by Dan Simmons
Kate licked her lips. “O’Rourke…why are you here? Why did you come with me?”
He looked at her then and his gray eyes seemed very clear and very honest. “You asked me to,” he said.
Tîrgovişte was a town of about fifty thousand people set in the valley of another river, the Ialomiţa, and beyond it Kate could see the foothills of the Carpathians rising into cloud. At first glance, Tîrgovişte was as polluted and industrial as the oil town Piteşti, but then they rumbled through the busy outskirts and found themselves in the old center of the pre-medieval city.
“That’s the old palace,” said O’Rourke, taking his right hand off the throttle to point at ruins beyond a six-foot wall. “It was founded by Mircea the Old back in the late thirteen hundreds, but Vlad the Impaler burned it down in a battle with the Turks in 1462. Just before he lost power, I think.”
Kate wiped mud from her goggles.
“That’s the Chindia Tower,” said O’Rourke, pointing to a circular stone tower visible above the compound wall. “Old Vlad built it as a watchtower and as an observation post to watch the tortures he held in the courtyard below. The new building just outside the wall there is the museum.” O’Rourke pulled the motorcycle into a side street, but signs on the door proclaimed the museum closed. “Too bad,” said the priest. “I know the assistant curator there. He’s an officious little prick…quite loyal to Ceauşescu…but he knows an awful lot about Tîrgovişte’s history.”
Kate shifted her weight in the sidecar. Her feet were almost asleep. “Two shits and a little prick,” she said. “Your debits are adding up, Father.”
“And have been for years, sister.” He gunned the throttle and moved slowly down the sidestreet. “My guess was that this is where they’d hold tonight’s part of the ceremony, but I don’t see any preparations.” All of the gates to the palace historical compound had been chained and padlocked with signs saying CLOSED in English and French.
“It’s not dark yet,” said Kate. “Vampires don’t come out until it’s dark.” She closed her eyes. She felt very sleepy and very discouraged. But when she closed her eyes she saw a perfect image of Joshua laughing at one of his monthly birthday parties, his small hands clenching and unclenching in delight, his dark eyes luminous in candlelight… Kate snapped her eyes open. “Now what?” she said.
O’Rourke stopped the motorcycle, “I think we need to find a place to hide the bike and ourselves,” he said. “And then we wait until the vampires come out.”
“And if they don’t?” said Kate. “If this isn’t the site?”
“Then we’re well and royally screwed.”
Kate patted his arm. “Two shits, a little prick, and now a royally screwed,” she said. “You’d better get to confession soon, O’Rourke.”
The priest pulled off his leather helmet and vigorously rubbed his scalp. His hair stood in matted clumps. He was grinning through his beard. “I agree,” he said. “And since all of the priests in Tîrgovişte have been rounded up by the Securitate, you may just have to hear my confession.”
Kate made a face. The motorcycle moved on through quiet sidestreets.
The barn was all by itself in an empty field less than half a mile from the palace grounds. It obviously had not been used in years except to store the remains of a tractor with iron wheels and no engine, although the hay in the loft was relatively new. There was no farmhouse around. Across half a mile of field, the towers of a petrochemical plant were visible through a renewed drizzle.
“Systematization,” said O’Rourke, looking both ways before pushing the motorcycle off the narrow lane and down the path to the barn. “Ceauşescu probably bulldozed the farmhouse.”
“The hay is recent,” said Kate.
O’Rourke nodded to two scrawny cows far across the field, their ribs visible even at that distance. “With all the chemical dumping, their milk probably glows a nice toxic green,” he said.
“Nice thought,” said Kate, following him into the barn and pulling the sagging doors as closed as they would go. She was shivering visibly now. Her head felt warm and she was dizzy.
O’Rourke set his hand against her forehead. “My God, Neuman…you’re burning up.”
She clutched her bag closer. “I’ve got antibiotics, aspirin…”
“What you need is to get warm,” he said, clambering up a rotted wooden ladder to the loft. “It’s OK,” he called down.
The straw was not actually fresh, but it was relatively clean. O’Rourke made a nest in it and set the sidecar blanket down. “Take off the raincoat and your outer layers,” he said. He was pulling his own sodden coat off.
Kate hesitated only a second. Then she shucked off her wet coat and scarf, found her cheap sweater and polyester pants soaked through, and tugged them off. Even her underwear was damp, but she left on her bra and white cotton pants. Her legs and arms were a mass of goosebumps and she knew that her nipples were visible through her unstructured bra. Kate dropped into the straw and pulled half of the blanket up and around her. The wool was scratchy and smelled of gasoline. “I have a change of clothes in the bag,” she said through chattering teeth.
“You wouldn’t have some for me in there would you?” asked O’Rourke. He was much wetter than she had been. He squeezed his black shirt and water ran out. The skin of his chest and upper arms was very white and Kate could see his fingers shaking with the cold. His black trousers were visibly soaked, but he hesitated a moment after unbuttoning them. “Close your eyes,” he said.
“Don’t be silly,” snapped Kate, clenching jaw muscles to keep her teeth from chattering, “I’m a doctor, remember? Do you want a lecture on hypothermia?”
“No,” said O’Rourke and unzipped his pants. He put both their sets of clothes on a wooden railing where the weak sunlight could reach them through the single filthy window in the loft.
He doesn’t wear underwear! was Kate’s single thought. Only then did she notice the plastic of the prosthesis beginning just below his left knee and realized that his request might have come from something other than simple modesty.
Kate’s eyes left the prosthetic leg and looked at the man. Father Michael O’Rourke was not as lean as Lucian, muscles not quite as well defined, but when he turned to spread the clothes on the railing, Kate found herself admiring his small rear end in a way that was far from medical. When he turned around, she followed the line of dark hair from where it covered his chest down to the thick patch of pubic hair. His penis and scrotum were contracted from the cold.
Kate turned away and fumbled in her bag for clothes.
“Don’t get the other clothes wet,” said O’Rourke, slipping onto the blanket and pulling up the loose end. He was facing her, their knees not quite touching, and there was just enough extra blanket to cover him. “Get warm first, then put them on.”
In other circumstances, with any other man, she would have known that was a line. Now, with Michael O’Rourke, she wasn’t sure. “Just a sweater,” she said, pulling out a navy cotton sweater and tugging it on while undoing the clasp of her wet bra and slipping it off as subtly as she could before putting her arms through the arms of the sweater. She was not unaware that the motion made her breasts seem larger. “The rest is mostly jeans and skirts that would look out of place here,” she whispered, tugging the blanket tight again. “I’ll have to wear the damn polyester stuff Lucian bought me if we’re going back out on the street.” She pulled a dry pair of underpants from the bag and slipped them under the corner of the blanket. How to do this without being so obvious? She gave up being subtle, hunkered down in the blanket, slipped off the wet panties, and pulled on the dry ones.
O’Rourke clasped his bare arms outside the blanket, and Kate realized that he was also trying to keep from shivering. He was not succeeding. She wondered if any of the shivers were from nervousness. They were huddled in their little depression in the straw like two Indians crouched face-to-face.
“Come here,” whispered Kate and lay back in the stra
w, pulling the blanket so that O’Rourke was obliged to come with it. There was an awkward moment of rearranging the blanket and then they were lying next to each other, not quite touching but sharing warmth under the wool. Kate tried to think of a joke to break the tension palpable between them, then decided not to. O’Rourke was looking at her with those clear gray eyes, and she was not quite sure if there was a question there or not.
“Turn around,” she whispered.
With each of them in a fetal position, there was just enough blanket to cover them securely. Without hesitating, Kate slipped against him spoon fashion, feeling her breasts compress under the cotton sweater, feeling the backs of his thighs still moist with rain against the front of hers. Her hands touched his cold shoulders, slipped down his arms. She could feel the muscles tense and quivering with cold and realized that O’Rourke had been soaked and freezing during most of the long drive to Tîrgovişte. She snuggled closer and slid her bandaged left arm around his body, her hand flat against his chest.
“I don’t think…” began O’Rourke.
“Shhh,” whispered Kate, molding his legs and hips to his. “It’s all right. We’ll just get warm and rest a bit until it gets dark.” She felt his chest expand as if he were going to say something else, but he stayed silent. A moment later she felt him relax.
Kate felt her own excitement, felt the warmth and moisture between her thighs and the slight sense of heaviness in her breasts that always signified arousal in her, but she also felt a great sense of calm descend on her for the first time since the fire. She set her face close to the back of his neck, feeling the soft tickling where his uncut hair curled slightly there and breathing in the clean male scent of him. He had stopped shivering.
Kate was very aware of her nipples separated from his skin by only the light cotton, was conscious of the warmth of the cheeks of his behind against her thighs, and sensed the curve of his back solid against the cusp of her belly, but she let the urgency such proximity produced just slide away for now, become a pleasant background sensation, as she relaxed into the warmth of the moment.
And slept.
It was dark when she woke and for a second there was a surge of panic that they had overslept and missed the Ceremony, but then Kate saw the dim remnants of twilight through the dusty panes and knew that the sun had just set. They had hours left until midnight.
O’Rourke was asleep—Kate had not even the briefest confusion about where she was or whom she was with—but he had turned in his sleep so that they lay facing each other. Kate’s bandaged left arm was still encircling him, but O’Rourke had huddled closer under the small blanket, his hands clasped together in front of him so that they lay in the warm valley between her breasts. There was no chance that he was feigning sleep; O’Rourke was snoring ever so softly, his mouth open slightly in that vulnerable unselfconsciousness Kate had seen so often when she checked on Joshua in the night.
Kate studied O’Rourke’s face in the bit of light available: his lips were full and soft, his eyelashes long—she could imagine how cute he had been as a boy—and there were traces of red and premature gray in his brown beard. His relaxed face made her realize how much subtle strain there usually was in his otherwise open and friendly countenance, as if Mike O’Rourke carried a heavy weight which he relinquished only in sleep.
Kate glanced down but could not see the artificial leg in the gap where the small blanket had parted above them. She did see the long curve of his naked thigh where his leg lay next to hers.
Without thinking about it, because thinking would change her mind, Kate leaned closer, kissed O’Rourke’s cheek, and—when his eyes opened and lips closed in surprise—kissed him softly but firmly on the mouth. He did not pull away. Kate pulled back a second to let her eyes focus on his, saw something more important than surprise there, and brought her face closer to kiss him again. This time her lips parted only seconds before his did. She used her bandaged left arm to pull him tighter against her, feeling his hands, still folded, between her breasts and the slow but steady rise of his penis against her thigh.
They gasped for breath and then kissed again, and this time something infinitely more complex than their mutual urgency and excitement was communicated in the kiss—it was a slow and simultaneous opening of sensation, a resonance as real as the pounding of their hearts.
Kate pulled back, her senses literally swimming in a vertigo of feeling. “I’m sorry, I—”
“Hush,” whispered O’Rourke, lifting his hands to the back of her head, fingers sliding into and under her hair, pulling her close again for another kiss.
Kate thought that the moist perfection of that kiss would never end. When it did, her voice was shaky. “I mean, it’s all right if we do. I mean, I have an IUD…but, really, I understand if you—”
“Hush,” he whispered again and lifted her sweater over her head. Her nipples responded to the cold air at the same instant her eyes were covered, then she could see again and he was pulling the blanket back in place. “Shhh,” he said, touching her lips with one finger while his other hand found her underpants and tugged them down and off.
“If you don’t want to, it’s all—” she began, voice thick.
“Shut up,” whispered O’Rourke. “Please.” He kissed her again, then slipped his left arm behind her, fingers strong on her back, and rolled half on top of her, his left arm taking the weight.
“Please,” she echoed and said no more as she lifted her face and kissed him, one hand splayed on the back of his head, the other sliding down his back to the base of his spine. There were scar ridges there—most small, but at least one long and ridged. She felt the briefest touch of the prosthesis as he lifted and then lowered himself between her legs, but then she was aware only of the warmth of the rest of his body, of his kisses, and of his erection warm and insistent against the curve of her belly.
Kate moaned and moved her right hand down, under his thighs, cupped him, slid up him, and guided him to her. She was very wet as she raised her knees and cradled him.
O’Rourke was in no hurry. He kissed her deeply, raised his face to look at her with what seemed infinite tenderness, then kissed her again so slowly and so passionately that Kate thought she might have lost consciousness for a second or two. Her hips moved and he entered her then, with no clumsiness, no rough male desperation, but with the same moist, slow firmness that she felt in his kiss.
Kate stopped breathing for an instant as he paused and seemed ready to withdraw, but he returned with infinite slowness. Then he was moving deep within her, still slowly, so slowly that she could feel the perfect contact as he moved across the most sensitive interior part of her and then almost withdrew and moved again.
The next few minutes were like memories of a future in which their lovemaking had grown better and better, more intimate with each act of love. Nothing seemed forced or awkward. They moved together for several urgent moments, Kate’s senses lifted to a point of excitement where she could hardly breathe, and then O’Rourke shifted his weight slightly and his right hand was between them, part of the moisture and contact, and each time he drew back a bit—the slow movement then making Kate feel as if she were folding around him and in on herself—his moist fingers stroked her gently downward, she felt the sensation of being rubbed against both his fingers and the shaft of his penis, and then his hand would rise slowly against her even as he slid deeper. In moments Kate found herself excited beyond anything she had experienced before, her hips moving more rapidly, demandingly, then slowing as the cadence of their movement slowed, their tempo increasing again in a perfect unison of lubricated friction.
Kate was no novice at making love—she had been passionate with Tom and with a few lovers in the years before and after Tom—but nothing had prepared her for the intimacy and excitement she felt now. Just when it felt like neither she nor O’Rourke could last another instant, that each would have to shudder to orgasm in the same movement, then their rhythm would change as if choreographed th
rough long experience and they would begin rising through another circle of sensation.
They rolled together now, the blanket falling away unheeded, ending with Kate on top and O’Rourke’s broad hand on her chest so that his fingers touched both breasts. He was looking at her, his face lost in that sensuous zone between pain and pleasure. She saw that he had bitten his lip and she lowered her face to kiss away the drop of blood there. He tried to slow her movements now with his hand firm on her hip, but Kate sensed that there could be no more slowing, no more waiting. Throwing her face back, she set both hands on his chest and moved with a rocking, downward shifting motion that brought them to the edge and beyond. For a throbbing second, Kate did not know whose impending orgasm she was feeling more strongly, hers or O’Rourke’s.
Then O’Rourke’s eyes closed, Kate’s closed a second later, she came with a flood of warmth that echoed through her in widening ripples, and an instant after that she felt O’Rourke pulsing inside her as he groaned.
A moment later Kate lay full length on him while O’Rourke hugged her close and pulled the blanket above them. He remained in her, still hard, holding her with strong hands as she half-dozed with her cheek against his chest. It grew full dark. The cold was a palpable thing in the barn now. Somewhere far across the field, a goat bleated.
“Does this ruin everything?” Kate whispered at last, coming out of a half-dream.
“It doesn’t ruin anything,” whispered O’Rourke. His hands rubbed her back.
“But your vows…”
“I’d already decided to leave the priesthood, Kate. My trip to Chicago was to resign in person.” He turned his face to one side and freed his hand long enough to brush away a bit of straw that clung to his beard. He returned the hand to her back. “I’ve honored the vow of celibacy for eighteen years without believing in the reason for it.”
