FATHER: Men of the Cloth - Tristan (Forbidden Priest Romance 1)

  father

  Lark McCaffrey

  For Paul

  With whom dreams are possible.

  author note

  Bible scripture used in this book was for dramatic purpose. Though researched to the best of the writer’s ability, the religious references should not be taken for a tutorial on Catholicism. Just as the character of Father Cleary shouldn’t be considered an accurate portrayal of a Catholic priest (lol).

  The intent is not to educate or offend but to simply entertain. =D

  Please be forewarned that content includes strong language and explicit sex. =O

  God is faithful.

  He will not let you be tempted beyond

  what you can bear. But when you are tempted,

  he will also provide a way out

  so that you can endure it.

  ~oOo~

  Corinthians 10:13

  prologue

  I haven’t fucked a woman in five years.

  Yeah, you heard that right. I’ve been celibate for half a decade, the equivalent of a century in man time. Not because I’m a fucking masochist who gets off on having perpetual blue balls, or because I’m some fucking living-in-mom’s-basement loser who has about as much chance of getting laid as a pig has of flying. Nope, because I’m a fucking—

  Because I’m a priest.

  Yeah, you heard correct again, which no doubt surprises the hell out of you. Maybe it’s the tat-sleeves or six-pack courtesy of daily six am workouts. Pierced nipple perhaps? But since you can’t see any of that shit under my cassock unless you had x-ray vision or recently caught me in the shower—neither of which is fucking likely—I can only assume it’s the granite-hewn features and sun-streaked blonde hair throwing you into a tizzy.

  Agreed. Priests typically don’t come packaged in six-foot-two frames of shredded muscle. They don’t have panty-melting smiles or eyes the color of an ocean squall. That isn’t conceit talking, just fact. (Along with holding ourselves to a higher moral standard, we’re also expected to exercise humility.)

  Thirty-one years ago I was baptized Ryan Tristan Cleary in the same church where I’m now the resident parish priest. I enrolled in divinity school right after college at twenty-one, and four years and six months later was ordained Father Cleary, which is how everyone with the exception of family and friends now addresses me. To those closest to me, I am still and always will be just Tristan.

  Now if you’ve been paying attention and doing the math then you figured out I entered the priesthood at the tender age of twenty-five. That was six years ago. But if I claimed I haven’t had pussy in five years, well that would mean…

  I said I was a priest. Not perfect.

  My moral decline started in seminary of all places. By day I was a theology student and at night a fornicating sinner. Hitting the books was followed by hitting the bars and cruising for tail like any healthy, horny young male. Suppose I could make excuses and say I was just sowing my oats, making up for lost time. After all, I stayed a damn virgin till I was a senior in college. But to make matters worse and add to my shame, the whoring continued even after taking my vows. My sacred holy vows, for chrissake.

  Not gonna lie, my first year as a priest was a bitch. I’d made a commitment to God in my heart yet neglected to inform that other bodily organ, the one that seems to have a mind all its own. My main man Matt nailed it when he said, “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.” Astute saint that Matthew.

  In order to right myself with God it was expected I confess my carnal sins to a fellow father. Yeah, um… no. No way could I park my sorry ass in the box every time I had an “intimate interaction” with a woman. (Though admittedly, intimacy had nothing to do with what I was doing.) So after a lot of angsty soul-searching I decided to bypass the middleman and take my case to the Man Upstairs directly.

  Okay, it was arrogant to assume selective rules didn’t apply to me. But come on… I was genuinely repentant, sincerely remorseful, and to atone for my transgressions did a fuckton of penance. If all that was good enough for the Almighty, what more could the local diocese want?

  Doubt had been gnawing away at my faith like some flesh-eating disease and I swore to strengthen my resolve. I reaffirmed my commitment to God and Church. I avoided the secular path and stayed on the straight and narrow. I kept my physical urges in a chokehold and embraced chastity like a long lost friend. Went from profligate to celibate, cold turkey.

  But giving up sex in perpetuity doesn't make a man a saint. Nor does it turn him into a eunuch. And trust me, the passage of time doesn’t make him forget how the soft, warm body of a woman feels writhing beneath him. I remember it like it was yesterday. And I miss it. So. Fucking. Much.

  Determined to turn over a new leaf, for the next five years I threw myself—my energy, my passion, my heart—into living a life of purpose and service. And obedience, can’t forget obedience, a virtue I needed to work on even more than I did abstinence.

  My dedication and determination eventually paid off in that Saint Benedict’s congregation grew under my shepherdship from a modest two hundred in size to almost double that number. Not too shabby considering the town of Carkeek, Indiana has a population of less than ten thousand yet boasts more than a dozen places of worship, surpassed only by the number of bars.

  As to where residents go to dine out, there aren’t a whole lot of choices aside from fast food. When it comes to where they pray, the options are a religious buyer’s market. Butts in pews means coins in coffers, making the competition for souls fierce. Yet in the short time that I’ve served at Saint Ben I’ve managed to attract more than my fair share of new members. And yeah, I’m aware that the verb means to entice, lure, seduce…

  For the record, it wasn’t calculation on my part but neither was it any small coincidence that the majority of the recently converted happen to be women. Though I’d like to think it’s the winning way I conduct Mass that draws them in droves, I know there’s another reason. If my appeal as a priest isn’t immediately evident, my attributes as a man are blatantly obvious. Again, just fact. Don’t hate.

  Now I bet you’ve been sitting there wondering where all this boring expositional bullshit is leading. Keep your panties on I’m getting to that. First, let’s do a little recap of what you’ve learned about me so far.

  I’m an ordained Catholic priest. Check. I’ve broken the vow of celibacy. Double check. I’m not your mama’s cleric, lookswise or otherwise. I think about sex a little too much. At times I can come across as an arrogant dick. I’m not always good about following the rules. And in case you haven’t noticed, I say fuck a whole fucking lot.

  Here’s what you don’t know…

  I truly love God. I heard my calling at the age of nine. My grandmother is one of my best friends. I’m addicted to ink, caffeine, and (no judging) The Bachelor. My temper can sometimes get the better of me. Not only can I pronounce the word floccinaucinihilipilification I can fucking spell it. I take my eggs scrambled, my burgers without the bun, and my coffee with two Splenda. I had a brother, a twin. We were so close we were more Siamese than fraternal.

  Cue the eye rolling, I’ve been known to help little old ladies cross the street and on occasion have even rescued cats stuck in trees. I was once madly in love with a woman. My Netflix queue is filled with foreign films and Will Ferrell. Bitch broke my heart. Fucking betrayed me. I have a shellfish allergy. We haven’t spoken in over a decade. Cauliflower makes me gag, literally. Three days ago she shows up in my reconciliation booth. Oh yeah. Out of the fucking blue the little tramp shows up asking me to… waa
ait for it… take her goddamn confession.

  Now here’s where your patience pays off and the fucking story finally begins.

  one

  She didn’t look real.

  That was his thought as moonlight slicing through the open blinds painted her nude body in pearlescent stripes. Crouched over him… nails clawing his chest… mouth hungrily devouring his neck… she was a luminescent white tiger. Rare, magnificent, dangerous.

  For she hath cast down many wounded. yea, many strong men have been slain by her.

  Trying to escape the rapacious assault of her lips and tongue, he turned his head into the pillow but succeeded only in offering her more of him to feast on. She’d straddled his hips and the moment she settled that luscious round rear on his groin, his cock had roared to life and he panicked. Much to his chagrin, trying to dethrone the tiny tigress proved futile. Despite his superior strength and arms bulging with muscle, he’d been unable to prevent her from mounting him like Lady Godiva.

  In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.

  While a man of the cloth was required, expected to resist temptation, his efforts were half-assed at best. But then, as he knew all too well, resistance proves pointless when the will is unwilling. How can your soul resist what it yearns to embrace?

  Determined thighs clasped him like a vise as she leaned down and pressed her full, round breasts into his chest. Up until then he hadn’t managed to do much more than grunt in protest. When she began rubbing herself against him he growled, “Don’t!”

  Swaddled in the heady scent of feminine arousal and the creamy warmth of bare skin, his senses were already on overload. The addition of her diamond-tipped nipples scoring his pecs was more than the father could take. Blood was being pumped straight to his dick with every accelerating beat of his heart, getting him hard as a railroad spike and he didn’t like it. In a last ditch effort to save himself he tried bucking her off but should’ve known she would hang on with the tenacity of a bronco buster.

  “Easy, my love, easy,” she cooed, clinging fast to him. Her long hair tumbled to her tapered waist in silver waves, forming a veil in front that shrouded her features. It didn’t matter if he couldn’t see her face, it was burned into his brain like a lightning scar on a tree. “Shhh… relax… let me take care of you… Let me take care of your ache… your need…” Reaching down between them she took his throbbing erection and closed her fingers around most of it.

  He let out an agonized groan and clenched both teeth and eyes as it continued to throb and thicken in the girl’s clever grip. Fuck. The feel of that hot little hand sliding up and down his shaft lubed with pre-cum… Fuck. God as his witness, he didn’t want this.

  Oh but his body, his traitorous body called him out as a liar. His cock craved her touch like his lungs did air and he could no more refuse her than he could stop breathing. So the holy father gave in to her. Like she knew he would. Like he knew he would.

  I am carnal, sold under sin.

  “Go on,” he grated. “Get it over with.”

  Guiding him to the entrance of her pretty pink cunt, she teased the plum-sized tip into her welcoming folds. Locking eyes with him she beared down and impaled herself to the hilt, sheathing the priest’s considerable length in her glove of molten lava. When the head rammed her cervix she let out a gasp of surprise and retreated slightly to ease the discomfort. Large masculine hands roughly grabbing her hips told her she was to remain fully seated until instructed otherwise.

  She’d made her bed.

  Anchoring the petite woman in place, the man of God didn’t care if he was hurting her. He wanted to hurt her. He didn’t give a damn that his fingers were digging into her tender, young flesh or that she was small while he was… not small. Fuck yeah, the girl was tight as a tick. She was also sopping wet and he didn’t doubt for a second she’d be able to handle him. All of him. Every inch he had to give, she would take. One way or another.

  “Do it,” he commanded.

  Readying herself for the ride, she braced her palms on his chest and arched her back. With breasts thrust forward and eyes closed, started swaying her body. Slowly… to and fro… back and forth… like a child on a rocking horse.

  The father’s brows clashed in disapproval. “No,” he barked. “Not like that! Fuck me the way a whore would fuck.” In a low mocking tone he added, “You know how to do that, don’t you?”

  Ignoring the rhetorical insult she switched gears as smoothly as Mario Andretti, and this time when she rode him it was with all the expertise and experience of a seasoned jockey.

  “Yeah, that’s it,” he grunted. “Just like that. Such a dirty girl.”

  The little temptress was executing moves that would drive any man wild, let alone one who hadn’t had sex in five years. She was bouncing and twerking, bumping and grinding, working her God-given talents until they were both dripping with sweat and panting like animals. Every few minutes, to give them a chance to catch their breath, she’d take it down a notch and start undulating and gyrating her hips like a belly dancer in slow-mo. Then she’d resume fucking him fast and furious, filthy, the way the father liked it. The way he liked to fuck and get fucked.

  “Yes, he cried. “Ride it! Ride that fucking dick. That’s right… That’s it…” With an iron grip on her hips he slammed her up and down on his rod, their guttural sounds in sync with the relentless rhythm of flesh slapping flesh. “Fuck me! Fuck me the way you did him. God, yes. Just like that. Just like that.”

  The priest’s head was arched back against the headboard, neck veins popping, molars gnashing. It was all he could do not to flip the woman heels-over-head and pile drive her into next Tuesday.

  Not wanting it to end but knowing he couldn’t take much more, he felt his climax on the brink of exploding and grabbed hold of her tits. His large hands filled to overflowing, he squeezed hard, using her as leverage as he lunged his hips upward, thrusting his dick deep.

  “God, fuck!”

  His cry of anguish filled the room as his cock jerked spasmodically, emptying his balls and christening his belly with the seed of his disgrace. At the same time he came… Father Cleary came awake.

  Christ on the cross.

  Finding himself alone in bed yet again, the priest released a pitiful sound that bespoke his defeat and self-disgust. Laying on top of the comforter, drenched in perspiration he stared up at the ceiling waiting for the last of the aftershocks to subside and his breathing to get under control.

  After muttering a few choice expletives, he dragged both palms down his face and ripped a handful of Kleenex from the box on his nightstand. How many did this make it now? How many times over the last eleven years had he had to mop up copious amounts of cum desecrating his body and sheets? One… two… ten thousand?

  Flinging the wad of saturated tissue across the room, he cursed aloud the woman responsible. The woman who haunted his dreams, visiting him during the midnight hour when the priest’s demons howled the loudest. Coming to him at those times when he felt lonely and troubled and vulnerable.

  She was uninvited and unwanted, and yet like manna from heaven fed his hunger when nothing else could. She was his sweet succubus, seducing him to the dark side with her silken skin and searing heat. Both heaven and hell rolled into one, she was Father Cleary’s greediest pleasure. And his greatest shame.

  two

  Trying to warm herself, she wrapped both hands around her coffee mug as she sat at the kitchen table in her bathrobe studying the tablecloth as if it were a thing of fascination. The floral pattern was a familiar theme in the house and she couldn’t help cracking a small smile at the gaudy yellow roses speckled with dried tomato sauce. Last night’s spaghetti dinner.

  Home sweet home.

  She hadn’t been back like this in over a decade. Not like back back. There’d been visits over the years, of course, but she came and went so fast it was like she was never even here to begin with. But Carkeek was her ho
metown, the place she was raised and where she planned on someday putting down permanent roots. Like a homing pigeon returning to the coop, she knew she’d come back for good.

  Someday.

  Her parents still lived in the house they bought thirty years ago and her sister, Alex, resided nearby. Many of her childhood friends, however, had moved on to pursue careers in larger cities. There weren’t a whole lot of employment options in the small town aside from farming or toiling at the local smelt factory, which forty-percent of the population did including her dad and two uncles. There were a smattering of small businesses, mom and pop stores hanging on by a thread, and the lone grocery store was the Piggly Wiggly, a self-service chain where cashiers were non-existent.

  Standing behind a register was one of the few things she knew how to do. Ringing up people’s crap… asking how their day was going like she gave a rip… It’s what she’d done since being forced to support herself at nineteen. She didn’t have much other work experience or marketable skills to speak of, nor did she care to acquire any. It wasn’t only career ambition she lacked. She just didn’t care, about much of anything. (If everyone had a personal theme song hers would be “Poor Poor Pitiful Me”.)

  She hadn’t always been that way, apathetic and adrift. She did have a life once, with hopes and dreams and goals. Was even studying to be a nurse if one could believe it by looking at her now. That was a lifetime ago, before she dropped out of school and moved away. Maybe if things had turned out differently…

  Instead of performing price checks for a living she’d be taking care of kids in a pediatric hospital. Maybe be married to a man who adored her, raising a bunch of rugrats with him and living in a Dutch Colonial with a white picket fence. And maybe lollipops grew on trees and unicorns really did exist.

  No. She’d learned the hard way that some things just aren’t meant to be.