The Saint: The Original Sinners Book 5 (6 page)

Søren raised his fingers to his mouth and slowly stroked his bottom lip. It seemed an unconscious gesture, as unconscious as her lip-biting. But whereas her lip-biting apparently made her look like an idiot, his lip-caressing made her want to straddle his lap, wrap her arms around him and put her tongue down his throat.

“So you’re telling me I should manipulate the church into thinking that closing the rectory was a suggestion they made me?”

“Or just flat-out lie. Or lay. Whatever.”

“I could lie. That would be a sin, but I appreciate that suggestion.”

“You don’t sin?”

“I try not to.”

“I don’t.”

“You don’t sin?” Søren sounded so skeptical she would have been insulted if he weren’t entirely right to be that skeptical.

“No, I don’t try to
not
sin.”

Søren closed his eyes and shook his head.

“What?” she asked.

He held up his hand, indicating his need for silence.

“What?” she whispered.

“Do you hear that?”

She tilted her head and listened.

“No. I don’t hear anything. Do you hear something?” she asked Søren.

“I do.”

“What?”

“God laughing at me.”

Eleanor rested her chin on her hand. “You hear God laughing at you?”

“Loudly. I’m quite surprised you can’t hear it.”

“He’s laughing at you, not me,” she said.

“Excellent point. And you made another excellent point about handling the church. I’ll consider your suggestion.”

“You will?”

“It’s a wise and Machiavellian strategy.”

“Is that bad?”

“No. It’s biblical. Matthew 10:16. ‘Behold, I send you forth as a sheep among wolves—be therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.’”

“Sheep among wolves. That makes the church sound dangerous. You think we’re dangerous.”

“I think you’re dangerous.”

Eleanor sat back on her heels. They’d been joking the entire time they’d been in the sanctuary, but what he’d said and how he’d said it? That was no joke.

“Me? Dangerous?” she repeated.

“You. Very.”

“Why?”

“Because you want to be. That’s part of the reason.”

“I also want to be six feet tall and have straight blond hair, but wanting something doesn’t make it real. I’m not dangerous.”

“I’d explain my reasons for saying you are, but I have to get back to packing. I promised Father Gregory’s sister I would have all of his things ready to pick up tomorrow.”

“You know there are like a million old ladies in this church who would have packed up the office for you.”

“I know, but I said I would do it, and I feel only another priest should take care of his personal things for him.”

“That’s really nice of you.” She winced.
Really nice of you?
Could she sound like a bigger suck-up or idiot? “I should go home, I guess. Mom might call and wonder where I am.”

“Where is your mother?”

“Working.” Eleanor followed him out of the sanctuary.

“She works this late often?”

“This early. She works the late shift a lot. It pays more.”

“Does your father not help out financially?”

Eleanor stood in the doorway of the office again while Søren got back to work packing the boxes.

“Mom won’t take a cent from him even if he offered, which I doubt he would. He says he’s broke.”

“I take it the divorce was not entirely amicable.”

“She hates him.”

“Do you?”

“Hate Dad? No way. I love him.”

“Why does your mother hate him? If these questions are too personal you don’t have to answer them.”

“No, it’s okay.” She liked answering Søren’s questions. They were personal but not embarrassing. “Mom and Dad got married when she was eight months pregnant with me.”

“Eight? Talk about waiting until the last minute.”

Eleanor tried to smile but couldn’t.

“What is it?” Søren asked.

“She waited that long because she was hoping she’d have a miscarriage.”

Søren dropped the book on the desk with a loud thud.

“Surely not.”

“It’s true. I overheard her talking to my grandmother one night about some guy named Thomas Martin. She said she felt bad about thinking it, but she had once wished God would handle the pregnancy the way he handled Thomas Martin, whoever that is.”

“Thomas Merton,” Søren corrected.

“You know him?”

“He was a Trappist monk at the Abbey of Gethsemani in Bardstown, Kentucky. He’s arguably the most famous Catholic writer of the twentieth century. When he was a young man, he fathered a child out of wedlock, but the mother and child were both killed during an air raid in World War II, which allowed him to eventually become a monk without the familial obligations of fatherhood.”

“Makes sense, I guess. She was hoping God would kill me so she could be a nun.”

Søren gave her a look of such deep and profound sympathy she couldn’t stand to look at it.

“Eleanor...I’m so—”

“Sorry. I know. Don’t be. She loves me now. I think.” Eleanor laughed. “Anyway, it was young lust with Dad. She was seventeen. A year after she had me, she found out what my dad does for a living. They got divorced. She didn’t want any of his money because she said it’s all dirty.”

“Dirty money? What does your father do for a living?”

“He...” Eleanor paused and considered the best way to say it. “He’s a mechanic, sort of. Works with cars.”

“Nothing to be ashamed of.”

“They’re not always his cars.”

Søren nodded. “I see.”

“He’s been in prison a couple times.”

“Does that trouble you?”

“No,” she said. “Not too much anyway.”

They looked at each other a moment without speaking. It wasn’t an awkward silence, but a meaningful silence.

“Anyway, I’ll let you get back to packing.” Eleanor wanted to stay and keep talking to him. But she didn’t want to be a nuisance either, and wear out her welcome.

“I’ll see you Sunday?” he asked.

“What’s Sunday?”

“Mass? Church? Holy Day of Obligation?”

“Right. Sunday. I’ll check with my secretary,” she said. “You know, see if I’m free.”

“Do you have the office number here?”

“It’s on the fridge.”

“Call my number when you get home. I want to know you’ve arrived safely.”

She stared at him.

“Seriously?”

“How long does it take for you to walk home?”

“I don’t know. Twenty minutes?”

“Then I’ll expect to hear from you within the half hour. Please be safe.”

She gave him a wave and took a step back. It hurt walking away from him. That cord she felt last Sunday, she felt it again now, felt it in his presence, felt it even more when she moved to leave him.

“Three more things, Eleanor, before you go.”

“What?” She turned back to face him. Once more he stood in the doorway to his office.

“One.” He held up one finger. “Earlier you said you wished you to be six feet tall and have long straight hair. Don’t ever wish that again. God created you. Don’t argue aesthetics with the Creator. Do you understand?”

“Sure, I guess,” she said although she didn’t.

“Two.” He held up a second finger. “Don’t be troubled I said were you dangerous. It wasn’t an insult.”

“If you say so.”

“I do. And three.” He took a step back into the office. “I’ve been at Sacred Heart four days and already half the parish has made it abundantly clear to me that I am not wanted here. Father Gregory is much beloved. The parish is not ready to let him go and accept a new pastor. You aren’t the only one who knows what it’s like to feel unwanted.”

Eleanor felt something funny in her throat. It burned so she swallowed it. The burn remained.

“The church isn’t your own mother.”

“No, it isn’t. And I won’t minimize your pain by pretending the church’s distrust of me compares at all to your pregnant, terrified seventeen-year-old mother making a desperate wish that her problems would magically disappear and the dream she lost would be hers again. But I will say that it doesn’t matter anymore if your mother wanted you at the time or not. Nor does it matter if this church wants me here or not. We’re here, you and I. We’re not going away. We’re here, if for no other reason than God wants us here, and He gets the final say.”

“If it makes you feel any better, I want you here.”

Søren picked up one of Father Gregory’s books again.

“That does make me feel better.”

“Thank you...Søren.” She still couldn’t believe she was calling a priest by his first name, no “Father” attached.

“Good night.”

She turned and started to walk away from the office.

“Thirty minutes,” Søren called out, and Eleanor allowed herself to give free rein to the ear-to-ear grin she’d been holding back for the past hour.

The second she entered her kitchen, Eleanor picked up the phone. She had to stretch the cord all the way to the fridge so she could read off the office number to Sacred Heart.

Søren answered on the first ring.

“I’m home safe,” she said.

“Good.”

“Thanks for talking to me tonight.”

“I enjoyed our conversation, Eleanor.”

She smiled at the phone. Usually she hated being called Eleanor. Why did it sound so right coming from him? Eleanor...sounded so classy the way he said it, so adult.

“Can I ask you a quick question?”

“Of course,” Søren answered, and she heard the sound of books dropping into boxes.

“Are you dangerous, too?”

She held her breath waiting for his answer.

“Yes.”

“Thought so,” she said. Søren said no more.

“Good night, Søren. See you Sunday.”

“Try to avoid doing anything to prove I’m right about you being dangerous between now and Sunday, please.”

Eleanor would have laughed, but she knew he wasn’t joking. She wasn’t joking either, when she answered.

“No promises.”

7

Eleanor

FRIDAY NIGHT CAME
and Eleanor staked out the bathroom. Ever since meeting Søren she’d thought about him nonstop. She woke to him, fell asleep to him, wrote his name on scraps of paper and whispered it under her breath when no one was listening. Tonight she had to deal with these feelings. Thankfully her mom had already gone to bed.

Elle cleaned the bathtub and pulled out two candles from her secret stash. They lived so close to the railroad tracks that the entire house shook when the train rumbled by. Her mother had banned candles after one near miss during Thanksgiving. Thank God turkeys weren’t flammable. Unfortunately, the tablecloth was. At least the firemen had been nice to her. But the next train tonight wasn’t due for an hour, so Elle lit the candles as she filled the bathtub with hot water. Once it was full and steaming, she stripped naked and sank into the bathwater. She needed her alone time in the water tonight. Over the past year her body had turned on her. Almost overnight she had developed breasts that felt huge to her and the spread of her hips made her feel fat most of the time. And she could have lived her entire life very happily without pubic hair. Floating in the bathtub made her feel weightless and buoyant. The water surrounded her body and cradled it like strong arms. Something about sinking into the water always turned her on. Being naked in the bath made her hyperaware of every inch of her body—what it did, what it could feel.

Elle lay back in the water and let it hold her up. The heat penetrated her skin, tickled her sensitive nipples and lapped between her legs. She let her mind wander to a thousand erotic fantasies. She’d love to take a bath with Søren. Maybe then it wouldn’t be bathwater licking her breasts or slipping through the folds between her legs.

She opened her eyes and picked up the nearest candle. Sitting up in the water, she lifted her left arm into the flickering light. Holding the candle steady in her hand she tilted it and let the wax drip onto the inside of her wrist. Søren had told her to find a new way to hurt herself. Candle wax seemed to work. It hurt, it stung but it never scarred. The wax hit her flesh and she winced as the heat seared the delicate skin that covered her veins. Another dollop of melted wax fell onto her forearm. She’d be sixteen this month. In honor of her impending birthday she adorned herself with sixteen wax burns from her wrist to her inner elbow. With each burn she felt herself growing more and more aroused. The fire and the light and the heat seemed to come as much from within her as without. She breathed through the pain, conquering it, mastering it. Taking the pain made her feel stronger, powerful even.

After the final burn, she dipped her arm into the bathtub and rinsed off the solidified candle wax. She stared at her skin, now raw and bright red from the burns. Lying back in the water, she slipped her right hand between her legs and found the tight knot of her clitoris.
Clitoris.
She loved that word. She’d been reading a magazine in the doctor’s office waiting room the first time she’d discovered it. It wasn’t a word she heard often or ever got to say out loud. Nobody used real words at school when talking about sex except during those embarrassing girls-only lectures in gym class. Even then it was
menstruation
and
uteruses.
No one ever talked about the clitoris, which seemed crazy to her. It was the most amazing thing. When hers got swollen like this she could rub it between her fingers and these incredible feelings would wash all over her. She couldn’t believe her own body could make her feel this good. Every time she touched herself she became aware of an emptiness inside her, a hollowness in her hips. That hollowness ached to be opened up, explored and filled.

Carefully she eased two fingers inside herself. Going inside always made her nervous, which added to the excitement. She felt resistance against her fingers, like something would rip if she pushed in too hard. But she had to go inside. Her body wanted it. The heat inside her vagina surprised her. Was it from the hot water in the bathtub, or did that fire come from within her? Maybe it came from Søren. With her eyes closed she could easily imagine lying on a bed, naked and waiting. And in her mind, Søren crawled over her, kissing her stomach, her hips, her breasts. In her mind she reached for him, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, pulling him to her. Had he had sex before? Or was he a virgin like she was? What would he be like in bed? Gentle? Careful? Rough? Did he talk or stay silent? Would he tell her he loved her or simply show her all night long?

She felt the pressure building in her lower back and stomach as she rubbed her clitoris again with her thumb. Her body rose in the water as muscles deep in her hips and her bottom started to contract and flutter. She felt like a taut cello string had been plucked inside her. Everything hummed and vibrated. At last the pressure reached its peak. The orgasm sent her clitoris pulsing hard between her fingers as if it had a heartbeat of its own. And within her, her vagina clenched over and over again, pressing against itself. In that final moment of pleasure, Eleanor imagined the moment Søren entered her body and buried himself deep in her, penetrating her like Teresa’s angel had, all the way into her entrails.

As the climax waned, Eleanor sat up in the water and washed her hands and arms with soap. She’d started sweating in the bath so she turned the tap on and ran cold water now, splashing her face with it.

Feeling relaxed and clean, Elle got out of the bath and wrapped a towel around herself. She drained the tub and hid the candles away. Friday night. Best night of the week.

Eleanor padded to her room and curled up in bed. She found her secret notebook she kept hidden behind her headboard. She had to write down all the thoughts she had about Søren. In her mind she could see his pulse throbbing in the hollow of his throat and his unusually dark eyelashes casting shadows on his face. She wanted to capture those images before they were gone. They lived and died quick deaths in her mind. Ink could preserve them long after her mind had moved onto new fantasies.

Søren thrust into her,
she wrote. Thrust? She’d already used the word
thrust
twice in this scene. She got out her thesaurus and flipped to the entry for thrust.

“Ram, jab, prod, push, poke, drill,” it read.

Drill? He drilled into her?

“He’s fucking me, not installing new kitchen cabinets,” she said to her useless thesaurus. Whatever. Back to writing. She’d fix her thrust issue later.

Lost as she was in her writing, she at first ignored the tapping on her window. A branch, a bird, a burglar coming to rob them—she couldn’t give a damn about that now. Only when the tapping morphed into knocking did she turn her head toward the sound.

Eleanor peered through the dirty glass and spied a man’s face. She flung the window open.

“Dad, what the hell?” she whispered.

“Long story. I need you to get your things and come with me.” His face wore no smile. She saw fear in his dark green eyes.

“Dad, what’s—”

“Get your stuff right now,” he ordered.

“Okay, okay. I’ll be right back.” She started to pull away but her dad grabbed her hand.

“Put on your school uniform. I’ll be waiting in the car.”

He released her hand and stepped back into the darkness.

In the bathroom Eleanor stripped out of her pajama shorts and T-shirt and pulled on her abandoned school uniform—plaid skirt, white polo shirt, tights and boots. She’d put her hair in pigtails when she’d gotten home from school in a failed effort to tame the black waves. She looked like some kind of cartoon character with the pigtails, the combat boots and the Catholic-schoolgirl getup. But her dad had promised to explain so she grabbed her coat, grabbed her backpack and snuck out the window, shutting it behind her.

A beige Camry idled across the street. She’d never seen her father in a car so nondescript before. Bad sign.

“So what’s up?” she asked as she threw herself in the passenger seat and her dad took off at twice the speed limit.

“I’m in trouble,” he said.

“How bad?”

Her dad paused before answering.

“Bad.”

“Oh, fuck.”

“Yeah, I got into some money trouble a few months ago. I had to take out a loan. They called it in early. I either pay by morning or—”

Eleanor gripped her knees in fear. Her hands shook. Her stomach flip-flopped.

“Or I don’t.”

She leaned forward and breathed through her hands. “Or you don’t...”

Her dad tried to shield her from what really happened at his shop. And when he talked about his
business partners,
he never used the words
mafia
or
mob—
because he didn’t have to. She was young, not stupid. She’d seen enough gangster movies to know the score. If her father didn’t pay back his loan by dawn, he was in trouble. Bad trouble.

“What do you want from me?” she asked.

“We need quick money. Manhattan. I have the crew out and working. We need more.”

“Dad, I can’t—”

“You can. You’re faster than any of the guys on my crew.”

“That’s only in the garage. I’ve never done this on the street before.”

“It’ll be easy. No one will worry about a girl your age in a school uniform. They’ll think you’re some private-school snob wandering around after curfew.”

“What if I get caught?”

“You’re not going to get caught. It’ll take two hours. You’ll be in bed by morning.”

“No way. This is crazy. Take me home.” Eleanor shook her head and fought off a wave of nausea. Yeah, she knew how to steal a car. She’d known as long as she could remember. This way to bend the hanger. This wire to that wire. But that was a game she played in her dad’s garage in Queens, something to do to impress her dad and the guys he worked with.
Look at me, I can do it faster than you.
They’d pat her on her head, applaud, tell her she needed to work for them instead of wasting her time in school. Those were jokes, funny cracks, playtime.

“Honey. I need your help here. I wouldn’t ask if it wasn’t life and death.”

Life and death. She closed her eyes and tried to ignore the visions of her father lying in casket that danced through her head. Casket? Probably not. If he didn’t pay off the mob, there wouldn’t be enough left of him for a casket.

“Don’t call me
honey.
”

They drove in silence the rest of the way to the city. Friday night in Manhattan, all the money had come out to play. Up ahead on the left Eleanor spotted a black Jaguar trying to parallel park in front of a bar.

“Elle—” her father began but she didn’t let him finish.

“How many?”

He shrugged. “Five?”

“Five. Fine. I’ll see you at the shop.” She opened the door and slammed it behind her.

Five cars. Home by dawn. No one would suspect her.

Eleanor walked down the sidewalk, not taking her eyes off the Jag. Finally the driver managed to worm the car into the spot. He opened the driver’s side door and Eleanor stood on the passenger side.

“Sir, I think you hit that car behind you,” she said over the roof.

“What?” He barely glanced at her. “No way.”

“Looks like it to me. Check the bumper.”

The driver, who looked half-drunk already, stumbled to the rear of the car and bent over.

“Nah, it’s good. You scared me there.” He pointed at her over the trunk and smiled.

“No problem. My mistake.”

He walked into the bar, barely giving her a second look. He didn’t seem to notice that while he’d examined the rear bumper, she’d unlatched the passenger side door. When she was certain no one on the street was paying her any attention, she dropped into the car and shut the door behind her.

Seconds later, she was on her way to Queens.

She’d snagged the Jag so fast she beat her father back to the garage.

Sitting on the hood of the car, she watched the shop at work. They’d known her since she was a baby; Jimmie, Jake, Levon and Kev had entertained her with card tricks and jokes and let her watch them working under the hoods of the cars anytime she’d come around. Now they barely glanced at her. In fact, in the past year whenever she’d stopped by they all treated her like a stranger.

“Nice Jag,” Oz, the oldest guy on her dad’s crew, said as he shuffled past her. He had so much grease and oil on his overalls she couldn’t tell what color they were supposed to be. “Yours?”

“Mine. I’m keeping it.”

“You got good taste, kiddo.”

“In cars only. I suck at picking parents.”

Oz raised his hands. “You know he wouldn’t have asked if he wasn’t desperate.”

“How desperate?”

Oz glanced around. He looked back at her and dropped his voice to a whisper.

“Told me five hundred.”

Eleanor couldn’t wrap her mind around the number.

“Five hundred...
thousand?
”

Oz nodded. “Had to borrow to pay off an old debt. Swapped an old debt for a new one.”

“Jesus H. Christ.” Eleanor sighed. Someone had loaned her dad five hundred thousand dollars? Wonder what he’d spent it on. She’d gotten nothing for Christmas from him.

Oz patted her knee and started to shuffle away again.

“Hey, Oz?”

“Yeah, toots?”

“Do Kev and Jake hate me for some reason?” Even now Kev and Jake eyed her from their various posts. Both of them were in their mid-twenties, her dad’s two best guys.

Oz burst into peals of big-bellied laughter.

“Hate you, toots? Hell, no.”

“Then what’s their problem?”

“They don’t wanna piss off your papa by getting caught staring at his baby. You’re getting too pretty for your own good. Stop that, now. And get rid of those pigtails. That only makes it worse.” He slapped the side of her leg in a fatherly sort of way and headed back to work. Eleanor couldn’t believe these guys she’d known since she was a tiny seven-year-old, and they were zit-faced teenagers, now couldn’t even talk to her because she had boobs. She yanked her ponytail holders out of her hair.

Eleanor glanced around the garage while she waited. Bad night. Everybody working like demons. She’d never seen the garage looking so dismal or so frenzied. A great furnace boiled with flames in one corner casting heat but no light. The whole place smelled of smoke and sulfur. She couldn’t wait to get the hell out of here.