TWENTY-EIGHT
Bastien
“And so James said to the apostles, ‘Is any one among you sick? Let him call for the elders of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith will save the one who is sick, and the Lord will raise him up. And if he has committed sins, he will be forgiven.’” I breathed the familiar passage in my native tongue, the richly inflected words a pleasant lullaby to my ears.
I turned the page of my hand-scribbled homily as I stood at the lectern, the words swirling around in my mouth like warm drops of honey, bringing so much comfort to my confused soul. I'd spent hours of my time after sunset poring over the pages of my Bible, committing passages to memory in my pathetic attempt at redemption. “After much reading,” I breathed honestly, “even I am reminded that Jesus himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sin and live in triumphant righteousness. By his wounds, you have been healed. We have all been healed already—he welcomes us sick, weak, and stumbling—we need only ask it of ourselves. It's essential we confess our sins to one another—that we pray for one another. The prayer of a righteous person has great power, my friends.”
I scanned the eyes of the small crowd, women fanning themselves with dried banana leaves, the men hunched and pulling at the frayed edges of their baseball caps. This tiny parish and the people who populated it had become a lifeline after all the years of self-inflicted heartache.
Maybe the once-a-week love Padre Juan and Carmelita shared was enough for them. And I decided right then that no longer would I shame myself for my earthy transgressions and biological desires; my very peace required it.
Moving on without Tressa had proven itself nearly unbearable, the charged interaction with Margarita last night only proof that man was meant to love, just as I’d whispered in Tressa’s ear so many ages ago.
Adam and Eve were meant to explore each other, learn, and grow to another level.
“Sons and daughters, please never forget—we are already whole in His eyes. All the strength we need to walk through this life can be found in faith.” My eyes traveled across the quiet crowd, lingering on a form in the corner with long waves of chocolate brown over one shoulder.
A smile that reached my eyes washed across my face as I held up my hand for the sign of the cross. “Peace be with you.”
The murmured reply in Spanish brought me back to my time at the Jesuit seminary and the first few dozen homilies and liturgies I’d given in my young career. My time with the Jesuits had been short but left a lasting impression. Their dedication to education and social issues was unmatched by any other order I’d come across in all of my years practicing my faith. All that goodness rivaled only by the militant order they impressed upon their most dedicated practitioners.
As the parishioners began to file out, I exchanged meaningful nods with each of them as the sun began its slow descent over the mountains.
My palms began to itch for the familiar feeling of the woven ropes and leather belt that left a kiss not soon to be forgotten.
My mind wove back to the brief moments I’d seen the girl with the dark hair hovering in my Mass.
I swallowed, wondering if it could have been her.
If she was still here.
If I was crazy and she was only a mirage.
Carmelita and Santiago followed up the last of the line, warm and open smiles on both of their faces. “Where’s the rest of the family this evening?”
Santiago was twisting the ropes that hung long on my vestments as his mother spoke. “My boys are down sick, so Padre Juan is watching them. And mi Margarita—” she brushed closer, hand at my elbow “—she went back to Havana. Country life is not for her, she decided.” Carmelita winked. “I’m glad. One less mouth to feed. She’d get bored and cause trouble for me anyway.”
I held back my chuckle, only wishing the best for both of them.
“Come on, Santi,” Carmelita instructed.
The boy gave my leg a quick hug before sprinting down the cobbled stone path that wove to the dusty red road. “See ya, Padre Castaneda!”
“Adios, Santiago!”
His mother caught his hand, setting sun lighting his dark hair like a halo.
I watched them get smaller and smaller until they finally turned the bend in the road and were out of my sight.
With the heavy feeling settling, I spent the next few minutes locking up the small church and readying for morning Mass. The sun was already below the horizon by the time I was shuffling back to my rectory, the before-bed ritual I’d become accustomed to already warming my skin in anticipation.
Locking the door behind me, I paused for a moment at the small window carved into the stone hovel. Shades of navy and obsidian played tricks on my eyes, warm wind whispering on the palm leaves, only a few brave avian souls singing a staccatoed birdsong in the distance. And after a minute, even that grew silent, romance and mystery clinging to the soft breeze.
A small, satisfied grin lifted my lips as I made a mental note to emblazon this moment in my mind.
It felt like I’d already walked a lifetime in the shoes my God had given me for this life, but I appreciated the lessons learned each and every day, even if they were hard wrought.
I closed the thin curtain, still enjoying the way the breeze lifted it to twirl and dance, adding levity to an admittedly stifling room.
I unbuttoned the top few buttons at my neck before pulling the shirt from my waistband and yanking it over my head. My pants followed before I was on my knees, hard wooden floor biting into unforgiving bone. I turned my eyes to the window and the few slivers of moonlight that shone through the curtain.
I began the string of prayers I used to repent for the wicked desires in my mind as I took the soft licks of leather in my hand, running it through my knuckles and enjoying the way the grain warmed against my flesh. The natural touch made the bite less shocking, though it’d been my experience that it tended to make the welts worse. I’d trained myself not to wince anymore, so that was something.
With a soft flick, I used the action of my wrist to cut this evening’s first lash across the expanse of my back.
The speed of my words increased as I surrendered in prayer to his holiness for forgiveness.
“Forgive me, Father,” I whispered in English before continuing on with the Lord’s prayer in Spanish just under my breath.
My second lash was diverted midway by a soft knock at the door.
A knock so soft, I wasn’t sure I’d even heard it.
I waited, prickles of sweat already nipping at my neck and hairline, skin at my back stinging nicely.
Two more soft knocks and then silence. I rubbed a palm over my head, neck corded and muscles jumping under the skin as anxiety swept through my bloodstream.
I dropped the belt at my knees, sliding it under the edge of the bed, and stood.
I waited, hovering at the door and thinking what a fool I was being because it wasn’t at all uncommon to have a parishioner stop by after sunset. It was only uncommon that I was standing here, nearly naked, with a belt in my fists. I could play it off that I’d been asleep, or just out of the bath.
I pushed a hand through my hair, steadying myself before opening the door and plastering a pleasant smile on my face.
Darkness clung to every corner, my eyes adjusting poorly to the dark night, focusing fully only when someone stepped out of the shadows.
Her.
Blood red seeped into the corners of my vision as my head began to pound, the pleasant sting at my back fast becoming an unbearable colony of fire ants crawling out of every pore.
My eyes were undoubtedly playing tricks.
Four years in this tiny country parish had finally sent me straight over the cliff into the seas of insanity.
And then her chin tipped up, shadows giving way to cool, silvered light.
Cheekbones high and more angular than I’d remembered.
Lids o
pening to reveal eyes a deep shade of chestnut.
I sank my teeth into my bottom lip, blinking my eyes open and closed as she stood before me, a mirage.
My dove.
I stretched out an arm, heart galloping at a wild speed within my rib cage as I took my first steps to her.
She licked her lips once, eyes locked with mine in a raw embrace of our very souls.
“Tressa.” Her name snaked past my lips like a sacred prayer.
Her eyes shuddered closed a moment before she took one tentative step over the threshold of my room.
I brushed the side of her wrist with my fingers, pleading for more of her with my eyes.
Whatever she was willing to give, like a starving man, I would take.
“I…” Her chocolate eyes welled up. I took her other wrist in my hands, pulling her closer.
“I’m happier to see you than I can even say.” I held her face in my hands, eyes hovering inches apart.
Her head fell, conflicted emotions warring in her eyes.
“I…” The truth clung to her throat, my own desire to wrap myself in the memory of her voice coaxing the words from her like a greedy bastard. I assessed the soft planes of her face with my gaze. She was older, skin a darker shade of cocoa, hair longer and the same rich hue of a coffee bean. My fingers itched to plow through the soft waves of silk, drown myself in everything I’d been missing. The very dream that’d kept me awake night after night.
“I’ve missed you,” I finally admitted, pulling her a few steps farther into my tiny room and closing the ancient door.
We were alone.
My palms prickled with anticipation.
I watched the sweet hollow of her succulent throat swallow before her eyes cascaded up my body, bare feet to naked thigh, boxer briefs to bare chest. “I don’t know why I came,” she finally blurted, eyes watery. “Only that I had to.”
My heart splintered, arms crushing her to me, soft sobs finally releasing as she buried her face in my chest.
“I didn’t know… I wasn’t sure…after all this time…” She whispered on repeat, words stuttering out of her between tears. “I thought maybe what happened between us was something that you’d done before, that what you and I had was…common.”
My own pain rose like a bubble to the surface, tears slipping past my eyelids and soaking into her hair. I wove my fingers deep into her tresses, both of our chests shuddering to the same heartbroken rhythm, and somehow—someway—with her, I came back to life.
“There’s never been anything common about us, dove.”
TWENTY-NINE
Bastien
“How many times do I have to apologize for landing on your doorstep crying?” She breathed a giggle that touched me in places it shouldn’t have.
Hearing her lips wrap around a full sentence was like hearing an angel at the end of a long, dark night. One gloriously full sentence out of her gloriously beautiful mouth was enough to set my heart at ease for another lifetime.
“God, I missed you,” I said again, caging her in my arms and thinking I might possibly refuse to ever let go. Keeping her hostage here would be a crime, but I was pretty confident I could get away with it for at least a little while before the authorities showed up. And still, it’d be worth every minute with her.
“I heard your Mass.” She pushed me away, inches separating us now. “Heard all of it.” She shook her head, eyes welling up again. “I’ve agonized for so long about whether it was a good idea for me to come here. At one point on the flight from Miami, I told myself this was the worst decision I’d ever made in my life. Then I reached the cathedral I thought you might be at, only to be told I’d need to head deeper into the mountains.” A frown danced across her features. “And then I heard that Mass, and I was sure I’d done the wrong thing.” She swiped at more tears, this time a little more angrily. “I almost turned and left again. I thought you’d moved on, would resent me for even showing my face here, but I couldn’t come this far without…” Her gaze clung heavily and weighted to mine. “…without hearing your voice one last time.”
I crossed the inches, hands clasped at her elbows to hold her to me. “I’ve tried to move on. I can’t tell you how I’ve tried. But I could never resent seeing you.”
“Then why this, Bastien?” She was slipping around me, fingertips trailing over the raised muscles of my bicep, over my shoulder blades, finally landing at the fresh welt on my back.
I winced when she touched the tender, broken skin.
“How could you do this to yourself?” Her words cracked, tears lacing every syllable.
I didn’t think I could handle her pain on top of it all.
Hell, if only I’d known she would be back, I’d never have taken leather to my skin at all. I’d have endured, biding my time, waiting until now.
“I’ve allowed carnal lusts to corrupt my faith. I need absolution.” I breathed, intent on the truth, no matter how much it hurt.
“How can I fight your God when he is not mine? Filled with more vengeance than redemption, more retribution than forgiveness? You know what I think? I think to love is to die a little. To not love is to exist a lifetime in purgatory.”
She regarded me shrewdly, logic written on every feature. She was a contradiction, faithfully detached, committed and still free. She gave love freely but to no one at all. Gentle and tough and passionate and refreshingly predictable in her unpredictability, just being near her light brightened mine.
Left to generate my own light, my world had gone dark.
“Bastien,” she finally uttered. “You’ve been torturing yourself.”
Her eyes cast across the room, the chrome of my belt buckle glinting from under the bed. “I heard the first strike.”
I closed my eyes abruptly, thinking of the sickening sound leather made when it met flesh.
A sound I’d never forget, and now, because of me, neither would she.
“No.”
Her palms were holding my face, lifting my gaze to meet hers.
Every ravaged day spent apart was etched on our pupils.
“You don’t know what I’ve done,” I finally murmured.
“I don’t have to to know corporal punishment isn’t an appropriate form of penance.”
“It’s not like that. The Jesuits have a practice—”
“I don’t care about the goddamn Jesuits. If you only saw yourself through my eyes, if you loved yourself as much as I love you.” Her eyes broke with emotion. “Then you would never raze your own flesh.”
And that was all it took.
With those few words, she pieced a broken man back together. Stitched my heart whole, assembled my soul to a capacity fuller than it’d been before. Like a sorceress, she used her magic to expose all the unseen parts of me. The parts I’d been hiding from myself.
“You are a good man, Bastien Castaneda. No number of lashings could make you any better in my eyes. Tell me, how much good can you bring to the world if you’re ravaged and beaten and bloody on this bed?” Her gaze was accusatory now, reason rearing its ugly head. “Don’t you think all the beautiful gifts you’ve brought to this world far overshadow the few moments of unbridled passion you’ve allowed yourself?”
“That’s not what the Church would say—”
“Fuck the Church, Bastien!” She pressed closer to me, up on her tiptoes, our noses hovering just out of reach, her lips right there. “You contaminate and condemn the most beautiful and complex love of my life, and you think I want to know what God would say? I want to know what you would say.”
My mind warred, good and evil, pleasure and pain, sin and sacrifice, all battled fiercely before she did the one thing she could do to calm the chaos.
She kissed me.
THIRTY
Bastien
“This rugged holy man thing you’ve got going on works well on you.” She tugged at my overgrown stubble.
I captured her wrist, pulling her down onto the bed beside me. “If you like it, I
’ll keep it.”
“Ha!” She laughed, and just like that, we fell back into that thing we did so well together. “Giving up your power already, Castaneda?”
Her banter almost brought me to tears.
I’d missed her more than I’d allowed myself to admit.
“I left all my power in your hands.” I could hear the lusty frustration lacing my own words, my hands greedy as they traveled her body, stroking her curves and lifting the layers of loose clothing she wore.
I gulped when her body was bare and gleaming in the moonlight, damp skin already hot with anticipation as I caged her in my heavy arms. Collapsing on top of her, I melded our lips, tasting her, touching her, getting reacquainted with my favorite everything all over again.
“I don’t know how I stayed away from you.” I kissed her deeper, not allowing a response or even a breath, our bodies working up a feverish rhythm before my fingertips were touching the wet skin between her legs and sheathing themselves in her warmth for the first time.
Again.
I groaned, her fingernails raking across my shoulder blades as she clung to me, our lips rarely disconnected as we rediscovered the love in our formerly hopeless love story all over again. All the misaligned pieces of me fell back into place as if pulled by an invisible magnet, the very force she held over my true nature incomparable to anything else in my life.
Love.
What a funny little emotion.
“Bastien?” Her lips grazed my ear and sent a thrill down my spine, grounding me in this moment. In her.
“Say it again.” I sucked at the sweat trickling down her neck, collecting at her throat, driving me wild as it beaded between her breasts.
“What?” Her laugh made me crazier for her.
“My name.”
Her grin fell a notch, warmth pooling in her eyes as she cradled my jaw in her palms. “Bastien.”
My lips glided along hers, smile lifting farther as I kissed and teased at the delicious little bow. “You are music to my ears.”
REBEL SAINT Page 14
