Devotion

"Don't pull the buttons. We have to be careful."

With the skill of a girl who had enjoyed her teenage years more than she should, Delfina hurriedly unbuttoned the raven shirt I wore. And she had the shoes and black slacks off just as quickly. The socks and underwear followed , and soon we were almost completely nude save for her good-girl panties. The irony of this was not lost on me as she collapsed beside me, capturing my mouth with hers again as she began to run her hands all over my chest and arms.

The seminarian in me cried out, but the man in me silenced him as I felt cool fingertips brush over my nipples. I don't know which of us was shaking more violently, but I think we clung to one another at that moment. I'm sure she wasn't thinking of the death of her mother with just as much intent as I was ignoring the potentially fatal blow to my life this moment could inflict.

"I've always wanted to hold you," I murmured deliriously as her lips left mine to burn a trail down my throat, the heat and dampness of her most precious of parts pressed against my hip as her teeth nibbled at my collarbone. "I just... I want to keep our relationship as it is..."

"No, you don't," she breathed, wriggling on top of me to press her crotch against my throbbing cock. "You want this as badly as I do. And we won't ever need to think of this night again, Frankie." No one had called me Frankie in years. She hadn't called me Frankie since we were children.

"Delfina, I love you. I love what you represent as a woman. You're beautiful and if I weren't going to be a priest, you know I'd ask you to marry me, or at least date me, but this is..."

Another silencing kiss as the warm voluptuousness of her body settled over me, and the high voltage intensity of her weight against my cock made me wince. I think I must have groaned aloud as she broke the kiss to shush me, then returned her lips to mine as her hands left my sides to push down her panties.

I had seen plenty of nude women before. Maggie seemed to find perverse joy in running around the house fresh from her shower in a scrap of a towel—or sometimes no towel at all, if Mother wasn't home. She had been wild as an untamed nymph since she was a toddler, viewing clothes as a nuisance instead of a modest covering for herself. And I recall many thrilling nights during my tenth and eleventh year, huddled under the covers with Joseph and a contraband Playboy magazine, trying to wrap my mind around the pawnshop pearls of wisdom he gave me. Instructions on how you should play with a girl's "boobs" to get her in the mood, or of how you shouldn't stick your "thing" in her because that's what made babies, and you didn't want that to happen.

All this seemed like decades ago as I felt the silken brush of Delfina's pubic hair against my thigh. I gasped and grabbed her upper arms, and pushed her up and off me, to tumble her down beside me on the mauve fleece blanket that covered her bed. I shakily got to my knees to stare down at her and try to collect myself.

Her skin was as soft and flawless as satin. Her large breasts were firm and perky and tipped with pale-pink nipples. The shadowy recess of her navel, the flare of her hips and the black lace of her trimmed bush were nothing short of exquisite. Even her narrow feet, with their pink-painted toenails. I felt feverish, and buried my face in my hands.

For her part, Delfina just gazed up at me with those hypnotic eyes. The tension between us was focused and all encompassing. Her demure expression was of a virginal girl with the face and body of a woman. I closed my eyes again and made to cross myself when one of her tiny hands shot up and encircled my wrist with surprising strength.

"No. Not now."

I was on my back again, and she was kissing down my chest. When I realized what she meant to do, I froze in terror and thrilling excitement.

"No, no. You can't..." I quaked as she paused just above the painfully hard spike of my cock. Her hair settled like a mysterious veil over her face, and obscured my sight. I felt the first velvety kisses on the head of my cock, and all was lost.

Lying under this creature with the face of an angel and the mouth of an experienced courtesan, I at last knew the true definition of sin. I wanted her to stop. I thought of the Virgin and the purity of her relationship with Joseph. I thought of how proud I was to have made it to seminary school with a chastity that was honest and unblemished, and how I felt this allowed me to keep my focus during prayer and meditation so easily.

But God, did I crave her mouth and all the pleasure it brought. In short order, my hands moved down to tangle themselves in the silken density of her hair, cupping the back of her head as they did so. My hips arched of their own volition, and I closed my eyes. My flesh was on fire and my cock throbbed and swelled. The sensation sent icy tingles all over my body. I began to thrust my hips, increasing the rhythm as Delfina did the same. Soft moans escaped her lips and vibrated the sensitive head of my cock until I began to tremble and groan deep in my throat.

"Stop... Please..." I panted, squeezing great fistfuls of her hair as I thrust into her throat. She coughed, and suddenly the world exploded into darkness as I collapsed, taken prisoner by my first conscious, blinding and earth-shattering orgasm. My heart pounded in my ears and my muscles clenched. The warmth and intensity of sensation spilled outward from my cock until I thought I would simply die.

Delfina sat up then, misted in perspiration as the scent of her perfume and my seed filled the air. She closed her eyes, grimaced, then swallowed, wiping a drop of semen from her chin as she fell beside me, already reaching for my still throbbing cock.

"In for a penny, in for a pound," she whispered, brushing her knuckles across my cheek. "You can hate me if you want, Francis. But first make love to me."

"I can't," I whispered back, still reeling from the head she had given me. "I can't cross that line with you, Delfina. I love you and care about your soul. I want to see you in Heaven, sweetheart. I want us to be together forever."

"Then make love to me and hear my confession when we're through," she justified, tossing her hair from her face and grabbing my hand to put it between her legs.

Hours ago, her mother had died. Her father had sedated himself to cope. Her sister had fled to her room and her own music and thoughts. Her brother had gotten sloppy drunk and cried like a baby on the phone with her. She was teaching me how to rub her pussy, with breathy instruction and barely controlled movement.

I came to understand in short order that rubbing the tiny nub of her clitoris was what she wanted. I stroked it lightly with my index finger, and her eyes closed and her back arched like a feline basking in the sun. Her vagina was hot. Very hot. I wondered at the warmth there, and that it didn't seem to make her uncomfortable. But it was also slippery with her own secretions. Between the downy outer lips, her sex was silken, swollen, and slick with obvious desire.

The bed squeaked in protest as she rolled onto her side and flung a leg over my waist. I rolled onto my side to face her, now pressing one adoring kiss after another to her feverish brow as I flicked and rubbed that hardening little pearl beneath my fingertips.

She was sweating more freely now, and she wrapped her arms around my neck and breathed heavily against my ear. Her lips grazed my neck as she began to writhe against my fingertips.

"God, don't stop," she moaned as she wriggled closer. I felt heat and wetness against the head of my cock and realized what she was doing.

"Delfina," I breathed, gasping as she bit my throat to stifle a moan. One of her hands left my shoulders and wrapped resolutely around my cock, pulling it toward her soaked pussy.

"Don't stop, no matter what I do," Delfina ordered breathlessly. Simultaneously, she pushed herself onto my cock and rolled onto her back, taking me with her.

Natural instinct acted before rational mind in my case, and I thrust into the tight heat and wetness of her vagina. My eyes closed and my nerves barely registered the sharp pain of ten little fingernails digging into my back. She gasped, inhaled twice, then froze and I felt the tightness of her pussy increase as she came beneath me. Unable to resist, I plowed into her, withdrew enough to do it again, and then began to take her with all the strength and virility of a long-caged bull.

My head swam as I luxuriated in sensation I had never known. I was vaguely aware of hee raking my back with her nails and grabbing a pillow to release her cries of pleasure into as I bore into her again and again, driven by the slippery addiction of her cunt squeezing my cock.

Sweat dripped from my brow, and I thought I caught the phantom fragrance of incense smoke. I figured it must be smoke from the burning candles as I drove Delfina's shapely bottom into the mattress. No doubt we made a huge mess of the blanket beneath her.

When I felt pressure against my belly, and realized that she had moved a hand between us to continue stroking herself while I made love to her, I abandoned all pretense of gentleness or caution. I fucked her.

Our climax came seconds later. She bucked beneath me, and her free hand scored my lower back with her nails as I bent and bit her neck. I groaned loudly despite myself as I erupted into all that contracting musculature, and she trembled violently beneath me.

We lay quietly then, I still on top of her and inside her, my head resting on her shoulder, she silent with her eyes closed. Somehow, on that horrible and wonderful night, we dozed in each other's arms.

**

Delfina awoke before I did, and her startled gasp and jump brought me around fast. The room was brighter than it should have been, and one quick glance confirmed that the candles had gone out and that dawn was approaching.

"Shit!" she hissed, sitting up. I moved off her and did the same, watching as she looked around in bewilderment for a moment. Then it all hit her at once, and she began to shake. Her hands going to her face. "Oh God... What did we do? Mama..."

I leaned in to embrace her. I had always hated to see a woman cry, but when the first tears fell from her eyes, that feeling multiplied. As I lowered my face to kiss her brow, a dark stain upon the blanket between her splayed thighs caught my eye. Refusing to believe what I was seeing, I pulled away from her to stare wide-eyed as the enormity of what we'd done crashed over me in a tidal wave of horror and rapture.

"Delfina... You were a virgin... Oh, Christ..."

Invisible daggers of tears pricked my eyes and I was helpless to stop them. All around us, the house was silent. Had Lucia gotten up to check on her sister? I prayed she had not. I didn't think Marco would be up any time soon. I prayed that we had not been discovered, as the shame I was feeling could not have endured further compounding.

Chest heaving, Delfina pulled herself away from me briefly to kiss me with salty fervor, then return to sobbing on my shoulder. I felt one of her hands capture mine. She brought it to her forehead, then her bosom. Her left shoulder next, and then her right. I felt responsible for putting her in this position. I also felt it was my Godly duty to make things right by doing what I had learned to do through experience ever since I was a child. Our sins had to be absolved. A silent confession and request for penance—the words escaped my lips as they had been prepared to do through four years of college and almost the same at seminary: "Delfina, God the Father of mercies, through the death and resurrection of his Son, has reconciled the world to himself and sent the Holy Spirit among us for the forgiveness of sins. Through the ministry of the Church may God give you pardon and peace, and I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit."

Inwardly, I wondered who would hear my confession as I got out of her bed and began to cast about for my clothes. She did not look at me. She turned her gaze heavenward out the window, and I could not stop looking at the dark stain of her maiden's blood upon the coverlet.

I kissed the top of her head, her cheek, and her lips. Then I left the DiFranco house.

**

Mother, Dad, Maggie, Patrick, Peter and I sat in the living room on the evening of my ordination. It had been held after our lunch, and I had been so nervous as I received blessings from the Bishop and other priests that I thought I might lose the contents of my stomach. But all had gone well, and it felt good to be home again, though one issue rested heavily on my mind.

Mother had mixed up whiskey sours for the adults and a Shirley Temple for a disgruntled Patrick. We all sat sipping our respective drinks, with our bellies full of reheated prime rib and potatoes. Our collective spirits were light, though the favor Delfina asked of me after the ceremony today weighed on my heart and unsettled it when it should have been joyous and proud.

May has always been one of my favorite months. It is a month of rebirth, the coming of summer, and all the earth's fruits growing on the vine—the rebirth of my commitment to my faith and the priesthood. My new vestments and new life as a servant to God, and it was also a fine time for weddings.

"So that lovely Delfina is marrying a lawyer?" Mother asked, a hopeful smile touching her lips. "The poor child has had such a difficult time of it lately."

"Yes. That's what she told me today after the ceremony," I said, wishing my inner feelings could match the contented and peaceful expression on my face. "She said it will be a July wedding, and asked me if I'd preside."

"Oh, how sweet!" Maggie gushed. "I mean, it's really good of her fiancé to not mind the baby and all." I tried not to drop my glass.

"Baby?"

"Yeah. I guess it's gonna be a shotgun wedding after all. When her mother died, she sort of had a rough time, you know? Went and got herself knocked..." A reproachful look from my mother in Maggie's direction. "Excuse me, in the family way. But she and Josh had been dating off and on for a few months before it happened, so it's no big surprise that this happened, what with all she's been through." Maggie tossed her hair out of her eyes and sipped her drink. "I'm sure it means a lot to her that you'll be there to perform the wedding. You were such a help to the DiFrancos after Mrs. DiFranco died."

The peace I had made with my ordination now disintegrated. . I had carefully dissected the incidents the night of Gabriella's death. I had prayed over them, contemplated them at great length, and finally decided that yes, I did love Delfina, but I felt my calling was not to settle down and have a family. The church was my family, and I loved serving the Lord.

But now I thought of that night in every sharp, painful and exquisite detail. When was the baby due? I had a hunch it would be born in December. And I also had a hunch I would be performing the baptism. Beyond that, I did not know. But I knew that night would stay with me forever— perhaps in more ways than I had realized.