“In very few cases would I suggest this course of cure. But you know, to overcome a greater, even God will allow a lesser evil. So it may be that if you permitted yourself intercourse just once again — and without any feeling of wrongdoing to add to the excitement — you would get the whole necessity out of your system. At least, you would rid yourself of its full power as you now feel it and would pave the way to a beginning at controlling it. This may seem a very strange recommendation, but reflect, my lamb, that the ways of God are often strange beyond belief — but always with the end in mind. If, by this means, you can help to overcome the acuteness of your desires and thus, eventually, overcome them completely, you will have taken the right and only course. If you go on as you are you will either go mad or give way again and again until you are no better than the lowest whore.”
There was a long silence after his words. Lucrezia let her hand slip from his and flop against his thigh, as if accidentally, in weariness. She could feel his skinny thigh under the coverlet — and against the side of her hand she could feel the rising bulge of his erection. Knowledge of his desire had given her course to be bold.
“I thank you, Holy Father. I'm sure your advice is good. And as it is your advice I'm willing to follow it with a glad heart — even though of my own willing the idea must have seemed wrong to me. I see that it may well be the only way. But there is one thing that frightens me still.”
“What is that, my child?”
“Holy Father, it's just something I feel. It hardly makes sense. But I'd know that it was simply lust in the man with whom I made love. I'd know that although I was trying to purge myself, that he was on a different plane simply using me as an object of his passion. Although I could have holy aims and thoughts about what I was doing, it would shame me that the man would feel completely differently.”
The Pope turned this over in his mind, gloating, playing cat with the mouse, unaware that he was being outplayed, that his thoughts were being directed along channels which would lead to the inevitable. Amidst his thoughts he was aware of her hand against his erection, the slight pressure making him involuntarily strain the mast up against her hand, trusting that she wouldn't realize what was happening.
“I think I could only do it, now, after what you've said, with someone who knew why I was doing it and sympathized and made love to me with the intention of curing my desires,” Lucrezia told him.
“For that you would need the holiest of men,” said the Pope innocently.
“Yes,” Lucrezia replied from his shoulder, “the holiest of men.”
She raised her head and stared into his eyes for several seconds.
The Pope felt her words sinking into his mind like a physical force. They startled and excited him — and her look heightened the effect. He was sure, now, that it would be a simple matter. The girl was very susceptible; she would really imagine she was ridding herself of evil.
Slowly he looked at her breasts again. How lovely they would look swinging free to the air. And her body! What would her body be like? And how would her face look screwed up and lost in passion. His hand clenched over his erection in a fierce surge of emotion. He couldn't pass up such an opportunity — even if it was the last thing he did. The last thing! He wondered. But doctors always exaggerated. It was part of their business to frighten the patient into submission. And surely he wouldn't feel so much like having intercourse with her if it were likely to do him any real harm.
Lucrezia had seen the lust in Innocent's eyes. She had very nearly won. She wondered what it would be like with such an old man, but the thought didn't appall her — in fact she rather liked the idea of being screwed by fatherly old men. The contrast between their balding heads, her golden locks, her young, firm body and their slack flesh added to her excitement, made the whole thing seem less permissible.
Without looking up she raised her hand to her cheek and then allowed it to drop back casually onto the bed-onto his stiff penis. She could feel the bulge under her hand and she felt him tense with her touch.
The Pope felt his breath rise up through his body, as if from his loins, strangling him in a weight of emotion. This was it; this was the moment of choice — but it was already too late to choose. Knowing the inevitable he nonetheless raced through a number of arguments in his mind against having her. But now her fingers were moving gently on his penis, stabbing it with needles of fire and she had raised her eyes to his again, was looking deeply into him as if she knew the depths of his soul.
“You are the holiest of men,” she whispered. And her mouth opened gently and her eyes closed as if she were overcome at the awe the thought inspired.
He seized her then and drew her up to him.
“We will drive the evil out of you,” he said with a voice he could hardly control. “Together we will prove the strength of the Lord.” Inside he burned with excitement and laughed madly at his hypocritical words. He would do it. He would screw her young-girl flesh, fill her young-girl passage with his holy mace — if it was his very last act he would do it.
“I will do anything you think should be done,” Lucrezia whispered, with a fine show of youthful, feminine weakness. So saying she pressed her breasts into him and pushed her young body alongside his in a sign of submission.
Innocent's lips trembled with lust. He tried to think clearly for a moment, forcing his thoughts away from a desire to rip her clothes from her with his ebbing strength.
“We are unlikely to be disturbed,” he said softly. “My attendants wait in the antechamber when I have visitors, but against emergency perhaps you would go and bolt that door, my dear — and then you can remove your clothes — behind the screen if you wish — and come back here.”
Lucrezia ran her hand along his hard tower and then obediently got up from the bed and went to the oak door. She slid the heavy bolt across, looked back to the bed, smiled nervously at the Pope and slipped behind the screen.
She took a fair time about undressing, flinging her garments one by one onto the top of the screen. She peered through one of the cracks at the join of the two panels and saw Innocent's eyes avidly taking in the items of clothing which had intimately draped her body. What a lustful old man he is, she thought-and with all that nonsense about the strength of the Lord. She sniggered to herself. She'd show him her strength and see how he stood up to that.
She pressed her hands down her buttocks. God, what a thrill he was going to have doing that-astonishing that her own body meant so little to her. She smoothed her belly and glanced down at the globes of her breasts. She felt a little nervous about what this was all leading to, but when she glanced for the last time through the crack and saw the Pope playing with himself so obviously under the sheets she took heart and walked around the screen, utterly naked, toward the bed.
Innocent's eyes goggled at her as she came toward him, with head bowed slightly.
“Don't be afraid of your nakedness-you have a rare beauty,” he said in an attempt to sound pontifical. But his eagerness seeped into the words making them sound comic.
Lucrezia raised her head and fixed her eyes on him. She had adopted an expression of young and tender helplessness.
Innocent let his gaze rifle her from top to toe. What beautiful proportions! If he couldn't have had her now he would have been willing to die rather than live with the memory of her body denied him.
Her slender neck ran into slim, sloping shoulders, well-covered with flesh; her breasts were firm and impudent, the sleek ovals begged to be cupped in a hand, to be squeezed. Her waist was very slim, which accentuated the sexy outward curve of her hips and the tapering into firm luscious-fleshed thighs. He could see the slight trace of blonde down on her lower belly and what was little more than a shadow of flesh at the nest between her legs.