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His hand snapped out and grabbed my throat, controlled and precise with the speed and accuracy of a snake. “I want to hurt you and not because I hate you, but solely for my own pleasure.”
I pressed into his grip. “What’s stopping you?”
Arousal burned in my veins, and I might die if he didn’t do something.
“I told you, I can’t risk letting the monster out.”He was hard under his cassock, the outline of him betraying even the thick fabric.
“So what, you deny it forever and risk snapping when you can’t take it anymore?” I stroked my fingers over his wrist in adoration, no attempt to break his hold on me.
“What other choice do I have?” His grip tightened and the lines in his face eased.
“You let it out in controlled bursts, with a willing vessel. Maybe this is why God brought me to your threshold.”
He quivered.
I feared losing him.
Any second, he could flee and refuse to see me again.
“I can’t.”
“What if I beg?”
This time he fled.
3
INSISTANCE
A rare sick day. In all the time I’d come to this church, he’d never missed a Friday night Mass and confession. Sick.
Sick.
I said the word over and over to myself as I sat through the unfamiliar service. Anthony had a way about him, and cadence to the Mass—the delivery as sacred as the sacraments. He had a candor in his humility. I’d never witnessed anything like it.
This new priest felt—lacking.
I didn’t stay for confession.
Another week passed, another Friday missed. Anthony was avoiding me. Was he afraid of himself or me? Both, if I had to guess. My line of work came with the combat of avoidance. I killed the men with the best protection. The most paranoid men no other agent could lay their hands on, I stalked until I learned their ways. Patience was a virtue, and I had it in abundance. Or maybe it ran through my blood, my mother gifting me more than her green eyes. She’d been the best enforcer the Irish mob had ever seen, but it didn’t save her in the end.
And it wouldn’t save me either.
Not when I outlived my usefulness. But I wouldn’t let that day come. Not for a long time. The government was kinder than the mob, but not by much. I’d be retired as soon as I became inconvenient. We all knew the ways of it.
I’d probably go much the way of our parents: A massacre. Some days, I felt it like a whisper on the back of my neck, a promise from the universe to correct what should have been twenty years ago. But not before I earned it.
On his absence the third Friday, attendance waned. How fickle the flock. They came for the savior, but not anyone would do. Did God judge them? I’d always wonder. I came other days at random times, venturing in for both Masses and holy hours. He became a ghost. Whispers of sightings but never any release. Still I came, serving my vigil.
Summer captured the East. It came late but with a vengeance, turning the sun filled vacation days sour. Beaches were packed with people seeking any sort of relief from the heat. With the heat came the worst of mankind—tempers razor thin while the weather threatened to turn. The humidity set in, and tourism dwindled.
Stiff. Sticky. Stifling.
I sat in the back of the empty church, sweat dripping down the back of my neck, shirt sticking to my skin. The fans barely offered any reprieve.
“Do you come here to worship at God’s altar, or mine?” His familiar voice broke my suffering. He was different. Less exuberant—or maybe exhausted. Shadows lived under his eyes, and he carried himself like a man returning from war.
“It can be both, can’t it? You said there were no rules.”
