Note: Hi readers! Thanks for the feedback on the previous chapters! This is my first story I posted on the site. Sorry for the extremely slow burn, still learning to pace a story. This chapter is a bit longer, but it's what you've all been waiting for. Hope you enjoy! :)
Let Me Burn
Isaiah stood in the nave of the chapel, barefoot, breathless, cloaked only in candlelight. The air was thick with incense and heat, as if the walls themselves had begun to sweat. The stained glass behind the altar glowed with unnatural color, bathing the pewless floor in red and gold.
And there, on the altar steps, knelt his father. Thaddeus. Naked. Utterly, terribly exposed.
His body was carved in chiaroscuro, shoulders broad as doors, chest thick and heaving, thighs parted in supplication. His back bore the ghosts of welts, fading into flesh. Blood had dried in the grooves of his spine like wine down marble.
He looked upward. Not at God. At Isaiah.
His father mouthed something but no sound came out. Isaiah trembled.
His eyes trailed a little left of the altar. A tall narrow mirror, framed in wrought iron, misted with breath that wasn’t his own, rippled his reflection and he realized that he too was naked.
His own eyes stared back, gray-blue and glowing faintly. His body shone like pale marble in the warm candlelight. He was tall, but not as tall as Thaddeus. His chest rose with shallow breath, muscles lean. The long neck, the delicate jaw. A mouth slightly parted. The soft plane of the stomach tapering into hips no cassock could cleanse.. He was built not with strength, but with grace. Beautiful and arresting.
His heart beat so hard that it pounded in his chest. He tried to cover himself, but the moment he lifted his hands, Thaddeus reached for him.
Not to push him away.
To cradle.
To worship.
Isaiah’s eyes darted back to the mirror. Far behind his reflection, in the deep of the mirror’s shadow, a figure stood. So distant it might’ve been part of the dark. But he felt it. The presence.
He quickly turned. And there, in the corner of the chapel’s apse, stood something. Watching. Its body was like a man’s, but wrong in every contour. Flesh dark and slick like oil. Its shoulders were massive, hunched, wings dragging the floor behind it like heavy robes. The face was blackened by shadow, angular.
The figure leaned forward, extending one hand. Long, clawed, delicate.
“Do you not wonder what makes you holy to him?”
Isaiah looked back to Thaddeus, who had lowered his face to the floor. His hand reached forward, his own volition, or not, he did not know. Only that he must.
“Touch him,”
Said the figure, voice woven like scripture in reverse,
“And know what power your body holds. Not beauty. Not youth. But hunger. The kind that sanctifies… and devours.”
“You are not temptation, little lamb.”
“You are the altar.”
Isaiah's fingers grazed Thaddeus’s shoulder, trembling.
And then—
He woke.
The room was dim, heavy with the scent of cold ash and sleep. Sweat clung to his chest in a film. The blanket had twisted around his legs.
There was someone at the door. His father stood at the threshold of Isaiah’s room, brow furrowed.
“Isaiah,” he said, low but firm. The boy did not stir. Black curls clung to his forehead. One arm had fallen limply over the edge of the bed, fingers curled like ivy. Thaddeus stepped inside, half-shadowed, his body blocking the spill of light from the hall. He wore only his dark clerical shirt, sleeves rolled back. His hair was damp, as though freshly washed, the scent of pine and iron wafting in with him.
“You overslept,” Thaddeus said. The priest’s voice had softened. He looked Isaiah over. “You look pale, boy,” he said. “Sickly. Are you ill?” Isaiah wiped at his brow. “Just… a dream.”
Thaddeus nodded slowly. His eyes dropped to the small nightstand, where something familiar lay.
The wooden crucifix he had carved years ago, by his own hand. A gift from long before they knew what they would become to one another.
He said nothing.
Thaddeus turned. “Come down when you’re ready. I must go to the village this morning. You’ll be alone.”
Isaiah nodded, and Thaddeus stepped out.
Only once the door clicked shut did Isaiah throw back the sheets, revealing the stiff curve of his arousal pressing hard against the thin linen of his nightclothes. His cock stood thick, flushed, twitching faintly with each pulse of blood.
He exhaled, shaky.
The dream’s heat lingered.
Downstairs, the priest was fastening his coat, broad hands adjusting the buttons with careful force. His frame was massive, almost too large for the coat’s stitching.
“I’ll be some time,” he said. “The supplies I ordered have arrived. Salt, oil, linens. Tools for the north wall.”
Isaiah hovered at the foot of the stairs, watching him. Something twisted in his gut. And then it struck him.
He had not seen a single villager inside the chapel.
Not once.
Not in passing, not in prayer.
No footsteps on the stone floor but their own.
No candles lit but Thaddeus’s hand.
No bodies in the pews.
The thought coiled cold and strange in the base of his spine.
“I want to come,” he said, voice firmer than expected.
Thaddeus’s brow furrowed. “To the village?”
“I’ve not met anyone since arriving.”
Thaddeus’s jaw tensed.
“I live here now,” Isaiah continued. “Shouldn’t I know the people?”
“You should not take what they say at face value,” Thaddeus warned. “They are… wary. Prone to fear..”
A long pause.
Then a slow nod.
“Very well.”
The walk to the village took ten minutes. The road narrowed beneath frost-covered birch trees, the air sharp with coming snow.
They walked in silence.
Only the crunch of boots and the rustle of wind.
“I saw the crucifix,” Thaddeus said at last.
Isaiah glanced up.
“You still keep it.”
Isaiah nodded. “Always.”
“Why?”
Isaiah shrugged, then murmured, “Because I believed there was something good in you once.”
Thaddeus did not answer.
They walked on.
After a stretch of silence, the priest spoke again, quieter this time. His pale eyes pinned Isaiah with quiet, unreadable intensity.
“You took my shirt.”
Isaiah stiffened. “I… it was stained. I meant to clean it.”
Thaddeus said nothing for a moment.
“You were in my room.”
Isaiah looked away. “I worry for you,” Isaiah said quickly. “You punish yourself. I can’t… watch you destroy yourself and do nothing.”
Thaddeus stopped walking, and Isaiah turned to face him.
“You shouldn’t be in my chambers.”
“Then keep your doors locked.”
Their eyes met.
For a moment, only breath between them.
“I didn’t mean harm,” Isaiah added, voice soft. “I wanted to help.”
Thaddeus looked at him. Hard. Searching.
“Why?” he asked.
Isaiah swallowed. “Because I see you.”
A silence followed, deep and full.
Thaddeus’s jaw shifted. “You see me,” he murmured, “but you will not follow the path of the Lord.”
Isaiah’s throat tightened. “The path you follow… leads to suffering.”
“I suffer so that others might be spared.”
Isaiah stepped closer, voice low. “And who suffers for you?”
That made something falter in Thaddeus’s gaze. The priest looked away, but not for long. He reached out, slowly, and touched Isaiah’s jaw. The callused pad of his thumb brushed just under his chin. A gentle, devastating contact.
“But you do not repent.”
Isaiah’s breath caught.
“You would pull me from the fire,” Thaddeus said, “only to burn with me.”
Thaddeus stepped closer. The space between them narrowed to nothing. His chest rose, slowly, deeply and restrained.
And then—
He stepped back.
The cold air rushed in between them like breath after drowning.
“Come, boy,” he said, voice returned to form. “We are nearly at the village.”
The village unfolded from the trees like a secret unwrapped too quickly—its crooked rooftops kissed by chimney smoke, its stone paths dappled with frost. Laughter drifted on the wind. A woman’s voice rang out near the well. Children dashed past bundled legs, cheeks flushed pink with cold.
It was alive.
Until they arrived.
As soon as Thaddeus and Isaiah crossed the boundary stone near the first cottage, the air seemed to shift.
The laughter stopped.
Voices fell to hush.
Smiles faded.
Eyes turned toward them. Quick glances. Lingering stares. A murmur behind a window shutter. The butcher’s boy, who had been chasing a hoop down the lane, let it roll from his fingers as he backed away.
Isaiah saw it all. The way the warmth drained from the villagers’ faces, how they turned from open-hearted to shuttered in a breath.
He stepped slightly behind Thaddeus without meaning to.
The priest said nothing.
He moved forward through the change in atmosphere with practiced indifference, like a storm parting reeds. The villagers made way. Not out of reverence.
Out of fear.
And perhaps something else.
Thaddeus went to the merchant’s stall with the deliberate calm of a man used to being watched.
Isaiah lingered at the edge of the square, eyes scanning faces. He turned toward a knot of villagers standing near a cart of boiled turnips. Three of them: two women and a man. They stood close together, speaking in hushed tones before they noticed him. The moment he approached, their voices ceased.
He offered a tentative smile. “Good morning.”
They nodded, cautiously. One woman gave a polite murmur. The man said nothing.
“I’ve just arrived in Black Hollow,” Isaiah said. “I’m staying at the rectory, with Father Vale.”
The name changed the air. The woman on the left crossed her arms. The man shifted his weight like a horse scenting thunder.
“I was hoping to ask you about the chapel,” Isaiah continued. “I’ve been there almost a week and haven’t seen anyone attend mass.”
The second woman, older and stiff-spined, narrowed her eyes. “We pray in our homes.”
“Why?” Isaiah asked.
“Because the chapel is his,” the man said flatly.
Isaiah blinked. “He’s a priest.”
“And priests are men,” the first woman added, “until they’re not.”
Isaiah frowned. “What does that mean?”
The man leaned forward just slightly. His teeth were stained. “It means there are things in that chapel that kneel for no God.”
Isaiah’s skin prickled.
“You speak like you fear him,” he said.
“We do not fear him,” the old woman said. “We fear what comes with him.”
They turned away.
Just like that. Conversation over.
Isaiah wandered through the square once more, the earlier conversation with the villagers pressing at the corners of his thoughts. His breath hung in the morning air, and the scent of firewood and cider clung to the breeze.
He felt eyes on him.
Across the way, near a cart of dyed wool and old iron tools, a young man leaned lazily against the low wall of the apothecary. His auburn hair caught the gray light, and his coat hung open to reveal a well-fitted shirt, slightly threadbare at the cuffs. He looked older than Isaiah, but not by much. Perhaps twenty-three. His face bore the kind of beauty that made one forget the cold: olive-toned skin, a sharp jaw softened by a quiet smile, and brown eyes that glinted beneath heavy lashes.
He was watching Isaiah.
When their eyes met, the man didn’t look away.
Isaiah blushed, immediately dropping his gaze, then, with a breath he hadn’t meant to hold, he dared glance back.
The man was still watching.
And smiling.
Isaiah’s feet moved before he gave them permission. He stepped toward him, cautious but drawn forward as if by thread.
“Hello,” he said, his voice gentler than intended. “I don’t think we’ve met.”
The man stood straighter, brushing his hands on his coat. “We haven’t. I would’ve remembered.”
Isaiah’s blush deepened.
“I’m Isaiah.”
“Alek,” the man replied, offering his hand. His grip was warm, confident, the kind that lingered. “You’re the priest’s son.”
Isaiah blinked. “You knew?”
“This is a small place. New faces don’t stay unnoticed.”
There was no judgment in his tone. Only something curious… maybe even kind.
“I haven’t seen you at the chapel,” Isaiah said.
Alek looked toward the chapel spire visible through the trees, then shrugged. “I haven’t been since I was a boy.”
“Why?”
Alek tilted his head. “Because I don’t believe the same things Father Vale does. And I don’t think I need a cold stone room to know right from wrong.”
Isaiah found himself smiling. “I don’t think I do either. I believe people should be free… not judged for who they are. What they feel.”
Alek’s eyes softened. “That’s not a sermon I’ve heard in this town before.”
“Maybe it should be.”
The silence between them felt... full. Not awkward. But aware.
Alek’s gaze drifted down Isaiah’s frame for just a moment before he looked back up.
“I like that coat,” he said.
Isaiah flushed. “Oh- thank you. It was my mother’s, actually.”
“It suits you,” Alek murmured. And then, as though the motion were natural, his hand lifted, gentle, hesitant, and brushed lightly against Isaiah’s side, just beneath the edge of his coat. The contact was brief but unmistakable.
Isaiah froze.
Not in fear.
In... longing.
The hand withdrew just as the voice came.
“Isaiah.”
The name struck the square like a bell.
Thaddeus stood several paces away, arms burdened with supplies he did not need help carrying. His grey eyes were fixed not on Isaiah, but on Alek’s hand.
“Come. Help me.”
Isaiah swallowed and stepped back, guilt blooming in his chest though he had done nothing.
Alek leaned in slightly before he left. His voice low, near his ear.
“Be careful with him,” he said. “The people here… we don’t fear God half as much as we fear the way your father speaks for Him.”
Isaiah turned, brows drawn. “What do you mean?”
Alek’s gaze flicked toward the chapel, then back.
“There’s something in him. Something cold. Like the faith got twisted up in his bones, turned rigid… cruel. It’s not holiness we feel when he walks by—it’s something else. Something darker.”
His hand brushed Isaiah’s coat again, just lightly. Then he stepped back, voice still soft:
“Just promise me you’ll remember what your own heart tells you. Not just his voice in your ear.”
"Come now, boy," Thaddeus growled, not waiting for Isaiah to catch up.
Isaiah hesitated, stealing one last glance over his shoulder. Alek still stood by the square’s edge, his eyes fixed on him with worry.
Isaiah gave a small wave.
Alek didn’t return it. Only watched.
The walk back to the rectory was steep and stifling. Mist had begun to rise from the earth again, curling low around the trees like smoke from some unseen pyre.
Thaddeus strode ahead at first, but slowed when the path narrowed, forcing them side by side.
"You’ve grown quiet," he said.
Isaiah shrugged. "Just tired."
"Of what?"
"That’s a longer answer than you’ll like."
Thaddeus grunted. The sound meant try me.
A long pause stretched between them, filled by the hush of wind through damp branches.
At last, Thaddeus asked, "Was your life better with your mother?"
Isaiah’s jaw tightened. "It was different. Quieter. She kept me busy. Taught me how to keep the house, how to read."
"And your companions? Did you keep the company of boys your age?"
Isaiah’s glance was sharp. "Not the kind you'd approve of."
Thaddeus stopped. Just for a moment. But his breath caught.
"You never took a wife?"
Isaiah smiled, bitter. "No."
"Do you intend to?"
He turned to face his father fully. "Not everyone is meant for marriage."
"Some are meant for ruin," Thaddeus said flatly. "Like that boy you were talking to."
Isaiah stopped walking. "Alek."
"Don’t speak his name."
"Why not?"
"He’s known in the village. He’s corrupt. Weak. His desires are unnatural."
Isaiah’s voice rose. "And what would you know of desire?"
Thaddeus turned, jaw tight. "Enough to know where it leads. To shame. To fire."
"The villagers said things about you," Isaiah pressed, stepping forward. "They said you lost your way. That your prayers are for show. That your God is silent because you serve something else."
Thaddeus stepped close. Their chests nearly touched. "Be careful, Isaiah."
Isaiah held his ground. "Why do they say those things, Father? What did you do?"
"I have spent every year resisting," Thaddeus snarled. "While the village festers with rot. That boy you fawned over. He is a sodomite."
"So what if he is?" Isaiah snapped. "Is that enough to cast a man aside? To hate him?"
"You defend him too quickly. Are you the same? Are you a homosexual too, Isaiah?"
The word struck the air like a lash.
Isaiah’s throat went dry.
"You should be honest," Thaddeus pressed. "Do you feel the same filth in your blood that he does?"
Isaiah’s lips parted, but he said nothing. His silence was answer enough. Thaddeus’s jaw clenched. His breath came hard through his nose.
"You are mine," he hissed. "Mine to protect. Mine to discipline."
The word mine echoed in the air, dense with heat. Isaiah’s eyes searched his. "And what does that mean, Father? What do you want to do to me so badly you shake with it?" They stood in the shadow of the trees now. Fog curling around their legs. No more path, only loam and silence. Thaddeus moved first. He gripped Isaiah’s collar. Not to choke, not to strike. To drag him forward.
Their mouths collided. No grace. No preparation. Just fire.
Isaiah moaned into it. Thaddeus’s hand gripped the back of his neck, the other already pawing at his coat. He yanked it down, shoved it off his shoulders.
"You feel guilt?" Thaddeus whispered against his mouth.
"Yes," Isaiah gasped.
Thaddeus’s hand slipped to his chest, undoing buttons, exposing skin. "But you do not repent."
"No."
Their eyes met. And then Isaiah was shoved hard against a tree.
Hands. Mouth. Teeth. Cloth torn in haste.
Thaddeus sank to his knees, biting at Isaiah’s hip, his thighs. He mouthed over the boy’s cock through the thin cloth, then pulled it free. It was hard, flushed, weeping.
"You’re wicked," the priest whispered.
Isaiah’s fingers clawed his shoulders. "So make me holy."
Thaddeus devoured him.
He held Isaiah’s hips firm with both hands, arms thick as stone columns, and dragged his tongue slow along the length of him, savoring the taste like sacrament. The younger man bucked, cried out. The sound was swallowed by the trees, buried in the fog. Thaddeus pulled back. His stubble scraped along Isaiah's skin.
"You smell like temptation."
"And you smell like fire," Isaiah whispered.
With a grunt, Thaddeus rose, towering over him. The bulk of his body pressed close. His shirt half-open, chest heaving. Wide shoulders framed the younger man like a wall. He turned Isaiah to the tree, lifted his leg, exposed him.
"Do you know why you tempt me?" he growled, cock pressed thick against Isaiah’s cleft, teasing.
Isaiah nodded, shivering. "Because you want to be tempted."
Thaddeus’s breath was ragged, nostrils flaring, chest rising and falling with each strained inhale. The cold did not seem to touch him. Sweat still clung to his skin in a sheen that caught the fog-filtered light. His body towered above Isaiah, broad and monstrous with restraint, his shirt half undone, soaked through in parts, revealing the thatch of dark hair across his chest that trailed downward to his stomach in a thick line.
Each muscle was carved, brutal in shape and function. His shoulders were massive, deltoids straining with power beneath the soaked linen. His arms, thick and veined, held the weight of years of penance and labor, every movement slow and deliberate, as if reining in a force that might crack the world if unleashed. His forearms flexed as he gripped Isaiah’s wrists, not cruelly, but with ownership. The hair on his arms was dark, curling slightly, wet with mist and sweat. The scent of him, arth, fire, and musk, rolled off his skin in waves.
And below, pressed firm against the wool of his trousers, was the unmistakable outline of his cock. Long, thick, and obscenely hard. It strained against the fabric like a beast caged. Even before Isaiah looked directly, he felt it: the heat, the throb, the weight of it grazing his thigh as Thaddeus pinned him against the tree. When he dared glance down, his breath caught.
It was monstrous.
A heavy bulge that curved slightly to the left, the shape clear even beneath the coarse black cloth. The girth alone made Isaiah’s stomach tighten. A thickness that could not be grasped with one hand. The head was broad, blunt, crowned and pulsing, outlined with maddening clarity as Thaddeus’s hips pressed flush to his own.
Thaddeus growled low in his throat, a sound more beast than man. He pressed harder, grinding the length of his cock against Isaiah’s belly through their clothes. “Do you feel that?” he whispered, voice trembling with fury and hunger. “You did this to me.”
Isaiah’s lips parted. His hands braced against Thaddeus’s chest, fingers splayed across the sweat-slick, furred skin. The priest's pecs were massive like iron under flesh, each one twitching under his palms. His chest hair was dense, soft in parts, coarse in others, tapering toward his navel where it thickened and disappeared beneath his waistband.
“Say it,” Thaddeus snarled, pinning Isaiah’s wrists above his head with one hand. “Say you want it.”
Isaiah gasped, head tilted back against the bark, lips parted. The mist around them thickened, heat from their bodies rising into it like smoke.
“I want it,” he breathed. “I want you.”
Thaddeus moved fast. Too fast. He lifted Isaiah bodily, pressing him against the tree, letting the weight of his own bulk pin the boy in place. Isaiah’s legs wrapped around him instinctively, his own cock hard and leaking through the thin fabric of his trousers.
The priest’s hand fumbled at his belt, then tore the front of his trousers open. His cock sprang free. It jutted upward with an impossible weight, veins curling along its length like chains. The foreskin clung to the crown just slightly, wet with precome, the slit already beading. It throbbed in time with his heartbeat.
Isaiah moaned.
Thaddeus didn’t enter him yet. He pressed that monstrous shaft against Isaiah’s belly, dragging the heat and hardness of it up the boy’s trembling abdomen, smearing his skin with the slick wetness at the head. “You don’t know what you ask for,” he growled. “You don’t know what I am.”
Isaiah whimpered. “Then show me.”
The world had narrowed to sweat and heat and sin. To the weight of a priest’s cock dragging along a boy’s bare stomach. To the tremble in Isaiah’s thighs. To the breath they shared.
To the moment before flesh yielded to flesh.
Thaddeus entered him slowly yet relentlessly.
Isaiah arched back, gasping, the stretch tearing a moan from his throat.
The priest fucked him against the tree, both hands gripping his hips like they were handles on salvation. His thighs slammed against Isaiah's, his rhythm violent, devout.
Isaiah clung to bark and breath. "Harder," he whispered. "Don’t stop."
"You were made for sin," Thaddeus breathed into his ear. "And I was made to burn with you."
Their bodies moved like liturgy. Like ritual. Not gentle. Not cruel. Necessary. When it ended, they were both shaking. Cum slick between them. Sweat cooling in the fog. Thaddeus collapsed beside him, panting. Isaiah blinked, his eyes still unfocused.
They collapsed into the soft moss, their bodies drenched in sweat and spent desire. Thaddeus held Isaiah against him, chest rising and falling in ragged gasps, his great arms wrapped tightly around the boy’s slender frame. Steam rose from their bodies where the heat met the cool forest air. The fog clung to them like breath, thick and curling.
Isaiah’s limbs trembled with exhaustion. His breath slowed. His mind flickered on the edge of sleep. He felt safe, or something like it, held in the arms of the man who had just taken him apart and pieced him back together with heat and shame and something dangerously close to love.
But just as his eyes began to close, something stirred.
The fog shifted.
Through the silver veil, Isaiah saw it. His vision was blurry, but there was no mistaking it. A figure. A shadow moving just beyond the trees.
Its shape was all wrong. Too tall. Too big. Horns curled from its head. Vast wings arched behind it, dragging the mist in currents.
Isaiah’s heart thudded once. He blinked.
The thing stepped closer.
Its face was a blur, but the feeling was the same as in the dream.
Isaiah tried to sit up, but his body would not obey. His vision swam. The fog thickened.
The last thing he saw was the outline of its hand reaching toward him, long fingers stretched in greeting or claim.
Then darkness took him.
To be continued…
