Matthew 13 #2
Bondage came to mind, and, yes, this na?ve little Christian girl knew what that was.
There were lots and lots of straps that crisscrossed the lace, meant to run across the curve of the breasts, then in between them, loop around the neck, and then drop down between the breasts again, to circle the waist and thighs.
I know what I saw, I know what it presented — control, surrender.
The better, more important question was — how would I get it on?
I held it up in the morning light coming through the tall windows.
My father would have called it a garment of sin. He had a category for everything and a Bible verse to back it.
My father was a miserable man, I realized.
It took me a moment to figure it out and then — I put it on.
It fit perfectly.
I stood in front of the big mirror in the red lace and looked at myself for a long moment.
Then I got dressed, which proved a considerable challenge given the collar that started around my neck and ran way down, between my breasts and even further.
I decided in favor of a dusty-rose high-neck sleeveless shirt and a ribbed, tight-fitting skirt that reached well past the knee.
Those were the clothes I would've worn any Monday.
I put it all on, smoothed everything down, checked the mirror again.
You couldn't see anything.
That was the point. I understood that immediately, standing there looking at myself — a perfectly ordinary woman getting ready for a perfectly ordinary workday, with something that belonged to him pressed against her skin.
I picked up my bag and went to work.
Grace Eternal on a Monday morning had its own built-in rhythm. Darlene arrived, the printer made its personality known, the volunteer schedule needed three things fixed before nine. I fixed them. I made calls. I reorganized the August intake folders that had somehow migrated to September.
Normal. Ordinary. The fluorescent light above my desk stammered once and stabilized.
The lace sat against my skin all morning and I was aware of it every second of the day.
At ten-thirty I went to the staff room to make coffee.
The staff room was small — a table, four chairs, the ancient drip machine that Darlene treated like a dependent. I had the room to myself. I filled the machine, leaned against the counter and waited, and didn't notice the strap until I caught my own reflection in the window above the sink.
It had slipped down my shoulder, past the point the top could hide. Just slightly. Just enough that an inch of the crimson lace was visible at my shoulder.
I reached up to fix it.
“Leave it.”
I went still.
Judah was in the doorway. I hadn't heard him — he moved through this building like he'd been built into it.
Dark shirt, sleeves rolled up, the ink on his forearms catching the light.
He was looking at the strap with an expression that had no business being on a pastor's face at ten-thirty on a Monday morning.
He came into the room. The door didn't close behind him — it stayed open, the hallway beyond empty and quiet.
He crossed to me in four steps and moved my hand away from my shoulder, replacing it with his own. His fingers traced the edge of the strap, slow, following the line of it where it disappeared beneath my shirt.
“Good girl,” he said, low. I almost missed it.
Heat moved through me from the point of contact outward.
I turned around in his arms.
His head dipped. His mouth found the place where the strap sat against my skin — just above my collarbone — and pressed there. Open. Warm.
“You have no idea,” he said against my skin, “what it does to me knowing you've been wearing this all morning.”
“Judah—”
“In this building.” His lips moved up, barely. “At your desk. In front of Darlene.” His teeth grazed the curve of my shoulder and I gripped the counter behind me. “God should strike me down right now and I would die a happy man.”
“That's—” I tried to find the word. “That's genuinely blasphemous.”
“Mmhm.” He didn't sound troubled by it. His hand had found the hem of my shirt at my waist, fingers slipping underneath to the lace beneath, tracing the edge of it against my skin. “There will be more sets like this. You're going to wear them every day.”
“I'm at work.”
“You're at my work.” His thumb pressed against my hip, over the lace. “Every day, Mercy.”
I opened my mouth to say something — I don't know what, something sensible, something that acknowledged we were standing in a staff room with an open door in a church — and he kissed me instead.
Hard and brief and completely without apology, his hand still at my waist, his mouth tasting like coffee.
When he pulled back his eyes were dark.
“Fix the strap,” he said.
“No,” I told him.
He cocked an eyebrow.
“You put this on me — you fix it,” I told him.
A slow smile spread across his face, something darkly pleased in it.
“Well now.” His voice was rough velvet. “That’s a dangerous request.”
His fingers moved to the strap slowly, brushing against my skin as he adjusted it back into place. The touch lingered, tracing the line of my shoulder, my collarbone.
“Better?” he asked, though he hadn’t stepped back. The space between us remained charged, electric.
I leaned against the counter behind me and lifted my leg, my knee brushing the inside of his thighs.
His hand clamped around my leg, fingers digging into the fabric of my skirt.
“Not here,” he said, but his body contradicted him, pressing closer.
“Why not?” I kept my voice light, casual, even as my heart hammered against my ribs. “Isn’t this your kingdom? Your rules?”
I saw something dangerous light up in his eyes. His grip tightened on my leg.
I closed in despite it, and said, quoting him from a couple of days past, “I could strip you naked, fuck you on this very table, and all they would do is look away.”
For a heartbeat, the room went absolutely still. His eyes narrowed, darkened to that impossible shade that made me forget my name, my purpose, everything except the weight of his gaze. Then his hand moved from my leg to my throat.
“You’re learning too fast,” he murmured, his voice pitched low enough that only I could hear it. “And you’re enjoying it too much.”
The coffee machine behind me gurgled its completion, filling the small room with the rich scent of dark roast. Neither of us moved.
The sound of Darlene’s sensible heels clicked down the hallway, growing louder. Judah stepped back smoothly, creating a respectable distance between us just as she appeared in the doorway.
“Oh! Pastor, there you are,” she said right as Judah was reaching for a mug to fill it with coffee. “There’s a pair come to talk about a wedding.”
He nodded, already moving toward the door. “I’m going.” He sipped from the mug, and added, “The Tureaud memorial committee wants to meet Thursday. Can you check my calendar?”
“Of course.” She stepped aside to let him pass, watching him go, and then turned back to the room.
I was very busy with my freshly poured coffee cup.
Darlene looked at the counter. At me. At the space where he'd been standing.
“The Henderson forms,” she said finally.
“Done,” I said.
She nodded once, slowly, poured her coffee and left without another word.
I took a long, shaky breath.
I was learning fast.
The rule about Judah’s door had never been stated out loud.
That was how his rules worked — they didn't arrive as instructions; they arrived as facts you discovered by observing what happened when they were violated.
Or in this case, what didn't happen. Nobody knocked on a closed door in this building.
Not Darlene, not Sister Ruth, not the deacons who'd been coming to this office for ten years.
The closed door was a language everyone spoke fluently and nobody had taught me.
I'd learned it by watching.
So when he appeared in the doorway of the food bank office at two in the afternoon and said, “Mercy. My office,” and walked back without waiting — I knew what the closed door meant before I'd even stood up.
Darlene was on the phone. She glanced at me over the receiver, something passing through her expression too quickly to name, and looked back at her desk.
I closed my laptop and went, the heels of my shoes echoing in my wake.
His office was at the end of the hall, past the meeting room, past the small prayer alcove with its perpetual candle. The door was open when I got there. He was at his desk, not looking up, reading something —completely still, total absorption, the rest of the world paused and waiting.
I came in, feeling the lace shift against my skin under my clothes. Anticipation. I knew what this would be.
“Close the door,” he instructed without looking up.
I did.
The sound of it — that soft, final click — did something immediate to the air in the room.
The hallway sounds disappeared. The printer down the corridor, Darlene's voice on the phone — a building full of people doing ordinary things — all of it gone.
Just the room. Only him. And the lace against my skin.
He set the paper down and looked at me.
“Come here,” he said.
I hesitated, walking to the shelve with books instead. It appeared being a brat came naturally to me — my father’s fear materialized.
I ran my fingers along the spines of theology books, feeling his eyes on me like a physical touch. I selected one, pulled it out, and examined the cover as though it were the most fascinating thing I’d ever seen.
“Are you disobeying me, Mercy?” His voice was quiet, controlled, but with a dangerous edge that sent a shiver down my spine.
“I’m looking at your books,” I replied, not looking up. “You have quite the collection.”
I heard his chair move, then his footsteps across the carpet. He didn’t touch me. He stood close enough that I could feel the heat radiating from his body, smell the faint notes of his cologne mixed with coffee.
“Put the book down.”