out of myself. When that didn’t work, he yielded the whip and then a knife, trying to cut it out of me.
“The parishioners lived and breathed his holiness. They followed by his example. I was kicked like a dog in the streets, beaten by teenagers for sport. I learned to defend myself quickly, but whenever I hurt others, Father O’Neal punished me bitterly.”
His tone took on a dazed, almost dreamy quality as he sunk deeper into the past. He didn’t notice when I leaned back against him in a silent offer of support or when I muffled my tears in an open palm.
“His favourite way to torture me was to hold one of the lit votive candles against my skin while I recited whole Bible passages. If I got one word wrong, he chose a new spot on my flesh to burn and it all began again.”
“Oh, Priest,” I whispered, the agonized cry caught in my hands.
Inexorably, he rotated me slowly to face him. I kept my eyes closed until I was fully turned, bracing myself for the sight that would meet me.
But nothing could brace me for the sight of him naked but for the cloak of scars he wore as regally as a king his mantle. He stood there before me with his chin tilted, shoulders pinned back, feet braced apart in proud defiance of my pity.
This was him, scars and all.
He wanted to scare me away almost as much as he wanted my acceptance. The war of conflict shining in his eyes, wrestling in his twitching jaw.
His flesh was a ruin of scars. So many, I couldn’t begin to count them. My fingers fluttered between us like a butterfly afraid to land. His hand whipped out and grasped my wrist so quickly, so painfully I gasped.
He wielded my fingers like an artist with a brush, carefully using my fingertips to trace the thick lacerations carving up his belly, the whirling of burned flesh flaming up his chest, distorting his left nipple, the smooth trail of poorly healed skin that had burned away half of the hair leading down from his navel to his groin. Even his thighs were gashed and knitted back together, a long slash like a ladder mutilating the skin, clearly having been inadequately stitched back together. The flesh pulled over the strong swell of his muscle and I realized it must’ve pained him all the time.
Tears blurred my vision as he used me to trace every inch of his body. His hold was too tight, but I didn’t complain. It was a kind of cleansing for him, I thought, standing in the steam and water, exposing himself to my touch like a form of healing torture. So I swallowed the bile that rose in my throat at the sight of my beautiful Priest’s mutilated body and I endured along with him.
When his front was finished, he turned and braced his arms against the tiled walls to let me explore his back alone. He shuddered viciously at my first touch, as I trailed my fingers lightly along the massive tattoo of The Fallen’s flaming skull and tattered wings inked into his scared back.
“It’s not as bad,” he explained in a ragged, war-torn voice as I thumbed the ridge of a long scar. “He liked to look me in the eye when he forced me to pay his fucked-up penance.” He paused, breathing so heavily his pants rose above the rush of water. “You see, mo cuishle. This is why I am a monster. This is why I do not have a heart. Father O’Neal cut it out of me.”
A sob bubbled up my throat and exploded between us. I ached so fiercely for this big, achingly exquisite, irrevocably broken man that each breath I took felt like a blade to my heart. Unable to resist, I wrapped myself around his tapered waist, pressing my entire length to his scarred back, brushing my hands over the boxed muscles in his abdomen, knowing I’d never forget the exact way in which they’d been defaced.
He let me hug him, but his voice was a weapon when he lashed out, “I will not have your pity, Bea. I am not some broken victim. On my seventeenth birthday, when that motherfucker tried to rape my arse with a branding iron to exhume the devil, I impaled him on that spike and then cut him to ribbons with the same knife he’d used for years to cut the evil out of