Friday Flasher: Initiation

He lit a candle, removed his collar and set it down with care, like the offering it was, before the sputtering flame.

When he finally found the courage to turn and face her, perhaps speak some words of decency to her first, he could only watch mutely as she leaned back and lifted her skirts, the creamy skin of her thighs smooth as any alabaster saint’s in that flickering light.

At the sight of her shimmering like that, a vision in the candlelight, Father Daniel murmured one last prayer for forgiveness and the God inside his mind sighed and turned away. Whether in disgust or anger, or perhaps shame or modesty, he would never know.  And it would never matter.

As she ran the fingers of a graceful hand through the silk of her chestnut hair, he felt his entire life of words and judgements of words coil back on itself, a ravenous circle made full.

But before he could consider that thought, before he could approach the assumptive evil of it with a weapon of learned philosophy or grim belief, she smiled at him.  Within the mirror of  her smile, he saw not a hissing wanton serpent or a temptress made of wretched flesh, but simply a reflection of his own need:  just a man, fallen, back to himself.

Then with neither modesty nor shame, she spread her naked legs open before his gaze. And when she reached out her hand to him, she said his name, just once, in the voice of a lover. He thrilled to the beautiful music of it, the sound of his own name, rightfully returned.

In the wake of her voice, all temptation disappeared, each prayer for deliverance fell away and he knew it was time to begin the long journey, the single step that would take him to where she waited, where she had always waited, for him.

And when he reached her, when at last he touched his shaking hand to the heaven of her skin, all his despot vows flew raucously to the rafters like so many frantic doves set free, finally, to God.

 

Image: Hungry For Your Touch, Jan Saudek