Ash
1294 Words
(Lucien POV)
Rain lashed the sacristy window like God was pissed.
Fitting.
The stone walls usually felt like cool refuge. Now they felt like a cell. My cell. The air reeked of damp wool and incense gone stale.
And her.
Her scent – rain, cheap shampoo, and something wild, untamed – clung to me like damnation.
I braced my hands on the cold stone sink, knuckles white, head bowed.
My reflection in the small, tarnished mirror above it was a stranger. Pale. Eyes wide, dark, haunted. Hair dishevelled. Lips…
Christ, my lips felt bruised. Swollen.
I could still taste her. Tart apple and defiance and something purely, devastatingly female. The phantom pressure of her mouth on mine burned.
What have you done?
The question screamed inside my skull, a relentless, jagged thing. I'd kissed her.
Not just kissed. Devoured. And not just anywhere but in the confessional. God’s house. My sanctuary. My prison.
I’d dragged her up, felt the frantic beat of her heart against mine, tangled my hands in her rain-soaked hair, and lost myself in the heat of her mouth like a drowning man gasping for air that wasn’t there.
Disgust curdled in my gut, hot and acidic. I was a priest. Or supposed to be. It was a shield against the darkness I carried inside. For twenty years, the collar had been my armor. My penance. My hiding place.
Twenty years of rigid control, of locking the monster in the basement and throwing away the key.
Praying it would starve.
Then she walked in.
Luna. Trouble wrapped in faded denim and a gaze that saw too much. A spark tossed onto dry tinder.
Her confessions… God, her confessions. Not the usual mumbled sins of petty gossip or stolen glances.
Hers were raw. Angry. Vibrating with a restless energy that resonated with the damned thing inside me I’d tried to bury.
Her voice, husky in the dark, confessing to touch, to wanting, to feeling…
It wasn’t piety she offered.
It was temptation.
Pure, unadulterated temptation.
And I’d been parched for so long.
"Does the collar keep you warm at night? Or does it just remind you how cold you are?" Her words, a challenge thrown down in the dark, had been the detonation.
Something snapped. The lock on the basement door blew open. And the monster didn’t just walk out; it charged, and I’d let it.
I pushed away from the sink, pacing the small, cluttered space. My cassock felt like a shroud. A lie. The rough wool scraped against my skin, a constant reminder of the vow I’d just shattered. I wanted to tear it off. Rip it to shreds. Burn it.
I’d kissed her like a man possessed.
Because I was.
Possessed by twenty years of denial. Possessed by the ghost of the man I used to be – the violent heir, the cold enforcer, the son who thrived on chaos and control. The man who took what he wanted, consequences be damned.
That man had tasted her defiance and wanted more. Wanted to consume it. Own it.
That soft whimper when she felt me… hard against her… it echoed in my bones.
I stopped pacing, leaning my forehead against the cold stone wall as the rough surface scraped my skin.
Good. I needed the pain. Needed to feel something besides the burning shame and the terrifying, persistent thrum of want still coursing through me.
My body hummed, alive in a way it hadn’t been in decades. Alive and screaming for more.
It was obscene. Profane... I was a priest and she was… she was lost. Angry. Young. Too damn young. Twenty years my junior, seeking refuge in this dead-end village, and I’d just added another layer of trauma to her life.
I’d become the predator I’d sworn never to be again.
A low growl ripped from my throat, frustration and self-loathing boiling over. My fist slammed against the stone. Pain exploded in my knuckles, sharp and clean.
Better.
Physical pain I could understand. Handle. The other pain… the guilt, the terrifying pull towards her… that was a vortex threatening to swallow me whole.
I looked at my hand. Blood welled from split knuckles, stark red against the pale skin.
I stared at it.
Blood. Always blood.
My father’s legacy and it seemed that no matter how far I ran, how deep I buried it, it found me.
Or I found it.
In violence, in anger? Or in the taste of a woman I had no right to touch.
I needed to fix this. To lock the monster back in the basement. Brick up the door. Pour concrete over it.
But how?
She was still out there in the church? Gone?
The thought of her leaving, walking out into the rain… it sent an irrational spike of panic through me. No. She couldn’t leave. Not yet. Not before…
Not before what, Lucien? Before you ruin her completely?
I pushed the thought away, and I almost gasped, I needed air. Space. I couldn’t stay trapped in this tiny room with the ghost of her taste and the echo of her gasp.
I wrenched open the sacristy door.
The church was empty. Silent except for the drumming rain. My gaze flew to the confessional as the sinner’s door hung open. Abandoned.
My eyes scanned the nave, the shadowed alcoves.
Nothing.
Then I saw it.
A small puddle of water on the stone floor near the confessional step.
And beside it…a single, muddy boot print. Pointing towards the main door.
Gone.
She’d run.
Relief warred with a sharp, unexpected pang of… loss? No. Not loss.
Good.
She was smart as she’d run from the monster.
She should run.
Far and fast.
I walked slowly down the aisle, my footsteps echoing too loudly in the hollow silence.
I stopped where she’d been kneeling. The air still held a faint trace of her – rain and that wild, elusive scent.
I knelt Not in prayer but in defeat.
My fingers brushed the cold stone where her knees had been.
My bloodied knuckles left a faint smear.
Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.
The old words rose automatically, hollow now. Meaningless. What absolution could there be for this?
I’d betrayed my vows. Betrayed her trust. Betrayed the fragile peace I’d built here.
And the worst part? The absolute, gut-wrenching truth clawing its way up from the darkness?
I wasn’t sorry I kissed her.
I was sorry I stopped. I was sorry she ran.
The hunger she’d awakened wasn’t sated; it was ravenous. The monster wasn’t just out; it was pacing, restless, scenting the air for her.
I’d spent twenty years building walls of stone and scripture.
Luna had blown through them like they were tissue paper in a single week.
With angry confessions and rain-damp skin and a mouth that tasted like sin and salvation all at once.
I looked up at the crucifix above the altar.
The serene, suffering face offered no comfort.
Only condemnation.
The collar felt like a noose.
She’d asked if the collar kept me warm. It didn’t.
It never had.
It was a constant chill, a reminder of the coldness I’d chosen to contain the fire inside.
But now… Now the fire was loose and it craved her heat.
She’d run. Good.
But she lived just down the lane. With Mildred.
She’d be back. She was trouble.
And trouble didn’t stay away.
The rain hammered on. My hand throbbed and my mouth burned.
And the monster inside me, the one with my father’s eyes and my own damned hunger, stretched and smiled in the dark.
Game on, indeed.
And I had no idea how to play without getting us both burned.
Or if I even wanted to stop the fire.
- Writer
