TWENTY-FIVE
Bastien
An hour later, heart hanging heavier in my chest than it’d ever before, I excused myself until next week, thanking them for the company and hospitality. Their shameless environment of love and connection was on my mind as I headed off on foot, red dust under my boots and the sun setting low at my back. Dense tobacco plants grew full and leafy, dew already clinging to the tips as I pushed down the small drive that led to Ms. Carmelita’s house.
Once I’d reached the end of her little lane, I turned, hand in the air and waving before I looked closely in the dim light and found them in an embrace. Shadows of light played tricks on Padre Juan’s rough and callused hands pushing up the soft linen of Carmelita’s dress, her schoolgirl giggle carried on the wind to my ears.
My love for Tressa burned brightly that night.
So brightly, that by the time I’d wound my way the mile back to the tiny stone chapel of Santa Maria’s, I was keyed up, her sweet face the only vision in my mind. The soft angle of her cheeks and the upturned slant of her lips. How her dark eyes sparkled when she teased me.
So much like Carmelita’s did tonight with Padre Juan.
I pressed a hand to the physical discomfort plaguing my chest, looping my finger behind the stiff white collar at my neck and tearing it from my throat as soon as I crossed the threshold of my room in the rectory.
Heat rippled through me, frustration spiking in my veins as I thought of the way her hair felt running over my fingers.
Her honeyed skin sliding against mine.
The warmth of her body the first time I sank inside of her.
Angry tears crushed at my eyelids, my hands pushing through my short hair before I worked at the buttons of my clerical blacks, shrugging out of the fabric and leaving it on the floor.
I kicked off my dusty walking boots, quickly unfastening the button of my pants and pushing the stiff fabric down my thighs. I hunkered down under the comforting discomfort of my church-issued sheets, tremors of carnal lust wracking my body as I fought the physical taste of her in my mouth. Her flavor on my lips. The ghost of her body running its deadly hands along mine.
Every muscle in my body was tense, my cock standing against my cotton boxers before I did the one thing I hadn’t allowed myself to do in all the years since I’d last had her.
I touched myself.
I defiled my body in her name.
Exchanged the love we shared for a lust-fueled fantasy as I stroked the flesh of my body, chasing a release from this incessant pain of missing her.
Losing her.
Walking away from her.
Leaving her.
Letting her go.
“Tressssssa.”
Tremors shook my muscles as I hurtled closer to a release I hadn’t given myself the pleasure of feeling outside of her. Wracked with spasms, I came in violent bursts of semen, thick seed coating the slabs of my abdomen, my sheets, even the pile of holy garb I’d thrown on the floor in favor of my truest form.
Years of pent-up shame and guilt rained down on me, propelled by the orgasm I’d allowed myself in her name. I wiped at the errant moisture escaping my eyes as I composed myself, sucking in shaky breaths of the humid Caribbean air.
I’d never predicted I’d land back on this tiny island after I’d escaped it in my teens.
I supposed this place still had more to teach me; I’d just rushed away before my education could run its course.
Sweat pricked my skin, silent shame still pulling at the corners of my mind as I hauled myself off the twin bed, divesting myself of my now-damp boxers as I walked to the en suite bath.
Running the hot water over my body for the next fifteen minutes felt like the best thing I could do for myself.
Coming to terms that I’d just sinned in the eyes of my God wasn’t something that sat easy in my heart. And now I’d shamelessly defiled the body God had given me to do work here on this earth. By the time I climbed out of the shower, I was feeling less forgiving and more desperate for penance.
Darkness cloaked the small room of the rectory, the single window overlooking the mountains in the distance, hundreds of acres of tobacco fields between me and it.
