Chapter 3
Killed a man?
I balked. I was sure I’d misheard the female.
Who are you to judge?
The confessional smelled of wax and old wood, thick with centuries of whispered sins and her strong spicy perfume. My chest felt tight, and my hands gripped onto the wooden ledge with my own guilt swimming in my veins.
Her voice was so soft yet almost teasing.
“Father?”
My stomach dropped with her words. The way she said my title was almost mocking. Confessions like this should have been impossible. I lived in a small ass town, and yet she was here, telling me she killed a guy. The words landed with the weight of a hammer on my skull, dragging me back to hell.
I inhaled sharply. “Excuse me? What did you say?”
My voice betrayed me with a tremor I didn’t want her to hear.
“I…killed a man,” she said again, softer. “Please don’t damn me for my sins, Father. Haven’t you ever sinned and feared judgment from a higher power?”
The cadence of her words made the hairs on my neck prickle. My pulse accelerated, as a tightness spread in my chest. There was something…unusual in the way she spoke. Something that wasn’t quite right.
“When did this happen?”
“Hmm,” she murmured. “It’s been years, yet no time at all has passed. I suppose it’s hard to count when the nights are full of…choices you can’t take back. Temptation is beautiful. The allure of the taste of sin. Is that not why they made the devil beautiful, Jedidiah?”
My name…She said my name.
It was no secret who I was, but no one dared speak to me as an equal.
The pause she let linger was long, quiet, and almost intentional. It was like a gentle fingernail against an open wound, toying with the fragile pieces of unhealed skin. My heart thudded in my chest like a drum. I gripped the ledger tighter while my mind tried to focus.
Be a goddamned professional, stay neutral. You have a duty.
But I couldn’t.
Something about this female was unnerving. She almost felt…familiar.
Her voice changed, ever so slightly, with her next words. It became even softer, breathier, intimate, and fuck me, it was coaxing. My dick twitched shamefully in my robes.
What the fuck was wrong with me?
It must be her perfume. “Some people in the face of danger…they leave. And then others…others are left to bear the weight of those who left.”
I froze.
Something about that subtle rhythm, the soft rise and fall of her words, tugged at something inside me, at the man in me.
The confessional booth felt suddenly smaller, and the woman on the other side felt closer. The air was hotter with her heavy breaths, and I swallowed, certain she wouldn’t be…
“Tell me…what troubles you? Why confess now after all these years?” I tried to sound steady.
My throat was too damn dry, and my pulse thudded in tune with my dick.
“I…survived then, Father,” she said, her voice lower now, husky, and slow. “I didn’t run. I felt every lash of God’s whip. I’ve endured my punishments. Have you?”
Was that subtle noise…suctioning?
I blinked rapidly, trying to see through the lattice. The image was dim, but it was unmistakable that her dark dress was pulled above her thighs, and her hand was beneath the fabric.
“Sometimes, when no one was watching…I like to remind myself of what I control. What do you control, Jedidiah? You must crave the submission from your flock? Enjoy the power of leading all these men and women away from temptation and into your salvation.”
I swallowed thickly, trying to get my damn eyes off her moving hand.
“But see, I fear that sin and temptation taste far too sweet to turn away from simply, don’t you think?”
Control. Yourself.
The words hit differently than they should have. I should have demanded she leave my church, stood up, and called the authorities for this unorderly conduct.
But when her hand pressed against the lattice and I saw her slender fingers slip through the small barrier, I couldn’t even breathe anymore. Her scent was overwhelming my system.
My dick ached underneath my robes, dancing to her voice. My chest tightened, and for a moment, I imagined her leaning just slightly forward, closer to me now, with the lattice becoming the barrier I wanted to cross and destroy to reach her.
The tone of her voice, the pauses, and the subtle tremor.
Fuck me, it made my stomach twist in ways I would not confess.
She let the pause stretch, her wet fingertips nearly dripping down the wooden design.
It was just quiet enough that I could hear every small, imperceptible shift in her voice.
Her soft breathing became a rhythm I shouldn’t have recognized.
My fingers flexed on my lap, desperate not to soothe my erection.
Control. My thoughts spun. This was a murderer, and I was getting hard for her? Why?
“Father, no one can confirm heaven is truly paradise,” she whispered, leaning forward with her bright red lips nearly touching the boundary, her soft, husky voice barely audible.
“Sometimes I think that living is the true hell, so should we not embrace every piece of heaven we’re given before it’s too late? ”
I knew what she was doing was forbidden, and I knew I should stop this. If there was a hell, I had a one-way ticket already, so maybe she was right, I should enjoy this while I could.
My hand started to fall to my cock, and the pressure of my hands on my shaft, even through the fabric, felt so damn good.
The confessional should have anchored me. It should have reminded me where I was and how hard I had fought to become the man I was today.
But it didn’t.
My mind wasn’t on the ritual, my duty, or even the penance.
It was in her voice, on the heat creeping through my chest, with the way my thoughts betrayed me as much as my body.
I tried to speak, but it was a pathetic whisper.
“Why do you think you crave sin? Are you not afraid that salvation will be unreachable?”
She laughed at my outward thought, and holy fuck, I couldn’t help stroking myself at her panted reply.
Click.
“Jedidiah Franklin. Maybe, if you are a good boy, someday you, too, will realize that being bad feels better than the dream of your heaven. Why not enjoy a thousand virgins on earth? You are the one in power here, not your God.”
I tried to remind myself she was a penitent, that I was a priest and should steer her away from these damning words, but my mind couldn’t catch up. Every syllable, every breath she let linger, dragged me further into a tide I couldn’t resist.
“Close your eyes.” She breathed, and I froze, hearing her dress shuffle as she stood up from the space.
I swallowed hard, scrambling to cover my protruding dick with my forearms and a Bible on the ground.
Tick.
I heard the swish of the soft fabric of the curtain keeping me hidden from the rest of the world. I wanted to open my eyes. I needed to see this vixen and give a name to the temptress, but I obeyed her demand. She was inside the booth with me, and I couldn’t breathe.
“There you are. See, Father? I told you…If you were a good boy…”
I felt her fingers graze my lips, and I inhaled a sharp breath, my thoughts whirling and my dick so hard the damn Bible toppled to the ground.
Fuuuuuck me.
“Open wide, Jedidiah. Taste my sin.”
I was going to hell in a gift basket for this.
I obeyed her demand, opening my mouth slightly, and then wider when her soft fingertips pushed past my lips, and her sweetness hit my taste buds.
We both groaned when my tongue met her wetness on her fingers.
Click.
“This is so wrong…” I moaned, unable to keep myself from sucking her digits into my mouth.
“I know. That’s why sin can be your own slice of heaven.”
Slice.
A memory struck me, sudden and sharp.
That damn street…screams…a stranger falling into a puddle of blood, only half his own. My hands were trembling, covered in crimson. My own cowardice…and blood. So much blood.
And the image of the woman I had left behind. Her pleading eyes called to me to be her hero. I had to believe the cops came and saved her that night.
She couldn’t have died. They were so close.
If I had stayed, I would be imprisoned for killing the man with her. I would be worse than dead if I didn’t get back to The Black Onyx gang. I was just a stupid kid. My boss had tasked me with pushing drugs in that damn alley, and then I had heard her screams.
No one helped her. She didn’t even speak English. Her words were broken and pained. I couldn’t just watch that monster rape her to death. I had to help her.
But you didn’t. You ran.
The weight of that night crashed over me like cold water, and I inhaled, jerking backward and smashing my head against the wood behind me.
The wound on my torso burned, and it was like the knife was piercing me again, the jagged metal ripping into my skin and painting the woman on the pavement below me.
The two sounds blended in my mind.
The cries of the woman in the alley and the breathy vixen in my church. It mixed with my memory until it became unbearable and just as piercing as the blade. I realized I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t fucking move.
I was trapped. I had to open my eyes and escape the hell I was in.
“I’m sorry we can’t do this…” I opened my eyes, and the woman was gone.
Had she ever really been here?
I didn’t hear her leave or see her step away from me. There had just been the flash icy feeling of the memory that sucked the heat out of the air like a polar vortex.
“Wait,” I said, scrambling to get out of the booth.
I saw her at the doorway, her slick, long black hair catching in the moonlight for a heartbeat before it vanished.
I stood there by the confessional, frozen, my mind reeling, my stomach still tight, and my heart pounding from the acts committed. The confessional was suddenly empty. It was a suffocating echo of her voice, with a slight hint of her perfume.
Was she real? Am I finally going insane?
The weight of my guilt hung heavy around my neck, like a collar. This tempting spirit had me feeling…powerless, flustered, and absolutely obsessed.
I reached up and touched my lips. The taste of her heat lingered on my tongue, and I swallowed hard. She was real. She had to be. But that begged the questions.
Who the fuck was she?
Where did she come from?
Where did she go?
And most importantly…was she really a killer?