Temptation and Fire
Isaiah rose to clear the table, the weight of silence lingering thick as smoke between them. The priest had spoken little since that single, terrible sentence, “he must bleed them out,” and Isaiah found his mind chasing its echoes. He did not know whether he pitied the man… or feared him.
Or something else entirely.
The priest stood near the table now, no longer at the window, still and massive, as if carved from the same stone as the chapel walls. The sun caught the edge of his jaw, glinting along the faint sheen of sweat that still glistened at his temple, where the morning’s exertions had not yet dried. The shirt he wore clung too tightly to his frame, the muscle beneath it unhidden, the bloodstain at his shoulder spreading in slow bloom. His hands moved with silent purpose as he lifted the bread dish, just as Isaiah reached for the same.
Their fingers met.
A mistake.
But neither hand withdrew.
The touch was brief.
A second.
Two.
But it lingered like an oath broken.
The heat of the man’s skin struck Isaiah like a blow. Hot, calloused, enormous. His father’s fingers dwarfed his own. The contact sent a sharp jolt of something dark and wrong down Isaiah’s spine. desire, yes, but more than that: recognition.
Thaddeus withdrew his hand with sudden, violent purpose.
He turned away, his movements harsh, brittle. “That will be all. You may leave the dishes.”
Isaiah remained still. “I only meant to—”
“It is not your place,” Thaddeus snapped, the words too quick, too sharp.
Isaiah stepped back, his face unreadable. Thaddeus did not look at him again. He turned and strode out into the hall, boots heavy on the wood.
Isaiah stood there in the stillness, hands trembling at his sides.
Thaddeus stood shirtless before the hearth in his chamber, one hand braced against the mantle, the other closed tight around a small iron chain wound through his fingers. The firelight carved deep shadows across the planes of his body. A body that had grown thick with penance. Each muscle earned not from vanity but from punishment. His chest dusted with sweat, his abdomen carved with tension.
His back was raw. Beneath the linen, where the scourge had torn skin, blood had crusted.
He had not bled enough.
He had not prayed enough.
He had touched the boy.
Even that second, those soft fingers brushing his own, had sent a jolt through him that left his thighs trembling and his groin tight with heat. It was wrong. He had starved the lust for years, buried it beneath penance.
And yet it bloomed again.
Because of him.
He knelt. The stone beneath him was cold. The bones of his knees ached. He pressed his forehead to the hearthstones and clenched the cross at his throat until the edges cut into his palm.
“Lord, I have sinned. Lord, I have fallen again. My blood is impure. My thoughts unclean.”
He closed his eyes, breath trembling.
But no answer came.
Only the heat behind his eyes.
And then:
A voice.
Low.
Not external, But within.
“You bleed for him.”
Thaddeus’s eyes shot open.
The fire flickered. Wood cracked.
He was alone.
“You deny what I gave you. Strength. Hunger. Heat.”
Thaddeus shook his head. “No. You are not real. You are temptation.”
“I am your Lord.”
He gritted his teeth.
“God is my Lord.”
The voice laughed.
Not aloud. Inside.
“Your God did not give you that body. Did not mold your hands to command. Did not make your son tremble at your voice. I did.”
“No.” Thaddeus stood abruptly, knocking over the pewter candlestick. “You are a lie. A test. I will resist.”
“Then resist me, priest. Will you whip the desire out of your bones? Carve it out of your tongue? Shall I watch you bleed desire from the root?”
Thaddeus staggered back.
“No,” he whispered, but it was already happening. His body betrayed him, thickening, rising with shameful purpose.
The fire roared for one instant, then died to embers.
His chest rose and fell like a beast waking in his ribs. His body trembled. The cross at his neck burned like ice.
But his cock… ached.
Heavy. Hot. Throbbing beneath the linen.
“Forgive me,” he pleaded
His hand moved. Rough. Desperate. Down the ridges of his stomach, beneath the band of his trousers.
He reached down, shuddering.
Gripped the length of himself. Already hard, already leaking. The fire cast golden light across his belly as he stroked, slow and brutal. Every drag of his fist echoed with breath, every pulse of blood reminding him of the boy’s scent, the boy’s lips. His mind went to Isaiah’s hand. Soft, unsure, trembling when it touched his. The way the boy’s eyes lingered. The faint scent of him. The soft breath of his voice when he said “Father.” He hissed between his teeth as shame ignited into something ravenous. His back arched. His hips lifted.
He stroked faster. His chest slicked with sweat. His thighs tensed.
And when he came, he did not cry out.
He growled.
Half-choked, half-ashamed. His thick ropes of seed hit the stones before the hearth, some spattering into the flames. The fire flared as it caught. Sizzled. And for a moment the room was lit with a brilliant, unnatural glow.
Then it died down again.
He collapsed, panting, chest heaving. Sweat ran down the curve of his back, his thighs. His cross still hung from his neck. But it felt heavier now. The voice was gone.
Only silence remained.
“Forgive me…”
The afternoon was brittle with wind. Clouds slid across the sky like ash dragged by unseen hands, and the light through the narrow windows made the house feel even older, like it had forgotten how to be warm.
Thaddeus had gone out and Isaiah found himself pacing.
“There’s work to do in the eastern wood,” he had said. “The storm felled a tree near the old well. It blocks the path to town.”
He would be gone for hours.
Isaiah waited one.
Then two.
And by the third, silence had grown unbearable.
He wandered the rectory’s halls with quiet steps, trailing fingers along wood and stone. Dust lingered in corners, but nothing was neglected. Thaddeus kept a careful, punishing order in everything: his books, his coats, the oil for his lamp. The sharp, male smell of worn fabric, iron, salt. Isaiah touched nothing. He only walked, listening.
Until he came to his father’s door.
It was closed. But not latched. His hand hovered over the handle for longer than he could justify. Then he pressed it open.
The room was larger than his own, but not grand. A large bed. An old desk. A kneeling bench. Three crucifixes. The hearth was unlit.
He stepped inside.
The air smelled like linen, pine, and that same scent that always seemed to cling to Thaddeus’s clothes: warm skin and smoke. Faint but undeniable.
There was a wooden chest at the foot of the bed. Locked. Books on the desk. Mostly religious texts. But one. ‘The Confessions of Saint Augustine’ lay open to a passage underlined in ink.
“My will the enemy held, and thence had made a chain for me, and bound me.”
Isaiah exhaled. He turned from the desk and saw the wardrobe slightly ajar. A shirt hung from the open door.
His father’s shirt. The one from the morning. Black, soaked with sweat and blood. It had not yet been cleaned.
He stared at it. His mouth went dry. He stepped closer, reached out.
Touched it.
The cloth was stiff where the blood had dried, but soft at the collar. The scent rose from it like steam. Masculine. Private. Intimate. He brought it to his face before he even thought.
His breath hitched.
He saw, without meaning to, his father’s body, stripped, gleaming with sweat, muscles coiled from ritual pain, thighs thick as pillars.
He closed his eyes. Fingers trembling. He felt himself harden. And he pressed the shirt to his face.
Isaiah shuddered.
His hand moved to the front of his trousers.
He shouldn’t.
He did.
He moaned, quiet, bitten off, and leaned against the wardrobe as the friction built. He buried his face in the fabric, lips brushing the collar.
His body betrayed him quickly.
Heat bloomed low, fast, unstoppable.
He came with a strangled cry, spilling hot onto the floorboards at his feet, onto the shirt clutched in his hands. His legs trembled, panting. He backed away, horrified at himself. Guilt surged up like bile.
And then: a noise.
Behind him.
A whisper.
Not in his ears.
In his mind.
“He suffers for your lust.”
He turned, heart slamming against his ribs, and froze. There was nothing there. Only the crucifixes above the bed.
But the face of Christ was wrong. The mouth slightly parted. Not in agony. In something closer to... pleasure. Eyes rolled upward. Lips just open. Neck exposed. Isaiah stumbled back. Blinked. And it was normal again. The blood pounded in his temples. His heart thundered. His breath came in gasps. He grabbed the shirt, crumpled it into a bundle, and fled the room.
He would wash it.
Return it clean.
He told himself that.
That night, when he lay in his bed with the window open to the moon, and the shirt bundled beneath his bed, he could not sleep.
His mind returned again and again to the vision. His father’s body bent in pain, and somehow, beautiful for it. And the way the crucifix had changed.
His eyes stared upward. And in the silence, he heard no voice. Only the sound of his own breath. Wanting and ashamed.
To be continued…
