitant. She murmured soft words against me. A prayer.
“What’s happened to you?” she whispered.
I tangled my hands in her hair, across her curves, along her softness. Nothing compared to the press of her body against mine.
This was a sin worth reverence.
“I want you,” I said. “Here. Tonight. I need to make you mine in every way—our bodies, our souls, our hearts. I want to own you.”
“I do too…” Honor brushed her fingers along my cheek. She wasn’t meek or mild, but she was just as gentle. Too gentle. It’d only make me take her harder. “But you don’t belong to me, Father. I can’t let you destroy yourself. This is a sin.”
“Then it is the sweetest sin.”
I kissed her again, trapping her against me, losing myself in her candied apple scent and silken touch. She was smaller than me. Fragile. Beautiful. She closed her eyes as I touched her and surrendered with my kiss.
She had always been mine. Tonight I’d prove it.
“Take off your dress.” My command rolled a shudder over her body. “Kneel before me.”
Her fingers teased the straps of her dress, silken material that marked the end of something righteous and the beginning of our own destruction.
The dress fell away, and her panties slid to the floor. My Honor stood before me, naked, trembling, and gazing over the church with a bitten lip.
“Here, Father?” She looked over the church. “Are you sure?”
For weeks I’d struggled against my desire. Harsh and vile and all-consuming.
I’d prayed. I’d fasted. I’d sought comfort in old books and exercise and charity. None of it helped. Nothing eased my desperation to take her, rut her, seize her within a display of utter sacrilege.
If I was to violate her, then I would violate myself and everything that made me. My desires would not save me, and so I would worship the object of my lust.
Honor drove me to madness.
Only my angel would save me, sating those perverted desires with her own sacrifice.
She knelt before me, naked and beautiful. Every curve dark and rich. She shivered. Not fear, but in lust. Desire. The same heat and passion which tore through my body and mind.
I stood before her, savoring the power coursing through my veins.
I didn’t remove my cassock. This night wouldn’t honor the man beneath the collar, but the one who wore it. The last of him. A baptism of sin as I felled an angel with me.