Priest: A Love Story

“Wake up, sleepyhead.”

The voice pierced through the smoky, smudgy veil of heavy sleep, sound waves and nerve receptors working together to rouse my brain, to coax me awake and back into the world of the sober living.

My brain wasn’t having it. I rolled over, but rather than finding one of my ancient, flattened pillows, my face found bare flesh. Bare thighs. I wrapped an arm around them in an automatic gesture, burying my face in the smooth, sweet-smelling skin.

Fingers twined through my hair. “It’s time to wake up.”

It was the thighs more than the request, but I finally managed to force my eyes open, and once I did, I regretted it.

“Ugh,” I groaned. “I feel like shit.”

“Because of the booze or because of the way you acted?”

I kept my face against Poppy’s thigh. “Both,” I mumbled.

“That’s what I thought. Well, time to feel better. I’ve laid out some clothes for you on the bed.”

The thighs moved away, which made me sad. She swung her legs over the edge of the bed and stood up, stretching her arms as if she’d been in the same position for a long time, but she wasn’t naked any longer, she was wearing a short tunic belted at the waist and gladiator sandals.

“You left,” I accused.

She nodded. “I couldn’t go where we’re going in one of your undershirts and I certainly wasn’t going to go in my dirty clothes. I was only gone for a few minutes, I promise.”

I sat up slowly and took the water and Advil she offered. “Now get dressed,” she said. “We have a date.”

Thirty minutes later and we were pulling on the interstate in the Fiat. I was wearing dark jeans and a soft pullover sweater Sean had given me last Christmas in his continuing quest to improve my closet. It was a casual outfit—despite the sweater’s ridiculous price tag—and I wondered why we were driving down to the city if not to go to someplace dressy and expensive.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

Poppy didn’t answer at first, checking her mirrors and craning her neck as she water-bugged through the dense Saturday night traffic. I decided not to push her, even though the curiosity was killing me, as well as the faint, nervous worry that someone would see us out together.

Finally she said, “Someplace I’ve wanted to take you for a while. But first: yesterday. We need to talk about yesterday.”

Yes, we did, but now that I knew she hadn’t slept with Sterling, I half wanted to avoid the painful dialogue altogether. This last day and a half had shoved us roughly past the pretending phase, past the place where we could just imagine the world outside as an irrelevant storm beating ineffectively at our window, and I hated it. Because beyond that place were all the decisions and discussions that would slowly break my life apart, one piece at a time.

“So, Sterling came to my house yesterday,” she said. “After he saw you.”

She knew about that?

As if reading my mind, she followed up with, “Sterling loves to brag about his conquests. Business, romantic, vengeful, any kind of victory. I think he thought I’d be impressed that he’s so thoroughly boxed us in with the photographic evidence of our relationship.”

God. He’s such a tool.

“You have to understand, I knew he’d come here eventually, and I knew that I would tell him I didn’t want to be with him. But I also knew that he wouldn’t accept anything less than a full, face-to-face rejection, and also I felt like I at least owed him dinner, a chance to talk everything over. I mean, we dated for years….”

“Years that he cheated on you,” I muttered.

She looked over at me. The look wasn’t entirely pleasant. “Anyway,” she continued, her voice edged with agitation, “I agreed to drive down to the city and get dinner with him. We ended up talking so late that I fell asleep in his hotel room.”

I didn’t like that detail.

I didn’t like that detail at all.

“But like I said,” she said, “nothing happened. I dozed on his couch until morning and then his driver brought me back home. To you.”

“So he knows now that you’re done with him? He’s leaving?”

She hesitated. “Yes?”

“Is that a question? Are you saying you don’t know for sure?”

Her eyes stayed on the road. “When I left this morning, he said he understood my decision completely. He said he didn’t want me to be with him unwillingly—that it mattered to him how I felt. And so he’d be stepping back.”

I thought of the man I’d met yesterday, of those icy blue eyes and that calculating voice. He didn’t seem like the kind of man who’d step back. He did, however, seem like the kind of man who would lie about stepping back.

“So the pictures he’s taken of us…he went to all that effort to set up a potential blackmailing scheme and he’s just going to give that up?”

She bit her lip, checking over her shoulder and changing lanes again. I liked the way she drove—fast, capable, with a flavor of aggression that never actually translated into anything unsafe. “I don’t know,” she said a bit helplessly. “He seemed so determined and so yeah—it’s hard to imagine him going to all that effort just to leave, but I also don’t think he’d lie about it either.”

“I do,” I said under my breath.

She heard. “Look, Sterling is not a saint, but it’s not fair to demonize him just because he is my ex. Yes, he did bad things, but it’s not like he’s a psychopath. He’s just a spoiled boy who’s never had anyone say no to him. And I honestly don’t think he’ll do anything with those pictures.”

Is she defending him? It felt like she was defending him, and that pissed me off a little.

“Did he offer to return the files to you? Or even to delete them?”

“What? No. But—”

“Then I don’t think he’s planning on going anywhere,” I said, keeping my gaze on the window, where the dusk-covered fields were slowly turning into the sprawl of the city. “He said what he knew you wanted to hear, but this isn’t over, Poppy. It won’t be over for him until he gets what he wants. Which is you.”

Her hand slid over mine, and for a minute, I petulantly thought about ignoring it, about not lacing my fingers through hers, whether to hurt her or to show my disagreement, I wasn’t sure.

God, I was being such a tool.

When I grabbed her hand, I grabbed it tight. “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s just—it’s like this trident pointed right at my heart. That I might lose you or lose my job—or both.”

“You’re not losing me,” she insisted, glancing over. “And you won’t lose your job. Unless you want to.”

I rested my head against the cool glass of the window. And there it was…the choice. Black and white, night and day, one or the other. Poppy or God.

“Millie knows,” I said out of nowhere.

I felt her hand tense in mine, and there it was again, that weird anger, because why would Millie—awesome, dependable Millie—be more worrisome than Sterling? But I took a breath and then eased it out. I refused to let this latest cascade of events drive a wedge between us.

I wouldn’t allow it.

“She’s not going to tell anyone,” I reassured Poppy. And then I told her about what had happened to me yesterday, ultimately choosing to tell her every single thing, even my ugly, stupid thoughts, because I owed her that. I wanted to owe her that. And really, what did I have to lose? I was this close to losing everything anyway. Might as well be honest.

She listened as I told her everything, about Millie, and about Sterling’s blackmail, and about how I had guessed she was with him even before he texted me, and about all the nasty, jealous feelings currently corkscrewed into my chest, and when I finished, her lips were pressed together in a red line, hiding those teeth I found so strangely sexy, pulling her features into a serious expression that was somehow just as attractive.

“I know we haven’t known each other long,” she said. “But you never have to worry about me cheating on you. It won’t happen. Period. I don’t cheat.”

“I didn’t mean…” I struggled for the right words. “I know you, the real you, and I know you wouldn’t do anything to hurt me. But I also know that Sterling is more than just an ex-boyfriend to you. I know that there’s something between you two that’s old and powerful, and I guess that’s what had me worried, not some imagined weakness in your character.”

“It doesn’t matter how much history is between Sterling and me. I’ll never cheat on you. It’s not in my nature.”

I hoped that was true. I hoped it so much. But it occurred to me that there was no way I could ever be sure that she wouldn’t cheat, there was no warranty for trusting someone you loved and no court where you could sue them if they ended up betraying you. Loving her, choosing to trust her with Sterling, it would make me vulnerable.

But she was already vulnerable, loving a man who wasn’t actually allowed to love her back, so maybe this made us even.

To lighten the mood, I said, “I guess I understand that. Sean and Aiden even have a name for why people are the way you are; they call it the Monogamy Gene.”

“The monogamy gene,” she repeated. “I suppose that’s about right.”

I sat back. Downtown Kansas City came into view, glass and brick monoliths scraping against a lavender sky, the river a steel-gray snake below.

“They also used to joke I had the celibacy gene,” I said. “Although now I’m not so sure.” Streetlights and stoplights flashed across through car, and Poppy deftly maneuvered through the traffic to pull into the heart of the city.

“Maybe it wasn’t the celibacy gene,” I said, more to myself than to her. “Maybe it’s just that I was always waiting for you.”

She sucked in a breath and jerked the car into an alley between two buildings. Before I could ask her what she was doing, she’d put the car in park and was crawling onto my lap, which made my dick perk up with interest.

Her lips met mine with urgency, a hot, determined hunger, and her hands were everywhere—in my hair, on my chest, pulling impatiently at the fly of my jeans.

“I love you,” she breathed, over and over again, and the tension of the drive melted away. “I love you, I love you, I love you. And I’m so sorry for everything today.”

I found her ass under her dress and squeezed, sliding my fingers beneath her thighs to run my fingertips along the crotch of her thong, which was damp.

But before I could delve any further into this interesting new development, she pulled back, breathing hard.

“We have a big night ahead, so I don’t want to ruin it by getting started early,” she said with a smile. “But you don’t know what you do to me when you say things like that.”

“They’re all true,” I whispered to her. “I care about you so fucking much and I just wish—” I pulled her tight to me, her chest in my face, her pussy flat against my denim-clad erection. “I just wish it was like this all the time. You and me. No decisions. No problems. Just…us.”

She kissed the top of my head. “Well, if it’s escape you’re looking for, then you’ll like tonight.”

At first, I thought maybe Poppy had lost her mind, because instead of going to a restaurant or a movie theater or anything remotely date-like, she pulled into an office parking garage (and I only knew it was an office because the Business Brothers worked two skyscrapers down and Aiden used to date a girl who worked here.)

We walked over to the glassed-in elevator vestibule and Poppy ran a keycard over the secured door. When it clicked open, she led me to the far elevator, ran the keycard again, and we shot up to the 30th floor.

Finally, I ventured to ask. “Where are we going?”

She gave me a small smile, one of those smiles that left me transfixed by her mouth. “To my job.”

I barely had time to process this before we were walking inside, before Poppy was nodding at the woman at the front desk (who was dressed in a tailored suit, as if she was working at an investment firm and not at a strip club.) Poppy pushed at the smoked glass doors, and I followed, and then we were inside the most exclusive club in this city, the place that had lured a Dartmouth MBA to stay when Wall Street couldn’t.

Walls had been constructed along the perimeter of the space, blocking the windows, presumably so the flashing lights wouldn’t shine out during the night (and so that daylight wouldn’t shine in during the day.) But there was a sizable gap between the walls and the windows, meaning any guest could take his drink and roam in between the two, gazing out at the cityscape, as several men were doing now, some of them fielding what sounded like business calls as Poppy led me past.

Here and there, the walls broke, giving me a glimpse inside the main room. Two or three women danced alone in glassed-in boxes, but several were out on the floor, and I instinctively turned my eyes away from all the exposed female flesh. Maybe I was still a priest at heart.

But then my eyes were drawn back to Poppy’s short tunic and where I could see the shape of her ass through the fabric.

Yeah, right.

We ducked through one of the openings and then Poppy led me inside a room.

“What are we doing?”

“My boss said I can use these rooms whenever I want. And I want to right now.”

“For me?”

“For you. Now wait here,” she said with a grin, and then left, closing the heavy wood door with a snick.

So these were the private rooms she’d told me about, like the one she’d fucked Sterling in. That thought sent the now-familiar corkscrew of jealousy spiraling deeper, but then I remembered the car, her desperate I love yous. She was here…with me. Not with him.

But why did this snake of anger still slither in my belly? I hated myself for feeling it, but I couldn’t chase it out, couldn’t dig it out. It slunk through my veins, tickling the inside of my fingertips with the urge to—to what? Spank her ass for spending time with her ex without my permission? Fuck her until she grunted, until my cock was the only thing she knew?

God, I was such a fucking Philistine.

To distract myself, I examined my surroundings. I’d never been to a strip club before, but this was admittedly much nicer than what I’d expected. There was a chair and a sofa, both leather (easily cleaned, a bitter voice thought) and a dais in the middle of the room, wide enough to host a pole and also wide enough for a dancer to dance without it.

The light was low—shades of blue and purple—and the music was loud but not loud enough to be annoying. The kind of volume where it sank into your blood with a thrumming, demanding beat, where it fused with your own thoughts and set your pulse higher, set your adrenaline on a slow, steady drip.

I sat on the leather sofa and leaned forward, looking at my hands. What was I doing here? Why had she brought me? Of all the places—

But then the door opened and I stopped wondering anything except when I could push my cock inside her because fuck.

She wore a wig the color of blue cotton candy, and eye makeup so heavy that all I could picture were those kohl-rimmed eyes peering up at me as she sucked my dick. And I immediately saw what she’d meant when she said the club liked to hire girls who looked expensive. Because while I knew fuck all about lingerie, I did know that the delicately embroidered fabric of her sheer panties was not probably not the usual stripper garb. Nor the matching silk shelf bra or the lace pasties covering her nipples—all in a soft champagne. A strip of the same champagne-colored silk was tied around her neck in a bow, and I wanted to unwrap her like a present, right then and there. She always looked amazing—in clothes and naked—but she was transformed right now, a Poppy I had only seen glimpses of even in our most intimate moments.

She strode over to me, just as graceful in six-inch heels as she was in ballet flats, and held out her hand. “Your wallet.”

Confused, I dug it out of my (suddenly very tight) jeans and handed it to her. She dug a roll of crisp fifties and hundreds out of her bra and slid them neatly inside my wallet, handing it back to me. “I want to play a game,” she said.

“Okay,” I said, my mouth suddenly dry. “Let’s play a game.”

She licked her lips, and I realized that I wasn’t the only one crazy fucking turned on right now. “You’re just a client, and I’m just a dancer, okay?”

“Okay,” I echoed.

“And you know there’s certain rules about private rooms, don’t you?”

I shook my head, unable to keep my gaze from raking over her form, over her expensive lingerie, over that strip of silk tied around her neck that could so easily be turned into a leash…

“Well, first you have to pay me for being here.” And then she put a hand on her hip, looking so impatient and so hot, and any philosophical arguments Good Guy Tyler might have had about pretending something so degrading—about being in a strip club in the first place—vanished. And the moment I placed the bills in her hand, the air instantly changed. The game vanished and this was our reality—no matter that we loved each other, that this wasn’t even my money—I was paying her and she was taking it and now she was on the stage, one hand on the pole, her eyes on me.

She started dancing, and I leaned back, wanting to memorize every detail of this, of the way her legs wrapped around the pole as she swung, the way her blue hair brushed against her shoulders, the way the muscles in her arms and shoulders pulled and strained against each other.

The low light, the loud music, the anonymity of the sex on display in front of me…all combined with the heated blaze in her eyes, like she wanted me and me specifically and me right now—I now understood why Herod had offered Salome anything she’d wanted after she danced for him. There was something so delicious in the tug of power between us; I presumably held all the control and dignity in this situation, but the reverse was actually true. She was captivating me, she was putting me under her thrall, until I wanted to offer her everything, not just the money she’d put in my wallet, but my house, my life, my soul.

Poppy and her dance of seven veils.

And then she bent over, and I was distracted by the fact that her ass was now front and center, that I could see the shadow of her folds through the fabric, and I would’ve sworn any oath right then to caress her there.

I shifted, trying to make more room for myself in my jeans, but it was useless. And then she was in front of me, a hand on each of my knees, and she spread them wide so she could step between them. She turned so that her ass was in front of my face, so close that I could make out the individual flowers embroidered on her lingerie, and I ran a finger across them.

She caught my hand. “You have to pay more if you want to touch,” she purred, and I followed Herod down the path to spiritual perdition, because no price was too high for her.

I handed over the money without question, which she tucked in her bra. Then she guided my hands to her hips and moved them down to her flanks and then back up to her tits. I toyed with the pasties a moment, both loving and hating the unfamiliar feeling of having her nipples blocked from me.

She sat in my lap, pressing her ass against my erection and laying her head back against my shoulder as I fondled her tits. I nuzzled her neck. “I bet you do this with all the guys who come in here.”

“Just you,” she said in a velvet voice, wriggling against me, the friction against my dick making me groan quietly. She flipped over, so she was straddling me.

“You know,” she said, in that same low, kitten voice, “I never let guys do this, but if you want, I’ll let you see my pussy.”

Yes, please.

“I would like that.” I am very proud that I managed to not squeak like a teenage boy.

She extended her hand, and I fished out the wallet again. It was just as well that this was a game; I’d never be able to afford Poppy on a priest’s salary.

After she was paid, she hopped on the dais and spread her legs wide again, pulling the crotch of her panties aside to show me what I wanted to see. It was wet and an enticing rose color in the dim blue light of the room—the color Renaissance painters should’ve used to paint the light of Heaven.

I stared, hypnotized, as she slowly let her hand drift from her neck, down past her breasts to the gentle rise of her pubic bone. From there she traced wide, light circles around her pussy, a loose spiral across her lower stomach and inner thighs, drawing closer and closer, and when she finally grazed her clit, I let out a shaky breath I didn’t know I’d been holding.

She too sighed at her touch, her hips rocking tiny little rocks into her hand, as if she was unconsciously trying to fuck the air, and I was beginning to lose track of everything that wasn’t her cunt. Didn’t she know I could fill it for her? Didn’t she know I could make her feel good, if only she’d let me?

I stood up and walked to the dais. Our eyes were at the same level, and I kept her gaze as I slid my hands from her knees up to her inner thighs, my thumbs coming teasingly close to her pussy. I did it again, this time daring to go closer, wondering if she would let me, if her lust would overtake her rules about money. My thumbs ran over her folds and she shuddered, and so did I, because holy shit, she was wet. So wet that I knew I’d be able to push my dick right in with no resistance.

“You want to stick your fingers inside me?” she asked.

I nodded, taking my thumbs and spreading her folds apart, moving that smooth pink flesh aside so that her entrance was completely exposed, begging for fingers or a cock.

“It’s going to cost you,” she said mischievously, placing her hands over mine.

“You drive a hard bargain,” I breathed. Hard was the right word for how I felt too. I was about three seconds away from unzipping my jeans and taking matters into my own hands (as it were.)

I found the bill, folded it lengthwise to make it easier for her to stow away, but this time she didn’t take it with her fingers, she took it with her mouth, her lips grazing my fingers, and it was so degrading, so wonderfully degrading, and the Herod in me was exultant on his throne, delighted with a king’s delight to see her with that money in between her teeth, knowing that now her pussy was mine to touch as I wanted.

She raised up on her knees as if to stand, but I was getting what I paid for, and right now, and I wrapped one arm around her waist and yanked her down, onto the two fingers I had waiting for her. She cried out and I smiled grimly, planning on taking full advantage of this particular service tier. With the arm around her waist, I pushed her down even farther, so that her pussy was grinding against my hand (which was currently smashed against the dais, but I didn’t mind,) and so the hot locus of nerves at her front rubbed relentlessly on my palm. My fingers crooked forward, finding the soft textured spot that would send her over the edge.

I moved my fingers while I crooned in her ear. “If I make you come, do you have to pay me?”

She laughed but the laugh immediately faded into a ragged sigh as I pressed her harder against my hand. I bit at her collarbone and at the soft skin around her pasties, her wetness quivering against my hand and that silk bow just begging to be wrapped around her wrists, and then she came with a sharp noise, bucking fruitlessly against me as I held her tighter, worked her harder, wrung every last drop of pleasure from her climax.

As she came down, her body relaxed against mine, but I was nowhere near relaxed. I slid my hand out from underneath her and put my fingers to her lips, making her suck her own taste off of them, my other hand unbuttoning my jeans.

Poppy glanced down and back up to my face. “You want me to put it in my mouth?” she asked, looking at me from under her lashes in a way that was utterly fucking debilitating to my ability to form coherent thoughts.

I grabbed a few bills and tucked them into her bra myself. Then I took that silk bow in hand and slowly untied it, baring that lovely neck for me to suck and nip at, as I slid the silk through my hands—reverently, like I would hold my stole or my cincture.

I pulled back and wrapped one end of the length around her neck, tying it to itself in a secure knot—the kind of knot that meant I’d be able to yank on it without worrying about it tightening around her neck.

Leash secured, I wrapped the loose end once around my hand and gave an experimental tug. She jerked forward a bit, making a surprised noise, but her pupils dilated and her pulse thrummed in her neck, so I felt free to pull again, forcing her to slide carefully off the dais and to her knees. I sat in the chair and made her crawl to me, watching the way her tits swung as she did.

Once she was in between my knees, I yanked up, perhaps a bit harder than I should have, but I was almost lost with lust at this point, lost to my inner caveman and my inner Herod, and all he wanted was that pretty red mouth on his dick right the fuck now.

She curled her fingers around the waistband of my black boxer briefs and pulled down, and my dick sprang free, jutting up between the V of my zipper. I wound the end of the leash around my hand a few more times until the silk was taut, and then I pulled her head to my cock, but she didn’t open her mouth right away, those red lips sealed. But the hint of a smile was at the corners of her mouth, a delighted defiance in her eyes, and I remembered my kitchen counter all those weeks ago, when she’d asked me to steal her kisses—no, not even steal. She’d wanted me to force them from her.

So I wound the leash tighter and jerked, her mouth now pressed against the underside of my penis, the sensation of her breath against my skin enough to make me wild.

Play the game, Tyler.

“I paid you to suck,” I hissed. “You can either suck me on your own or I can make you do it. So unless you want that, you better open that pretty little mouth and do your fucking job.”

She was covered in goose bumps, and I didn’t miss the way she tried to rub her thighs together. Impatiently, I stuck a finger between her lips and forced them apart.

“Put me in your mouth,” I warned, “or there will be hell to pay.”

It didn’t take an astute observer to notice the extra flare of interest in her eyes at that idea; she wanted there to be hell to pay, but I also think she wanted to suck me, because she finally perched her candy apple lips at my tip, and—meeting my eyes as she did so—slid her mouth down and over me, her tongue flat and scorching against my shaft.

Keeping my hand tight on the leash, I leaned back to watch the show, watch her breasts move as she worked me, watch those hazel eyes gaze up at me with a look that would get me hard in the shower for years to come. And those lips like a gorgeous red halo around my dick…it was the only halo I ever wanted again, a circle of wicked wants and devilish delights.

Up and down she went, sometimes fluttering her tongue, sometimes running it in a hot, wide line down my shaft. I thrust up to meet her, hitting the back of her throat and—losing all semblance of patience—grabbed the back of her head to keep her from pulling away. I held her head with both hands and pumped that way for several long seconds, fucking her throat like I fucked her pussy—hard and without apology, and she deserved it for being such a brazen, shameless tease.

“You like that?” I asked. She was breathing carefully through her nose, and she couldn’t speak, so I talked for her. “I know you do. You like it when a paying customer treats you roughly. It makes you wet to be treated like the slut you are, doesn’t it?”

She made a noise that could of have a yes or a no or simply a moan of pure pleasure. Whatever it was, it made my stomach clench and my hands dig into her scalp and my balls tighten with the need to release. But I didn’t want to come in her mouth.

“Off,” I ordered, pulling on the leash. She obeyed, coming off my dick with watery, smudged eyes and one of the biggest smiles I’d ever seen on her face.

I used the leash to bring her face to mine as I leaned toward her. “How much to fuck?”

Her smile faded into a darker expression, an expression that promised me everything I wanted. “We—we aren’t supposed to do that,” she said faintly.

“I don’t care,” I growled. “I want to fuck you. How much?”

“The rest of what you have,” she said, with a defiant arch of her eyebrow, and I silently commended her for her dedication to our game. I took out my wallet and the remaining cash—about $700 (fuck, Poppy had a lot of money)—and then tossed the bills in the air. They floated slowly down to the floor.

“Pick them up with your mouth.”

“No.”

“No?” I tugged on the leash, just enough that she remembered it was there. “I want to get what I paid for. Now. Pick. Them. Up.”

I saw the moment she gave in by the set of her shoulders, but as she started to bend down to reach for the bill closest to her, I put my shoe on the money. “Panties off first.”

She worried her lower lip between her teeth, and I don’t know what my face looked like, but whatever expression was there must have convinced her that she didn’t want to test me. She stood up, hooked her thumbs at the sides of her panties and slipped them down, one gold heel coming off the floor and then the other as she stepped out of them.

Then she bent over and began collecting the money.

I kept a loose grip on the leash as she did, spooling it out so she’d have plenty of slack, licking my lips at the swollen perfection exposed between her legs. When we got home, I wanted to worship her with my mouth, I wanted her coming on my tongue again and again. She deserved it, my little lamb, for going to such lengths for me, creating this little game where I could take and take from her. Yes, after this, I was going to reward her.

But as for right now…

I got on the floor behind her, also on my knees, and because the music was so loud, I don’t think she heard. She was bent completely over, her face to the floor, her ass high in the air, and I took my dick and shoved into her with one rough thrust, all the way in, slapping her hard on one ass cheek as I did.

She squealed—a happy noise—and that was enough to keep my conscience at bay as I fucked her harder than was purely gentlemanly, not fast necessarily, just hard and deep, the kind of deep that made her toes curl and my balls swing against her clit.

And then the snake slithered again, that angry, bitter snake, as I remembered that I was not the first man to do this to Poppy here, that she’d been fucked before like this, in this very place, and then that anger was itching at my palms and coiling in my pelvis.

I wanted to punish her. I wanted to hurt her the way she hurt me with making me care so much, but instead of hurting her, I pulled out and stood up, my cock wet and as hard as fucking steel, throbbing with the need to screw the pussy still raised up in offering to me.

I didn’t want to be Herod. Not really.

I sat down on the chair. “Come here.” I jerked my head towards my cock so that she knew what I wanted, and she didn’t hesitate to climb up my lap and then impale herself on me, sinking down with her tight, hot cunt, her tits right in my face.

And here, now that I could see her face, now that I couldn’t be brutal, I confessed. “I can’t, like that. It makes me want to…”

But I couldn’t get the words out. They were too awful. Instead, I buried my face in her breasts, smelling the lavender smell of her, the clean fabric of her bra.

She tugged at my hair so that my head was pulled back. “Want to hurt me?”

I closed my eyes. I couldn’t look at her. She must hate me, but she was still fucking me, rocking back and forth like women do instead of up and down, using my dick to get her off as if the rest of me was irrelevant.

God, that was hot.

“I guessed as much today,” she said. “That’s why I brought us here.”

My eyes flew open. “What?”

“You’re a man, Tyler. It doesn’t matter what I tell you or even what you choose to believe…there’s always going to be this Neanderthal inside you that wants to claim me. Reclaim me, if necessary, and I thought here…” She slowed her movements, looking uncertain for the first time. “I thought if we played like this, it would be easier for you to let go. To satisfy that part of you that you don’t want to acknowledge. That part that you hide from. Because it’s a bigger slice of you than you think.”

As if to underscore her point, she scratched her fingernails down my stomach—hard—and my hand spanked her ass so fast that I barely knew what I was doing. She gave a little moan and ground herself down on me.

“See? You need this. And I need this. I’ll take you to every place I’ve ever been and let you fuck me there, so you can rewrite my history as your history, if you want,” she promised. “Let me give that to you.”

I looked at her in amazement. In gratitude. She was so astute and so giving and of course I hadn’t needed to watch out for her well-being. As always, she had both of us under control when she surrendered her control to me.

“I don’t know what to say,” I admitted.

“Say yes. Say that you’ll finish the game.”

I’d been wrong. She wasn’t Salome right now. She was Esther, using her body to save her kingdom—our kingdom of two. And how could I act out my primal need to claim her knowing that? Knowing how generous and brave she was?

“It doesn’t feel right, to treat you like this…to claim you like some sort of property. And more importantly, I don’t want to hurt you.”

“I want you to claim me like property,” she said, leaning to whisper in my ear. The change in position squeezed her cunt around my length and I sucked in a breath. “And if you hurt me, I’ll tell you. You trust me to say stop, and I’ll trust you to stop if I say it. Sound good?”

Fuck yes, it sounded good. It sounded too good to be true, but then again, that was my Poppy, a woman made like God himself had designed her for me. And maybe He had.

I decided to trust her. Trust Him.

Mind made up, I grabbed her thighs and stood, keeping her pelvis pinned to mine as I stepped over to the sofa. I kissed her—a soft, searing kiss—a reminder of how much I loved her before the rough part of me took over, which it did right after our mouths broke apart. I set Poppy down and flipped her over the arm of the sofa, so that her ass was higher than her head, and then notched the head of my dick in her entrance.

“Press your legs together,” I commanded. “Make it tighter.”

She obeyed, and I sank in with a groan. “So tight like this,” I managed. “You make it so good for me.”

I shoved in again, hard enough that her feet came off the floor, and I kept going like that, her beautiful ass filling my hands and her satin cunt around my cock and her moans as she ground her clit against the firm arm of the sofa.

And in this moment of her Esther-like love for us and a future that was so ephemeral as to be nonexistent, it came to me that there was no sin here. This was love, this was sacrifice, the opposite of sin, and maybe it was fucked up to feel like God was here with us in the back room of a strip club, but I did, like He was bearing witness to this moment where Poppy opened herself to the worst of me and erased it with her love, just like God did for us sinners every moment of every day.

That feeling that Poppy and I had felt in the sanctuary, that God-feeling of presence and promise, it was here right now, making my chest tight and my head swim with the potency of the air itself, and once again I felt like a bridegroom, the man shouting his joy for all his friends and family to hear, and this room was our chuppah, our marriage tent, the faint blue lights the lamps of the ten virgins, our bodies echoing the joining God had already forged between our immortal souls.

How was this not marriage? How was this not more binding and more intimate, us bare with each other in the presence of God? At the very least, this was a betrothal, a promise, an oath.

I spanked my betrothed, wishing I could drink her squeals like Scotch and eat her moans afterward. I fucked her hard, taking in the blue hair tumbling over her back, the delicate lines of her small waist as they swelled into her perfect hips and ass, her wet cunt gripping me, and the pink aperture of her asshole—all of it mine. I was the monarch of all I surveyed—no, I was the master of all I surveyed, and I spanked and scratched and stabbed her over and over again with my cock until finally, finally, she made a noise that was half gasp, half wail, pulsing around me, her hands scrabbling at the leather as she was lost to everything but her body’s response to me.

I was lost to it too—this moment where I had rewritten history, her body’s history—where I had made this room belong to me and the orgasms that I’d given her. Where I’d made her mine and no other man’s, where I had taken an oath of marriage in my heart, and it was that mine that made me pull out and force her on her knees. I wanted her to witness my orgasm, I wanted her to see what she had given me.

The leash in one hand, the other hand with its rough grip and brutal pressure on my cock, using the wetness she’d left on me as lubrication, and it only took a few rough tugs before I shot streams of semen on her waiting lips, on her swan’s neck, on the fringes of her long eyelashes.

The tip of her tongue, pointed and pink, licked a drop off her upper lip, and then she gave me a soft, happy look that sent one more jet of come out to land on her collarbone.

We both breathed heavily for a moment, pleasure still thick in the air, but it was the only thing thick in the air now: the tension and bitterness and anger from earlier were gone. It had worked—Poppy’s game had worked. I had burned away the jealousy and primal urges, and in the interim, also burned away something else. My guilt maybe, or the feeling of sin. Something had shifted, like it had for me those moments on the altar, where the line between sacred and profane blurred completely, and I felt like I’d just participated in something holy, just pressed my naked hands to the mercy seat in a cloud of incense and sweat.

I knelt in front of her and untied the silk leash, using the material to carefully dab my climax off her face. “Game over,” I said gently, running the tip of my nose along her jaw.

“Who do you think won?” she murmured.

I wrapped her in my arms and pulled her into me, kissing the top of her head. “Do you even have to ask? It’s you, little lamb.” She nestled into me, and I rocked her back and forth, my precious one, my sweet woman. “It’s always you.”