Chapter 5 Pater Noster
Pater Noster
BELLE
The team at Unfurl really doesn’t do things by halves.
I hesitate in the doorframe of the basement room I’ve been summoned to and survey my surroundings. My husband’s note merely said the following:
Belle Charlton
It has been too long since your last confession. Please see Fr Rafe at your earliest convenience to partake of the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
Only my darling husband would see this as an appropriate wedding gift and a way to celebrate our anniversary… every year after.
It was two years ago today that we were married—and no, we did not marry in the sight of God.
Instead, we had a beautifully heartfelt humanist ceremony at a vineyard just outside St Tropez, Chateau des Anges.
We wrote our own vows, and they reflected everything we wanted to tell each other. To promise each other.
And no, my dad didn’t come. We knew he wouldn’t.
In the eyes of the Church, and therefore in his eyes, it wasn’t a wedding, and we’re not married, and that’s okay.
He gets to choose his views. His boundaries.
And I get to choose not to tie myself up in knots over his reactions.
It’s a slow process, and our truce is uneasy, but we’re getting there, and Rosalie’s birth has helped our relationship no end.
Most importantly, no one is riding roughshod over each other’s beliefs.
In a fit of spectacularly wilful disobedience to her husband, Mummy gave me away and hosted the chic wedding breakfast. I couldn’t have been more proud, or more grateful.
Yes, my husband still runs Alchemy.
Yes, we enjoy the frisson that frequenting the club adds to our sex life on occasion.
And yes, Rafe is still a kinky fucker. This anniversary celebration being a case in point.
What used to be a bland, versatile and generously proportioned space in the club’s basement has been transformed.
Wax church candles stand everywhere, their dancing, darting flames casting long shadows on the maroon walls.
There’s an enormous bed with four dark, ornately carved wooden posts.
I eye it warily. On any other day it would be the main attraction, but not today.
No. That dubious honour is reserved for the sizeable wooden box taking up the entire far wall. A box that, for many, may resemble a walk-in cupboard, but that anyone raised in the Catholic faith will instantly recognise as a confessional.
It’s lifesize.
It’s bloody enormous, complete with a doorway on either side from whose arched frames hang purple velvet curtains and a centre panel featuring a wooden grille in place of a window. One curtain is drawn, and one is pulled open, revealing the small, dim booth within.
I still can’t believe my husband and his team found an actual confessional box somewhere and reassembled it in the bowels of Alchemy for my husband’s nefarious purposes. I definitely smelt Cal’s handiwork that first time he showed it to me.
The mere sight of it is always enough to trigger a host of emotions, and tonight is no exception.
The guilt and fear I felt as a child facing my monthly confession churn in my stomach with the hopeless, roiling, lustful anticipation of what’s about to go down in that box, as well as a wholly new form of guilt.
Because past forays down here tell me that the salvation of my immortal soul is not what Fr Rafe has in store for me this evening. On the contrary, he won’t stop until he’s damned us both to hell for all eternity.
And that thought alone has me squirming with hopeless, helpless desire.
Sr Belina makes regular appearances in our sex life. She and her bishop are still hot as hell for each other. But on these annual pilgrimages to the confessional we try something different.
Tonight I’m Belle, random sinner and priestly prey. I’m not sure what sins I’ve committed, but I think we can all rest assured that Fr Rafe will unearth them and punish me for my immorality.
I lock the door to the room behind me and approach the open booth, trusting that Rafe is already established on his side.
There’s a little card slotted into the door with Fr Rafe Charlton inscribed, and someone’s even rigged up a little light above his door.
His light is on, meaning he’s in situ and hearing confessions.
Dear God. What the hell am I getting myself into this time?
* * *
I kneel on the leather-cushioned kneeler, smoothing my silky black dress over my hips. I’ve pulled the velvet curtain closed, which serves to make the confines of this confessional more oppressive.
Rafe’s fine profile is dimly visible through the diamond-shaped holes in the wooden fretwork between us. Fretwork that’s supposed to afford the sinner a modicum of privacy. His head is bent. He’s not looking at me.
‘Good evening, my child.’
‘Good evening, Father,’ I tell him. ‘It has been a year since my last confession.’
‘Very good,’ he intones. ‘What sins would you like to seek His Holy Father’s forgiveness for tonight?’
I cast my eyes upwards. The booth smells of aged wood and grave secrets and penitence. It’s atmospheric and alarmingly real. It feels uncomfortably like I’m in church.
Uncomfortably convincing.
Uncomfortably blasphemous.
I swallow.
‘Um,’ I begin feebly. I’ve discussed this, choreographed it, even, with the real-life version of Rafe.
But now I’m here, spilling out my darkest thoughts and deeds to this shadowy figure feels as confronting as it did last year—and the year before.
I certainly never confessed sins like these in my previous life.
The whispered sins of my school days—the ones I was brave enough to admit to, at least—were more along the lines of zoning out in church and not keeping my bedroom tidy.
‘I have impure thoughts,’ I tell the priest now. ‘All the time, actually.’
He sucks in a harsh breath. When he speaks, his voice sounds strangled. ‘What kind of impure thoughts?’
As usual, this is more realistic and a damn sight more intimidating than I expected. It’s easy to forget the guy on the other side of the grille is my husband. The person who knows me more intimately than I know myself. The object and the instigator of my impure thoughts.
In this moment, he’s my judge.
I clear my throat. ‘I think about men. About… about enjoying the pleasures of the flesh with men.’
‘The act of physical love isn’t a sin, if it’s enjoyed within the sacrament of marriage,’ he tells me carefully.
‘I’m not married,’ I lie. ‘And my fantasies aren’t about being with one man. They’re about being with multiple men at the same time, and having all of them use my body however they want.’
‘Dear God,’ he mutters. He wipes a hand over his face. ‘That is a mortal sin indeed. And tell me, have you ever acted on these wicked fantasies?’
‘Yes,’ I tell him. ‘Plenty of times.’
There’s a pregnant silence. My nipples harden, brushing against the soft silk of my dress. My breasts feel full and heavy.
‘Do you allow these men to profane your body?’ the priest asks eventually.
‘Yes, Father.’
‘Tell me what you let them do to you.’
There’s a movement through the fretwork. I could swear he’s reaching down and touching himself.
‘I let them do whatever they want with me. I let them strip me naked, and lay me down on a bed, and tie me up if they like, and touch me however they want.
‘I let them pull and suck on my nipples, and lick my pussy, and slide their fingers inside me. And I let them come on me and put their dicks in my mouth, and I allow them to fuck me however they want.’
I stare at his profile as I answer. I can see enough to know his gorgeous jaw is clenched, his eyes squeezed closed. His lips begin to move silently, although whether he’s seeking salvation for the sinner across from him or for strength for himself is unclear.
That arm of his is still moving, and then there’s the unmistakable sound of a zip being pulled down, and God.
I’ve made this priest hard.
I’ve made him want to touch himself.
My words have crept through the barriers of the fretwork and his protective layer of priestly garb, right through to the core of him. The core that makes him a man, that no amount of kneeling and praying and beseeching and shuffling of rosary beads can erase.
‘How does it make you feel when they do these things to you?’ he grits out. ‘Do you feel contrition for your sins? Are you here to repent?’
‘I don’t know,’ I admit. ‘I feel the shame of it, but it’s… it’s glorious. It makes everything brighter. Sharper. I know how sinful it is, but I don’t want to stop.’
On the other side of the screen, fabric rustles.
‘Is your body having a sinful reaction right now, just recounting these transgressions?’
‘Yes, Father,’ I murmur, and God knows, it’s the truth.
Between my recollections of my darkest, most vital couplings, and the viscerally physical reaction this beautiful man of God is having to me, and his obvious torment, and the womb-like sanctuary this confessional offers, I’m all at once feeling alive and vulnerable and shameless and fatalistic.
As if, by coming to this priest and making my burdens his, I have the breathing space to marvel at my sins and delight in them rather than letting them suffocate me.
The low rasp of his next words breaks my reverie.
‘Show me.’
‘I—what?’ I manage.
For the first time, he permits himself to turn and face me. The shadows in the booth only accentuate the hard, symmetrical planes of his face.
The eyes so full of pupil they’re practically black.
The full lusciousness of his bottom lip as he tugs at it with his teeth.
He’s so beautiful.
‘You just confessed to having a physical reaction to your sins—although not the one God would wish you to have. Your nipples must be hard, no?’
‘Yes.’ Hard is an understatement. They’re pinched. Aching. Almost brittle.
‘And you’re wet between your legs?’
I hesitate, unsure where this is going. Unsure whether he’s seeking to punish me or prey upon me.
I suspect it’s both.
‘Yes.’