I'M A LONGTIME FAN OF THE HOT PRIEST FANTASY & I LOVE ALL THE PRIEST KILLIAN STORIES - SPECIAL HOMAGE TO HOLDINGOUTFORAPIRATEHERO & HER AMAZING STORY FORBIDDEN FRUIT OF THE JUICIEST KIND. I WAS FINALLY 'DRAGGED OVER THE EDGE' TO START ONE OF MY OWN BY THE NEW ITV SERIES GRANTCHESTER STARRING JAMES NORTON AS THE DISHY VICAR. CHECK HIM OUT LADIES IN BOTH THIS AND "HAPPY VALLEY".
Chapter 1: There's A New Kid In Town
Emma Swan pulled into Storybrooke around dusk on a wintry November Friday just as the first snowflakes began to swirl. She was utterly exhausted and looking forward to taking a couple of long delayed months off from her demanding job as an insurance investigator specializing in art theft to spend time with her parents in the picturesque Maine coastal town in which she'd grown up.
She'd spent the last few years traveling the world in pursuit of thieves, fraudsters and scammers of all variety. She'd just made a rather spectacular recovery of an original copy of the Bill of Rights from a shady antiquities dealer and she was due for some time off. Although her ideal vacation would have involved palm-fringed white sand and turquoise waters somewhere, her father, David, had just had emergency heart surgery. Although her mother Mary Margaret assured he was recovering beautifully and there was nothing to worry about, Emma had detected strain in her mother's cheerful voice. They were the last parents to try to hold her back or make demands, but she could tell they needed her. So she had decided to spend the winter with them, and get reacquainted with old friends.
The door flew open as she scooted up the stairs, bags in hand. Her parents emerged eagerly to envelop her in their warm smiles and loving arms.
"Oh Emma, honey, we're so happy you're here!" Mary Margaret squealed, giving her a fierce hug. "Come on in and get comfortable. Your room is waiting for you, of course."
David, more restrained, embraced her and gave her an affectionate kiss on the cheek. "How's my little girl," he said, his voice a little gruff with emotion.
"I'm fine, but how are you, Dad? How are you feeling?" Emma stood back and looked at him. He was paler and thinner than she remembered, his cardigan sweater hanging loose on his shoulders.
He shrugged off her concern. "I feel great, actually. You know there's nothing to these stents and things these days. Or at least that's what they tell me," he laughed.
"How about dinner at Granny's?" Mary Margaret suggested, leading Emma into the warm, bright house by the hand as David insisted on carrying her bags upstairs, determined to prove he was as hale and hearty as ever. "You'll see a lot of your old friends there – they can't wait to catch up!"
Later on at Granny's, happily surrounded by her parents and many old friends, Emma caught up on the gossip. She was sad to hear that old Marco had died last summer and amused to hear that Victor Whale was still an aging would-be Lothario trying to pick up girls way too young for him down at the Rabbit Hole.
"His combover is worse than ever!" Emma's longtime best friend Ruby told her, giggling.
But most of the excitement centered on the new priest at St. Aloysius Church.
"Oh my God, Emma, he's all anyone can talk about," Ruby told her. "He's young and gorgeous. Can you imagine? I always thought priests should be old and ugly but I was obviously wrong."
"Don't tell me, let me guess," Emma said, taking a healthy swallow of her wine, "Everyone goes to church now?"
"Yes, don't judge," Mary Margaret unexpectedly piped up. "And you're going next Sunday too. It's practically the main event in Storybrooke these days."
Emma rolled her eyes and leaned back in her chair. "Give me a break. Since when do we go to church?"
As far as Emma remembered, St. Aloysius-By-The-Sea had not even had a parish priest for years and years. It was so small the Diocese of Portland, which had jurisdiction over all of Maine, hadn't bothered appointing one for years. Instead, one of the priests from Bangor came over occasionally to preside over a monthly mass or the odd wedding or funeral.
"Don't listen to them, Emma, stay home with me," David chimed in, gesturing to Granny for another beer as she passed around dessert menus. "There's something about that priest
that's entirely too glib and facile for my taste. I don't trust him one bit."
Ruby's long time boyfriend Graham, Storybrooke's Sheriff, nodded in agreement. "Absolutely right, David. He's a little too good to be true, and I think his accent's fake."
"Accent?" Emma asked, quirking an eyebrow.
"He claims to be from around London, but moved to the States to attend college and seminary," Graham said scornfully.
"Oh, you're just jealous," Ruby squeezed his arm affectionately.
"Does this priest have a name?" Emma turned to ask her father.
"Father James Hook," David supplied, "I mean, if that's even his real name."
"David! Why would a priest make up a name?" Mary Margaret reproved him with a hand on his arm. David folded his arms over his chest and glowered.
"Given the rarity of anyone new moving to Storybrook, I'm not surprised a handsome stranger would excite comment," Emma said, topping up all the glasses around her with wine.
"Oh, he's not just a handsome stranger," Ashley piped up suddenly, "he's a priest, and not just any priest, a hot priest. Who hasn't had that fantasy, huh? It's so…Thorn Birds!"
All the women burst out giggling and Ashley blushed. The men just groaned and rolled their eyes in disgust.
"The men envy the attention he gets," Mary Margaret explained indulgently. "And I don't think the man has had to buy or make his own dinner since he got here. There's either a casserole, pie or something else home-cooked and yummy left on his doorstep or someone has invited him over."
"Likes his drink, though," Leroy commented from further down the table, scowling at the mention of the new priest. "I've seen him plenty of nights knocking back a few at the bar at Tony's. He's not the friendliest guy, either.
"You've piqued my curiousity, at least," Emma laughed. "But if the good ladies of Storybrook are plying him with food on a daily basis, he'll probably weigh 300 pounds by this time next year."
"Forget it," Ruby said, "He works out practically every day at Gold's Gym. And God, you should see his squat thrusts….." her eyes looked a little dreamy.
Graham looked like he'd eaten something distinctly unpleasant, so Emma changed the subject and the talk turned to skiing.
Emma suspected that Ruby was exaggerating the priest's appeal to needle her own rather beautiful boyfriend and the other women were just bored and in need of a new project. All the same, Emma rather looked forward to Sunday morning.
The following Sunday found Emma, Mary-Margaret and practically every woman in Storybrooke with any feelings left below the waist seated demurely in the pews while listening attentively to the good Father Hook say the mass.
She barely heard the words so transfixed was she by the man's physical beauty and what seemed to her at least, obvious sensuality. Ashley was dead right: he reminded her of Father Ralph de Bricassart in The Thorn Birds, a guilty pleasure she had reread many many times. How had Colleen McCullough described him? Something about "a man who had to be aware of how he looked: the height, the perfect proportions of his body, the fine aristocratic features, the way every physical element had been put together with a degree of care about the appearance of the finished product God lavished on few of His creations." She also seemed to recall references to black hair and startling blue eyes, and the conclusion of "he was perfect." Check, check and check.
Rather interestingly, Father Hook sported facial scruff. Most priests she had seen were clean shaven (not that she had seen that many). The scruff gave his face a rugged look that enhanced his appeal. Without it, she thought critically, he would have been too baby-faced. Despite his prettiness, there was nothing metrosexual or feminine about him. He reeked of confident and unapologetic masculinity. She couldn't help noticing how the scruff attractively framed his obscenely sensual full lips, lips that fascinated her a little too much as she watched them forming each word like a caress.
Though she was too agitated to take in what he was actually saying, his richly timbered, resonant voice reminded her of deep golden, well-aged whiskey, and it seemed to wash over her like a powerful psychoactive drug. The man wasn't just handsome, he threw off a powerful sexual charisma almost like a scent in its impact. She shifted uncomfortably on the hard pew, acutely aware of the tingling sensation between her legs and the moisture beginning to pool there. She uncrossed then recrossed her legs, squirming and feeling horribly exposed and embarrassed. Glancing furtively around her, she quickly saw she was hardly the only woman squirming as they stared at the priest, eyes a little glazed, lips slightly parted and, occasionally, nervously moistened.
When she looked up again, she froze. She could swear that Father Hook was staring right back out at her. Even more mortifying, she felt certain that he knew exactly the nature of her unholy thoughts about him. She tried desperately not to blush or fidget under his blue gaze. Oh God, was that the slightest hint of a smirk on his face? She dropped her eyes and began turning the pages of the hymnal in her hands as if suddenly fascinated by the contents. When she dared to raise her eyes, she was relieved to see that he had now turned to face the altar.
She breathed out in relief. With the distraction of his face turned away from her and unable to check out his ass under the chasuble, her musings turned towards other interesting questions about the hot priest.
What the hell was he doing in Storybrooke? What was a man like that even doing in a little town in the middle of nowhere? In a church that hadn't even merited a full time priest until now? She remembered vividly that Father de Bricassart had been extremely ambitious to rise in the Church, what was wrong with this guy? Perhaps he had been disgraced and sent here as a punishment, or to clean up a scandal. Thinking of the church's history of sexual misconduct and covering up that conduct, she had to wonder if the handsome young priest had he been caught with a dead girl or a live boy. If that smirk he'd given her was not her imagination, it seemed all too likely.
The hackles on her neck prickled. Not for nothing was she one of the youngest and most successful of the many private insurance investigators working on the recovery of stolen art and antiquities. She relied at least as much on her gut instinct about people and situations as she did on her formal training in either art history and investigative techniques. And her gut was telling her that her father and Graham were right. There was something off about that priest.
She decided there and then that she absolutely had to find out his secret. She didn't think she was an obsessive compulsive person, but she was an absolute terrier when it came to finding out what she needed to know and nailing a suspect. Like the Canadian Mounties and every Jane Austen heroine, Emma Swan always got her man. She would stop at absolutely nothing and would use every trick in her repertoire to get to the truth. After all, she needed to keep her brain and her skills limber while she was hibernating in Storybrooke for the winter, didn't she?
Mary Margaret had stood up next to her and she realized it was time to go up for communion. She patiently waited her turn and when it came, she looked Father Hook right in the eye and, after moistening her lips with her tongue in a deliberately provocative manner, parted them to receive the host from his long fingers. As he placed the wafer on her tongue, she thought his eyes widened and dilated, just a little. She wrapped her tongue around the host and pulled it into her waiting mouth slowly, then gave him the merest hint of a smile. He quickly looked away as she shifted toward the waiting altar boy holding the cup of wine.
Step one, she thought to herself, satisfied as she returned to her seat.
After the service, Emma and the others waited in line to shake the priest's hand on the way out of church. She was behind Mary Margaret and Ruby as she heard Mary Margaret exclaim over the lack of an organ to provide service music and suggesting that the town start a community fund to pay for a new one.
"Yes, what a great idea!" enthused Ruby beside her, "Can I help you with your organ, Father?" she asked innocently.
Emma started to laugh but controlled herself by feigning a fit of coughing. She saw the priest hide a smile. "I'll have to consult the vestry," he said, seriously, "but your generosity is appreciated."
He turned from Ruby to greet Emma. He turned his amused blue eyes to her then, regarding her with frank and open interest. "I don't believe we've met. Are you new in town too?" he said, his voice neutral and perfectly proper.
"This is my daughter, Emma, Father," Mary Margaret put in, "She lives in New York, but she's staying with us for the winter."
"How nice for you all," he said politely as he took her hand solemnly. His hand was warm and dry as it exerted pressure on her own, but she had to resist the urge to yank it away. His touch was like an electric shock, and she didn't want him to see how it unsettled her.
"And how is your father feeling?" he asked, solicitously, "I understand he recently had surgery." Emma noticed he had not let go of her hand, and she tried to resist the mesmerizing pull of his eyes.
"He's doing great, thanks for asking," she managed, coolly.
"I'm so glad to hear that." She felt him place his other hand on top of hers. "Thanks for coming today," he let go finally and turned to the next parishioner, but she could have sworn that for a split second before he released her hand, he had caressed her palm with his thumb in a subtle, yet incontrovertibly sexual manner.
When they were safely beyond the church and out of earshot, Ruby turned to her with a triumphant grin. "Well, was I right or what? Don't you need a cold shower?"
"Ruby!" Mary Margaret scolded her, "He's a man of God!"
"Man of God, my ass, I bet he'd make you see God!" Ruby laughed.
Now it was Emma's turn to tease. "Ruby, in all likelihood you are going to be struck by lightening and sent straight to hell for that. Besides, I think every female in this town is in love with your gorgeous boyfriend. You know everyone calls him 'the Golden Torso, right?" Emma dropped her voice to a conspiratorial whisper but by then Mary Margaret had moved away from them to talk with Regina, Mayor Mills, who nodded and smiled at Emma from across the churchyard.
"The more the merrier," Ruby smiled, incorrigible as ever. "But speak of the devil – I think I'll be getting home to Graham right away. I've got a surprise wake up present for him. When you think about it, he ought to be thanking the new priest! Our sex life has had a whole new lease on life since I started attending church regularly. We're doing some interesting role play."
"God moves in mysterious ways," Emma said, smirking and giving Ruby a little shove.
"Come on, Emma, you've got to admit he is fuckable."
"Oh I agree, he's fuckable, all right." And he knows it all too well, she thought.