Angel Fire - Lisa Unger [80]
With deft fingers he unbuttoned her blouse, his mouth never leaving hers until he slid the garment off her shoulders, let it fall to the floor. He drew in a sharp breath at her beauty and kissed the delicate slope of her shoulder, the soft nape of her neck. He let her pull his T-shirt off, and groaned as her lips glanced his chest and alighted on the scar on his shoulder. He felt her fingers unbutton his jeans and he grew hard for her.
She stood and offered him her hand and led him up the stairs to his bed, not wanting to face the mess in her bedroom. She stripped off the rest of her clothes and stood before him. He traced the lines of her body with reverent hands, kissing her breasts, then running his lips down to her tight belly, then to the sacred place below. Her moans, her hands in his hair, brought him to his knees. Then he rose and lifted her onto the bed. She pulled off his jeans, and touched him with a tenderness he had never known, stroking him, caressing him. His pleasure was so intense, he could make no sound as he entered her.
She could feel the power of his desire as he thrust himself deeply inside her. Slowly, gently at first, then harder, more urgent. His arms held her as close to him as she could be and his lips were on hers with an insatiable hunger. She had dreamed of this but never had she imagined it so beautifully, never had she realized how much she loved him, how strong was her desire—or his. And as he repeated her name over and over like a prayer, she gave in to the building crescendo of her pleasure as they came together.
They lay wrapped around each other beneath the moonlight that slipped into the room between passing clouds, not speaking, not sleeping, but savoring each other.
“I’ll never leave you now, you realize that,” he said, lifting his head to look into her eyes.
“I know,” she said and smiled. “That night in the hospital, Jeffrey?”
“Yeah, I wanted to tell you then. But you stopped me.”
“If I had known the sex was going to be this good, I wouldn’t have.”
Moving past their awe of what had happened between them, they laughed. It was a laughter full of relief, comfort, of homecoming.
chapter eighteen
Even as he knelt before the altar, rosary in his hands, he could not feel the presence of God. There had been times in prayer when Father Luis had felt the presence of the Lord so profoundly that it had made him weep. But today, he was alone. Perhaps, he considered, he had been for the past thirty years. What use would God have for a priest whose whole life was a lie? Who had done nothing but lie since the day of Juno’s birth?
In his mind he could argue the existence of God. In his actions, he affirmed his faith in the Church. But his heart seized with doubt in the face of the violence, poverty, and pain he witnessed in the lives of his parishioners, in the news of his world. It was an ache within him that did not begin with the death of his sister but had solidified that day, became like the benign tumor he had on the bottom of his foot which he felt only when it rained, but then every step was agony.
He had prayed feverishly since the police had visited, asking for guidance, for a sign. But no answers came. Rather, no different answers came. Father Luis knew it was time for Juno to know the truth of his past. Perhaps God had abandoned the priest in his prayers because he was really only asking for a reason to excuse further cowardice, more lies.
When Luis looked at Juno, he was sometimes overwhelmed with feelings of love and tenderness. As a child, Juno was so delicate, so sensitive, the picture of cherubic innocence. Luis wanted only to protect him within the walls of the church. In this, at least, he had not failed.
Juno’s blindness kept him necessarily isolated