"Please," she breathes. "I need you."
"Not yet." I move lower, kissing her stomach, her hip bones, the soft skin of her inner thighs. "I want to taste you first. I want to make you come on my tongue before I'm inside you."
She makes a sound that might be a protest or a plea, but when my mouth finds her center, all coherent thought seems to leave her. I lick into her slowly, savoring her taste, feeling her thighs tremble against my shoulders. She's already wet, already desperate, and I want to draw this out as long as possible.
"Cillian." My name is a moan on her lips. "God, please, I can't..."
"You can." I circle her clit with my tongue, then suck gently. "You will. For me."
I work her higher and higher, reading the signs of her body, learning what makes her gasp and what makes her cry out.When she finally shatters, it's with a scream that echoes off the walls, her hands fisted in the sheets, her whole body arching off the bed.
I don't give her time to recover. I move up her body and sink into her in one smooth thrust, swallowing her moan with my mouth. She's so tight, so hot, so perfect around me that I have to stop and breathe, fighting for control.
"I love you," I say against her lips. "I love you so much it scares me."
"I love you too." She cups my face in her hands, and I see tears glistening in her eyes. "I love you, Cillian. I'll spend the rest of my life loving you."
I start to move, slow and deep, watching her face for every reaction. This isn't just sex. This is communion in the truest sense of the word. Two people becoming one, giving themselves completely to each other without reservation or fear.
"Harder," she gasps, her nails digging into my back. "Please. I want to feel you everywhere."
I give her what she asks for. My thrusts become faster, deeper, more urgent. I hook her leg over my shoulder, changing the angle, and she cries out as I hit something deep inside her.
"Right there," she pants. "Don't stop. Please, don't stop."
I couldn't stop if I wanted to. My whole world has narrowed to this moment, to the heat of her body and the sound of her voice and the way she looks at me like I'm the only thing that matters. I reach between us and find her clit, rubbing in tight circles, and I feel her start to tighten around me.
"Come with me," I growl. "I want to feel you come when I'm inside you."
She shatters with a cry, and I follow her a heartbeat later, burying myself deep and groaning her name like a prayer. We hold each other through the aftershocks, trembling and breathless and completely undone.
Afterward, I pull her against my chest and hold her as our breathing slows. The afternoon light has turned golden, streaming through her windows, making everything look warm and soft and perfect.
"Stay with me," she whispers against my chest, her breath warm on my skin. "Tonight. Tomorrow night. Every night after that."
"I'll never leave," I promise, tightening my arms around her. "Not unless you send me away."
"I'll never want you to." Her fingers trace lazy patterns across my ribs, mapping the contours of my body like she's memorizing every detail.
I press a lingering kiss to the top of her head, breathing in the scent of her shampoo mixed with the musk of our lovemaking, and let my eyes drift closed. The peace that settles over me is profound, complete—something I've been searching for through years of prayer and confession and spiritual discipline. For the first time in eight years of serving God and parish, I feel like I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be, doing exactly what I was meant to do. Not kneeling in a pew or standing at an altar, but here, holding this woman who saw through the collar to the man beneath.
We sleep for hours, tangled together, waking only when the room has gone dark. I find us food in her small kitchen and bringit back to bed, and we eat picnic-style on her sheets, talking about everything and nothing.
"What will you do?" she asks, spearing a strawberry with her fork. "Once the laicization goes through? For work, I mean."
"I've been thinking about counseling," I admit. "I spent eight years listening to people's problems. Helping them find peace. Maybe I can keep doing that, just without the collar."
"You'd be good at it," she says, her smile warm and genuine as she sets down her fork. "You have this natural way of making people feel truly heard. Like what they're saying actually matters to you."
"You're the first person who ever made me feel heard," I tell her honestly, my chest tight with the truth of it. "Everyone else in my life just heard the priest—the collar, the title, the authority. You're the only one who saw past all that to the man underneath."
She leans over, closing the small distance between us on the rumpled sheets, and kisses me—soft and sweet and tasting faintly of strawberries. "I always saw you, Nathan," she whispers against my lips. "From the very first moment you walked into that confessional. I saw you."
We make love again as dawn breaks, slow and tender, and then we shower together and face the new day. There are complications ahead, I know. The diocese will make things difficult. The parish will gossip. There will be hard conversations and harder choices. But none of it matters, because I'm not facing it alone.
On Sunday, we attend mass at a different church. St. Catherine's, on the other side of the city, where no one knows our faces or ourstory. We sit together in the pew, her hand in mine, and I listen to the homily with different ears than I used to.
The priest speaks about transformation. About becoming who you're meant to be, even when it means letting go of who you thought you were. I squeeze Waverly's hand, and she squeezes back, and I know that whatever comes next, we'll face it together.
