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19
ZEPH
Sleep didn’t come easy. I tossed and turned, catching a few minutes here and there, dozing on the couch with the TV on to keep me company. All I could think about was Lyric. What we’d done and how much I’d wanted to do more. It was an endless cycle of questions playing over in my head, making sleep nearly impossible. I’d tried watching a movie but couldn’t follow the plotline, and eventually switched to the news station, needing something that didn’t require concentration.
The first report was a murder at the other end of the country. I watched with vague interest; grateful they had moved on from reporting about the ‘serial priest killer.’ The second was a political report that was almost dull enough to send me off to sleep.
“Now onto the suspected abduction of three-year-old, Toby Innes. Police still have no suspects in the case. Toby was last seen at a Saint View park with his mother, Tammie, and her two other children, Daniel and Mathew. Grave fears are held for the young boy’s whereabouts.”
I sat bolt upright, staring at the TV and the image of the little boy, now familiar to me after meeting him and his family at the homeless shelter. “What the fuck?” That had to be a mistake. I’d only seen them a few days ago when I’d given them the money I’d acquired for them. Daniel had been healthy, he and Toby happily playing on the equipment. I pulled out my phone only to realize Tammie had never given me her number. I stood to go to her house, but I didn’t know where she lived either.
I sank back down onto the couch and called the Saint View Police Department, who promptly gave me a canned response about not being able to divulge details of the case. A search party was already working around the clock, and even after I’d explained I was a friend of the family, I’d been told to sit tight and wait for an update.
I got out my phone and googled everything I could find, horrified Toby had been missing for twenty-four hours and this was the first I’d even heard of it.
Tammie had to be going out of her mind.
And there was absolutely nothing I could do to help.
I bounced my leg with nervous energy, sitting on my hands never something I’d been good at. I wanted to go search the streets, look in every alley, every home, until I found him.
This time, I had to be content with letting the police do their jobs.
But there was no chance of sleeping after that. I paced the halls of my house for hours after I gave up trying, but the walking back and forth was no better. Time moved at a snail’s pace, the minute hand on the clock in my living room inching around at a sluggish pace that did nothing to calm the unease that had wrapped itself around me.
Thoughts of Lyric were less unsettling than wondering where Toby was.
I’d spent the last couple days on my knees in front of my altar, begging for some sort of clarity that never came.
Kissing Lyric had felt good. So damn good it was all I’d thought of since. Stroking my cock while watching her come had been better.
But both had awakened something inside me I’d so desperately been trying to dull for years, ever since Annie. That need inside me, dark and depraved, was the whole reason I’d agreed to joining the priesthood.
And it had worked.
Until her.
Because I didn’t just want to kiss Lyric. I didn’t just want to stroke my cock while she fingered her pussy.
I wanted things I could never say out loud again.
I squeezed my eyes shut tight, but it did nothing to diminish the desires. I wanted to chase her. To have her run while I followed close behind, an impending force at her back that would have her breathless. I wanted to grab her from behind. Pin her to a tree or to the ground. Take her hard and fast until her screams of terror turned to screams of pleasure. I wanted my hand around her throat when she came around my cock.
One short chase down a set of stairs, and all the work I’d put in at therapy came unraveled.
I couldn’t see her again. She was the perfect temptation, made just for me, I was sure of it.
By one in the morning, I couldn’t take it anymore. I couldn’t take the thoughts in my head, the guilt over what I’d done, the terror that I might do it again.
Because I’d done it once before. And it hadn’t ended well.
I had to end this thing with Lyric now, before I hurt her. I knew exactly what I was capable of. I’d killed a man in cold blood. What if I did the same to her? That wasn’t part of my desires, but I also didn’t trust myself not to get carried away.
Hurting her was the last thing I wanted.
Hurting anyone wasn’t it at all, and yet I knew that I could. I’d proved it more than once.
Every time I thought about what we’d done, the walls seemed to move in an inch until my house felt as small as a sardine can.
