She gasped.

“I’m anointing you now,” I informed her. “I’m sanctifying you from the inside out. You feel that? That’s my finger fucking your ass. And in just a minute, it will be my cock. It will be my cock consecrating you. No, don’t touch yourself, sweetheart. We’re going to get there together.”

I took her hand, which had been sliding underneath her stomach, and put it up by her head, all while I kept working her ass with the oil and my finger. Her channel was so damn snug, and just knowing my dick would take its place in a matter of minutes was enough to make me into a wild man.

I couldn’t wait any longer. I poured a healthy amount of oil on my palm and then fisted my cock, the view in front of me and my own slick, strong hand pushing me close to the edge.

“Tyler,” Poppy said, looking back at me. “I’ve done this before. But never with someone your size.” She looked a little worried, but she was also still grinding herself against the floor, desperate to be fucked.

I wanted to tell her I’d be gentle with her ass, but I also didn’t want to make a promise I didn’t know I could keep (because fuck, I could barely hold it together just looking at it.) Instead, I told her, “You tell me when to stop and I’ll stop that very instant, okay?”

She nodded and laid her head down, canting her hips up to meet me. I leaned down, one hand guiding my cock to her entrance and the other reaching for the oil, pouring more over her ass and over my dick until we were both slippery as fuck.

I set down the vial and then started caressing her back as I pushed against her tightness, feeling her open gradually to me, slowly welcoming me in.

The head of my dick pushed and pushed and finally eased past the initial resistance, and all of a sudden, I was inside and her ass was gripping me in a tight heat unlike anything I’d ever felt before, even with the other girlfriends I’d done this with. I had to hang my head and take several deep breaths, counting to ten, before I could be sure that I wasn’t going to lose it too early to savor her properly.

I pushed in a little more. “Oh lamb, this is going to be a tight fit,” I warned.

And it was.

The moment I sank all the way home, I paused, giving her a moment to adjust to my size. She breathed in and out, and then sucked in a sharp, needy inhale as I found her clit and began working it. I didn’t move for several long moments, simply let her feel the fullness of me while I exploited all that tension I’d built up in her, leading her to the precipice so we could jump off together.

I wanted to ask her if she was ready for more, but I knew how frustrated she got with Good Guy Tyler always asking for permission, so instead I moved slowly, waiting at every movement for her to signal that she needed time or that she needed to stop.

I lifted her hips, guiding her to rest up on all fours. Pause.

I straightened my own body as I kept rubbing her clit. Pause.

I withdrew just an inch and then pushed in just an inch. Pause.

And bit by bit, she went from adjusting to wanting, pushing back into me like the greedy kitten she was, whimpering in protest whenever my hand left her clit. And I gave her slightly more and more, until I was pulling out to the tip and gliding back in, still unhurriedly—calmly even—but building steam now.

The whole time, I stroked her legs and back and rubbed her clit, I told her what a good girl she was, such a good little slut for letting me fuck her sweet ass, my own obedient little slut, and she belonged to me, wasn’t that right? She only wanted me inside her, she only wanted my dick and my fingers and my mouth.

She nodded at my words, all of them, and she was trembling as I fucked her, covered in sweat and shivering like she had a fever. I had meant to hold her back until the very end, but seeing her like this drove me crazy, obsessed me with the thought of her coming while I was in her ass, and so I finally settled in on her clit in earnest, pressing the pad of my middle finger against it and circling her in the hard, fast way that she liked.

Within seconds, she was crying out, pressing her ass against my hips so that I was buried to my balls, her fingers scrabbling at the carpet and wordless grunts tearing from her throat.

I watched her come apart, the carefully coiffed and sculpted pieces of Poppy Danforth falling away like scaffolding, leaving behind a shuddering, incoherent creature of want, and then she ground out one word, and that was it, I was lost. Lost to my control, to my vows, to anything other than the need to mark this woman in the most primitive and the basest way possible.

One word.

Yours.

I went rough now, gripping her hips and slamming into her, grunting myself, chasing my release as she gasped her way through the aftershocks of hers, and her ass was so damn slick, so damn tight, everything squeezing me and gripping me, and then it took me like a tidal wave of darkness, the real frenzy, pounding and growling as it imploded up through my spine and my balls, and fuck, I was coming, coming, coming, and there was black crowding at the edges of my vision and I was going to pass out as I pulsed, pass out or just keep coming and coming like it had no end.

I’d pulled out at the very last moment so I could watch as my orgasm laced her ass and back with cum, drops and rivulets like some kind of rain, dripping down the pleated rose of her entrance and over the curves of her back and hips.

As my vision cleared and my senses returned, I could admire my handiwork, the panting, trembling woman in front of me, covered with me.

Poppy stretched back out on her stomach, somehow making the movement elegant, erotic. “Clean me up,” she commanded like the little queen she was, and I rushed to obey. I washed her with a wet towel and then I kept her on the floor while I massaged her hips and thighs and back and arms, murmuring the sweetest things I could think of in Latin and Greek and quoting Song of Songs as I covered every inch of her skin in kisses.

And I could tell from the way she smiled to herself, the way she closed her eyes every now and again as if to push back tears, that this was something Sterling had never done. He’d never checked in with her after sex, he’d never petted her and praised her and rewarded her.

I didn’t even try not to feel triumphant about that.

And then after she was cleaned up, she and I sat down and worked on our fundraiser. She helped me set up for the men’s group and then she went to the women’s group at Millie’s house. And all the while I could smell the balsam on her skin and on mine, and nothing short of being with this woman every minute of every day would be enough to stop the yawning hunger low in my belly.

Or, even more dangerously, stop the hunger in my heart.

Something shifted for me that day, something that I realized had been shifting for a while. It was like the feeling I’d had as a child, when I’d taken off my roller skates after a few hours of skating and my feet would feel abnormally light and floaty. Or maybe like the feeling when I camped with my dad and Ryan, and we finally got to dump our gear on the ground after several hours of hiking, and I felt so light I could swear I was hovering a few inches above the ground.

I didn’t have a name for it, but it was lightness and lifting, and it had something to do with Lizzy. Something to do with sharing her death and its aftermath with Poppy, something with Poppy’s whispered words, is Lizzy the reason you’re afraid to let go with me?

I realized now, as I cradled Lizzy’s rosary in my palm, that Lizzy was the reason for a lot of things. She was the reason for everything. Her death was a weight I carried with me always, a wrong I had to avenge. But what if I could change that? What if I could trade vengeance for love? That was what Christians were called to do, after all, choose love above all else.