Book 4: The Velvet Confession. Chapter 1: The Booth.

The church was empty at 23:11, and only my heartbeat echoed loud.

St. Augustine’s, Lower East Side, once a home for Irish newcomers, now stood as an old relic of stone and colored glass, with moonlight bleeding across the main area. The air hung thick with incense and old candle wax, and it clung to your skin like guilt. I knelt in the left confession box, where the seat was cracked and the screen thin enough to see shadows move, and my black wool skirt, high on the waist, was already pulled up to my thighs. I’m Elara Quinn, 33, an investigative journalist with three big awards, but I had one secret I’d never print: I came here to record, not to confess.

The screen slid open with a quiet scrape of wood on wood.

A shadow filled the other side.

He was male, with broad shoulders straining the black priest clothes.

His cologne was faint—oud and smoke, expensive, and forbidden.

His voice came low, familiar, and dangerous.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”

I froze.

That voice.

It was Father Luca Valenti, 38, a Vatican exile, and he was the priest I’d interviewed six months ago for a story on church wrongs in Boston. He’d sat across from me in a small rectory room, hands folded, eyes gray like wet ash, and he’d answered my questions with a calm that felt like a dare. He’d touched my wrist just once when passing tea, his thumb brushing my vein too gently, too long, and he’d left me hot in the pew, thighs clenched, pretending to take notes while my recorder caught every word and my body caught every glance.

He continued, his voice velvet over gravel, the kind that could absolve or condemn with one syllable.

“It’s been one week since my last confession, and I’ve coveted, I’ve tasted, and I’ve broken vows in ways you can’t imagine, Elara.”

He knew.

My breath hitched, sharp enough to cut the silence.

The screen was dark, but I felt his eyes, and they stripped me layer by layer, burning my skin like a brand.

“Describe it,” I whispered, my journalist reflex kicking in, and my recorder in my bra was already running, red light blinking against my chest.

A soft laugh came, low and filthy.

“You first, Elara.”

He knew my name.

I should’ve run.

I should’ve yanked the recorder, bolted for the side door, deleted the file, and burned the card.

Instead, I leaned closer, lips inches from the screen, and the wood felt cool against my forehead.

“I’ve lied,” I said, my voice trembling but steady. “I’ve recorded without consent, and I’ve come in this booth thinking of you, Father. I’ve touched myself in the pews, imagining your mouth where my fingers fail.”

Silence.

Then his door creaked open on his side.

He stepped into my half of the confessional, his cassock unbuttoned to the chest, and the crucifix glinted in the moonlight spilling through the cracked window. The space was barely big enough for one, let alone two, but he made it feel vast and suffocating at once. He knelt.

Not in prayer.

But in hunger.

Moonlight carved his face: a straight Roman nose, a scar through one brow from a childhood fall he’d never explained, and a mouth made for sin, for secrets, for me.

“Show me,” he said, his voice barely a whisper, but it filled the booth like incense.

I hiked my skirt higher, slow and deliberate.

No panties, planned and premeditated.

The air was cold against my slick skin, but his inhale was sharp, reverent, and ravenous.

His fingers traced my inner thigh, gloveless and calloused from years of turning pages in ancient books, and they stopped just short of where I ached.

“Say the Act of Contrition,” he commanded, his eyes locked on mine, pupils blown wide.

I did, my voice shaking, and Latin stumbled like a drunk.

“Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa…”

His mouth followed his fingers.

Slow, reverent and filthy.

His tongue parted me, tasted my confession, and circled my clit like absolution, like punishment. I gripped the wooden kneeler, splintered it under my nails, and came with a choked “Mea culpa” that echoed off the high ceiling, my thighs trembling around his ears, my release flooding his tongue.

He rose, his cassock tented, cock straining against the black wool, and the outline was thick, heavy, impossible.

I reached, my fingers brushing the fabric, feeling the heat and the pulse.

He caught my wrist in an iron grip, his thumb pressing into my vein.

“Not here. Not yet.”

He pressed a key into my palm, brass, old, and heavy, engraved “Crypt 7” in gothic script.

“Tomorrow. Midnight. Bring the recorder. And nothing else.”

He left.

The confessional door creaked shut behind him.

I stayed on my knees, thighs slick, pulse roaring, and the taste of him lingered on my lips, though he’d been the one tasting me. The cathedral swallowed his footsteps, and the side door clicked shut like a gunshot.

I should’ve deleted the audio.

Instead, I stumbled out of the booth, skirt still rucked, and clutched the recorder to my chest. The nave was empty, moonlight pooling on the stone like spilled milk. I made it to my SoHo apartment, a shoebox with exposed brick and a bed that creaked like the confessional. I played the file back on my laptop, headphones on, volume low.

His tongue on me.

My moans.

The creak of the kneeler.

The wet sounds of my surrender.

I came again, harder, fingers buried where his mouth had been, and I bit my lip until I tasted blood, the key to Crypt 7 burning in my fist like a brand.

I didn’t sleep.

I researched.

St. Augustine’s crypts, seven of them, sealed since the 1890s, used for storage and then forgotten. Crypt 7 was the deepest, beneath the high altar, accessible only by a service tunnel behind the sacristy. No public access. No records. Just rumors of relics, of bones, of sin.

The key was real.

The priest was real.

The confession was real.

But Luca Valenti wasn’t just a priest.

He was a collector.

And I was about to become his next relic.