“Like is not the word, chérie,” he whispered against her lips.

“We can’t ever tell him we did this,” she said.

Kingsley smiled. “Our little secret.”

Laughing softly she started to move again on him, riding him hard, chasing her own orgasm. She dug her fingernails into his chest, hard...harder...they broke the skin and kept breaking. Kingsley was brutally hard again inside her and when she came again, he came, too.

And when he came again inside her, Elle woke up.

* * *

She lay on her stomach on her bed at the abbey. Her hips pushed down and into the bed and her vagina clenched emptiness. When her orgasm faded out, she groaned into her pillow, rolled onto her back and stared up at the ceiling.

Another dream. She was losing her goddamn mind here.

Elle crawled out of her bed and pulled on her black silk pajama pants and camisole, and a black sweater. She shoved her feet into shoes, and she left her room and her burning bed behind.

Even now, almost eight months after leaving Søren, she still feared the front door that led to the outside world. Instead, she went out the back door into the garden and found a path to follow. It was brisk out on this spring night, and the air cooled her skin.

At the center of the garden stood a statue of the Virgin Mary, solid white stone and life-size, her belly rounded with the unborn Christ inside her. A full moon gave her enough light to see Mary’s face. She looked so peaceful, so calm and serene. Elle had trouble believing a fourteen-year-old girl who got pregnant by God would be that relaxed about the situation.

“Can I tell you a secret?” Kyrie asked from behind Elle.

“Are you following me?”

“Yes. But only because I couldn’t sleep. That’s my window.” Kyrie pointed to the nearest window looking out onto the garden.

“It’s okay. I don’t mind the company. What’s your secret?”

“When I was twelve, I had the biggest crush on the Virgin Mary. Is that weird?”

Elle turned and found Kyrie standing in her white bathrobe and white veil behind her.

“Not really. She’s beautiful. At least in all the paintings and statues she is.”

“I like that she submitted to God. I always thought that was sexy what she said to God when He told her she would get pregnant with His child—‘Behold the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done unto me according to Your word.’”

Let it be done unto me... Elle had said similar words so many times in her life to Søren. I am yours, do what you want to do with me. Whatever you want with my body, you can do it...

“When I was fourteen, I wanted her life,” Kyrie said. “I like to think Mary was a lesbian. I mean, it’s the perfect situation for a closeted lesbian.”

Elle laughed. “It is?”

“Well, of course. She can’t come out to her family so the best way to pretend to be straight is by getting married. But she gets pregnant with God’s child through the Holy Spirit. And then she’s a perpetual virgin. Never has to have sex with her husband and yet he protects her and provides for her.”

“Sounds like you,” Elle said.

“Me?”

“Can’t come out to your Catholic family. Married to a man you’ll never have sex with. That’s what they call you all, right? Brides of Christ?”

Kyrie held up her left hand. She wore a wedding band on her ring finger.

“That’s us.”

“A warning, don’t tell anyone but me your theory about Mary being a lesbian,” Elle said. “Lots of people don’t handle erotic speculation about Mary and Jesus very well.”

“I’m not saying she was. Just my theory,” Kyrie said.

“Søren had a theory like that, too,” Elle said.

“Søren? Is that his name?”

Elle nodded. She hadn’t spoken his name aloud in months.

“One of his names,” she said. “He’s half-Danish.”

“What was his theory?”

“When Søren was in seminary, he wrote a paper positing that Jesus had been married and was widowed. Only explanation for why this thirty-something Jewish man would be unmarried, and no one would remark on it. Married young. Wife probably died in childbirth or for a thousand other reasons people died back then. Søren’s professor called him a heretic. He was proud of that label. Then again, he’s a Jesuit.”

“This is the first time you’ve ever smiled while talking about him.”

“I think this is the first time I’ve really talked about him in months,” Elle said. “Telling a nun you used to sleep with a priest doesn’t go over well.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry for the way I reacted,” Kyrie said. “That was...not cool of me.”

“You’re a nun and a virgin. I’d be surprised if you weren’t a little disgusted with me.”

“Reflex,” Kyrie said. “Priest seduces a girl in his church. Hard not to flinch.”

“It sounds sordid when you put it that way. It wasn’t like that.”

“Yes, but how am I supposed to know what it was like if you won’t tell me anything?”

Elle shrugged. “Good point.”

“I guess you couldn’t sleep, either.” Kyrie came to stand beside her.

“I was sleeping. I had a dream. It woke me up.”

“Nightmare.”

“Opposite of a nightmare.”