Prayer (The Pagano Family Book 5)

by Susan Fanetti

  He turned the page, and the front cover came up so she could see it. He was reading The Constant Gardner. She smiled. “Good pick.”

  “Hey. Good morning.” He closed the book and set it aside, then scooted down and lay facing her. The cats complained and jumped down. Very soon, they’d be yelling for breakfast, but they seemed willing to let her have this moment.

  She smiled and brushed her fingers over his scruffy cheek. “You’re here.”

  “I am.” He took hold of her hand and kissed it. “I do have to pee, though. There was no force on earth that would have made me leave this room before you woke up, but it was close, I won’t lie.”

  Laughing, she sat up. “You’re sweet. Thank you. Go pee.” He really was sweet; Katrynn knew exactly how she would have felt if she’d woken alone in the bed. Even if he’d only been in the bathroom, that first strike of crushing disappointment would have been vicious.

  He stood and went to the door, unconcerned with his nakedness. She was not nearly so unaffected by the sight. Damn, his ass was fine. In the doorway, he turned. The front view was great, too.

  “Hey—you should look out the window. It’s still snowing. I checked my phone. They’re saying we’re at twenty-two inches and counting. Maybe up to thirty before it stops. The plows can’t keep the main roads clear, so they’re not going to get to side streets at all today. We definitely have a snow day.”

  Katrynn smiled, and he gave her a little wink and headed to the bathroom. When she was sure she was alone, she indulged a tiny moment of utter glee, clapping and bouncing up and down as she sat naked on her bed.

  Then Lennie and George came in and reminded her in clear terms that they had been there first, so she got up, pulled her Snoopy bottoms back on, got a much sexier cotton cami from her dresser, and shrugged it on. Before she left the room, she went to the window. The world was buried in white, softening the sharp edges and brightening the dark corners. Just so very beautiful. Like a fresh start.

  George bumped her leg impatiently, and she went to the kitchen to feed her fellas.

  And breakfast for her and John. A snow day called for oatmeal. She hoped he liked oatmeal.

  ~oOo~

  He did like oatmeal. They had it with coffee and cinnamon toast, and then John set her on the counter and fucked her next to the sink stacked with their dishes. They spent the rest of the morning talking and fucking—in the kitchen, on the sofa, back in bed. He ran out of condoms, but she had a box in her nightstand. It was only a box of a dozen, though; at the rate they were going, if the snow-in lasted much longer than a day, they’d be in trouble.

  The snow stopped in the early afternoon, with an official accumulation of twenty-eight inches, and they went out and shoveled the walk. When she dumped a shovelful of snow on his head, they also had a snow fight, laughing and lurching around the thigh-high snow like idiots.

  Before they went back inside, John dug out his truck enough to get into the cab, and he pulled out a backpack and his guitar.

  She lifted her eyebrow at him. “Pretty cocky, packing a bag.”

  “I meant to go to the house after I apologized, I swear. I did not plan on seducing you last night.”

  That deserved a higher eyebrow. “Is that what you think you did? Seduce me?”

  “Hell yeah. Wicked good job of it, too.” He grinned and grabbed her hand. “Come on. I need to get my guitar inside and let it warm up. I want to play with you.”

  “Play?” She stopped in the snow.

  “You, me, guitar, keyboard. Play. I’ve been thinking about it since I saw the keyboard last night.”

  That seemed strangely intimate, and Katrynn wasn’t sure why. But it scared her, took the head off the day’s blissful buzz. She felt herself take an internal step back. If they went too fast, they could crash.

  Obviously surprised by her hesitation, John cocked his head. “Katrynn?”

  She was being ridiculous. They’d been fucking all day—how much more intimate could they be? And anyway, wasn’t that what she wanted? To be close with him? For him to be down at the base of the cliff with her?

  Yes. That was exactly what she wanted.

  Shaking off that weird moment, she smiled. “Okay. Sounds fun.”

  While his guitar warmed up, they showered. When things got extra steamy, Katrynn took quiet control and jacked him off—she didn’t want things to get to a point where she’d have to stop him. She still didn’t trust herself to speak up when she needed to, and she didn’t want to have to make a pharmacy run in the snow.

  Dry and dressed, they went to the living room. While John sat on the sofa and tuned his guitar, Katrynn set up the keyboard and sat before it in her rocking chair. She really didn’t like the way it sounded, and she knew, as she listened to the warm natural notes of his acoustic, that her notes would sound synthetic. But it was nice to sit here in her cozy little apartment, with her cats stretched out on the back of the sofa, and have music fill the space. Music and affection.

  When he was satisfied with the tuning, he lightly strummed some chords and asked, “What do you like to play?”

  Feeling shy, she lifted a shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. “A lot of things, I guess. Classical, pop, some standards. My mom likes old-school country, so that, too. You?”

  “Singer-songwriter stuff, mostly. My brothers give me shit about my musical taste, but whatever. I like harmony and poetry in my music. Do you know any Dylan?”

  “Sure. Some.”

  A light came into his eyes, and he smiled. “How about this?” He strummed an upbeat rhythm, a classic Dylan riff, and after a bar or two started to sing, softly, in a rich, low tenor. She didn’t know the song, but got the key and listened closely, her fingers moving soundlessly over her keyboard, finding where they’d fit.

  He sang a second verse, and she heard the lines again that clearly made up the refrain, and she guessed at the title: probably something like ‘Shelter from the Storm.’ Understanding why he’d picked it, she smiled and began to play an accompaniment. By the third verse, she had the pattern of the lyrics and sang harmony with the refrain.

  When it was over, he laid his arms over the top of his instrument and looked long at her, until she felt self-conscious. “What?”

  “You have a nice voice.”

  “Thank you. So do you.”

  “Are you religious?”

  The question surprised her, and made her uncomfortable. Her mother had the same attention span about religion that she had with anything else. In Katrynn’s life, they’d been members of Methodist, Presbyterian, Buddhist, Unitarian, Baptist, Hindu, and Pentecostal congregations, but mostly they hadn’t gone to church at all. Her spiritual understanding had been stitched together like a patchwork quilt.

  She wasn’t religious, but she knew he was. The Paganos were leaders of the Catholic community here in the Cove. Would an honest answer to his question end their snowy idyll and whatever might come after it? Could she fake being religious to keep up what they were starting?

  No. No. What they were starting felt important. Too important to hurt it with dishonesty or obfuscation.

  “I’m not. I’m sorry.”

  “Why sorry?”

  “I know you are.”

  He nodded. “I am. But maybe not like you think. I mean, I’m Catholic, obviously, and I go to Mass with my family, and I believe in God. But I don’t agree with everything about the Church. There’s a lot of stuff I do that’s a sin in the Church’s teaching, and that doesn’t bother me. I like the Mass—the rituals and the beauty. The traditions and connection with my family. I feel peaceful at Mass, even if I’m ignoring the homily. But I feel closest to God when I’m playing guitar. I don’t really pray much outside of church, but playing sometimes feels like that to me.” He smiled, and Katrynn would have sworn that he’d blushed. “Playing with you just now, that felt like a prayer.”

  No one had ever said anything so beautiful to her in her life. “John,” she breathed as her hand went to her ches
t. She’d been right that playing together would be intimate.

  John shook his head. “Too much? I’m sorry. But I’m done holding back what I feel. I’m so tired of the game, Katrynn. I’ve never figured out the rules. I’m gonna be forty in April, and I keep getting sent back to ‘Start.’ Well, I want to start. I want to make my way around the board, and I want to do it with you.” He sighed, and it turned into a rueful chuckle. “Unless, of course, I just totally freaked you out, and you want me to go. In that case, I’m really sorry I dumped all that while I’m snowed in with you.”

  Katrynn got up from the rocker and went to sit at John’s side. “It’s not too much, and I’m not freaked out. That’s the most wonderful thing anyone’s ever said to me. My metaphor is different, but I feel the same. I don’t think of it like a game, but like a cliff. I was thinking this morning that I’d jumped off the cliff for you last night, and I was afraid I was alone down at the bottom.”

  He smiled and set his guitar aside. He took her face in his hands—those big, dark, rough, incredibly sexy hands that made beautiful music on his guitar and on her body. And in her heart.

  “You’re not alone. I’m with you,” he said and kissed her.

  ~oOo~

  That night, when they were finally spent, John pulled her back and nestled her in the long, warm curve of his body. With his arms snug around her, his body touching hers at every point, he kissed the back of her shoulder and whispered, “Sleep well, baby.”

  Katrynn smiled and breathed a deep, sated sigh. She didn’t pray; she didn’t even know whom she’d pray to. But still, as she drifted off to sleep, she thought the words Thank you.

  ~ 11 ~

  John opened his eyes as the sun was just washing golden dawn over the bed. Katrynn was snug in his arms, and he smiled and kissed her shoulder. “Wake up, baby.”

  She moaned and slapped a hand over her face.

  He picked up that hand and kissed it. “Wake up.” He trailed kisses up her arm, back to her shoulder and then down her back, along her side, over her hip, lingering at her pretty red birthmark shaped like an angel’s wing, then down her thigh. “Wake up, wake up, wake up.”

  “God! You need a fucking shade over that window!”

  Grinning, he looked out the loft window at the sun rising over the ocean. “No way, Grumpy Cat. There’s no better way to wake up than sunrise over the water. Except maybe…”

  He lifted her leg and slid under it, settling himself between her thighs. When his tongue touched her clit, her moan changed its tune, becoming sultry rather than sulky.

  “Oh…God, you’re good at that.”

  “I’m good at all of it.” To make his point, he sucked that pretty little pink bud into his mouth exactly the way she liked.

  “Yes. Yes, you are,” she breathed. “Do you have time for this?” She gasped as his tongue lapped along her folds. “You better have time for this.”

  “Why do you think I wanted you awake? Now shut up. I’m busy.”

  She relaxed and rolled to her back, opening herself completely to him, and John wrapped his arms under her thighs and took hold of her hips. Then he settled in for a morning feast. He loved the taste and smell and feel of her, the way her muscles rolled in his hands as he made her squirm. He had learned quickly to read her body because once they got started, her mouth said very little, nothing more than erratic breaths and soft moans to lead him. Maybe the occasional calling out of his name or God’s, but nothing more than that.

  Gradually, very gradually, she was becoming more expressive. It was like she was still learning to trust him, though he wasn’t sure what she might yet fear. He was all the way in. He loved her—and he’d told her as much. There was a chance he’d loved her longer than he’d realized.

  She hadn’t returned the words to him yet, but he knew that she felt the same way. Just as he’d learned to read her body in sex, he’d learned—was learning—to read her actions in life. She loved him. She was afraid of it, but she felt it.

  During the storm, when they’d been caught in a fantasy snow globe, she had been more open and free. But after two days, they’d had to return to the world, and she’d pulled back a little. Just a little, and only in word, not in deed.

  He didn’t need the words, because she showed him, every day. He understood her—or he was coming to understand. He knew he needed to ease her fear, so that she could embrace her feelings, and then the words would come. And when they did, then they’d move the next step on the board.

  At this moment, however, John’s attention was on her body and on the way her thighs had closed around his head. He could feel her muscles spasming against his tongue, in his hands, on his ears. Her fingers had twisted into his hair, and her breath was coming in desperate cries. When she came, she always sounded almost afraid of it. Her body seemed to resist the pleasure of his touch, even as she sought it.

  “Let go, baby,” he murmured against her sweet flesh. “Let go, let go.” He slid two fingers inside her, pressing against that one perfect spot, and sucked again on her clit, and her need trumped her resistance. Her climax landed like a bolt of lightning, pulling her back and shoulders off the bed. He stayed on her until she flopped back down and began her languid twitching.

  He felt victory in making her come like that. She’d told him that no one had ever made her come like he could, and he was proud as hell about it. But he understood, he thought, why she’d had trouble.

  His girl was afraid of letting go.

  It took some focused attention to pull her from her shell. He knew a lot of guys who’d be defensive about that, turning insecurity into hostility. He also knew guys who probably wouldn’t even notice.

  He eased up her body, tonguing a twisty trail up her soft skin—so, so soft, like no other woman’s skin he’d ever touched. She was smiling, her eyelids heavy, when he reached her face and laid a light kiss on her mouth and then brushed his wet beard over her cheeks.

  She took hold of his face. “What about you?”

  “There’s time. I want you to ride me.”

  He didn’t really have that much time, but fuck it. Carlo and Luca could wait.

  Grinning widely, she shifted under him, pushing at his shoulders until he rolled to his back. She treated him to the same attention he’d paid her, kissing a trail from his mouth down, lingering at his nipples, licking over the muscles of his abdomen, nuzzling her nose in the hair below his navel. John closed his eyes and let himself feel her.

  She enjoyed paying him attention, and he had no trouble at all letting go.

  When she sucked on the tip of his cock, he groaned and grabbed a handful of her hair. “Come on, baby. I want to fill you up.” He pulled lightly, urging her up, but she held back. Then she turned and straddled him backwards.

  He liked to watch her face, since there was so much to read about her pleasure there, but as she sank down on him, he didn’t care at all that her back was to him. She’d gone on the Pill, and they’d both tested clean—not a surprise, but he shared her caution—a couple of weeks before, and hallelujah for that. He’d gone without condoms with women before, when he’d been in something serious, but the feel of being bare inside a woman was always different and never got old. It changed the way he knew her, and it meant that there was something real between them.

  He’d felt that with every woman he’d gotten to this level of intimacy with, but it had seemed even more meaningful with Katrynn, possibly because of their rocky start, and her reserve. It was a sign, and he took them all to heart.

  Feeling her molten heat envelop him now, watching the shimmy of her hips and the little jiggle of that great ass, John could only have felt closer to her if he’d been looking into her deep brown eyes. He rested his hands on her hips, covering her little angel’s wing with his thumb, and urged her to move.

  She did, and fuck. Going down on her, getting her to come so powerfully, had almost set him off already, and now with the focus on him, he was going to blow. But he didn’t want tha
t. He never wanted to come without her, not even if he’d already brought her off.

  He watched the silk of her hair ripple as she bounced and flexed on him. Even that was too potent an image. He could feel that she wasn’t going to come like this, she was too focused on him, and he knew she wouldn’t touch herself while he was inside her. She had a thing about that: masturbation was not for couples. It was something he hoped to work on.

  But for now, he just need to get her off so he could go, too. He sat up and grabbed her hair, pulling her backward until she collided with his chest. Then he lay back down, bringing her with him, so that she was completely exposed to his hands.