Bea
I woke up Sunday morning with a prayer on my tongue. It was so popular with Christians that it was almost a cliché. My grandpa often avoided the passage even though it was one of the most requested for him to recite at weddings. The passage from Corinthians began with stating love was patient and kind, but that wasn’t what grew in my mouth like a newly budded rose when I opened my eyes and knew I was alone in my bed after a night of sin and sex with the love of my life who might never, through no fault of his own, love me back the same way.
It was the end, the whimper at the end of the bang.
Love “bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
It perfectly articulated the vast wealth of hope and patience I felt for Priest. My love for him was not something I could force on him, especially when he had no context for it. Instead, I chose to think of it as a home I created and tended for him, a place I fashioned like a haven where he might lay his weary head and be free of his demons. Where he might, one day, decide to live along with me, happy in our own way, in love under our own conditions.
I sighed wearily as I slipped out of bed, absently leaning down to pet Sampson as she snaked around my ankles on the way to my bathroom.
He ran from the room when I gasped as I caught sight of my shattered mirror. As I moved closer, I saw a single, long shard of glass in the basin, lying beneath the bloody entrails of words Priest must have written on the white porcelain.
A rún mo chroí.
I traced my finger over the dried blood and shivered even though I didn’t know what the words meant. Whatever the Gaelic denoted, I knew it was inherently some kind of declaration. Of course, the only love letter a man like Priest would ever write was one penned in his own blood.
I fingered the shard of glass, shivering as I remembered the way Priest had used the sharp edge of his blade on my body. I’d never known such a thing could be erotic, but the feel of that cold steel was incendiary. Knowing he had the skill to split me in two, but the restraint and talent to avoid harming me was a heady combination. Somehow, he knew my darkest thoughts, the fantasies my brain concocted only in the deepest hours of night when I lay awake and dreaming with my hand between my thighs in bed.
I looked up at my reflection, noting the way my smile suffused every inch of my face with gentle contentment. Last night had been intense and glorious. The evidence of it was stamped on my skin in the beard burn abrading my neck and chest, in the faint bruises decorating my hips like little bunches of grapes, and in the deeper bruises on my knees from kneeling in the shower to take Priest’s blunt cock in my throat. I’d always bruised like a peach, and for once, I was proud to bear the wounds on my flesh. I shivered at the salacious image I made, watching as my eyes went half-mast with remembered lust.
I startled when someone knocked on my front door, then grinned cheek to cheek as I wondered if it might be Priest come back to see me. I practically flew to the door, hair flying, before I realized I was naked.
I bit my lip, then grabbed the knit cream throw Cleo had made for me from the back of my living room chair and wrapped it around myself.
“Hello,” I sung as I opened the door.
Bat, Dane, and Cleo all blinked back at me.
The two men averted their eyes, covering their smiling mouths, but Cleo burst into delighted laughter and started clapping.
“Oh, oh, I just knew it,” she crowed as she pushed past me into the house holding a picnic basket.
“It was pretty damn obvious,” Bat told her as he followed her into the house, ruffling Cleo’s silky hair. “Don’t be too proud’a yourself.”
Cleo just beamed at him. “I’m just so happy for her.” She turned to look over her shoulder at me as she headed into my kitchen. “I’m just so happy for you.”
I remained in the doorway, getting cold in the icy wind, watching as Dane grinned at me and knocked the snow off his boots before entering and closing the door behind him.
“I’m thinking you aren’t used to being teased like this,” he said softly.
I bit my lip, then nodded. “This is kinda new, you know?”
Something flickered in his eyes like a faulty light bulb. “Yeah, kid. I gotcha. I’ll handle them if you promise me coffee. It’s too damn early to function without coffee.”