“I’ll never get used to you wearing that.” Giovanni snaps his tongue over his front teeth, waving at my black robe as I blow at the steam rising from my coffee mug. “Do the robes keep you warm? Because it would freeze the tits off a heretic in here.”
The comforting smell of coffee and the warmth of the mug in my palms doesn’t change that it’s butt ass cold in the mornings in my office at the rectory. The two-hundred-year-old stone walls and floor have a persistent chill. The ancient as fuck heating system hisses and sputters and the woven tapestries on the ten-foot-tall leaded glass windows do nothing to keep the heat in.
I point my index fingers that are wrapped around the mug toward my friend’s blue Brooks Brothers tie. “I’ll never get used to you wearing that. In college, you used to cut off guys ties in the bar telling them they were sheep.”
He scoffs but doesn’t bother to deny it. “Only when I was drunk.”
“That was most of the time.” I draw a sip of the dark liquid between my lips, closing my eyes as it scalds my tongue, burning its way down my throat. Giovanni called last night, letting me know he was passing through on his way to a meeting with some over-paid chemists turned execs at Winthrop PharmCo.
No doubt to sell them a multi-million-dollar package of the new nanopore microscopes his company is producing from an exclusive patent he secured last year.
“Whatever.” He shakes his head. “You may not have enjoyed the company of the ladies in school, but you sure enjoyed the company of Johnnie Walker.”
I swallow, setting my mug down on the walnut surface of my desk where Giovanni pokes at my name placard.
Father Martin Louis, Headmaster.
“Goodbye, Father Martin.” A singsong voice drifts in from the open door as a young woman in a plaid skirt flicks a finger wave my way, drawing Giovanni’s eyes.
She flutters her lashes with a teasing arch of her back.
“Goodbye, Fawn,” I say, my voice flat.
Giovanni watches the doorway as she disappears. “Damn, how do you keep your dick in your pants?”
Truth is, all I feel is relief. Fawn is the last of my charges to leave the dormitory before the renovations begin. I’ll have two to three months without the burden of watching over a flock of black sheep sent here by parents hoping for a miracle.
I raise my eyebrows. “You know why.”
Giovanni was my roommate in freshman year at Regent Overton University where we were both majoring in chemistry by day and mayhem by night. Drinking and fighting, trying to shed the academic nerd cloak that most that take on our scientific interests are forced to wear.
Out of everyone in the world, I’m closest to him but that’s not saying much.
“Besides,” I continue, “most of them would get you a one-way ticket to the sex offender registry. That doesn’t deter most of them, mind you. Last Tuesday, that one showed up for her last assessment session commando. How do I know? Because she sat right where you are now, toes together, knees spread, leaning back showing me what God gave her. Wanted me to give her a five-star review for the final report I was sending to her parents.”
“Damn… Did it work?”
“Did it fuck. I wrote a six-page oratory of her offenses while she was here. No amount of consequences or encouragement moved her. She knows the power of what she has between her legs, at least on most men, and she will undoubtedly continue to use it to her advantage.”
They all try to use what they have to get what they want. But I’m not buying what they are selling.
I reach down and slide open the bottom drawer on the century old carved desk and pull out a bottle of blue label Johnnie, unscrewing the cap before adding a short pour into both our coffee mugs.
“I never did understand when you went in this direction. I mean, damn, stuck here in the middle of Nowheresville, Maine? I’d go stir crazy. Still, your job has its perks. Legal or not.”
“There’s nothing about them that perks me,” I bite back, thinking of all the sneaking lies they try to put past me and my staff. All the tricks and snide remarks they think I don’t know about. The marijuana and booze I’ve confiscated over the years and the occasional boyfriend I throw out the front door after he’s snuck into the dorm.
They offer their fake smiles and fluttering lashes when they are caught. Dropping to their knees, eyes up, hands pressed together, mouths open. Please, Father Martin, I’ll do anything…
Little do they know, I abhor them and no offer of their sexual collateral makes my blood flow hot.
“Your track record with the fairer sex has been fucked, you have every right to be salty. I guess you found your calling.”
My calling. My journey was not what most would expect, but here I am. Was I called to serve my faith? Yes, but in my heart, my reasons were not what most would assume.
Thanks to my grandmother’s influence, my formation process was a little different to most. I was posted here to Saint Margaret’s as a Chemistry teacher for the handful of young women sent by their parents as a form of punishment. Within a year of ordination, I was the headmaster, and two years later, my prejudice about females has rooted down into my marrow.
But the location is remote, and I have no parishioners to speak of besides a few octogenarians that still shuffle into the chapel for confession or communion once a week. The girls that come here go away just as fast, either by violating the rules or begging their parents to free them from the oppression of prayer and studies and the litany of rules I impose.
Pleasantly enough, the diocese has stalled any further intakes until a decision is made about the crumbling stone structures and list of code violations that anchor this five-hundred-acre compound.
If I had my way, there would be no more Headmaster Martin and instead, I’d be left alone here to continue my own studies and research. I would set up my own lab, do things my way.
That time is coming. I’ve made deals, talked to the right people and greased the right palms. The church isn’t keen on selling up old buildings, but to the right person with the right recommendation?
Through God, all things are possible.
Giovanni slugs back the last of his whiskey coffee and I do the same as the office phone on my desk rings through. The clear button flashing on the front of the base indicates it’s on my personal line, which is only used by my father when he needs something.
My three brothers, one by blood and two by marriage, all use my cell. I see them rarely these days, but whenever they need something, be that advice or bailing out of some mess they’ve stepped in, I’m their first call. Not our father. He’s on wife number six and she came with something new.
An eighteen-year-old daughter. With a cat. He hates cats.
I haven’t met them, don’t see any point. I’ve come to realize my father has a ‘type’. Outside of my mother, of course, who was a fucking saint, he likes them a little bitchy, definitely greedy, Peg Bundy variations without the humor. There’s lots of leopard print and big hair, fake tits and PhD’s in narcissism.
My father gets the frequent flier discount at Johnson, Mettam and Roth, Divorce Attorneys, and my brothers are already doing the over under on how long this new wife is going to last.
What a fucking shit storm marriage is.
I tap my fingers on the desktop as I debate the pros and cons of answering.
“Take it,” Giovanni says, nodding at the office door. “I gotta take a leak, then need to head out. You sure you won’t come along? Let those PharmCo people see what real genius looks like.”
He pushes up from the armchair on the other side of my desk, flinging his fingers through his salty-brown hair, then turns and walks across the colorful Turkish rug that covers the stone floor between my desk and the doorway.
I take a deep breath and answer on the fifth ring, knowing when I hang up, I’ll need another shot of Johnnie.
Airports have a distinct smell that’s equal parts jet fuel, frustration, sweat and stale booze.
The ten-minute phone call with my father was mostly me saying no, and him not listening. It’s a dance for the ages with us, but this time, for whatever reason, I let him win.
Maybe it was the new sound of desperation in his voice.
Maybe it was that all the other wayward girls have vacated Saint Margaret’s so the renovations can begin and I needed a little side project.
Or, as they say, curiosity killed the cat. So, three hours later, I’m waiting to pick up my newest stepsister, not as her stepbrother but as Father Martin, and maybe I can offer some solace or advice on how to navigate the prickly as a cactus man that raised me.
I don’t fucking know, but when he promised that this would be the last favor he would ever ask of me, and that he appreciated me, I caved.
An older couple nods, making the sign of the cross as they pass. I’m inside baggage claim holding a piece of white poster board I grabbed from the art supply closet before scrawling ‘TENNANT’ across the front in thick black marker.
The ones that have that intoxicating smell.
I think it’s a childhood thing, remembering the swirling lightheaded feeling they gave me in my youth at St. Agatha’s Preparatory School where every kid needed a good magic marker high to get through the day.
They no longer deliver a buzz, but the scent is still oddly comforting.
Seems my newest sibling has upended my father’s calm, orderly life and he’s at the age where putting up with another stepchild’s bullshit is not in his wheelhouse.
Why my newest stepmother, number six to be exact, agreed to this, I don’t know, and I didn’t ask. I didn’t to go to the wedding and had no intentions of meeting my stepsister, figuring the divorce would be filed within a year and outside of an occasional phone call or a lunch when he’s passing through town, my father and I have an unspoken agreement to stay out of each other’s lives.
I hold up the poster board, the flavor of the whiskey coffee still on my tongue as a throng of hurried and annoyed passengers flood off the elevator and down the stairs toward baggage claim number twenty-six, where a flight from Orlando is barfing its baggage guts down the stainless-steel slide onto the rotating black rubber track.
I make a punching move with my fist, turning the back of my hand toward my face, checking the time. The ink that covers my arms, chest and back peeks out from under the white cuff of my shirt, but my black suit, white shirt and clerical collar are drawing looks from pretty much everyone that walks by.
The minute hand points toward the nine. Her flight landed twenty minutes ago. Surely she’s with this gaggle that’s jostling for position to snatch up their luggage at carousel twenty-six.
Then, I get my first look at Katherine ‘Kitty’ Tennant.
She’ll be wearing a hoodie and black shorts. Black boots. She looks like a hooker, you can’t miss her.
There have been many turning points in my life.
My mother’s death: Big one.
Getting kicked out of my post grad studies when I was wrongly accused of sexual misconduct with some undergrads: Ugly one.
The deal I made with my grandmother that saw me becoming a priest: Calculated one.
A few more, none of them pleasant.
But, as I stand here, I know I’m in the middle of another one, because the luscious young woman with caramel colored hair and a wobbly roller bag just locked eyes with me.
And I’m spinning. My personal commitment has boarded a flight for Vegas and is downing a double shot of Stoli while tapping out a line of coke with a maxed-out credit card.
This turning point has me in its sights like a heat seeking missile and with one look, I already know my world is about to be upended.
I come alive. Not the baseline vital signs that show I’m breathing and my heart is pumping, but alive in that way you know what hope means.
I raise the posterboard to shoulder height and she nods, points to her face then offers a half-hearted wave and my heart rate skyrockets.
It’s her. My stepsister. Only, I’m not going to tell her that. To her, I’m Father Martin. That was the agreement I made with my father and even if I didn’t, I don’t want to be her fucking brother.
Her candy-coated lips twist into a frown. She doesn’t want to be here. I see it in the slump of her shoulders, the hard set of her jaw under cherub cheeks where a set of dimples are making me question every choice I’ve ever made in my sorry fucking life.
I don’t blame her for the frown.
From the bit my good ole dad told me, she’s gone from textbook good girl to Bahd Barbie-wild child since her mother married my father.
Don’t tell her who you are. You’re just the headmaster. Be ruthless with her. She’s a pain in my ass.
My father’s voice rattles around in my head, but telling her I’m her stepbrother is the last thing on my mind.
It’s like all the lights in a dark stadium have been turned on at once as I stand in the middle of the field, blinded and helpless to move a muscle.
My extremities may be paralyzed, but my dick isn’t. For the first time in as long as I can remember, I’m having that reaction.
She’s wearing a cropped little hoodie paired with the smallest black yoga shorts. They show off her voluptuous ass and thick thighs, and I want to destroy the flock of men waiting for their golf bags and suitcases, panting and smiling and fucking her with every sidelong glance.
I feel my demise approaching. The missile is getting closer, aiming directly at my aching balls and thickening cock.
How long has it been since I grew hard at the sight or thought of a woman?
Ten years? More?
I am not physically unable, I have disciplined myself in ways most would find horrifying. But, the horror of lust and wanting far outweighs the alternative.
My substantial hard-on is hidden under the length of my black blazer as a riot of depraved thoughts burst alive inside me like a grenade.
This is not me. I’m not this man. I’ve made a personal commitment to myself, the church and God, but my desire to find the nearest bathroom stall and pound into my fist as I did as an adolescent boy returns with a fury.
She reaches forward, tugging another bag from the turnstile, fighting to pull it toward her as a twenty-something guy with a ball cap and athletic shorts pushes next to her, grabbing his duffel from behind her suitcase and nearly knocking her over.
Revelations-like rage pounds in my heart as she shoots him a glare but pulls away muttering something under her breath as she rights herself and extends the handles on her roller bags.
He scared her. Why is she scared, here in the middle of a busy airport?
The way she bends to the side, showing off the curve of her braless tits sends the missile into my chest and fire into my belly.
She has made the first hammer blow to the stone walls of my vows. As she strides my way, the sign in my hand shakes along with her tits.
Her body is pure sin but her face? She is the virgin Mary herself, with skin smooth as spun sugar and fine, doll-like features. For the first time ever, I imagine using my position of authority to coerce a girl into the depths of sin.
I could do it in the back of the car waiting outside. I could.
I could.
I have a driver but there’s a barrier between the front and back of the ancient limousine that belongs to Saint Margaret’s.
I could slide my hand onto her thigh. Demand she tell me all her dark secrets. Her sins. Her desires. The things that drive her wild at night.
I’d dip my fingers between the lush flesh of her legs, tell her this is part of her penance. Her training. She will submit to me.
Why do I hear the devil laughing? Why do I feel death whispering in my ear?
It doesn’t matter. Taking a woman with force or coercion was never my way and never will be. I never needed pussy that bad. But something inside me says that’s gonna change now that my new stepsister has been forced into my life.
She teeters on high heeled black boots, stumbling as she drags her bags, blowing a tendril golden brown hair from her lips as I imagine drinking from the sweet well of sin between her legs.
Stop. This has to stop.
“Hi. I’m Kitty,” she whispers as she stops in front of me, her tits still jostling from her unsteady stride and the pounding in my chest forces me to clutch at my heart.
She scans the area on a smirk then looks up at me, and I’m struck for a moment as I realize: she’s been crying. Her eyes are puffy and sure, she’s putting a brave face on but something has upset her.
And all I want to do is pound whatever that thing is into dust.
“I’m supposed to meet Father Martin… I’m assuming that’s you, since you have my name on a sign and you’re dressed, well, like that?”
I open my mouth to answer as she stalls, her ankle crumpling and throwing her off balance. Her tits jiggle and sway with the movement. Her small roller bag is missing a wheel, and the larger one is strapped closed with duct tape, and has one of those, ‘TSA Inspected Your Luggage’ stickers plastered on the front.
I am the Father you seek.
I am also your brother.
But, most of all, I already know, I will be your Daddy.
The effort of managing the opposing forces of her bags and the five-inch chunky heels throws her sideways. Her eyes flash wide, her face flushed and dewy as she starts to spin off center, dropping her suitcases while simultaneously bumping into my chest. She grasps at whatever she can, which in this case is me, her little hands like flames lapping at my heart.
Somewhere, deep in the recesses of my mind, a synapse shrieks at me to remember that women are all trouble. That in some way or another she’ll show herself to be no different. The only women in my life are my grandmother and the ghost of my mom.
For a second I nearly turn away, nearly retreat into my jaded view of the female sex.
Then she needs me, and all bets are off.
“Oh shit.” She hisses as I drop the sign to the sticky, purple carpet, my hands moving to catch her, one landing on the smooth, warm flesh of her back.
The other finding the weight of her tit, sliding up under the cropped edge of her come fuck me hoodie.
And the missile detonates inside me.
End times are near, and they’re as cute as a kitten.
