The next day dawned like any other in the convent: the toll of the bell for Lauds pulling me from a fitful sleep, the cold stone under my knees as we gathered in the choir stalls, the murmur of thirty voices reciting the Psalms in unison.
But nothing was the same.
My body remembered her, every ache between my thighs, every faint bruise where her claws had grazed my hips, the sticky residue of her release that I’d scrubbed away in the pre-dawn dark, whispering frantic Hail Marys over the basin.
I knelt now in the chapel, habit smoothed, wimple starched, rosary threaded through my fingers like a barrier. The others sang around me: “O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall declare Your praise.”
My lips moved. My mind did not.
Her taste lingered on my tongue, phantom and sweet. My s*x thr
