Chapter 7 - Gabriel
Idrive until the road runs out.
Twenty minutes since I left her against that wall.
Twenty minutes since I kissed her like a fool and fled like a coward.
Her lipstick is probably still on my mouth.
I can still taste her—champagne and something darker, hungrier.
My cock is still half-hard in these expensive pants, and every shift of the fabric reminds me of how she felt pressed against me, how she made that small sound when she felt how hard I was.
The Miami waterfront spreads before me, black water meeting black sky, the city's lights bleeding into both.
My hands grip the steering wheel even though the car's been in park for five minutes.
The bespoke Italian suit feels like it's strangling me, every thread a reminder of what just happened.
Her mouth under mine. Her body pressed against me.
The way she said my name—not Father, just Gabriel—like she'd been waiting to taste it.
I get out. Walk. Check the shadows automatically.
The seawall stretches ahead, and muscle memory takes over.
This path, these stones, the small chapel at the end where my mother used to take us before dawn mass on Sundays.
Before the money got complicated. Before she got sick. Before I killed someone and ran to God.
The chapel's unlocked. Always is. Too small to steal from, too old to matter. Just a room with six pews and a crucifix and windows that face the water. I haven't been here in nine years.
I kneel.
The stone floor is cold through the suit. Good. I need to feel something that isn't her mouth, her heat, the way her whole body responded when I gripped her throat. My hands find each other, fingers interlacing in the prayer position I've held ten thousand times.
"I kissed her." The words echo in the empty space. "I want her. I want to fuck her. I can't stop thinking about what she'd feel like under me. Tell me what to do."
Silence.
Not the pregnant silence of God listening.
The empty silence of God having better things to do.
Traffic hums from the causeway. A boat horn sounds somewhere in the dark.
The city continues its Saturday night fever while I kneel on stone begging for guidance about a woman who makes me want to tear off my collar with my teeth.
Then: jasmine.
Faint at first, carried on the breeze through the open window.
The small white flowers that grow wild along the seawall, blooming at night when no one's watching.
But close enough to her scent—that warm sweetness she carries—that my body doesn't care about the distinction.
My pulse spikes. My cock hardens fully, pressing painfully against my zipper.
I'm on my knees in a chapel begging God for guidance and the only answer is a flower that smells like the woman I'm begging about.
I almost laugh. Would laugh, if it wouldn't sound like crying. Either God has a sense of humor or God has stopped listening.
I stay until the jasmine fades. Until my knees go numb. Until the city quiets toward dawn. My cock stays hard the entire time, throbbing with each heartbeat.
At 4 AM I’m back in the rectory, the crucifix watching over my narrow bed as I try to sleep. Every time I close my eyes, I see her. Not just her face—her mouth, pink and swollen from kissing. Her throat where my thumb pressed. The way her nipples were hard through that dress, begging to be touched.
I give up fighting it. My hand moves under the sheet, gripping my cock with punishing force.
I fuck my fist to the memory of her pressed against that wall, imagining what would have happened if I hadn't stopped.
If I'd hiked up that dress and fucked her right there, made her come with two hundred people on the other side of the wall.
No sleep comes. Just her taste and jasmine in my memory and my cock that won't stop aching for her.
Sunday mass is the worst performance of my career.
My hands shake during consecration. Actually shake, the wine trembling in the chalice like my body's rejecting the ritual.
Mrs. Alvarez notices from the third pew, her eyes narrowing with concern.
The homily falls apart halfway through—something about redemption that sounds hollow even to me.
I lose my place twice in the liturgy. Father Gabriel, the composed priest, is coming apart at the seams.
After mass. Handshake line. The routine that should steady me.
"Beautiful service, Father," Mrs. Gutierrez lies kindly.
"You feeling alright?" Alma asks, less kind, more observant.
I make the right sounds, shake the right hands, but my attention keeps drifting to the churchyard visible through the open doors. She's out there. I know it without looking. Can feel her presence like a change in barometric pressure, like my body is attuned to hers now.
When the last parishioner passes, I step outside. The October sun cuts sharp angles through the trees. I scan the churchyard. No unfamiliar cars. No men who don't belong. The surveillance from Thursday seems to have backed off, or maybe they really were at the wrong address.
She's by the garden wall, talking to Mrs. Herrera. Jeans that fit like they were painted on, showing every curve. Hair down, catching the light. Coffee cup in her hand.
She hasn't looked at me. She's giving me space. Being considerate. Letting me pretend last night didn't happen.
I am not considerate.
I stare.
Not a glance. Not the quick assessment of a priest checking on his flock.
An open, deliberate, hungry look. I devour her with my eyes—the shape of her ass in those jeans, the way her breasts move when she laughs at something Mrs. Herrera says, the elegant line of her throat that I know now tastes like sin.
In my vestments. In the churchyard. In front of the entire lingering congregation.
I know exactly what I'm doing. I want her to feel it.
Want her to know I'm thinking about fucking her right here in God's garden.
She senses it. Of course she does—she's been reading rooms since she was twenty-two and married to a monster. Her shoulders tense first, then her head turns, finding me across thirty feet of sacred ground.
Our eyes meet.
I don't look away. I let her see it—the raw want I've been containing for ten days, the memory of her mouth on mine, the things I did to myself last night while thinking of her.
I imagine her naked, imagine my mouth between her legs, imagine the sounds she'd make when I make her come.
I know she can see it all on my face because I'm not hiding it anymore.
I watch the effect ripple through her. The way her neck flushes pink, the color spreading down to her chest. The way her nipples harden—I can see them through her shirt, two perfect points.
The way she presses her thighs together, a subtle shift that tells me she's wet.
The way she breaks eye contact first—looks down, shifts her weight, her free hand going to her chest where Julian's ring hides under her shirt.
The power of it hits me somewhere primitive. I made her wet. With nothing but my eyes. With thirty feet between us and people all around, I made her pussy clench, made her body prepare itself for me.
My cock hardens fully, straining against my vestments. In the churchyard. On a Sunday. Because I made her need me.
"Father Gabriel?" Someone's talking to me. Mrs. Santiago, holding out a casserole dish. "For the rectory."
"Thank you," I manage, taking the dish, holding it strategically in front of me to hide my erection. My voice sounds almost normal. "Very kind."
I excuse myself. Escape to the sacristy, closing the door harder than necessary. My cock throbs, demanding attention. Years of discipline, undone by making a woman wet. I lean against the wall, palming myself through my vestments, biting back a groan.
When I finally emerge, she's gone. But there on the garden wall where she was standing—her coffee cup. Still warm. Black coffee, the way I take mine. And on the rim, the faint pink print of her lipstick.
I stare at the mark of her mouth longer than any sane man would. Then I take the cup. Tell myself I'm just cleaning up. Carry it to the rectory kitchen where I set it on the counter and don't wash it.
It sits there all day. Her lipstick on white ceramic. Evidence that she exists, that she was here, that her mouth leaves marks on things. I think about her mouth. About what it would feel like on my cock. About making her gag on it, watching tears run down her face while she takes it.
I'm so fucked.
Monday morning at the food pantry. She's on a stepstool, reaching for something on a high shelf. Her shirt rides up. Just an inch. Just enough to show a strip of skin at her waist. Smooth. Soft. The curve where her hip begins.
My brain glitches. All I can think about is biting that skin, marking it, making her wear my teeth marks under her clothes.
I imagine walking up behind her, pressing my cock against her ass, making her feel how hard she makes me.
Imagine sliding my hand into those jeans, finding her wet, fingering her right here in the food pantry while she tries not to make a sound.
I turn and leave without getting what I came for.
Lock myself in the bathroom, grip the sink, try to breathe through the need that's eating me alive.
End up jerking off standing up, coming so hard I have to bite my fist to stay quiet, imagining her bent over that stepstool while I fuck her from behind.
Tuesday afternoon. She makes real coffee in the parish kitchen.
Good beans she brought from somewhere, a grinder, the whole ritual.
The kitchen smells like something other than penance for once.
She hands me a cup. Our fingers touch—not accidentally, we both know where our hands are. Neither of us pulls away.