again, his tongue in her mouth. The kiss was wild, hungry, violent, as were the thrusts that he slammed into her. She couldn’t get enough of this part of him inside her. She’d never get enough of it.
The heat of their joined bodies rose to a fever pitch. She moved her mouth from his so she could breathe. He’d pounded her so hard against the tree behind her she felt as if she would become one with it as she became one with John. Her hands grasped his broad muscular shoulders and her nipples tightened painfully against his burning chest. He’d said he would stop if she told him to but she knew they were both too far gone to stop now. Ecstasy writhed and trembled along every nerve inside her hips. Her vagina poured wetness over him, a mix of blood and desire. Her muscles contracted into a knot and with a cry she couldn’t contain, she exploded around his still-thrusting length. As she spasmed and flinched, he slammed into her with rough jerks of his pelvis, at last coming inside her with a burning rush.
Finally it stopped. Her heart rattled against her rib cage like a prisoner banging on the bars. But John lowered her feet to the ground. He pulled out slowly and she winced in fresh agony.
“Daphne...” he breathed as he kissed her stomach, caressed her nipples with his tongue, kissed her neck and mouth. Even as his semen dripped down her thighs, he couldn’t stop touching her.
“Stop, please...” At last she got the words out. As promised, he stopped. He stepped away from her and nervously straightened his clothes. Before he buttoned his shirt again, she saw she’d left deep red scratches on his shoulders.
In pain like she’d never felt before, she got onto her hands and knees and gathered her clothes.
“Daphne, I—”
She raised her hand.
“Don’t talk to me,” she said. “You killed River and fucking me doesn’t change anything.”
She pulled her shorts on and winced as the fabric met the ravaged flesh. Her arms shook when she hooked her bra and pulled on her running tank again.
“Tell me what I can do to help,” he said. He was begging, pleading, offering her anything. She saw it in his eyes—he would do anything she asked.
“Take me to your house,” she said. “And what you just did to me—”
“What? Tell me.”
She looked up at him.
“Do it again.”
* * *
“What do you think?” Elle asked, bracing herself for Kyrie’s judgment. She sorted through a pile of towels she needed to fold. If she looked busy maybe Kyrie wouldn’t notice how nervous she was, letting someone else read the story she’d been writing.
“You made Apollo into a cop?” Kyrie asked, flipping through the sixty handwritten pages Elle had created over the past week.
“Yeah, and Daphne and her brother lived in a group home—no parents. Seemed like a good idea at the time,” Elle said. “Trying to make the story more contemporary. Daphne’s a runner. That’s the only thing I could think of that would be like a wood nymph—a girl who runs cross-country.”
“He’s also a music teacher?”
“Well, Apollo was the god of music,” Elle said, “and I needed a reason for him to be at the group home. He volunteers there with the kids in the home, teaches them music. He’s an off-duty cop, so when her brother goes off and starts beating another kid to death, he intervenes and Daphne’s brother dies in the process.”
“Where did the arrows go?”
“I thought it would be more interesting if Daphne had a really good reason for hating Apollo rather than just getting hit by an arrow from a pissy little cherub with an inferiority complex. So I gave her a twin brother who was emotionally unstable and then had Mr. Apollo accidentally kill him while restraining him. Daphne blames him and voila! Hate.”
“That’s kind of dark,” Kyrie said, flipping through the pages again.
Elle smiled. “I like dark.”
“Cop–teenage girl affair. Interesting,” Kyrie said, putting the pages back down.
“Just interesting?” Elle had been hoping for more of a reaction.
“Very interesting. And hot.”
“Kyrie.”
“What?”
“You’re a nun. You’re not allowed to find anything hot.”
“If I put my hand on a stove, I’m allowed to find it hot. This story is the fictional equivalent of putting your hand on a hot stove.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment. Don’t tell me if it isn’t, okay?”
Kyrie’s eyes went wide and she whistled to herself. Kyrie could whistle? Cute.
“This is wow,” Kyrie said.
“Wow? I can live with wow.” Elle tried to hold back her smile.
“Really wow. I love it. I have never loved a story as much as I love this story. I want to read it again. And I want to read more of it. I want it to be one thousand and ninety-five pages long so I can read one page a day for three straight years. Wait. Leap year. Better make it one thousand and ninety-six pages long.”
“I think you’re exaggerating.”
“I’m not exaggerating,” Kyrie said. “I love this story. You have to keep working on it. Please?”
“Sure, why not?” Elle said. “Nothing else to do around here. Except laundry.”
“You could come to Mass.”
“I could. I won’t. But I could.”
“Your mom is a nun. You’re obviously Catholic. Why do I never see you at Mass?”
“I’ve gone to Mass enough for a lifetime.”
“Are we getting into an area you don’t want to talk about again?”
“Very much so,” Elle said. “I’d rather talk about why you’re still a virgin at twenty-one.”
“Is it that surprising?”
“No girls even?”
“Elle,” Kyrie said as she hopped off the counter, “I’ve never even been kissed.”
“You have got to be kidding me.” Elle stared blankly at her, the towel in her hand forgotten.
“I’m not counting the kisses you get in elementary school from boys who grab you from behind.”
“No, those definitely don’t count. Nothing before puberty counts.”
“Well, what can I say? I come from a very Catholic family. I have three brothers and two sisters and the most conservative parents ever. And the day I realized I liked girls and only girls was the same day I realized I wanted to be a nun.”
“How old were you?” Elle asked.
“Thirteen.”
“You knew you wanted to be a nun when you were thirteen?”
“Sister Mary Patrick came to my high school and gave a little talk on joining religious orders. I fell in love with her and the idea of being a nun all at once. I think...”
Kyrie leaned back against the counter and crossed her arms. If Sister Mary Patrick had looked anything like Kyrie did now, like an angel all in white, no wonder Kyrie had fallen for her. “I think they became the same thing to me. The idea of love and the idea of joining a convent. They were one and the same, two strands of the same cord. If I wanted one I had to have the other.”
“How’s it working out for you so far?”
“So far...” Kyrie smiled. “So far the past month has been the happiest month of my life.”
“Honeymoon phase,” Elle said. “It’ll pass.”
“You think so?”
“I’ve been here long enough to see three novices go from ‘This is Heaven on earth’ to ‘Get me the fuck out of here’ already.”
“But they didn’t leave?”
“One did. Two are still here. She’s better now. At least she stopped having panic attacks during Vespers. Sister Aquinas calls it progress.”
“Your mom seems to love it here.”
“She does. But Mom’s wanted to be a nun since she was—I don’t know. Forever, she says.”
“What took her so long to join?”
“Me,” Elle said with a shrug. She placed her folded towels into the basket and started on a new stack.
“She got pregnant with y
ou?”
“When she was seventeen. Then she got divorced and of course you can’t join a religious order if you’re divorced and you have a kid. But then my father was killed and that meant she was technically a widow. She went back to college, got her degree and joined here a couple of years ago.”
“Good for her.”
“Yeah, I guess it is. I didn’t see that at the time. I’m starting to see it now.”
“You can see a change in her?”
“In Mom? Definitely. She used to be really angry,” Elle said. “Angry at herself, but she took it out on me a lot. Not physically. She wasn’t abusive or anything. Just...sad. Really sad and I made her even sadder.” The memories of a hundred mother-daughter fights flashed through her mind in an instant. “She wasn’t who she thought she should be. And now she finally is.”
“It’s a terrible thing to not be who God called you to be. I think that’s the cause for most of the suffering in all the world,” Kyrie said. “People trying to be who they aren’t supposed to be or not getting to be who they should be.”
“Maybe. But what do you do when you don’t know what you’re supposed to be?”
“Ask me. I’ll tell you.”
“Great. What am I supposed to be?”
Kyrie held up the pages again.
“This.”
“That? A girl having sex with a cop?” Elle asked, arching her eyebrow. “I don’t think I’ve ever fucked a cop. Or a music teacher.”
“A writer,” Kyrie said. “You should write books. Professionally. For money. Like my sister did.”
“Write books,” Elle said.
“Professionally,” Kyrie repeated. “For money. There. I told you I would figure out what you should do with your life. You can even do it here. You don’t have to leave to do it.”
“I’d probably have to go somewhere with a computer,” Elle said. “You know, for typing. I doubt publishers have accepted handwritten manuscripts since 1890.”
“Mother Prioress has a computer in her office.”
“That’s good. I’ll ask her if I can borrow it to type up my novel about the rookie cop deflowering a high school girl against a tree after killing her brother.”
“Well...you might not want to word it quite like that.” Kyrie laughed. “Maybe call it a dissertation.”
Elle winced at the word dissertation.
“What?” Kyrie asked.
“Force of habit. Sorry. Anyway, it’s a fun idea, writing books. I’ve been writing short stories since I got here. Very depressing ones.”
“Toss them,” Kyrie said. “No money in short stories. Write novels.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“You say that in a tone that makes me think you won’t think about it.”
“I’ll think about it, I promise.”
“You’ll finish the book, right?” Kyrie asked. “I want to know what happens next.”
“I don’t know what happens next.”
“You’re smart. You’ll figure it out. You should write more tree sex, though. That was fun.”
“It’s not as fun in real life. The bark on your back is really itchy.”
“You’ve had tree sex?” Kyrie asked, her eyes wide.
“Not with a tree. Against a tree.”
“Oh my.” Kyrie grinned and leaned over Elle’s ironing board. “Tell me all.”
“I had sex once and it was against a tree. The end.”
“Okay, maybe you shouldn’t be a writer.” Kyrie stood up straight again and sighed.
“I’m not going to tell the dirty details of my sex life to a virginal nun who’s never been kissed.”
“Elle, I will tell you the truth and you should believe it because it is the truth.”
“What?”
Kyrie reached out and took Elle’s hand in hers. It had been so long since someone had held her hand that Elle had forgotten how good it felt, the simple act of fingers touching fingers, of palms pressed to palms.
“The truth is...there is no one on earth who needs to hear the details of your sex life more than a virginal nun who has never been kissed.”
Elle stared at Kyrie. She thought they’d been joking, only joking. And while Kyrie’s words were joking, the way she said them was serious.
It wouldn’t hurt anything, would it? A kiss? A kiss was such a small thing, small as a hiccup, small as a firefly. And maybe if she kissed Kyrie, it would scare the girl enough to send her running away. Then Elle could have her peace and quiet back. Worth the risk anyway.
It was only a kiss.
“Ellie? Ellie, are you here?”
Kyrie dropped Elle’s hand as if it had caught fire.
They both turned to the door. Elle’s mother rushed into the laundry room. Her pale skin was whiter than usual, almost as white as her habit.
“I’m here. What’s up?” Elle glanced at Kyrie who was discreetly sliding Elle’s pages underneath a pile of towels.
“Have either of you seen Sister Mary Angelica?”
“Which one is she?” Elle asked.
“The old one,” Kyrie said. “Really old, right?”
“Yes, she’s ninety-two. And she has dementia. She’s wandered off again, and no one can find her.”
“I’ve been in here for three hours,” Elle said.
“When is the last time you saw her?” her mother asked Kyrie.
“Breakfast,” Kyrie said. “Not since then.”
“Everyone is looking for her,” her mother said. “Can you help?”
“Yeah, sure.” Elle dropped her towel back into the basket. Kyrie followed her out of the door. In the hallway they were met by Sister Aquinas.
“She’s locked herself in the supply pantry in the infirmary,” Sister Aquinas said. Her words were rushed, her faced flushed.
“Can’t you unlock it?” Elle asked.
“No. It used to be an office so it’s got an old lock on the inside. We haven’t had the key in years.”
“Did you call a locksmith?” her mother asked.
“Yes, but he’s on a call and can’t be here for another hour. There are needles in there, scalpels. We’re going to have to take the door off the hinges,” Sister Aquinas said. “Or call the fire department to come.”
“Is it a normal lock?” Elle asked. “A key lock? Nothing fancy?”
“Nothing fancy,” Sister Aquinas said.
“Hold on,” Elle said. “I’ll meet you in the infirmary.”
She raced off down the hall to her cell.
“Elle?” Kyrie stood in the doorway of her room.
“I got this,” Elle said. She pulled open her purse and dug to