"Pray with me," whispered the kneeling, naked man.
I was a weekly visitor to his apartment and knew the routine intimately. I undressed slowly and spent some time folding my garments before placing them in a neat pile on a chair. His eyes remained closed. Perhaps he was focused on prayer. Perhaps he was concentrating on the sounds of my actions, the subtle prelude to sin. The slip of buttons through their holes. Silk against skin. Other sounds that weren't so easily placed.
Naked, I knelt before him on a rug next to his bed. I wasn't interested in praying with him. I looked around instead, a little bored with his piety.
The decor of his bedroom was decidedly masculine -- dark, heavy, and warm. The tidiness spoke of an ordered, disciplined mind. I felt comfortable in this room though it was so different from my own place with its brightness and pastels.
Arthur was a deacon at a church. I didn't know at first what a deacon was and still wasn't entirely sure. Less than a priest, I supposed, but more than a parishioner. I could have looked it up, but never did.
I met him several years before at the local food bank, not as consumers but as volunteers. He was there out of Christian charity. I was there simply to help. For me, thoughts of charity never entered into it. It was more of a duty. An arranged marriage had collapsed under decades of accumulated disillusionment and I realized just how vulnerable I could have been, how a subtle twist of fate could have made me a consumer rather than a volunteer. My ex, however, was honorable when too many in his position wouldn't have been. Indifference had never expressed itself as cruelty and for that I was grateful. And that gratitude expressed itself in the wish to help those whose hadn't enjoyed my fate.
I introduced myself as Prija. His name was Arthur and I thought he looked nice. Solid and open, though I knew that even openness could be faked.
On several occasions our hands touched by accident over the boxes that we filled with cans and packages. If he felt the same spark that I had, he never let on. But he did invite me out for a coffee afterwards. And one thing led to another and evolved into this odd routine.
Arthur's hands were now clasped before him at chest level, fingers intertwined. My arms rested at my sides as I waited.
This weekly visit was a test of sorts for him, one he invariably failed. I wasn't proud of my part in it, but something in me did enjoy watching the man's capitulation to temptation, particularly as I was its agent. A Salome or a Jezebel. It was exhilarating, this influence I had over him, the influence that he gifted me. It was one of the key reasons I came to him week after week after having had no such influence over my ex-husband. The aphrodisiac of power and of being desired. That and the fact that the man was a particularly selfless lover, ensuring my satisfaction before seeking his own. That was new to me as well, and welcome. Whatever his hang-ups and quirks, and there were many, he more than made up for in creativity, enthusiasm, and gratitude.
His lips moved as he worked through some silent prayer. I waited patiently and looked him over. He was still in good shape. A little thicker than in his youth, of course, because who wasn't. A dense layer of hair over his chest that I found attractive. A cock that now only hinted at its potential.
Sometimes his prayers were short, sometimes long. The short ones usually presaged tender lovemaking. The long ones preceded violent, assertive fucking. I appreciated both. A time and a place for everything.
His prayers were long tonight. Before they were even over, his hands parted and moved to cover my breasts. Pale hands over coffee skin. He tested their softness, weighed their substance. My nipples hardened into peaks.
I might have reciprocated by touching him between the legs -- I'd done so in the past -- but I had another idea. A challenge. I was feeling naughty and assertive and I wanted to show him that I was not predictable. He wore a small crucifix on a chain around his neck. A tiny golden cross that featured a tiny golden Jesus, legs bent modestly to the side even in his apparent agony.
While he kneaded my breasts and continued his prayers, I reached to him and unclasped the chain. I held it draped over my fingers until he opened his eyes several moments later and looked at me for the first time. He watched expressionlessly as I allowed the golden Jesus to slide down my torso. Jesus behaved like an extreme skier at a precipice. Funneled into the valley of my breasts, down the cliff of my stomach. His eyes followed the icon down to my pussy. I gathered up the chain and held it down there. His eyebrows rose and his breath stilled as my index fingers pushed the chain into my pussy, leaving only the charm exposed.
He frowned, not sure if I was being bold or blasphemous.
"Can it go the rest of the way?"
He paused before nodding.
"You do it," I said.
With his fingers, he pushed the rest of the chain into me until it disappeared entirely. His touch sent a jolt through me. As for the chain and Jesus, I barely felt them.
"When you decide to reclaim it, you can't use your hands."
He smiled, up for the challenge. He liked most of our occasional games. He stood then and held out a hand for me.
He arranged me on the edge of the bed. I suspected he would kneel at the foot of it and ravage me with his tongue. Sometimes he used his fingers and sometimes a bullet, but I liked his tongue the best. I liked to see his face, bathed and glistening with my juices and his saliva.
With the kind of attentiveness that was far too absent in other men, he stroked me -- breasts and nipples, torso, waist, the insides of my thighs. His butterfly touches set my skin tingling and I widened my legs to signal my readiness.
"Talk dirty to me," he said. His fingertips played on the margins of my cunt, spreading my labia.
He meant the kind of slutty talk that didn't come naturally to me. He's asked this of me before and I always felt that my performance was inadequate. I was many things -- a hypocrite, a blasphemer, a hedonist -- but I was not a slut.
A fingertip orbited just inside my opening. Then I remembered the chain that nestled within me. I said, "I can't honor a deity who appears indifferent to the atrocities and suffering perpetuated in his name."
My lover glanced up from my pussy and chuckled, "He gave us free will."
"He's an absentee landlord, maybe even a slum landlord. And don't get me started with the church, led by his so-called representatives on Earth. Too many of them purveyors of rape and murder."
It was strange foreplay, this talk of religion's shortcomings. The words came to me easily and I eased into the familiar arguments like a tire in a rut.
"We do a lot of good," he said, his breath warming my cunt.
