Always Alchemy: The Ever After Book (Alchemy #6)

5. Pater Noster

5

PATER NOSTER

BELLE

T he team at Unfurl really doesn’t do things by halves.

I hesitate in the doorframe of the basement room I’ve been summoned to and survey my surroundings. My husband’s note merely said the following:

Belle Charlton

It has been too long since your last confession. Please see Fr Rafe at your earliest convenience to partake of the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

Only my darling husband would see this as an appropriate wedding gift and a way to celebrate our anniversary… every year after.

It was two years ago today that we were married—and no, we did not marry in the sight of God. Instead, we had a beautifully heartfelt humanist ceremony at a vineyard just outside St Tropez, Chateau des Anges. We wrote our own vows, and they reflected everything we wanted to tell each other. To promise each other.

And no, my dad didn’t come. We knew he wouldn’t. In the eyes of the Church, and therefore in his eyes, it wasn’t a wedding, and we’re not married, and that’s okay. He gets to choose his views. His boundaries. And I get to choose not to tie myself up in knots over his reactions. It’s a slow process, and our truce is uneasy, but we’re getting there, and Rosalie’s birth has helped our relationship no end.

Most importantly, no one is riding roughshod over each other’s beliefs.

In a fit of spectacularly wilful disobedience to her husband, Mummy gave me away and hosted the chic wedding breakfast. I couldn’t have been more proud, or more grateful.

Yes, my husband still runs Alchemy.

Yes, we enjoy the frisson that frequenting the club adds to our sex life on occasion.

And yes, Rafe is still a kinky fucker. This anniversary celebration being a case in point.

What used to be a bland, versatile and generously proportioned space in the club’s basement has been transformed. Wax church candles stand everywhere, their dancing, darting flames casting long shadows on the maroon walls. There’s an enormous bed with four dark, ornately carved wooden posts. I eye it warily. On any other day it would be the main attraction, but not today.

No. That dubious honour is reserved for the sizeable wooden box taking up the entire far wall. A box that, for many, may resemble a walk-in cupboard, but that anyone raised in the Catholic faith will instantly recognise as a confessional .

It’s lifesize.

It’s bloody enormous, complete with a doorway on either side from whose arched frames hang purple velvet curtains and a centre panel featuring a wooden grille in place of a window. One curtain is drawn, and one is pulled open, revealing the small, dim booth within.

I still can’t believe my husband and his team found an actual confessional box somewhere and reassembled it in the bowels of Alchemy for my husband’s nefarious purposes. I definitely smelt Cal’s handiwork that first time he showed it to me.

The mere sight of it is always enough to trigger a host of emotions, and tonight is no exception. The guilt and fear I felt as a child facing my monthly confession churn in my stomach with the hopeless, roiling, lustful anticipation of what’s about to go down in that box, as well as a wholly new form of guilt.

Because past forays down here tell me that the salvation of my immortal soul is not what Fr Rafe has in store for me this evening. On the contrary, he won’t stop until he’s damned us both to hell for all eternity.

And that thought alone has me squirming with hopeless, helpless desire.

Sr Belina makes regular appearances in our sex life. She and her bishop are still hot as hell for each other. But on these annual pilgrimages to the confessional we try something different.

Tonight I’m Belle, random sinner and priestly prey. I’m not sure what sins I’ve committed, but I think we can all rest assured that Fr Rafe will unearth them and punish me for my immorality.

I lock the door to the room behind me and approach the open booth, trusting that Rafe is already established on his side. There’s a little card slotted into the door with Fr Rafe Charlton inscribed, and someone’s even rigged up a little light above his door. His light is on, meaning he’s in situ and hearing confessions.

Dear God. What the hell am I getting myself into this time?

I kneel on the leather-cushioned kneeler, smoothing my silky black dress over my hips. I’ve pulled the velvet curtain closed, which serves to make the confines of this confessional more oppressive.

Rafe’s fine profile is dimly visible through the diamond-shaped holes in the wooden fretwork between us. Fretwork that’s supposed to afford the sinner a modicum of privacy. His head is bent. He’s not looking at me.

‘Good evening, my child.’

‘Good evening, Father,’ I tell him. ‘It has been a year since my last confession.’

‘Very good,’ he intones. ‘What sins would you like to seek His Holy Father’s forgiveness for tonight?’

I cast my eyes upwards. The booth smells of aged wood and grave secrets and penitence. It’s atmospheric and alarmingly real. It feels uncomfortably like I’m in church.

Uncomfortably convincing.

Uncomfortably blasphemous.

I swallow.

‘Um,’ I begin feebly. I’ve discussed this, choreographed it, even, with the real-life version of Rafe. But now I’m here, spilling out my darkest thoughts and deeds to this shadowy figure feels as confronting as it did last year—and the year before. I certainly never confessed sins like these in my previous life. The whispered sins of my school days—the ones I was brave enough to admit to, at least—were more along the lines of zoning out in church and not keeping my bedroom tidy.

‘I have impure thoughts,’ I tell the priest now. ‘All the time, actually.’

He sucks in a harsh breath. When he speaks, his voice sounds strangled. ‘What kind of impure thoughts?’

As usual, this is more realistic and a damn sight more intimidating than I expected. It’s easy to forget the guy on the other side of the grille is my husband. The person who knows me more intimately than I know myself. The object and the instigator of my impure thoughts.

In this moment, he’s my judge.

I clear my throat. ‘I think about men. About… about enjoying the pleasures of the flesh with men.’

‘The act of physical love isn’t a sin, if it’s enjoyed within the sacrament of marriage,’ he tells me carefully.

‘I’m not married,’ I lie. ‘And my fantasies aren’t about being with one man. They’re about being with multiple men at the same time, and having all of them use my body however they want.’

‘Dear God,’ he mutters. He wipes a hand over his face. ‘That is a mortal sin indeed. And tell me, have you ever acted on these wicked fantasies?’

‘Yes,’ I tell him. ‘Plenty of times.’

There’s a pregnant silence. My nipples harden, brushing against the soft silk of my dress. My breasts feel full and heavy.

‘Do you allow these men to profane your body?’ the priest asks eventually.

‘Yes, Father.’

‘Tell me what you let them do to you. ’

There’s a movement through the fretwork. I could swear he’s reaching down and touching himself.

‘I let them do whatever they want with me. I let them strip me naked, and lay me down on a bed, and tie me up if they like, and touch me however they want.

‘I let them pull and suck on my nipples, and lick my pussy, and slide their fingers inside me. And I let them come on me and put their dicks in my mouth, and I allow them to fuck me however they want.’

I stare at his profile as I answer. I can see enough to know his gorgeous jaw is clenched, his eyes squeezed closed. His lips begin to move silently, although whether he’s seeking salvation for the sinner across from him or for strength for himself is unclear.

That arm of his is still moving, and then there’s the unmistakable sound of a zip being pulled down, and God.

I’ve made this priest hard.

I’ve made him want to touch himself.

My words have crept through the barriers of the fretwork and his protective layer of priestly garb, right through to the core of him. The core that makes him a man, that no amount of kneeling and praying and beseeching and shuffling of rosary beads can erase.

‘How does it make you feel when they do these things to you?’ he grits out. ‘Do you feel contrition for your sins? Are you here to repent?’

‘I don’t know,’ I admit. ‘I feel the shame of it, but it’s… it’s glorious. It makes everything brighter. Sharper. I know how sinful it is, but I don’t want to stop.’

On the other side of the screen, fabric rustles.

‘Is your body having a sinful reaction right now, just recounting these transgressions?’

‘Yes, Father,’ I murmur, and God knows, it’s the truth. Between my recollections of my darkest, most vital couplings, and the viscerally physical reaction this beautiful man of God is having to me, and his obvious torment, and the womb-like sanctuary this confessional offers, I’m all at once feeling alive and vulnerable and shameless and fatalistic.

As if, by coming to this priest and making my burdens his, I have the breathing space to marvel at my sins and delight in them rather than letting them suffocate me.

The low rasp of his next words breaks my reverie.

‘Show me.’

‘I—what?’ I manage.

For the first time, he permits himself to turn and face me. The shadows in the booth only accentuate the hard, symmetrical planes of his face.

The eyes so full of pupil they’re practically black.

The full lusciousness of his bottom lip as he tugs at it with his teeth.

He’s so beautiful.

‘You just confessed to having a physical reaction to your sins—although not the one God would wish you to have. Your nipples must be hard, no?’

‘Yes.’ Hard is an understatement. They’re pinched. Aching. Almost brittle.

‘And you’re wet between your legs?’

I hesitate, unsure where this is going. Unsure whether he’s seeking to punish me or prey upon me.

I suspect it’s both.

‘Yes.’

‘Then pull down your dress and let me see your nipples. Let me see what this sinful desire does to your body.’

I freeze .

He exhales, and it’s the sound of a man pushed beyond all limits.

‘For the love of God. I said show me. ’

It’s the need in his voice that undoes me.

Whatever he thinks he’s doing, it’s clear in this moment he’s simply a flesh-and-blood man.

I lift my hands and hook my fingers through the tiny straps of my dress, letting them fall from my shoulders. The entire dress slithers off my body, pooling where I’m kneeling. To all intents and purposes, I’m naked. Not that Fr Rafe can see much below my chest.

Those black eyes are fixated on my bare breasts. If he had any doubt that I was telling the truth about my arousal, it must be clear to him now.

‘Dear sweet Lord above,’ he groans, and the delicious anguish in his voice moves me. Tectonic plates shift beneath me. The air seems to swirl, to dance around me as he takes me in.

I wait.

‘Stand up,’ he orders. ‘As far back as you can, so I can see you.’

I get to my feet, stepping out of the heap of pooled silk and hitting the back wall of the booth. It’s only a couple of feet back from where I was kneeling, but I hope it gives him a decent eyeful of my naked body. I love nothing more than flesh against flesh, but the unwilling, anguished stare of this celibate man burns my skin like nothing else. That it costs him so much to yield to this reaction he’s having to me has power and desire and yearning rushing, hot and heady, through my veins .

‘So beautiful,’ he says mournfully on an exhale. ‘I knew it. I knew as soon as you told me your terrible sins that you must have a face and body made to bring men to their knees. That you’d be so beautiful they’d turn their back on salvation without a backwards glance.’

I’m unclear on whether this is a compliment or a condemnation.

Probably both.

‘Show me how they touch you,’ he orders. ‘Show me how they play with your breasts.’

I bring my hands to my breasts and run a finger along the silky underside of each before cupping them gently. Then I allow myself to strum my aching nipples. The shot of pure pleasure to my clit has me inhaling sharply and arching my back.

‘How does that feel?’ he demands.

‘Amazing,’ I tell him.

‘Wrong?’

‘No.’ The pleasure I’m enjoying at my own hands has me forcing the point. ‘It feels far too good to be wrong.’

‘That’s where you’re mistaken, you poor little sinner,’ he says. ‘But I bet you like it when they pinch your nipples hard, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do it.’

I pinch the taut little buds. I roll them. I rub them. Jesus Christ, my fingers and his burning gaze have me hot as hell.

‘Do you let two men suck on them at once?’ he asks.

‘Yes,’ I tell him. I used to, anyway. ‘And it’s the best feeling in the world.’

Two mouths are better than one .

A wise man gave me a maths lesson once, and I’ve never forgotten it .

‘Let me,’ he says. His voice is rough. Full of heat and friction and raw, masculine need. ‘I need a taste. I need to know how you’ll feel between my lips as my teeth graze you and my tongue laves you as hard as it can. Come here. Stand up on the kneeler.’

I do as he says, and he scrambles to his feet. I lean forward so I can press my breasts against the fretwork. The diamonds are large-ish, probably a couple of inches across. I cup my breasts and feed my nipples through the holes.

He swipes a fingertip roughly over each nipple, his head dropping to the screen with a dull thud as he does. The sensation of his hands on me is so perfect and so fleeting I gasp. I lay my forehead against the wood, too, driven by a need to be as close as possible to him. I can’t see his face clearly like this, but our breaths are mingling.

‘You’ve been in here two minutes,’ he rasps, ‘and already you’ve driven me to sin. You’re some kind of unholy siren, and I’m completely powerless against you. Look at you. Jesus Christ. I should be horrified by your wanton promiscuity, but I’ve never seen anything so beautiful in my life.’

He reaches up again and tweaks my nipples. Hard. Viciously, almost. I sense he means it as a punishment, or at least as retaliation for the effect I’m having on him, but his undoing is my undoing, and I arch into the staggering pleasure his touch gives me.

He keeps rubbing. Pinching. My nipples, which were sore in my first trimester and are now needy as fuck, send sharp jolts of arousal to my clit. I stand there, my forehead against the screen, my moans turning to whimpers as he works me relentlessly and my legs widening of their own accord.

Then he’s lifting his head and stooping and sealing his lips around one nipple as his fingers fondle the other. He’s true to his promise. He snags my nipple lightly between his teeth as the flat of his tongue works over it roughly. Desperately. He hums, low and hungrily, in the back of his throat. Mmm , he says. Mmm.

My hands claw at the fretwork. My fingers dig through it, but I can’t reach him. He breaks the seal of his mouth on my skin for a moment.

‘I bet this is making you sinfully wet in that greedy little pussy,’ he growls against my breast.

‘It is,’ I gasp. ‘So wet.’ Wet and achy and needy and empty . So empty. So bereft. It’s clear I won’t find salvation today, and I don’t care. Nothing matters in this moment except getting this beautiful, conflicted, agonised man’s hands and mouth and dick on and in every part of my body.

‘Give me a taste,’ he commands. ‘Slide a finger through that slick pussy and let me taste you.’

I do as he says, shuddering as my finger swipes through the parts of me that need so badly to be touched, violated, more thoroughly before sticking it through a diamond-shaped hole.

His mouth closes over it, hot and hungry, sucking me in hard as his teeth hold me in place and his taut tongue devours every last drop of my arousal. His mouth is so warm. So soft. I feel the power of his sucks everywhere. I need his mouth on my pussy more than I need oxygen.

He’s still working my other nipple with firm pinches and decadent sweeps and rolls of his fingers. I’m drowning and floating, my noises growing breathier and needier with every one of his ministrations.

And then he’s pulling away, leaving my finger cold and wet.

‘Look down,’ he orders .

The crown of his dick is poised at one of the diamonds, moisture beading alluringly at its tip.

I don’t think.

I don’t ask.

I kneel back down, and bend my head, and indulge in lavish sweeps of my tongue through the beads of liquid before swirling it around his red, angry crown.

‘Fuuuuuuck!’ he grits out, and the sound is helpless and furious and primal and so male that I practically pass out from the heady rush of power it gives me.

Next thing, he’s withdrawing, and stumbling noisily out of his booth, and dragging my curtain open, and grabbing me by the arm and onto my feet and out of the confessional. I blink, not expecting to have been transported from a church to a bedroom where candlelight flickers intimately and a huge dark bed offers the opportunity for us to instantly alleviate our needs and purge ourselves of this ungodly desire.

We stare at each other. He’s fully dressed in his austere, all-black weekday ensemble, dog collar in place, but the infernal look in his eyes has him resembling Lucifer himself. His eyes are bottomless black pits of sin; his facial expression more fraught with diabolical intent than I’ve seen on any of the other sinners with whom I’ve indulged in unspeakable acts.

He lowers his face to mine and snags my lower lip between his teeth, tugging at it before plunging his tongue into my mouth. One hand goes to fist my hair at the nape of my neck and the other roams firmly, possessively over the skin of my stomach. It reaches lower, lower, and I widen my stance in the hope that he’ll claim my pussy like this and give me what I need, but the man is too restrained, too self- controlled, for his own good or mine, because it stops just north of my tidy landing strip.

‘On your knees,’ he growls, releasing my mouth too soon. But I sink to my knees gratefully, because if he won’t touch me, then at least I’ll have the pleasure of undoing him. I’m ashamed to say he’s the greatest prize of all. Not just on account of his stupendous looks, but because he doesn’t want to be won.

The others have all come willingly.

He’s been resisting, trying to hold himself off, and it’s arousing and adorable in equal measure.

I’m going to make it so good for him.

I’m going to make him forget his own name, let alone his vows.

I’m going to make every sin he commits tonight so worth his while that he can’t possibly find it in himself to repent.

His dick is poking out from under his shirt tails. I get my body as close to his as I can and rub my nipples against the abrasive fabric of his trousers.

And then I take him in my mouth.

God, he smells and tastes and feels amazing. He’s huge and satiny and so fucking hard I’m almost scared on his behalf. I’m worried about his ability to stay conscious with this much blood in his cock. But he’s gripping the post at the foot of the bed for support with one hand as he winds my long hair around his other one.

I suck. I lick. I move my mouth over him as extravagantly as I can, and he growls. He groans. He pulls my hair.

My clit pulsates as I work him. My nipples throb. I need a seeing-to so badly it’s not funny. I pull away from him and look up. He’s staring down at me in a way that’s hopeless and ecstatic all in one.

‘Do you want me to swallow, Father?’ I ask, running a finger through his weeping slit. His dick twitches in my hand, and I smile to myself. ‘Or do you want to give me a pearl necklace? Because you can do what you like to me. You can use me however you want. I told you—I love that.’

‘Jesus Christ.’ He glances heavenward, but it seems God’s in the mood to let his faithful servant hang himself, because his gaze comes back to me and roves over my naked body. My upturned face. ‘I’m going to come all over those glorious fucking tits, and you’re going to like it, you dirty little sinner.’

My lips curve up into a triumphant smile. ‘Very good, Father.’

I grip his shaft harder. I arch my body this way and that, running his sensitised crown over my breasts. My nipples. I swipe at it with my tongue as I work him in hard, decisive pumps. The conflict on his beautiful face turns to anguish, then rapture, as he stiffens and groans and shoots his hot seed all over me. I aim it between my breasts and it keeps on coming, spurting over my skin, trickling down my stomach, hitting my jaw, my hair.

I don’t take my eyes off him.

He doesn’t take his eyes off me as I lick his crown clean and slow my thrusts until I’m sure he’s spent.

Then I sit back on my heels, covered in his cum, and I smirk.

Fr Rafe grabs a throw from the bed and uses it to wipe his primal markings off my body in hasty, jerky movements. He doesn’t do a great job, but I couldn’t care less, because the predatory look in his eyes tells me he has far better treats in store for my body than cleaning it up .

‘Hands and knees,’ he croaks out hoarsely. ‘Edge of the bed.’

I don’t need to be told twice.

I hoist myself up and position myself on my hands and knees, facing away from him. This position puts my pussy on a platter for this beautiful man who’s now presumably damned to all eternity with me.

He’s on his knees on the hard floor in seconds. It’s probably a position he’s found himself in countless times in countless churches, but now, instead of raising his face heavenward in supplication, he’s kneeling behind me and stroking the flesh of my bottom in wonder and pressing his nose to my cunt and inhaling like I’m the most intoxicating drug he’s ever encountered.

He parts my flesh and holds me open to him.

A pause.

Then mouth meets flesh, and I’m undone.

His tongue slices a straight line up my seam, from my clit to my entrance and back. The sensation is such a delicious blend of friction and slick ease, of reverence and downright filth, that I practically come on the spot.

‘Fucking hell,’ he groans against my pussy. ‘So fucking addictive. No wonder you’re dragging so many men to hell with you.’

‘I think I made it worth your while just now,’ I manage with difficulty.

A hand slides around me, caressing my stomach and pinching a nipple, while another finds my entrance. Two fingers ram inside, hard.

‘I’m in charge,’ he tells me. ‘You walked in here reeking of sin and pulling me under with you. Well, now I’m here and I’ve got you right where I want you. You’re fucking mine , do you hear? ’

His fingers twist cruelly inside me as his tongue hits my clit, and I gasp in astonishment that sin can feel quite so sublime.

‘Yes, Father,’ I say.

‘I’m going to enthrall you and ravish you and violate you and claim you.’

Twist. Lick.

‘You think you need all these men to keep you satisfied? You don’t. You just need me and my fingers and my tongue and my dick.’

Lick.

Oh my God. I’m spiralling out of control, up and up into some celestial ecstasy.

‘You waltz into my confessional like the fucking queen of all that is forbidden and tempting, and you undo me, and I’m about to give you so much dick that I’ll have you writhing on this bed begging for sweet release like a sinner begging to be let into Heaven. Do you understand?’

Oh my God.

Yes.

Exactly this.

Jesus.

He’s hitting every spot in my head and on my body with his cruel fingers and clever tongue and taunting, intoxicating words.

‘I understand,’ I tell him. ‘I want—I need to come. I need your dick inside me right now.’

‘Fuck me,’ he grits out, and then his lips are sealing to my pussy and his tongue is swiping at my clit, up and down in rough, relentless strokes, and my orgasm hits me like a freight train, painting my world red as unimaginable flames of pleasure engulf my entire body.

He pulls away from me, and I twist my head, panting and bereft, and watch lasciviously the glorious view of Fr Rafe losing his priestly kit. Off comes the collar, and the shirt, and down come the trousers, and then he’s blurring as he closes the distance between us and stands behind me.

A hand comes to my hips and tugs me against him as he presses his gloriously blunt, warm crown to my entrance. I’m still shuddering out the last of my orgasm as he breaches me in a single jagged drive, and holy fucking Lord, everything is now good with the world and the angels are singing their approval because this man is inside me and filling me up with no room to spare.

I groan, low and guttural, and push my bottom back against him. His answering groan is agonised. Carnal. He pulls out of me slowly, before sinking deeply, luxuriously, back inside me.

We both moan. Then there’s the low, familiar but unintelligible incantation of prayer.

‘Are you praying in Latin?’ I ask. ‘It’s a bit late to seek forgiveness.’

‘Trying to hold on,’ he grunts, and I shut up, because I don’t want to focus on anything that is not the slow drags of this man’s dick as it fills me up again and again.

His thrusts pick up pace. They grow impossibly deeper. His fingernails dig into the flesh of my hip. I lower myself onto my elbows and claw at the black sheets.

‘You seductress,’ he mutters as he thrusts. ‘Your body is so fucking luscious. So decadent. So intoxicating. I didn’t stand a chance. I wanted my fingers twisting in your cunt the second I felt you kneeling next to me. Jesus Christ. How our Lord can make a single human so fucking delicious, I do not know.’

His hungry words spin me higher as his drives, profound and elemental, work their magic against the nerve endings hidden deep inside my body for him to find.

We’ve profaned a sacrament. We’ve sullied what should have been a sacred communion of two souls, dragged it down to the mud with us and transformed it into something base and primal.

In theory, anyway.

But I don’t know about the theory, because the practice, this, feels pretty fucking sacred to me. It feels transcendent and mystical and redemptive, as if our souls are simply communing in a way we can feel far more clearly than we can comprehend.

The dirtier he gets, the more crude his whispered curses and admonishments and extortions get, the more roughly he drags that great big dick of his in and out of me, the more I soar and unravel and transform.

And then that blunt, insistent crown provokes my front wall one time too many, and I break, grinding my bottom against his balls and my forehead against the mattress as I take and take and allow the unearthly pleasure to course over me in relentless waves.

I’m contracting around him when he comes emphatically inside me, pulsing and shuddering and crying out and stilling, his lips pressing urgent kisses along my spinal column as his hair brushes the thin skin of my back.

He pulls out of me and helps me down onto my back, tugging me into his arms.

‘I love you,’ my beautiful, depraved priest tells me between hungry kisses. I curl into him and smile against his lips like a cat. I’m spent and well-used and practically purring with satisfaction.

‘I love you too,’ I tell him. ‘Tell me you didn’t envision this when you were eyeing me up at Mummy’s party four years ago.’

His gaze moves lovingly from my face, over my breasts, and comes to rest on my stomach. On the part of my body that gave him a daughter. The skin there isn’t as smooth as I’d like, the muscle not as taut, but he doesn’t care as he strokes it reverently.

‘I didn’t dare dream about any of it,’ he says. ‘Apart from sliding my cock between those gorgeous lips, that is.’

I roll my eyes and pull him as close against me as I can get him. ‘Some things never change. I can’t believe you guys can still justify keeping this massive confessional knocking around.’

He smirks. ‘It gets a lot of use in this place. We started a trend, you know.’

I shrug. ‘I suppose so. Priest corrupts the innocent young penitent who rocks up in his confessional. It’s a hot scenario. It doesn’t get old.’

He massages my stomach tenderly. ‘Nothing innocent about you. And let’s get one thing straight. Tonight, you flat-out corrupted me.’