Prayer (17 page)

Dry and dressed, they went to the living room. While John sat on the sofa and tuned his guitar, Katrynn set up the keyboard and sat before it in her rocking chair. She really didn’t like the way it sounded, and she knew, as she listened to the warm natural notes of his acoustic, that her notes would sound synthetic. But it was nice to sit here in her cozy little apartment, with her cats stretched out on the back of the sofa, and have music fill the space. Music and affection.

When he was satisfied with the tuning, he lightly strummed some chords and asked, “What do you like to play?”

Feeling shy, she lifted a shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. “A lot of things, I guess. Classical, pop, some standards. My mom likes old-school country, so that, too. You?”

“Singer-songwriter stuff, mostly. My brothers give me shit about my musical taste, but whatever. I like harmony and poetry in my music. Do you know any Dylan?”

“Sure. Some.”

A light came into his eyes, and he smiled. “How about this?” He strummed an upbeat rhythm, a classic Dylan riff, and after a bar or two started to sing, softly, in a rich, low tenor. She didn’t know the song, but got the key and listened closely, her fingers moving soundlessly over her keyboard, finding where they’d fit.

He sang a second verse, and she heard the lines again that clearly made up the refrain, and she guessed at the title: probably something like ‘Shelter from the Storm.’ Understanding why he’d picked it, she smiled and began to play an accompaniment. By the third verse, she had the pattern of the lyrics and sang harmony with the refrain.

When it was over, he laid his arms over the top of his instrument and looked long at her, until she felt self-conscious. “What?”

“You have a nice voice.”

“Thank you. So do you.”

“Are you religious?”

The question surprised her, and made her uncomfortable. Her mother had the same attention span about religion that she had with anything else. In Katrynn’s life, they’d been members of Methodist, Presbyterian, Buddhist, Unitarian, Baptist, Hindu, and Pentecostal congregations, but mostly they hadn’t gone to church at all. Her spiritual understanding had been stitched together like a patchwork quilt.

She wasn’t religious, but she knew he was. The Paganos were leaders of the Catholic community here in the Cove. Would an honest answer to his question end their snowy idyll and whatever might come after it? Could she fake being religious to keep up what they were starting?

No. No. What they were starting felt important. Too important to hurt it with dishonesty or obfuscation.

“I’m not. I’m sorry.”

“Why sorry?”

“I know you are.”

He nodded. “I am. But maybe not like you think. I mean, I’m Catholic, obviously, and I go to Mass with my family, and I believe in God. But I don’t agree with everything about the Church. There’s a lot of stuff I do that’s a sin in the Church’s teaching, and that doesn’t bother me. I like the Mass—the rituals and the beauty. The traditions and connection with my family. I feel peaceful at Mass, even if I’m ignoring the homily. But I feel closest to God when I’m playing guitar. I don’t really pray much outside of church, but playing sometimes feels like that to me.” He smiled, and Katrynn would have sworn that he’d blushed. “Playing with you just now, that felt like a prayer.”

No one had ever said anything so beautiful to her in her life. “John,” she breathed as her hand went to her chest. She’d been right that playing together would be intimate.

John shook his head. “Too much? I’m sorry. But I’m done holding back what I feel. I’m so tired of the game, Katrynn. I’ve never figured out the rules. I’m gonna be forty in April, and I keep getting sent back to ‘Start.’ Well, I want to start. I want to make my way around the board, and I want to do it with you.” He sighed, and it turned into a rueful chuckle. “Unless, of course, I just totally freaked you out, and you want me to go. In that case, I’m really sorry I dumped all that while I’m snowed in with you.”

Katrynn got up from the rocker and went to sit at John’s side. “It’s not too much, and I’m not freaked out. That’s the most wonderful thing anyone’s ever said to me. My metaphor is different, but I feel the same. I don’t think of it like a game, but like a cliff. I was thinking this morning that I’d jumped off the cliff for you last night, and I was afraid I was alone down at the bottom.”

He smiled and set his guitar aside. He took her face in his hands—those big, dark, rough, incredibly sexy hands that made beautiful music on his guitar and on her body. And in her heart.

“You’re not alone. I’m with you,” he said and kissed her.

~oOo~

That night, when they were finally spent, John pulled her back and nestled her in the long, warm curve of his body. With his arms snug around her, his body touching hers at every point, he kissed the back of her shoulder and whispered, “Sleep well, baby.”

Katrynn smiled and breathed a deep, sated sigh. She didn’t pray; she didn’t even know whom she’d pray to. But still, as she drifted off to sleep, she thought the words
Thank you
.

~ 11 ~

John opened his eyes as the sun was just washing golden dawn over the bed. Katrynn was snug in his arms, and he smiled and kissed her shoulder. “Wake up, baby.”

She moaned and slapped a hand over her face.

He picked up that hand and kissed it. “Wake up.” He trailed kisses up her arm, back to her shoulder and then down her back, along her side, over her hip, lingering at her pretty red birthmark shaped like an angel’s wing, then down her thigh. “Wake up, wake up, wake up.”

“God! You need a fucking shade over that window!”

Grinning, he looked out the loft window at the sun rising over the ocean. “No way, Grumpy Cat. There’s no better way to wake up than sunrise over the water. Except maybe…”

He lifted her leg and slid under it, settling himself between her thighs. When his tongue touched her clit, her moan changed its tune, becoming sultry rather than sulky.

“Oh…God, you’re good at that.”

“I’m good at all of it.” To make his point, he sucked that pretty little pink bud into his mouth exactly the way she liked.

“Yes. Yes, you are,” she breathed. “Do you have time for this?” She gasped as his tongue lapped along her folds. “You better have time for this.”

“Why do you think I wanted you awake? Now shut up. I’m busy.”

She relaxed and rolled to her back, opening herself completely to him, and John wrapped his arms under her thighs and took hold of her hips. Then he settled in for a morning feast. He loved the taste and smell and feel of her, the way her muscles rolled in his hands as he made her squirm. He had learned quickly to read her body because once they got started, her mouth said very little, nothing more than erratic breaths and soft moans to lead him. Maybe the occasional calling out of his name or God’s, but nothing more than that.

Gradually, very gradually, she was becoming more expressive. It was like she was still learning to trust him, though he wasn’t sure what she might yet fear. He was all the way in. He loved her—and he’d told her as much. There was a chance he’d loved her longer than he’d realized.

She hadn’t returned the words to him yet, but he knew that she felt the same way. Just as he’d learned to read her body in sex, he’d learned—was learning—to read her actions in life. She loved him. She was afraid of it, but she felt it.

During the storm, when they’d been caught in a fantasy snow globe, she had been more open and free. But after two days, they’d had to return to the world, and she’d pulled back a little. Just a little, and only in word, not in deed.

He didn’t need the words, because she showed him, every day. He understood her—or he was coming to understand. He knew he needed to ease her fear, so that she could embrace her feelings, and then the words would come. And when they did, then they’d move the next step on the board.

At this moment, however, John’s attention was on her body and on the way her thighs had closed around his head. He could feel her muscles spasming against his tongue, in his hands, on his ears. Her fingers had twisted into his hair, and her breath was coming in desperate cries. When she came, she always sounded almost afraid of it. Her body seemed to resist the pleasure of his touch, even as she sought it.

“Let go, baby,” he murmured against her sweet flesh. “Let go, let go.” He slid two fingers inside her, pressing against that one perfect spot, and sucked again on her clit, and her need trumped her resistance. Her climax landed like a bolt of lightning, pulling her back and shoulders off the bed. He stayed on her until she flopped back down and began her languid twitching.

He felt victory in making her come like that. She’d told him that no one had ever made her come like he could, and he was proud as hell about it. But he understood, he thought, why she’d had trouble.

His girl was afraid of letting go.

It took some focused attention to pull her from her shell. He knew a lot of guys who’d be defensive about that, turning insecurity into hostility. He also knew guys who probably wouldn’t even notice.

He eased up her body, tonguing a twisty trail up her soft skin—so, so soft, like no other woman’s skin he’d ever touched. She was smiling, her eyelids heavy, when he reached her face and laid a light kiss on her mouth and then brushed his wet beard over her cheeks.

She took hold of his face. “What about you?”

“There’s time. I want you to ride me.”

He didn’t really have that much time, but fuck it. Carlo and Luca could wait.

Grinning widely, she shifted under him, pushing at his shoulders until he rolled to his back. She treated him to the same attention he’d paid her, kissing a trail from his mouth down, lingering at his nipples, licking over the muscles of his abdomen, nuzzling her nose in the hair below his navel. John closed his eyes and let himself feel her.

She enjoyed paying him attention, and he had no trouble at all letting go.

When she sucked on the tip of his cock, he groaned and grabbed a handful of her hair. “Come on, baby. I want to fill you up.” He pulled lightly, urging her up, but she held back. Then she turned and straddled him backwards.

He liked to watch her face, since there was so much to read about her pleasure there, but as she sank down on him, he didn’t care at all that her back was to him. She’d gone on the Pill, and they’d both tested clean—not a surprise, but he shared her caution—a couple of weeks before, and hallelujah for that. He’d gone without condoms with women before, when he’d been in something serious, but the feel of being bare inside a woman was always different and never got old. It changed the way he knew her, and it meant that there was something real between them.

He’d felt that with every woman he’d gotten to this level of intimacy with, but it had seemed even more meaningful with Katrynn, possibly because of their rocky start, and her reserve. It was a sign, and he took them all to heart.

Feeling her molten heat envelop him now, watching the shimmy of her hips and the little jiggle of that great ass, John could only have felt closer to her if he’d been looking into her deep brown eyes. He rested his hands on her hips, covering her little angel’s wing with his thumb, and urged her to move.

She did, and fuck. Going down on her, getting her to come so powerfully, had almost set him off already, and now with the focus on him, he was going to blow. But he didn’t want that. He never wanted to come without her, not even if he’d already brought her off.

He watched the silk of her hair ripple as she bounced and flexed on him. Even that was too potent an image. He could feel that she wasn’t going to come like this, she was too focused on him, and he knew she wouldn’t touch herself while he was inside her. She had a thing about that: masturbation was not for couples. It was something he hoped to work on.

But for now, he just need to get her off so he could go, too. He sat up and grabbed her hair, pulling her backward until she collided with his chest. Then he lay back down, bringing her with him, so that she was completely exposed to his hands.

She’d gone still. “Keep moving,” he breathed at her ear.

When she picked up her rhythm again—a little stilted now as she tried to find the way to move in this position, he slid one hand between her legs and went for her clit. With his other hand, he plucked at a small, pink nipple.

Instantly, everything changed for her. Her breath got harsh and erratic, those small, anxious cries on each exhale, and every muscle in her body began to thrum. He sucked at her earlobe, pulling her little silver hoop against his teeth. When he put his feet on the bed and started thrusting upward, getting to her full depth, he slammed his eyes shut and grunted through his own need to let go.

His grunt set her off—hard. Her body went rigid, and she flooded his hand. She’d never done that before, and at the feel of her total loss of control, he could not possibly have kept any control over himself. With several more thrusts and a shockingly loud, totally senseless shout, he came, the climax slamming through his body so hard that his head ached.

When he could, he rolled to his side, taking Katrynn with him, nesting her in the spoon of his body. She liked to be held close afterward, not just as a cuddle, but as if she needed to be protected after becoming vulnerable.

As he felt her become calm and steady, he asked, “You want to come out with us?”

She reached back and combed her fingers through his hair. He loved that touch. “No. I’ll just hold you back.”

“You can’t get better if you don’t get wet.”

“I know, Surf Sage. But it’s too cold. Early May is not swimming weather.”

“Surfing, not swimming. And that’s what wetsuits are for.”

“I have to go into work for a while before this afternoon.”

They were going to Nick and Bev’s for a baby shower. Since she’d spent Easter with her mother in Connecticut, and since they’d spent his birthday in Atlantic City, this would be their first big family event as a couple. It was hardly a coming out—their circles overlapped tightly, and she had been practically family for years. Anyway, everybody in the Cove knew they were together by now. But John still felt it as significant.

He hadn’t yet met her family.

“And I have Mass. I’m still getting wet first.”

She looked over her shoulder and gave him a wry smirk. “I just got plenty wet. Embarrassingly wet.”

He leaned over and kissed her. “Don’t ever be embarrassed about that. That was wicked hot. I came so hard my eyes about popped out.”

That smirk turned up into a grin. “You’re awesome.”

“I know.” He sat up, then leaned over and kissed her angel’s wing. “Okay. I gotta get moving, or they’ll go without me. Will you be gone when I get back?”

She sat up, too, and tucked the sheet demurely over her breasts. “Probably. I need to go home and spend a few minutes with the boys before I get ready for work. I’ve been neglecting them lately.”

A thought occurred to him, but it would be a big conversation, one he didn’t have time for, and one he doubted she was ready for, so he tucked it away for later. He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Okay. Give the boys a pat for me. I’ll see you later.”

~oOo~

Shortly after Teresa had been born, Carmen and the baby had moved up to Maine, where Theo had worked as a professor at a liberal arts college. John had been living in a nondescript apartment back then, and Carmen hadn’t wanted to sell the beach house she loved, so they’d come to an arrangement, and he’d rented the place from her. He hadn’t wanted her to sell it, either. This little cottage was home base for everything the family did on the beach—and they did a lot on the beach.

When Theo had retired from teaching, they’d moved back to the Cove. But the beach house, with basically two rooms and a loft, was too small for a family, even a family of three. So they’d bought a considerably larger house down shore, and John had stayed put. By then, he’d been tired of renting, even from his sister, and she’d been tired of landlording, even to her brother, and Uncle Ben had offered his help, so he’d bought the place.

He owned this stretch of beach, this view of the sunrise. Every morning, he felt that knowledge with pride and pleasure.

When he got onto the beach on this morning, Carmen and Trey were sitting in a couple of the Adirondack chairs around the fire ring, their wetsuits fully up. Carlo and Luca weren’t around. He squinted out onto the water and saw a couple of guys sitting on their boards, waiting for the next swell. Probably them.

He leaned his board against the chair next to Carmen and dropped into the seat. “Hey. Didn’t know you guys would be out this morning.”

Carmen hardly ever came out anymore. Trey had been surfing since he was five—it was a family ritual, and Ben and Teresa had gotten their first boards at that age, too—but since Trey had hit middle school, he hadn’t been so keen on the dawn patrol.