The last linen threads of my composure shake as Lacie quickens around me, and I blink my eyes open. Lifting my head, I look down in awe as my bride arches into the delicate curve of pure delight, chasing ecstasy so divine I feel it pulse through her body in breathless rushes and swells. Her lids lift, too, showing me staggering gratitude that shines behind candle-bright tears. Trembling fingers grip mine as I hold fast to upturned hips, and love’s favorite color spreads all across her skin.
She moans a low little hymn, and it glides along me while blissful waves ebb out into a hypersensitive and lushly responsive ocean. Eyes I’ve loved as long as I’ve known her widen with pleas her lips can’t shape, but the threads barely holding me back are in His hands. Her hands press wishes for patience into my grip, while my own dig tighter into her.
“Mmm-Mm-Marc,” she pants between small sounds she can’t help making for every push of my hips.
A flicker like panic flashes in her pupils and they open further. Long, completely undone hair moves over her naked shoulders and along white silk as she shakes her head, gripping my wrists. Adoration and desire burn inside her as she tries in vain to bring her knees up and together, to get away.
To wait worldly seconds for composure to regather itself before she comes again.
To question if she even could bear it.
“I can’t,” little light whispers, digging knees I adore with all that I am into my sides with her effort to close up and catch her breath. “I can’t, Marc. I can’t—”
But our Maker’s untying all that’s left of my own authority.
“You can,” I promise, feeling her legs shake with all her strength as I place my palms on pink kneecaps. With a single, slender thread holding me from abandon, I kiss each of them more times than I can count before closing my hands and pushing against Lacie’s doubts.
Kissed-red lips fall open for notes that resound within and all around me as her neck arches. Her head rolls to the left as I guide her legs all the way back, not stopping until cherished knees are pressed against silk and velvet covered marble and love is utterly defenseless to worship.
Soft, is the only thought I can think for a few fleeting seconds.
Soft. Soft. Soft.
With the heart of light held so open, I bear deeply, carefully down.
“Let me,” I tell her as gently as I can around the force between my shoulders.
“Let go,” I plead, so in need as the final thread around my restraint pulls insufferably tight.
“Let God,” I whisper, and as the words leave my lips, pressure and light suffuse my spine. The brittle control I was cradling with strained sinews and shallow breaths becomes golden, and all I hear in the split second between heartbeats is the most inviting little intake of breath.
Straightening, I lift Lacie just up from the altar, wrapping my arms under and around her as I move.
She’s weak from the exertion and intensity of more than God has ever offered her, but she tries. Wavering arms and feeble legs stumble to find their grip on my unyielding form, irresistibly drawn to the incorruptible stability flowing through me from Him.
Keeping one arm under her back, I bring each of her hands around my neck. Sanctified fingers lace themselves immediately together in my hair while her arms tense with found vigor and her shoulders brace, too. Her legs climb like vines around me, and her most precious, hidden little muscles cling with the most tender, most innate devotion as I find new depth of physical unity in this surrender.
Red roses bloom white hot between us as the girl who’s lit my path her entire life arches in my arms, soft hips struggling to meet mine again and again as I give in. She buries her face in my neck and clings, trembling and soft on the edge of herself.
“Regnum,” I whisper, pressing my right hand over her tailbone, holding her body to mine as my movements quicken.
Kingdom.
“Et potestas,” I murmur, my voice low despite the divine endowment charging through my flesh. I gather her closer still, further opening and completing every part of who she is with every part of myself.
Power.
“Et Gloria.” I breathe just below her ear.
And I feel her become it.
Glory.
The purest cry pours from my purpose as she fulfills the promise of Heaven. Fluttering and attenuated, she comes, and as God moves me, all of my own control and coherence blurs.
Lacie’s grip, her warmth, so given over—
Rolling rosary beads and her so sacred, so surrounding heartbeat—
Soft, pressed-so-close skin and pure, perfect prayers and tight little trembles, all over me, from the inside out—
Everything His gift resounds His name, and I bind her to myself.
It starts behind my eyes, so strong, so heavy, for a second I think I’ll feel it forever, and then it rushes.
Like instinct.
Like light split from the darkness to make day.
Somewhere on Earth, in the same chapel I give love God’s communion and God’s forgiveness, I still her gently surging hips while she adheres to me with fragile limbs.
I give her everything He gives to me.
I give her all that He built her to take, and she takes all that I am.
What started strong and heavy behind my eyes floods down my spine and into my hips, from my body into hers. I can’t help pushing ever-harder, ever-deeper, embedding myself into light with desperate strokes as I come. It detonates in every pulse she draws from me, boundless surges of nascent bliss feathering out into my bloodstream. They radiate truth and life, and the highest sense of rightness through every vein, from the base of my backbone all the way out to the fingertips pressing into the sweetest skin, down legs that strain to stand through the need to keep moving, keep pushing, keep making His word flesh.
The fire He built in me roars in my ears, and I don’t want to stop.
I want to give Him to her this way forever.
The sound that escapes me is caught, a groan falling from barely parted lips as I fill her again and again, helpless to the rhythm of release. I give her all of me, every day of my earthly life and beyond, every cell of my body and more. I fasten light to myself with every stroke I can’t still and every shiver that pours my soul into hers.
I come, and I come, and there is nothing but love, holding onto me and breathing fast in the bend of my neck. There is only her and the staggering need to keep moving that’s only just beginning to ease its force as I open my eyes and seek hers.
There is nothing but the way they shine for me.
Our Father.
Who art in Heaven.
Hallowed be Thy name.
Hazel eyes, glossy with tears, are lit with more devotion, gratitude, and awe than ever. The church around us has never held so much love, not with all the voices that have sang here for over a hundred years, and even it pales compared to her eyes, immaculately consumed and consummated as they focus on mine.
“Aeternum,” I whisper, finally still within her.
Love that’s sanctified this place tightens limbs that are frail from so much giving. She presses the prettiest lips together, swallowing so she can echo my vow.
“Aeternum.”
The word gleams in the air between us, enticing stillness I’d only just found into the need to move again. A coarse reprise of the sound that left my chest just moments ago comes out with all my air as my eyes close and my feet shift, and I lean all the way into my conduit to Him.
Lacie whimpers freely, unveiled on every level. She stretches her limbs so innocently a tremor rushes through me as I press her down, bearing all that’s left of burning light all the way into its so beholden little heart.
“Always, always, always,” she promises, fading into the faintest lilts and coos between little breaths while her fingers curl into my hair so gently and her legs endeavor to hold me closer.
Buried in her neck, sinking into the finally ebbing waves of flame and fulfillment, I nod. I slide enamored hands
up her sides, and her pulse races deeply against my palms. Cradling her with care under my weight, I roll my hips—half in revelry, and half in want—to ensure I’ve given her everything.
“In saecula saeculorum,” I promise eternity in the holiest of words, kissing her skin, longing to cover all of her with all of me.
“Mea lux, mea agna,” I whisper with more kisses.
My light, my lamb.
“Meum votum, mea fides, meum caelum.”
My vow, my faith, my heaven.
“Mea carissima, mea pulchra puella.”
My beloved, beautiful girl.
“Lacie, Lacie, Lacie …”
Joyful notes surround me as I lift from kisses I know are making her smile.
Fervently pink cheeked under eyes flickering candlelight and glowing grace, Lacie beams as I look down at her. She brings her hands up and smooths her touch over my forehead and eyebrows. Small thumbs brush under my eyes and across my cheeks, along my jaw and lips and chin. She smiles higher as she comforts and assures me with her fingers, nourishing and upholding me with the most sincere affection as God lifts his thumb from my back.
The letting up of the Holy Spirit leaves a slow weight in me. My shoulders feel heavy under the loss of His contact, but then Lacie breathes.
And there’s only lightness.
Kissing along palms that still hold my face, I seek to ease myself from one of a kind love with just as much patience and prudence as I first filled her with. Her body doesn’t want to let mine go, though, and my own, even after giving all, is unwavering.
Shining eyes close as little glory lifts her hips to me, and moans long and soft and sweet.
God’s returned threads of human control back to my spine. He’s with us still, but in this lingering afterglow of grace, we’re man and wife.
Two as one.
In love.
Still holding my face even as she tilts her own back, Lacie shifts against silk and velvet. My lips continue caressing her small palms as I glance between us, and lift only to sink completely into her once more.
Tender-pink and softer than ever, she’s sodden-hot inside, and I bring her hips instinctively to the edge of the altar, tilting her form upward, not wanting her any less than full. She tenses beneath me as I do, and I open my kiss over the heel of her hand as I rock deeper in long, languid strokes. I watch our bodies move together, building harmony at our own pace, and when she comes once more, it’s a slow motion flutter, tight and gasping and lushly lissome along the length of me.
When I follow after, it’s dizzying, drawn out, and strips me every stitch as bare as she.
Leaning up, I join love on His altar, kneeling above her as I work to guide us slowly apart. With her fingers grasping my forearms and the lightest whimpers of missing, loving, and sweet, unaccustomed soreness filling my ears, I drape Lacie’s legs over mine and tilt her little hips up to keep our ardor inside her.
God’s dearest gift doesn’t let me go. She keeps her eyes and both hands on me while our breaths steady and our pulses compose. The scent of fully bloomed roses falls everywhere, softer than the velvet underneath us and nearly as supple as the cheek I stroke with transfixed fingertips of my own. The blush of ardent life there slowly subsides into pale pink as she traces from the corners of my smile to my hair.
Wanting to feel all of her blessed form and every hushed little rush of air whispering between her lips, I gather her closer. Shy lashes lilt and she hums a smile as I turn my hand, letting the backs of my fingers blaze a silent trail down her neck, ever-desirous for the delicate swell of life beneath satin-thin skin.
Married in His house and fulfilled in His hands, my wife curls closer as I spread my fingers gently between her breast and her side. With her eyes closed, she nestles her nose and cheek to my chest with the smallest giggle, and the sound is golden pure perfection, gingerly reverberating within the apse.
I can’t take my eyes off her.
I hold in my arms a moving heaven, who holds within her all of my hope and all of my happiness. Safely enshrined within her slender frame are meaning and purpose an angel would envy.
When her eyes open again, hazel and sable glimmer with fervor that the corners of her smile can’t help but catch, devotion, and I see the sun truly rise for the first time.
I want to speak.
I want to whisper of the intensity and expanse of her blessed perfection.
I want to tell her forever and ever, here you are.
But there are no words to encompass the breadth of certainty swelling inside my chest. I’m weightless in awe and at the same time filled with knowing my reason, and I am without a language to convey the heights and depths of my honor, ardency, and wonder.
Between hearts settling into steady harmony, from under tired lids, our eyes adore. We linger quietly in the warmth of love confirmed, and I want Lacie looking up at me this way every day. I want her touching me with grateful admiration that matches my own, forever.
With a higher smile, she fills little lungs under my palm and presses new-petal pink lips together before she speaks.
“Hi,” she says gently, sounding far more innocent than only seventeen.
I know the exact feeling.
“Hi,” I reply, smiling down, feeling her shyness matched in my own disposition.
But light’s soft sincerity has never been more resplendent. Trembles have mellowed into a calm chorus of affirmation, continuing to illuminate her and bringing us still deeper into unebbing grace. Even as her eyes search mine for courage and solace, she shines.
“What comes next?” she asks, timid-tender and shifting closer.
“Love,” I answer easily. Taking her hand in mine and pressing it over the beating center of my devotion, I fold my other arm all the way around her. “Come what may, for every day of this life and every moment of the next, I will love you, Lacie.”
She nods and swallows, her forehead beginning to show the tightness of apprehension.
“You’ll never have to take a single step on this road without me,” I promise.
As I kiss beside her eye, I note the fading scent of roses imbued in her skin. I kiss her cheek and her nose, and black lashes bow before me as she exhales. It’s a warm rush over my lips, and she angles herself so we can kiss with soft abandon. Slow and open, we kiss until the truth in our hearts sings glad tidings through both our bodies. We kiss until the worries in her forehead smooth, and the grip in her fingers returns to a sleepy caress.
Feeling the tiredness in her limbs, I move to stand and help her sit up. Perfection blushes in ever-glowing candlelight as I kneel at her feet, cradling a bare ankle and kissing her heel before glancing around for her clothes. With my eyes off of her and on our surroundings for the first time in so long, what I see moves my heartbeat to a warmer depth, somewhere between pride and protection.
Her cream-colored skirt and my clerical shirt are tossed to my left. One of her boots rests on its side against one of my shoes, and my tee shirt landed slightly further from the altar, near the steps. Nearby, under slacks that still hold my undone belt in their loops, I glimpse ivory lace.
When I knelt here, it was my intention to find and slide delicate fabric back up the legs that carried her to me, but as I look around and don’t see her sweater, I remember lifting that cotton from her long before we were here. I remember holding her and praying with her in the pew, and I remember how sodden-soft she felt on my lap. I remember how soaked through she was between my fingers and thin lace, and I think maybe returning that same lace to her now couldn’t possibly be comfortable.
Kissing the sole of the foot I’m still cradling, I’m rewarded with a tiny hum that’s almost a giggle, and I wish so much suddenly that we were in my bed. There’s no part of me that would change any part of this for anything, but in this moment, I long to wrap her in my sheets.
Standing as I tug boxers and slacks back on, I find Lacie’s eyes. They wait on mine as I pull my tee shirt over my head, and while I’m bring
ing it down my stomach, she sits up and reaches with both hands for my belt. Her irises gleam under my attention, reflecting adoration beat for beat as she buckles me together.
Bending for clerical cotton, I pick it up and when I bring it around light’s naked form, she extends her arms into long sleeves with a smile that brightens the whole chapel.
Deepened by confirmation, my pulse beats with the same one of a kind fervor it always has for this person. Leaning down, I kiss her worry-free forehead.
“Wait right here?” I ask, bringing the sides of my shirt together on her but not buttoning them.
Glowing love nods, holding my face as I brush both hands between her skin and starched soft cotton, almost too enamored with the look and feel of her in my garment.
“I’ll be right back,” I tell her lowly, lips over and along hers, kissing and missing already.
She nods again, and as I stand straight, pulling socks and shoes on without bothering to tie them, I can barely stand to take my eyes away. All bare legs and too-long black sleeves over her hands, little agna Dei smiles at me with newfound innocence and undeniable allure.
Beaming, my heart beats.
“Don’t you move, love.”
“I won’t,” she promises, voice light and toes wiggling as she tucks tousled locks of brown behind her ears.
“Hurry,” she tells me.
And I do.
Out the same doors I let her in, I jog across the dark parking lot with purpose coursing steadily through me. As fresh air cools my arms and fills my lungs, stars and orange light from the rectory’s porch lamp guide my way.
Inside the sleepy-quiet house that’s been my shelter for years, the air is cozy and familiar with the scent of incense and linen. It’s warm with comfort and memories as I move through the dark hallways. There’s thankfulness and nostalgia, and earnest peace of mind in my heart, but I know as I enter my bedroom, this place isn’t my home anymore.
Light and Wine Page 8
