Father Frenault tapped his watch, just to make sure it was still running. It was.
3:26. Damn it! She should have been here by now!
he thought bitterly, then immediately made penance for the mental outburst and bit of implied blasphemy. He could afford a few more minutes before heading over to the Murphy boy's wake. In the meantime, he had no choice but to wait.
The first Thursday afternoon he'd run into Adara had been a fluke, pure and simple. He'd just happened to be in church, puttering around in his new parish, when he noticed a lovely redhead come into the vestry, light a candle, and make her way to one of the pews. He'd quickly slipped into the confessional and poked at the half curtain of the priest's vestibule until he caught a sliver of the image of her kneeling at prayer. It didn't seem right for her to have a barrier between herself and God.
A creature like that didn't need intercession; she was perfection personified,
he mused.
When she finished praying, she turned, heading for the confessional. Panic was his first reaction; then he realized she couldn't see him - the folds of the curtains camouflaged the slight voyeur's gap in shadows. Obviously, she'd noticed the indicator light was on; so she'd come to make her confession. After a couple of deep breaths, he calmed down enough to compose himself and took a seat in the coffin-like room beside her. Once he heard the clatter of metal hooks as the floor-length curtain of the parishioner's section closed, he slid back the little door, opening her compartment's grille to his chamber.
"Bless me, Father, for I have sinned. It's been over two months since my last confession."
He rubbed his sweaty palms on his trousers as he ran his shaking hands down his thighs. "Why has it been so long since your last confession, my child?" he said, trying to keep the croaking betrayal of nerves out of his voice.
Her breath caught in a sigh before she replied, "My husband's dying. It's hard to pray to a God I'm not sure I believe in any longer."
"Death is a part of life, child." The words sounded trite in his own ears, so he could only guess how meaningless they seemed to her.
She sighed again, and this time he could hear the weariness of the sound. "It's just that... well... he's been so sick for so long..." her voice trailed off without finishing her sentence.
"Cancer?"
He could see a shadow pass over the grille as she nodded; then he heard the faint rustle of fabric and a sniffling. She was crying, and there was nothing he could do to comfort her except offer words.
She choked back her tears before whispering, "Between the cancer, chemotherapy, and the drugs, he hasn't had any sex drive at all for over a year."
That admission seemed a damn shame to him, given how lovely she was.
What a waste!
"There's more to blessed union than the physical. Have you children?"
He heard her sniffling again before she replied, "No, Father. It was our wish, but we were never blessed. And now he's dying. All I ever wanted was a child." There was a strong sense of desperation in her simple statement. "So long since..."
Thoughts of lying with her, of planting seed inside her filled his inner sight. Oh, to hold her, for just a moment. To smell her honeyed breath, to feel the warmth of her bared flesh as their bodies lay entwined.
Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned
, his internal voice begged.
He was jarred back to reality by an unexpected and muffled noise, a shifting of weight, more rustling of fabric, shoes scuffing against the floorboards of the boxy chamber. "It seems the longer I go without, the more obsessed I become with it, and I realize that's a sin, Father."
His eyes closed as he listened to her sing-song litany of "sin." There were times when he wondered why the Church was so hard on simple thoughts, as if thinking of sin was as serious an offense to God as actually committing it. Then he looked down, surprised to witness his already hard cock making a bulge in his pants. With a sense of chagrin, he realized he hadn't been hearing the woman's confession for the last few minutes.
She'd stopped talking, and, at first, he thought she'd momentarily paused before continuing, but then he noticed a slight slurping noise coming from the other side of the wall. Curiosity got the better of him, so he leaned low to peer through the grille to try to catch a glimpse of what was transpiring in the roomlet beside him, but it was to no avail. However, he did notice a faint muskiness hanging in the air. She emitted a shuddering moan before whispering, "Oh, Father! I'm going to hell for this."
"No sin is so grave that penance cannot be made, my child."
"You don't know what I'm doing right now."
He smiled to himself before replying, "Why don't you tell me all about it so I might counsel you?" Without even thinking about what he was doing or the consequences of such a sinful act, he took his dick out of his pants and started pulling it in long, even strokes.
She gasped and trembled; he imagined he could feel her breath wafting through his hair as she laid beside him.
"I touch myself, Father. I do it all the time. I just can't seem to stop. It's almost as if my soul's possessed by some crazed demon. Even before I realize what's happening, I look down and my fingers are pressed against my... my..."
"Womanhood?" he offered.
"Yes, against my womanhood, stroking myself furiously until I find release - but it's the release of the tormented. My cries always sound so frustrated, as if even my body knows that fulfillment can't be gained by such sinful acts."
"You're doing this now? I heard no cries, tormented or otherwise."
"Sometimes I can control that part of it." A sharp intake of breath came from the room beside him, followed by a strained whimpering. "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph," she gasped, then hastily added, "and their little donkey, too," thus sparing herself the charge of blasphemy on top of all her other transgressions. After that, for several minutes all he heard was heavy breathing, ragged at first, then slowly becoming more even. In spite of the growing calm of her respiration, her voice broke as she cried, "Oh, Father, please forgive me! I thought I could control it this once!" With those simple words, she ran from the confessional and out of the church.
Casting a glance down at his own lap, he echoed her words, in a silent plea to God. All this time he believed he could control his baser instincts; it was, after all, simply an act of willpower and faith. Or so he'd believed until this first test.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Adara was glad she'd had the presence of mind to grab her gray wool cape before heading out the door for this morning's Mass. Admittedly, the church's interior could be cold this time of year - at least until the crowd of bodies warmed up the chapel - and her camel-colored cashmere coat would have been a more stylish choice if warmth were her primary concern, but other matters, like discretion, guided her preference.
She hadn't set foot in church for over a month, not since that afternoon when she'd desecrated the confessional with her coarse need for self-gratification. The action she had in mind for today was even more sinful than the one previous,
may God forgive me
.
A small group of people stood at the confessional, awaiting the opportunity to make penance for their sins, whether real or merely perceived. Adara hung back, allowing others to step between her and the priest cloistered in the wooden chamber. As she stood there, nervously shifting her weight from one foot to the other, she wondered if he realized she was merely steps away from him. For that matter, she doubted - or perhaps more rightly
