I pulled out, my c.o.c.k so hard it hurt, and stood. "Stay," I ordered, and I tucked myself back inside my boxers to make the short walk to the ambry in the back of the sanctuary, the small cabinet where we kept our sacred oils.

My hands shook as I opened the door. These were oils that had been blessed during Holy Week by my bishop, oils used only for sacraments like baptism and confirmation and the anointing of the sick. I selected a gla.s.s vial of oil-the Oil of Chrism-and went back to Poppy, studiously avoiding the crucifix and the tabernacle with my eyes as I did.

She'd stayed on the floor, her skirt still bunched up around her waist, her cheeks flushed. After I'd locked the door again, I stood over her and pulled at my collar, trying to take it off.

"No," she said, her pupils large and dark. "Leave it on."

My d.i.c.k surged. Dirty girl.

"You're going to kill me," I told her as I knelt down. I flipped her over on her stomach, so that her delicious a.s.s faced me and also so that she could rest her head on her arms if she needed.

I unstoppered the vial and drizzled some of the oil on my fingertip, which I then used to paint a slick circle around the tight rosebud of her a.s.s. She quivered under my caress, involuntarily tensing every time my touch grazed her there. But her p.u.s.s.y clenched too, and I could see how she was starting to press her hips into the floor, trying to alleviate some of the ache building in her c.l.i.t.

I added more oil to my fingers and started teasing and testing at her rim, ma.s.saging her, loosening her. The smell of balsam-an ancient, churchy smell-filled the room.

"Do you know what this is, Poppy?" I asked.

She shook her head against her arms.

"It's a sacramental oil. It's used for baptisms and ordinations. It's even used to anoint the walls of a church when it's built." I ran a hand down the smooth, firm slope of her back, feeling her sigh against my touch, and at that moment, sliding a finger inside.

She gasped.

"I'm anointing you now," I informed her. "I'm sanctifying you from the inside out. You feel that? That's my finger f.u.c.king your a.s.s. And in just a minute, it will be my c.o.c.k. It will be my c.o.c.k consecrating you. No, don't touch yourself, sweetheart. We're going to get there together."

I took her hand, which had been sliding underneath her stomach, and put it up by her head, all while I kept working her a.s.s with the oil and my finger. Her channel was so d.a.m.n snug, and just knowing my d.i.c.k would take its place in a matter of minutes was enough to make me into a wild man.

I couldn't wait any longer. I poured a healthy amount of oil on my palm and then fisted my c.o.c.k, the view in front of me and my own slick, strong hand pushing me close to the edge.

"Tyler," Poppy said, looking back at me. "I've done this before. But never with someone your size." She looked a little worried, but she was also still grinding herself against the floor, desperate to be f.u.c.ked.

I wanted to tell her I'd be gentle with her a.s.s, but I also didn't want to make a promise I didn't know I could keep (because f.u.c.k, I could barely hold it together just looking at it.) Instead, I told her, "You tell me when to stop and I'll stop that very instant, okay?"

She nodded and laid her head down, canting her hips up to meet me. I leaned down, one hand guiding my c.o.c.k to her entrance and the other reaching for the oil, pouring more over her a.s.s and over my d.i.c.k until we were both slippery as f.u.c.k.

I set down the vial and then started caressing her back as I pushed against her tightness, feeling her open gradually to me, slowly welcoming me in.

The head of my d.i.c.k pushed and pushed and finally eased past the initial resistance, and all of a sudden, I was inside and her a.s.s was gripping me in a tight heat unlike anything I'd ever felt before, even with the other girlfriends I'd done this with. I had to hang my head and take several deep breaths, counting to ten, before I could be sure that I wasn't going to lose it too early to savor her properly.

I pushed in a little more. "Oh lamb, this is going to be a tight fit," I warned.

And it was.

The moment I sank all the way home, I paused, giving her a moment to adjust to my size. She breathed in and out, and then sucked in a sharp, needy inhale as I found her c.l.i.t and began working it. I didn't move for several long moments, simply let her feel the fullness of me while I exploited all that tension I'd built up in her, leading her to the precipice so we could jump off together.

I wanted to ask her if she was ready for more, but I knew how frustrated she got with Good Guy Tyler always asking for permission, so instead I moved slowly, waiting at every movement for her to signal that she needed time or that she needed to stop.

I lifted her hips, guiding her to rest up on all fours. Pause.

I straightened my own body as I kept rubbing her c.l.i.t. Pause.

I withdrew just an inch and then pushed in just an inch. Pause.

And bit by bit, she went from adjusting to wanting, pushing back into me like the greedy kitten she was, whimpering in protest whenever my hand left her c.l.i.t. And I gave her slightly more and more, until I was pulling out to the tip and gliding back in, still unhurriedly-calmly even-but building steam now.

The whole time, I stroked her legs and back and rubbed her c.l.i.t, I told her what a good girl she was, such a good little s.l.u.t for letting me f.u.c.k her sweet a.s.s, my own obedient little s.l.u.t, and she belonged to me, wasn't that right? She only wanted me inside her, she only wanted my d.i.c.k and my fingers and my mouth.

She nodded at my words, all of them, and she was trembling as I f.u.c.ked her, covered in sweat and shivering like she had a fever. I had meant to hold her back until the very end, but seeing her like this drove me crazy, obsessed me with the thought of her coming while I was in her a.s.s, and so I finally settled in on her c.l.i.t in earnest, pressing the pad of my middle finger against it and circling her in the hard, fast way that she liked.

Within seconds, she was crying out, pressing her a.s.s against my hips so that I was buried to my b.a.l.l.s, her fingers scrabbling at the carpet and wordless grunts tearing from her throat.

I watched her come apart, the carefully coiffed and sculpted pieces of Poppy Danforth falling away like scaffolding, leaving behind a shuddering, incoherent creature of want, and then she ground out one word, and that was it, I was lost. Lost to my control, to my vows, to anything other than the need to mark this woman in the most primitive and the basest way possible.

One word.

Yours.

I went rough now, gripping her hips and slamming into her, grunting myself, chasing my release as she gasped her way through the aftershocks of hers, and her a.s.s was so d.a.m.n slick, so d.a.m.n tight, everything squeezing me and gripping me, and then it took me like a tidal wave of darkness, the real frenzy, pounding and growling as it imploded up through my spine and my b.a.l.l.s, and f.u.c.k, I was coming, coming, coming, and there was black crowding at the edges of my vision and I was going to pa.s.s out as I pulsed, pa.s.s out or just keep coming and coming like it had no end.

I'd pulled out at the very last moment so I could watch as my o.r.g.a.s.m laced her a.s.s and back with c.u.m, drops and rivulets like some kind of rain, dripping down the pleated rose of her entrance and over the curves of her back and hips.

As my vision cleared and my senses returned, I could admire my handiwork, the panting, trembling woman in front of me, covered with me.

Poppy stretched back out on her stomach, somehow making the movement elegant, erotic. "Clean me up," she commanded like the little queen she was, and I rushed to obey. I washed her with a wet towel and then I kept her on the floor while I ma.s.saged her hips and thighs and back and arms, murmuring the sweetest things I could think of in Latin and Greek and quoting Song of Songs as I covered every inch of her skin in kisses.

And I could tell from the way she smiled to herself, the way she closed her eyes every now and again as if to push back tears, that this was something Sterling had never done. He'd never checked in with her after s.e.x, he'd never petted her and praised her and rewarded her.

I didn't even try not to feel triumphant about that.

And then after she was cleaned up, she and I sat down and worked on our fundraiser. She helped me set up for the men's group and then she went to the women's group at Millie's house. And all the while I could smell the balsam on her skin and on mine, and nothing short of being with this woman every minute of every day would be enough to stop the yawning hunger low in my belly.

Or, even more dangerously, stop the hunger in my heart.

Something shifted for me that day, something that I realized had been shifting for a while. It was like the feeling I'd had as a child, when I'd taken off my roller skates after a few hours of skating and my feet would feel abnormally light and floaty. Or maybe like the feeling when I camped with my dad and Ryan, and we finally got to dump our gear on the ground after several hours of hiking, and I felt so light I could swear I was hovering a few inches above the ground.

I didn't have a name for it, but it was lightness and lifting, and it had something to do with Lizzy. Something to do with sharing her death and its aftermath with Poppy, something with Poppy's whispered words, is Lizzy the reason you're afraid to let go with me?

I realized now, as I cradled Lizzy's rosary in my palm, that Lizzy was the reason for a lot of things. She was the reason for everything. Her death was a weight I carried with me always, a wrong I had to avenge. But what if I could change that? What if I could trade vengeance for love? That was what Christians were called to do, after all, choose love above all else.

Love. The word was a bomb. An unexploded bomb living inside my chest.

That night, I texted Poppy. Are you awake?

A beat. Yes.

My response was immediate. Can I come over? I have a gift for you.

Well, I was going to say no, but now that I know there's a present...come on over ;) I made my careful, quiet way across the park, wearing a dark t-shirt and jeans. It was late and the park was in a natural dell, sheltered from view, but I still felt nervous as I strode in quick steps down the path, cutting through the weed-choked gra.s.s to get to Poppy's gate. I let myself in, wincing at every creak of the rusted latch, and then walked up to her door, rapping once with my knuckle on the gla.s.s.

She opened the door and her face lit up with the most beautiful f.u.c.king smile I'd ever seen.

"Wow," she said. "You're here. Like a real person."

"Did you doubt that I was real before?"

She shook her head, standing aside so I could walk in and then closing the door after me. "I've never dated someone whom I couldn't actually date. I had half-convinced myself that you only existed inside the church walls."

"Dating?" My voice came out too eager, too excited. I cleared my throat. "I mean, we're dating?"

"I don't know what you call it when you f.u.c.k someone's a.s.s raw, Father Bell, but that's what I call it."

A sudden fear dropped into my stomach, and I stepped towards her, grabbing her hand and pulling her into me, so I could look down into her eyes. "Are you sore?" I asked, worried.

She beamed up at me. "Only in the best ways." She raised up to kiss my jaw and then moved into the kitchen. "Would you like a drink? Let me guess...a cosmo? No-a pomegranate martini."

"Ha. Whiskey-Irish or Scotch, I don't care. But neat."

She gestured toward the living room and I went, taking the opportunity to look around her house as I did. It was still mostly boxes and paint cans, and despite the attractive furniture and tasteful pictures and paintings resting against the wall, it was fairly plain that Poppy didn't find much interest in the domestic arts.

Stacks of books rested against the wall, waiting for a permanent home, and I ran my fingers down the ridged towers of their spines, both openly pleased and secretly jealous of how well-read this woman was. There were the usual suspects, of course-Austen and Bronte and Wharton-but names I would not have expected along with them-Joseph Campbell and David Hume and Michel Foucault. I was flipping through Thus Spoke Zarathustra (an old nemesis from both my mDiv and my history cla.s.ses) when Poppy drifted over with our drinks.

Our fingers grazed against each other when I took my tumbler of Macallan, and then I set it down and set Poppy's drink down, because I wanted to kiss her. I wanted to slide my hands up that slender neck and cup her face as I explored her mouth, and I wanted to walk her back to the couch so I could lay her down and slowly peel every layer of clothing off her body.

But I had come here to do something, not to f.u.c.k her (well, not only to f.u.c.k her) so I contented myself with a kiss and then pulled back to get my drink again. She looked a little dazed from the kiss, a dreamy sort of smile hanging around her lips as she took a sip from her martini gla.s.s, and then she declared that she was going to get something for us to snack on.

I continued my slow perusal of her living room, feeling relaxed and peaceful. I'm doing the right thing. This could be a new beginning for us, for me. Something official to mark our relationship-that's how rituals worked, right? Something tangible to signal the intangible. A gift to show Poppy what she meant to me-what us meant to me-to show her the strange but also divine transformation happening in my life because of her.

The house was small, but it had been recently renovated, with sleek wooden floors and the original large fireplace and large, clean lines of trim. She had a wide wooden desk by a window, the only symbol of any true intent of unpacking and staying, with an iMac and a printer and a scanner, neat stacks of folders and a small wooden box filled with expensive looking pens.

Next to the desk, in an open cardboard box, were her framed degrees, neglected and buried amongst other castoff office items-half-used pads of Post-Its and open boxes of envelopes.

Dartmouth - Bachelor of Economics, summa c.u.m laude.

Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth - Master of Business Administration, summa c.u.m laude.

And then one I didn't expect, University of Kansas - Bachelor of Fine Arts, Dance. This one was dated from this past spring.

I held it up as Poppy returned with a cutting board loaded with cheese and sliced pears. "You got another degree?"

She actually blushed, busying herself with setting the tray down on the coffee table. "I had a lot of free time when I moved here, and once I started making so much money at the club, I thought I'd put it to good use. This time, my parents weren't around to tell me not to get a dance degree, so I just went for it. I managed to squeeze it into three years instead of four."

I came toward her. "Will you dance for me sometime?"

"I could do it now," she said, pressing her hand against my sternum and pushing me down onto the sofa. She climbed over me, straddling me, and my c.o.c.k immediately leapt with interest. But her thigh pressed against my slacks pocket and I remembered why I was there in the first place.

I trapped her with one arm around her waist, forcing her to hold still while I dug the small tissue-paper-wrapped packet out of my pocket.

She tilted her head as I handed it to her. "Is this my present?" she asked, looking delighted.

"It's..." I didn't know how to explain what it was. "It's not new," I finished lamely.

She unwrapped it, staring at the pile of jade beads nestled in the tissue paper. She pulled the rosary out slowly, the silver cross spinning in the low light. "It's beautiful," she whispered.

"Everyone should have a nice rosary. At least, that's what my grandmother always said." I slid my hands to rest on the outside of Poppy's thighs, mostly so I could look somewhere other than the rosary. "That one was Lizzy's."

I felt her body tense in my lap.

"Tyler," she said carefully. "I can't take this."

She tried to hand it back to me, but I caught her hand with my own, curling her fingers around it.

"After Lizzy died, no one wanted anything of hers that reminded them of what she had gone through at church. Her bible and holy cards and saint's candles-my dad threw them all away." I flinched, remembering his white-hot rage when he'd found out that I'd dug her rosary out of the trash. "But I wanted something of hers. I wanted to keep all the parts of her alive in my memory."

"Don't you still?"

"Of course, but after we talked the other night...I realized that I also need to let parts of her go too. And when I think about her-well, I know she would have loved you." I met her eyes. "She would have loved you like I do."

Poppy's lips parted, her eyes wide and hopeful and scared, but before she could respond to what I said, I took her fingers in mine and said, "Let me teach you how to use this."

Yes, I was a coward. I was afraid of her not telling me that she loved me, and I was afraid of her telling me that she did love me. I was afraid of the palpable tie between us, afraid of the ribbon that laced through my ribs and around my heart that was also laced and tied around hers.

Her eyes never left mine as I moved her hand from her forehead to her heart and then to each shoulder. "In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit," I said for her. And then I put her fingers on the crucifix. "Now we pray the Apostle's Creed..."

We prayed the entire thing together with her on my lap, her echoing faintly after me, our fingers moving together through the beads, and it was somewhere near the last decade that I became aware of how hard I was, of how her nipples showed through her soft flowing tank top. Aware of those big hazel eyes and that long wavy hair and the watchful intelligence that peered through each and every expression of hers.

This is love, I thought dizzily, wondrously. This is what laying down a cross feels like. This is what taking up a new life feels like...it feels like Poppy Danforth. And as I intoned the final words of the rosary, I almost forgot whom I was praying to.

Hail holy queen...our sweetness and our hope.

Later that night, when I was moving over her and into her, those words tumbled around in my mind, words that were so indelibly Poppy, so indelibly attached to the brightness of her mind and the paradise of her body.

Holy. Queen. Sweetness.

Hope.

"Jordan."

The priest kneeling in front of me didn't stop praying or even turn to face me. Instead, he kept murmuring to himself in the same measured voice with the same measured pace, and I knew Jordan well enough to know that this was a polite way of telling me to f.u.c.k off until he was done.

I sat in the pew behind him.

Jordan was the only priest I personally knew who still prayed the Liturgy of the Hours, a practice that was so monastic as to be almost obsolete, which was probably part of the reason it appealed to him. Like me, he loved old things, but his fascination went beyond mere books and the occasional spiritual encounter. He lived like a medieval monk, a life almost completely and totally devoted to prayer and ritual. It was this mystical, unearthly nature that had brought so many young people into his parish; over the past three years, it had been his presence that had revitalized this old, inner city church that had been so close to closing when he'd taken it over into something thriving and alive.

Jordan finished his prayers and made the sign of the cross, standing with a purposeful slowness to face me.

"Father Bell," he said formally.

I refrained from rolling my eyes. He'd always been like this-aloof and intense. Even the one time he'd accidentally drank too much at the seminary barbecue and I'd had to babysit him as he puked all night. But what appeared to be haughtiness or coldness was actually just a symptom of his vibrant inner life, the constant atmosphere of holiness and inspiration that he lived in, an atmosphere so palpable to him that he didn't understand why other people didn't sense it as he did.