Lessons in Sin

Panic spiked, but I leaned forward to meet him head-on, heedless of the warnings emitting from his stiff posture.

I wanted this too badly.

I wanted to go home, and at the same time, I wanted to grab his collar, rip it from his throat, yell at him to fly apart and give me everything he hid from the world. I wanted the man who roared behind those eyes, not the priest who imprisoned him.

“What are you doing?” His voice abraded with unconcealed rage and untold secrets.

“All that sexy talk about economic regression models was getting under my skin. The sounds you make with numbers and formulas raise my temperature and lower my inhibitions.” I slid a hand over my skirt, between my legs, and tried not to blush. “You make me wet, Father Magnus.”

“You’re playing with fire.”

“You’re about as fiery as an iceberg. I think what you mean to say is…” I directed my eyes at his groin. “I’m playing with the South Pole?”

“Not a chance in hell.” He released a chilling laugh, the sound pelting my skin like splinters of ice. “The fact that you think I would stray for you, that I would break my promise to God for an overindulged, ungrateful heathen…” He shook his head, disgust carved in his features. “You’re just like all the others, and here’s a spoiler. None of them succeed. I will not sin for you. I will not violate my vows for you. Never.”

Pain flared in my chest. It consumed. It dragged me under a dark tide.

“Sending me home is sinless,” I said quietly. “Add that to your vows.”

He stepped away, snagged a Bible from the rack, and thunk. It dropped on my lap.

“Pick up where you left off last night.” Acid stained his voice as he stalked to his desk.

The school day was officially over. While the main building emptied of all students and teachers, this was where I remained every single afternoon.

Because I didn’t know when to keep my mouth shut.

He seemed content to endure these daily punishments with me. Sitting in his chair, he’d already plunged into his work on the laptop. This would go on for the rest of the evening. Him, typing away. Me, reading the New Testament out loud.

Except I couldn’t do it again. Not another night. Not another second.

“I don’t hear you reading.” His eyes remained on the laptop.

“I only read this stuff because I don’t have a choice. But you can’t force your faith on me. These are your beliefs, not mine.”

“I still don’t hear you reading.”

Last night, I ended on the Gospel of Mark, but I wouldn’t be picking up there as he wanted. Instead, I opened the Bible to Ezekiel 23:20.

Blanking my face, I read aloud. “There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses.”

“Wrong passage.”

“This is your book. Besides, I don’t think this part’s so wrong. Genitals like donkeys? Emissions like horses? Sounds poetic to me. Evocative.” I met his unfriendly eyes. “Why can’t you be more like Ezekiel? He was a dirty little prophet.”

“Turn to the Gospel of Mark.”

“Okay, hang on. This one’s disturbing.” I sensed him rising to his feet and approaching as I quickly flipped to Deuteronomy 22:20. “If, however, the charge is true and no proof of the young woman’s virginity can be found, she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death.” I closed the book and stared at the ominous black cover. “It’s stories like this that make it difficult for modern, liberated women to read the Bible.”

I felt him above me like an overcast sky. Rotating thunderclouds. Static in the air. A looming storm about to fuck up my world.

Slowly tipping my head up, I watched with fascinated horror as his chest expanded and his hands furled into fists. What was that expression? His lips formed a smile, but it wasn’t a smile at all. It was skin-deep and scary.

What lay beneath was a man breaking his restraints.

Stiffly, he turned and prowled toward the door as if it were either that or wrap his hands around my throat.

I wanted his hands.

Didn’t I?

Watching him walk away filled me with uncertainty. There was something off about him. He held himself differently, his composure impossibly colder, less human.

My mind raced as he reached for the closed door.

Then, in a tone as black as Satan’s abyss, he said, “You foolish girl, all you had to do was read the correct passage.”

My hackles bristled. “Here’s a passage for you, straight from the Gospel of Tinsley. Thou shalt fuck off.”

He stood there for a moment with his back to me, one hand on the door handle, the other shifting in front of him, near his groin. Adjusting himself?