SACRILEGIOUS 4

Agnes pov

He started pacing the room, running a hand through his already-messy hair. "Do you have any idea what this means? For me? For you? If anyone found out… we'd both be defrocked. Excommunicated. We'd be nothing. Less than nothing."

"So that's it?" I said, my voice shaking with a mixture of hurt and rising anger. "You get what you want, and now you're just throwing me away? Telling me to pray?"

"Throwing you away?" he stopped pacing and glared at me, his eyes flashing with the same intensity from before. "Do you have any idea the self-control it took not to do that the first time you confessed to thinking about a boy's hands when you were sixteen? The restraint I've exercised every single time you've come in here, smelling of soap and innocence, and poured out all your sweet, little doubts for me? I have wanted to desecrate you in every way imaginable for the better part of a decade. 

He shook his head, a bitter smile staining his lips. “Tonight, I finally did. And now, the only thing left, the only decent thing I can do, is to send you away before I ruin you completely."

I stared at him, my mind reeling. A decade? All this time? It wasn't just a passing fantasy, it was a simmering, suppressed obsession. For both of us.

"So that was it? A one-time thing to get it out of your system?" I asked, my voice hard, clutching the book tighter to my chest.

He let out a long, shaky breath and walked back toward me, but he stopped a few feet away, as if he was afraid to touch me again. "I wish to the lord that it could be," he whispered, his eyes filled with a pain so deep it made my chest ache. "But we both know it's not."

He reached out, not to touch me, but to gently take the book from my hands. He placed it back on the desk, then he looked down at my naked body, at the marks on my hips, at the evidence of his passion staining my skin and still trickling down my thighs. 

A shudder ran through him. "Go," he said again, but this time, his voice was softer, more pleading. "Go now. Before I change my mind and do it all over again. And again. And again. Until there's nothing left of either of us but sin."

He turned his back to me, walking to the window and staring out into the blackness of the night. It was a dismissal, a clear, brutal, and final one.

Slowly, my body aching with every movement, I gathered my clothes. 

My habit was ripped beyond repair. I pulled my simple cotton shift over my head, the fabric feeling rough and scratchy against my sensitive skin. I found my underwear and pulled them on, the feeling of the damp cotton a final, humiliating reminder of my transgression.

I walked to the door, my sandaled shoes silent on the rug. My hand was on the doorknob when I turned back to look at him one last time. He was still standing by the window, a solitary, tormented figure bathed in moonlight.

"Michael," I said, my voice barely a whisper.

He didn't turn. "Go, Sister."

His use of my title was like a slap in the face. A final, cruel barrier between us. I opened the door and slipped out, back into the cold, silent hallway.

The walk back to my cell was the longest of my life. Every shadow seemed to hold a judging eye, and every creak of the old building sounded like an accusation.

 I crept through the sleeping convent, a ghost of myself, carrying the secret of what had happened in a place that was the most sacred place for a nun.

But now, it was just a reminder of the forbidden fruit that I’d tasted, and craved even more.

I finally reached the stark, small room that had been my home for years. I closed the door and leaned against it, my body trembling. 

I looked at my small, simple cot, the plain wooden crucifix on the wall, and the well-worn Bible on my nightstand. It all looked so foreign now, like a life that belonged to someone else.

I was no longer the girl who had entered that confessional. I was no longer just Sister Agnes. 

I was the woman Father Michael had fucked over his desk. 

The woman he had ruined.