Chapter 8: Sacrament

Chapter 8: Sacrament

The world had narrowed to the searing heat of his mouth through the damp silk of her dress and the iron grip of his hand in her hair. Elara was adrift, her carefully constructed reality dismantled by a fallen priest on his knees. This was power. Not the playful dominance she’d practiced with Liam, but the terrifying, exhilarating power to shatter a man’s soul. And in his shattering, she felt her own carefully guarded walls begin to crumble.

His worship was a desperate, hungry thing. His mouth moved from her breast, a hot, wet trail over the fabric of her dress, tracing a path down her stomach. A low groan escaped him, a sound of pure agony and ecstasy. He was a pilgrim lost in the desert, and she was his mirage made real.

This wasn't enough. The thin barriers of silk and wool between them were an intolerable heresy.

With a sudden, violent movement, he surged upward, not to his feet, but just enough to drag her down with him. She tumbled from her perch on the desk, landing in a heap of green silk and tangled limbs on the cold stone floor beside him. The shock of the frigid stone against her heated skin was a jolt back to a reality more intense than any she had ever known.

They were on the floor of his study. The floor where generations of pious men had paced, where countless pleas for salvation had been whispered. It was now their bed of sin.

“This dress,” he growled, his voice thick and unrecognizable. His hands were frantic, searching for a zipper, a seam, anything. He was a man drowning, clawing for air. He found the delicate zipper at her back and tore it down with a single, vicious rasp. The sound echoed in the silent room like a covenant being broken.

Elara’s own hands were just as desperate. She tore at the heavy black fabric of his cassock, her fingers fumbling with the line of small, infuriating buttons down the front. There was no grace in their movements, no seductive art. It was a frantic, mutual undressing, a shedding of the roles that had defined and separated them. She was no longer the defiant parishioner; he was no longer the untouchable priest. They were just a man and a woman, stripped down to their most primal, lawless needs.

She ripped the last few buttons free, the fabric parting to reveal the hard planes of his chest, covered in a smattering of dark hair. Beneath the holy robes was a man’s body, solid and powerful and radiating a heat that belied the cold stone beneath them. He pushed the torn halves of her dress aside, baring her to the lamplight. Her lace bra and panties, the armor she’d once worn for another man’s game, now seemed like a fragile, pathetic defense against this cataclysm.

His eyes devoured her. It was not the appreciative gaze of a lover, but the desperate, possessive stare of a starving man finally beholding a feast. “Elara,” he breathed, her name a prayer and a curse on his lips.

And then there were no more words. There was only a frantic coupling of hands and mouths on the unforgiving floor. He pushed aside the flimsy lace of her panties, his fingers finding her wet heat with unerring accuracy. She cried out, her back arching off the floor as his thumb found her clit, pressing down with a knowledge that was both shocking and deeply intuitive. He understood the rhythm of her body as if he had created it.

His mouth returned to her, not to her lips, but lower, descending her body in a pilgrimage of scorching kisses. He tasted her stomach, her hips, the inside of her thigh, his tongue tracing paths of fire on her skin. He was tasting the sin he had commanded her to confess, anointing himself with it, baptizing himself in her.

While he paid his dark homage, her hands were exploring him. She pushed the heavy cassock from his shoulders, her fingers tracing the hard muscle of his arms, his chest. She found the waistband of his trousers, her own desperate fumbling mirroring his. The last barrier between them fell away, and she closed her hand around his erection.

He was hard as stone, hot and impossibly thick. He hissed, his head falling back as her fingers closed around him, his own rhythm against her clit faltering for a second. It was a moment of perfect, profane symmetry. His hand bringing her to the edge, her hand holding his own desperate need. This was their communion. A shared sacrament of the flesh.

He buried his face against the juncture of her thighs, his tongue finally finding its ultimate destination. Elara screamed, a raw, sharp sound that was swallowed by the thick, ancient walls. It was nothing like the coy games with Liam. This was an invasion, an annihilation. He lapped at her like a man dying of thirst, his tongue relentless, his fingers still working their magic, pushing her higher and higher.

The world dissolved into sensation. The cold floor beneath her, the scorching heat of his mouth on her, the pressure of his thumb, the solid weight of him in her hand. She was coming apart, unraveling at his command.

“Magnus,” she gasped, the name torn from her, the first time she had ever used it.

Hearing his name from her lips seemed to break the last thread of his sanity. His rhythm became more frantic, a desperate push toward a shared oblivion. Her own hand tightened around him, her thumb stroking the weeping head of his cock, pushing him toward the same precipice.

They were a tangle of sin and salvation on the cold stone floor. A messy, desperate, beautiful ruin.

The climax hit them both at the same instant.

It was a violent, silent explosion. Elara’s body locked, a blinding white light exploding behind her eyes as a wave of pleasure so intense it bordered on pain ripped through her. A sob tore from her throat, and she felt the hot pulse of his release against her hand, a torrent of absolution. His own body shuddered violently against hers, a low, guttural groan vibrating from his chest as he poured his own ruin, his own confession, into her grasp.

For a long, timeless moment, they remained frozen in that tableau of mutual destruction. Sprawled on the floor of the holy study, breathless and glistening, surrounded by the scent of sex and sin.

The frantic storm had passed, leaving in its wake a devastating, irrevocable calm. The silence that descended was heavier, more profound than before. It was the silence of a tomb, and the silence of a womb. Something had died here tonight. His piety, her defiance, the very possibility of ever going back.

And something new, something terrifying and beautiful, had just been born. They had trespassed. They had partaken in a sacrament of their own making. And their fate, messy and ruinous, was now sealed together.