by Ruth Wind
In between, he dozed in the waiting room, and Molly stayed with him, holding his hand sometimes, attempting to reassure him. She left for a while and came back with food, which he ate mechanically. He wanted to send her away, wished he did not need her again, so soon, that one day, somehow; he would be the strong one. She would think him a weak man indeed, and he was not.
Finally, a little past midnight, the fever broke and Josefina seemed out of danger for a little while. The doctor, reporting the news in a face that seemed sincere, told Alejandro this would be a good time to go home and get some sleep. "Maybe by the time you come back in the morning, she'll be able to eat with you."
"You will tell her I am coming back? And if she—"
"I'll call you." The doctor looked at Molly with a smile Alejandro found vaguely insulting, and he scowled, tugging his arm away from Molly's hand. They were treating him as if he were the child.
"Does my worry amuse you?" he asked pointedly.
"On the contrary, Mr. Sosa, I find it refreshing." The doctor pursed her lips. "However, it would not take a trained professional to see that you are dead on your feet and need to get some rest. Those are my orders. Let your wife take you home."
His wife. He had almost forgotten. Wiping a hand over his face, he nodded. "I am sorry."
On the way to the house, Alejandro saw that Molly, too, was exhausted. Blue shadows lay under her eyes. Impulsively, he reached across the seat. "Thank you for staying with me. It was good not to be alone."
She attempted a smile that fell short of her eyes.
Inside, Molly threw her keys on the table and kicked off her shoes, then moved to the kitchen. Alejandro followed more slowly, his body reminding him forcefully that he was not yet healed, and there was, too, a hollowness in his chest that he couldn't quite pinpoint until he also drank a glass of water and they were standing side by side, dull-witted and staring sightlessly at the gray shapes of moon-washed lavender beds outside the window.
Suddenly, the full force of it all hit Alejandro, and with a strangled sound, he reached for the counter. "If she had been outside another day," he said roughly, "she would have died."
"Yes," Molly whispered.
Something in her posture, coupled with his own need for human touch, made him reach for her, pull her next to him. And there was not even a hint of resistance. She flowed into his embrace, and put her head on his shoulder with a sigh.
It eased the hollowness in him, and he closed his eyes, inexpressibly weary, drawing comfort from the warmth and softness of her. In an ancient motion of comfort, they rocked ever so slightly.
"I can tell you now that it's over," she said quietly, "and she's out of danger." She paused. "But she almost died tonight. I have never prayed so hard in all my life."
It pierced him, and he rubbed his cheek against her hair. "So did I."
And there was no more need for words. They simply leaned together, finding support and comfort from the other. Vaguely, he wondered why humans needed this, needed to feel the breath of another, feel the warmth of blood below flesh, the assurance of life continuing.
The need for sleep edged into his brain, sucked will from his muscles. He raised his head. "Molly, will you let me sleep beside you? Only sleep, I promise." He touched her hair. "I want to hold you."
She simply nodded, took his hand and led him to her bedroom. He took off his shirt, and would have left on his jeans, but she gave him a half smile. "I've already seen everything."
But more modest than he, she took a flannel nightshirt into the bathroom and came back, suddenly shy, he could tell. Carefully, he did not look at her bare legs, and held out a hand. "Only sleep, Saint Molly. We both need to touch."
Without another word of protest, she slid under the covers and across the bed into his arms. Her head fit neatly into his shoulder, and her small hand rested against his chest, and with a sigh, he let sleep come on him.
* * *
When Molly awakened, the first thing she became aware of was Alejandro's breath against her neck. There was not a single second of confusion over exactly who it was in the bed with her, the bed she'd only shared with one man her whole life.
And there was no mistaking the feel of his long-fingered hand resting loosely upon her hip. No mistake in the rush of feelings that overtook her when she realized she was lying here with the man who, if she were honest, had occupied center stage of her fantasies for several days now. Against her bare calf, she felt the silky hair of his shin. His soft breath, warm and moist on her neck, made her imagine how close his mouth was to her flesh.
She ached to turn, simply roll over in the nest of blankets, and put her hands on him. Instead, savoring the moment as it was, she simply lay very still and gloried in the surprise that was Alejandro Sosa. Every facet of him surprised her, but especially this. How many men would have slept beside a woman without trying something? How many men would have been so respectful of her needs and wishes in every little thing?
What an odd freedom he'd given her!
His hand moved on her hip, moved away, and Molly felt him getting up. Bereft, she turned. "I didn't know you were awake."
With his back to her, that long, butter-smooth, golden back, he said, "I have been awake for a long time, Saint Molly. I am going to take a shower and make coffee for you." Still keeping his back to her, he slipped into his jeans, then turned and tugged the cover back over her shoulder. "Sleep a little longer."
She gazed up at him sleepily, hungrily, wishing for the courage to pull the covers back and invite him to crawl back into bed with her. For a moment, as he stood there, looking down, she thought he was going to do it, even without her invitation. Then he smiled. "Sleep some more," he said, and left her.
When he was safely gone, she pulled a pillow over her head and groaned. If nerves were visible, she would look like a porcupine. Every single one stood on alert, distended, ready. She needed his hands on her. His mouth. His body. It was the only thing that would soothe those nerves back into place.
She pushed the pillow down harder on her face. The smell of him lingered in it, sending the longing up one more notch, making her remember the way his long, copper limbs had looked when she bathed him, when his black hair was drawn back from that elegantly arranged face.
The water came on in the bathroom. Right by her head. On the other side of that wall he was naked, all six feet two inches of muscled flesh. Right now, water was spilling over him, all over him. His neck. His beautiful shoulders. His mouth. His sex.
Her skin was on fire. What was wrong with her? In disgust, she got up, threw on her robe and started unweaving her tangled braid. She was crazy. He was kind and honorable and virtuous. She was a sex-crazed female who couldn't think how to seduce him.
Maybe, she thought, yanking a brush through her hair, he wasn't all that interested. He'd certainly had plenty of opportunity – and it wasn't like men of any culture were slow to pick up on those signals. She'd been blipping red-hot since the first night she'd lusted over him in the back room, when he had ostensibly been just a patient she was nursing back to health.
Get over it, she told herself with a glare, and flung open the door, stomping down the hallway in her bare feet, studiously ignoring the sound of the shower behind the bathroom door.
Coffee. She needed coffee, fast. And a good walk, maybe. She scowled, running her tongue over her teeth. And her toothbrush. Ugh.
She started the coffee and leaned against the counter, glaring at the machine while she waited for Alejandro to emerge. When he did, with his hair wet-combed straight back, and his jaw shaved and his blastedly gorgeous chest bare and damp, she brushed by him abruptly and went into the bathroom. She scrubbed her teeth with the same violence she'd used on her hair, washed her face until it stung.
And she could still feel the brush of his breath on her neck. Could feel the ghostly image of his shin against the back of her leg. Felt the imprint of his hand on her hip.
I have been awake a long time.
"You idiot," she said into the mirror. He was honorable in such an old-world way that a jaded American like Molly had a hard time even recognizing the depth of it when it was right under her nose. She thought of him carefully keeping his body turned away from her, thought of his rush to the shower.
A cold shower?
With a slight sense of giddiness, she took off her robe and her gown. She washed her breasts and arms and private places, then dusted a musky talcum powder over her body. Then, naked below her loosely tied robe, she went to find him.
He leaned on the kitchen sink, an unusual brooding expression on his face, one he quickly hid when she came into the room. "Ah," he said, smiling. "There you are. Do you wish my good coffee, or this machine kind?"
Molly swallowed. It had been one thing to imagine, in the privacy of the bathroom, seducing him. It was quite another to actually do it.
To her despair, she found she didn't have the courage.
Brightly she said, "Well, the machine kind is already made." She opened a cupboard, embarrassingly aware of her nakedness below the robe, and took out two mugs.
He was quiet as she poured first his, then her own. Her skin flushed under his gaze, and she wanted, more than breathing, for him to kiss her. Touch her.
He brushed his hand over her hair, down her back. "You never wear it like this," he said. "Why?"
Molly stirred sugar in her coffee. "Too much trouble." She lifted her head to smile, stupidly and brightly, once again, and halted.
Alejandro, bare to the waist, held his coffee in one hand. In his other, he grasped a fistful of her hair. His eyes were far beyond liquid as he stared down at her – they were lava. Molten. For a moment, he only looked at her, then in a gesture both considered and primal, he lifted the small fistful of hair to his face and rubbed it across his mouth.
Her hips went suddenly fluid.
"I am trying, Molly, to be strong." He swallowed and put the cup down on the counter, then took hers and put it down, too. With one hand, he drew a line from her throat down to the opening of her robe, which was lower than she had believed, low enough to reveal the obviously naked swell of a breast at the opening. "I do not think you wish me to be strong any longer."
"No," she whispered.
His eyes closed for one moment, then he let go of a breath, as if he'd held it a long time, and bent down to touch his lips to hers. They kissed, lips to lips, that gentleness of greeting, and then he pressed closer, a heaviness to his breath, and backed her into the counter. The kiss ignited, pushing from one second to the next far beyond civility or gentleness or greeting into a roaring expression of passion, for her and for him. Their teeth clicked at the urgent connection, and Molly lifted her hands to his licorice-black hair, taking it in her fists, pulling him closer.
He hauled her against him, as if by pressing close they would meld, and she cried out, wishing for more. He broke the kiss and lifted his head, the dark eyes grave.
Molly thought of his face that first day, the way it had struck her, like an arrow through the heart, and even then, she had known this time would come. She put a hand on his cheek, wordless as she stroked the high arch of bone below his eye, let her thumb drift to touch his chin, cleanly shaven.
He held her gaze as he moved backward, then covered her throat with his hand, his touch light as he slid his palm downward, flat between her breasts, then lower still, using his wrist, then his other hand, to untie the robe. It hung open but covering her breasts, for a long, long moment. "I ached, all night, to touch you," he said. "To see you."
"So did I," she whispered. He pushed away the fabric covering her breasts. For one agonizing moment, she worried that her breasts would be too small, too ordinary, too pale, but then he made a low, pleased sound, and those long-fingered elegant hands lifted, cupped the soft weight.
"Touch me," he said, and bent to take her mouth in a deep, bruising kind of kiss, a violence of need she welcomed with a violence of her own. She opened her hands on his body, and met his kiss even as her greedy palms explored the whole of his back, the muscles and spine, and touched his waist, and lightly skimmed over his bruised ribs. With a low groan, he shoved the robe from her shoulders and pulled her next to him, chest to chest, arms entangled, brushing, exploring, even as he kissed her and kissed her and kissed her. His member thrust aggressively against her belly, and she rubbed against it, lost in the glory of the fury the contact brought out, the need.
As if both acted with one mind, they broke apart and joined hands and moved to the bed in the back room, flooded with sunlight that poured from the eastern sky in buckets, bucketsful of liquid, gold light. Alejandro stopped her when she would have lain on the bed. "Wait," he said urgently. She saw him swallow, and his eyes burned as he skimmed her panties from her body, then pulled her hair around her shoulders, over her breasts. "I thought of this so often," he whispered, touching her nipples through her hair. "So many colors. Sunlight and clay and roses." He cupped her breasts in their cloak of hair, lifting them, in no rush.
Her breath came in quick, shallow pants, and her legs were made of tissue, but it was devastatingly erotic to stand naked and pagan in the sunlight while a man who was still mostly dressed touched her as if he had never dreamed of anything so beautiful. And again she knew, even as the moment burned through her that she would never forget – never – the way Alejandro made her feel right now.
She lowered her lids against the brilliance of light melting over her, and gasped softly as he bent his head and suckled her breast through her hair, lingeringly, as if there was nothing he would ever have to do but this. He suckled her neck, and kissed a line between her breasts, knelt and lingered over her belly, putting the side of his face against it for a moment, his hand on her hips. He kissed her thighs, pulled back and looked at her sex, brushed his fingers over the hair.
It made her dizzy. She steadied herself by grasping his shoulders, and the reflected red of sunlight beneath her eyelids burned all else away as he grasped her hips and kissed between her legs. She cried out, pleased, but doubly hungry, and her body began to shiver. With arms made fierce by need, she pulled him up and they fell together on the bed.
"Take off your pants," she said, and grabbed them by their hems. He laughed when his hands were not quick enough, and Molly helped him, hauling clothes from him with a boldness that was not like her.
Or maybe it was. Maybe this was truly the Molly that lived inside the shell all these years, a Molly who could stand naked, draped only in sunlight and hair as she gazed down at her lover.
She made a sound of pain at the revelation of him, all of him lying on that bed as she remembered. She used her fingers to touch what her eyes admired – the shelf of collarbone and triangular swath of hair across his chest. She brushed the bruises, purple and yellow, on his side, and the smooth, flat, copper belly and the dark weight of his aroused sex growing out of its silky nest.
"I've never seen a man who was so beautiful," she whispered, and with a sense of reverence, she knelt over him and kissed his throat, and his chest, and his chin, expressing with her hands what she could not say – that never had God made a man more perfect than he. Never.
He touched her hair, pulled her to his mouth, breathing softly, "Dios," before he kissed her, the power in his arms fierce and unyielding as he guided her to mount him. It made her briefly shy, and she protested, but he touched her waist, her lips, and she remembered that his leg would be too weak for a more traditional sort of joining. She closed her eyes against her shyness, at the sense of being utterly exposed as she let him guide himself into her.
The shock of pleasure was so deep, so intense that she cried out, even as he groaned, low and rich in his throat, and Molly's shyness disappeared as she threw her head back, and felt him, responded to his subtle movements, began to move.
As if he could not bear to be so far apart, he reached for her, pulling her down into his kiss, and somehow, somehow, they found the exquisite rhythm, breaking and falling and tum
bling together, dust motes on a river of sunlight, hair and mouths and deep cries. Molly found tears washing from her eyes and did not halt them, for they were tears of joy and freedom. And love.
Oh, love. Spent, they folded together, and Molly let the tears wash from her eyes down her cheeks to his chest, felt the gentleness of his big strong capable hands, and knew beyond the faintest doubt that she had only been waiting, all of her days, for this man to come into her life and set her free. In a rush of gratitude, she lifted her wet face and put her hands on his face and stared down at him for a long moment.
"Gracias," she said softly, and kissed his wide, generous mouth, watched his eyes with their long black lashes close as if in pain. "Gracias," she whispered again.
Wordless, he kissed her fiercely, pulled her tight against him, breathed into her hair.
* * *
Chapter 11
«^»
For a long time, Alejandro simply held his saint close against his body, unwilling to release the spirit he had momentarily captured. He wrapped his long arms around her naked shoulders and breathed in the smell of her hair, scattered over his chest and chin.
He had wished to make love to her all night long – no, before that. Since the first time they kissed – but he had not known it would shatter him so. He had expected bashfulness, slowness, an exploration of tiny moves to bigger ones, a long slow night of learning.
Instead, it seemed he had always known her, as if they were old lovers, come together again after a long, long time of waiting. He had known exactly where to touch her, how, when, and it seemed she had known how to return his gestures. Only the smallest of moves and they realigned in new harmony.
A vision of her, head thrown back as she mounted him, burned through his veins and stirred in his newly spent organ, and in response, he pulled her up close to kiss her, and touch her, his need flaming all over again. He lifted on one elbow over her and touched the tracks of tears on her face, wondering if she wept over remembering her husband or in release, that release she had thanked him so earnestly for. Her thanks made him feel hollow for a moment, and that hollowness came back as he looked at her, filled with a pained sort of wonder at her beauty, at the dazzling, blinding sense of love he felt toward her.
