Author: Tiffany Reisz

And God kissed him.

The kiss startled him at first with its utter gentleness. Kingsley’s lips parted and he breathed Søren’s air. Søren pushed Kingsley’s mouth open farther. Their tongues touched and intermingled. Søren didn’t just smell of winter, he tasted of it, too. Although warm, Søren’s mouth tasted like ice. It soothed Kingsley’s dry and burning lips. He wanted Søren to melt into his mouth so he could drink him.

When Søren moved his mouth away, Kingsley moaned in distress. The kiss…he could have lived in that kiss forever. But he sighed with newfound bliss when Søren pressed his lips into the panting hollow of his throat. And from his throat, Søren’s lips moved to Kingsley’s shoulder. The left one, then the right. Over his heart, Søren kissed him again. Then down his chest and over the hard, flat surface of Kingsley’s stomach. Had they been in a bed, Kingsley would have dug his fingers deep inside the mattress to hold himself steady. But he had nothing but rock below him. He scratched at it and found nothing to hold on to.

Søren seemed to sense his need. He took Kingsley’s hands in his and locked their fingers together. The intimacy of the act filled a space inside Kingsley’s heart that he hadn’t even realized had been empty. He wanted everything to stop right then and there so he could talk to Søren about it. What they were doing now, Kingsley knew, was as powerful as the millions of years of sun and wind and rain that had carved this plateau out of the side of the mountain. Every kiss eroded something of the old Kingsley and carved a new shape into him.

But Søren’s kisses moved lower and he took Kingsley into his mouth. And then Kingsley didn’t want anything to stop. This could go on forever. Dozens of girls had done this to him in the past and he always loved it, whether or not they knew what they were doing. The sight of those innocent girlish faces between his legs, with his cock between their soft, angelic lips—the lips they kissed their grandmothers with…the deviancy of it alone was enough to get him off with spectacular success every time. But now that Søren did it to him, the entire meaning of the act changed. He felt unworthy of having Søren’s mouth on him. Before, with his girls, a blow job had been his right. He asked for it and received it. With Søren it felt like a gift he didn’t deserve. The pleasure was beyond anything he’d felt in his entire life. Nothing compared to it. Nothing ever.

Kingsley arched as wave after wave of sensation washed over him. His hips rose off the ground and his fingers clenched Søren’s viciously. He closed his eyes tight as Søren brought him to the very edge. Then, suddenly, his body felt a rush of cold air as Søren pulled away from him. Without warning Kingsley was forced over and up onto his hands and knees again. He couldn’t stop the orgasm, so when he came it wasn’t into Søren’s mouth, but onto the cold stone ground beneath him.

The sudden change in Søren’s demeanor shamed him. His semen on the ground shamed him. Søren holding him immobile as Kingsley caught his breath shamed him. The last shudder of his orgasm passed through him and the pleasure he took in the shame shamed him.

Kingsley rolled onto his back and winced from the pain. What would it be like tomorrow? He already ached to see the welts and the bruises. They were gifts to him, gifts from Søren. Kingsley would treasure every moment he bore them, and when they faded he’d beg for more.

Absurd, wasn’t it? Treasuring bruises as if they were gold? Madness. And yet, so true.

Something welled up inside Kingsley. Something he couldn’t keep in. He opened his arms wide again as if to give himself over to the sky. And without knowing why, he began to laugh. The laugh filled him up and poured out of him. It rose into the air and expanded, slipping into the forest and echoing throughout the valley below.

And Kingsley heard something else. Another laugh. Søren’s laugh. Had he even heard Søren laughing before? No. Of course not. He would have remembered such a sound. So unlike him—so light and alive, but so weighty and real. If God laughed it would sound just like that.

Søren reached for Kingsley and dragged him close. Kingsley lay across Søren’s legs and relaxed into the heat of his body. Søren draped an arm over Kingsley’s back, and in silence they both stared out at the night. They remained quiet for five full minutes at least, until Søren spoke again.

“Are you cold?” he asked.

“No. I’m fine.”

“You did well.” Søren ran two fingers down the center of Kingsley’s back, and his spine sang at the touch.

“Merci,” Kingsley sighed. He’d been aching to hear three words from Søren, the same three words Kingsley had said to him after their first night on the forest floor. But for whatever reason, “You did well” seemed a bigger thing, a better thing than simply “I love you.”

“It’s late. You need to sleep. Get dressed. I’ll take you back to bed.”

“Yes, sir.” Kingsley rolled up off of Søren’s lap and slowly stood. Everything hurt. Not like the first time. The first time, he’d been torn open and apart. Tonight he’d only been broken. This was good. Give him a week and he’d be ready for another night like this.

“Sir?” Søren repeated. Kingsley laughed again as he pulled on his clothes. “You’re a teacher now, but not one of the priests. I heard your students calling you ‘sir.’ Seemed to suit you. I could call you ‘monsieur.’”

Søren cupped the side of Kingsley’s face and he immediately stopped laughing.

“I like ‘sir.’”

He traced Kingsley’s bottom lip with his thumb. Kingsley said nothing, only nodded.

Søren dropped his hand and stepped to the edge of the cliff. Dressed now, Kingsley came and stood at his side.

“It’s Maine,” Kingsley said.

“Is it really? I hadn’t noticed.”

Kingsley suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. “I mean…it will get cold soon. Too cold at night to meet like this.”

Søren’s face remained implacable. “You assume this is an ongoing arrangement?”

Kingsley’s heart dropped to the bottom of the valley. Or started to, until he noticed the smile lurking at the corner of Søren’s lips.

“You blond monster,” Kingsley said, shoving him.

Søren laughed and shoved back with twice the grace and ten times the force. Kingsley ended up on his back again, with Søren straddling his thighs.

“Say it,” Søren ordered. “Apologize.”

He pinned Kingsley down hard to the ground.

“I’m sorry, sir.”

“Good boy.”

Kingsley groaned as Søren dragged his aching body off the ground.

“We’ll find somewhere,” Søren said. “If I have to build a house with my own hands…we’ll find somewhere to be together.”

Together...That one word healed every wound inside Kingsley. The bruises remained on his body, the welts and the cuts. But the pain evaporated. He became whole again.

“What about there?” The first rays of dawn light started to peek over the tops of the hills. At the base of the valley stood a tiny cobblestone cottage nearly swallowed up by ivy and weeds.

“That’s the old hermitage. It hasn’t been used since Father Leopold in 1954.”

“It has four walls, a chimney...” What else did they need? Nothing but shelter from the elements when winter came.

“It’s a hellhole. I’ve seen it.”

Kingsley stared down at the tiny cottage.

“Hell is fine. Surely God wants nothing to do with us, anyway.”

NORTH

The Present

Kingsley found Søren in the chapel, sitting at the piano and playing before a spellbound audience of twenty teenage boys. In this day and age, Kingsley could hardly imagine teenagers being so enthralled by classical music. Baroque music, he corrected, as he recognized the piece—Vivaldi’s “Winter,” the Allegro for Piano. Søren did have a fondness for Vivaldi, the Red Priest, as he was known in his day. Kingsley lingered at the back of the chapel, closed his eyes and let the music wash over him.

Antonio Vivaldi...Kingsley had written a paper on the composer thirty years ago for Father Henry’s music appreciation seminar. Søren had suggested that composer. Kingsley remembered little about the man. He did recall Vivaldi suffered from asthma so severely he couldn’t say Mass. In lieu of parish life, he’d been sent to an orphanage, where he taught music to the illegitimate daughters of courtesans. When Kingsley read that in Vivaldi’s biography, he’d understood why Søren had thought Vivaldi and he would get along so well.

The piece ended, and Søren stood up and gave a self-deprecating bow to the herd of boys who’d gathered to listen. A few came up to him and chatted as he tried to work his way to the back of the chapel. They’d probably never met a priest like Søren before—one who could so obviously have had any woman or man he wanted, could have had a career in any field he desired, but instead had taken a vow of celibacy and poverty and given his time and his talents to God. Or at least, most of his talents he’d given to God. A few he’d reserved for his Eleanor. Lucky bitch.

Søren came to him and Kingsley said nothing, only nodded, indicating his readiness to leave. Søren waved a polite farewell to the boys, shook hands with a few priests as they departed. Once safely inside the car, with the glass up between them and the driver, Kingsley finally felt safe to speak freely.

“You know something,” Søren said before Kingsley could even open his mouth.

“I know nothing,” he replied as he watched Saint Ignatius disappear behind them. “But I have a theory, at least.”

“Tell me.”

“I saw Christian. He’s a priest now. Did you know that?”

“Of course,” Søren said. “I attended his ordination. Is he in the hermitage now?”

“Oui. We talked at length.”

“About?”

Søren sat across from Kingsley, who couldn’t resist stretching out his legs and resting them on the seat next to Søren’s thigh.

“Your wife.”

Søren narrowed his eyes at him and Kingsley grinned.

“Your sister?”

“The very same. Christian thinks it’s possible someone knew about you and me while we were at Saint Ignatius, and assumed that Marie-Laure committed suicide because of it.”

“You believe she did commit suicide.”

“I always have. You married her, but you didn’t know her. She was incapable of love—only obsession. She nearly ripped my arm off the day they separated us. She was obsessed with you, and when she saw us together…” Kingsley stopped and said no more.

“She ran off in tears and fell to her death. Perhaps it was suicide but that was her choice. You bring too much guilt upon yourself.”

“Do you want to know this theory or do you want to save my soul?”

“Both. But your soul will take a little more time. Tell me the theory.”

“Christian thinks that this someone was in love with Marie-Laure and is now threatening us in revenge.”

“Revenge…” Søren sighed heavily as he leaned his regal head back in the seat. “Such melodrama this all is. The photograph, the burning bed...I have a lover, Kingsley, and half the Underground knows it. I fell in love with her when she was fifteen years old. And on that day I determined I would have her. On that day I started training her for my bed. This is not a secret. I am one phone call to the bishop away from being excommunicated. If someone wants to ruin my career as a priest, they hardly need to go to such lengths.”