Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 77018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77018 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
I glared at him right before we arrived at the chapel entrance. “Who hurt you? Only someone truly tortured during their childhood would Google such things.”
“No one…” He placed his hand on the small of my back as we stepped inside the crowded room. The boiling, non-air-conditioned—because nothing in Europe seemed to be air-conditioned—room.
“I think it’s hotter in here than it is outside,” I mumbled, fanning myself as my attention snapped to the monstrous painting on the back wall.
Revelation Jesus stood on a fluffy white cloud, arms held out over a scene of End of Days carnage. Gnarled demons sat in the painting’s corner, beating people with boat oars. Angels hauled half-naked men up toward heaven, some by their ankles. Half the women in the depiction had their boobs out, butt cheeks everywhere. Not to mention, there was an insane number of bare Renaissance dicks.
I latched onto Vance’s arm, jutting my chin toward the fresco. “Look at all those penises! If Michelangelo painted them on the walls, surely you taking a photo of yours can’t be that bad.”
Vance shot a confused look at the artwork. “Why are so many of them naked?”
“My guess is the demons stripped off their clothes. I mean, that’s Judgment Day, Vance.” I patted his back while staring at the oar-wielding creature. “It’s not supposed to be a bed of roses.”
I rummaged through my purse, eyeing up Revelation Jesus while asking for forgiveness for all the sins I was about to commit. Starting with using a cell phone in the chapel when the signs, once again, clearly told me not to.
The usual confidence that radiated from Vance suddenly evaporated. His gaze shifted around us. “I don’t think I can do this.”
“You can.” I tried to sound chipper, but as I stared around at the throngs of people, I had my doubts. “All you have to do is discreetly get yourself semi-hard. Then I’ll set a timer on the phone’s camera like we talked about, and I’ll put it on the floor underneath you.” I fell silent, waiting for a group of women to shuffle around us. “You hold out the waist of the kilt so the ceiling will be in the shot, then—” I pretended to take a picture—“snappy, snappy.”
A line sank in the middle of his forehead, and his piercing green gaze landed on me. “If I said, make yourself wet, on command. Could you do it?” He motioned around the busy chapel. “In this room? With all these people?” Then he pointed a finger at Jesus. “And that painting?”
“Okay, you can’t look at Jesus.” But I was pretty sure it didn’t matter where he looked. He wasn’t an adolescent boy who could get a hard-on from his jeans rubbing him the wrong way. “Just close your eyes and pretend you’re not here.”
“I’ll close my eyes and pretend not to hear the hum of conversation from a hundred people in the background. Some of whom I’m pretty sure are praying.”
An idea swooped through my mind like a shit-covered wrecking ball. I snapped my fingers, then dug my AirPods out of my purse. I had a way to block out the nose and get him horny at the same time.
He shot an uneasy look in my direction when I pushed up on my tiptoes. “What are you doing?”
I shushed him while cramming an earbud into his ear. “Just trust me.”
“Famous last words,” he mumbled. “Last time I trusted you, a video went viral.”
“Like you should even care about that. No one even noticed you.” Trying my best to hide my phone screen from the sight of anyone around me, I typed in Charlie and the Chocolate Starfish, featuring porn star Johnny Depth. To be clear, the only reason I knew about the film was because of Margot. She had an unhealthy obsession with porn and talked about that video all the time.
I put the other earbud into my ear, intending to shove it into Vance’s left one once I’d fast-forward to a part of the video I thought might work.
The smack of skin slapping skin came through the Bluetooth, followed by a fake moan and “Oh, Johnny!” The pace of the pounding picked up. “Your gobstopper really is everlasting.”
My face went up in flames when Vance looked at me and mouthed, “What the fuck?” Moans and grunts and skin slapping continued, and everywhere I looked, I found some rendition of Jesus on the wall.
Admittedly, maybe playing porn hadn’t been the best idea. Yet there we were, in the very center of the chapel, and if I’d thought mosaic Jesus looking down on me when I’d called Vance a delectable god of hate fucks was bad, staring at a painting of the apocalypse while listening to a girl scream out “Oompah Loompa” while she came was ten trillion times worse.