The Merciful
I stand, ready to go after the Sincero boy and see if I can catch him, but when I turn to go, Father Salvatore is standing in the doorway. Our eyes meet, and my heart stops. It’s like that day in the library, when he watched, except today, we’re alone. I swallow hard, my heart racing. After a long moment’s hesitation, as if he’s giving me a chance to flee, he begins moving slowly down the aisle toward me.
“Lamb,” he says, that velvet voice rolling across the pews, echoing in the rafters overhead. “Why haven’t you gone home yet?”
“I’m—I’m not going home,” I say, retreating into my pew. “I got an exception to stay on campus. I don’t have anywhere to go.”
To my horror, my voice cracks unexpectedly. I don’t want him feeling sorry for me. I want to be fine with being alone, to be a strong, independent woman now that I’m eighteen. But the truth is, I’m not that kind of girl. I’m not fierce and careless like Eternity, or droll and blasé like Annabel Lee, or tough and practical like Ronique.
I’m lonely, and I ache for somewhere to belong, someone to belong to. I want somewhere to call home, somewhere safe, that I can call my own, where I can be myself. I want to find the person that I can be myself with too, my person; the one who accepts me and loves me just as I am, for who I am.
And I’m terrified he doesn’t exist.
I’m afraid I’ll never find him, because I am unlovable.
“Can I offer you some comfort?” Father Salvatore asks, stopping in front of the first pew.
I nod, swallowing hard and willing myself not to cry. He doesn’t want to sit next to me, won’t even sit in the same pew. He must think I’m dirty and disgusting after all I’ve said to him, all he’s witnessed.
He sinks onto the pew in front of me, and his scent envelopes me, that masculine scent of sandalwood and leather that makes my head spin and my knees squeeze together. I close my eyes and take a breath, my fingers moving automatically to my cross, wrapping around it. When I open my eyes, he’s watching me from behind his glasses, his gaze watchful and sympathetic. His pose is casual this time, his body slanted at a sideways angle, elbow resting on the back of the pew that separates us.
“What does it say?” he asks.
“What?”
He nods towards my necklace. “It has an engraving on the back, yes? I catch glimpses when you toy with it in class, but I’ve never caught the word.”
“Oh,” I say, my cheeks heating with the knowledge that he’s been watching me that closely, noticing me in his class, remembering how I fidget. “It says SHAME.”
I turn it over to show him the letters I’ve rubbed with my thumb so many times they’re beginning to wear away.
“Shame,” he repeats. “Interesting choice to have put on a cross. Do you imagine that’s what Jesus would want associated with the way in which he died?”
“No,” I say quickly. “I mean, it does say that, and yes, I use it to remind me of my own shame, my sins. But it stands for the Quint. I think we were a little bit proud when we figured out our initials spelled the word—Saint, Heath, Angel, Mercy, Eternity. I wouldn’t have liked it by myself, but they owned it, so I did too. We all got them. Matching necklaces of shame.”
I laugh feebly and slip the cross back under my shirt, feeling silly.
“And you still wear it,” Father Salvatore says. “Even now.”
“I still love them,” I admit. “Maybe I had ulterior motives for getting close, but I do.”
“Do you think any of them still have their necklaces?”
I snort out a laugh. “No. They probably flushed them down the toilet.”
Father Salvatore rests his chin on his shoulder as he looks at me, and it’s the most adorable thing I’ve ever seen. I’ve never pictured him like this, hanging out and talking, like a person and not a priest. But he’s not so old, not that much older than us. He must have friends, sit around talking with them, wearing jeans, doing regular things. Before I can ask what he likes to do, he speaks.
“What are these ulterior motives you mentioned?”
“Oh—nothing. I just wanted to find out the truth, you know. What happened to Eternity.”
“Ah yes. The noble goal.”
“Is it?” I ask, tucking my hands under my thighs. “How do you determine that?”
He smiles a little, his lips smooth and slightly red, and I can’t stop staring. “Determine what, lamb?” he asks.
A wobbling, melting shimmer climbs my spine, and I can hardly breathe. He cannot use that word right now, when he’s sitting so casual, chatting with me like we’re not a priest and his congregant, like we’re a man and a woman.
“How do you know right from wrong?” I manage. “Who makes the rules?”
“You listen to yourself,” he says. “The answers are inside you.”
“What if the answers inside me are wrong?” I whisper, searching his night-dark eyes for the truth, for some flicker of judgment. I don’t find one.
“They’re not,” he says firmly. “I think you know that. If you look inside yourself and let yourself believe it, you’ll know.”
“Then why does it feel so wrong?” I ask, my cheeks heating again.
“What feels wrong?” he asks, his voice low, alluring.
I swallow hard. “What we’ve been doing. What I’ve done.”
“What have you done?”
My lashes flutter as I dart a gaze up and then back down, knotting my fingers in my lap. “You know. You saw.”
“Tell me. Say it out loud, Mercy.”
I gulp down my nerves, my core trembling at the command in his rich, low voice. “I touched myself,” I whisper, my cheeks on fire.
“Didn’t it feel good?”
“Yes,” I admit in a rush of breath. “But… But it’s wrong. Right?”
I dare to lift my gaze to his, and I find his eyes on fire with a dark heat behind his glasses.
“You know my answer to that,” he says, turning his hand over, offering it to me. I stare at his palm, his fingers, wondering how I never noticed how huge his hands are. His fingers must be four or five inches, thick and long, strong and calloused.
“You promise?” I ask, lifting my hand to his but stopping just short of taking it. I hesitate, searching his gaze, praying I can trust him.
“You’ve been taught your whole life not to trust the answers inside you,” he says. “It takes time to unlearn that. But you will, lamb.”
I slide forward off the seat, onto the kneeler, and let my hand sink into his. His strong fingers close around mine. I gasp with shock at the hot, roughness of his palm against my soft, cold one, the way his hand engulfs mine like a father’s hand enveloping his child’s.
“Your body is holy, Mercy,” he says gently. “It is no sin to give it what it needs.”
I nod, staring at our hands.
“Did it feel like a sin when you knelt for your brother?” he asks, his voice a sultry rumble.
I hesitate only a moment. “No.”
“How did it feel?”
“It felt… In the moment, I felt powerful,” I admit, the admission making me squirm.
“You are powerful.”
I swallow hard. “I don’t feel powerful now, Father. I feel… Disposable. Everyone throws me away.”
I force my eyes to his, force myself to admit this deepest, most vulnerable fear while I face him, only inches between us.
“Perhaps it’s not you at all, but their own desires that push them away. People are often uncomfortable facing their own desires. You know this misplaced shame firsthand.”
“Who desires me?” I whisper.
“Do you have to ask?”
“Yes.”
I hate myself for needing him to say it, for even wanting him to. He’s a priest.
But he’s someone.
“I think you know the answer to this question, too,” he says gently.
“I don’t,” I say, my voice catching. “Even after what I did, Saint said I was repulsive to him. Maybe because of what I did. And Heath—he wants to hurt me, Father. Maybe he wants to kill me, like Eternity.”
“Is there anyone else who might?”
My heart is beating so hard I can’t hear my own whisper of breath when I dare to ask the most forbidden question of all. “You?”
“I am not allowed the luxury.”
“Of course,” I blurt, the heat of shame in my cheeks unbearable. “Forgive me for asking, Father.”
I try to draw my hand away, but he holds on, his grip firm, commanding.
“Your turn,” he says. “What do you desire, lamb?”
You.
I want to say it, but I can’t. Not after he told me he didn’t want me. There are too many people I love who feel nothing in return. I can’t bear to be told one more time, that one more person doesn’t care about me the way I care about him.
“I want to be loved,” I admit, feeling raw and naked admitting it aloud.
“You are loved,” Father Salvatore says. “God loves all His children.”
“Maybe I want one of His children to love me too.”
“There is one,” he says slowly. “One of his children that you can make love you.”
“Really?” I whisper, not daring to breathe, to hope. I would do anything he asked, no matter how impossible, how revolting, if he could feel it too. “How?”
“It’s you, lamb,” he says gently, giving my hand a comforting squeeze.
“Me?” I ask. “How am I supposed to do that?”
“You must first know yourself,” he says. “Just as it is for anyone else. You can’t control someone else’s heart. You can only let them know you, and if they choose to love you, that is a blessing you can choose to accept or refuse.”
If only it were that easy. I can’t tell him the truth though, that I let people know me, and they hate me now. I don’t want him to think I’m unlovable, or to take it as self-pity, when it’s simply a statement of fact.
“What if I can’t do that?” I ask.
“The body is an easy place to start,” he says. “Knowing the parts of yourself you can see and feel with your fingertips, understanding your desires, accepting that they are God-given and holy, is a gateway to the soul.”
“I thought the eyes were the windows to the soul,” I say, a bit shakily.
He doesn’t smile, his dark eyes earnest and gentle behind the lenses of his wire-rimmed glasses.
“Sorry,” I mutter, shifting on the kneeler to take some of the pressure off my kneecaps.
“Would you like to practice now?” he asks.
“Practice?” I whisper, my throat going dry. “Like… Like I did in the confessional?”
He doesn’t answer, just keeps watching me squirm on the kneeler in front of him. It was one thing to do that when he couldn’t see or didn’t know I was doing it. How can I do it now, here, while he’s watching me like that? While we’re in the church, with the huge cross looming over us and Jesus watching from the stained-glass mosaics?
“Is that what you were doing in the confessional?” he asks.
I feel a prickle of sweat at my hairline at the thought of telling him. I can’t do it. He knows.
“You saw,” I whisper, staring at the gold wristwatch around his wrist. It’s such a masculine thing to wear, an adult thing. I feel like a child who was caught doing something wrong, forced to confess what she did before she receives her punishment.
“Tell me,” he says, confirming my fears. “I want you to say it every time, until you can do it easily, with no shame.”
“I touched myself,” I whisper.
“Do you want me to tell you to do it again?”
“Yes.”
“Then ask.”
I swallow hard, my whole body flushed, my heartbeat erratic. “Can I?”
“Can you what, lamb?” he asks gently, patiently, even though he should be disappointed that I can’t say it without shame like he instructed.
“Can—Can I touch myself, Father?” I blurt.
“You may.”
“Okay,” I say, nodding, not moving. Now that I’ve said it aloud, I can’t do it. Not while he’s watching.
But then, he’s watching.
He’s waiting.
I can’t let him down. I remind myself of that brief, momentary swell of power I felt, as if I were holding all the cards for once when I knelt at my brother’s feet, when he couldn’t bring himself to refuse.
I lift one knee and then the other, tugging my velvet skirt free. My bare knees press into the warm leather cushion of the kneeler, and I shiver when the cool air meets my thighs, bare above my knee socks. I slip a hand up, under the skirt, and then down, into my panties.
Father Salvatore doesn’t move.
“Like this, Father?” I ask, my throat thick.
“Does that feel good?”
I nod, then bite my lip so I don’t make any embarrassing noises. We’re so close I can see the ring of blue-black around his irises, and that his dark eyes that look inky are actually the deepest, darkest shade of brown, like the bitter, one hundred precent cacao Manson brought Annabel Lee.
The father’s gaze emboldens me somehow, as if I’m daring him to stop me. I move my fingers, exploring myself in a slow, methodical way I’ve never done before. The skin is soft and damp, a strange feeling as I finger apart the layers. Inside and lower, I find something different, a secret pocket of wet heat just big enough for my fingertip. I gasp, and Father’s eyes flare.
“What is it, lamb?” he asks, his voice so low I feel the rumble more than hear it.
“It’s… Wet,” I say, a shudder of bliss rolling through me.
Our eyes meet again, and I hold his gaze while I slide my finger up and down my slit, gasping again when I hit a spot that feels so good it makes my hips jerk back, as if they know it’s too much pleasure, more than I deserve. My other hand wraps around the top of the bench seat in front of me, gripping tight, keeping me anchored. I bite my lip and try again. Father Salvatore’s gaze fuses to my mouth with a blazing heat, watching my teeth cut into my lip. When our eyes meet again, a searing hot electricity charges the air between us, and arousal drenches my fingers in a rush.
I gasp again, and his fingers close over mine on the seat, holding me in place. My breath comes quicker, in ragged, panting gasps. “Father,” I manage, then lose the rest of the thought.
“What are you thinking about, lamb?” he prompts, his voice so seductive my thighs quake, yearning to open for him, to wrap around his hips as he lays me down on a pew and teaches me the holiness of our bodies together.
“You,” I breathe.
“Mercy…”
“Help me,” I blurt before I can stop myself, before he can stop me.
“Let me see,” he says, his thumb stroking across my hand.
“What?”
“Show me your other hand.”
I don’t want to stop, but I reluctantly withdraw my other hand from my panties and hold it up for him to inspect. I drop my gaze, my pulse suddenly racing, sure he’ll scold me or slap my hand for what it’s done. Instead, he draws it close, inhaling a long, slow breath. His eyes fall closed for a second, just like Saint’s did when he smelled me, and in some flash of daring, I remember how I drew my brother in after that, and I tip my finger forward, dragging it across the priest’s lower lip.
He jerks back, his eyes snapping open, a thunderous frown darkening his brow.
“I’m sorry,” I cry, trying to pull away, to bolt from the church and never return.
He holds me fast, his grip on my wrist like a cuff, harder than the ropes the boys used to tie me to the cross.
“There’s no need to apologize,” he says. “What do you want, Mercy Soules?”
“I—I don’t know,” I blurt out, desperate and humiliated.
“You do,” he says gently, reaching over the back of the pew to bring my other hand back to my lower belly. “Tell me. What do you need?”
“You,” I admit, my cheeks flaming. “You do it. Please, Father. I can’t.”
He hesitates a long moment, and then he releases my hand. “I’m not able to relieve you of this craving. But someone will come if it is His will.”
“No,” I gasp out. “Not my brother. Please.”
“Your friend, then?” he asks. “You’d like Heath to join you?”
“No,” I cry, shaking my head. “I want you .”
“Put your hand in your panties again,” he commands, his voice sharper now, almost angry.
I don’t know what I did wrong, and I want to cry, but I bite my trembling lip and hold it back. If I obey, maybe he’ll be happy with me again, forget I touched him like that without permission, after he said he didn’t want me. Maybe I can please him if I submit to his demands, and he’ll forgive me. I can’t bear the thought of losing one more person, even if he was never really mine.
He watches while I obey, slipping my trembling fingers under the thin cotton fabric. He watches my hand move, its ministrations hidden from his view.
When the pressure inside me has built until I’m gasping for something I can’t find on my own, distracted by my own pleasure, he rolls his lips in, and I see the barest glimpse of his tongue dragging between them. The realization that he’s tasting me makes my hips buck, a fluttering ache stab into me so fiercely I cry out. The soft sound echoes through the church with my panting breaths.
“Bury your finger in your cunt,” he growls.
I obey, wincing at the ease with which I can slowly sink it inside myself, how wet I am, dripping for him. Ragged breaths tear from my open lips, my eyes rolling back with pure pleasure when I can’t go any deeper.
Suddenly, I hear the creak of old hinges, and the air sweeps over the sweat misting my skin, making me shiver. I yank my hand from my underwear, but Father Salvatore’s other hand pins mine to the back of the pew, silently commanding me to stay.
“We’ve been expecting you,” he says. “Come and take communion.”
I turn and find Angel, and a sick, guilty sense of relief sweeps through me when I remember how well he pleasured me in my room. Without a word, he strides down the aisles, slides into the pew with me, and lifts me. I cry out as I tip forward when he lifts my hips higher, level with his shoulders. He swiftly lowers my panties, then deftly slides his arms between my thighs above the fabric as it binds my knees, and parts my legs wide. A loud groan echoes through the church, then breaks off suddenly when he buries his face in me.
Hot, rough pleasure slams into me. His sounds are muffled as they vibrate through my flesh, sending the most delicious shocks of ecstasy rippling through me. He moans again and again, his lips and tongue assaulting my overstimulated flesh. He’s not slow and gentle this time, not playful. His mouth moves with sure absolution, hungry and primal and fierce, leaving nothing untouched.
I cry out, gripping the pew in front of me to steady myself as he lifts my hips higher, dragging me harder against his face. His tongue probes at my entrance, and I whimper when the tip dips into me.
Father Salvatore’s hand closes over mine again, firm but warm, steadying me.
“This is God’s will for you, my lamb. Can you surrender to Him?”
“Yes,” I cry, my back arching, needing more even as I struggle to contain the bliss already wracking my body. “Please.”
Angel’s tongue plunges into me, stretching me, stretching to reach deeper. I try to close my thighs, but he pushes them wider, stabbing into me.
“Forgive me, Father,” I cry, tears filling my eyes as the pleasure builds higher, higher. It’s uncontainable, unbearable.
“Forgive you for what, my child?”
“For—for thinking my body wasn’t made for this.”
“What was it made for, lamb?”
“For you,” I say without a moment’s hesitation.
“For me?” he asks, brows drawing together. “For what purpose?”
“Anything,” I cry. “I’ll do anything you ask, anything you want. It feels so good.”
“My God,” he mutters under his breath like a curse.
“Tell me what to do,” I gasp out. “It’s all yours. My body is yours. Tell me what it needs.”
“Let go,” he coaxes. “Let him worship and awaken the divinity inside you.”
Angel’s tongue strokes relentlessly, driving into me in sensuous, rhythmic strokes. He growls into me, his tongue stroking faster, harder, before he withdraws, his lips sucking rhythmically, sealed over my entrance. I lose my breath as silent ecstasy washes over me. I want him to suck harder, to turn me inside out, to ravage every part of me until there’s nothing left.
“Father,” I gasp, gripping the priest’s hand, staring into his eyes that burn with a hunger so deep it steals my breath, my soul.
My core trembles as I stare back at him, into the mirror of my own longing. I understand then that even if he can’t say it, can’t let himself have this, he wants it with the same maddening desperation that I do. Since he can’t let himself take me, though, he’s giving me to someone else, taking whatever small, vicarious pleasure he can derive from watching someone else take what he can never have, touch me in ways he is not allowed, glut himself on something of which he will only ever have the barest taste.
“Give him your body,” he says, his voice low and husky. “Surrender it completely.”
I open my mouth to say I can’t, but suddenly, Angel’s mouth retreats, and his hands snake behind me, stretching me so far open pain ripples into me. Cool air shocks my drenched, fevered flesh for one second as he looks at me, stretched to the point of pain, engorged, throbbing and dripping with need. Then, his tongue spears deep inside me. The hunger I’ve felt building, the clenching, sucking need, is suddenly stuffed full. My entire body convulses, writhing in the sudden fulfillment, the ecstasy that courses through me as if I’m being electrocuted. I cry out in breathless, wordless abandon as wave after wave crashes through me, stealing all control, all thought, all sin from me as it washes me clean.