Confession Booth
"The priest's housekeeper hears everything through thin walls. Tonight, she acts on it."
I've been living in sin for six months.
Not the kind the church would recognize. No theft, no violence, no obvious transgressions against God or man. Just... thoughts. Desires. A growing obsession with someone I should barely notice.
Mrs. Espinoza. The rectory housekeeper.
I came to St. Augustine's as a lay assistant—organizing files, maintaining the website, helping Father Martinez with administrative tasks while I figure out what to do with my twenty-six-year-old life. The job came with a small room in the rectory and the quiet understanding that I'd be respectful, celibate, and utterly unremarkable.
I've failed at all three.
Dolores Espinoza is fifty-five years old.
Widowed. Devout. She's been keeping house for St. Augustine's for two decades—cooking, cleaning, managing the rectory with an efficiency that borders on supernatural. She attends mass every morning, says the rosary every evening, and speaks to Father Martinez with the comfortable familiarity of someone who's seen him through three crises of faith.
She's also built like something from an older world.
Two-forty, easily. Maybe more. Thick everywhere—breasts that strain against her modest blouses, hips that make doorways optional, a belly that rounds soft beneath her aprons. Her skin is warm brown, her hair silver-streaked black, her face lined with decades of service and secret sorrows.
I've been fantasizing about her since the day I arrived.
The rectory walls are thin.
Thin enough that I can hear Father Martinez's conversations in the study next door. Thin enough that I've learned the rhythm of his counseling sessions—the hushed voices of parishioners seeking guidance, the gentle baritone of his responses, the occasional sob when absolution finally comes.
Thin enough that I hear her.
Every night, before bed, Dolores prays in her room. And every night, her prayers drift through the walls—a murmured Spanish rosary, sometimes interrupted by words I can't quite catch.
Until last week.
"Forgive me," she whispered, her voice thick with something that wasn't grief. "Forgive me for wanting him. Forgive me for dreaming of his hands. His mouth. His—"
She broke off. But I'd heard enough.
She wants me too.
I find her in the kitchen at midnight.
She's washing dishes that could have waited until morning, her back to me, her body silhouetted in the dim light over the sink. She's wearing a nightgown—thin, modest, doing nothing to hide the shape of her.
"You should be asleep, Mr. Reyes."
"Gabriel." I move closer. "We've been living together for six months. You can call me Gabriel."
"You should be asleep, Gabriel." She doesn't turn around. "The morning comes early."
"I heard you praying."
Her hands go still in the soapy water.
"The walls are thin. I didn't mean to listen, but..." I stop behind her. Close enough to feel her heat. "You mentioned someone. Someone you want. Someone you feel guilty about wanting."
"You misheard."
"I didn't." I reach out, let my fingers brush her shoulder. She shudders. "Tell me to leave, Dolores. Tell me I'm wrong. Tell me you haven't been thinking about me the same way I've been thinking about you."
She turns.
Her face is anguished.
Tears glittering in the dim light, rosary beads clutched in one wet hand, every line of her body screaming confession.
"You don't know what you're asking."
"I'm asking for the truth."
"The truth is sin." Her voice cracks. "The truth is that I'm an old woman, a widow, a servant of God's house—and I've spent six months imagining you in my bed. Imagining your hands on me. Imagining—"
"Tell me."
"Everything." The word comes out broken. "I imagine everything. Your mouth on my skin. Your body on mine. I imagine—" She shuts her eyes. "I imagine you inside me, Gabriel. I imagine crying out your name. I imagine committing every sin I've spent my life avoiding."
I take the rosary from her hand. Set it on the counter.
"Then let's sin together."
She kisses me like she's drowning.
Her hands grab my shirt, pull me against her, and the softness of her body absorbing mine is almost too much to bear. She tastes like chamomile tea and desperation, and the sounds she makes—half-prayer, half-moan—echo off the kitchen tiles.
"We shouldn't—"
"I know."
"Father Martinez—"
"Is in the church. Won't be back for hours." I pull back, cup her face in my hands. "It's just us, Dolores. Just you and me and whatever we want to confess."
"I want—" Her voice shakes. "I want you to touch me. All of me. Every inch that no one has touched in twenty years."
I lead her to her bedroom.
She undresses like she's offering herself at an altar.
Slowly. Reverently. The nightgown slips from her shoulders, pools at her feet, and she stands before me in nothing but plain white underwear—the kind designed for modesty, not seduction.
Somehow that makes it more erotic.
"I know I'm not—" She starts, arms moving to cover herself.
"Don't." I catch her wrists, hold them gently at her sides. "Don't hide from me. Let me see you."
She lets me see.
Her breasts are heavy, hanging low, nipples dark and already hardening. Her belly is round and soft, marked with the silver lines of age and motherhood—she mentioned once she had children who died young, a grief she never elaborates on. Her hips are vast, her thighs thick enough to lose yourself between.
"You're beautiful," I tell her.
"I'm old."
"You're beautiful." I kneel before her. Pull down her underwear. Press my mouth to the soft curve of her belly. "And I'm going to worship every inch of you."
She weeps.
And lets me.
I worship her like the sacred thing she is.
Kiss my way down her body—every roll, every fold, every inch of warm brown skin. She trembles under my mouth, whispering prayers and profanities in equal measure, her hands in my hair, pulling me closer.
When I reach between her thighs, she gasps.
"Gabriel—"
"Let me. Please. Let me taste you."
She spreads for me. Leans back against her narrow bed, grips the sheets, and watches with tear-bright eyes as I bury my face in her.
She's wet. Hot. Sweet in a way that makes me groan against her flesh. I find her clit and focus on it—gentle at first, learning her responses, then harder as she begins to rock against my mouth.
"Dios mío—yes—there—"
I hold her thighs open—thick flesh spilling over my fingers—and devour her like communion. Her moans fill the small room, drowning out the distant sound of the church bells, drowning out the guilt that should be crushing us both.
When she comes, she screams a name.
Not God's.
Mine.
"Inside me," she begs.
I climb over her on the narrow bed. Her body spreads beneath me, soft and welcoming, her arms wrapping around my back.
"Are you sure?"
"I've never been sure of anything." She pulls me down. "Make me forget I'm supposed to be holy. Make me remember what it feels like to be wanted."
I slide inside her.
The feeling is—there's no word. She's tight and hot and wet, and her body wraps around me like she's trying to absorb me entirely. Her legs come up, thick thighs gripping my hips, and she pulls me deeper.
"Yes—oh, Gabriel—yes—"
I move slowly at first. Watching her face, learning what makes her gasp, what makes her moan, what makes her whisper Spanish prayers that have nothing to do with God.
"Faster—please—I need—"
I give her faster. Harder. I brace myself on the headboard and pound into her, watching her breasts bounce, feeling her belly ripple against mine, hearing the bed creak in rhythms that must be audible throughout the rectory.
I don't care.
"You feel—god—Dolores—"
"Say my name again."
"Dolores." I thrust deeper. "Dolores—you're perfect—you're everything—"
"Make me come—please—please—"
I reach between us. Find her clit. Stroke it while I fuck her.
She shatters.
Her whole body convulses, clenching around me, and the pressure drags me over the edge with her. I come with her name on my lips—not a prayer, but something better.
A confession.
We lie in her narrow bed, tangled together.
The room smells like sex and chamomile and something sweeter—the incense that permeates everything in this rectory. Her head is on my chest, her weight half-covering me, her rosary beads still sitting on the kitchen counter where I left them.
"We're going to hell," she murmurs.
"Maybe."
"I'm supposed to feel guilty."
"Do you?"
She's quiet for a long moment.
"No," she admits. "I feel... alive. For the first time in twenty years. I feel like I remember what my body is for."
"Your body is for this." I pull her closer. "For pleasure. For touch. For being wanted and wanting back."
"That's not what the church teaches."
"The church also teaches that God is love." I tilt her face up, make her look at me. "So maybe love—even this kind—is holy too."
We keep sinning.
Every night, after Father Martinez retires, I slip into her room. We make love in her narrow bed, in the kitchen, in the garden behind the rectory where the roses bloom in defiance of all reason.
We're careful. Discreet. The church sees nothing but a devoted housekeeper and a quiet assistant, going about their business.
But I see her.
The way she glows during morning mass. The way her prayers have changed—less guilt, more gratitude. The way she smiles at me across the breakfast table, a secret burning between us that no confession could erase.
"I love you," I tell her one night.
We're in her garden, wrapped in a blanket, watching stars that the city lights almost drown.
"You shouldn't."
"I know."
"I'm old enough to be your mother. I'm a servant. This is scandal waiting to happen."
"I don't care." I pull her into my lap, feel her weight settle against me. "I love you, Dolores Espinoza. I've loved you since the first day I saw you. And I'm not going to stop."
She cries.
But she kisses me back.
And in a rectory in Neo-San Antonio, two people who should never have touched build something that looks nothing like sin.
It looks like love.
It feels like grace.
Amen.