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“Say it.”
It’s intoxicating, the heavy smell of varnish and wood, sawdust and dead things, creationism made beautiful and pied beneath the holy glow of stained glass windows and the flickering tangerine lights of half-melted candles, a twinkling unity of shadow and dwindling flame, of fire.
“Hn–”
Of damnation.
“Say it, mi ángel.”
He used to think that he wanted to be good. Or wise, maybe, on the days when his heart failed him, succumbing to the predilections of mortality and iniquity, as humans are wont to do.
“Fuck y-you–”
It’s terrible, Antonio thinks, this desire to love.
To love or to be loved, perhaps, he doesn’t know. But he does know touch, know taste, was baptized into a new life by sanctimonious hands that bestowed purity, proffered virtuosity, that dripped water made clean to wash away his sins and birth him anew in the golden light of God, a sinner made sacred within holy walls and the heady glow of colored glass backlit by the miracle of morning sun and the blessed promise of a new dawn, a new day.
“What was that, ángel?”
He was meant to be righteous, pure, the voice of God within priests’ robes, honorable by nature and impeccant by choice, encumbered by sin but stronger, stronger than the call of it, the sweet song of it, the decadence inherent to it.
“Y-You–”
He was also, Antonio knows, meant for this, too—meant to push into this body, feel the warmth of it, the softness of it, meant to trace twitching wings with the blunt of his nail and kiss the sweat from maroon-stained collarbones, littered with the markings of humanity’s hand, of his hand, of lips that were destined to preach devotion and reverence now used to sully and stain that which is hallowed, is good, is pure.
The angel beneath him writhes, back arching against the floor of the basilica as his chest hitches with a sharp intake of air, lungs warmed with the thick weight of humidity and the breath Antonio hums against his lips, chasing the way his name falls from the mouth of the divine, a creature of holiness, born from Heaven and sent to Earth to protect, to bless.
It’s only right, Antonio thinks, that this miracle be worshipped properly.
He crooks his finger, watching with starry-eyed fascination as the being beneath him gasps, hazel eyes clenching shut as a tremble skates across his wings, vast and downy against the colored floor of the cathedral—too perfect, Antonio muses, to be seen by anything other than the flawless, glorious eyes of God.
God and himself.
It’s only right.
Antonio’s grin sharpens when he presses a second finger into the body laid out below him, watching wondrously as it welcomes him, opens for him, as it always does, back curving and chest stuttering at a mortal's touch, at his touch, and it’s high enough of an honor that Antonio feels cowed by it, humbled by it, made supplicant and reverent at the feeling of warm skin beneath his hands, unmarred and unscarred, inhuman in its faultlessness.
“Eres perfecto,” he whispers, voice lost and worthless beneath the echo of an angel’s unearthly moans reverberating across the basilica, the most beautiful choir Antonio has ever heard, performed and made wanton by his hand, a hand sullied by sin and tainted by avarice, by humanity’s need to covet, to possess, to claim.
Surely, he thinks, he can’t be blamed for bowing at an altar made too perfect to neglect, for falling for eyes that shine too brightly to be compared to anything but the wide-ranging cosmos, for lips that curve around the words of his Spanish too beautifully, fluent in sounds and tongues Antonio could never dare to comprehend. To remain abstinent in the face of heavenly excellence would be an insult to God, and Antonio desperately wants to be a pious man, God-fearing and reverential of the power he has always known existed.
“A–Anto–!”
Three fingers, slow circles, and Antonio doesn’t dare blink as the being gasps beneath him, wings fluttering dully against the floor, plush feathers catching on uneven floorboards and decorated tile. He can feel the press of irrevocable softness tickling his calf, skin adorned with fallen feathers and the holy glow that comes from being in the presence of something so divine, so lovely, spread out and beautiful around his fingers.
The angel’s lips fall open, mouthing the syllables of Antonio’s name, voice catching halfway through as his fingers fist the dark of Antonio’s robes, and Antonio can only feel blessed as this creature comes from his fingers alone, skin flushed the color of sangria where Antonio marked him, bit him—a pauper’s attempt to claim that which cannot be tainted, a being free from humanity’s bondage, but who still allows Antonio to press his teeth to the base of his throat, nipping bruises across celestial collarbones and shoulders that were made to carry the burdens of the frail, that now carry lavish praise and all the reverence Antonio can find it within himself to give.
How wondrous you are, mi ángel, Antonio thinks, and he presses his fingers deeper, allows them to keep moving in slow, measured circles, drunk and dizzy on every whine and whimper that leaves heavenly lungs, drinking each reverberating noise as if it was ambrosia, as if it was wine, born from the body of Christ Himself and spilled into the cup of Antonio’s hand, the most beautiful sacrament to have ever been bestowed.
“Too much, it’s too much,” the angel groans, voice echoing within empty basilica walls as his wings bat against the floor in a flurry of hypersensitive agitation. “Anton–ah, you fu– Hm!”
Antonio grins as he runs delicate fingers across the base of one of those vast wings, nails scratching lightly at delicate skin, massaging every inch that causes the angel to gasp, to whine, to breathe life to Antonio’s name, reverential lips forming the shape of Antonio’s soul in all the ways he never deemed himself worthy, the sweetest mercy humanity could possibly be gifted, hand-delivered to him by God’s own creation.
Mine, he wants to say, mine. To hold, to touch, to pleasure and to praise, to devour. Mine.
He’s on his back in an instant, elbow throbbing with the force used to catch himself, to stop his head from cracking into the pews behind him. He hears a breathless scoff, airy and wheezed despite its irritability, and his eyes flick up to catch a vision pulled directly from the colored windows that adorn the walls that hold him, that cradle him, that give him new life, new purpose, a sight written from biblical stories and dropped onto his lap in what surely must be a mirage, a hallucination, some otherworldly phantom destined to exist beyond the realm of Antonio’s comprehension.
Golden hazel eyes burn their way across Antonio’s skin, flitting from his hair to his robes to his hands, and Antonio only just restrains himself from reaching up and touching, from running his fingers back over wings that span almost the entire length of the transept, that catch the radiance of the stained glass windows around them and gleam beneath their colors, a cascade of dusk-illuminated refulgence and splendor.
The angel steps toward him, bending low so his finger can hook around the clerical collar at Antonio’s throat. “Don’t think so highly of yourself, Father,” he says, rolling voice like a reverberating chorus in the space of the empty nave. With a swift flick of his hand, the angel pulls the tab from Antonio’s shirt and holds it between deft, immaculate fingers. “A man of the cloth who so readily gives into temptation.” The angel scoffs, dropping the collar to his feet and kicking it away. “How pathetically Pharisaical.”
And yet you keep coming back to me, he thinks, pulse roaring in his ears when his eyes catch the fading flush on celestial cheeks, the barely-concealed hitch in supernal breath. Antonio holds his tongue, feels the burn of each movement in the blood that sings through his veins; his heartbeat is so loud he wonders if the being in front of him can hear it, can feel it, intrinsically tied together in the way only the devout and the divine could be.
The angel raises an eyebrow, soft bangs falling over his forehead in delicate waves, catching on his eyelashes as he scrutinizes Antonio, kneeling over him to grasp at his chin.“And are you?” he asks. “Devout?”
Antonio smiles, teeth delicately scraping the thumb that traces the curve of his lip. “Let me show you how devout I can be.”
Let me remind you what my hands feel like when they worship. That’s why you return to me, isn’t it, mi bendición?
From the corner of his eye, Antonio can see the fluttering of feathers and the twitching of restless wings, a white darkened like amber beneath melting candles and the faintest rays of setting light. His skin is warm where it presses against Antonio’s mouth, and Antonio wants to taste him, wants to feel him, wants to imprint his name into the swell of those thighs and show this being the blessed joys of mortality, the decadence of baseless sin, the faith of a soul that would give itself to the hottest of Hells if only to hear angelic lips sigh his name in full.
The grip on his chin tightens, and Antonio can see a grin tugging at the angel’s lips, hard-fought and winning, with eyes that sparkle with something that looks prideful, enraptured, human.
Antonio raises his hand, settling it at the base of soft, dark hair, letting his fingers curl into the waves that rest against a nape Antonio yearns to bite, mark, litter with humanity’s markings and the ecstasy that comes with rebellion. Hazel eyes look at him hesitantly, guarded, and Antonio continues to smile, just as he does whenever they meet, whenever they delve into their resplendently wicked transgressions.
Let me, he thinks. Let me, mi ángel.
His angel folds, as he always, always does, follows the pressure of mortal hands until he is settled beautifully across Antonio’s lap, thighs warm and bare against the scratch of Antonio’s robes. He’s glowing, ethereal, delicately illuminated with gossamer-light gold, an aura only just perceptible to human eyes, marking him exquisite.
Though, Antonio muses, he’d be exquisite anyway. He’s too beautiful to be anything else.
The angel snorts against his cheek, skin warming again with blush as his wing smacks the back of Antonio’s head. “Flattery will get you nowhere.”
Antonio can’t help but grin, nose tracing the line of the shoulder in front of him. His hand runs up the inside of soft, spread thighs and presses against the hole his fingers were in only a moment ago. “No need to be coy, mi ángel. I’ve already been inside you.”
It takes what Antonio considers to be monumental effort not to kiss the whine from the angel’s lips, though he does allow his mouth to press against the underside of a perfectly curved jaw, teeth scraping down the front of a divinely bared throat, demissive enough to make Antonio’s blood run hot in his veins.
“Demissive.” Antonio can feel the scoff against his shoulder, the heat of it the only thing that pulls him from his musings and into a reality far beyond his sweetest of dreams. “Says the man who wears a collar.”
“I’d wear a collar for you, too, mi milagro, if you wanted. Shall I also get on my knees and pray to you?”
The angel shoves him back, face stern as his eyes settle in a steely glare. “Don’t joke about this. You’ve blasphemed enough already–”
“Lo lamento,” Antonio hums, voice and hands soothing that temper before it swallows them both. “Forgive me. It’s hard to hold my tongue when I’m in the presence of something so divine.” Antonio smiles as he says it, kissing up the center of the angel’s chest and watching with sparkling eyes as he continues to glare, face flushing dark beneath half-melted candles and the arrival of caliginous night.
It’s a lie—they both know it—but the being in his lap only clicks his tongue, fingers rising to pull at the buttons of Antonio’s cassock.
“That tongue will be your downfall.”
I’m already damned, he thinks, mind flicking back to all the times they’ve descended into lustful gluttony before, tucked into confession booths and seated in darkened pine pews, to every chance he took to mark golden celestial skin, bruising his handprint onto strong thighs and across smooth hips, reverent in his praise and giving in his need to claim. “Save me then.”
The angel glowers at him, and Antonio thinks he is so painfully beautiful. “Save yourself.”
The buttons of Antonio’s cassock pop with the force of the angel’s grip, scattering across the floor and into corners Antonio knows he will never discover, lost to time and homilies waiting to be preached. He bites his tongue and bitterly swallows the chastisement, losing himself instead to the teeth that nip at the curve of his neck, to the fingers that brush aside his undershirt and press desperately to his chest.
“Off with these,” the angel huffs, and Antonio almost wants to laugh at the petulance of his tone, impatient and restive, with his fidgeting wings and wandering fingers, mapping the planes of Antonio’s chest as if his tongue hasn’t followed that same line before, as if those lips haven’t already covered almost every inch of Antonio’s soul, branding him more than Antonio could possibly hope to return.
He pushes off his cassock and hastily removes the shirt underneath, content enough to let them crumple to the floor beneath his hands, too eager, instead, to get his fingers back into his angel’s hair, to feel the heat of his breath and the soft of his lips, to know what God’s language sounds like when it’s being moaned against his mouth, the words of the universe rendered sacrilegious when he paints this immaculate body with humanity’s hand, fills it with pleasure and the miraculous splendor of a baseless soul and ever-cycling transgression.
The second his clothes are on the ground, Antonio pushes his angel onto his back, wings splayed across the multicolored tile of the transept, feathers dancing in the air beneath old pews. He’s stunning like this, mesmerizing, the work of mythical fable and biblical legend, pulled as art from stained glass windows and hand-stitched tapestries, with legs spread and chest heaving, skin littered with Antonio’s handprints and the maroon marks he nipped and sucked over sacred collarbones and sloping shoulders.
“Stop thinking and take your pants off.”
Antonio’s lips quirk up into a grin, and he lets his teeth scratch the inside of one delicate knee, amused at the twitch that shoots across massive, downy wings. “So demanding,” he smiles, though he lets his thoughts dance with syrupy sentiments of you’re perfect and I’ll always think of you, enough to turn his angel’s cheeks ruddy and pink, chest flushing with frustration and impatience and what Antonio knows is diffident pleasure.
“You don’t know shit.”
Antonio laughs, fingers easing the belt from his black slacks. He shoves his pants down to his thighs, eyes crinkling with mirth and joy and a certain something dark that settles across his vision when he sees torrid eyes watching him, narrowed and burning, liquid heat turned molten, utterly captivating.
With a hum, Antonio reaches out, using one hand to give his angel’s cock several long strokes, tightening slowly at the base before easing his grip as his fist rises. The reaction is instantaneous, as it always is when Antonio gets his hands on him the way he deserves—it's like the air has been swept completely from those lungs, and the angel gasps, eyes drooping as the muscles in his thighs tense. His wings shudder, feathers vibrating with the energy that thrums through him, something otherworldly coursing through them with each shake and shiver, and Antonio can only feel blessed that he is the one to deliver this reaction to their world, a messenger of pleasure to something so absolutely deserving.
He’s always surprised, somehow, at how easily stimulated his angel is, how simple it is to get his lips moving around words that have no human equivalent, whispering sighs and pleas that only Antonio has ever heard, half-choking on the vowels of Antonio’s name as if he himself is something holy, pure, as if he could ever be worthy of having his name gasped by lips so heavenly, a choir trumpeted from the cosmos and beyond.
“You’re so beautiful,” he says, using his other hand to lift the angel’s leg, bringing a perfect knee to his mouth. And he is so beautiful, a creature incomparable to anything on Earth, so perfect that Antonio truly would don a collar for this being specifically, would happily stay on his knees for the rest of eternity if only to worship at the feet of something this divine. It would be no sacrifice to be subservient to someone so strikingly breathtaking, so wholeheartedly faultless.
Antonio’s eyes flick over the span of the angel’s body, savoring the soft wave of his hair, the flush of his face, the hitch of his chest with every gasped breath—still, Antonio is pleased to see, unused to their prolonged contact, always so sensitive and reactive to every touch Antonio presses to him, bites to him, kisses to him, as he always wants to do.
Antonio sucks a bruise onto the unmarred skin at the back of the angel’s knee, teeth nipping the curve of his calf as he pulls away. He’s a sight to see, something wickedly glorious to behold, stained and spread out with a cock already heavy and leaking, wanton like a human being fucked on the floor.
He’s a mess before Antonio has even gotten his cock into him, and Antonio has to swallow the searing scorch of pride that threatens to split his chest at the thought, fingers desperate to render this celestine creature more licentious than he already is, too enraptured with legs and wings and lips that open for him so sweetly, so gloriously, so damningly.
“Eres tan perfecto, mi ángel.”
Antonio receives an embarrassed scowl in return, vision quickly blocked by a massive wing covering the entirety of the body before him. Antonio mourns the loss immediately. With a tsk, he drops the leg from his hand and relinquishes his grip on the erection he was dead-set on tormenting, choosing instead to nuzzle below the wing currently acting as what must be the universe’s most regal and infuriating barrier.
His hands skate up the angel’s sides, fingers tracing the lines of muscle and sinew and rib until they settle beside dark, soft hair, and Antonio can only smile as he tucks a stray strand behind his angel’s ear, nudging his chin so he can look, wondrously, always wondrously, into eyes that hold the stars of galaxies Antonio could never name.
“Don’t,” he says, fingers tightening when those eyes look reticently away from him. “Don’t hide from me.”
The angel frowns, watching every line of Antonio’s face—and Antonio is struck with the stunning, painful realization that he truly would be content to die if it was here, within the nestled cocoon of luxurious wings, blessed with the warmth of heavenly skin and the feeling of this heat against him, falling into hazel eyes that could push Antonio to bare his soul to Lucifer himself, if only to keep these memories with him always, a sin for which he could never, would never repent.
“Don’t think such stupid things.”
Antonio says nothing, only brings their lips together and kisses his angel for as long as he can, pressing him into the floor and swallowing every whined noise and huffed breath, holding them within his own lungs in the hopes that he will remember the heat of this, the feel of this, so he may bare the mark of it within his soul, proudly so.
He curls a hand into the angel’s hair, feels fingers gripping desperately at his shoulders in return, soft and smooth and delicate, entirely otherworldly, and Antonio lets himself touch, too, feeling the contours of a body from which he would take Communion if he could, skin marked like the wine born from the blood and body of Christ. He bites at plush lips, fingers brushing against sensitive inner thighs, and his heart constricts at how those legs part for him, fall open for him, like they do every time, a miracle in glory and in kindness.
Antonio wets his fingers on his tongue before he lets them circle the angel’s rim again, pushing easily into the body he has already worshipped before, one he would be happy to do so again, to spend his days admiring, honoring, adoring. He breathes in the guttural moan that is pressed to his mouth when he slips in two fingers easily, grinning against open lips when he nudges the one spot that always gets his angel shaking, quivering and shattered with blind human ecstasy.
“Ah–Antoni–”
He’s warm, so warm, always burning hot around Antonio’s fingers. Antonio’s cock aches when the angel rolls his hips down into him in a desperate attempt to ride his hand, snarling half-mewled demands for more and hurry up and enough with the fingers, would you just fucking–
He’d laugh if he didn’t know it would get him hit, amused by how quickly divinity can succumb to wondrous carnality, falling prey—like them all—to orectic wants and ever-fallible needs. But he cannot find the will in him to tease, too busy, instead, with wandering hands and probing fingers, eager to pull apart the immortal strings that hold this blessing together, wanting to see this being be unwound across the floor of the basilica, made a mess by his mouth and his touch and him.
“Stop thinking and do it, then,” the angel gasps, hips pushing down onto Antonio’s fingers, taking him just that much deeper, never deep enough.
Antonio has a sneaking suspicion it was meant to sound threatening, more of a growl than a plea; he doesn’t even try to push away the supercilious glee that rises in him at that, always loftily prideful of his ability to pull the air from those holy lungs, to render the dignified inarticulate and panting from baptized hands and a simple preacher’s mouth.
He takes himself in hand, stroking his own cock slowly from base to tip, easing only a minuscule amount of strain. It isn’t refined, appropriate, honorable for a man of his nature to be so easily tempted by the beautiful, but Antonio, for all his attempts at goodness and righteousness, is also only a man, a sinner who has long since fallen into adoration for molten amber eyes and gloriously soft skin, for a tongue that can recount the history of the universe in languages unwritten but that feels perfect whispering the sounds of his name.
The spit in his hand is a crude substitute for the oil he wishes he had, the one with which this miracle should be anointed, opened and massaged carefully, properly, reverentially, the rituals of which deities are worthy, deserving of the finest and nothing less. He only has a moment to mourn, though, before hands are in his hair and honeyed lips are biting his, intense and all-consuming in their bid to get him to move.
“Make it up to me later.”
With a breathless chuckle and a wolfish grin, Antonio teasingly circles his dick around the angel’s hole, vain enough, he’s sure, to know a command when he hears it and yet still find it within himself to taunt.
“I will send you to the deepest pits of Hell myself if you don’t fu–uck!”
He eases in with a hum, skin and blood and body burning with the ecstasy that comes from holding a blessing from God Himself, from loving that which can never be had. “Whatever you want, mi ángel,” he breathes, and he knows within the most intrinsic parts of himself that he means it, would walk into Hell willingly if it means enjoying this one final time, pressing in and taking something so wondrously divine that it’s a miracle he doesn’t wither beneath its presence, hot and sweating from sex and the insulated heat of feathers cocooned around them.
Antonio pushes in deeper, pressing his hips against gold-glowing skin, hand languidly stroking the erection he can feel nudging against his abdomen with every thrust. He can just discern the tremors in the wings around him, knows he’s hit that one spot that sends his angel wailing when his back arches, voice echoing something deafening in what is unassailable human decadence, iniquitous and insurmountable in its visceral pleasure.
“You’re stunning like this,” he groans, gratified beyond measure when pink cheeks stain themselves scarlet at his word, his thought, his unerring devotion—because he means it, will always mean it, every single word and every single sentiment, for as long as he lives and beyond. The grip in his hair is punishing, but he takes the sting and relishes it, allowing it to guide his lips across sangria-spotted collarbones and to nipples he greedily sucks into his mouth. “You are the most perfect thing I have ever seen.”
The angel whines, hips stuttering down against his, chest flushing and panting with heaving breath and skillful, practiced debauchery. His eyes are squeezed shut, face turned away and half-hidden from Antonio, lips open and red from bruising kisses and all the ways Antonio likes to leave his mark, a testament to his ability to worship, to lay claim, to handle a gift for which humanity could never be too grateful, could never be deserving enough.
Antonio continues to stroke him, slowly, deliberately, enough to feel the angel’s toes curling desperately against his calves, hands like vices around the curve of Antonio’s shoulders and hair. He feels nails scratch down his back, a searing line of red sprouting in its wake, and Antonio can only feel humbled by the meaning of something so incomparable marking him in return.
“You should be praised every second of every day.” He dips down, brushing their lips together, cutting off the growled hiss he knows was about to be leveled at him to shut up and stop speaking and don’t say such ridiculous things, as if Antonio wouldn’t dedicate his entire life to doing that exactly.
“I was made to touch you. You’re so responsive to me, aren’t you, mi milagro?” Antonio squeezes his hand at the same time that he sucks a mark beneath the angel’s ear, and the resounding moan echoes loudly across the basilica walls, caught only in the feathers of lustrous wings and the dripping wax falling from mostly-melted candles. “You’re divine, so perfect, just for me, hm?”
Legs clamp desperately around his hips, vise-like and ironclad in their grip in a way only the otherworldly could be, and Antonio lets a hand curve around the swell of the thighs pressing against him, fingers bruising marks into illuminated skin, hitching them higher so he can press in deeper, harder, pull the breath from kiss-swollen lips until this being is nothing more than immaculate mess and the wondrous, hollow remains of numinous ecstasy.
“Let– Let me–” It’s gasped, choked, a babbled plea of half nonsense and half begging masquerading as an order Antonio has no intention of obeying quite yet, not until hears what he wants, what he needs, because he is only human, after all, and as devout and God-fearing as he is, he is also blessed with the favor of something divine, and he wants, he wants.
“Say it first.”
He fucks in deep, fast, knocking inhuman sounds from Heaven’s lips until they catch on high-pitched whines and shallow, breathless panting. He presses against the base of the cock in his hand, a pressure he knows will only serve to send the body beneath him spiraling, sobbing, still unaccustomed to touch and feel and want, no matter how many times they do this, no matter how many times they transgress, as though Antonio himself is the sole reason for this undoing.
Maybe he is, he wonders, and the thought makes Antonio want to imprint the outline of his teeth onto his angel’s shoulders and between his thighs, an unquestionable, univocal claim to God and Heaven itself that he was meant for this, for this, to bring pleasure to something so terrifyingly divine—because what other purpose could he possibly have in this world if not to be between these legs, if not to kiss the pleas from love-bitten lips?
“I need– Antonio, I need–”
“Lo sé,” he says, voice low the way he knows his angel likes, because Antonio does live to please, and it’s always so satisfying seeing golden skin turn ruddy with blush. “Lo sé, ángel. Say it and you can.”
If he can never know this being’s name, can never pronounce the syllables of it with his human tongue, can never be gifted the honor of calling upon something so lovely and splendid in prayer, then he will have this, bestowed upon him from holy lips and a voice that existed before the song of humanity had ever been sung, from hands that hung God’s cosmos within the skies and a body that would shepherd their world to its path through the universe, timeless in his grace, dazzling in its willingness to bend to Antonio’s hand.
“Say it.” His hips snap against blinding radiance, lips ghosting over a mouth that stutters the vowels of his name, and he wants.
“Y–Yours!” Dark chestnut waves fall against multicolored tile, wings fluttering with taut restlessness and the steps that dance the precipice of the knife’s edge, teetering on the brink of condemnatory carnality and what will be their inevitable destruction.
Antonio strokes him until he’s sobbing with it, back arched and wings splayed across step-worn floors. There’s a sound that gets caught in the wet of an empty throat, but all Antonio can see is honey-hazel eyes that sear into his, his gaze half-blinded by gold-irradiated skin and a fist that pulls at his hair until he’s emptying himself into the only thing worth saving his soul for, the only thing worth damning himself to Hell for.
Blood pounds too thick in his ears for him to hear his own voice, mind gone and heat suffocating every pore, scorching every breath. He can feel the humidity of labored panting brushing over his shoulder, head no longer ringing with the bruising grip that was once in his hair. Instead, that hand settles on his shoulder, tracing the line of his arm down to his hand, where it links their fingers, soft and sweet, shy.
Antonio presses a kiss to sweat-dampened hair, to flushed cheeks and half-lidded eyes, to panting lips that bring nectar to his name. “Say it again,” he whispers, voice soft and supplicant in the echoing emptiness of the basilica, heard only by stained glass windows made dark by coal-black night and an angel for whom Antonio would walk through fire, for whom Antonio would defy God, just to be able to revere something so unequivocally sublime. “Por favor.”
“Yours.”
Blessedly, yes.