The Priest's Virgin Concubine

He typed on the computer, occasionally humming along with the music. When it stopped, it left the church feeling strangely sad and empty. Dimly he heard the sound of the young women chattering to themselves as they left the building. Eventually, there was silence.

Until it was interrupted by a knock at his office door, so unexpected that he almost jumped out of his skin. "Father Justin? Are you in there?"

"Come in," he said, and flushed as his voice emerged in an embarrassing squeak. He firmed it and repeated, "Come in."

The door opened, and the face of one of the girls peeked in. "Are you busy? I can come back."

"No, that's all right." With a click, he saved his notes and sat up. "Come in. Brittany, isn't it?"

"Yes, Father Justin." She sat down in the chair opposite his desk, lowering her eyes demurely.

Justin took a moment to study the girl. Or, he corrected himself, young woman. Brittany was of medium height, but there was nothing girlish about her body. Her blouse clung to the rich curves of her chest, and her legs were long and tanned from the spring sun. Even through her lowered lashes, Justin could see that her green eyes were bright. And her hair was an arresting shade of reddish blond, flowing past her shoulders in a golden river that reminded him of a waterfall at sunset.

He swallowed, and reined in his appreciation, even if it was only academic in nature. He could no more think of Brittany as a sexual object than he could join the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. "What can I do for you, Brittany?"

The young woman looked up, then back down at her lap, where her fingers were fidgeting. "I've...been having dreams, Father." A quick, bright glance, like the glimpse of a bird's eye in the leaves of an oak tree. "Strange ones."

"Oh?" he said encouragingly.

She nodded rapidly in agreement. "Almost every night." Her cheeks grew pink. "Sexy dreams."

He swallowed. "Oh. Um." He cast about in his mind rapidly. "Are you sure this is something you should be telling me, Brittany? Wouldn't you rather tell your mother? Or a friend?"

"Oh, no!" Her pretty brows drew down in consternation. "I couldn't tell Mom! That would be so embarrassing! I would just die!"

"Well, why are you telling me?" he asked, in what he hoped was a reasonable tone.

"Because Father Snodgrass always told us that we could tell our priest anything," she replied earnestly. Her plump lips thinned. "Though Father Cobden and Father McCartney and Father Franklin didn't seem to think so. They all told me I shouldn't be having lustful thoughts, and that I should pray to the Holy Mother for forgiveness for having such an evil, wicked, depraved mind."

At last, a life preserver. Though probably one that leaked. "If you like, I could put this under the seal of the confessional."

Brittany's eyes shone. "Could you? Would you? Please, Father Justin!" Her legs shifted nervously. "I need to talk about this to someone!"

"All right." He got out his stole, kissed it, and set it over his shoulders. "Whenever you're ready."

Her eyes closed. "It's a dream. I know it is. But it seems so real.

"It is dark when he comes to me," she whispered. "Dark as night. I can see the stars overhead, clear as crystal in the summer sky. The wind is whispering through the grass. The moon is riding high; fat and full. The grass is wet with dew, and I can feel the rich earth under my bare feet."

Her voice slowed, becoming almost hypnotic in its steady rhythm. "There is a fire. Red light shines on my body. I am naked. The heat surrounds me. Fills me. As he will fill me." As if guided by another person's will, her hands rose, fingers undoing the buttons of her sheer white blouse. Justin froze as her firm young breasts, her nipples pink and stiff with desire, came into view.

Terrified, he panicked. "Brittany! Stop that!"

"Why, Father Justin?" Brittany's eyes popped open, but her voice lost none of its dreamy cadence. "Father Snodgrass taught me that my body was a gift from God. Should I be ashamed of it?"

"Put your clothes on!"

"No." Her refusal was polite, but with granite-hard conviction under the calm tone. With her blouse open to the waist, her hands began to caress her flesh. "I can feel him behind me," she continued, as if she had not heard his interruption. "He's male." Her throat bobbed as she swallowed. "Hard. Ready for me. He presses into my back, and I can feel his need.

"He speaks no words. But I know what I have to do. I drop down on my hands and knees and present myself to him. My haunches are high in the air." Sweat was beaded on her upper lip, and the motions of her hands sped, her fingers stroking her breasts, teasing her erect nipples.

"He takes me. Hard. Like a stallion with a mare. His hands are on my hips. He fills me. And it is good. So good. My body welcomes him. I am the earth. He is the king. The lord of the land, filling me. I sink down. The dew on the grass coats my body. But he drives into me. Over. And over. And then over again. Until there is no me anymore. There is only my body.

"I can feel it. We are two. But we are one. I can feel it. He can feel me. My body as it rejoices in his strength. His seed as he explodes into me." Her eyes sprang wide, something dark and primal and fierce lurking in the depths of her gaze, and Justin's own reaction to her carnal desire was forgotten as her hips began to roll in slow steady motions, like the actions of the waves in a dark, stormy sea. "I am his vessel. And he is mine. We make the earth bountiful. Man," she gasped, shuddering. "And woman. Male and female.

"Oh, Father Justin! Oh. OH! OH!" Her head tilted back as she grasped her breasts, tan flesh showing between the gaps of her fingers. And then her head whipped forward, her entire body curling in a c-shape in the chair, as if she was a puppet whose cords had been cut.

Brittany fell silent, though her breath was deep and labored. Her body still moved in small, languid motions, as she came down from what was obvious, even to him, as a very satisfying sexual climax. Justin tried to hide his own body's visceral reaction to her incredible body. But it was hard.

Very hard.

Oh, shut up.

After a long moment, her eyes opened. Despite her youth, her face was wise. The face, he thought, of an adult. An adult who knew exactly how deeply she had affected him. And rather than being disgusted by him, was actually pleased. "Thank you, Father Justin." A small smile curved her mouth as she did up the buttons of her blouse. Justin hoped that the pang he felt as she hid her breasts from view would not show in his face. "What is my penance?"

He had to clear his throat twice before he could speak. In his slacks, his erection raged for release. Release, and more.

"The Church teaches that we cannot be held responsible for our dreams," he managed at last. "As our actions in them are not the result of our own will, but rather that of our dreaming mind." He removed the stole from his shoulders, trying to hide the way his hands were shaking. "You have committed no sin. You need no absolution."

"Thank you, Father Justin!" The young woman hopped up, her face alight. "I knew you would understand! Not like the rest of those cranky old men. All they could think about was sin." Her nose wrinkled adorably. "But Jesus told us different, didn't he?"

Off the top of his head, Justin couldn't recall any place in the bible where a gorgeous young woman brought herself to orgasm by paying with her breasts. Or where Jesus said that was perfectly fine. But with his sex drive screaming at him, the safest course seemed to get Brittany out of his office as quickly as he could. God only knew what someone would think if they saw him alone with the sexy young teenager, who seemed at once completely innocent and indecently depraved.

"Sure," he croaked, adjusting his erection behind the desk, and hoping against hope that Brittany wouldn't realize what he was doing. His cock burned against his belly like a brand, making him squirmingly conscious of his sinful desires. He got to his feet, wiping sweat off his upper lip. "Will I see you at mass on Sunday?"

"Oh." Brittany smiled. "I'm sure I'll see you before that. A lot more. Isn't there a pot-luck here tomorrow? Me and the 'rents and my horrible gross brothers and sisters will all be there." She grinned. "Nothing like a big meal to get my mom and dad out of the house, especially if it's free. Raising five kids takes a lot of food, you know."

His smile suddenly felt sickly. Face Brittany's parents? After this? "Well, I'll see you then."

"You bet, Father Justin!" She leaned up and planted a completely unexpected kiss on his cheek, then left the office in a rush. In seconds, the only trace of her presence was a sweet scent in the air.

Oh, God. Justin couldn't take it. The pounding pressure in his groin would have broken the willpower of a saint. And he certainly wasn't a holy man, more able to withstand temptation than mere mortals. He staggered through the church to the rectory, shutting the door behind him with the same sense of relief that Noah might have felt when he drew up the plank of the ark as the rain of the flood started pouring down.

He sank down on his bed, his slacks pooled around his ankles. The throbbing rod of his cock in his fist made him groan. Half in relief, half in sheer need. He closed his eyes as his thumb swept thick fluid around the head of his glans.

Brittany. A phrase echoed through his head. A body that would make a priest curse his vows. For the first time, he actually understood what it meant. Her young, nubile body, half hidden, half revealed, was graven in his mind's eye. The lovely curves of her breasts. The flat expanse of her belly. The way the light shone down from the window to gild her body in golden light. Her face, rapt with pleasure and feminine beauty, as she confessed her desires to him.

No. Not to you. To God. You are merely the conduit.

Through the firestorm of desire, Justin wondered what it would be like with Brittany. He had always felt that the vows of chastity would lie lightly on him. Now they seemed cold and damp and smothering, like a clammy blanket drawn from a fetid swamp, and something that should be cast aside.

Sex. His classmates in college had been dumbfounded when he told them that he wanted to be a priest, and that he actually intended to stay celibate. He could still see their slack-jawed stares, as if he were speaking a foreign language, with concepts they would never be able to understand.

"Dude," his roommate Neil had said, his brow furrowed in confusion. "Like, never?"

"Right."

"Never ever?"

He nodded.

"What if, you know," he pointed to the television, where a movie was playing. The dialogue seemed to consist mostly of grunts, swearing, and explosions, but some of the other guys in the room were staring at it in rapt attention. Maybe it was because of the actress whose main talent seemed to be her ability to keep a massive pair of breasts inside her skintight top whenever she appeared on the screen. "What if she knocked on the door, right now, and asked you to get down with her, no questions asked?"

"I would tell her," he said, trying to hide his amusement, "that without love to turn our act into a sacrament, what she was proposing was sinful. And also that I was committed to a life of chastity."

Neil shook his head and drained his beer. "You're hopeless, man." Murmurs of agreement rose from others in the small, crowded apartment. "Completely fucking hopeless."

But now his willpower was being put to the test. Sometimes, out of boredom or curiosity or sheer lonely depression, he had watched adult movies on his computer or the television. The experience had always left him with a sour taste in his mouth, disgusted at his own weakness and sickened by the thought of the poor women who had been reduced to selling their bodies. But now he wanted, more than anything, for one of those women to be in bed with him. For him to be able to slake his desperate need.

No. Not them. His hand began to speed up. Not them. Brittany, pure and virginal and completely wanton, her fingers pulling at her tender young nipples as she told him about her sexy dream. As she had spoken, Justin had begun to fantasize, to put himself in the place of her dream-lover. He had imagined the sensations he had never known in waking life, of the clench of Brittany's hot young sheath around his manhood as he drove into her over and over and over again, seeding her fertile body with his male power.

Oh, God!

He let go. His climax swept over him, wracking his body with shudders that were almost painful in their pleasure. His flailing hand barely managed to grab a wad of tissue from the nightstand and cap his throbbing prick. Blast after blast of his semen burst from his slit, leaving him limp, drained and dry.

Sinner.

The voice of his conscience pounded at him. Look at you. You are not worthy to serve our Lord. One look at an attractive teenager, and you're fantasizing about her and engaging in the sin of self-abuse.

Even though he was torn with guilt, he almost snickered. Self-abuse? Seriously? Who talks like that?

He closed his eyes. Yes, he had lusted after Brittany in his heart. But it would be far, far worse for his desires to be translated into action. He would not. He could not. To attempt to seduce her would not only shatter his own vows, but would put him at risk of losing the parish he had worked for so long to achieve.

I will be strong.

Chapter 3: Taking the Bait

"So I said to Vern. 'Listen man. I appreciate the work you did cutting her up. And a side of beef is going to come in real handy. But that wasn't my cow. It was yours!'"

The men surrounding the story-teller roared with laughter, and Justin smiled politely, though he had lost track of the tale about halfway through.

Despite his fervent prayers for rain, or perhaps a small, non-destructive tornado, born out of a desire to somehow avoid Brittany, the day had dawned clear and sunny, with a light northwest breeze teasing the few cotton-ball clouds that dotted the sky. Around three in the afternoon, Megan Murray had shown up with a dozen other women, and twice that many teenage assistants, and with a speed and efficiency that would have made his father nod approvingly, they had transformed the west lawn of St. Catherine's into a sort of open-air all-you-can eat buffet. Long folding tables were set up to hold the food, and the young men erected a large tent. A short time later, a bucket-brigade brought smaller tables and folding chairs out of the basement so that people would have someplace to sit down and eat.

By six, the parking lot began to fill and the people to arrive, all of them contributing something to the meal. Casseroles, veggie trays, bread and cheese and cold cuts for sandwiches, huge salads in containers big enough to be a dinosaur's feeding bowl, and every side dish you could imagine, from potato salad and coleslaw to corn on the cob and baked beans. Pairs of men lugged huge tubs of crushed ice with the necks of beer bottles sticking out, and on one table, you could choose between tea or soda or large pitchers of lemonade, with sweat dripping down the frosted sides. At the last minute, a man pulled up in a delivery van and brought out pans full of fried chicken and battered catfish, which sent up a heavenly aroma.

There wasn't any formal grace, or any time when the meal began. At some point, the pot-luck seemed to hit a critical mass, and people stopped talking and started eating. Some under the tent, and some on blankets they spread out on the lawn. Justin wandered around with Megan, who seemed to have appointed herself as his guardian angel. She introduced him to the various couples and families, and he made sure to invite everyone to his first 'real' mass, scheduled to take place the next morning.

As they walked around the grounds, he felt the pressure of many pairs of eyes on him, sizing him up. "So," he joked, though he didn't think his nervousness was hidden very well. "How am I doing so far?"

Megan smiled at him. "Relax, Father. You're doing fine." Her eyes crinkled at the corners. "You got to cut them some slack, you know. We've been burned three times in a row by priests were too old, too lazy, or to rigid to fit in." She raised a hand, ticking points off on her fingers. "Father Cobden was just marking time until he could retire. Father Franklin couldn't be bothered to get off his well-padded ass and do his job, and Father McCartney was so conservative he probably thought that the world started going to hell when women learned how to read."

Justin snickered, though he knew that he probably shouldn't be amused by other men's failures. "I guess there's worse things. If I even do a half-decent job, I'll look good by comparison."

"You could," Megan said, though the corner of her mouth twitched. "If we were interested in someone doing a half-decent job." Her head tilted. "Mediocrity is a terrible fate, Father. I hope you have more ambition than that."

Whatever reply he might have made was cut off, when a voice he had heard in his dreams exclaimed, "Hi, Mom!"

Megan turned, smiling, as Brittany dashed up and gave her a quick hug. "Hey, honey. Where is everyone?"

"Dad's parking the car," the young woman replied. "Doug is bringing the biscuits that someone, I'm not saying who, forgot at home. Billy ran off to play football out back with his friends. Kenna is over there," she pointed, "and Sabrina is up in the choir loft making hot, passionate love to Brett Terhune."

"What?" Megan looked startled, but not completely shocked.

"What?" Justin added, just in case.

Brittany's laughter pealed out. "Just kidding, Mom. They're being all lovey-dovey over there by the redbuds." She snorted. "You'd think they hadn't seen each other for a year."

Megan blew out a deep breath. "Horrible child. Father Justin, I'd like to introduce you to my oldest daughter, Brittany."

"Number two out of the chute, but number one in your heart," Brittany added amiably. "But me and Father Justin have already met. He saw us at choir practice yesterday." She gave him a sly look from under her eyelids. "Didn't you, Father?"

"She's your daughter?" Justin asked Megan helplessly. But now that he saw the two of them together, the resemblance was obvious.

"My pride and joy," the older woman replied. Something in his expression must have warned her, because she tilted her head questioningly. "Is everything all right, Father?"

He opened his mouth, then cut himself of. He couldn't possibly relate what had happened the previous day. Even if he was willing to make Brittany look like a bimbo in front of her mother, he had put the entire encounter under the seal of the confessional. If he told Megan now, it would be a terrible betrayal of Brittany's trust.

And good luck getting anyone else to come to confessional if you pull that sort of crap, Justin.

"Nothing," he said. "Your daughter and her friends are very talented singers," he added weakly.

"Oh, yes." Megan's expression was darkly amused. "She has all sorts of skills, doesn't she?"

"Come on, Father Justin!" Brittany took his arm. "Have you had anything to eat yet? I'm starving. And I heard that Mr. Anderson brought chicken and fish from his restaurant for tonight! Let's get some!"

Justin allowed himself to be dragged to the food, where Brittany helped him load a heaping plate. Before he knew it, he was sitting down at one of the long tables, with the Murrays surrounding him on three sides.