Father Briar and The Angel

by Rita Saladano

  “Please,” he asked, voice ragged and raspy, “are you ready now?”

  “I’m aching for it,” she said.

  She lay back on the bed and spread herself. He rubbed his hard body against her soft, sweet spots. He wanted to thrust himself into her without grace or control or restraint, but he was too kind, too decent, and still to unsure of his prowess as a lover. Were he to finish too quickly, as quickly as he wanted to, the whole evening would be ruined.

  So he waited. Waited long enough for her to say, “please.”

  “What would you like me to do, my Jewels?”

  Her dislike of that nickname took her out of the moment for the briefest of time. But Father Briar wouldn’t be dissuaded. He felt fully in control, full of power, and now he wanted to fill her up.

  He needed to hear her express her desire, he wanted her beg him, and he wanted to know she wanted him as much as he wanted her.

  “What would you like me to do?” he repeated.

  “Make love to me. Put it in me,” she moaned.

  That was what he needed to hear.

  Julianna focused on the incredible feel of him. The missing of him had been impossible; the last couple of days had been a study in snow-swept boredom. She’d read East of Eden. She’d done crossword puzzles.

  It felt like Heaven to be here with Cedric now.

  His kisses made her wiggle and writhe, they were the only thing in this brutal February that warmed her and she took great glory in the joy she felt. She could also feel the hardness in his pants, urgently pressing against her.

  Cedric pulled up for a moment, he stopped kissing her, his eyes lingering on his body. She was tired of waiting and was ecstatic when he put both of his hands on her hips and brought her towards him.

  He ran his hands from her neck down to her belly then raised her shirt, showing off her new Sears Roebuck bra. His fingers drifted close to her nipples, to the clasps on her bra, but he left them alone, for the moment.

  She was amazed at the forbidden desire he was able to command with just his hands. Julianna wondered if there wasn’t real holy, Heavenly power in those hands. He could arouse her with a single touch.

  Then he stopped touching her with his fingers and began kissing her with his tongue. Her knees got weak and he had to hang on to his waist to stay vertical.

  “Cedric?” she asked her voice still and small.

  “Yes, my darling Jewels?”

  “Please…” She couldn’t finish that sentence. She couldn’t ask, even if she wanted to. She’d waited so long to be with him. She could wait a little more.

  He helped out. “Soon, my darling dear, soon we will make love.”

  One hand around her neck, the other came up to help her undress. They pulled her blouse over her head and shoulders and she reached back and unhooked her bra, but she didn’t let if fall, not yet.

  Those long moments made her desire him even greater. Both of his hands went to her breasts and stars exploded behind her closed eyes. What a release, and what a builder of tension!

  Father Briar kissed her earlobes and the hidden spots behind them. He took in the lush, jasmine scent of her hair. His teeth nibbled at her and for a moment, she wanted to be bitten, for him to draw her blood, just to know what it would feel like.

  “Bite me like a wolf,” she thought, but did not have the courage to say.

  He put his lips to the top of her cleavage and he savored the soft skin at that special place, now free from that pesky bra. He brought his hands to her breasts and squeezed softly. Julianna felt the hairs at the base of her spine rise.

  Hands still on one another’s hips, they slow danced (with room still between them for the Holy Spirit) towards the bed. They stayed this way, dancing to music only they could hear, for a long while, enjoying the closeness (but not too closeness!) until they could stand to wait no longer.

  Father Brier brought around the side of the queen-size bed. The girl at the check-in desk asked if they’d wanted “the Honeymooner’s suite but Julianna, fearing it had something to do with that wife-abusing Jackie Gleason, had quickly demurred. So here they were in a simple single room with a big bed and not much else.

  Putting what little they had to proper use, Cedric lay her down on the bed and she helped him with her skirt; he was still amazed by the complexity of women’s dress. What clothes he had left on came off quickly.

  She saw him naked, in his birthday suit, in all his glory, for the first time. It was everything she’d imagined and more. She couldn’t help but notice how hard he was, and how hard he was fighting to control his desire. Every bit of him was tight and straining. Control was very important to him, and she knew he didn’t want to lose it.

  He joined her on the bed and with an athlete’s easy effortlessness; he got on top of her and pressed a bit of his weight down upon her. Cedric lowered himself even further and she could now feel the strange, powerless joy in being immobile beneath a powerful man.

  Again her eyes fluttered shut. She never knew what to do with them when she was near to him, and she’d never been this near to him before. To guide herself in the blackness, she grabbed his ass and adjusted his hips for him, putting him just inches away from her hot, throbbing sex.

  Julianna kept her hands on him, delaying, denying, enjoying. She did not know how much longer she could control himself; she didn’t know how much longer he would let her keep control.

  He nudged her forward a little, and then straddled her. “My Julianna, if I would’ve known you were this beautiful, I wouldn’t have waited this long to make love to you.”

  She would’ve blushed, but her face was flushed red already. His penis was right there. Right there! How huge it looked from this (and any!) angle and she was ready to have it. Would he give it to her?

  To her disappointment, he didn’t. He knew she wanted it but he needed to maintain his hold upon her.

  Julianna’s disappointment didn’t last long, thought, because he gave her one of the best kisses in her life, a real movie star sort of kiss, a kiss that reclaimed her and restarted their race towards climax.

  Cedric’s slow, self-controlled rhythm had its desired effect. Julianna was no longer in control of her body. She felt as though she was nuclear powered, like her heart and soul were some new power source that could run on lust and faith forever.

  Julianna’s need for him was beyond what she had even imagined possible, and she could tell by the glassy, faraway look in his eyes that he was ready to finally make love to her. To have intercourse. To fuck, as the teenagers said.

  Despite his great desire to keep control, he wanted this first time together to be about Julianna. He wanted her to know only his touch; he wanted to be faithful as faithful to her as he was to God.

  He kept himself out of her as long as he could, feeling her warmth with the hard end of himself, enjoying the wetness, and how alive everything down there felt, how very alive.

  Her breasts were firm and warm as he rubbed his chest against them, inflaming her one last time before entering. Every fraction of an inch, every shift of weight, and every upcoming thrust, he imagined in advance. This way he had the power to enjoy everything twice.

  Cedric had to insert himself into her now or the whole moment would be lost, spoiled by his insistence on his own pace. He put his hands on her thighs and helped her wrap her legs around his waist and muscular butt. He needed her now, no, it was deeper and more meaningful than that; they needed each other.

  Desire to possess the whole of Julianna was a devilishly elusive and strange feeling, one he knew he’d need again and again, a feeling he thought not might be satiable. Nonetheless, he knew he had to go forward now or be lost forever. So he wiggled her thighs apart with his hard dick and said a final sentence as a celibate priest.

  “Your lust, your body, and your love are mine and mine alone. Only God may tell me to stop,” he whispered in her ear, and then he took her as her own.

  Although they slept the just sleep of the dead, t
hey woke up in the morning realizing what they’d done and where they were. Suddenly nervous, they dressed quickly and without words.

  In the car on the way home, Julianna fiddled with the radio until she found 830 clearly coming in on the dial. WCCO was just finishing up the commodities prices and the weather report came on after a commercial for Armor Brand canned hams.

  “There is a storm brewing to the north of us right now,” the news-reader’s cheery voice said.

  “Why do they think that is news?” Cedric said, sour, “there is always a storm brewing north of here.”

  Julianna ignored him, focused on the weather report.

  “An Alberta Clipper has been reported by our sources at the National Weather Service.”

  “Their so-called source is a drunken Irish fisherman.”

  “How does he report the weather from his boat in Europe?” Julianna asked, the sweetness in her voice masking the mocking in her question.

  “I’ll ignore that,” he said, putting his foot on the accelerator a bit harder, hoping to get home faster.

  “Concerned residents of Brannaska and other towns in the storm’s path should be prepared and take all precautions.”

  “As if we wouldn’t have done that already, given how nasty this winter has been.”

  Sex was shaping up to be more wonderful, but infinitely more complicated, than she’d ever though.

  Chapter Nine: Father Briar Counsels Worried Hockey Moms.

  Despite the wind whipping outside and the frost clouding the inside of the windows, Father Briar’s office was cozy and warm, if not particularly friendly-feeling at the moment. Racks of books lined the shelves on the walls. Cedric wished he could worm his way into one of the volumes, that C.S. Lewis volume of talks during the war, perhaps, Mere Christianity, instead of dealing with the frustrated and uncomfortable mothers that were sitting in the Naugahyde chairs across from his desk.

  “Is it natural for them to be so much like rabbits?” Mrs. Herbertson was trying to be discreet and talk around the “problem” of her daughter’s libido. “They just want to be together at all times. Day and night, night and day, at school and on the weekends. Talk of Trigger never stops!” Mrs. Olsen complained. “I know more about your son, Jenny, than I do about my own husband!”

  “Well maybe that is a problem the two of you ought to address,” Father Briar said quietly and without judgment.

  “We are not here to talk about my marriage,” she responded sternly. Father Briar wasn’t used to being reprimanded, especially by the a mother of a teenage boy who was a broken condom (or no condom at all, given that they were Catholic, and we all know that teenage boys aren’t exactly precise when it comes to ejaculatory control…) away from being an unwed father.

  Trygve “Trigger” Olsen was the star of the Brannaska High School Hockey team. He played center and was the co-captain. He was on course to graduate and the go on to the University of Minnesota, Duluth Campus, the beneficiary of a full athletic scholarship.

  But all of that would fall apart if he got Ramona Herbertson “in a family way,” as her ever delicate mother had put it. The two had been dating for five months and both had undergone a recent hormonal explosion and all its attendant side effects. They’d been caught, en flagrante delicto, and pants around their ankles, twice now. Poor Mrs. Abraham, the history teacher and debate coach, had walked in to his classroom during a free hour when students were supposed to be at a pep rally. “Well, there was a lot of pep going on in that room!” the horrified educator had told the principal.

  One such incident could be chalked up to teenage impulsiveness and maybe even a bit of a freaky streak. The second incident was much more serious, as it had taken place in the Church itself.

  The amorous couple had taken advantage of the parish’s “open door” policy and snuck into the sanctuary one snowy day after school to explore not their faith, but their bodies. There weren’t heretical enough to get it on right there in the pews (having spent many a Sunday mass sitting in them, they knew how sore they could make a clothed butt, much less a naked one) so they went down to the nursery, which they knew to both be empty and have padded play mats that would be comfortable to lay, and get laid, on.

  It was By Golly Gosha who’d spotted them.

  She was out driving around town, up to nothing much, just watching the machinations and movements of its denizens. This was her entertainment, her movies, and it was far better than anything that was on the flickering, static-ridden, newly popular television. From the cab of her Ford truck (“Where does she get the money for such vehicles?” the locals wondered, “selling rabbits can’t be that profitable”) she’d seen Ramona and Trig sneak into the church and, knowing what teenagers do alone in the dark, had gone to investigate.

  She phoned Father Briar, although not immediately; no, she took in ten minutes of the show beforehand. She envied their teenage energy; their coupling was positively electric, athletic, and arousing.

  Upon his arrival, Cedric gave a sharp rap on the door with his weathered knuckles. In the small room it sounded like a shotgun going off and poor Trig leapt away from his girlfriend and lost his erection in world record-breaking time.

  Father Briar and Gosha could hear the jangling of belt buckles and the zipping of zippers, so he waited until they were properly dressed to preserve their modesty.

  Then he chewed them out using language he’d learned as a sailor.

  Those events had led to this meeting, with both concerned mothers. “I don’t want this to be seen as a bigger problem than it actually is. Young adults, especially these days, as they are so under the influence of trashy media like movies, rock and roll, and romance novels, are beset with sexual desires. It is that they learn to control them that is important.” Here, Cedric couldn’t help bit feel like a bit of a hypocrite, as he had no desire to control his sexual urges when he was around Julianna.

  In his heart of hearts, he sympathized with Trigger and Ramona, sympathized with them deeply. If Father Briar, with all of his Jesuit rigor and deeply abiding Catholic faith, as well as years of training and practice, couldn’t control himself, how could the teens?

  He’d had a simple childhood and his future had been planned and predetermined since the morning of his birth; his was to be a life of service to God and Country. So it was easy, at least for a while, to subvert his sexual nature in pursuit of said service. These kids had so many options; the whole world was laid out in front of them. There was talk of Trygve going to the National Hockey League. “Getting paid to play hockey,” Cedric marveled as he looked at the boy’s kindly and rotund mother, “who could imagine such a thing?”

  So he empathized with her concern, too. Father Briar was never short on empathy. If Trigger got Ramona “in a family way,” that would ruin his chances at a glamorous future and sporting career. They’d be stuck here in Brannaska forever, as if frozen in ice. They’d live a traditional, conventional life, a difficult one, not like the Joe and Marilyn life his talent could earn them.

  As if paralleling his thoughts, Mrs. Olsen asked, “do you think they should get married?”

  Cedric was surprised by the speed and fervor of his response. “Absolutely not,” he commanded. “Eighteen is far too young.”

  “I was married at eighteen,” Mrs. Herbertson volunteered.

  “I was married at sixteen,” Mrs. Olsen said, “best decision I ever made.”

  “Twenty two years with Ty Olsen seems like a long, long time,” Cedric thought, but of course didn’t say anything. “After all, what do I know about marriage?”

  And this, of course, made his thoughts turn towards his beloved Julianna and how if she stayed in love with him, and stayed faithful to him, she would never be married. He wondered how much that weighed on her, how much it hurt. It was something he’d never considered. He’d always assumed he’d be a priest, and he’d also spent some years assuming he’d be killed in the war, like good old Jake. But didn’t every little girl grow up believing s
he’d be married, didn’t she grow up dreaming of the day?

  “I don’t think they should be married, either. I just want them to stop having sexual intercourse.”

  For whatever reason, the other woman’s use of such a formal term made Mrs. Olsen giggle. Her laughter was infectious and soon Cedric had caught it. He felt rather undignified but he couldn’t help it. Knowing she had such effect on people (living all those years with a goofy and notorious eccentric had taught her a thing or two about comedy) she would deploy her good cheer with strategic intent, often to defuse tense situations.

  “Well, I’m glad we’ve all had this little chat,” Father Briar said, even though nothing had been resolved and no conclusions had been reached. There wasn’t much he could do in this situation, anyway, other than to recommend Scripture and other readings about morality and family and conscience. Those were three things very much on his mind and he wanted some space in his office to think. These women with their catalogue ordered and mail delivered perfumes and bouffant hairdos were overwhelming him.

  “Are you making the trip up to Thief River Falls for the big hockey game this weekend? We play Mille Lacs tomorrow here at home, but we’ll smoke them.” Mrs. Olsen asked.

  “I certainly am,” he said. He was planning on a way to finagle a seat next to Julianna, too, but he didn’t mention that. He’d already arranged for her to come to the home game tomorrow, but would he be able to get her to come on a road trip with him?

  Oh, how he longed for a weekend away!

  What would these women think if he was giving them advice from personal experience, experience neither he nor any other priest was supposed to have?

  “Our family was thinking of making a weekend of it in the big city. Maybe you could join us and have a talk with Trigger after the game? Maybe Saturday morning? We could have breakfast?”

  Cedric couldn’t help but smile at hearing her call Thief River Falls “the big city.” There were six thousand people there.