Midnight Mass (Camren)

EPILOGUE

HAPPY PRIDE MONTH Y'ALL! BE PROUD OF WHO YOU ARE AND DON'T FORGET THAT YOU'RE LOVED 🏳️‍⚧️🏳️‍🌈🫶🏻

Camila

one year later

Three a.m. Christmas morning. You have me sitting at the edge of a pew, my hands folded in my lap. I wanted this, I remind myself. I asked for this. But still, I'm nervous. Nervous that we'll get caught certainly, (although it's Jordan's church and I know he won't be back inside until dawn.) And I'm nervous about why—why we are acting out this fantasy or memory or whatever it is. It makes me nervous how much I want it, how much I dream about it. And it makes me nervous how aroused I am right now, doing nothing more than waiting for you in a dark, empty church.

When you asked me what I wanted for Christmas, I'm sure this wasn't what you expected to hear.

Your footsteps echo throughout the lofty sanctuary, loud and clear in the silence, and then I feel it, the gentle tap of two fingers on my shoulder, and I look up.

I practically come just by looking at you.

The flickering glow of candles illuminates your cheekbones, your square jaw, your nose that's bumped slightly in the middle from the time your brother pushed you face-first off a trampoline. Your face is scruffed, and your hair has grown a little longer than you usually wear it, just long enough for me to slip my fingers through and grab onto. A small smile is on your wide mouth, just a hint of that dimple I love so much, and as always, you're so hot and intensely fuckable that I have to restrain myself from diving for your dick.

But it's what you're wearing that sets me off: belted black pants, long-sleeved black shirt, and—God help me—your collar.

Your collar, snowy white against the black of your shirt and setting off the strong lines of your throat. Your collar, which looks so natural on you, as if you'd never stopped wearing it. As if you were born to wear it. Did you know that you walk differently with that collar on? Stand differently? As if you're bearing both a burden and a joy at the same time. It's fascinating and beautiful and so fucking magnetic.

"I'm Mother Jauregui," you say, as if we're meeting for the first time. "What brings you to the church today?"

Role-play. We haven't done it very often, so even though my heart is already racing and my thighs are already squeezing together at the sight of you in your collar, I feel a little self-conscious when I say, "I've never really been in a church before. I guess I'm just looking for guidance."

We're play-acting a version of how we first met. Me, lost and vulnerable, wandering into a church. You, intelligent and friendly and trying not to notice how your body responds to me.

You sit down on the pew, keeping two careful feet between us. For propriety. For morality. If this had been five years ago, I would have looked down, abashed at my own desire for you. I would have tilted my body away, trying to preserve your vows as I battled off the strongest attraction I'd ever felt in my life. But five years ago, we were in a church to pray.

Tonight, we are here to play.

I slide closer to you, making a show of adjusting my skirt so that you can see the top of my stocking and the clip of my garter belt. Your breath catches and our gazes meet momentarily. Then you blink away and clear your throat. "I'm happy to give any guidance you might like."

"And company too?" I let my hand drift over yours for the barest second before pulling it away. "I'm so lonely."

"Your loneliness can be cured through worship. And discipline." Your voice goes dangerous on that last word, and I shiver.