Father Figure

by Jane Harvey-Berrick

  I’d never been in his room before, Mrs. O’Cee being the one who cleaned the bedrooms—presumably out of some sort of sense of propriety—not that there was much to see. A queen-size bed with white sheets and a dark blue comforter; a narrow closet; an ugly wooden dresser; and a crucifix over his bed. Not exactly homey.

  He collapsed onto the bed with the sound of a redwood hitting the forest floor—I thought the bed might give way, but it had obviously been bought to take his giant frame.

  I unlaced his boots and tossed them into the corner, then peeled off his socks. His bare feet were large, the toes long and straight. Their nakedness gave him an air of vulnerability, so I turned my attention higher. I pulled off the dog collar and tossed it at the crucifix on the wall as if I was trying to win a hoopla prize at the fair, but it just bounced off the wall and fell to the floor.

  I snapped on his reading lamp on the bedside table and studied the man laying before me. Carefully, I pulled my razor-sharp knife out of my purse and hid it under the pillow.

  Gabriel’s eyes fluttered as I climbed on top of him, one knee on either side of his thick thighs. Slowly, one button at a time, I pulled his black shirt open, leaving his chest exposed. I studied the ink that poured down his muscled chest, flowing over his arms and the backs of his hands, colorful stains, the reds running like blood into the purples, blues, yellows and blacks. Some were typical Navy tattoos, an anchor, a mermaid; one was an American flag with teardrops beneath it; and there were lines of scripture and some symbols that I didn’t understand. On his left bicep there was a lifelike picture of Jesus and the crown of thorns. Gabriel Thorne would take a lifetime to read.

  But I didn’t have that long, and nor did he.

  I wiggled down, pulling a grunt from the sleeping giant, then unbuttoned his jeans and tugged the zipper down.

  Even in sleep, his dick was prominent beneath the black briefs. I leaned down to sniff the fabric, taking in the musky odor of man, and saliva pooled in my mouth. The other day in the confessional had just been the starter—now for the main course.

  As I pulled his dick free, it began to swell in my hand, becoming firmer as I ran my tongue up and down the shaft, the head turning purple and engorged.

  I smiled to myself, then leaned down to kiss him, teasing his lips open and his body into consciousness.

  His eyelids snapped open, the irises turning to pinpoints as he squinted into the dim light of his reading lamp.

  “Blue,” he choked out. “Blue…”

  I silenced him with another kiss and was rewarded as his tongue thrust into my mouth and his hands reached up to knead my ass. Then he pulled me against him, welding our bodies together, sharing our heat and desire. His thick fingers slipped inside my thong and he groaned as he felt how wet I was. I ground against his hand letting my long hair trail over his chest.

  “Yes!” I hissed as he rubbed along my seam and then stroked inside me, each time pressing over my clit.

  Desire and heat raced through me sending sparks that set my body alight. Sweat broke out in the small of my back and rolled down my ass crack. His other hand reached under my t-shirt and tugged at my nipples, each one gaining his attention.

  When he reached up to bite my breast over my t-shirt, I went up like a rocket, spiraling into the darkness and exploding like a shooting star.

  “You’re spectacular, Blue,” he breathed against my damp skin as my breath roared. “So fucking beautiful.”

  As I fell to earth, my heart racing like a forest fire, I felt his fingers pull away.

  “Blue … I can’t make love to you. God knows, I want to, but I can’t.”

  “Gabriel,” I wailed. “I need you! Please!”

  “Blue, you’re breaking my heart, but I can’t! My vows, I can’t.”

  “Life is for the living, Gabriel. Now is our time. I know that you’re mourning the death of your friend, but look at me! Look at me! I’m healthy and whole! Touch me, Gabriel, I’m real, I’m alive.”

  I ground my drenched pussy against his erection and he groaned like he was in pain.

  “I know you want to fuck me. Come on Gabriel. Fuck me!” He hesitated, clearly torn, his expression full of desperation, but he didn’t pull away. “You think God loves me? You think He cares? Show me. Prove it to me right now!”

  “I can’t!”

  “Fuck God. Fuck me!”

  I was deliberately pushing him, testing him, breaking him.

  “Do you know how many men have naughty Catholic schoolgirl fantasies? Do you want to put me over your knee, Gabriel? I mean, Father?”

  But when he spoke, it wasn’t to me.

  “Lord, show me my duty! Show me my path! I’m so lost, Lord!”

  “Fuck me, Gabriel! Now!”

  “I can’t!” he gasped as I pressed against him.

  “You mean you won’t! Love me! Show me it’s possible for someone to love me!”

  A long sigh shuddered through his chest. “Blue, honey, I wish I was that man. I would love to make love to you but it wouldn’t be right.”

  I slapped my hands on his chest, and his eyes opened wide.

  “No one has ever made love to me. I’ve just been fucked. And the one man I love won’t show me how much he loves me. I want to feel it, Gabriel! Just once! I want to feel the inferno! Show me how much you love me. Make me feel good. Show me how to be good.”

  A choked sob broke from his throat as he pulled me on top of his rigid dick, thrusting roughly inside me. I felt pain and I felt full, stretched beyond my limits as his shaft surged over sensitive nerve-endings, the wave built in me again.

  Suddenly, he flipped me onto my back, crushing me into his bed with his weight and pounded into me, a frenzy coming over him as if he was racing to the end of the world.

  Stroke after stroke, lash after lash, torment glistening in his eyes, he drove himself to hell, and when he came, he exploded inside me, wave after wave of cum until it was spilling out of me and soaking the sheets beneath us.

  Finally, he stilled, the calmness in the eye of the storm.

  “Oh God, what have I done?”

  He sat up, his head in his hands, his face frozen in an appalled mask.

  “Only what you wanted to do, Gabriel. What you’ve wanted to do for a long time.”

  He shook his head, and when he spoke, his voice was tortured.

  “Mariana. I’m sorry, fuck, I’m sorry. It wasn’t meant to happen. God forgive me, I’ve betrayed everything in me as a priest and a man. Jesus, I’m twice your age.”

  When I saw tears glisten in his eyes, right then, that was the moment that I knew I’d won: I’d broken Father Gabriel Thorne.

  “You reap what you sow, Gabriel,” I said coldly as I let my heart ice over, protecting me from the monster in the bed.

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “Do you believe that people get what they deserve? Because I do—and you’ve reaped the whirlwind.”

  “Blue, you’re talking crazy. I’m sorry, God knows how much, but please…”

  I leaned away from him, until I was at the edge of the bed, my hand inching toward the pillow.

  “Don’t you get it? Are you really so stupid?” I sneered. “I planned this, Gabriel. And now you have to pay the final installment. Luke Herrera was my father—and you murdered him!”

  I pulled my knife from under the pillow and sliced it across his neck in a slashing movement. But he was quicker than me and way stronger, his reflexes instantly awake. I’d expected him to be docile and dumb after sex, like most men, but not him, not the ex-SEAL.

  He twisted my arm so brutally I cried out and dropped the knife. His eyes were a haze of confusion and anger.

  “What the fuck, Blue? What the actual fuck? You tried to…”

  “Kill you!” I screamed at him. “Yes! I tried to kill you! I want you dead! You should be dead! I want you dead! Dead! DEAD! DEAD! You deserve to die. You’re nothing but a filthy murdering scum. You murdered my father!” I spat in h
is face. “I wish you were dead!”

  His face was ashen, pale under his tan, like a thin strip of paint across the stubbled surface.

  “What? Who? You’re only saying Luke’s name because you saw me there today. God, you’re sick!”

  “You killed my father!” I screamed in his face, my spittle hitting his cheeks again, but he didn’t let go of my arm. “Luke Mitchell Herrera was my father and you killed him! I know everything! You’re a murderer!”

  He dropped my arm like I’d become superheated, and I backed away from him, my face twisted with anger and fury that I’d failed. Maybe if I was lucky, he’d kill himself and earn his place in Purgatory.

  “Luke was your father? That’s not possible.”

  “So I’m a liar as well as a whore,” I said bitterly, then reached into my purse and tossed my precious strip of photographs at him, the smiling boy and girl, a teenage Gabriel.

  His mouth dropped open, regret, pain, astonishment boiling in his gray eyes.

  “How did you get this?”

  “From my mother,” I whispered.

  He shook his head, stunned.

  “I can’t believe this, I can’t. But fuck, you look just like her but … but…”

  “I have my father’s eyes,” I said, my voice harsh and bitter. “It’s all I have of him, because of you. You murdered him! My mom told me everything! You’re a filthy murderer and you deserve to die. I’ve waited my whole life for this moment. If you had any shred of decency in you, you’d kill yourself. You’d take my knife and finish it! Finish it, Gabriel! Do it! It won’t even hurt if you’re quick! Do it for Luke! Do it now!”

  “Mariana,” he said, his voice full of pain, “I didn’t murder Luke, but I did kill him.” He swallowed then looked up to meet my eyes. “I’ll confess everything to you. Will you hear my confession, Mariana?”

  My eyes fixed on his face, and no matter how old I grow, I will never forget the torment I saw there.

  “It was called the Battle of Belgrade,” he began. “The Kosovo War. Twenty years ago, we were in the old Yugoslavia, just as everything was going to shit. They didn’t call it a civil war, but that’s what it was, villagers and townsfolk, Muslims and Christians, Serbs, Albanians, Kosovans, Croats and Bosnians who’d lived together for years, decades, suddenly turning on each other. There were no rules—it was Hell unleashed on earth.”

  He took a deep breath as his voice disappeared into the past.

  “Operation Noble Anvil was a plan for NATO to bomb the hell out of Belgrade and force the withdrawal of Yugoslav armed forces from Kosovo, and the establishment of a UN peacekeeping mission. There’d been ethnic cleansing of thousands of Albanians—which is a polite political way of saying that men, women and children had been butchered, mown down with machine guns and left to rot—communities had been split apart. William Cohen, Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Defense described it as ‘a fight for justice over genocide’. Well, the bombing destroyed bridges, industrial plants, public buildings, private businesses, several barracks and military installations, but it also killed more than 500 civilians.

  “Our SEAL team was sent on a denied op to take out the Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević. Taking out a lawfully-elected President is a big political no-no, even though he was a bad bastard and responsible for thousands of deaths.

  “I only found this out afterward. At the time, we were just told who the target was and that he had to be taken out. We were dropped into a fucking war zone. NATO was still bombing all around us and the Yugoslav Army was throwing up thousands of shells as well as anti-aircraft missiles. It was a real hot area. We knew that Milošević was scheduled to be at the Serbian television studios on April 23, and that’s where we’d end him.”

  Gabriel’s voice had grown stronger, but now he ran his hands over his short hair, frustration warring with resentment and pain at the memories.

  “Our backup was in two Humvees that were supposed to seal the exits, but the first one drove over an IED—multiple casualties—and the second couldn’t get past the debris and were then pinned down by heavy arms fire from an ambush. We knew that we were on our own.

  “Our OC had ten seconds to decide whether it was a go. It was sixty minutes after sunset and light was poor.

  “We entered the building at 1900 hours by rappelling onto the roof, and cut the power to every part of the building but the alarm. Protocol meant that the studio manager should have evacuated the building, and that’s what we were counting on, but he didn’t, and to this day, I don’t understand what the fuck he was thinking. There weren’t supposed to be any friendlies but now we had all these civilians in the building while we were trying to get to Milošević. It was a complete crapshoot.

  “His bodyguards were shooting at everyone in their path to clear an exit. So instead of a simple in-and-out, we were caught in a firefight. Luke still thought he and I could get to Milošević if we blocked the front entrance with a couple of flashbangs, sending the bodyguards into our ambush, and we’d hit him at the rear exit. The LT said to go for it, but he was pinned down by a group of Yugoslav Army who shouldn’t have even fucking been there. The intel was bad—we were outnumbered and outgunned. The Team was split and the guys were on different floors of the building fighting for their lives.

  “It was Hell on earth. We were trying to get to the emergency exit to block it off from the tango, and we were tripping over all these bodies, slipping in their blood. Some were wounded and crying out for help and we just stepped over them like they were nothing—an inconvenience. That’s all they were to us—in the way.

  “So Luke and I ran down the emergency exit stairs and I tossed the flashbangs along the corridor at the front of the building and heard them explode. Then we waited, but nothing happened, no one came. I yelled at Luke that I was going to check, but he told me to stay and that they’d be coming. My gut said he was right, but I was impatient so I didn’t listen because adrenaline was making me crazy, and I thought I knew better. I got turned around in all the noise and confusion, not able to find the right corridors and then I realized that we’d been given old blueprints for the building. I was in completely the wrong part of the building and I’d left Luke on his own.

  “I started running back the way I’d come. There were two corridors, and Milošević and his bodyguards were hustling down the second. I knew that Luke would be one man against six heavily-armed bodyguards. When I heard shooting, I ran towards it—and this figure loomed out of the smoke. I didn’t think, I just reacted, a double-tap like I’d been taught, then one more. I fired. I fired without thinking, without checking—just aching for the kill, a mindless, bloodthirsty machine. But it wasn’t Yugoslav Army or bodyguards that I hit—it was Luke. I hit him in the groin, chest and neck.”

  By now, Gabriel was covered in sweat and panting like he’d run a race. It was too much and I vomited into his trashcan, wiping my mouth on the black clerical shirt he’d been wearing.

  Gabriel’s voice softened.

  “They tell me it was the third shot that killed him. He didn’t stand a chance. I wrapped my hands around his throat, trying to stem the bleeding even though I knew it was pointless. His blood poured through my fingers. I was screaming for Sanchez our medic, but I watched the light fade from Luke’s eyes. He just sort of smiled at me and said, ‘Game over’. Then he was gone. That was it. I killed my best friend in the whole fucking world because I was a cocky 19-year-old kid who thought he was a big man and knew better. So you’re right—I killed Luke Herrera. I murdered him.”

  His voice broke and it was several seconds before he spoke again.

  “I carried him … his body … up to the roof, and we got him in the helo. Four minutes after we evac-ed, NATO took out the building with a single missile and 16 journalists were killed. They said it was a mistake, but I’ve always wondered. Milošević escaped but was indicted a year later and died of a heart attack in prison. So it was all for fucking nothing.

  “It was a denied op, s
o no one wanted to admit what had happened. The official version stated that Luke died in a training op. I kicked up like hell about that because I wouldn’t have his memory tainted, as if he was the one who’d fucked up. I threatened my CO that I’d go to the Press with the whole damn story. In the end, Luke’s death was put down to ‘friendly fire’.”

  Gabriel laughed bitterly.

  “He was my best friend and I killed him. Now you tell me he was your father and if I had a gun, I’d shoot myself in the head. You may as well call me a murderer because I fucking feeling like one.”

  He handed me my knife.

  “I won’t stop you again, Blue,” and he closed his eyes.

  My hand shook and cold sweat broke out across my whole body. I pressed the knife against the tanned skin of his neck, forcing the blade in. A thin line of blood appeared and my eyes widened.

  The knife slipped from my hand and I screamed with frustration. I couldn’t do it! After all this time, all this effort, the years of hatred, and I couldn’t finish it!

  I fell to the bed, sobbing with rage and shock and self-pity, fury at the lack of justice, slayed by my weakness.

  Gabriel held me in his arms, rocking me gently. I wanted him to burn, I wanted him to die … I wanted his strength, his arms around me. And I cried like the world was ending.

  “I’m so sorry, Blue,” he whispered. “So fucking sorry. I can’t imagine what your life has been. Luke was a great guy, the best, and I know he would have loved you very much. But you have to believe me when I say that if I’d known about you, I’d have taken care of you and your mom. But we only met once, at the Pickled Frog the night before that deployment. That’s why I couldn’t believe it when you took me there tonight, tonight of all nights.”

  “No, you’re still lying to me!” I sobbed. “Mom told me! They were in love, they were going to get married! He was coming back for her, for me!”

  Gabriel shook his head, his eyes brimming with sadness.

  “I’m sorry but that’s not true. Luke and I were out partying. We met two women, one blonde, one redhead. Luke chose the redhead, your mom. We drank and partied for hours. Luke and Red went somewhere private and … well, then we went back to the Base. We were wheels up at dawn.”