A Saint and a Sinner

A Saint and a Sinner

1922

South Carolina

They were alone in the hallway, the electric lights warm just bright enough to cast them both in shadows. Jack had been waiting for him, just past the stairs, arms crossed over his chest, green eyes narrowing.

Gael, flush from illegal whiskey, had left his jacket and hat in his car, probably. Unbuttoned, at the top, tie long gone, his cuffs rolled up, Gael paused at the top of the stairs, his lips lifting into a hungry smile as his lover glared at him. He reached to undo the already gone tie, and smiled even brighter that it was no where now.

Jack’s glare dissolved into a flush under Gael’s smile. Somehow the patch over his lost eye made the other one gleam brighter, full of more mischief, more hedonistic life. “Where have you been?”

On his lover in less time than a breath, backing him up against the fashionable wallpaper that illegal things paid for, breath like clove and alcohol, Gael smirked. “I was out thinking about you, every single second.”

“Liar,” Jack hissed in Irish, one of the only words his wife, his lover’s sister, had been willing to teach him until he could say it faithfully.

“Never,” Gael said, back, in a deep drawling Irish in a husky whisper, as he leaned close enough to kiss Jack’s ear, then in English, but drizzled in Irish, “Not to you my love. To lie to you would split my little heart in twain.”

Both hands on the wall, his sweet red-headed doctor caught between those strong arms, he leaned in letting his body gently press against Jack’s, making no secret of what he had in mind for the rest of the night.

“You’re a criminal,” Jack accused.

Gael pulled back just a bit, one hand moving to cup Jack’s face tenderly, over the rough red beard trying to race into being by morning. “Is that a problem, Jackie?”

“No,” Jack said, both hands grabbing Gael’s face as he pressed forward to kiss the younger, uncivilized, reckless outlaw of a man. The kiss when deep, tongues swirling around each other like a melody never to be forgotten, but forbidden to be sung in public. A hungry kiss all the more so because it wasn’t something that could exist outside of shadows.

Gael’s arm went around Jack’s back and he lifted him off the thick red carpet. “My room or yours,” Gael nearly growled, lips wet against Jack’s ear.

“Yours,” Jack said, arms around Gael’s neck, his face pressed against his arm, his lover’s cheek. This seven year old love was everything he’d been beaten into rejecting, but it was the only love that kept his heart beating, made days worth living. “Maybe we’ll get in the car and go west, all the way to San Francisco.”

Gael carried him the few steps to his door before pulling the key from his pocket and letting them in. As the door closed, there was no more light. The heavy drapes kept the moonlight out and the bit of leather at the base of the door kept the electric light out. Neither man made light nor nature’s could come between them. “But say the word and we’ll go, Jackie. I’ll leave everything. You are everything. I don’t need more than that.”

“At dawn,” Jack said, “We’ll go then.”

“Of course we will,” Gael agreed, knowing they wouldn’t. There was the house and Jack’s medical practice, the entire community for his angel to take care of, and Jack’s wife who could have been yet a virgin for all of Jack’s efforts in that vein, the children who were all growing well, but still children, and all of the people who lived on the land where Jack’s medical practice was. “We’ll go and I’ll buy you a beautiful house on a hill in San Francisco.”

“With your criminal money,” Jack said, undoing his dressing robe as he laid back on Gael’s decadently thick feather bed.

“With my criminal money, I’d buy you every bit of heaven I could,” Gael promised, his shirt already abandoned to the darkness. His shoes slipped off silently, then his trousers, but Jack was up from the bed, kneeling before him in the dark, those skilled hands taking the brace off the leg that never healed perfectly after the great war.

“Sit down,” Jack said, pulling Gael’s shorts down at the same time.

With a soft grunt, Gael lowered himself into the chair, with Jack already unstrapping the brace. “Jackie,” he said, suddenly unsure of himself, vulnerable.

“Shhh,” Jack whispered, laying the metal and leather brace down as quietly as he could. “Everything is okay. You are beautiful and I love you with every single cell of my being Galen McNeil.”

Hands shaking, self conscious now that his bravado had worn thin, Gael reached out to run his hands through Jack’s hair, soft red silk, which only right for his angel. When Jack’s tongue slowly traced his erect cock, familiar and completely erotic, he shoved the side of his wrist into his mouth to keep from making noises they’d have to explain in the morning. Jack didn’t make quiet easy either. He knew every surface, every curve of Gael’s being and just exactly how to suck or bit, teeth along the length, just enough pressure to make Gael clench his teeth and try to rip the chair arms off.

Shortly, Gael’s breath caught, his chest clenching as he Jackie the pearls he sought. Dazed, he put up no resistance as Jack lifted him, and transferred him face down on the opulent bed. His doctor straddled his waist a laid hands on his shoulders, thumbs circling, massaging down his spine. “I’m going to fuck you,” Jack said, the taboo word a secret and delicious word on his tongue.

“Fuck me, Jackie, please? I wish I was your wife! I wish I could get pregnant with your baby.”

“Mr. Walker,” Jack said with the same inflection as if it were Mrs. Walker, stretching out over his beloved, arms coming under his shoulders to hold him tight for a moment. “Doctor and Mr. Walker. That would be perfect.”

With practiced ease, Jack moved to the stand by Gael’s bed, opened the drawer, ignored the pistol, and removed the cork from the small bottle of olive oil. “Spread your legs for me,” he said, lovingly, a tone that was never used outside of these times together.

Expert fingers slid into Gael, massaging his entrance and passage with the oil. As he wiped his hands on the cloth and set the oil he way, his eyes had adjusted to the darkness just enough to see the faint highlights of the curve of Gael’s ass, the golden blond hair, his naughty little devil that he loved so beyond ever being able to explain.

Watching those legs spread so willingly, legs that carried Gael through all manner of adventure, war, and criminal enterprise, not to mention how confident they seemed as he strode across court rooms, arguing cases as if he were a founding father spitting on the King, but in these moments, they’d spread for him, offer the ambrosia of Gael’s dangerous body as sweetly as butter melts on warm bread. Jack’s heart beat fast and he felt like he’d fumble everything, be unworthy in ways he couldn’t measure, but he tried to be dignified as he climbed back on the bed. He ran his fingers down the back of Gael’s neck, knowing it would make him moan softly in pleasure. “Who do you belong to, Gael?”

“You Jackie, it’s always you,” he moaned, lifting that beautiful ass up. To Jack, Gael was Helen, the most beautiful, for whom a thousand ships would sail and the world outside their doors waiting for the right moment to tear them apart, but this was not that moment.

“You’re mine,” Jack said, harder for Gael than he imagined Paris could ever have been for Helen. “Mine,” he said in Irish, the word that Gael had been willing to teach him. “I love you Gael. I love you so much.”

Gael’s body welcomed him with no resistance, easy and hot. Words stopped being with their range for either of them. It was a song that sang together, moving perfectly, a kind of secretly sanctified promise, the meaning of being human. It wasn’t a long song for it wasn’t sung that often. At the peak, Jack held Gael tight, arms around him, and it was never just this moment. It was all the moments and fear and loss and love and everything that happened in their lives that they revisited in sweat and mixed breath, kisses across that nape of Gael’s neck that made him harden again. Even though it was Jack holding Gael, when Jack came, it was Gael’s presence that kept the doctor whole.

After moments of laying there together, Gael grabbed the thick velvet blanket and wrapped it around them both. Rolling them over so that he had his arms around his sweet doctor, holding him close. “We leave at dawn,” he whispered.

“At dawn,” Jack agreed, already falling into sleep, safe in Gael’s arms.

Dawn would find Gael alone in his velvet cocoon, sticky and content. It wasn’t like Jack was ever going to leave his duties. Gael knew that. Gael had always known that. It was enough that the bedding smelled like Jack. It was a new day to get into some trouble.