29. A Man of Faith #3
I’m still trying to process everything before the universe dishes out the final taste of its humour.
Something hard slams into my stomach; there’s no time to brace, and I stumble as the backs of my knees hit the tub.
The last thing I see is Francesca’s startled eyes, and a muffled shit leaves my mouth before water fills my nose and ears.
Mercifully, the tub is huge, and I hit the area somewhere close to her ankles. My trousers stick to my legs, and I feel Francesca’s toes nudging my ribs. For one endless, stupid moment, I remain underwater before pushing up and shaking my head like a wet dog.
Fuck , my socks are soup.
“Tommy!” Francesca is scolding, but it’s futile considering she’s fighting laughter. “That was rude!”
I blink slowly, pushing hair from my face as my socks give the most miserable fucking squelch. There’s a crown of foam on my head; I can feel it. Marinating with a naked cryptid wasn’t on my bingo card, but here we are.
“Congratulations, duchess. Apparently I’m a man of faith now.”
She opens her mouth, dimples already weaponised in preparation for a half-assed apology, but she’s interrupted by her own little squeak when my fingers close around a dainty ankle.
I tug gently, dragging her closer until our knees knock, and her smile melts into surprise.
Bubbles rise like a shield between us, and she blows some of it at my face.
There’s still laughter in her voice when she speaks. “So, what—you weren’t religious before this?”
I pull my shirt over my head and toss it somewhere behind me, cringing at the sound of wet fabric hitting tile. “Never saw the appeal in kneeling for somebody invisible.” A droplet trickles down her throat, pilfering what’s left of my attention. “Need something I can see.”
I realise too late that I’ve let something slip, something so ruinous that even luck flees me, unable to withstand how comprehension hits her. She knows. Knows exactly what I meant.
Reason wears a smug little smirk, folds its arms and takes three exaggerated steps towards the exit.
You’re visible , I almost say, but she already knows that.
Steam has pinked her cheeks, the flush doing a wicked thing to my self-control, and I’m left trying to remind myself that I’m the kind of man who prioritises restraint.
Here’s the thing though: how the fuck am I to do that when she’s looking at me like I’ve resurrected her?
Like I’ve opened the casket, forced her before a mirror and made her stare down the truth that she exists.
Like I’ve chained the horror of her mortality to the ankle in my hold.
She keeps my stare until it’s too much, until she registers that I’ve held her image up against God, and it wasn’t her I found wanting.
The concept of worship had been mutilated and buried in my mind’s graveyard for years.
Seven years old, maybe, knees pressed against the narrow pews, staring up at the ceiling and waiting for everything to be over.
Father Bariston said, ‘ Love thy neighbour,’ while the king hated every person he shook hands with.
The latter made me sit still and learn the script so I wouldn’t embarrass him.
He thought the eternity of worship would cure me of myself, but I could never trust the man preaching eternity when he couldn’t go one hour without checking his phone for word from his mistress.
It was a death he caused, a burial nobody attended, except maybe my mother.
She brought notepads to church and let me count the panes, tally how many times a baby cried and catalogue the different types of feathered hats I saw.
In the car home— Kai conked out like the dead, Henrik nursing a sippy cup, Father already gone in his own car, always gone —she’d ask me about the sermon in numbers.
A believer to the core, and yet she let me worship the way I needed.
The way I wanted.
But now Francesca is staring at me, and the old chapel in my skull has its braziers burning again.
The corpse of belief coughs beneath the soil, shifting as an ancient organ plays the beginning notes of logic’s demise.
She stares at my mouth, and I’m a congregation of one, waiting for her to say my name, for permission to convert.
It’d be so easy to seize her mouth, to drag her even closer, but the ease of it isn’t my currency alone—it’s hers too.
And if she wants to spend it, she needs to make the first move.
The prince in me bites his tongue on his desire, but the academic begs for tutelage.
To teach, to craft a syllabus of want, highlight every little gasp until she’s fluent in the confidence to demand more.
“Is it…” She leans in on a trembling breath, pupils blown so wide that the green is only a faint suggestion of a ring. That chin is tilted the slightest bit, duchess-heir to the very bone, even when on the verge of begging. “Is it alright if I…”
I laugh because the alternative would probably be sobbing in aching relief. My mouth goes dry. There she is, asking permission as if I’m the one with the power here.
Absolutely fucking insane.
“Fuck, yes. Just—come here, baby. Please .”
Porcelain squeals beneath my trousers when I shift, hands breaking the surface to cup the side of her neck.
My last coherent thought is that I pray Tommy has left.
She rises just enough to meet me, and the water unveils her, cascading over the bruises and nipples pebbled with heat.
The sight puts Botticelli’s Venus to utter fucking shame.
When her mouth finds mine, all I can do is open for her—and she takes .
I angle right, she turns left, and everything clicks into place. Wet skin. The softest lips.
I’m fucking dying.
The tip of my tongue voices my need before I even can, tracing the seam of her mouth.
She answers by opening wider, and I slip in lazily, gliding along her tongue, coaxing and feeding her.
There’s a wet click when we part for breath, a faint string of spit snapping before I’m plunging again.
I suck her tongue back into my mouth, swallowing the obscene moan she releases as the kiss grows noisier.
“Closer,” I murmur, sliding my palms under her thighs and dragging her into my lap. “Need you closer.”
Water gives her up, naked heat settling over my cock.
I don’t move for a full five seconds because my restraint is holding on for dear life.
She takes my mouth again before it has a chance to shatter, and she melts— fucking melts —into my chest. Her hips forget that I’m only a mortal man and jump into a tortuous rocking motion.
One small, experimental roll, more an accident, really.
Then another, purposeful. I breathe through it, letting her take what she needs, and—oh, there , she notches perfectly, sobbing against my mouth.
“Stunning, infuriating girl, you’re absolute fucking heaven.”
“ Eric ,” she whimpers, the want outrunning her so much so that her face contorts with it.
Eyes half shut, brows furrowed and mouth chasing mine even though she can’t keep up with her own movements.
Each roll steals her coordination and her language, and she misses my mouth to give a breathy moan at my ear.
“Hey,” I whisper, thumb smoothing over her cheekbones. “Easy, now. C’mon, darling, just this.”
My next kiss is slower than her urgency, folding each corner of this moment into a place where we can just float, breathing tangled, noses brushing, just holding.
She rocks smaller now, hands sliding to my hair to tug, which lures a deep chuckle from my chest. Our kiss loosens, becoming lazy until it’s just the most tactile way to remind the other I’m here .
Forehead to forehead, we pant into the minuscule space between us.
“That was probably the most illogical thing you could’ve done, indulging me like that.” She grins at me, sleepy and a little bit smug. “But hey, didn’t Kierkegaard say that faith begins precisely where thinking leaves off? Congrats, you’ve finally stopped thinking.”
Of all things to leave her mouth post-kiss… My brain seemingly leaves off too, because she’s naked as Eve in my lap, quoting Fear and Trembling at me.
“I’m sorry,” I laugh, “did you just flex philosophy at me? What, you read the works of S?ren Kierkegaard now?”
“Absolutely not; I saw the quote on Pinterest and Googled him. Thought it might shut you up someday.”
That’s it. That’s the end of me.
This sweet, haunting thing borrowed lines from a philosopher she probably wouldn’t even be able to point out, all so she could meet me on my ground.
Preparation like that is something you save for A-levels, and I don’t know what to do with that fact when I’ve gone my whole life feeling like an elective.
Extra credit if you’re up for it; fine to neglect if you don’t need it.
But shit if she didn’t just make me compulsory. She’s cornered me with my own logic and looks at me with the unfiltered knowledge of what I’ve become.
What she’s made me.
Belief is indeed another pattern, just like she said, except the repetitive event is how logic evacuates whenever she’s concerned and I consent to the loss each time.
Something has crawled from the grave I dug for belief, and it rises with eyes the colour of lake water.
It doesn’t look like a book. Doesn’t look like a cross.
Belief has a face, and it looks like Francesca Sheffolk.
My phone interrupts the moment with a sterile beep-beep from the counter. I don’t need to see the screen to know that it flashes 00:00. Into her hair, I whisper with a hum, “Happy birthday, Baskerville.”
And when she breathes a grateful thank you , there’s a collective sigh, just far enough to not be fully part of this world. The impossible closes in, reaching for me, yet I see no pattern. Because this time I’m part of it.
And God help me, I let them claim me.