Magdalene

by Moriah Jovan

  “Trust me, if you weren’t doing it right, I’d tell you. So which one was that?”

  “The third one.”

  She gave him a broad chuckle, shaking her head. “You aren’t going to say it, are you?”

  “Nope.”

  “It was all three. You realize that all making love is fucking, but not all fucking is making love.”

  “I do now.”

  “Did you and Mina ever take a shower together?”

  “No. She was too shy, didn’t like to let me see her nude. When we made love, it was always in the dark.”

  Her smile faded and she sighed. “Let me down.”

  He did, wondering what she was up to, then he knew. She took a round scrunchy scrubber thing and squeezed something from a bottle onto it, then said, “Turn around.” He did and once she touched that scratchy thing to his back, he sighed and dropped his head back, the water sluicing over him and Cassandra—his wife!—scrubbing his back, his shoulders, his arms, his ribs, his butt, and down his legs...something he had never expected to happen. She trailed her soft hands in the soap after the scrubber, her fingers tracing patterns, writing things maybe, making him feel cherished.

  Mitch didn’t remember ever feeling cherished in this manner; Mina had been so timid, so insecure...

  “Turn around.”

  He did, and noticed how her body glistened with water, how beautiful she was with her hair, now wet and slicked back, her face heart-shaped and perfect. He cupped her jaws in his palms and brought her to him for a long, tender kiss.

  “Now let me wash you,” he whispered.

  She blinked. Had no one had ever done that for her? He smiled and took the scrubber thing from her, spending an inordinate amount of time on each body part so that by the time they rinsed, Mitch was ready for her again and, apparently, she shared his desire.

  She led him back to bed and Mitch marveled that he had never known such intimacy existed, how much different it was, making love with a healthy, sensual woman.

  “Lie on your back.”

  He propped himself on his elbows, then closed his eyes as exquisite agony washed over him when she straddled him and sheathed him within her.

  “It’s daylight, Mitch. Open your eyes. Watch.”

  His wife, his beautiful wife, set a slower pace now that they were in no rush to get to New York and into bed. He studied the way his body slid in and out of hers, the way her breasts bobbed, the way the skin between her legs glistened with moisture, the way he looked with the evidence of her desire smeared on him.

  He took a long breath and lay back to take her hips in his hands.

  “You just can’t give up control, can you?”

  “Habit.”

  She smiled at him and took one of his hands to arrange his fingers just so on her clitoris, showing him how she liked it, controlling how he touched her. He determined to remember this and practice often.

  “Talk to me,” she whispered as she lay on his chest once she had groaned his name. The pride of a job well done burst through him. “There’s something about you and Mina— I don’t understand.”

  He took a deep breath and pulled her even closer than she already was. “Mina and me... It wasn’t about the sex. It was about building a life together, fulfilling each other’s more pressing needs. She had a crush on me— I always wondered if it was because her father had trashed me before she even saw me, if I was just her big rebellion. Or if she cultivated a crush because saw me as a way out.” He paused. “My mother was mad at me for months, thinking I was bitter about my mission, marrying Mina to get Shane’s goat because he was just like my mission president, and me rebounding off Inez to boot.”

  “You couldn’t have had the life you did if those had been your only motives.”

  “I know, but we never talked about it. We sat down at the dinner table, set our goals and our budget, and learned how to live together. We both made an effort to serve each other.”

  “And fell in love. Did Mina know about Inez?”

  “Yes. I think a lot of her insecurity stemmed from that. Inez was much older, sensual. She was an intimidating woman.”

  “But your sexual issues really stemmed from Mina’s illness.”

  “Yes. I liked it. It felt good. To me. Wasn’t worth making a big deal over getting more, so it didn’t occur to me to resent it. I didn’t know what I was doing, didn’t know what to do to give her pleasure, didn’t know there was supposed to be that kind of pleasure. For us, it was a bonding more like...trust. Feeling close to each other, you know, us against the world. She would’ve been perfectly satisfied with making out all the time—she loved that—but you don’t get pregnant that way. Other than that, it was never about pleasure.”

  “Did you ever want more?”

  He sighed. “Not until my mid-thirties, when life began to shake out a little here and there. I’d think about it at odd times, then I’d dive back into my crises to take my mind off it. Try not to, uh...”

  “Masturbate.”

  He flushed a bit. Shrugged. “It doesn’t happen often.”

  “And then she was comatose. Then she died.”

  He paused. “It’s been very...difficult. The last four or five years. I looked around. Saw what I could have, how easily I could have it.” The sudden bitterness in his voice shocked me. “But there was always something missing, some spark. Interest. No one I could talk to and like. No one I could have fun with. Who could be my friend as well as my lover. My equal.” He paused. “Cassandra, you are...everything I have wanted for so long, everything I never knew I needed. You have no idea how much of a blessing you are to me, in so many ways.”

  She turned her face away from him then and he felt her tears drop on his chest.

  “Cassandra,” he whispered, and, with his fingers on her chin, made her look up at him. Her eyes had filled with tears and she wouldn’t meet his gaze. “Don’t cry. I’m telling you I love you.”

  She choked and buried her face in his neck to sob.

  He wrapped his arms around her and stroked her back until she fell asleep.

  * * * * *

  Took the Hand of a Preacher Man

  March 26, 2011

  “You planning to go to church with me?” Mitch murmured in my ear as we lay in bed tangled up together, sweaty, sticky, smelling of sex, Mitch’s hands caressing my back and butt, his teeth intermittently nipping at my ear.

  It was the last day of our honeymoon, an entire week spent in my otherwise abandoned townhouse in a suite that was as unfamiliar to me as it was to him. It was like a luxury hotel without the pool we wouldn’t have used anyway.

  I couldn’t get enough of him. He was a fast learner, inventive and selfless. We only left the bed long enough to eat, bathe, watch a few movies (including Bridget Jones and Fight Club), and even then we ended up making love in the rest of the house.

  The bathtub.

  The kitchen table.

  The stairs.

  The very expensive couch which now had cum stains on it, which I would have to pay for myself because I couldn’t blame Clarissa and her boyfriend (although it did occur to me to try for my own amusement).

  But not The Bordello. It sat ready to be shown as an apartment once I finished moving to Bethlehem.

  It was the most time I’d ever spent having sex with one man in one stretch.

  “Yes,” I finally answered.

  “Oh,” he said, startled but clearly pleased. “Thank you.”

  “Don’t feel too flattered. It’s Prissy I go for. Love that woman.”

  He laughed.

  “Do you know she’s one of the first real female friends I’ve ever had?”

  Mitch looked at me. “That’s sad.”

  I shrugged. “Not really. But now that I have her, I don’t want to take her for granted.”

  It took us most of the afternoon to move the rest of my wardrobe and what few trinkets I wanted around me in the home I’d share with Mitch for the next year. That night, I slep
t and made love with him in the bed he’d shared with Mina.

  “Uh, no,” Mitch informed me when I mentioned it. “This is a brand new bed.”

  I said nothing for a moment. Then, because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut, I murmured, “This marriage is a bunch of firsts for both of us, isn’t it?”

  He smiled against my temple.

  Mitch was gone when I awoke Sunday morning and I felt his side of the bed. Cold. That didn’t surprise me, but what did surprise me was the fact that it hadn’t taken but a week for his body beside mine in bed to become normal.

  Necessary.

  I dressed with extra care, my wedding ring catching on bits of my clothing and hair. I would stop to look at it every time, a beautiful diamond the color of molten steel in a setting designed by Sebastian. It was moulded from the Hollander alloy, the finish precisely machined to reflect the orange of the diamond to flow around the ring like a steel river.

  Mitch had started building this ring the moment I told him I liked his metal, had told Sebastian exactly what he wanted, but not why or for whom.

  I had to swallow over the lump in my throat when I thought about the look on his face when he saw me at the end of the aisle, waiting for him.

  He loved me. I knew it before he said it, and then he had and I had broken down like a teenager with her first crush.

  I had successfully kept all that at bay during the week we spent bound up in each other, naked, fucking, but now that I was alone for the first time in a week, I couldn’t help but think about it.

  No man had ever said that to me before.

  As usual, I sat in the back pew on the left side of the chapel to await Prissy and her children. Trevor surprised me by hopping over the back of it to sit with me. “You mind?” he said brightly. “Not like I have to be up on the stand to bless the sacrament anymore, right?” That made me laugh.

  Prissy’s little girl made a beeline for me so as to prevent her brother from sitting by me. Whatever Prissy might have said to me died in the face of her curiosity that Trevor was sitting in the back instead of up front. “Trevor, is this seating arrangement permanent?”

  “Yup.”

  She sighed with acute disappointment, but he shrugged. At my confused look, he muttered, “There’s only one reason I’d be sitting back here until I go to college. It’ll take everybody else a while to notice, much less figure it out.”

  People stopped to say hi and chitchat before going about finding their places. So. They still didn’t know, and Mitch would most likely announce it from the pulpit and then all hell would break loose.

  The service proceeded as normal, Mitch conducting.

  Prelude music.

  Opening hymn.

  Opening prayer.

  Announcements.

  Ward business.

  “Cassandra?”

  His mouth twitched as he looked at me from the pulpit and Prissy slid me a look. “Well, stand up,” she said.

  So I did.

  “A week ago Friday,” Mitch said, looking at me with what I now knew to be desire, pure and hot. No one else but I would know that and it humbled me. “Cassandra St. James did me the honor of becoming my wife.”

  The gasp was immediate and loud. I felt two hundred fifty pairs of eyes on me, though Sally’s was not one of them. She had her head down, her scriptures in her lap. Her husband beamed at me.

  The look of shock on Sitkaris’s face made me long for a camera, but then it faded into calculation and I stared back at him until he looked away with a knowing smirk.

  Sabrina Johnston wiped her eyes and flashed me a sweet, happy smile.

  I felt Prissy’s hand on mine, tugging me down. “What an ornery man,” she grumbled with great amusement, and I chuckled. “I’ll run interference for you.”

  I could not have named a bigger blessing at that moment, and for the two hours after sacrament meeting, Prissy was my bodyguard. If they couldn’t get around her—and, granted, that was difficult—they couldn’t get to me. She did it on purpose, shielding me physically, never allowing anyone to see that she was being deliberate.

  To our great surprise, Sally took up her usual place on my right, though she was tense and disinclined to chat. She was angry with me, I knew, and for a myriad of reasons.

  Greg Sitkaris had a convenient emergency and left the Sunday school class without a substitute teacher. Prissy was prevailed upon to teach with no warning, no preparation, and only a glimpse at the lesson manual.

  God, she was brilliant, with a fund of knowledge I imagined could only belong to a trained theologian. I didn’t care a whit about these people’s beliefs, but I could listen to Prissy teach for hours.

  It was in Relief Society that Sally finally worked up the courage to nail me. “Why didn’t you tell anyone you and Mitch were getting married?”

  “It was between me and him, Sally,” I said as gently as I could because she was about to cry. I was unaccountably proud when she sucked it up. And then...

  “Sister Hollander!” Louise said from the front of the room. Her smile could’ve lit Lady Liberty’s torch. “Congratulations! You have no idea how happy we are.”

  I almost groaned at Louise’s timing, but she moved on.

  “Sally,” she said with concern, “is it true you and Dan are moving?”

  Sally was pale, but her voice didn’t tremble when she said, “Yes. He got a job in Seattle.”

  “Excellent. Well, not that you’ll be leaving us, of course. When’s the big day?”

  “Some time after Easter.”

  “We’ll miss you.”

  Sally only nodded, her mouth tight, and I wondered how much Mitch had to do with that, but she held on as the class proceeded. About fifteen minutes in, she said, “When, uh—” She cleared her throat. Wouldn’t look me in the face. Directed her conversation somewhere in the direction of my shoulder. “When are you getting baptized?”

  “I don’t know yet,” I murmured.

  “But you’re planning to?”

  “Yes.”

  On my left, Prissy started. “Really?”

  “Well, yeah. Why wouldn’t I?”

  Her mouth pursed. “You and I are going to have a little chat later, darling.”

  “Okay, Mother,” I said somewhat snidely. “Am I in trouble?”

  “Yes.”

  Odd. First Sebastian, now Prissy. That wasn’t even counting the fact that Mitch had never so much as invited me to attend. For a church bent on converting the world, there wasn’t a whole lot of encouragement coming my way. Why would I care one way or another? I hadn’t stepped foot in a church in twenty years, since the twins’ baptisms, not even to do my Easter and Christmas duty.

  Relief Society ended and Prissy dragged me out as fast as she could to find a private corner somewhere in the labyrinthine hallways. “Unless you have a thorough understanding of this doctrine and buy into it, you should not get baptized.”

  “Why?”

  “We—okay, I—take it seriously. This is not fire insurance.”

  I stared at her.

  “Fire insurance. You know, where people go to different churches and join a bunch of them to reduce their chances of going to hell.”

  I burst out laughing.

  “Look, I can appreciate that you want to support Mitch because you love him, but you can’t just—”

  “Oh, wait a minute. Let’s clear something up right now.” Well, hell, why not tell her? She wouldn’t approve, but she’d get it. “I married Mitch for one reason and one reason only, and it doesn’t have anything to do with love or money.”

  It was her turn to stare at me for a few seconds, completely confused. And then she burst out laughing. “Yeah. Okay. Sure.” She turned to leave me there. “Ask Mitch his opinion before you tell anybody about your miraculous conversion.”

  “Prissy!”

  “Gotta git. See you Sunday.”

  She strode down the hallway, and I could hear laughing all the way.

  Bitch.


  * * * * *

  Jacob’s Well

  March 28, 2011

  Mitch hadn’t been wrong in predicting that Jack would let me do what I wanted as long as I didn’t leave Blackwood Securities. Considering my agreement with Mitch only ran a year, Jack was perfectly willing to put up with the inconvenience of...no change at all.

  It would be like I was out on permanent assignment, half my staff here in Bethlehem dealing with the division, which would take another couple of months, and half my staff in New York. I’d go into the office once a week or so, and nothing would change.

  Monday morning, I sat in the kitchen at the island bar eating breakfast and perusing the morning’s financials on my laptop. I looked up and watched Mitch come in from the mill, greasy, exhausted, still in his orange coveralls. He gave me a warm smile and a quick kiss, then headed to bed. He’d warned me that he didn’t intend to give up his graveyard shift in the foundry on Sunday nights, and I’d said, “Okay, no problem” because it hadn’t been.

  Then.

  I’d come home from church alone the day before and slept alone for the first time in a little over a week—and I resented the hell out of it.

  Strange, considering I had only slept with one other man in the fifteen years since Nigel had deemed me suitably trained.

  “Mornin’, Cassie,” Trevor mumbled as he dragged himself into the house from the garage.

  I looked at the clock. Almost seven. “Why didn’t you just pack a bag, take a shower there, and go to school?”

  He growled. “I’m not supposed to be there at all and Scarlett’s RA is a bitch. I fell asleep and barely made it out without getting caught.”

  “Go take a shower. You stink. I have lox and bagels if you want any, because I will not live without my Zabar’s salmon.”

  “Yum. I could get used to this. You gonna make bread today? Maybe?”

  I saw the genuinely hopeful look on his face and didn’t have the heart to refuse. “Sure.”

  “Yes!”

  I finished with my breakfast and news gathering, then headed upstairs to get ready for work—at the mill, where I would commandeer an office in which to establish Blackwood Securities’s satellite.