I bite my lower lip and stay quiet even as my body starts with a cascade of absolutely inappropriate reactions. It has been months since I last got laid, and even longer since a man who knows how to touch a woman put his hands on me and made me feel good. I am melting under this rogue priest’s touch, getting tight between my thighs, feeling that clitoral throb of excitement.
My mind wanders to what it would be like to be bent over this couch and have him inside me. I am sure he would not be gentle with me. He would destroy me, his rough cock plunging punishingly inside me over and over. He’d probably be angry that he was fucking me, blame me for making him break his vows of chastity…
“Anglican priests don’t have vows of chastity.”
“What!?” I startle as the words are purred in my ear. How did he know what I was thinking? “Why would you say that? What the fuck are you?”
I scramble up, grasping for the useless halves of my cardigan.
“I didn’t say anything,” he frowns. He’s so handsome, even when he’s confused. Maybe more so because the lift of his brow makes my stomach quiver. “Are you feeling alright, Nina?”
I am not feeling alright. Not even a little bit. I’m either hearing voices or I’m with someone who lies about whispering carnal things in my ear.
“What did you think you heard?”
“I thought I heard someone say that Anglican priests don’t…”
“Don't what?”
I blush, but I tell him what I heard. “Don’t take vows of chastity.”
“That is true,” he says. “But I didn't say that.”
“So now I’m mad as well?”
“You’re not mad. This house has whispers.” He says that as if it is a completely reasonable thing to say.
“Whispers?”
He looks at me with those deep dark eyes and sighs. “I suppose I shall have to explain.”
“Most people cannot hear the whispers. But you are not most people,” Bryn says. He has moved to sit beside me on the couch, one arm looped around my shoulders, the tips of his fingers brushing lightly against the top of my breast. I do not move and I certainly do not complain, as delicious tingles race from the site of his touch through my body. How does he make the very follicles of my hair feel more alive?
I can’t look into his eyes anymore from this position. All I can do is feel him next to me, his weight, his warmth, his strength, and his darkness too. He is quite literally old enough to be my father, but somehow, he feels older than that, and younger too, and I am beginning to be swept up into a place where pure virility is all that matters. Blame a lifetime of watching jacked older men dominate the silver screen, or my own simple biology programmed to respond to the presence of a powerful provider and defender.
My thoughts are racing and also entirely inconsequential. This is not a time for thinking. It is a time for feeling. Did he say something? Explain something? I am sure I was supposed to be learning some facet of the mysteries of this old place but instead I am falling to a hot void of sensation.
“I’m very average.”
“If only that were true. Your brother, poor sod, is average. I expected him to show me otherwise when I took the cane to him. But it was you who showed your hand tonight, Nina.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
I know exactly what he means. It’s just very strange because I’ve never met anybody who knew how to mean what he means. This is a roundabout way of saying he sees right fucking through me. I am in trouble.
But he lets that go, for now, with just a flash of recognition in his dark eyes.
“This was an abbey once. It has always been a place where the veils between various realms thin and become in some parts, permeable. You may hear things here. You may also see things. You, specifically, could potentially be harmed by some things. I should send you away.”
“Where?”
“To a place where women of faith can safeguard you and whatever innocence you might have left.”
“I don’t want to be sent away.” I speak softly. I have no claim to this place and definitely not to this man, but I already feel an attachment. It’s not likely a healthy one, but I sense that there are questions here I didn't know existed, and the answer to those hidden questions matter.
His fingers curl beneath my chin and turn my gaze toward those two great dark voids in the center of his eyes.
“It is not safe for you here, Nina. Not in this house, and not in my presence.”
“Why not?” I breathe the question, though the ache in my body should be enough in the way of explanation. He will hurt me. He will not want to hurt me, but pain will be inevitable, nonetheless.