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He’s been taking to hiding here, late at night, in the confessional. He’s not sure who he’s been hiding from, exactly. The other priests maybe? It’s been harder to look them in the eye recently. He’d begged and cajoled and was finally granted his first assignment in this diocese. They’d scoffed at his age when he first arrived, but for the first six months he’d been a model member of the clergy. He hates that he’s proving them right, acting like the teenager he barely isn’t.
Maybe he’s hiding from God.
No. No, he knows who he’s hiding from. She’s got an auburn bob, a round sweet face, lips like a bow, and a spine of steel.
Lucy.
He knows she’s somewhere in this house of God; she runs the semi-weekly support group for homeless teens out of the church basement. It was the group that saved her when she herself ran away to London, escaping dangers more personal and particular than the ones she found on the streets of the city.
“It saved me,” she told him over tea, late in the kitchen one evening. “And now it’s brought me to you.”
The shriek of the kettle had cut through the dark glances they were throwing each other across the table. It allowed him to pretend, to keep the smooth veneer of professionalism in place, when every, “I know where Sister Margorie hides the good biscuits, want to join?” was making him sound more and more like what he really was: a lovesick boy asking his crush on a date. Until last week, of course. But that’s why he was hiding.
He had probably waited in the confessional long enough. He couldn’t hear the clatter of folding chairs he would normally help put away, nor could he hear the echo of any more footsteps, not even the uneven gait of Old Joe, the church grounds caretaker, and Joe was always the last to leave and lock up.
Maybe he should just sleep here. Maybe the dreams of her smile and her voice and her warmth wouldn’t find him if he slept close to the relic of St. Dwynwen that was buried in the altar.
It’s possible he dozed off for a moment, otherwise he was so lost in thought, he didn’t hear her until the sharp clatter of the curtains opening and closing echoed through the church.
“Bless me Father, for I have sinned.”
He breathed in sharply.
“Lucy…”
“My last confession was-”
“Lucy, please-”
“-last Saturday, but Father-”
“Please, Lucy, you can’t be here-”
“–I wasn’t fully honest with you then.”
He remembered last Saturday. Two days before he stepped out of line. He remembered it was hot outside, but cool in the church. The scrape of the white surplice chafed at his neck. He had been sitting in the same position all afternoon, but while his body was stiff, his mind was alert.
This ritual was precious to him.
His congregants came to him with their greatest struggles and he knew if he just listened well and counseled well he could do his part to ease their burdens. He could prescribe the right number of Hail Mary’s, and with each passing bead of the rosary there was a chance they would leave the pews with their shoulders a little lighter than when they first knelt down.
She managed to catch him by surprise last Saturday as well.
The moment he had recognized her voice, he bolted up straight. His skin started to buzz.
Maybe it was the realization that he was about to hear, not just anyone’s secrets, but Lucy’s secrets. Or maybe it was the low pitch of her tone, the hush of her voice. He’d never heard her like that before. They had spent plenty of evenings alone, and the pews were full outside the confessional, but these next few minutes were the most intimate they would ever be. Could ever be.
His hands were sweaty. He wiped them on his robes.
It had never really occurred to him so starkly before: he was a priest.
“These are my sins,” she said. “There has been something weighing on me, Father, and I’m not sure—”
He was so distracted he hadn’t registered a word she’d said before this. He cleared his throat. She must have recognized him just from that.
“—Lockwood!? I mean, oh gosh…” her voice jumped an octave.
The spell broke. He leaned his head back against the wood behind him, pulling his hands away where they were clutched to his stole and rubbed his eyes.
“Hello, Lucy,” he said.
“Oh, Father, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—” there was a note of panic in her voice.
“It’s quite alright, Lucy—” He tried to soothe her as best he could, while his own skin itched heavily beneath his cassock— “you’ve done nothing wrong. Please, continue. Something has been weighing on you.”
So she continued, choking out a story about one of the kids in her group and her inability to get through to them and the shame she felt for failing God in this way. But gone was the cool low murmur in her voice. The lie was tightening her throat.
He knew what was weighing on her. It was the same thing that sat heavy on his chest when he tried to fall asleep at night. It was the distinct knowledge that maybe God had put someone in his path as some sort of test, and it was only a matter of time before he failed.
He couldn’t quite remember what he said to her afterwards, some platitudes that may or may not have been relevant, and she rushed out of the confessional like the devil himself was on her heels.
Here, now, in the middle of the night, with no witnesses besides God in the pews, the low cool tone of her voice was back. And it already had his skin buzzing.
“Please, Father, I need to confess.”
“I’m not sure I’m the one who should be hearing this.”
“You are the only one.” Her voice grew harder, “Lockwood, you owe me.”
It was a few weeks ago now, when she teased him about his name. “You’re not really keeping up your ‘cool priest’ image, Father. Making everyone call you ‘Father Lockwood’, instead of by your first name.”
“Anthony,” he said, unthinkingly.
She looked up at him from where they were folding flyers for the church Cricket League. “Anthony?”
“No one calls me that, though, I prefer ‘Lockwood’, if you don’t mind. And just ‘Lockwood’ is fine, Luce, for you,” he smiled warmly at her, trying to cover up his misstep. The way she blushed and looked back down at her hands made him think he was successful.
He could have opened up a bit to her then. Told her about how he arrived at the priesthood so young. About the Catholic orphanage he was sent to, how he grew up in the Church, went straight to seminary, and ended up here. But he didn’t. If he started opening up to her, he wasn’t sure he would ever stop.
She mostly still called him “Father” after that, but did opt for “Lockwood” when she was annoyed at him, like when he stacked the folding chairs incorrectly or ate the last of the Jaffa Cakes.
She sounded more than annoyed now.
“I do,” he clenched out through his teeth, “I do owe you.”
“Since I’ve met you, Father, I’ve stopped going to church to be closer to God,” she whispered. “Now I go to be closer to you.” The dreamy quality was back in her voice. Every syllable swirled thick like honey through his head.
“At first, I thought it was just the joy of finding a true friend. Someone who really understands me. But lately, Father, lately when I come to your mass…”
He heard the ruffle of clothing and the creaking of a wooden bench.
“When I see you at the pulpit. When I’m sitting in the pews, I watch you, Father. And I think the unholiest things.”
He heard a soft wet noise.
“Are you…?” he asked.
She gave a faint gasp in reply. He pushed his face against the lattice, trying to get a better view through the mesh. He could only make out the dark spot of her hair, the pale flash of some expanse of skin and, yes—yes, movement.
“I think about your hands on me. And about what’s under your robes.”
He closed his eyes to try to imagine what she was doing, but to his utter frustration he didn’t know enough to know where to begin. The wet noise continued, rhythmic, taunting.
“When you pray, I imagine you saying the words soft and low in my ear, and it does something to me, Father.” She gasped again, louder this time. “I worry that when I stand up I’ll leave a puddle on the pew. I walk out of church with my knickers soaked.”
He was hard. He gripped the edge of the bench with all his strength.
“And the worst part is I see the way you look at me, I’m not stupid—”
“—Please, Lucy, if you start this—”
“Don’t give me that, Lockwood. We both know who already started this.”
“Luce…” he breathed out, one hand pressing down over the bulge in his trousers.
“But I’m not really here for my confession, Father. I’m here for yours.”
“Luce, I can’t just-”
“You have ten seconds, Lockwood. Then I leave and I will never talk about this again. This is your one shot. This week was awful. It’s not fair.”
He could hear the slick of her fingers leaving her.
“Fuck.”
She began to count down from ten.
He wished he could say he was strong enough to let her walk away. Hell, he wished he was strong enough to let her get all the way to “one” before ripping open the curtains and crowding her against the lattice.
He made it to “nine”.
And then her lips were finally against his and she was finally in his arms. He flexed his fingers, digging into her shoulder, her waist, her hips, anywhere he could find a grip. It was probably too hard, but she grabbed him just as insistently. He bit her lips and kissed her jaw.
“Get this off,” Lucy said between heavy breaths, ripping out the white collar from around his neck, popping the top buttons open, “You’re always so put together and I’m always so ragged, it’s not fair.”
Her wet fingers left a trail along his neck and he could smell her. Oh, Lord in Heaven he could smell her.
“Not put together, Luce,” He said before he dove back in to kiss her, “not around you.”
She let out a low moan as he kissed his way down her neck. It thrilled him. A weight was lifted. The possibilities thrummed around him like notes ringing from an organ: rich, complicated, precious.
“Were you,” he panted, “were you touching yourself? Before.”
“Uh huh.”
“Can you show me, please?”
She stiffened in his arms.
“Please, Lucy, please,” he begged.
She pushed him away. A knife pierced his heart.
“No, not after you ignored me all week, not after you punished me for your own actions.”
“Punished you?” His head was spinning, like the time he accidentally inhaled too much frankincense and myrrh from the censer and he needed to hold onto the walls to prevent himself from tripping.
“You wouldn’t look me in the eye all week! You left every room I entered. It’s like I lost my best friend. And I didn’t do anything, Lockwood!”
He fell to his knees, wrapped his arms around her hips, and pressed his face into her stomach. He’d only just started touching her a minute ago but he was already so addicted he felt he might die if he didn’t keep her close.
“So I decided if you were going to punish me, I might as well give you something real to punish me for,” She lowered her hands to rest on the crown of his head. “I haven’t been sleeping, so my decision making might not be—”
Even in front of God, who knew him fully, he was always trying to hide parts of himself. In front of the congregants, he hid behind a charming smile.
And this past week, he hid himself from Lucy. He barged through the unspoken boundary they had set up and promptly left her to clean up the mess of all the lines he had crossed. No wonder she was upset with him. To make it worse, who could she turn to for support? No one. Only him. And he wasn’t there.
Oh, God. He hurt Lucy.
Lucy who was so good, and kind, and tried so hard to help other people. She was a light. Blazing and purifying. Maybe she could forgive him. She could burn the shame and guilt right out of him.
“How do I make it up to you, Lucy?” He leaned his head back to take her in.
She was looking down at him in some mix of longing, disappointment, and pity.
With her finger hooked in the collar of his black shirt, she sat down on the confessional bench, dragging him with her. He shuffled forward on his knees, desperate to stay as close as she’d let him.
She was wearing what she typically wore during her group sessions: a fluffy blue sweater, a long grey pleated skirt, black lace up boots, and tights. She leaned back against the wood and brought her feet up, one resting on each shoulder, preventing him from getting any nearer.
He swallowed hard. It wasn’t exactly where he wanted to be, but it was still the first time he was between her legs. Her long skirt covered her completely.
He was lost, off kilter, and unsure. He must have looked like some kind of animal, a tomcat in heat, eyes wild, breath panting heavily, hands trembling.
With her legs so close, he realized that what he thought were tights were actually knee high socks that were currently pooled around the tops of her boots.
He gripped her ankles, rubbing the slippery nylon between his fingers. The edges were laced. He whimpered. If those were socks, then there was one less layer between them than he even imagined.
“What—what do you have on?” he pleaded, “Under your skirt—”
“No,” she interrupted. “Not yet.”
He gripped her ankles tighter.
“It’s time for your confession, Father.”
“What do you want me to say, Lucy, I’ll say it—”
“Examine your conscience. Confess, Anthony.”
It was silent in the confessional apart from his heavy breathing. A line of sweat dripped from his cheek to the corner of his lip. He met her eyes and his tongue flicked out to catch it.
“Bless me Lucy, for I have sinned.”
She inhaled sharply, her eyes darkened.
“This is my first confession.” He dipped his head to drop a kiss to the ankle of her boot. “These are my sins.” He kissed the other.
“I’ve been lying to you,” he confessed.
He might have felt like prey at that moment, but she certainly looked it. She stared at him unblinking and unmoving, her breathing quick and shallow.
“I lied to you on Monday,” he said, dropping his eyes to the floor, “When we met at the door to the church, I didn’t ‘happen’ to come in at the same time as you. I—I waited at the rectory window until I saw you walking down the street.”
He glanced back up quickly. He thought he maybe saw the corner of her lips quirk up. She definitely looked more relaxed, more steady.
He slowly shifted his hands from her socks to the bare skin of her calves, “I lied about why I was staying late at the church that night—” Oh God, he was touching her “—I didn’t have to reorganize the activity closet. I was just waiting for your meeting to finish.” Her skin was warm and smooth. His movement displaced her skirt just a bit to reveal a tantalizing stripe of shin. Heat pooled in his groin.
“And Sister Marjorie hasn’t bought Jaffa Cakes in months, I just know they’re your favorites.” He was so busy looking at the shape of his fingers pressing into her skin, that he missed the look on her face when she giggled.
His tongue flicked out again to lick at the line of sweat along his top lip. He looked back up at her.
“But the worst thing I did on Monday was when I left you.”
He had helped her clean up after her session and they loitered around the kitchen. She was radiant, all wry smiles and mock exasperation. They teased each other about their accents, hers round and rolling, his wide and smooth. He offered to help train her kids in self defense and she laughed at him because what good was fencing in a street fight?
From the way the steam blew out of the kettle’s spout, the water was almost done. She reached up to the top shelf to grab a cup, and he happened to be passing behind her. When the kettle whistled, she jumped and he steadied her, his hands on her hips. The kettle continued to scream, but neither of them moved to take it off the stove.
Maybe the kettle was loud enough, he tried to convince himself, that God cannot hear what I’m thinking.
Slowly, he reached over her head with one arm, the other still clutched to her hip. She was warm and if he leaned down he could bury his nose in her neck. He picked up her favorite mug and pressed closer against her.
She inhaled softly and pressed back.
Then he dropped the cup, it shattered, and he ran out of the room, like the coward he is. He spent the whole night sitting on his bed with his fingers digging into his knees gathering all of his will and whatever grace God had left for him and he did not touch himself.
She was touching him now.
She dropped a foot from his shoulder, and placed it between his kneeling legs. She rubbed her boot against his crotch, where his cock was hard and straining.
He jerked his hips. He didn’t deserve her, but she was allowing him this. He wouldn’t let her down.
“I was scared,” he gasped out, “and I hurt you because of it. I won’t do it again. I promise. It’s you from now on, Luce. It’s you. I’m not afraid anymore.”
She slid her boot along his hardness again. He shuttered, grinding down onto her. He must have looked pathetic, his shirt crumpled, sweat dripping down his temples, hips thrusting against her leg. She didn’t seem to mind. She watched him like he held all the answers she’d ever asked.
“For these and all my sins,” he groaned, “I am truly sorry.”
He was going to crumble to dust if he didn’t hold her closer. He slid his hands up farther, grasping her knees. He didn’t look, though. Not until she said it was okay. He hid his face in her skirt.
“Oh, Luce, please.” He didn’t even know what he was asking for. Release? Forgiveness?
“Let go, Anthony,” she said, a benediction over his bowed head.
So he did. It was the closest he’d ever felt to heaven.
A few moments later, before he could fully catch his breath, before the mess in his pants even cooled, Lucy suddenly shifted forward.
“What’s this? Is this new?” The silver cross of a rosary was dangling from his shirt pocket, probably tossed out when he was twitching against her. It weighed heavy there, the round sapphire-blue beads digging into his chest over his heart. She reached down to rest the heft of the cross in her hand.
“Oh, it’s, well, no it’s not new. But, it is for you.” He was carrying it around for when he got enough courage to set things straight between them. To politely apologize and give her a token of his friendship and let her know that that was all it could ever be. Thinking back on that plan now was laughable. Friendship? The rosary was his mother’s. His father gave it to her on their wedding day. He was so delusional.
She reached forward and pulled the rosary from his pocket, bead by bead. “Okay, Anthony,” she wrapped the rosary around her fist. “Are you ready for your penance?”
“Anything, Lucy.”
“Spread my legs,” she ordered.
This felt more like a reward than any kind of atonement, but he wasn’t about to argue.
His hands trembled as he pushed her knees up and out, folding her open like an oyster.
“Please, can I?” he begged. She nodded. He lifted the edge of her skirt to reveal her bare cunt, wet and pink, haloed by short, damp hair. She had already left a small saturated spot where she was sitting on the fabric.
He swallowed hard. He breathed deeply. Oh God, she smelled musky and sweet, a tangy combination that made saliva pool in the back of his throat. He could live here, kneeling at her altar.
She shifted a bit on the bench. “Is it—?” she started, but he cut her off.
“—Divine, Lucy.” His tongue swiped over his dry lips. “Divine.”
She relaxed again. His fingers twitched where they were holding tight to her knees. In his wildest imaginations, he’d never let himself get this far.
“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he said, and she smiled faintly at him, “please, help me.”
That she would bother to guide him through this was almost unfathomable, but it only showed the depths of her grace. She should slap him, run away, crow to the world about all his failings and the fierceness with which he coveted her. But instead she trailed her fingers from her knees down to her crux, and his own fingers followed, sometimes knocking against the cool glass of the beaded rosary that she still had wrapped around her fist.
Lucy, I am not worthy that you should let me love you, he thought, but only say the word and my soul shall be healed.
She gripped the insides of her thighs kneading the flesh there before petting firmly up the crease of her hips. She fisted the folds of her skirt when he copied her movements, letting out harsh puffs of air as his longer fingers pressed into the meat of her thigh.
“Will you show me what to do—” there was a growl to his voice he’d never heard before “—please?”
She hesitated for a moment, eyes searching his face, before biting her lower lip between her teeth. The hand with the rosary kept her skirt lifted as she drifted her other fingers down down down to her core. She pressed them into her cunt, which was already glistening, the wet slick sound melting the rest of his sanity.
Ahhh, that’s what she was doing before. He memorized it, the drag of her fingers in and out, the way the skin of her cunt stretched to accommodate her, the trail of wetness she left when she pressed circles around the small bump at the top of her opening.
“Your hands,” she stuttered out, “are much bigger than mine. I’ve thought about it. When you lift the chalice in mass—makes me crazy.”
“Please, let me,” he begged. She rested her wet hand at the top of her thigh.
He held his breath and willed himself to not fuck this up.
“Needs to be,” she jumped slightly at the first touch of his fingers to her cunt, “wet. Here—” She startled him by opening her mouth.
His heart banged against his ribs. He touched two fingers to the flat of her tongue. She closed her lips around him and he thought he might faint. When he pulled them away, his fingers were wet and tacky.
He was worried he might hurt her as he pushed into her cunt, but she just moaned softly and wrapped her hands around the nape of his neck. The rosary was cold against his throat, but she was hot and slick, like dipping his fingers into cooling wax. She dropped her legs to either side of him, and he crawled forward to fill up the space around her, using one arm to keep her thighs spread.
“Dreamed of this,” she breathed out. “Don’t stop.”
He did his best to mimic the pace she had set for herself before, until she urged him faster. He didn’t know where to settle his gaze. It flitted back and forth from the dusky folds where he watched himself enter her to the dazed, open-mouthed expression on her lovely face.
Astonishment, gratitude, and disbelief pulsed so loudly through him, he almost forgot to lower his thumb and roll over the swollen nerves at the top of her cunt.
“Needs to be wet, too—” her eyes were barely open, dark behind her lids “—my clit.”
He would duel Michael if the angel said he had to take his fingers out of her right now. So instead he leaned down slowly, deliberately. His hot breath against her cunt made her shiver.
He met her eyes and gave her plenty of time to stop him, but she didn’t. Perhaps she felt he had earned enough to be given this gift. He placed a gentle kiss at her clit and her hips jumped.
“Not so light.” Her face was buried in the crook of her arm.
He opened his lips, pressed his tongue down, and licked her. She keened above him, shoving one fist into his hair and her hips up to meet him. The movement knocked him, sending a sharp sting through his nose. He stayed down, though, through the hair pulling and the squirming and the steady stream of “lockwood lockwood anthony father father please”.
Her skin was salty, and the tang danced on his tongue.
“Please, Father, I need…” She pulled his hair tighter, dragging him up to her. She was flushed, panting, quivering in his arms. The rosary dug into his shoulder where she grabbed him. His fingers were dripping and his thumb circled her red clit just the way she showed him.
He loomed over her, catching her lips for the first time since his confession began. She moaned into his mouth, her lips slack.
They separated with a wet smack. He lowered his face to the shell of her ear and said, “Hail, Holy Queen, Mother of Mercy. Our life, our sweetness and our hope—”
A long, loud groan rumbled from the depths of her throat. He didn’t think she could even hear the next few lines of the prayer. He wasn’t certain but he thought, yes, it’s possible she was coming. She shook. He could feel her clenching around his fingers. Maybe he would be absolved.
Her thighs clamped down around his hand, but she muttered, “don’t stop don’t stop don’t stop”, so he did his best to keep moving. Her eyes cracked open and she pulled their foreheads together. He could feel each staccato of her breath puff over his lips.
“Turn then, most gracious advocate, your eyes of mercy toward us…” He continued as she kept shuddering underneath him.
She finally collapsed back with a groan, and released his hand from where it was trapped between her thighs. She didn’t stop rolling her hips though, fucking herself onto his fingers, and every few seconds her muscles seized again.
Her skin was pink, the hair around her temples sweaty, but gone was the worry and the strain that he’d noticed on her all week. She looked sated. Lazy.
A bolt of pleasure shot through him. There was a good chance she would forgive him. That he could touch her like this again. Like this, and in so many other ways he had been denying himself. Getting to grab her hip and press a kiss to the top of her head whenever she was in arm’s reach. Engulfing her in a hug whenever she fretted over one of her kids. Tasting her again. Pressing something other than his fingers inside of her.
When she stopped moving, he reluctantly pulled away, and sat back on the floor against the wall of the confessional. A large part of him still worried she’d stand up and leave, so it was with great relief that she followed him down, sitting in his lap. He wrapped his arms around her, and kissed her temple, as he murmured the rest of the prayer.
She rested her head on his shoulder and toyed with the beads of the rosary still draped around her palm. He gathered her up tight.
He already loved her in a visceral way, a way that was new and blood boiling. He wondered what it will be like to love her when it’s worn in and comfortable.
He could see the years laid out before them, after he returned to a state of laity, after he figured out his new path, after they were able to understand each other in these different circumstances.
He would wake up in their bed and watch her snore gently on his shoulder. They would make a mess when they painted their sitting room together and argue about footie matches down at the pub. He would learn to cook something other than toast and get frustrated untangling her knickers from his shirts when he folded the laundry.
He could volunteer at the parish, like she did.
He could watch her walk down the aisle wearing white and they could bring their children to church together on Sunday.
They could, if she wanted.
He tilted his lips to her ear and finished his prayer.
“O clement, O loving, O sweet Lucy.”