“You noticed. Thank you.” Emil grinned and, with all the audacity of a fox storming a henhouse, he spread his arms and made a slow turn, showcasing how good his ass looked in those pants.
Adam felt the flush creeping up his neck and then emerging on his face like a banner of embarrassment, but he wouldn’t back down, and kept his eyes on Adam’s. “What’s the point of this?”
Emil grabbed the pole of the broom so close to Adam’s hand its heat scorched his skin. And it wasn’t just because of embarrassment, anger, or even the fact that he found Emil attractive. Throughout his life he’d found plenty of men attractive in some way and successfully ignored the urges they stirred, yet everything about Emil’s presence screamed for Adam to rip off his cassock and run naked through the meadow until they both collapsed in the grass and fucked like two wild beasts. He could see it as if it were real—Emil’s naked body gaining that orange-lilac shade of the sky at dusk, his flesh so ripe and tasty Adam’s mouth watered.
A silly grin spread Emil’s handsome mouth as he slowly slid his hand up and down the broom in a gesture clearly imitating the act of masturbation. “Oh, what do I not want, Father?”
“I am trying to politely ask about your presence here? You’re obviously not religious,” Adam said, trying his best to remain stern in the face of a temptation he had never experienced on this level.
“I have many sins to confess. How about you? What got you kicked out to this dump?”
Adam’s heart skipped a beat, and the need to step closer became even more unbearable when Emil’s hand moved lower on the handle and touched his. He had no words to describe the electric jolt that exploded between their bodies, but for a moment, he forgot how to speak.
“I— I’ve only been ordained recently. They sent me here for six months, so that I can learn,” he lied.
“I can help you learn,” Emil said and placed his large hand over Adam’s, paralyzing it with his heat. They were way past suggestive flirting by now. The snake was wrapping himself around Adam and promising unspeakable sin that would become reality if Adam only said the word.
“If you don’t back off, I will not keep silent about this. I’m not gay. I’m not interested. I am a priest,” Adam said, but forgot to pull away from the warmth of Emil’s hand, which anchored him in place while the tempting scent wound itself around all of Adam’s body.
He could see himself entwined with this man, opening up his ribcage and sleeping inside its warmth. Adam frowned, disturbed by the gory fantasy, but Emil stepped away at last, and while Adam should be relieved, it felt like Emil took some of his skin, leaving the bare patch raw.
“Suit yourself.”
Emil walked off without as much as a goodbye, but the way he put his hands in the pockets of his jacket pulled it up enough to showcase his ass in jeans so tight they must have been designed by the devil himself.
What a bastard. How dare he try to tempt an unwilling man into sin for his selfish pleasure?
Adam’s hands trembled around the besom, and he fought the instinct to follow Emil. The desire stabbed his flesh with invisible needles that caused very real pain. He flinched when Jinx called out to him, speeding into a gallop, but as the smoky aroma pulled at the front of Adam’s cassock, attempting to drag him behind Emil, he pushed his sinful thoughts away and walked toward the parsonage.
Chapter 5 - Emil
Two weeks had passed since Adam’s rejection and it still stung more than it should have, but maybe it was for the better. Maybe Emil wouldn’t once again drown in the well of an attraction that ultimately couldn’t go anywhere. Maybe Radek was right and this really was the right time to leave the past behind. What kind of future did he have seducing tourists and pining after a priest? Any sensible person his age who couldn’t be a part of a family enterprise had long left. He was on his own, and he’d die alone, loveless, and friendless, if he couldn’t make a difficult decision now.
Without Radek to keep him company, Emil’s thoughts insistently returned to his two moments alone with Adam. The night after their second meeting, Emil awoke sweaty, to a whisper he could have sworn was Adam’s, but the priest returned in Emil’s dreams several times more, which always left Emil with a sense of loss by the time he opened his eyes.
He was pathetic. Almost thirty and desperately lonely, he’d latched on to the first guy who’d shown the slightest sign of interest. It was time to put an end to this. Leave Dybukowo and fuck his way through Cracow until he could convince himself that the strangers who partied with him gave a flying fuck about him or his problems.
He was going later that day, and if Radek was still single, Emil could let off some steam and quench the thirst that plagued him every time the handsome priest jogged past his house. It was a ritual by now, and despite the logical part of Emil’s brain telling him no, he couldn’t help but think of it as their ritual.
Every day in the past two weeks, Adam went out for a jog at precisely 8.00 a.m., and despite there being so many paths crisscrossing the meadows, fields, and woodland, he always chose the one by Emil’s house. They hadn’t spoken much since the brief yet unpleasant confrontation by the church, but Emil still found himself on the porch each day, having his morning coffee and cigarette while Adam ran by his homestead in shorts that revealed toned legs.
They would acknowledge one another with nods, with the exception of that one time when Adam had stopped to ask about the crows insistently nesting in the trees around Emil’s house and took his time applying sunscreen during the brief chat. But as desirable as the priest was, Emil was over trying to get into his pants, and acted as if nothing worth noting had transpired between them before. If Adam had chosen this route because he liked to feast his eyes on Dybukowo’s most handsome bachelor, then Emil could have the satisfaction of being the object of the repressed priest’s thirst.
But this morning felt different, because as Emil fed his animals and made his liquid breakfast before walking out into the May sun, he did so knowing this familiar routine would have to change. In just a couple of hours, he’d board the bus to Sanok and catch the cheapest—if slowest—train to Cracow. He had a gig there. It wasn’t anything earth-shattering, but Radek had somehow convinced one of his friends to hire a man with no official qualifications to renovate a newly-purchased apartment, and pay said man—Emil—a normal wage.
It would be hard work, and Emil would need to YouTube the shit out of the stuff he had little knowledge about, but since Radek had offered him a free stay in his room, the cash would stack up. If he did well, not only would he finish that job with a neat sum to kick-start something new but also get some references.
Two weeks back, he hadn’t considered a week-long trip a possibility, but for once in his life, the stars had aligned, and a chance meeting at the store led to Zofia, an elderly neighbor, offering to take care of Emil’s animals for a couple of days. He’d been apprehensive about leaving Jinx with someone else, since the horse was unruly at times, but Zofia assured him she had taken care of her own horses in the past, so Emil bit the bullet and chose to trust her.
He closed his eyes, taking a drag from his cigarette to a silence so perfect suspicion made him look up to the trees growing around his property. For once, there wasn’t a single crow in sight, but before he could have considered possible reasons for their unusual absence, Adam’s shadow climbed down the sandy road before the man himself jogged from between the trees. This was the halfway point of a route of approximately six kilometers, but he wasn’t out of breath yet. The sun shone through the short blond hair at the top of his head, and since it was now behind the running figure, the front of Adam’s body remained shadowed. Emil couldn’t stop staring at the shapely legs that stirred dust with each step.