Marlin's Faith: The Virtues Book II (19 page)

I smiled but it was a sad thing and told her, “This is the part where you apologize for puttin’ words in my mouth rather ‘n just talking with me straight.”

She closed her eyes and sagged in my arms, resting her forehead on my chest she said, “I’m so sorry for everything, for that, but mostly for hurting you… I don’t mean to hurt anybody, I’m… I’m like a poison. It’s just; it’s just what I do, no matter how hard I try. I can’t help it.”

I held her tighter against me and sighed out, “Breaks my fuckin’ heart to hear you talkin’ about yourself that way,” I told her, but the only answer I got was her breaking down into wracking sobs.

I didn’t know what to say, so I just didn’t say anything. Instead, I just held her, rubbing uselessly along her back over her soft jersey dress while she sobbed brokenly into my bare chest under my cut.

There was taking care of someone, then there was being responsible for them. I switched off that urge I had to tell her ‘shh’ or ‘don’t cry’ and just let her have this. I didn’t even lie to her and tell her it was okay, because it wasn’t, but she didn’t need any of that. Right now she needed to cry and let all the negative out.

“Gonna be honest with you, Baby Girl, I don’t know what I’m doing here. I just know it’s the right place for me to be. I get that you’re hurting, but I don’t know the first thing or way to go about healin’ that hurt if you don’t talk to me.”

“I don’t know what to say!” she wailed and that was the problem, right there in a nutshell. She was so worried about pleasing everyone else she couldn’t do for herself anymore. You can’t pour from an empty cup, and Faith had been trying for a long time, going by what she and Hope had told me about their arguments when she’d been growin’ up.

I sighed and drew her back so that she could see me eye to eye, “Don’t you ever filter yourself to me, Faith. You understand? I’m not going to get pissed because you feel one way or the other about somethin’. There is no right or wrong way to
feel
and you won’t find me tossin’ your feelin’s aside. You just gotta
talk to me
, Baby. I can’t promise I’ll be perfect when it comes to all of these things, but I can promise to try.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Why would you even want to?”

“What, try?”

“Yeah.”

“Better question, why d’you seem to think I shouldn’t?”

She was silent, eyes searching my face, the turmoil in them clear. I waited her out patiently and finally she caved, her expression crumbling and becoming sort of desolate.

“Look at me,” she uttered, “I’m a mess. I can’t hold myself together and after… after everything, what could I even do?”

“How do you mean?”

“Who’s going to hire a whore?” she asked harshly, “And a junkie at that?”

“You ain’t either of those things, Faith.” She looked at me sharply, with an incredulous ‘
are you serious!?’
look painted across her lovely face. I traced my thumbs gently across her cheeks and smiled.

“The way I see it, just because you were forced to do something, even for as long as you were, it don’t make you that thing. You aren’t a whore, you aren’t a junkie, and you’re only a victim for however long you choose to be.”

She scoffed, and I kissed her, which changed the sound from incredulous to one of surprise. She pressed her hands against my chest and I stopped, just like that, drawing back. She blinked up at me and I asked her, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, why’d you stop?”

I looked down at her hands and she dropped her eyes, staring at them for a considerable amount of time. Finally, her hands raised, along with her eyes. She twined them around my neck, burying her fingers into the short ponytail at the back of my head and gently drew me down. I didn’t resist her, and gave her what she wanted, touching my lips softly to hers, less demanding and more giving this time.

She opened under my touch and it was beautiful, her body finally relaxing, her breath sighing out against my lips gently. I let her kiss me, and simply gave her what she was asking for, I didn’t push, I didn’t take more or try to find an angle, I simply took what she was giving and was grateful that she let me in.

The kiss ran its course and we pulled apart gently, the breeze ruffling her hair as the sun began to dip lower. A flash turned our attention out to sea and the band of gray clouds closing in.

“Will we be okay downstairs with the side open like that?” she asked.

“We can watch the storm for a while, sure, but we’re sleepin’ below deck.”

“Oh.”

She stood with me, watching the sun set, and the rain showers move in and it was one of the first times I think we were both at peace, or on the same page, really. Her voice, when it came again was small and quiet.

“I feel safe with you. I have ever since you picked me up, in that house.”

“Yeah?” I asked.

She nodded, “The only time I can remember sleeping without the nightmares creeping in on me was back in the orchard. Remember?” she looked up at me and smiled wryly.

“How could I forget? Feels right having you in my arms.” I gave her a little squeeze.

“I’m really sorry,” she said and I nodded.

“I know, Baby Girl. I can see you are.”

“I’ll do better, I promise.”

“I suspect you will, just promise me somethin’ okay?”

“What?”

“If you can’t talk to me, you feel uncomfortable or whatever, just tell me so and promise you’ll talk to someone about it. Be it the doctor lady, or one of yer sisters. You can’t do it all by yourself. Ain’t no one can after all of that.”

She looked pensive for a minute, eyes distant, before she nodded finally, “That’s reasonable…”

“I also know it’s hard as fuck for you, isn’t it?”

She looked up at me sharply, and I pressed on, “You been told your whole life what’s what and how to act and you just lock it all down, bottle it all up, then you’re kidnapped, sold into sexual slavery, they get you hooked on some of the nastiest shit to keep you shackled and in line… Baby, it’s no wonder you have a hard time speaking your heart and mind. You been nothing but punished for it for a long, long, time.”

Her eyes welled and she nodded, before quickly averting her gaze toward the dipping sun. I sighed, and gathered her close, holding her tight as she gave a muffled sniff. A tension that she just about always carried had eased out of her some and I pretty much figured I’d just hit the damn nail on the head. It was a shit way to live and she’d been living that way for so long… I couldn’t even. I’d grown up similarly, but at some point I’d just stopped giving a fuck what my ma and pop had to say about things. Their religion hadn’t really done anything for me or any of my brothers that I could see, ‘cept’n for giving us a boat load of guilt about any given subject.

Faith cuddled into me and I wrapped my arms around her tighter, kissing the top of her head as she stared sightless and thinking into the setting sun, the cloud front moving across the water in our direction until the breeze carried with it the damp, ozone scent of imminent rain.

“Come on, Baby Girl. Time to go down and take cover,” I murmured into her hair. She nodded and let me lead her by the hand down the steps. At the bottom, I rounded the corner and got my keys out of my pocket. I unlocked the padlock holding the hatch shut and opened it up.

“It’s dark,” she said.

“Afraid?”

“Are you with me?”

“Always.”

“Then no.”

I smiled and she took the ladder carefully down into the bunk. I went down after her, shutting the hatch tightly against the coming rain. Our stuff was already down here, but with the growing dark, it wasn’t like you could see it. Hell, it might as well be light tight already.

“I can’t see, Marlin,” she uttered softly, and I could barely see her myself.

“Stay there, Baby. I’ll move this stuff off the bed and then I can hold you.”

I shifted our bags of clothes to the floor and dug around in the top of mine. I went to her and she jumped at my light touch. I trailed fingertips down her arm and put my tee in her hands.

“Can’t see a thing, Darlin’,” I led her around to the side of the bed and put her hand on it, “Go ahead and change.”

I felt my way around as cloth whispered in the dark and turned back the fresh bedding that’d come from my boat. I took off my cut and felt for the hook in the side of the headboard, and hung it up. The shorts I let hit the floor. I tugged up my boxer shorts and got into the bed. Faith stole in beside me and I held myself at the ready.

“Make yourself comfortable, Faith, however you’d like.”

She lay her head on my chest, and cuddled in close and I dropped the sheet and light blanket over the top of her.

“It’s cooler down here,” she uttered.

“Yeah, it is,” I kissed the top of her head and held her, and it felt right. Like this was where she was meant to be, in my arms each night, where I could keep her safe from the world that seemed pretty much dead set on stealing any light she had left. Truth be told, I was beginning to wonder that she still managed to hang on to any at all.

“What’re you thinking?” she whispered into the deep night.

“How you’ve been hanging on for so long, and how you really shouldn’t trust anybody anymore. How it’s both kind of amazing and beautiful that you trust me.”

“I do,” she looked up, I could tell by the movement of her head against my chest. She pushed off of me and a second later her lips touched to my chin, she giggled a bit and hit her mark on the second try, her lips soft and silky against my own.

She settled back down after the slow, relatively chaste, kiss and sighed as if content. Wasn’t long after that we was both asleep.

Chapter 24

Faith

Shifting light dancing across my eyes is what woke me. I put up a hand and opened them slowly, gasping. I hadn’t really taken into account the fact that by climbing down into the sleeping quarters of the Locker that we would be going below the water. It had been dark in here the evening before. So dark, I hadn’t seen the windows making up three of the four sides of the box.

I sat up slowly and stared into the blue, the fish swimming past the thick glass. It was beautiful. So peaceful, so… just…
beautiful.
I didn’t have the words. I stared, and stared, and felt a tranquility fill my heart. The light that had come through was sunlight through the waves up top, casting those shifting light patterns that you would see at the bottoms of swimming pools. Like marble veins carved from light, shifting with motion gently.

An equally gentle touch at my back caused me to jump; I looked down into Marlin’s bright blue eyes, vivid from the color of the deep blue around us.

“Good morning,” he said, voice rough with sleep.

“Hi,” I murmured.

“You sleep okay?”

I smiled; I knew my best sleep was when he was close and when I knew he watched over me. I felt self-conscious saying anything out loud to that effect. It sounded cheesy or corny, so I simply nodded in answer to his question. I looked down at him, where he lay against the white cotton sheets and swiped some of the golden strands of his shoulder length hair off the side of his face, where they’d caught in the rough stubble along his cheeks.

He was such a ruggedly handsome man. Strong, skin golden with the kiss of the sun, so deep a tan that it held an almost permanently reddish hue. I pushed myself up to my knees and threw a leg over his lean hips.

“Whoa. Hey, Faith, I just woke up,” he warned, a hint of panic in his tone and I smiled. He didn’t need to warn me about his erection. I knew it was there, just below the sheet. I also knew I was in a place where I wanted it. I wanted
him,
and the thought of having him inside me sent butterflies swirling in my stomach, the good kind. I felt calm, and it felt good to be confident, and in control. It felt good to trust him because I knew, if I couldn’t handle it, he would stop.

I pushed the sheet down behind me and his hands found my hips over the tee-shirt, but I was feeling brave, and the first thing I did was haul it off over my head. He gasped, the cotton jersey knit slicking against my skin, warmer where his hands rested until his work roughened fingers and palms rested against my bare skin. I shivered at the delicious sensation and his grip on my hips tightened. I met his eyes and he stared me in mine, refusing to let his gaze wander.

“You’re sure?” he asked, and I covered his mouth with mine.

“Do you have a condom?” I asked softly, knowing that it would still be months before I had a clean bill of health. I was sure. He looked at me, and I could tell he wasn’t, so I reached behind me and let my fingers close around the scorching stiff length of him, poking out the front of his boxers. It didn’t bother me that he had them and I was nude, not enough to make me want to move off of him and take them down. I wanted him with a gnawing ache in my center, and I could feel myself, slick at the apex of my thighs.
I wanted him so damn badly.

“Oh, god, Faith,” he groaned into my mouth, his hands tightening around my waist, he scrambled at the headboard and tore open a foil packet, rolling a rubber down his length for me. I raised myself up and sank onto him slowly, working him into me a little at a time. He wasn’t huge, but he wasn’t small either. To me, he was perfect; my body coming alive around him like it hadn’t in a very, very long time when it came to sex.

I don’t know if it was because of the way he stretched me, or if it was the smoldering light of pride, love and perfect trust that made his eyes glow fiercely in the deep blue light. I didn’t care, I simply buried him as deeply inside me as he could go, my eyes sinking shut as he found the end of the line, and nudged it gently. God he really was a perfect fit. I bowed my head and flattened my palms against his chest, the light smattering of crisp hair under my fingers adding to the sensory overload, until I was simply drowning in everything that was Marlin.

His scent, his touch, his warmth, and I think even his love. You couldn’t put up with someone as broken as I was and not love them, could you?

I met his eyes and bit my lower lip, rising off of him and sinking back down slowly, he gave an impassioned moan and closed his eyes, turning his head as if to savor my slow gasping breath.