Maria and Joy had glimpsed it before, on that chaotic first day when they'd barged in on him, but that had been a fleeting, obscured view, a shadow behind a bunch of maids and hurried towels.
This was different.
This was under clear light, in a state of aroused readiness, and it defied all reasonable expectation.
It wasn't just large; it was architectural.
It looked less like a part of a human body and more like something carved from stone and grafted onto him—a monstrous, veined pillar that seemed to distort the very space between his legs.
For Maria, the sight triggered a cascade of conflicting knowledge.
As the Sister of Compassion, her life was one of chaste service. Officially, matters of carnal knowledge were foreign to her.
But her work took her to the gutters of society, to the discarded and the used.
She frequently tended to brothel girls whose bodies had been broken by their trade and whose spirits had been abandoned by the city.
