Chapter 3: Set Up
The week
A week passed in a blur of furtive glances and sweat-dampened shame, the memory of Renate’s flat warning about seed and root poisoning every daylight hour between them. The humid air broke in a sudden summer storm, and Karl, driven by a hunger that eclipsed his fear, found her cleaning the sacristy brass. “The old shepherd’s barn,” he whispered, the words too loud in the empty chapel, “by the western wall. It’s empty.” Renate didn’t look up, her polishing rag moving in slow, deliberate circles over the chalice. Her knuckles were white. “After compline,” she said, her voice a low scrape that sent a jolt straight to his groin.
The barn was a skeleton of rotten timbers and thick, dusty air, but its isolation was a potent drug. Renate pushed him against a rough stall partition the moment the door closed behind them, her mouth hungry and devoid of its usual bitter restraint. “I want to see you,” she growled against his lips, her hands yanking at his laces with a new, terrifying confidence. He fumbled with the knots of her rope belt, his fingers clumsy until she batted them away and undid it herself, shoving her rough wool habit down over her shoulders until it pooled at her feet. She stood there, naked and stout in the slanted grey light from a high window, her large breasts pale and heavy, her nipples dark and hard. “Look,” she commanded, her voice shaking not with shame now, but with a raw, defiant power.
He was on his knees before her, his mouth closing over one nipple, sucking it deep as his hands gripped the thick swell of her hips. She moaned, a long, shuddering sound that echoed in the hollow space, and her fingers twisted in his hair, pressing his face harder into her flesh. “The other one,” she gasped, and he obeyed, his tongue circling the peaked bud until she was panting. “Now,” she urged, pulling him up, turning herself around to brace her hands against the splintering wood of the stall. “Fuck me from behind,” she said, the filthy words hanging in the dusty air, and she arched her back, presenting herself to him.
He entered her in one smooth, deep stroke, her body slick and ready, and she cried out, a sharp, animal sound of pure gratification. The new angle drove him deeper than ever before, and she pushed back against him with each thrust, meeting his rhythm with a desperate, driving force of her own. “Yes, you little bastard, right there,” she grunted, the wood creaking under her grip, her sturdy body jolting forward with each powerful slam of his hips. The air filled with the sound of skin slapping against skin, her choked pleas, and his own ragged breath. He watched, mesmerized, as her breasts swayed heavily with their movement, and the sight, the feel, the complete abandon of it shattered his control.
“I’m going to–” he managed to choke out, but she cut him off. “Pull out,” she ordered, her voice taut with a furious mix of pleasure and self-preservation. He tried, his muscles screaming in protest as he wrenched himself from the clutching heat of her, spilling his seed onto the packed earth floor in thick, pulsing ropes that glistened in the dim light. She stayed bent over, shuddering, her own release washing over her in violent waves that made her knees buckle. They collapsed together onto a pile of old, musty straw, their sweat making the chaff stick to their skin. For a long moment, there was only the sound of their breathing and the drumming of the rain on the distant roof.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of their breathing and the drumming of the rain on the distant roof. A faint, rotten-sweet smell of old hay and wet wool filled the space between them. Renate finally sat up, straw clinging to the sweat on her broad back, and looked at the mess he’d made on the ground.
“You learned,” she said flatly, her voice stripped of the passion she’d just shown.
A deep weariness settled in her eyes, and she lay back in the straw, staring at the cobwebbed rafters. His seed cooled quickly on the ground beside them. The moon, a bone-white sliver through a broken shingle, watched their stillness.
“It doesn’t feel like learning,” he finally mumbled, picking straw from her hip. She said nothing, just reached over and guided his hand between her legs. Her skin there was still fever-hot and slippery. “It feels like stealing.”
“We are,” she said, and her fingers pressed his own deeper into her wetness, showing him a slow, circular motion. Her breath hitched. “Now, steal this.” He followed her lead, his touch hesitant at first, then gaining confidence as her thighs tensed and a low, continuous moan vibrated in her chest. He watched her face in the pale light, the grim lines softening into something unfocused and slack. Her back arched off the ground, a tremor seizing her, and she came against his fingers with a sharp, bitten-off cry that sounded almost like grief.
After, they lay naked in the dust, the chill finally reaching them. She rolled onto her side towards him. He touched her cheek, where a tear had tracked through the grime. She flinched, then grabbed his wrist. This time she didn't pull him into her breasts. She put his hand over her own throat, his fingers resting on her frantic pulse. "Can you feel it?" she whispered. Her voice was raw. She offered his other hand one of her heavy breasts."And this? Do you feel any of it?" Her stare in the moonlight was a challenge. "Or am I just a hole you're afraid of filling?"
His hand trembled against her throat. “No.” The word was a breath, almost lost in the damp barn air. He swallowed, his thumb stroking the frantic beat under her skin. “It’s not that.” He looked at her face, really looked, seeing the dull plainness worn smooth by years of silence, and the fierce, terrible want beneath it. “I think about your mouth,” he whispered, his voice cracking. “I dream about the weight of you on top of me.”
She went very still, her breath catching. The challenge in her eyes flickered, drowned in a sudden, vulnerable confusion. No one had ever wanted her, not like this.
He leaned in, his lips brushing hers with a softness that was entirely new. It was not a kiss of hunger, but of confession. She froze, then yielded, her mouth opening under his with a small, broken sound. He kissed her slowly, tasting salt and straw and her, his hands moving to cradle her face. She shuddered, a single tear escaping her closed lids.
“Show me,” she breathed against his lips, her earlier defiance gone. He gently guided her onto her back in the straw, his movements hesitantly tender. He entered her again, but this time with a slow, aching push, his eyes locked on hers. She wrapped her legs around him, not to force him deeper, but to hold him close.
Their rhythm was a quiet, rocking motion, a shared breath. He watched every flicker of feeling on her face, each soft gasp, and kissed her when she trembled. She buried her face in his neck, her earlier profanities replaced by ragged, whispered sighs. The passion was a timid, glowing thing, fragile in the dusty dark, and it built between them not as a fire, but as a rising tide.
When her climax came, it washed over her in a deep, quiet wave, her body clenching around him in soft, rhythmic pulses. He followed, spilling inside her with a choked gasp, their joined trembling the only sound in the vast, quiet dark. He did not pull out.