“Jeremiah…” She breathed, focused for a moment on the stillness around them. “I didn’t think I’d ever let myself want you again.” She smiled, kissing him. “And it had nothing to do with honor.”
“If I could undo…”
“Don’t go there. I had to figure me out before I could figure us out. But what I’ve realized-” She inhaled at a jolt of desire that rocked her to her very soul. “I’ve realized that the figuring out isn’t ever really finished. Change is inevitable. We just can’t leave behind the wrong things.”
“Mollie.”
“Hm.”
“We can talk now or we can make love now.”
She smiled. “It’s that one-track mind of yours, isn’t it?”
She lay back on his bed, and he came with her, peeling her shirt over her head and casting it off onto the floor. His eyes locked with hers as he skimmed his palms up over the curve of her hips, leaving hot pools of lava in their wake. She could feel his arousal pushing against his pants, against her, inhaled sharply just at the thought of him bursting free.
His palms suddenly slid over her breasts, and she dug her hands into his sides, eased them up over his sleek, hard muscles. He lowered his head, slowly, her breasts swelling even as she imagined his mouth on them, and then with excruciating care and patience, he took one nipple between his lips, tugged gently, followed with his tongue, and finally his teeth, until she was bubbling hot, molten, tearing her hands up and down his back. He didn’t speed up, she didn’t divert him from his task. He eased off her shorts and underpants, using mouth and tongue and teeth to make her delirious with wanting and take her to the very edge of exploding.
“Now,” she said, amazed at the urgency she was feeling, the strangled sound of her own voice, “please, don’t wait.”
He drew back, tugged off his clothes, threw them every which way, and fell on her, all restraint gone, his patience as exhausted as her own. She had no chance to explore him, to move across his body with hand and tongue. “Stay with me,” he murmured, settling heavily between her legs. “Don’t close your eyes, don’t lose me.” He plunged into her, moaning softly as he seemed to savor the feel of their bodies intertwined. “We’re here, together, now.”
There were no more words after that, no possibility of speech or thought. When the explosion came, it was more than Mollie could have imagined, not just erupting out of her, but into her, into him, its heat and ferocity fusing them together. She was aware of nothing beyond him, herself, the moment. Warm, her muscles liquid now, she felt him scooping her onto her pillows, holding her as he drew the covers up over them both.
She cuddled up against him, but even as she was drifting off, her body refusing to stay awake any longer, she knew that it would be a long time yet before he would sleep. At his core, she realized, Jeremiah was a man who needed-was compelled by the force of his nature-to think beyond the moment. He would have to ponder what they’d done and all its ramifications, and how and if and whether what they had together should last.
Jeremiah didn’t fall asleep until well after midnight, but he was up again at dawn, restless, prowling his apartment as if he were in a cage himself. He peeked in on Mollie, asleep in his bed, her pale hair spilling across his hunter green sheets, only her bare creamy shoulders exposed. He saw their clothes tossed all over the floor. He saw the cotton blanket she’d kicked off in the night.
Mollie Lavender, in his bed, in his apartment. In his life, he thought, once more.
And in trouble. For certain. He just couldn’t fit the pieces together yet and see the clear picture of what, how, who all was involved.
The memory of their lovemaking flooded over him as he stood in the doorway. It was a gully-wash of sensations, memories, emotions that rocked him back on his heels.
Yet he didn’t have it in him to regret a single second of their night together. If he was going to have regrets, he wouldn’t have opened his door to her in the first place.
“The woman deserves her sleep,” he muttered, chastising himself for the quick, inevitable urge to rouse her and make love to her again, over and over until the sun was high and hot in the sky. It was, he thought, that way between the two of them. It had been ten years ago, and it was again now.
Some things didn’t change.
With a strangled groan, he grabbed up a pair of shorts and a shirt and headed for the bathroom. After a torturous burst of ice-cold water in the shower, he went downstairs to whittle with Sal, who was always up at dawn. The ex-priest had his ubiquitous Thermos of coffee and a Miami mug with flamingoes on it. Without so much as a good morning, he filled the Thermos top and handed it over.
“I’ve got troubles, Sal,” Jeremiah said, sipping the hot, surprisingly good coffee.
“Only dead people don’t have troubles, Tabak.”
“Words of wisdom from a former priest?”
“Nah, from an old man. But I guess forty years in the clergy, a few things are bound to get through. Whittle awhile. Dawn’s a good time of day to reflect, not to make decisions.”
Jeremiah took out his jackknife and chose a hunk of wood, and he might have been nine, listening to his daddy’s careful instructions, his mother hovering in the background, fretting about him cutting off a finger. There was no hurrying the wood, his daddy would say. You just stay with it.
The air was still, the light had a lavender cast to it, and the two men whittled awhile, saying nothing. Jeremiah felt his demons push back to the edges of his consciousness, at bay if not less threatening.
The blade of his knife slipped, nicked him between the knuckles of his left thumb. He saw the cut before he felt the pain.
“Cut yourself?” Sal asked, calm.
“Yes, dammit.” Blood spurted from the clean slit. “Hell.”
“That’s the world you’re swearing at, not that little old piece of wood.”
“I’m not swearing at the goddamned wood, I’m swearing at the cut.”
“You want me to get Bennie up? He’s got a first aid kit you wouldn’t believe. Let me tell you, that man-he’s ready for the apocalypse.”
Jeremiah put pressure on his thumb. “Sal, I’m bleeding here.”
“I can see that. Here, take my handkerchief.”
It was stark white, pressed, neatly folded, immaculate. Jeremiah shook it open with his uninjured hand and wrapped it around his bleeding thumb. He pulled it tight, knotted it. “I owe you a handkerchief.”
“The question is, what do you owe yourself?”
Jeremiah stared at him. “Sal.”
The old man smiled, embarrassed. “Sorry, it’s habit. I try to find lessons where sometimes there’s no lesson to be found.”
“Or a simple one, like you shouldn’t whittle before you’ve had your morning coffee.” Or, he thought darkly, when you’d rather be up with the pale-haired woman asleep in your bed.
“Think it needs stitches?” Sal asked.
“No.”
It was pounding now. Jeremiah applied pressure, cursing himself and Mollie both. If she’d just gone home, he wouldn’t have had to whittle at dawn. He could be asleep, not tortured by the contradictions, desires, miseries, joys, and fears of falling for her all over again.
Then again, if he hadn’t made love to her last night, he could have been down here anyway and cut off his whole damned hand. Whether upstairs or behind Leonardo Pascarelli’s gates, Mollie was in his life, and the frustrations of that abounded.
And also, he thought, the possibilities.
Sal handed him his coffee; Jeremiah sipped, grimacing at the pulsing pain. The cut wasn’t that deep. It would hurt and bleed like hell for a while, but it’d be fine.
“You ever think about getting married, Sal?” Jeremiah asked.
“When I was in the priesthood?”