Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Farrah
I ’m a whore.
I sit on a stone bench overlooking the green valley surrounding the cathedral, watching the sun lighten the sky. It’s a beautiful sight. One I rarely have a chance to witness from inside the high walls of the village, but I cannot fully enjoy the splendor, because I am accepting my true self.
I’m not a good person who was simply born into bad circumstances.
I’m the kind of woman who easily lies to a priest. A monsignor, no less.
I enjoy sexual acts. To a degree that I fear is unnatural.
When I woke up this morning, I sank my teeth into the feather down of my pillow, remembering Rune’s thickness against my panties. How I bucked and ground myself so shamelessly on his lap in nothing but a pair of underwear. How much I loved the fullness of Rune’s stiff, heavy sex in my mouth, how rewarding it was to elicit his climax, taste the salty wash of him down my throat.
Hide my sin down deep in your tummy.
I press my hands to my cheeks, feeling them burn. But the redness is not from humiliation. It’s from the horror of what I learned about myself. I’m a whore. I’m a woman who wants Father McDaniel to lie on top of me, to rut me. Despite the consequences.
Daddy.
That word continues to whisper through my mind, making my palms clammy, my pulse inconstant. Low and syrupy one minute, pounding the next.
I want to whimper that name in his ear while his big shaft stretches me from the inside. I want to sit with him in the stillness, have him to stroke my hair lovingly and call himself that name. She’s a good girl for her Daddy.
Something must be wrong with me.
Who gets paid to tempt a priest from his calling?
Who wants that priest to touch her naked body in reverence and praise her?
A whore .
A swallow gets stuck in my throat, the horizon blurring in front of me—
“Farrah,” says a voice, coming from behind me.
Rune.
I swipe the moisture from my eyes, turning my head to look up at him and…oh my, he’s incredible in the morning light, his vivid green eyes serious, his hair being pulled this way and that in the wind, his extra-large hands folded in front of him, a rosary twining through his fingers. He’s wearing a black robe this morning, that white collar resting against his jugular.
The picture of holiness. And all I can think about are his kisses.
How they made me feel like I’d been set on fire. How happily I’d perish in that blaze.
“Farrah,” he says, frowning. “You’re upset.”
“The sunrise is just so beautiful,” I say, haltingly.
A beat passes. “You’re crying over the sunrise?”
He sounds skeptical and honestly, I don’t have the strength right now to lie. Not after the whoppers I told last night. So I simply stare straight ahead, letting the wind dry my face, trying desperately to keep my breathing even when Rune takes a seat on the bench beside me, his attention zeroed in on me. “Now tell me the truth.”
“The truth from me?” I say with muffled sarcasm. “That would be a first.”
Rune’s head tips forward briefly. “You regret our actions last night. That’s why you’re crying.”
“No,” I whisper, fussing with the hem of my worn, mint green morning dress. “I’m crying because I don’t regret them.”
He attempts to take a slow, measured breath, but it’s as rocky as I feel. “Continue.”
I close my eyes, because looking at him makes me feel achy between my thighs, in the furthest down regions of my belly. In the middle of my chest. “After my parents died from an illness when I was a toddler, my aunt raised me. She did as fine a job as possible, considering her limited resources. She taught me to read and write. The difference between right and wrong. We’ve stolen to eat on occasion and found ways to make coin that some would consider lowly. But through all of it, I managed to believe I was…good. But I’m not. I’m not good at all.”
“What?” He’s visibly perplexed. Maybe even outraged. “Not… good? Farrah—”
“One time, Mr. Tandy said my hair is red for a reason. I was born to be a man’s plaything. After last night, I’m starting to wonder if he was right.”
“He was not right, that bastard. You are better than good, Farrah. Your spirit is a wild and beautiful thing.” He slams a fist to his chest. “It’s me who has corrupted you.”
“You were fine being pious and celibate until I came along.”
“I could say the same to you,” he says, reaching out to cup my face, the coolness of the rosary beads pressing to my jawline, cheek, and I can’t help leaning into his hold. Absorbing his touch like a flower soaking up the rain. “You are a decade younger than me, sweetheart. Eighteen. You will not blame yourself when I’m the one who should know better. Be better.”
“But, I…”
His thumb slips into the corner of my mouth, sending a shock wave of shivers down my calves to my toes. “You what?”
“I liked being corrupted. I didn’t want it to end.” I turn my face slightly, looking him in the eye while razing the pad of his thumb with my teeth. “I’m a whore, Father.”
“No, you are not ,” he says choppily, obviously trying to focus, but distracted by my lips. How they kiss his thumb, allowing it to dip into my mouth and fish around. “You are magnificent . I will hear no contradictions.”
“But I like being that to you,” I whisper, pressing my knees together. “A little whore. Only for you.”
His green eyes are eclipsed by black.
He surges close and we moan against one another’s mouth. “Farrah…”
“What?” When he hesitates, I lift my hand and stroke the morning stubble of his face. “You can tell me anything.”
“I…the way I am with you…controlled by hunger. It’s everything I swore I would never be. I crave this…intoxicated feeling of being your lover and letting the lust run rampant, but I can’t help but be ashamed of it, too.”
In other words, I’m his ruin.
His downfall.
In my absence, he’d be strong. The man he needs to be.
“We shouldn’t be seen like this,” I whisper, pulling away.
Just as quickly, he draws my face back, mashing our foreheads together, and I want to crawl into his lap so badly and hear the word “lover” again in his deep, deep voice, that my chest throbs like an open wound. “I will not have you thinking badly about yourself because you are my one and only temptation, Farrah. You can’t control it. You can’t control how I respond to you.”
I stay silent, because he’s wrong and I don’t want to argue.
I want him to soothe me. I’ve been raw since last night. Restless. And it’s hard to put my finger on why. I’m caged and irritable and sad.
“I can see you disagree.” Of course, this man reads me like a book and yet, I can’t have him. Must live without him and his astuteness where I’m concerned. “Walk with me.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I gasp, tasting his breath.
Pushing him away, when I really, really want to get closer.
“There’s a disquiet in you this morning,” he observes—and I go still, wanting him to assess me. “It’s more than your fears and self-doubt making you this way.”
“How do you know?”
“I don’t…I can’t explain. I just know I need to bring you somewhere and hold you for a while.” Before I can guess his intentions, he’s scooping me off the bench into his arms and carrying me into the woods that border the church grounds.
I have no explanation for my eyes welling with tears twice in one morning. I’m not a crier. But he must have peeled back a layer of emotion I can’t define, because the imminence of being held is making me almost light and lethargic at the same time. I press my face into his shoulder and pout with no explanation, except that I’m happy with him and mad at him. Concurrently. What is happening to me?
We stop beneath a canopy of trees and Rune settles me on my feet, pulling me into the warm circle of his arms, rubbing circles onto my lower back. It feels divine and I want to stand there all day, but when he lifts me off the ground and rubs his mouth back and forth against my temple, I begin my lesson on the meaning of contentment.
Oh. I see.
It’s praise. For me…it’s praise.
“You deserved to be held last night after taking all that come for me,” he breathes. “I’ve never had my cock sucked before, Farrah, so how do I know your mouth is the sweetest one this side of heaven? I just know. I felt every pull of your mouth in my balls. I’ve never emptied so much at once. Your lips are like fucking elastic, sweetheart, and that throat?” His hand closes around the part of my body in questions. Squeezing. Massaging. Staring at it, mesmerized. “If I was a man of the world, instead of a man of God, I would find a way to wrap it in diamonds. Feel the shape of them when you allow me deep, you sweet little thing.” He chants so sweet, so sweet into my hair and I’ve melted.
He cradles me, rocks me, but he’s far from done.
“You’re beautiful and brave and curious and sensual. You are perfect. ” He kisses the crown on my head. “From here down to your toes.”
I let out a shaky breath, imbued with ease. Joy.
“This…really is what you needed last night and this morning, isn’t it? To be wrapped up in my arms and cared for?” He kisses my cheeks and my hairline, that hand back to rubbing soothing circles into the middle of my back. “I’m sorry you didn’t get what you needed from me after giving me everything I needed and more.”
“You did give me something I needed, Daddy,” I whisper, without thinking—and immediately his frame stiffens, his presence looming larger than before.
“Did I?” he says, hoarsely, his thumb digging into the base of my spine. “What was it, Farrah?”
“Mmmm.” More than anything, I wish he wasn’t wearing the thick robe, so I could feel more of his stiffness against my belly. There is a distinct outline through the robe, but I want more proof of his attraction to me. More. “You know what it was,” I tease, nuzzling his nose.
“I want to hear you say it,” he says, beginning to breathe hard.
“You gave me my first orgasm.” I lean up and glide our lips together, side to side, gratified by the long groan he issues. “I don’t know what I liked more. The way you made my pussy so hot, or the way you kissed me when I was coming.”
He snarls his way into kissing me now, urging my lips wide and invading me with unmitigated hunger. That hand that was massaging my back is now bruising my backside in its grip, yanking me higher and tighter to his body, our mouths locked in a frenzy. “I feel like I’m going to go mad when you call me Daddy, Farrah,” he rasps, sucking a line down the front of my throat. “But I’ll go mad if you don’t call me that, too.”
“Daddy. Daddy. ”
“Music to my ears.” He begins gathering my dress in harried hands, pulling it up to my waist, kissing me hard again, again, again. His hands slide down the back of my panties, take hold of my cheeks and lift me, my thighs locking around his robed body. He drops to his knees, laying me down on the soft earth, his mouth raking over mine, drugging me with exceedingly deep and thorough kisses. “And a nail in my coffin.”
No.
No, I can’t let myself be that for him.
I open my mouth to tell him we need to stop. To apologize for spurring on this magnetic attraction with my words, my actions—
The church bells toll. Loudly. Surrounding us.
Rune curses in a very un-priestly way. “I…” He pushes five fingers through his dark hair. “I’m scheduled to say mass.”
“When?” I breathe.
He closes his eyes, hissing, “Right now.”
“That’s probably for the best,” I murmur, resisting the impulse to roll my hips. I’m thrumming everywhere. My blood is beating his name. Rune. Rune. Rune . I want to be flattened into the ground and used by his big body. Banged. Isn’t that the word I hear men using in the marketplace? I want him to bang me. Hard and unapologetically.
I want him to call me a whore while he does it.
But after how he praised me, cared for me, that word doesn’t feel filthy.
Not at all.
It feels exciting, now that he’s balanced me out with praise…and I allow myself to explore that excitement now.
Maybe I’m a girl who loves sex. Loves the idea of it. But only if it’s with Rune. Even the suggestion of another man’s touch makes me feel ill.
It’s him. He brings this out of me.
He’s turned on this lust.
And I don’t know if I can turn it off.
Even if it means his destruction.