Incense hung heavy and low in the nave of St. Irenaeus, a suffocating blanket of beeswax and myrrh meant to lift the prayers of the faithful to heaven. To Father Aaron, it currently felt like the thick, stifling air of a tomb. He stood at the ambo, his hands gripping the polished oak of the pulpit until his knuckles turned the color of old parchment, the gold embroidery of his chasuble weighing heavily on his shoulders.

He was halfway through the homily, discussing the virtue of fortitude against the “wiles of the devil,” a topic that was far too ironic for his tastes. He could feel the shift in the atmosphere before the physical sensation hit—a sudden drop in temperature that raised goosebumps along his forearms. Then, the smell. Not the holy smoke of the thurible, but something sulfurous, distinct, and intimately familiar curling around the edges of his senses.

Not now, you evil creature. Not here, he prayed, his heart hammering wildly, like prey under the eyes of a predator. He swallowed hard, trying to wet a throat that felt sandpaper-dry.

“The enemy,” Aaron continued, his voice resonant and steady to the congregation, though a slight tremor vibrated through the microphone, “is a prowling lion, seeking someone to devour. But we must be—“

He choked, the words dying in a sharp inhale as he felt it—an invisible, frigid pressure sliding up the back of his leg beneath the heavy hem of his cassock. It wasn't a hand, not exactly, but it had the distinct, deliberate grip of one. It bypassed through the fabric of his trousers, ghosting over the sensitive skin of his inner thigh with a possessiveness that made his knees give slightly.

He gripped the pulpit harder, his knuckles white, staring blindly at the rows of pews. One of the women in the front row looked up at him with concern, and he just gave her a small, polite smile. Hopefully the congregation would think he is merely coming down with a cold, not being actively violated.

“We must be... sober-minded. Vigilant.”

The touch moved higher, cupping him through the black wool of his trousers. It was a shock of sensation that seared his nerves, impossible and undeniable. His body, starved and traitorous, reacted instantly. His cock twitched in his underwear, a rush of blood filling him that made him dizzy with shame. He was getting hard in front of two hundred parishioners, and before the statue of the crucified Christ watching from the altar.

Sancte Michael Archangele, defende nos... The prayer was a frantic, silent scream in his mind, but the invocation felt weak, dissolving easily as the invisible fingers tightened around his shaft, squeezing him through the layers of his vestments.

The sensation was maddeningly vivid. He could feel the phantom weight of a body pressing against his back, warm breath ghosting over the sensitive shell of his ear, though the air around him was empty. The friction of the wool against the sensitive head of his cock was agonizingly intense; he was so unused to this, so untouched, that even the rough fabric felt like a gentle caress.

“And-... and put on the whole armor of God,” Aaron stammered, sweating beading on his upper lip. His face was flushing a deep, humiliating crimson, the heat flashing down his neck to disappear beneath his collar. He felt the wetness of precum leaking from the tip, soaking into his boxers, making the fabric cling damply to him. “That you may be able to stand against the-... the schemes of the devil.”

The all-to-familiar entity squeezed his cock again, a slow, deliberate pump that mimicked the act of sex. Aaron bit the inside of his cheek to stifle a groan, the metallic tang of blood filling his mouth. He didn't stop them, he couldn't stop them mid-sermon. He, by the grace of God—ironic, was able to keep himself standing still even though everything within him wanted to buck his hips into the touch.

He looked down at the lectionary, the Latin blurring into nonsense. Domine, non sum dignus. He wasn't worthy. He was a filthy thing, leaking in his trousers like a dog in heat while preaching the Lord's word.

“Turn with me,” he rasped, his voice breathless and thin, “to the book of Ephesians.” He needed them to look away, to look at their Bibles, so he could close his eyes for just a second and pretend the tears gathering in the corners of his eyes were from the intensity of his faith and not the overwhelming, terrifying pleasure of being violated by a demon in the house of God.

The rectory bedroom was freezing, but that didn’t stop the priest within from sweating into the bedsheets.

Aaron's arms ached. His wrists were bound apart, each secured to a bedpost with his vestment cording, gold embroidery thread twisted impossibly tight, the fabric biting into his skin. He'd tested the bonds: for the first hour, he'd pulled until his shoulders screamed and his heels dug gouges into the mattress, reciting every exorcism rite he could recall until his voice cracked.

Now he lay still, chest heaving, garments rucked up around his ribs in sweaty folds. His undershirt had been pushed beneath his armpits as well, exposing the pale plane of his stomach, the faint trail of dark hair below his navel, the visible hitch of each labored breath.

... And lower was where the rosary had been repurposed. His rosary. The one given to him before his ordination, worn smooth by decades of daily handling. Wooden beads and a crucifix, blessed by the Bishop himself, the object he reached for first every morning and last every night.

It circled the base of his cock and wrapped beneath his balls, pulled taut enough that the beads dug distinct crescents into the flushed skin, like a sacrilegious cockring. The small crucifix hung against his inner thigh, its metal edge catching on skin with every minute shift of his hips.

His erection strained against the restriction, swollen and leaking at the tip, the head flushed an angry purple-red with denial. Precum slid in a thin thread down his length and across his stomach, catching in the hair below his navel.

He couldn't stop looking at it—at himself like this.

"I'm a priest." It came out barely above a whisper. He wasn't sure who he was trying to convince. "I am a priest of the Lord, and you will—you will untie me, and you will remove that, and you will leave this house, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the—"

His voice broke, crumbling. He turned his face away, pressing his cheek into the pillow, jaw tight, eyes squeezing shut to try and block out the sensation as his lips moved silently through the rest of the prayer... but no sound came out.

The rectory was quiet: no traffic, no wind, just his shallow breathing and the faint creak of the cincture's knot as he pulled at it again.

Aaron lay there, chest heaving, arms stretched above him, his rosary wrapped around the part of him no one had ever touched, and waited for whatever they were going to do with the sick, sinking knowledge that no one was coming to check on him. No one ever came to the rectory this late.

"...What do you want, demon." Not a demand. It was barely even a question.

“—because it’s not about the lilies, Father. It’s about respect. And Rosa knows perfectly well that we’ve always used white carnations for the Easter altar, but she insists on making everything about herself, and I told Carmine—”

Eleven minutes. Mrs. Catalano had been confessing for eleven minutes, and Father Aaron Venuto was beginning to suspect that the Lord Himself had abandoned him.

Not a single one of her grievances was something that couldn’t have been resolved over coffee.

Aaron sat with his breviary resting against one knee, thumb worrying the worn leather of its spine. His expression remained appropriately solemn, though the privacy of the confessional mercifully concealed it. Twenty-odd years in the priesthood had taught him many things, chief among them that patience was a virtue best practiced without an audience.

“Jealousy is a common temptation, Mrs. Catalano,” he offered gently, seizing upon the first available pause, “What matters is whether we allow such feelings to govern our treatment of others.”

“Well, that’s exactly what I told Carmine, Father, but his sister—”

Of course.

Aaron closed his eyes briefly.

And that’s when he felt something change.

Not the light, nor the sound. Mrs. Catalano continued her uninterrupted prosecution of Rosa Catalano’s character, blissfully unaware that the atmosphere inside the little wooden compartment had grown strangely oppressive.

It was the pressure Aaron noticed first. A peculiar heaviness, as though the church itself had drawn a breath and neglected to release it.

Beneath the familiar frankincense and old paper, the bitter sweetness of something ancient, something that had no business existing beneath consecrated ground appeared.

Aaron’s thumb went still against the breviary.

He knew that presence... far too well.

Oh, Mother Maria, please no.

“—and naturally, I says to her, I says Rosa, honey, if you wanted to arrange the flowers, you shoulda volunteered in February—”

A faint stirring began below the kneeler on his side of the booth—hands that materialized from shadow, solid enough to feel, solid enough to make his breath catch violently as they found the hem of his cassock and pulled upward in one smooth motion.

His hands dropped to grip the wooden seat, knuckles whitening instantly. Cool air hit his thighs. Those hands—their hands—slid up the inside of his leg with deliberate slowness, and Aaron felt his thigh muscle jump beneath the touch, an involuntary twitch he couldn't suppress as he watched the rest of their infernal body materialize, kneeling between his legs.

Aaron stopped breathing.

Not here. Of all the places. Of all the hours. Not while Mrs. Catalano is discussing the blasted Easter lilies.

Aaron's throat worked around nothing. He had to speak. Had to maintain the rhythm of the confession, had to keep his voice steady, had to—

Their hands found the plain cotton of his undergarments. Found the flesh beneath that had never, in forty-eight years, been touched by anyone but himself. His cock was already half-hard from proximity alone, from the sheer alien reality of contact from them, and when they freed it from the fabric it sprang forth obscenely into the close dark air of the booth. The thick vein along the underside pulsed visibly, a steady heartbeat he could feel in his teeth. The head was blunt and flushed darker than the shaft, already gleaming at the tip with a beginning bead of precum that welled up against the slit.

“—Father? Did you hear what I said?”

His glasses had slipped down his nose. He pushed them up with a hand that trembled. He cleared his throat, forced his voice lower. “Yes. Yes, Mrs. Catalano. I am simply listening.”

Don't look down. Don't react. Don't—

He could feel the grin on {{user}}’s face as they leaned in towards his cock, and he refused to acknowledge them and give them the satisfaction.

.