Emma Mason sat in the front pew, staring straight ahead, watching the dust motes dance in the sunlight streaming through the windows of the church.

Emma shifted on the hard wood, ankles crossed and hands folded politely in her lap. Her head was bowed but she kept peeking up, watching as her mama talked in low tones to the preacher, Reverend Riley. Her mama’s hands were moving back and forth, and though Emma couldn’t hear the words it sure looked like her mama was upset.

Heat blossomed underneath the tight collar of Emma’s dress as she thought about what mama was telling the preacher. Emma slunk down in the pew, her perfect posture forgotten under the press of her shame, wondering how long this litany of her sins was going to take. Really, it was just the one, and how long would it take to tell the Reverend Emma had been “defiling” herself?

She felt sulky and reticent about being dragged here unwilling, to sit in her Sunday clothes (on a Thursday in the summer, no less) and suffer in the heat while her mama told their family preacher why their daughter was touched by the devil. Or whatever excuse mama was giving about what she’d caught Emma doing. The heat outside was oppressive and suffocating, but it carried with it a freedom that Emma desperately wanted.

To have this over and done with, and forget her mother’s horrified face as she’d caught Emma with her fingers between her thighs.

It wasn’t like the time she’d lied about watching an R-rated movie at Amanda’s house during that sleep-over. That little sin had waited until Sunday. This sin was obviously much worse, because waiting until Sunday hadn’t even been an option.

Emma noticed it had fallen silent in the church. She looked up and found her mama watching her, and the preacher had his dark solemn eyes fixed right on her, like he could look through her dress and see the taint of sin etched on her body. The thought made her squirm in her seat.

Emma looked down quickly, pressing her thighs together. She was sticky with sweat and sick with nerves. She hoped they thought she was praying. It may go better for her, if they did, if they thought she looked contrite. She was, but it wasn’t so much the sin but the getting caught that bothered her. That and being dragged here like a child, when she wasn’t. She was eighteen, and she thought that the burden of her soul should be her own worry, not her mama’s.

“Why don’t you just go run your errands, Mrs. Mason, and come back for Emma. Think maybe I just need to have a little talk with her.” Reverend Riley smiled, but there was something about it that made Emma look away, because it didn’t seem very nice to her.

Preachers were supposed to be nice. They taught Sunday school and came to potlucks, and they married people and they saved souls. Emma knew that there were bad people in the world that pretended to love God (like the Catholics, as her mama always said, the dirty papists) but not in her church.

She didn’t like the way Reverend Riley was looking at her, like he was some vengeful angel and he was going to cast her out of heaven. Emma’s mouth was suddenly dry as he gazed down at her. She wasn’t used to having the full measure of his attention. On Sundays he preached about the world and the end times and the rapture, or about sin and hellfire, and his eyes were always cast heavenwards as if he were delivering this message to God Himself. He never deigned to look at her, a teenage girl sitting next to her mama and daddy and little brother and wishing it were time to leave for lunch.

“Your mother says she caught you at a sin, Miss Mason.”

There was no way to stop herself from blushing hot red at that, and Emma bowed her head because she couldn’t meet his gaze any more. She’d always thought dark eyes were supposed to be cold like rocks in next to the river; dark and flat. His weren’t though; they were more like the river at night, churning and dark and scary, lit from within like there was some fire in the depths of the water. Hellfire. Emma shivered.

“I—I guess so, yes, Reverend,” she said politely, fingers scrabbling at her dress, twisting a loose thread around and around her index finger until it turned purple with blood.

“She’s in a state about it. Do you understand that she’s upset?”

Emma turned her attention back to him and nodded somewhat hesitantly. “She’s awful mad, Reverend. I know.”

“We are taught to honor our parents, Miss Mason. You remember that, I know you do. You’ve been in Sunday school classes since you were old enough to walk.” He was still standing on the other side of the pew, like it was church, except she was his only audience. “I know you’re almost eighteen, but our parents are owed our honor for the whole of our lives and beyond.”

“Y-yes, Reverend,” she said meekly, hiding her face again, hoping maybe that would work to relief some of the burning embarrassment she felt at having this conversation with him, man of God or no.

He surprised her by laughing. “I know you young people play at rebellion, but you know what God does to those that rebel against His authority, don’t you, Emma?”

She looked up at the sharp tone in his words. “But I don’t want to rule God’s kingdom, sir,” she said respectfully.

“A good thing to hear,” he said, and she thought she saw him smile for a moment, but it was gone in a heartbeat. “I want you to come with me.”

She stood up on shaking legs, licking lips gone dry with worry. She quietly followed him out of the church proper and into the back, into a cool dark room where brides dressed on their wedding day. It was also where they kept the baptismal when they weren’t using it. “I have to—you need to baptize me again?” She shivered. Was what she had done so bad?

“No, of course not. All God’s children sin, my child.” He moved to stand behind her, his hands resting lightly on her shoulders. “I want you to look in the mirror.”

She did so, standing straight because she knew she wasn’t supposed to slouch in polite company, and who was more polite company than a man of God?

“Now, tell me, what do you see?”

“I—I see myself, sir,” she said, confused, staring at her wide eyes in the mirror and trying to ignore how much she hated the dress she was wearing.

“You said you didn’t want to rule God’s kingdom,” Reverend Riley murmured, and his fingers wrapped around her upper arm, his grip just a shade below painful. “Yet, was that not what you were doing? Touching yourself in the darkness, when your body belongs to God until such time as you are lawfully married?”

Emma watched as her cheeks stained with a slow flush of red in the mirror before her. Reverend Riley was a stern commanding presence at her back, his hands anchoring her, his disapproval evident. “I—I suppose so, Reverend. I didn’t mean to sin,” she said miserably, feeling her eyes fill with tears.

“My child, no one means to sin,” he murmured, and drew her back slightly, so she could feel the heat of his body through the thin cotton of her summer dress. “We don’t mean to be tempted by the pleasures of the flesh, or the sins we can commit in the darkness.” His voice was hypnotic. His hands on her arms hurt, and she thought perhaps his fingers would leave bruises where they pressed, insistent and unforgiving, into her flesh. “Yet we do sin, again and again. God, in his infinite mercy, will forgive us our transgressions.”

Emma was finding it hard to breathe. The room was cooler than the sanctuary had been, but suddenly it was burning hot, rather like the proverbial fires of hell of which Reverend Riley warned in his sermons. “So I am…forgiven?” Her voice sounded unlike her own; choked and scared and trembling.

“My dear, forgiveness is not as easy as the Catholics would have you believe. You cannot mouth empty words and expect God to forgive you.” One of his hands left its bruising grip on her arm, and brushed her loose hair away from her neck. “You must mean it, with every fibre of your being.”

Before her mother had entered her bedroom, hearing the small soft sounds Emma had been making as her fingers caressed slick flesh, Emma had felt the same stirring of restless--something--deep in her stomach as she was right now, with Reverend Riley running blunt fingers over her slightly-parted lips.

“Just to speak is not enough,” he continued. “You must feel it, here. In your heart.”

She gasped just a little as his hand moved downward, over the too-tight bodice, drifting over her breasts. “R-Reverend Riley—”

His other hand was still painfully gripping, punishing her, even as his free hand drifted almost lazily over her body. “Such a young, beautiful girl you are, Emma. You do not want to condemn yourself to hellfire for a fleeting moment of pleasure, do you?”

Her legs were trembling and her body felt like it was weak, and she’d had hay fever last year but she’d never burned as hot as she did right now. She couldn’t even answer him, but she was leaning back, watching in the mirror as his hand traveled over her breasts and drifted down her stomach, towards—

“Did you find pleasure, Emma, before your mother stopped you? Tell the truth...”

She whimpered because his hand on her arm hurt, and yet his other hand was pressing between her legs, over her dress, and she could watch him there in the mirror. “I—no Reverend, she left and I knew she was angry and I was too ashamed and I couldn’t finish—” she couldn’t stop herself from speaking, her confession pouring out of her like water too long dammed, and his body behind hers was solid and strong.

“But you wanted to, didn’t you, Emma?” His voice was just like it was last Sunday, telling them about Judas and being lost for eternity—

Behold I set before you the way of life and the way of death.

“Yes,” she moaned, her head tilting back, shame and desire pulsing where he rubbed, pain blossoming from his grip on her arm. “I—I did.”

“And now, you would do so now, even knowing what I have told you?”

She couldn’t speak; a prisoner to pleasure too strong and pain too harsh, she yielded and leaned her head back against his shoulder, darkness and desire consuming her. “Y-yes.”

“As the Lord says in Daniel, we must finish the transgression to make an end to sin,” he murmured, and released her arm. The ending of the pain felt almost as good as the pleasure that was mounting and about to break, but she had too small a reprieve.

His hand tangled in her hair and his fingers between her legs rubbed harder, faster. “This transgression must be finished. Do you understand?”

Her body shivered and trembled and ached, and her scalp felt on fire from the painful pull of his hand in her hair. She felt her eyes tear up and hot tears slide over flushed skin as she nodded frantically.

“You mean this, with every fibre of your being, in every crevice of your sinner’s soul?” His voice was like thunder, resonant and loud and coming from everywhere all at once.

“Yes, please, I do--” there it was, elusive pleasure, a crest she’d almost reach but had been cruelly denied, and she strained and wanted and panted for it, and his hand was in her hair and the pain—

And then it was gone, the pleasure, like a wave pulling back from the shore and leaving nothing but jagged shells in its wake. She sobbed in frustration, sweaty and unfilled, as his hands went to her shoulders and pushed her, hard, to her knees.

“Now pray to God to forgive you, Emma Mason, for the sins which you have committed.”

Emma sobbed out her grief, the concrete hard beneath the flimsy dress, hair sweaty and sticking to a face washed clean by tears. He stood behind her, one hand on her shoulder, the other on the crown of her head, forcing her to bow.

“And now God shall forgive you,” he murmured, and she felt his hand drift, just once, down the fall of her hair.

You must want forgiveness, in your heart.

Emma didn’t think that was what she really wanted. Her arms ached, and her body was still flushed and wanting, and between her legs there was the same insistent, mad throbbing for fulfillment. She smiled where he couldn’t see; a secret, small smile. When her mother came to pick her up, she nodded at the Reverend and made a polite gesture of thanks.

Then she went home, and waited for nightfall.