I watched her today. From the pulpit, I spoke. I feigned that my gaze was upward, and none could see it wandering down, down, ever downward to her. If any noticed the flush of my cheek or quickness of breath, it could be pawned off as fervor for the topic at hand, but it is in response to her, and her alone. In response to the sight of her sooty lashes resting on her cheek- she does not slumber, I know, merely listens more intently with no vision to interfere with the hearing. My words are all that are allowed to touch her.
But at night… in the sparseness of my chamber, her wraith sends forth and that I may touch. This wraith, this spirit, this vision and visitation receives my caresses. The translucent lips which are not there part and utter groans of desire, echoing my own. Her neck slips back as my lips close over her flesh. Her fingers wend into my hair and hold on, afraid of slipping down into a doom and a grand pleasure, all the same.
I know the curve of her lips when she gasps with pleasure. I know that she closes her eyes to center her mind more fully on the task at hand, because I have seen her do so in response to my ministrations. Not those of the soul, or spirit- those of the flesh. I have felt her flesh melt beneath me, seen her rise above me, part angel, part confessor, part succubus. I have felt her fingers slip between my lips as she would ride, harder, higher, seeking more at every breath.
She has seen me bow my head, not in prayer as we know it, but in worship to her center. To the part of her none else has seen, not even her husband. I have whispered prayers of gratitude and praise to the folds of pale pink flesh, and been filled with the spirit of her Power and Grace.
The sin was not that I lay with a woman who was wed to another- whether or not the man was alive or dead, whether he remains so on this day. The sin committed by me was the eager replacement of my Father God for my Mother Goddess, and she in the form of Hester Prynne.
And so, I live now, in the moments she comes to me. I feign repentance for her eyes, but in my heart I know she has set me Free, shown me Truth, and sewn my Destruction. For this, I say daily thanks.