JACOB
Keep watching and praying that you may not come into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. Matthew 26:41
I’d tossed and turned all night. Partly because of the insane bullshit my brother had spewed the night before and partly because of the wood floor I had the honor of calling a bed.
My eyes cracked open to a dimly lit room, soft, rhythmic breathing above me a quiet sound counting down time as it passed by.
Eve hadn’t stirred when I returned from Jericho’s compound, hadn’t noticed when my weight sank down onto the side of the bed and I stared down at her wanting to peel off the uniform of a priest and reveal the man below.
Based on her breathing, she was still up there sleeping comfortably while I lay on a pile of blankets, my head supported by a lumpy pillow that provided me with absolutely no sleep.
There were too many shitty factors colliding in my life, too much I couldn’t explain that I felt like I was drowning beneath whatever madness my brother could inflict.
Yet, here it was, on God’s holy day, and I had a duty to lead a service I wasn’t sure I believed any longer.
Although, the majority of what Jericho had said was maniacal nonsense, there was one point he made that I couldn’t see past no matter how hard I tried not to think about it:
I was a fallen man.
Maybe not at the moment of birth, but when I grew older and I learned why God had created women for men. Once I had that first taste, it was over. Jacob the doubtful believer became Jacob the hopelessly lost.
I was no longer part of the flock to which my father had indoctrinated me, and all I wanted was another taste of the divine, that moment where I became God himself, setting myself up in his golden throne above the body of whatever woman I was corrupting.
At that moment, there was nobody more vulnerable than the woman sleeping soundly beside me. Everything inside me screamed to shuck the cloth, to rebel against the vows the religion had forced on me and give in to the man I was inside.
Guilt and more guilt, it’s all I’d ever been taught. And even though I knew the games I’d played would eventually lead me straight to Hell, I thought that Hell had grown impatient and risen up to greet me on the night Cassandra died.
Maybe I’d been too rough? Maybe I hadn’t seen the signs she was in distress? Maybe I didn’t care enough to see them.
Maybe it was God’s punishment for the sins I knew I’d keep committing, and I got scared.
Fuck! How I got scared.
I ran back to the only thing I knew that could shelter me, a life without sin, a calling without remorse, and a mentality that kept me sequestered and alone, free of the temptations that were all around me.
Only I had to be shouldered again with the unbearable weight of a lifetime of guilt for my crimes.
I was sick and tired of the guilt.
And it took a sick fuck to make me see it – which made me not want to see it at all.
In truth, the only thing the Church had done in my life was draw boundaries. They’d boxed me in with scripture, bound my hands with expectations, and drove a knife in my gut, twisting it each time I stepped just outside of those lines to explore who I really was inside. There were parts of me that were messy and without shape, parts that didn’t fit within those neat little lines that all devout people are supposed to respect. When I stepped outside those lines, I was whipped and beaten, dragged over the floor by a father who didn’t agree that life itself was just as messy as me, the abuse witnessed by a mother who believed the husband is the ruler of the house.
Maybe that’s where the darkness started: on those late nights and early mornings where Jericho and I both were beaten and flogged. Simple mistakes we made were somehow the same as us spitting in the face of God, and my father – a devout yet sinful man himself – made sure to brand us with our own sin, instilling in us a craving for the kind of pain that showed us we were alive.
It was only natural we’d follow in his footsteps. Once that door was opened, it was damn near impossible to close. Rather than shaping up and learning how to stay within those boundaries, we took that pain, that guilt, and all the horrible feelings that came with it and we turned it around on the good little brats who would drop their panties and let us invade and abuse them until they cried.
We didn’t just tempt them outside those boundaries, we forced them out, their eyes opening to the world around them once they were no longer sheltered in the strict ideas of what a good little girl should be.
What scared me even more than Jericho’s insistence that I’d never actually changed was his reminder that it had been me who always played the hardest, because, in that, he wasn’t wrong.
In the beginning, Jericho and I had just been looking for a good time. We were the normal teenage boys, horny as all hell, but still respectful of the boundaries set for us. But our first venture outside those lines set a fire in our bodies, a ravenous hunger to go further, push harder, until we could explore in intimate detail all the sexual deviances open to us if we only learned how to ask right.
A handsome man is enough to turn many a young woman’s eye, but two identical twins made attracting attention like child’s play.
A coordinated team, we learned to lure them in. Jericho was only there for the sexual release, at least, at first he was. But eventually I got bored with taking a woman’s virginity and I began exploring outward, seeing how far we could push them until they broke.
As it turned out, we could push very far.
Most women shied away at first, not trusting two men who wanted her bound and helpless. A little petting, a small stroke to awaken the fire inside her, and that woman was placing her wrists together, ready and willing to make herself victim to whatever pleasures we had in mind.
Fast forward a little bit later and bondage wasn’t enough. I wanted to hurt those women. I wanted them to know what it meant to be like us.
I’d had pain delivered on my body all my life, and I returned that pain with the gratification of a starving man receiving a slice of bread to ease his discomfort.
Jericho went along with it, like he always had, but then I pushed the boundary too far and scared a woman half to death.
He retreated back into the life safe within religion’s boundaries, and I pushed forward, packing my things and leaving for college – a free man unrestrained by the guilt I’d always carried.
Cassandra died because of me. I was as sure of that as I was the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. I never saw the autopsy photos, I never read the reports, but her mother came to see me one day, and she told me.
Almost every inch of her skin hidden beneath her clothes was bruised. Her breasts, her hips, the insides of her thighs, everywhere that my teeth, or fingers, or the palm of my hand had decided to play. Perhaps it was a symptom of whatever blood condition she had, but it was like artwork to me. I loved to sit and admire those marks only because she’d worn them in remembrance of me.
I put them there on all the women I took to my bed, and I wanted to put them on the woman sleeping above me now.
I needed a sign.
But for some reason, I didn’t think God cared.
Or maybe his silence was the sign after all.
Pushing up from the floor, I darted my eyes to the bed to see Sedra sleeping soundly. The blanket had slipped down to her waist and the t-shirt she wore had slipped up to reveal the bottom swell of her breasts. Lush and full, they called to me to taste them, to bite them, lick them and claim them with my greedy hands.
Taking a few steps in her direction, I balled my hands into fists. It would be so easy to wake her, so easy to tell her every dirty thing I wanted to do to her, and so easy to follow through with it.
But it was Sunday. God’s day. The church would soon start filling with the parishioners from town. They’d look for me if I ran late, and the things I wanted to do to Sedra would take hours.
I forced myself away, just to turn and see the inverted cross on the ground. Just like that I was forced back within those boundaries. Snatching the cross from the floor, I hung it on the nail in the wall and muttered, “Not today, Satan.”
The serpent must have laughed his head off.
It took me a half hour to shower and get as ready as possible for the day to come. Dreading having to get up in front of the congregation and spread a message of hope and love, I sat on the edge of the bed in my room, fixing my clerical collar into place and staring down at Sedra.
She was so sweet. So innocent. And so off limits if I had any hope of not going insane. Every day it was getting harder. Every day I struggled with the question of whether I could go against my vows. Would I be willing to take advantage of a woman who doesn’t know who I am?
To her, I was Elijah, and no matter how I tried to convince her otherwise, she would only see my brother when she looked at me.
It wasn’t like we hadn’t played that trick before with other women, but back then I hadn’t cared.
Not that I should care now.
Touching her shoulder, I shook her softly, waiting and watching as her green eyes cracked open, a sleepy smile slipping across her face as she looked at me.
“Morning,” I said, smiling back when I should have been stepping away.
“Hey,” she whispered, her voice still groggy from lack of use. Pushing herself into a seated position, she tugged the t-shirt down to her waist.
Ignoring how disappointed I was by her body being fully covered, I cleared my throat. “I have Sunday Mass today. I’ll be in the sanctuary for most of the late morning and early afternoon. Can you do me a favor and stay out of sight?”
“I already told you I would.”
Nodding my head, I stood up from the bed just to place some distance between us. Spinning back, I stared at her. “Wait? What?”
“For Mass.”
Had I already mentioned that to her? I couldn’t remember with all the chaos erupting in my life. I must have.
Glancing at the clock, I realized I’d lost the time to worry about it. I needed to get dressed, gather the homily I’d prepared and be ready for the procession into the sanctuary.
“Okay. The bathroom is through there, which I’m sure you know, and I’ll bring you some food once Mass has concluded.”
I didn’t give her time to respond, the sleepy look on her face was not making it easy to walk away.
Hurrying to my office, I waved at a few parishioners who’d already made their way into the church. I weaved the halls, grabbed the notes I’d made for today’s service and then used back halls to enter the sacristy, the room where I dressed in my vestments and awaited the procession that would lead me into the sanctuary. Several of the processional members were already dressed and in place.
I quickly clothed myself in the cassock robe worn by most priests during services, hung the alb around my neck to hang down the front of my body and tied it in place with the cincture. The robe had always been a little big for me and was roomy enough that I often worried about tripping over it while making my way around the altar towards the pulpit.
Although most parishes had an elaborate set up behind the pulpit where the priest gives his sermon, mine only had the stained glass windows, and not many people to lead me in the procession.
We were a small town, after all, and this was a small building that didn’t have the room for all the pomp and circumstance you’d find at a larger parish. The small size was fine by me because I’d never been one who saw the absolute need of all the decorations, glitz and glamor some felt was necessary to glorify God.
I’d always told my congregation that as long as they were in the Lord’s house, he was happy to see them. Many of my colleagues scoffed at my dressed down attitude, but I didn’t care much about those colleagues to give a damn.
Music softly played from the sanctuary and I walked slowly at the back of the processional, eventually weaving up around the altar to take my place at the pulpit.
The items needed for the Eucharist were set up on the altar and I inwardly groaned at being the man who would administer it. I was feeling anything but holy at that moment and wasn’t even sure I believed the message I would be giving today.
Spreading my papers out on the surface of the large pulpit, I took a steadying breath before peering out at the congregation. Dread crawled along my spine, and when I reached the center pews, the reason for that dread stared back at me.
Her hair was down for the first time I'd seen since I'd known her. Gone was the messy braid she always wore over her shoulder, absent were the thick framed glasses that always slipped down the bridge of her nose, and in their place was a face full of makeup, a shirt that hung low enough to show the top swells of her small breasts, and a smile intended just for me with sensual secrets hiding behind it.
Annabelle Prete had been shown a life outside the boundaries, and she had no idea that the man she'd slept with hadn't been me. I wouldn't say she was a changed girl, not yet anyway. I had hope that she'd simply let this all go and be successful in college and the rest of her life.
The come hither stare, however, made it hard to hold on to that hope.
Darting my gaze down to my papers, I waited while the five person chorus sang, I gathered my thoughts while the routine ran its course, and following the scripture reading about God's promise of salvation, I launched into the homily, keeping my eyes pinned anywhere than on Annabelle.
It didn't matter that I wouldn't look directly at her. I could feel her eyes burning into me. More guilt poured in and I was so fucking tired of it.
My mouth was preaching to the congregation about sin and forgiveness, but all I could think about was the woman sitting in my bedroom, most likely on my bed, that looked at me the same way Annabelle was doing now - like she would cut open all her veins for me just so I could enjoy tasting the blood.
That's the thing with certain women: It doesn't matter if you ask them to give up their life, they're just happy for the attention you give them. A pure submissive personality - so deliciously dutiful and obedient - is not a person with differences and opinions. They are a lump of clay waiting for you to form them while they snuggle up to the warmth of your strong hand.
Regardless of what I was really feeling and thinking, I continued talking to the parishioners, filling their lives with hope and light while I stood behind the pulpit wondering just how fast my train would be to Hell. Would it be a long and languorous trip on a coal-powered locomotive that gave you time to think of your sins? Or would it be a high-speed rail where I blinked and found myself kneeling obediently at Lucifer's feet?
I didn't know, and for the things that I kept thinking about doing to a woman who wouldn't say no, I didn't care much either. That scared me. So, while I preached about God to a congregation that looked to me for life's answers, I silently begged for a sign that He was there watching over me, that I hadn't fallen, and that Jericho wasn't right about me all along.
He sent me that sign, but it wasn't the answer I was expecting.
My lips kept preaching, my mind lost to the torment of the past few days, and beneath my legs, something brushed against my robe. The pulpit that encased me was large and dark wood, covering me completely in front and around both sides. It was bulky and dreary, needed a good polish, and the surface where I set my papers was scarred from years of use.
Wondering if a rat or some other animal had run in from the woods and taken this as a home, I stepped back just a touch to look down at my feet and see nothing but the hem of my cassock dusting lazily over the ground. My concern bled away to relief and I kept talking about the purity of the Divine, about the seat in Heaven we'd all receive if we did our best to fight against sin and ask for redemption.
I talked about how God, in his Kingdom, watched down on us, granting us blessings for our servitude and strife. And just as I raised my voice to remind the good people of this rural town that by acting in faith, by remembering our place and conducting our lives in a manner that God would deem fitting, a set of delicate fingers traced up my leg to wrap around my calf.
Shock tore through me, striking deep into every cell of my body, my muscles bunched over bone and I glanced down again while still trying to keep my voice as even as possible.
Eve sat below me, naked as the day she was born, her full breasts exposed to what light could breach the space between my body and the interior of the pulpit. She flashed me a wicked grin, the look in her eyes almost identical to the one Annabelle Prete kept giving me each and every time my gaze quickly drifted past her in the pews where the parishioners sat.
Lifting a finger, Eve placed it against her lips, reminding me that, for this, I needed to stay silent.
Stay out of sight...
I already told you I would...
My thoughts returned to the conversation we had in my room before I left for Mass. I hated that I didn't take the time to focus more on what she'd said to me on my way out the door. This wasn't exactly what I'd meant by staying out of sight, but in her messed up head, she wasn't doing anything wrong.
Shaking my head just enough that she would see, but the congregation wouldn't notice, I tried to make her understand that she needed to stop. Eve wasn't listening. Her lips pulled apart on a slinky little grin and before I could stop her, she flipped the hem of the cassock over her head and ran both hands up the backs of my legs.
My eyes closed for a second, panic overtaking me as I inched closer to the pulpit to ensure nobody would notice the naked woman beneath. There was nothing I could do but keep talking to the parishioners staring back at me, my voice still strong and steady despite the woman exploring up my legs with her hands.
It wasn't long before her hands cupped my ass, her small frame shimmying beneath the oversized Cassock that should have been tight to my body had it been the right size. As soon as her fingers squeezed over the muscles and I felt her breasts brush the front of my thighs, my hands moved from the surface of the pulpit to grip the raised ledges on the sides.
My voice wavered as my body responded and I fought to focus my attention on the homily and the congregation to whom I was speaking. A shiver coursed through me, my eyes closing and opening once more, my gaze accidentally catching sight of Annabelle's face where she sat in rapt attention watching me like I'd been the one to fulfill her most secret of fantasies.
Fuck... I thought silently while still struggling to speak with an even voice.
My erection was tight against my pants, the cotton of my underwear like sandpaper against skin that hadn't been touched by a foreign hand in twelve long years. Eve slid her fingers across the sides of my thighs, moving her grip from my ass to the front of my pants, a small tug letting me know she'd found the button that would open the front and expose me to whatever actions she had in mind.
There was no way out from between the rock and the hard place I now found myself. Moving aside or making a scene would only display to the entire congregation what I'd been hiding in the church for the last few days. I had no choice but to stand there, to let the serpent laugh as Eve freed the button of my pants and pulled down the tab of the zipper.
The relief was as instantaneous as the burden. The tight black pants of a priest no longer confined my erection. The burden was keeping my voice straight and continuing to preach God's holy light while my cock was gripped in Eve's warm hands and pulled free of my underwear.
My voice stumbled as soon as her fingers squeezed over the sensitive flesh, my eyes closed again as a hush fell over the congregation, each person looking up at me wondering why I'd stopped for that one small second and when I'd begin speaking again.
Clearing my throat, I ignored the bead of sweat dripping from my temple down the line of my jaw, and opened my eyes to keep fighting the need my body had to moan in absolute pleasure.
"Excuse me," I said out loud, finding my place in the homily to begin preaching again. "I got a little caught up in the Word of God is all."
The parishioners smiled in response to the blatant lie, their small hand fans working harder to expel the heat that tended to fill the nave and sanctuary when it was packed full of human bodies sucking up all the oxygen. I could barely breath myself, but it wasn't the crush of body heat that gripped my lungs, it was the firm grip of a hand that stroked me from head to balls, slowly moving until I knew that if I didn't start thrusting, I would die.
And there I stood like Sir Percival himself, being tempted by the devil while I sought the Holy Grail. However, unlike him, I wasn't able to deny the serpent's persuasion, wasn't able to forbid myself the freedom of my body's yearnings because, deep down inside, the serpent's darkness was the same as mine.
We are all simple men, our souls battered and striving to achieve greatness in a world that is anything but great. Nothing about me was better than the sinners staring back at me, the clothes I wore, the clerical collar. The years I'd spent denying myself were only a tattered and thin veil that had hidden away and concealed the truth of my sins from myself.
And to make matters worse, my eyes caught sight of Annabelle Prete, the shiny pink of her tongue flicking out to run provocatively across her bottom lip while down below the pulpit, Eve's hands pulled away so that she could wrap the wet heat of her mouth around the head my cock.
She suckled the tip and I sold my soul in full view of the flock I was supposed to lead. My hands gripped the sides of the pulpit threatening to shatter the thick, dark wood beneath my fingers. My legs locked to keep my hips from thrusting, the entire time my lips kept moving to deliver a message I knew at that moment I no longer believed.
The thought crossed my mind that I'd never believed it at all, that my entire existence after taking my vows had been one big lie I'd told, a farce engineered to deny myself the feeling of empowerment that came from sullying the good little girls and making them cry.
The beast that had settled silently inside me while I kneeled and prayed and pretended like I could deny my very nature came to life as Eve's mouth slid farther down the shaft, the tip of her dainty tongue flicking over the thick vein as my eyes continued to track the changing expressions on Annabelle's face, the finger that reached up to run along the deep V of her sweater.
I was a fallen man, damned and doomed, and waiting for the hour when I could shed the cloth of the devout to unfurl my dark, razor edged wings and take what should have been mine from the fucking start.
Somehow, my mouth kept speaking a message of hope and salvation, my voice much grittier now, strained with the effort not to growl as I reached down to force Eve's mouth so far that I could thrust into the back of her throat.
Of course, young Annabelle would pick up the need in my tone, the desperation bleeding out of me as fire, brimstone, and the wet heat of Hell's lava flowed over my dick, the sharp edges of teeth scraping the skin just enough to make me want to punish Eve with my hand fisted in her thick, soft hair.
My balls were tightening beneath me, dancing in delight for the storm of a climax they were readying. How bored they must have been hanging down between my legs, unused and useless, after I'd taken a vow to be celibate.
Gripping my fingers harder, I heard the faint crack of wood under the pressure, Eve's head bobbing now as she reached up to stroke the shaft with her hand in time with her mouth.
Annabelle shifted in her seat, her lips parting just barely to realize I was now staring her down.
As my climax roared through me, as my fingers tightened harder on the wood of the pulpit, and as I came so violently in Eve's mouth that it made her cough just slightly to quickly swallow it down, I finished the homily with so much passion and fury, it forced the parishioners to their feet at the moment I spilled my last drop just so they could scream, "Amen!"
A-fucking-men was right.
My eyes closed. My chest beat with labored breath and I cursed inwardly to realize I still had to administer Eucharist. The chorus began their communion songs, giving me a minute to wonder if Eve planned on tucking me back in my pants, or if I would perform the consecration of the Eucharist with my spit cleaned cock hanging out beneath my cassock.
It was definitely going to be the high speed rail that dragged me down to Hell itself, and I wondered if I wasn't already on it.
Eve did me the favor of tucking me back into my pants and refastening the buttons. Quickly wiggling her way out from beneath my robe, she stopped when the low light hit her eyes. I saw the devil himself dancing within the deep green, and I was the sadistic beast calling out to him.
Moving away from the pulpit, I stepped to the altar and went through the motions of changing wine and the wafers into the blood and body of Christ. Two altar servers stepped up to assist me and when we took our places, Annabelle made sure to step into my line.
Twenty minutes ago and I would have hated seeing her waiting so patiently, but now, freed of the ability to give a single fuck anymore, I simply looked at her and smirked.
Yes, it was wrong and yes, I should have realized I'd just snapped the leash of sanity that had held tight to my clerical collar for years, but I was sick and fucking tired of caging who I was inside, holding it within the boundaries laid out by a religion that always told me I'd be damned.
It didn't matter that I struggled and fought. It didn't matter that I confessed, and preached and lived a celibate life to escape eternal damnation. Because in this moment, during a Mass to the God who was apparently ignoring me, I realized that no matter what I did to avoid it, I would be knocking on Hell's gates regardless.
My smile widened as Annabelle inched closer, the parishioners kneeling down with their hands held out to accept the body of Christ within them. And when young Annabelle Prete stepped up, you couldn't miss the slight tremor in her body, the adoration in her eyes, and the fire of need raging inside her.
She knelt down slowly in front of me, her tongue flicking out to lick her lip, her gaze locking on mine as she didn't offer her hands for the Eucharist, but instead opened her mouth.
Taking a wafer to slip on her tongue, I shivered when her lips closed around my finger, when the tip of her tongue slid over the pad with the tempting promise of what it would feel like on another part of my body.
"The body of Christ," I murmured as she suckled on my finger, her tongue and lips sliding off as she let go and answered, "Amen."
The devil danced in her eyes just the same as mine.
Once the last parishioner had come before me to take the body and blood into their bodies, I returned to the altar to close communion with a prayer and drink what was left of the wine with greedy, ravenous gulps.
The parishioners made the sign of the cross over their bodies before filing slowly outside, and as they walked off to their early afternoon suppers, their chores around the house, or whatever it was they were going to do, I hovered by the pulpit waiting for the moment Eve and I would be alone. The exit procession had snaked off without me, but I didn't care about breaking Tradition, I simply wanted them all to be gone.
Annabelle was the last person to leave, her body aimlessly stalling, hoping for what, exactly, I wasn't sure. Eventually her mom called out to her, waving her on, and I locked my eyes to hers as her sweet smile turned into a frown and she exited through the front doors.
My hand landed on the ledge of the pulpit, my eyes studying the striation of the wood where it had cracked beneath my fingers, and when I was sure that the only two people left in the building were Eve and me, I let out a tremulous breath.
"Eve," I ordered with a barely controlled voice. "Get your ass out here."
The sound of shuffling whispered out from beneath the pulpit, a naked body being exposed with red marks on her knees from where she'd kneeled for over an hour.
Slowly, she crept toward me on hands and knees like any good girl should. When she reached my feet, she sat in wait, her bottom planted on her crossed feet and her hands folded demurely in her lap.
Damn it, Jericho. You trained her just right.
Jutting my chin in the direction of the rectory, I said, "Go to my room and wait for me."
Not able to trust myself where I was standing, I stepped back to keep our bodies from brushing together as she pushed up to her feet. I watched the beauty of her figure march away in route to my bedroom, my mind drowning in the ideas of what I'd do to her next.