The Nun's Confession: 4. Garden of Temptation

The convent bells tolled vespers, echoing across the fields and corridors like a sacred warning Emilia no longer heeded.

She stood by the fountain in the inner cloister garden, the stone cool beneath her bare feet, her wimple discarded, her veil unworn. The evening breeze kissed her flushed skin, and still she burned.

Since that morning in the grass, she had not slept.

Not truly.

Lucien haunted her dreams, her thoughts, her every breath. She could feel the echo of him inside her even now, a dull ache between her thighs that pulsed with memory. The garden—once her refuge—had become the site of her undoing. Her sins bloomed among the roses.

She didn’t hear him approach. She never did anymore.

"You're not hiding well," Lucien murmured from behind her, voice low and dangerous.

She turned slowly.

He stood in his cassock, though it hung looser now, as if he, too, no longer wore the uniform of God with conviction. His collar was undone. His g