14. Jacob
Jacob
A loud banging on the front doors of the church had me stepping into my slippers and shuffling out of my small apartment and through the chapel.
The pounding grew more insistent with every step, and I sent up a prayer hoping the person on the steps was someone in need and not someone trying to rob me for the silver.
The latter was less likely, but not completely out of the realm of possibility.
The last thing I expected when I undid the heavy locks and pulled the door open was to find Vince Angelini standing in front of me, fist still raised in the air.
Beside him stood a man I’d never seen before, Vince’s other fist tangled tightly in his hair. He was shoved to his knees, where he landed with enough force to shatter his kneecaps, but his face remained unfazed by the rough handling. I imagined his bones remained intact .
“Mr. Angelini,” I said, glancing between the two men. “To what do I owe this late visit?”
“When you asked me to dinner, you weren’t asking me to dinner, were you?”
The man on his knees grimaced, eyes downcast.
“I don’t understand.”
“It was dinner as a cover. Dinner as a preface, correct?”
I licked my lips, heart kicking into high gear.
It was imperative in my line of work that I be able to read people and understand the things they intended even if they weren’t the things they said.
And yes, Vince was correct. My ask of dinner had been little more than a ruse to test the waters for things that usually came after dinner, but he was a live wire, frantic and sleepless.
I didn’t know which was safer here—the truth or a lie.
Before I could answer, Vince reached behind him, pulled out a gun and pressed it against the other man’s temple. “Which was it, Father?”
“It was a preface,” I answered quickly, holding my hand up in surrender. “It was a cover.”
“Tell me exactly what you wanted from me,” he said next, jaw clenched. He shoved the other man onto the ground, his hands landing near my feet, the gun now pointed at the back of his skull.
“I didn’t have?—”
Vince fired, the bullet burying itself into the marble, inches away from my foot and the other man’s face.
“I wanted to fuck!” I shouted. I yelled it, hoping my voice was loud enough to cover the ringing in my ears from the gunshot.
“More detail,” he said next. “How did you want to fuck? Orion likes when I hurt him, and I’m rather fond of that myself. I like to fuck him while he’s unconscious sometimes, at least…I did.”
Orion.
That was his name.
Vince’s comment had me wondering if whatever was happening was some kind of grossly blasphemous foreplay. I should have been turned off by the whole thing, but instead I found my cock thickening between my legs, testing the seam of my sweatpants.
“I like it rough. I…like when it hurts. When I bleed.”
At my feet, Orion whimpered, hips pushing down against the floor.
“Knives?” he asked.
“Whips,” I admitted.
“Is that what you wanted from me?”
I opened my mouth, but snapped it closed, gesturing to Orion on the ground between us. “I’m not sure I understand what’s happening,” I said.
“Don’t worry about him.” Vince stepped on Orion’s fingers, closing the space between us with this man prostrate beneath our feet. “I’m not asking what he wants. I’m asking what you want.”
There had been a series of events that had brought me to the church, some in my control and some not. Church was not a sanctuary for me, and inviting another man into the space, especially a man like Vince Angelini…it wasn’t just reckless.
It was dangerous.
But I didn’t care.
“Yes,” I rasped, swallowing hard.
“Do you have a whip? Do you want to bleed?”
“Yes.”
“Go get it, then. Come back and ask me for the privilege, Priest, and we’ll see what you get.”
It was hard to walk, hard to turn around and run back into my small apartment, and harder still to dig through the small box under my bed with toys that I should have never brought into the church.
I still had no clue what was happening. Didn’t understand who Orion and Vince were to each other, but I didn’t have it in me to care.
My brain wasn’t firing right. The only thing that mattered was the looming promise of knotted leather digging holes into my back and the release that came with that kind of pain.
When I made it back to the sanctuary, Orion was on his feet, face a tangled mask of arousal and anger all at once.
Vince had re-holstered his weapon and he whispered something into Orion’s ear that I couldn’t hear.
When he saw the whip in my hand, more an old cat-of-nine tails with knotted leather falls, his mouth curved into a deviant smile.
He said something else, and Orion managed a weak nod.
“Too bad,” he said, once I was close enough to hear. “ You can go to the confessional and repent your fucking sin, Orion. I’ll deal with the holy father here.”
I wanted to tell him I wasn’t really a priest, but he took the whip out of my hand, and we both watched Orion stare longingly at the tool before heading to the confessional. He slammed himself inside, and I didn’t know if he went to his knees or into his pants.
“Get on your hands and knees and face your God,” he said, taking the whip out of my hand and testing the falls against his forearm.
I dug my nails into my palms to stop myself from coming on the spot, then sank to my knees and stared Vince Angelini straight in the eye, waiting for whatever salvation he had to offer.