Banishment

He was young and virile. It wasn't long—we were still calming our breathing—when he was hard again. He turned us, he on his back on the mattress and me on my back on top of him. He wrapped his arms under my armpits and forced my arms up in a captive full Nelson position. I raised my pelvis, placing my feet on the mattress on either side of his thighs to elevate me and give me leverage, positioned his cock head at my hole, descended on the cock, and raised and lowered my passage on his cock in a smooth, slow slide that eventually resulted in a long sigh from each of us and him releasing his seed inside me again.

Once again I drifted off into an exhausted sleep. When I woke, I was alone in the cabin.

I returned to my little church on the Avenue of Oaks, working on the buildings by myself for two days and holding a mass on Sunday that neither Frank nor Tom attended. Monday morning I drove my cart down to the public docks. Frank's boat was gone.

That afternoon Tom showed up by himself, to work.

"Where's Frank?" I asked.

"He's taken his boat to Savannah," Tom answered. He wasn't looking me in the eye.

"When will he be back?"

"I'm not sure he's coming back," Tom answered. Was there a mild rebuff in the tone of his answer I wondered—or was it just me, worrying that Frank had felt guilty about causing me to forsake my vows, and understanding how important vows were—or should be—to a Catholic priest?

* * * *

I heard a familiar voice coming from the dock as I was sitting in the cabin of Frank's boat, tapping away on the draft of my novel. I rose and moved to the hatch leading up on deck where Frank was, washing down the boat, but I didn't go topside.

"Father Blackwood, you say?" I heard Frank respond to the question Crandel was asking. "No I don't think we have a priest here on the island. Everyone I know on Daufuskie Island is Baptist. Most of us are Gullah and have been here since before the Civil War."

"I've been to Saint Mary's church. That's where the priest was supposed to be. The place is a wreck," Crandel said.

I wanted cry out in objection, "You should have seen it when I first saw it," but I didn't want him to know I was here.

"Do tell," Frank said, his voice a study in innocence. "The unhappy truth is that island is hard on man-made structures," he said. "If there once was a Catholic church here, it's probably long past returning to the soil. I hear tell them Catholics are sticklers about sin, and we sin pretty regular here on Daufuskie. Fact is, visitors tend to get bitten by the sin bug as soon as they step foot on the island. Best not linger here if you don't want to be bit by the sin bug."

Crandel, sounding a bit snippy, said, "A mutual friend of ours asked that I check on him. He hasn't heard from Father Blackwood for some time. He's a bishop and is particularly worried about his friend."

Andy—the Bishop of Charleston—having pangs of guilt and wanting to know why I hadn't answered his letters, I thought. And he sent James Crandel, possibly the only other person who knew about us. Still protecting himself.

"As I said, I wouldn't know about that. Don't know about there being an active priest on the island," Frank answered, his tone friendly and only half interested. "Sorry I couldn't have helped more. Maybe Daufuskie life was found as not being for a Catholic priest. Maybe your friend went somewhere else or changed into someone else. Maybe he doesn't want to be found. But there, that's the 'last call' sound for the ferry. Your last chance to get back to Hilton Head today—unless you want to spend the night on the island."

Fat chance of that, I thought. And then I thanked Frank again for covering for me—for covering me like he did—for believing me when I tracked him down in Savannah and declared that I wanted life with him and the lifestyle of Daufuskie Island and the Gullah more than I wanted or needed the Catholic Church.

I turned and went back to my computer, resuming the writing of my novel draft. It would be somewhat of a clearing of my soul and a revelation of the state of some matters inside the church. I had already decided to title it "The Bishop's Lover."

Frank came into the cabin, his gym shorts hanging low on his slim hips. "You heard?" he asked.

"Yes, I heard," I answered, drawing him over to between me and the computer, facing me.

"Do you have regrets? I can call him back."

"Not a single one other than how long it took me to accept my nature," I said, pushing the shorts down off his hips, pulling him to me, opening my mouth over his jet-black dick, and starting to suck him off.