4. Chapter Four

4

CHAPTER FOUR

I heard the chanting of learned men, as familiar to me as my own skin, and when I woke, I was not in Hell but in the chapel of the abbey, on my knees in prayer.

Unpleasant and excessive incense had become a haze in the air. Inhaling it triggered a bodily response in me. I shivered, fearful that what had happened to me in Hell was little more than a dream.

"No," I mumbled.

" Shh ." A biting twist of a sound. I looked up and saw Don Santi, one of my fellow dons, glaring at me. He shook his head in disapproval of my disrespect, but beside me, a comforting hand reached out and pressed against my back.

"Do not worry about him," a young man said. "He is simply jealous."

"What?" I half turned my head. Confusion bludgeoned me, for it was none other than Oliviero, looking much as he had the last time I had seen him. He smiled at me and rubbed my back comfortingly, and the motion was somewhat more intimate than I recalled him ever being with me. My mind, already so thoroughly dirtied and impure, and my body, which until moments earlier had been being ravished by a quartet of imps, wondered how Oliviero might fare in Hell. If he would be like me, a slut on his knees, begging to be used. And as these thoughts coalesced, Olivero moved his hands. They slid delicately from my back to the front of my chest. He pressed his body close, intimate, breath huffing in my ear and warming my neck. When his tongue licked up the exposed skin there, I shivered and made a noise of protest.

"Hush," he told me. More confidence lay in that single word than I had ever heard in our years together. "I know you want me to. I know you always have. I suspected the rumours about your inclinations were true early on, and every stolen glance, every time you pulled your gaze away from me with fretful speed—it felt good, Alessandro, to be the object of your desire."

I breathed out hard. "I don't?—"

"You don't need to pretend with me," he said. The foggy wall of incense cleared, and the pew we were in widened. All other people vanished as if wicked away by the smoke. It was just the two of us in this small chapel, both of us clad in simple black cassocks. Even as he thumbed at my chest over this fabric, it felt more sinful than anything I had done in Hell. I rocked forward, hands coming to rest on the pew in front of me, and Oliviero's hands lowered as he himself sank onto the ground.

I turned to face him. He genuflected, threw the sign of the cross quickly about himself, as if I was the altar. My body grew hot with the thought—that to these demons, to anyone who wanted, I would make an altar of my flesh, where every act of coupling and deviance transformed into worship.

Then, he pushed himself up and against my lips.

The kiss was gentle at first. Our lips landed clumsily on one another. I got the sense that Oliviero had never kissed anyone, or at least had never had the practice, and the sense of his innocence shivered through me even though he was twenty- something. My stomach trembled. More , I thought. More. He heard me, somehow, because he moved his body closer and his mouth wider. His tongue felt warm as it licked at mine, the pressure soft, both of us breathing in deeply through our noses, sucking incense and each other's scents into our lungs. Oliviero's hands ghosted along my jaw, tentative touches. He kept pulling away and laughing breathlessly, the sound boyish and giddy.

"Turn the other cheek," he breathed, lips spreading into a smile against my face as I craned away from him, laughing with him at the absurd and ill-placed reference. But I was not thinking of scripture, then. Not when his lips pressed against my neck, not when he gripped at the pleats of my cassock with such intensity I thought he might tear the thing off me. Oliviero's arms wrapped around me, and I—hesitated.

He pulled away. His face closed off and grew impenetrable. "What is it?" he asked without concern.

It was as if a part of me was fighting the fantasy. I don't know—I had had Bishop Jonah's cock down my throat, knowing distantly it was demonic fancy. I knew again that this was not the young man I had left at the abbey, sun blooming across his pale skin. Part of me found this to be a regression, a return to something I had thought I'd overcome. All the lust that had fermented inside me over years and years had been extracted by the first nameless demons I had met in Hell. So what was Malphas doing by sending me back here? What delicious new torture did it intend me to endure?

Oliviero's face swam into view, a thing of beauty. With heavy, lust-filled eyes, both his hands pressed into my cheek. He leaned forward again to kiss me firmly. The firm press of his stubble bit into my skin. Then he pushed more firmly into me, and I felt the swell of him beneath his cassock. He pressed it against my own firm member, and he looked up shyly, both hands still cupping my cheeks.

"Alessandro," he whispered. "Does it matter why this is happening? Don't you want me? Don't you want to taste me?"

I grabbed him, crushing his lips against mine. He moaned, chest expanding and shivering. I ran my fingers through his hair and let them tangle in the golden nest. I drank him like communion wine, each swallow a covenant made. Every wound I had ever endured, every heartbreak, every night I had laid awake cursing my own nature, begging God to let me die peacefully in my sleep—I forgot all those moments. I forgot everything except pleasure and the pursuit of it. This wasn't real; this was a demon's trick, a memory that had never happened. I embraced it as if it were a gift.

I pulled back from Oliviero, hands cupping his face. Something about his youthfulness roused a different part of me. I felt perhaps as the demons felt towards me: an urge to have him, to use him, to love him. My usual desire to sink onto my knees faded. I wanted him down there, craning up at me.

"Pray," I told him, and he knew what to do. He sank onto his knees with grace, his hands clasped and mouth moving. He took my order seriously, though I did not catch what prayer he spoke. Fragments of Latin slipped off his tongue. His voice, musical and full, was a whisper that was echoed by the stone surrounding us. I slipped my fingers into his hair and looked up to the vaulted ceiling, where stone angels and saints murmured back to us. I saw their carved lips moving in time with Oliviero and felt no fear at the sight.

He began to speak louder. His prayer crystallised.

"Sancte Michael Archangele," he said, eyes pressed together, and I laughed. Laughed at the choice this version of Oliviero had made—a prayer to defend holy servants in battle, to protect against the Devil. " Defende nos in proelio, contra nequitiam et insidias diaboli esto praesidium."

Defend us in battle; be our defence against the wickedness and snares of the Devil.

"Oliviero," I murmured. He did not stop. At that moment, Oliviero was exactly as I remembered him. Devout to the point of deafness, I knew I was not there for him. So I watched him. I allowed myself the indulgent appraisal. His hair curled over his forehead. His lips were pinkish and lightly chapped; I ran my thumb over them.

"Imperet illi Deus, supplices deprecamur: tuque, Princeps militiae coelestis, Satanam aliosque spiritus malignos, qui ad perditionem animarum pervagantur in mundo, divina virtute, in infernum detrude."

May God rebuke him, we humbly pray. And do thou, O prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, cast into Hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl about the world for the ruin of souls.

I reached down, forefinger gentle beneath his chin as I encouraged him to look up at me. Those wide eyes blinked at me; his mouth parted.

"Finish," I whispered.

He visibly swallowed, the bump in his throat gliding up. Peril and anticipation sat between us. This moment stretched. He brought himself to murmur, "Amen," and it felt as if he was concluding something more than his prayer, the way I had revoked my faith.

"I think my soul is already ruined," I told him, not caring if I was speaking to Malphas or to myself. I spoke to him as if he really were Oliviero and took my other hand to pat him, stoking his hair. "I think I have always been this way. That this moment was inevitable."

It was the truth. Many times, I had thought about my nature. Plenty of nights and prayers had been wasted on what I was and my eagerness to divorce myself from my desires. I had craved rescue, a religious intervention; I had played my entire life out in my mind again and again. If I had not stolen as a young boy, I would never have met God. Would the same crippling shame have threaded into my bones? Would I have been able to shack the fear of Him watching me? Would I have ever wasted so much time on a holiness and a goodness I would never achieve?

Failing that, if I had told Bishop Jonah what I was, would God have intervened then? If I had been truthful about my desires, would they have helped me?

The more I thought about it, the less certain I could be that any aid would have come. Slowly, like the setting of the sun, the knowledge settled in my stomach, not in the way of shameful inevitability but instead, a certainty. Like truth. My desires were ceaseless because they were natural. It would not have mattered if things had been different: I felt I would have always ended up here. Again and again, I would have walked into Hell, one way or another, embracing the truth of who I am.

Oliviero whispered, "Let he who is without sin," and he slipped his warm hand between the folds of my cassock. That soft palm of his wrapped around me. Instantly, I became light-headed, my vision woozy with delicious desire. He was economical with his motions, barely undressing me, moving the cassock aside so my cock slipped through.

"Oliviero," I breathed suddenly. I glanced down as that angelic face craned up at me, beautiful in its flushed state. He looked like a plum ripe for eating. The way my cock pressed against the soft skin of his youthful cheeks, the way his eyes were heavy with lust and distant with pleasure; it took everything in me not to press hungrily into his mouth. This—what the imps had done to me, what the demon resembling Bishop Jonah had done to me, and Asmodeus itself—I had never done. The demons who had taken me in their mouths did not count. Never had I had a young man on his knees eager to give me pleasure, and it frightened me how much I wanted it from Oliviero.

I—was a slut. If Oliviero had forced me down to take his cock, I would have done it without question. I grew eager with a new possibility: that my pleasure could be met in various ways, and the whoring of myself to demons could also involve stolen moments like this, where my pleasure became briefly central. This was no doubt a fantasy conjured by the demon Malphas. It had promised it would have me listen to the desires of my fellow priests. Though I doubted this was Oliviero's fantasy—I had wanted to send that man into ruinous deviance for years. I wanted to know what he looked like with my seed dripping over his face, with him rapidly blinking cum from his eyes.

Oliviero rubbed his cheeks against me. His lips only ever faintly ghosted over my twitching cock, and never for long. My grip in his hair tightened; it felt excruciating, this teasing. What was worse was when he moved his hand to curl in the rosary hanging by my side. He wrapped its beads around his hand and half around my cock. With slow, gentle movements, he dragged his hands up and down the shaft, the warm wooden beads rolling and pressing into the sensitive skin. I gasped and closed my eyes, focusing instead on the strange pleasure that came with the added texture. Then I heard wood against teeth, a precise clacking, and then wet moans. My eyes flittered open.

There Oliviero was, sucking the cross at the end of my rosary into his mouth. I watched it roll over his tongue and beneath it. I watched it disappear into the red, wet warmth of his mouth. I imagined untying the rosary and dipping the whole thing down his throat until he gagged and choked on the Lord's symbol—and it was this vision that made me grab his chin hungrily and tug him forward.

"You whore ," I whispered. Oliviero opened his mouth with a breathy exhale, and the painted cross slipped over his lips, glistening with his saliva. I took my cock and patted Oliviero's whore cheek with it. He let out a small moan, and I pressed the head against his lips and then beneath them, running the tip around his gums. A tantalising taste of what his mouth would feel like. I squeezed my fingers around the base of my cock, imagining it to be the sphincter of Oliviero's throat. I imagined how he might whimper, the moans of protest as he gagged.

" Fuck ."

I did not ask. I told him, "Open," and he obeyed. That wet pink tongue of his lolled out of his mouth with a small noise, and he positioned himself with both arms in front of him so he resembled an eager, panting dog.

I glided over his tongue and into the wet embrace of his mouth. Oliviero moaned as I did, and a holy chorus sung in the rafters of the chapel, a hallelujah sang by stone angels. It was a new type of pleasure for me. Usually, when the urge hit, I could feel how empty my body was. But this? The warmth and the wetness, the eager sucking, the way his lips closed like a vice around me. I let him suck and tease for minutes, his pace odd and unrhythmic—but it didn't matter. I was close from the instant I sank into him, and this teasing stopped the mounting pleasure from building to a climax. He licked around the tip, tongue flat as he dragged it over the head.

"You've done this before," I whispered.

He moaned his agreement, and I pulled myself out of him. Oliviero groaned and rutted into the palm of his hand over his clothes.

"Tell me."

"Yes," he admitted, nodding. His hands reached for me, and I stopped him, holding my cock away.

His eyes glinted. "Whenever the Bishop wants me."

I imagined him between Bishop Jonah's legs, as I had been; I imagined him cramped into a confessional booth as the bishop listened to confession. I imagined the bishop in prayer and Oliviero sucking dutifully on his knees. I imagined him splayed on the altar, cassock bunched up around his neck, ass exposed as the bishop fucked into him—God, the thought enraged me and allured me at once.

Oliviero was my fantasy. I gripped his chin and forced my thumb to leverage his teeth apart. Then I plunged into the warm, wet hole of his throat. He craned back and moaned loudly. Ruthlessly, I surged again and again into his throat, and I did not stop even as he cried out and gagged and tapped at me for mercy.

I made a rat's nest of his beautiful hair, tangling my fingers in for grip. His saliva dripped onto the floor and formed a puddle his hand kept slipping in. Our moans matched, and he was good— a good boy. He sucked and bobbed his head even as it became too much for him. My legs began to shake from the angle I thrust in, and Oliviero wrapped his arms around them, squeezing them in comfort, his moans slipping more and more towards a pleading sound.

I was close. I slipped out of him. I wanted to see it spread over his face, dripping from his lips.

"Beg for it," I hissed.

"Please," he said, hand desperately moving his own cassock aside to reveal his own swollen pink cock. It was so wet with leaking precum that it looked painful. "Please, Alessandro."

I touched myself in earnest, and he met my pace, the both of us staring into each other's eyes. The chapel filled with the sound of our wet hands and heavy breathing and the faint sound of our angel audience, and then, as it built and built, pleasure coalescing behind my belly button, pulling taut, the closer I got?—

"How doth it feel to know that many of thy holy brethren could have been corrupted as thou wert?"