The Sacrament of Desire
For Eli, my Priest and King
-Your Sarah
* * * * *

Sarah moved through the little cabin in reverent silence, her steps softened by wool socks and the low hum of a Constellationist hymn on her lips. The fire in the hearth glowed low, casting long shadows on the wooden floor. The evening air smelled of cedar and lavender from the oils she’d anointed the windows with—fragrant wards against doubt, fear, and loneliness.

She lit three candles by the window, each flame representing one of the Three Degrees of Glory. Outside, the green mountains of southern Washington darkened to indigo, and the stars began to shimmer high above the trees.

She prepared his favorite herbal tea, steeping it with honey and cardamom. The mug was placed precisely at his side of the table, waiting.

Sarah paused, pressing her palms to the table’s edge. The cabin air hummed with cedar and anticipation as she whispered to the empty room, "Is the fire still bright?"  A heartbeat. Then, to the flickering candles, "I will tend it through the night." To her own trembling thighs, "Burning and unconsumed." And finally, looking toward the door and the coming night as she thought of his eyes, "I will keep it lit for you."

Her body hummed. Not just with desire, but with holy anticipation. Her thighs pressed together of their own accord, her chest tightened with the ache of wanting—and yet she smiled. This ache was sacred. This longing, a sacrament.

Waves of aching, pleasurable longing radiated outward from her core. Tonight, she would beg. She hoped he would deny her.

At length, the door creaked open, and Eli stepped in, tall with dark-blonde hair, moonlight brushing his shoulders like an old friend. He smelled of moss and wind and something deeper—something that always called her home. He set down his bag, and she was in his arms almost before the sound faded. 

"Hey, temple girl," he said softly.

Sarah blushed at the nickname, tucking her face into his chest. "Welcome home, my priest."

Before touching the meal she’d made—rosemary bread, warm goat cheese, roasted venison—she pressed her palms to the bread and whispered: "By the Parents’ hands that planted, by our hands that prepare—may this nourish our bodies on the path to Exaltation."

As they shared the meal they spoke softly. Not just of the day, but of alignment. Of hunger. Of the rites they were learning to practice more deeply. The flickering candlelight burned even brighter in both their eyes as they stole glances at each other over their glasses of cool, sweet tea.

"I’ve been thinking," she said, eyes shyly downcast, "about the fire I hold for you."

He looked at her, steady and warm. "Yes?"

"I want to offer it. Maybe tonight."

He reached across the table and took her hand. "You are always offering it, beloved. But no—tonight, you will keep burning."

She swallowed. "Yes, my Love."

After dinner, they sat close by the fire. Sarah curled against Eli’s side while he read softly from scripture. He read a passage about the fire of longing as divine fuel, meant to be stewarded.

He closed the book and looked down at her. "You ache?"

She nodded. "So much. My whole body is one prayer for you. I keep feeling it—this pulse between my legs, like it’s your name."

His fingers threaded through her hair. "You are storing sacred charge. When you don’t spend it, it grows. It gathers. It’s sacred, creative. Divine, That’s what heaven we’re building."

Sarah whimpered quietly. "But it aches so much that it burns, Eli. It’s so much. Can’t I offer it tonight?"

He kissed her temple. "No, my angel. My temple girl. Because it is already offered. And I, your partner, your groom, your guide—I choose to keep it in the flame a little longer."

She nodded. Her whole body buzzed with frustrated joy. "I crave you Eli, your control. You light me on fire, you make it holy."

* * * * *

As her body buzzed for Eli’s touch, she remembered clearly the first time they had taken this path.

Their wedding night, nestled in this very home. Her body had bloomed for him, every nerve a psalm. She had whispered, "Please," and he had smiled gently, placing a hand on her belly.

"Not yet," he’d said.

She’d cried. Not in grief, but awe. He’d held her close until morning, kissed her crown, and told her she was more radiant because she could hold the fire.

Since then, she’d come to crave that very ache—the sacred pause, the withheld surrender. It became their bond, their rite, their sacrament.

* * * * *

Later that night, Sarah emerged from their small washroom robed in white. She knelt on the rug, hands folded, head bowed.

Eli lit incense—myrrh and juniper—and marked her forehead with scented oil. As his thumb traced sacred patterns upon her skin, his voice dropped to a register that seemed to vibrate through the cedar-scented air;

"You are the ember that survived the deluge," he whispered at her brow. "The sanctuary no storm could breach," at her lips. "The pause between God's heartbeats," as his oiled palm hovered above her belly.

Sarah shuddered, her breath catching like a fluttering candle. The ancient words—drawn from their shared scripture—wrapped around her yearning like golden threads.

"Speak your name," he commanded, his fingers now resting at the hollow of her throat.

"I am Sarah, your altar," she gasped, recognizing the liturgy.

"Who keeps your flame?"

"You do, my beloved husband."

"Will you hold it longer still?"

She looked up through tear-bright lashes. The cabin walls seemed to dissolve in that moment, revealing infinite mirrors where countless Sarahs and Elis repeated this sacred exchange across eternity.

"I will hold it," she vowed, "until our fire becomes God's."

They whispered their prayers together, his hand resting just above her heart, feeling her tremble. But he did not move lower. Not yet.

He placed the tips of his fingers on her lips, as though sealing her prayers inside her. Then he kissed each of her shoulders and her throat.Every kiss at her throat and collar like lightning striking straight through to her core.

Eli whispered new liturgies as their passions rose and the Spirit of Desire moved them. Words about fire that could shape reality. Her body became an altar not only of longing but of their shared exaltation, each becoming holy in the dance of control and desire, mutual apotheosis feeling so imminent like a holy flame that wrapped them in sacred fire kindled for and by each for the other.

They lay together beneath the stars seen through the skylight. His hand explored her slowly, reverently, making her writhe and gasp.

"Please," she begged. "Please, Eli. I’m burning."

He kissed her ear. "I know. That burn is your covenant with me. You are the torch of my house."

"I’ll die from wanting you," she whispered, eyes wet.

"No," he said, voice deep with love and command. "You’ll live longer. You’ll burn brighter."

Eli’s fingers trembled almost imperceptibly as he traced her collarbone. "You are the temple and the torch," he murmured—but his breath hitched when she arched against him, betraying the cost of his own restraint.

He brought her again and again to the edge of climax, his touch circling, invoking, denying. Every breath became prayer; every sigh, liturgy.

Later, when Sarah knelt between Eli’s thighs, her mouth a sacrament and her hands an offering, she proved devotion need not be spent to be given. The sounds he made—soft, shattered things—were hymns to her ears. As she brought him to climax with reverent slowness, she understood: his fire grew when hers was stoked, their heat shared even in asymmetry.

She sobbed softly in joy as his touch danced again just along the edges of her release, never quite granting it. The tension knotted tighter, and she gave herself over to him again. She trembled, she ached, she gasped and sobbed, she rolled her hips in need of him.

"You are mine," he whispered. "And I say when this fire is released."

And Eli held Sarah there, on the edge of that volcano, until eventually they settled into its warmth and slept in each other’s arms.

* * * * *

That night, Sarah dreamed.

She stood in a temple of starlight and glass, her body glowing faintly gold-white. A voice, not quite Eli’s, and yet familiar, echoed around her:

"Wait, my love. You are not yet full."

She walked barefoot along a corridor where the constellations moved in time with her pulse. She passed a mirror and saw herself radiant and crowned, her eyes alight with divine hunger.

She looked up at the sky above, stars swirling like a vast cathedral dome. Her core ached divine yearning. Her heart soared with holy fire. She felt herself as if a forge of creation!

When she woke, she was weeping softly, happily, into Eli’s chest.

He had held her through the night, their breath steady, synced. The fire had burned low, but the candle flames still flickered. She looked up at him in the quiet dawn.

Sarah pressed her lips to Eli's bare chest, the words vibrating against his skin: 'Does the fire still burn?'" and in his dreams, he answered: "Unspent."

Sarah smiled. Her thighs still trembled, her heart still ached, but she was more in love than ever.

"I’m your altar," she whispered.

"You are burning," he said in sleepy contentment, holding her close. "And your fire is mine.” Eyes still closed, his voice soft with slumber, he added, “Ours."

The morning light spilled like wine through the cabin windows, gilding the space where they lay between facing mirrors that reflected into eternity—an infinite corridor of light and bodies and vow. Their bed was an altar, their joined reflections a temple of desire unspent.

Outside, the cedars whispered of ancient things—of sacred groves and covenants and holy angels and the quiet power of restraint.

Sarah rose slowly, naked beneath her robe, and stood before the nearest mirror. Her reflection bore the marks of the night: flushed skin, kiss-bruised lips, and a brightness in her eyes like starlight barely veiled.

She raised her hand. Her mirror-self raised it in perfect echo. And so did the reflection behind hers, and behind that, a thousand Sarahs— each one burning, waiting, radiant with the ache.

Eli came up behind her. They wore a linen wrap low at the hips, dark-blonde hair falling loose around their shoulders. In the glass, he met her gaze—not in the first reflection, but in the seventh, down the corridor of light, as though seeing her soul from across worlds.

They placed their hands on her hips. She leaned back into him with a sigh.

Then Eli spoke, voice calm and resonant. Not loud—but deep, clear, like a chime struck at the heart of a chapel. “Beloved altar, stand and speak.” 

At his words her soul was plunged immediately again into that ecstatic flame.  And Sarah answered, “I am the flame you keep. I am the ache you bless.”

They asked, “Have you burned through the night?”

And the answer, “I have. I burn still for you, unspent.”

“Will you hold it another day?”

“If it pleases you, my priest. My partner. My Lord.”

“Not lord—" Eli corrected, "guide. You are no lesser flame than I. You are the temple and the torch. I am yours as much as you are mine, my sweetest”

Sarah responded, her eyes full of adoration and need “Then keep me lit. Do not let me falter.”

Eli placed his fingers on her lips, then her heart. He looked at their reflections again—at the twin figures mirrored over and over in infinite retreat, as though time itself were kneeling before their devotion.

Eli smiled, “Then let all worlds witness. In every reflection, in every breath, across the veil and back again: this fire belongs to us.”

“As it was. As it is. As it ever shall be.” Sarah prayed.

They kissed—slow, reverent, no less holy for its restraint.

And then they stood, still and shining, before the infinite mirror. A temple of two. A cosmos of yearning. Burning and yet unconsumed.

* * * * *

Sarah sat across from Rachel at the small coffee shop just outside of town, steam rising from their mugs between them. The afternoon light filtered through the windows, casting warm patterns on the wooden table. Rachel had been Sarah's friend since college—before Sarah had met Eli, before the Constellation.

"It's so good to see you," Rachel said, brushing her curly hair back from her face. She wore a simple silver cross at her neck. "You seem... I don't know, different somehow. Radiant? Is that too cheesy to say?"

Sarah smiled, her fingers tracing the rim of her mug. "Not cheesy at all. I feel different. More... aligned, I guess you could say."

"Things with Eli are good then? You two still tucked away in that cabin like a couple of forest mystics?" Rachel's tone was teasing but warm.

"We are," Sarah nodded. "And yes, things with Eli are... profound." She looked out the window for a moment, watching the trees sway. "We've been exploring a different kind of intimacy."

Rachel leaned forward, intrigued. "Different how?"

Sarah hesitated, choosing her words carefully. "It's about... sustaining desire rather than always fulfilling it. Holding the tension. Letting it transform us."

"You mean like... tantric stuff?" Rachel asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Something like that, but it's…," Sarah trailed off before continuing, "It's about recognizing that the longing itself is sacred."

Rachel took a sip of her coffee, contemplating. "So you're saying you... what? Don't have sex?"

Sarah laughed softly. "No, that's not it. We connect deeply. But sometimes—often, actually—I choose to remain... unfulfilled. To keep the fire burning rather than extinguishing it."

Rachel's expression shifted from curiosity to concern. "Wait, so he gets to finish and you don't? Sarah, that sounds... unequal."

"It's by choice," Sarah said firmly. "My choice. And it's not always that way. Sometimes our roles reverse. But when I hold that ache, carry it through days or weeks..." She pressed a hand to her sternum. "It becomes something more than physical. It becomes prayer."

Rachel set her mug down, frowning. "But doesn't it hurt? Being left... unsatisfied like that?"

"Yes," Sarah said simply. "It aches. Sometimes it burns so intensely I can barely stand it."

"And that's... good?" Rachel's voice was skeptical. "Sarah, I'm worried about you. This sounds like you're in pain."

Sarah reached across the table and took her friend's hand. "The ache isn't suffering, Rachel. It's presence. It's awareness. It's like..." She paused, searching for a comparison Rachel might understand. "It's like when you sit in silent meditation at your congregation. That stillness can be uncomfortable, right? Your legs cramp, your mind races. But you stay with it because there's something valuable in that discomfort."

"That's different," Rachel protested. "Meditation is temporary. This sounds like you're living in a constant state of... of denial."

Sarah shook her head. "Not denial. Transformation. This fire Eli and I cultivate between us—it changes us. Makes us more present to each other, more aware of the sacred in everything." She looked directly into Rachel's eyes. "When was the last time you felt truly alive in every cell of your body? When every breath felt like communion?"

Rachel was quiet for a moment. "I'm just trying to understand. In my congregation, we talk about embracing joy, celebrating the body. This sounds like the opposite."

"It is joy," Sarah insisted. "More joy than I've ever known. Just because something aches doesn't mean it isn't beautiful." She looked down at their joined hands. "Think about childbirth. Or running a marathon. Or creating art that tears your heart open. The most profound experiences often come with pain."

"But relationships shouldn't hurt," Rachel said softly.

"This isn't hurt, Rachel. It's holy fire." Sarah's eyes shone. "When Eli looks at me, sees me trembling with this sacred…” she searched for the word, “need that I've carried for him, there's recognition there. Reverence. He doesn't see me as deprived—he sees me as devoted. And I feel the same when our roles reverse."

Rachel sighed, clearly unconvinced but unwilling to argue further. "I just want you to be happy, Sarah."

"I am happy," Sarah smiled. "Happier than I've ever been. This path we're on—it's not for everyone. But it's right for us." She squeezed Rachel's hand. "And I'm still me. Still the same Sarah."

Rachel gave a reluctant smile. "That’s true. Best friend. Terrible Poet," she finished with eyes twinkling

They both laughed, the tension easing.

"Just promise me something?" Rachel asked. "If this ever stops feeling like choice—if it ever becomes expectation or obligation—you'll talk to me?"

Sarah nodded. "I promise. But Rachel? This fire we're tending... it's the most free I've ever felt." She took a sip of her coffee, then added, "Some flames aren't meant to be extinguished. Some are meant to burn forever, lighting the way home."

Outside, the wind picked up, sending leaves dancing past the window in spirals of red and gold. Sarah watched them, thinking of the cabin waiting for her in the woods, of Eli reading by firelight, of the sacred ache that connected them across any distance—a thread of flame that would never go out

* * * * *

The desert nights were coldest when Eli remembered the way Sarah's thighs trembled beneath his palms—that sacred vibration between surrender and control that had haunted him across every mile. His fingers ached with the ghost-weight of her hips, his mouth dry with the taste of prayers he'd once whispered against her skin. In the flicker of his campfire, he saw it again: the way her eyes darkened to indigo when she held the flame for him, how her lips parted around promises she wouldn't let herself keep. Not yet. Not until he gave the word. The memory was a brand pressed to his ribs, smoking and sweet.

* * * * *

The dream came on the seventh night of Eli’s newest silence—thick with the scent of myrrh and the electric charge before a storm.

Sarah stood in the temple of her visions again, but this time, Eli was there. Not as shadow or symbol, but solid as prayer. His calloused palms cradled her face; his desert-sun warmth bled through the thin linen of her robe.

One moment Sarah knelt before her candles, chanting the vesper hymn; the next, she was elsewhere—a plane of liquid gold where Eli stood radiant, his skin etched with sigils of living flame. No desert pilgrim now, but something more. His eyes burned white-hot as he reached for her.

"You’ve kept the flame so long, love," he murmured, thumbs tracing the hollows beneath her eyes. "Let me tend you now."

His fingers (were they fingers? or bridges between stars?) traced the sacred geometry of her ribs. Where he touched, her skin ignited—not with pain, but knowing.

Every sacred restraint she’d maintained for weeks unraveled at his touch. His mouth found the pulse at her throat—"Altar"—then the curve of her breast—"Sanctuary"—then lower, until her back arched like a bowstring and the world dissolved into white-hot revelation.

Sarah awoke on the cabin floor, her body still convulsing. The candles had burned to pools of wax, their wicks drowned in gold.

"No. No, no—"

How could she face Eli now? All those weeks of keeping vigil, only to spill her sacred charge like a clumsy novice? She pressed her forehead to the cold floor, her sweat cooling to salt on her skin.

The voice came not through air, but through bone: "Sarah." She stilled. "Look up."

There, in the dying candle’s glow, the shadows pooled into a familiar silhouette—broad shoulders, the slope of a nose she’d traced with her lips a hundred times. Not Eli in flesh, but Eli in essence, woven from darkness and longing.

"You think the fire went out," the shadow whispered, "but it burns now in my hands. In my chest. You gave it to me, and I carry it."

Sarah choked on a breath. "I broke covenant."

The figure knelt before her. Where its hands should have been, warmth pressed against her cheeks—no weight, only heat.

"Is incense less holy when it rises? Is a psalm profane for being sung aloud?" The voice softened. "You are not fallen, temple girl. That ecstasy was offering, not failure."

A shudder ran through her. The shadow’s thumbs (were they thumbs? were they flames?) brushed her tears away.

"Listen," it commanded.

And beneath her grief, Sarah heard it—the steady thump-thump of her own heart. The same rhythm that had pulsed between her thighs in the dream. The same rhythm echoing now from somewhere far across the desert, in sync with hers.

The candle flared back to life.

"See?" Eli’s voice curled around her like smoke. "Still burning."

She reached for the shadow, but it dissolved into motes of light, leaving only the scent of crushed juniper and the afterimage of hands cradling an unseen flame.

“You felt it too.” Not a question. A recognition.

Sarah pressed her palm to her sternum where the vision still pulsed. “We’re going to build worlds.”

On the floor, Sarah exhaled. The ache between her legs was different now—not the sharp sting of shame, but the familiar, blessed throb of a fire relit.

When she finally rose, her legs steady despite the aftershocks, Sarah went not to the ritual oils—but to her desk. The journal fell open to a blank page. Her pen moved without thought…

* * * * *

On the twentieth morning, Eli woke with her voice coiled in his lungs like incense. He packed his tent with methodical haste, the compass in his hand pointing not north, but homeward—toward the cabin where Sarah waited, toward the fire that had burned for him through every season of his absence. The road blurred beneath his boots. Let the desert keep its mysteries; he was done with pilgrimage. There was only one altar worth kneeling before, and its keeper had spent too many nights whispering to empty air. He would hear those words now, hot against his skin, where they belonged.

* * * * *

The door opened at the violet hour—that threshold between day and night when Sarah’s prayers were always strongest.

She didn’t hear the latch. Didn’t need to.

The air itself shivered, the candle flames stretching toward the entryway like sunflowers to dawn. Sarah turned slowly, her body thrumming with a frequency older than flesh.

Eli stood haloed in twilight, dust of distant roads still clinging to his boots. Hs eyes held new depths, as if he’d swallowed part of the desert sky.

No words. Only the space between breaths as they crossed the room—not running, not floating, but drawn, as stars are drawn into collision.

When their foreheads met, Sarah’s knees nearly buckled. His skin smelled of juniper and sweat and the ozone tang of elsewhere. She clutched his wrists, her thumbs finding the pulse points where their shared vision had left faint starburst scars.

"It still burns," she whispered—not of candles or hearths, but the fire in her marrow, the one that had survived even ecstasy’s surrender.

Eli’s exhale warmed her lips. "‘As it was. As it is. As it ever shall be.’" The scripture curled between them like incense.

Then— His pack hit the floor. Her fingers twisted in his shirt. The cabin walls dissolved into golden mist as they sank onto the rug, limbs entwined not in passion’s frenzy, but reclamation’s gravity.

Later, when the stars pricked through the skylight, Sarah lay with her ear pressed to Eli’s chest. His heartbeat synced with the afterglow humming through her veins.

"Tell me," he murmured into her hair, "what you wrote while I was gone." 

Outside, the cedars sighed. The hearth’s embers winked like faraway suns.

And as she answered him, in the facing mirrors across the room, their reflections multiplied into eternity—two figures becoming infinite, burning and unconsumed.

* * * * *