Estate #3
“God,” I gasped, my nails digging crescents into his skin.
“Blasphemy, Miss Evangeline,” he murmured, his voice strained with the effort of his restraint. “In my bed, no less.”
“Forgive me, Father,” I found myself saying through laughter despite the burning stretch, “for I have sinned.”
“I would rather hear you say ‘Bless me, Father.’”
I did. And he slid deeper.
“Again.”
I said it again — half breathless — and he went deeper still.
“Bless me, Father,” I whispered a third time, the words more moan than speech as he finally seated himself fully inside me. The fullness was overwhelming, a strange invasion that hovered between discomfort and something far more compelling.
Judah stilled above me, his breathing ragged against my neck. “Are you all right?”
I nodded, unable to form words as my body adjusted to his presence.
His forehead rested against mine, our breaths mingling in the narrow space between us.
I could feel his heartbeat everywhere — where his chest pressed against mine, where his cock pulsed inside me, where his wrist crossed over mine as he pinned my hand gently beside my head.
“Move,” I whispered, my free hand finding the nape of his neck, fingers threading through his hair. “Please.”
He withdrew slightly before pressing forward again, the motion sending ripples of sensation through my body. I gasped, my back arching involuntarily.
Judah had a rhythm — slow thrusts going deep. His eyes never left mine, watching every bit of expression across my face as if memorizing me. The weight of his body, the heat of his skin against mine, the scent of cedar and sweat — it was overwhelming in the best possible way.
“You're beautiful,” he murmured, his hand sliding beneath me to arch my hips higher. The slight change in angle sent a jolt of pleasure through me so intense I cried out.
“Fuck…”
He smiled against my neck. “There we go.”
Each thrust now hit something deep inside me that made coherent thought impossible.
My body responded to his without my conscious direction, hips rising to meet his thrusts, seeking more of that exquisite pressure.
The discomfort had dissolved entirely, replaced by waves of pleasure that built with each movement.
I didn’t understand what he was doing to me. How it could be this… this incredible.
He shifted his weight onto one elbow, his other hand sliding between our bodies to find where his cock was thrusting inside me.
He found my clit and his fingers circled that sensitive bundle of nerves and I was gone.
Floating somewhere without sound, without sight, crashing against Judah again and again.
Like I was liquid and gas, and all the other states besides.
Moans spilled from me, one after the other. I couldn’t contain them.
When it finally broke, it was like nothing I'd ever experienced — a wave of pleasure so intense it bordered on pain, radiating outward from where we were joined until every nerve ending in my body sang with it.
He covered my mouth with his, swallowing the sound as his thrusts became more urgent, more demanding.
The second wave hit me unexpectedly, building on the first before I'd even come down.
This time I bit into his shoulder to keep from screaming, the taste of salt on my tongue.
His rhythm faltered, became erratic, and I felt him swell inside me.
With a groan that seemed torn from somewhere deep within, Judah thrust in one final time.
His body tensed, every muscle going rigid.
I felt it. His release, mixing with the aftershocks of my own. It was so intimate and… primal, almost.
For several long moments, we remained locked together, our labored breathing the only sound in the room. The weight of him pressed me into the mattress, — but all of it felt right.
When he finally moved, it was to brush the damp hair from my forehead, his touch impossibly tender.
“Okay?”
I nodded, unable to form words just yet. My body felt different—used in the most exquisite way, tender in places I'd never been aware of before, but humming with a satisfaction so complete it bordered on spiritual.
He withdrew from me slowly, and I winced at the strange emptiness that followed. There was a smear of blood on the sheets between us — less than I’d expected.
Judah disappeared into what I assumed was an adjoining bathroom, returning moments later with a warm, damp cloth.
“How do you feel? Actually?” he asked as he started running the cloth down my thighs — so gentle.
I considered the question, taking inventory of my body — the pleasant ache between my legs, the lingering tingles of pleasure, the heaviness in my limbs.
I shrugged. “Fine.” There it was. That word again. Fine. But it was more than that. Only I didn’t know how to put it into words. “I… It was different than what I expected.”
I watched his forehead crease slightly as he cleaned up the last of the blood from my skin.
“And what did you expect?” he asked.
I smirked. “You didn’t grunt nearly enough, Preacher.”
His hand froze with the damp cloth against my skin, and his eyes lifted to look at me.
“Preacher,” he echoed, the corners of his mouth gaining an odd tilt.
Like he was trying not to smile. “I think yours and William’s friendship is becoming a cause for concern.
” He tossed the cloth aside and pulled me against him, settling us both among the plush pillows.
“He’s fun,” I said, resting my head against his chest.
“I don’t contest that,” he said, his fingers trailing lazy patterns on my bare shoulder. “But I promise to make improvements. More grunting next time. Less… whatever that was.”
“Next time?” I echoed, tilting my head to look at him.
Something flashed in his eyes — possessiveness, perhaps. “I have spilled your blood, Mercy.” He paused, his voice growing deep. “Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission.” His thumb traced my collarbone, unhurried. “We are bound now. You understand that.”
I couldn’t tell whether he was joking or not, but I didn’t feel like questioning him. Not now.
“Do you actually know the scripture by heart?” I asked instead. I did wonder because I knew my father hadn’t known more than some chosen few sentences he’d kept repeating ad nauseam — and even twisting them into non-recognition if it so pleased him.
“Most of it,” Judah admitted, his fingers continuing their lazy exploration of my skin.
“I'm impressed,” I said, watching the way the lamplight caught the planes of his face. “My father could barely get through Leviticus without making things up.”
“I have a photographic memory,” he said softly, running his fingers up and down my arm. “Helps with numbers.”
“Numbers?” I cocked an eyebrow.
He sighed, and let his hand rest against my shoulder. Simple. “Being a pastor is a lot like being a bookkeeper, Mercy,” he said. “Only instead of numbers, you’re multiplying faith.”
She was not what he'd expected, which was its own kind of reckoning.
He'd expected nerves — most virgins came with nerves. The uncertainty, the embarrassment, that all was a given. Granted, Judah couldn’t remember when he’d last been with a virgin — probably well before he’d taken up the Bible.
There had been a girl back then, not Christian.
Just a simple girl from a simple town over.
He’d met her at a party — one of Billy’s.
Judah must’ve been seventeen, the girl — around the same age, maybe a couple years younger.
Neither had had any idea of what they were doing — as children do.
But he wasn’t a child anymore, and Mercy wasn’t a fifteen-year-old girl from a town over.
Shit, she had him all twisted.
She had touched his older tattoos without asking and it had felt right. He couldn’t explain it.
Mercy had walked into his church with one bag and three books and turned his entire life upside down.
When it came down to it, the decision cost him three hundred thousand dollars and whatever thin line he’d been pretending still existed between restraint and want.
Hargrove had marked her. That golden cherry glinted against her dress like a claim staked in plain sight.
Judah had seen it and gone still — blood draining so fast it left him hollow for a second.
Billy had noticed. A hand on Judah’s shoulder, low voice in his ear, reminding him to keep playing his part.
Judah had played it.
He’d paid.
Easy.
Too easy.
He hadn’t told her what that meant.
Hadn’t told her that by every rule that mattered — the old ones whispered in back rooms, the new ones dressed up as business — she was his now.
He would.
But not like this. Not when her breath was still soft against his skin.
Not tonight. Tonight wasn’t for truth. It wasn’t for anything clean enough to name.
She lay across him, her head rising and falling with his breath. His hand moved through her hair slowly, mindfully now, not the absent motion it pretended to be. The cross on the nightstand caught what little light there was, dull and watchful.
Outside, the night carried on — wet, alive, full of things that hid in plain sight.
He thought about the cellar.
About the ledger locked tight behind steel. Routes. Names. Debts that didn’t forgive themselves. The kind of life that didn’t stop existing because someone softer had wandered into it.
Celeste Taylor’s photograph.
Gerald Hall’s cigarettes.
Ghosts. Evidence. Warnings.
And Mercy, threaded through all of it now whether she understood it or not.
He exhaled slowly, staring at the ceiling, hoping it might answer something. It never did.
She was going to find out.
There was no version of this where she didn’t. He’d known that from the first moment — when she walked into his church and didn’t bow her head like the rest of them, when her eyes moved instead of lowering, when she saw.
He’d recognized it.
And he’d chosen anyway.
Because you decided.
Billy’s voice again. Always that same blunt edge.
And once you decide, nothing else matters.
Judah’s hand stilled briefly in her hair before continuing, slower.
Mercy’s breathing had evened out. Sleep, or something close to it. Her hand rested over his ribs, over the suffering Christ inked into his skin — fingers splayed like she was claiming that too.
He looked down at it.
At her.
At the quiet trust she hadn’t realized she’d given him. And he thought about what it would cost when it broke. The moment she understood what the cherry meant. What room she’d stood in. What he’d done.
What he’d bought.
His throat tightened, something unfamiliar scraping up the inside of it.
He imagined himself on his knees.
Not for absolution. Not for forgiveness.
For her.
The image stayed there longer than it should have.
Might be the only honest prayer he’s said in years.
“Lord,” he thought, the word dry in his mouth, her hair warm against his skin, cicadas screaming outside like something restless and endless, “have mercy.”
The irony sat heavy, almost enough to make him laugh.
Almost.
He closed his eyes.
Outside, the bayou breathed — slow, patient, swallowing everything eventually.
He knew better than most what it did with the things it was given.
And still, he held her closer.