Light and Wine Read Free Page A

more. The glints of courage I find there feel like pleasure, privilege, and honor to me.
    As surely as I know she struggles, I know her faith is stronger, and that she’ll wait because I’ve asked her to.

Gently shifting her next to me on her bed, I place another kiss on her crown before standing on unwilling legs. I know she’ll join me at the table in a few moments, but my heart, my hands, and my soul are all reluctant to be parted from hers.
    Stopping in her doorframe, I turn my eyes back to blushing and blessed.

Afternoon light streams in from her windows, casting glowing marigold and coral colored hues all across her. Long hair wavy-undone, blouse crooked and creased, she slides pink rosary beads between pinker fingertips, working to steady her breathing while pinkest lips murmur prayers too soft for even me to hear.
     
     
    A sunset, a few hours, and miles later, I still can’t think of anything else.
    Saint Casilda’s rectory is quiet with rest, and I’m alone in my room. Lamp-lit and bare, save for the crucifix above my desk, taupe walls feel simultaneously confining and insubstantial, much like my body. Love and longing, missing and memories are contained here, but only just.

Focusing my eyes on the Latin tests in front of me isn’t difficult, but concentrating is. With every beat of fresh blood, my heart sends renewed yearning coursing through my veins. I was just with the source of its weighted cadence a little while ago, but the length of days and nights before that—more than a week—is indelible. Try as I might, pray as I have, the last time we were truly together endures and unnerves even still.
    “Marc …”
    With eyes closed, I can still feel needy little whispers burning between her kisses under my ear.
    “Father … Please …”

Lacie was on my lap in the chair I’m in now, straddling my hips. With my arms around her and my lips on her neck, too, delicately determined fingers left my hair to untuck black shirt cotton from black slacks.

I let her.
    “I want you,” she whispered, light and hot and rocking along my body without a slip of hesitance. “Tonight. I want you tonight, please.”
    Even as I gathered her completely to myself, cradling the back of her head and kissing her pleading lips, her hands continued. With the top button of my shirt undone, her right descended for the next while her left unfastened my collar. It landed on the carpet somewhere near our feet as she pushed both sides of the fabric apart, the warmth of her touch bleeding through my black undershirt.
    Leaning back long enough for our eyes to focus and find, she pulled her blouse over her head and dropped it next to the cardigan I’d undone from her only minutes before. Black lace cupped small curves she’d grown coyly into, contrasting against softer, pale peach skin.
    “I’m ready,” she insisted, lush and courageous eyes imploring my own.

Setting my pen on my desk, I rub both hands down my face and inhale until I can’t any hold any more air. I seek focus as I do so, but the hands pressed to my temples shake, and I can feel my pulse thrumming against my collar.   I catch my reflection in my small shaving mirror, and find I look as restless as I feel.   Dark-brown hair in disarray, it’s been a little too long since my last haircut, and coffee colored eyes clearly want for sleep as much as my heart does for peace.
    Standing from my desk, I sip from a glass of water before walking to my single window that faces the garden. I gaze out for a few seconds, but there’s no abatement or distraction there either.   So I take another drink and lie down on my neatly made bed and stare at the ceiling. I concentrate on all my muscles and seek requiescence, but this is the very place I laid her that night.
    My back grows warmer with the realization that I’m filling her silhouette.
    When I picked Lacie up, her arms wrapped tightly around my neck. She kissed me as I carried her, and when I carefully placed