Girl On the Edge

by CD Reiss

  He slid in with no resistance.

  He leaned over me and whispered, “I don’t care when or if you come.”

  I didn’t have time to be insulted because he started pounding me mercilessly. He ripped my shirt open, put his lips on my breast, and sucked on the skin, clamping his teeth together in an agonizing bite.

  He took me as I fingered myself to orgasm, coming inside me with a grunt. He bent over me, breathing in my ear, and kissed my cheek.

  “That’s going to hurt tomorrow,” I said softly as he popped out.

  He opened his mouth to answer, but as if the Universe was out to prove me right, the last of the sun fell beneath the horizon. Before he got a sound out, he blinked and was changed.

  “What’s going to hurt?”

  Chapter Forty-Four

  DAMON

  I entered consciousness in my office with her crying beneath me. There were books all over the floor, and my belt was out of the loops. She was on the floor, sobbing. I tried to pick her up, but she ran to the guest room and crawled onto the bed.

  He’d beaten her bottom raw. As she lay on the bed, still sobbing, I soothed it with a cream even after she told me to get away from her.

  She excused what he’d done to her with my body, saying she’d liked it. She’d wanted it. She’d asked me to hurt her in bed, but I didn’t understand how she could have meant what I saw.

  Once she was asleep, I scrubbed every inch of myself so hard I exacerbated the wrist sprain I didn’t remember getting.

  Was he sending me a message? He could bruise her and harm her. He could leave her broken for me. This must have been his response to my threat to use our body with other women. The soulless fuck had taken it all up a notch. I admired and feared his callousness.

  He’d be back when the sun came up. He’d do it again to spite me. I couldn’t cut off his desire for her, but I could make sure he couldn’t act on his desires. He wouldn’t hurt her tomorrow, or the next day, or the next. Not if I could help it—and I could. I had weapons in this war.

  I wrapped my hand around our dick and jerked off.

  Two could play at that.

  * * *

  Three in the morning. She woke when I crawled into bed again.

  “Hey,” she said sleepily.

  “Hey. It’s early. You can go back to sleep.”

  “I wanted to talk to you.” She sat up. I tried to ignore her cringe. “I want to see a specialist.”

  “In what?”

  “Dissociative disorder.”

  “Ah.”

  How could I refuse her after what she was going through? But how could I agree to what would be my own destruction?

  “It’ll mostly be in the day, but I’m letting you know.” She squeezed my hand. Her lips set in the dark as if she was about to say something difficult. “This is not optional.”

  I cupped her face, running my thumb under an eye still swollen from tears. “All right.”

  She curled into my arms. I kissed her head and looked out the window, wondering how to save her when she was trying so hard to save me.

  “Thank you,” she said with her hand on my chest. She was wearing the ring.

  “I’m sorry about what I did.”

  “You apologized already, and there’s nothing to apologize for.” Her hand drifted down my chest and to my waist. I stopped her.

  “Let me take care of you,” I said, rolling on top of her.

  “No, stop, don’t,” she said with a smile, but I straightened to get off her. “Joking. I’m joking.”

  “Good.”

  I kissed her face and neck, lifting her shirt to caress her breasts with my lips. I slid off her underpants and kissed inside her thighs, running my tongue along the soft skin, careful to avoid the places she’d been hurt.

  I kissed her sweet pussy, demanding nothing but her acceptance of my tongue inside her, gently guiding her to orgasm. She pulled my hair, pushed me into her, dug her nails into my shoulder as she bucked and groaned.

  When she was done, I wiped my mouth on my sleeve. She took my face in her hands and kissed me.

  “Your turn.”

  She reached for my dick, but I guided her away. “I’m tired, and so are you.”

  I took her in my arms and stroked her arm, kissing the top of her head until her breath fell into a soft, steady rhythm.

  When she was asleep, I went into the bathroom.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  GREYSEN

  “Gah!” He cried from the bathroom. “What the fuck?”

  I tilted toward the door. “Caden?”

  No answer. The medicine cabinet clicked open, then closed. Drawers went slide, snap, slide, snap.

  The door opened suddenly, leaving me too close to the threshold. We were face-to-face. Caden was in a T-shirt and shorts, looking through me, then directly at me as a barrier.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  I didn’t move out of the way, and he didn’t reply. I took in his form, looking for a reason for his dismay, not expecting to find one painted clearly on his body.

  My expectations were defied by a tiny dark spot that soaked through the fabric of his shorts. “You’re—”

  “It’s fine.” He pushed past me.

  “Is the blood from your dick or on it?” My snappish, accusatory tone was meant to stop him, and it worked.

  He froze before leaving the room and looked over his shoulder. “What do you think?”

  I didn’t know what to think, but it didn’t take long to dismiss my immediate paranoia that he’d run out and had sex with a random, menstruating woman. I held the possibility of relief from my worst suspicions and their confirmations in my heart.

  “I think there’s a part of every person that wants to have sex with multiple partners, and I don’t know if that’s attached to your Damon part,” I said. “Or if Damon has the will to act on it. But I think you’re surprised you’re sore.”

  “I’m irritated.”

  “I’ll forgive the pun.”

  “Where were you?” His words carried a tinge of accusation. “He wasn’t fucking you?”

  I went toward him and laid my hands on his body. “Would I lie?”

  He nodded with an understanding that cut through assumption.

  “I hate him.” He growled deep and low.

  “What did he do?” I asked, newly alarmed.

  “Made sure I couldn’t fuck you.” He whipped open the tie on the drawstring and lowered his waistband below his dick. It was hot red, with a spot under the head so raw that spots of blood soaked through the mesh of skin to form a heavy red drop.

  “What the—?”

  “Punishment.” He pulled his pants back up. “He jerked his own skin off to punish me for hurting you. Maybe he’s punishing you too.”

  “He knows I liked it.”

  He?

  You was the correct pronoun. I kept treating them as two separate men when they weren’t. It was all Caden. He’d penalized himself for his kink, then turned it on me because I encouraged it. Comforting daytime Caden about it only enraged the other.

  What was next? Were these two personalities going to torment each other day and night? What kind of damage would he inflict on himself?

  “You can’t do this anymore,” I said.

  “I’m going to get this under control.”

  “How? By proving your dominance over him? Over me? No, you’ve tried to get this under control. I can’t watch this escalate. I won’t be a weapon of war.”

  I met his gaze, the blue Iraqi sky, remembering the man I fell in love with. All his inner conflicts, all his grace and dignity, they were all there, and none of it worked in pieces. He only worked as a whole man.

  “I want you back,” I said. “I want that dominant, loyal, devoted, loving, careful man back.”

  He leaned back a few millimeters, enough for me to discern I’d said something unexpected. I’d mentioned traits he knew the other side of him had retained.

 
“I have limits.” I took a breath before saying something that couldn’t be taken back. “You’re going to lose me. Maybe not today or next week. Maybe not next year. But you’re going to lose me if you don’t engage in a sane way of fixing it.”

  “You want to sell this house?” It was a challenge more than acquiescence.

  “Move out. Rent it. Leave it empty.”

  “No. We sell. If we’re doing it, we’re doing it.”

  “Strategic therapy. A specialist who can help you merge these two personalities.”

  He hesitated. I reached for his dick, and he pulled away from the pain.

  “What’s he going to do to it next time?” I asked.

  “Nothing.” His authority would have convinced anyone else, but I knew how little agency he had once the sun went down.

  “What’s he going to do to me?”

  Anger saturated his blood, flowing to his face. His expression was one of revenge for a crime not yet committed.

  I knew he’d agree before he did. The battle was won, but the war was just beginning.

  * * *

  “Hey,” he said from the doorway, in jeans and a tank.

  I was under the covers in the guest bedroom, reading a PTSD study Jenn had sent me. It was night, so I knew who I was talking to.

  “How’s your dick?” I said without preamble.

  “So, you’ve seen it.”

  I put down the papers. “That was childish.”

  He sat on the bed. “I hurt myself to keep him from hurting you.”

  “All you did was guarantee I sleep in here from now on.”

  “Bed’s a little hard for me, but I can manage it.”

  I folded my arms.

  “Greysen, listen—”

  “No, you listen. This is hard enough, worrying about your mental state all day and night. Now I have to worry about your body?”

  “And I have to worry about yours!” he growled. “I will not ever, ever see you get hurt like that again. I will throw this motherfucker in front of a freight train first.”

  It wasn’t like Damon to speak like that, and I was stalled with surprise.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, reaching for my hand. “I mean what I say, but I’m sorry I said it like that.” With his thumb, he pushed my ring from side to side. “This all… it’s very stressful.”

  “Really?”

  He looked at me and gave me a rueful smile. “You’d know.”

  “I’m going to lay down some ground rules. And actually, I’m repeating them.” I flipped through the journal Jenn had sent and found a piece of paper. I unfolded it and passed it to my husband. It was a list, and he’d already signed the bottom. “One, you’ve agreed to sell the house. Two, you’ve agreed to see any specialist I think is best, and you’ve agreed to be enthusiastic and constructive about it. Three—”

  “I can’t agree to three.”

  “It wasn’t on the table until you jerked yourself raw.”

  “How long are you going to go without sex?”

  I took a pen off the night table and plopped it on the paper. “Sign it.”

  “This isn’t legally binding.”

  “Thanks. You’ve saved me the trouble of getting a lawyer.” I pushed it an inch closer to him. “You—meaning those eyes—will see in the morning that it was signed a second time after sundown, and I won’t have to argue about who agreed to what. This is for me, so I can sleep at night. So I can have a life. This does more to protect me than your heroic string of masturbation sessions.”

  He snapped up the pen and tilted it in my direction. “It was fucking heroic.” He signed. “I’d cut it off to defend you.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.” I snapped the paper away.

  He crawled onto the bed and over me, placing a kiss on my forehead. “How long can you go?”

  “Long.” I gently pushed his shoulders.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Back up.”

  “I’m going to take you away.” He kissed my cheek before backing away just enough to satisfy me. “I got us a week in Hawaii.”

  “When?”

  “Whenever you want. I don’t know what to do for you to make this all right. I thought this would be a step in the right direction. If you want to leave me here and take Jenn, that’s fine. But”—he held up a finger—“if you take me and that other guy, I get the sex.”

  “You’re…”

  Out of your fucking mind.

  He was thinking of me. Caring for me. He saw how hard his split was on me and did everything he could. It was inadequate and wrong, but at least he tried.

  “You’re all right,” I finished.

  “I love you so much.” He grabbed my hand again. “So much that when you hurt, I hurt. When you’re stressed, I am. I hate that I’m doing this to you. You’re my life, and if anything’s breaking you, it’s me. I should be the one suffering, but I’m just inflicting it.”

  I squeezed his hand. “It’s not your fault.”

  “Whose fault is it?”

  “I don’t know, but starting now, we find out.”

  He nodded and kissed me gently at first, then went in for more.

  I pushed him away. “I’m tired. Get outta here.”

  “All right.”

  After one last kiss on the cheek, he left, closing the door behind him.

  * * *

  I wasn’t having any kind of sex with my husband, day or night. It took all my strength to sleep in the guest bedroom. Seeing him in the morning with his cold, rigid expression and his bedclothes stretched across his beautiful body was as hard as seeing him in the soft lights of nighttime, over dinner, at a party, with a gentle touch I couldn’t walk away from.

  “Just once,” he whispered in my ear at the tail end of a dinner with hospital administrators. “I’ll just make you come.”

  We were at Bob Abramson’s penthouse on the Upper East Side. An inappropriate and somehow arousing place to flood my underwear. I was a mess of frustrated desire, but I shook my head and sipped my wine. He ran his fingers along the back of my neck and down my shoulder as if he thought he could wear me down.

  He didn’t know who he was dealing with.

  Tina was on my left. Over dessert, she leaned into me. “Is now all right?”

  “Now is great.”

  Tina stood and clicked her teaspoon against her water glass. “Ladies and gentlemen. Doctors. Paper pushers.” Laughter. “As you know, we’ve done an exhaustive search for someone to head up the military division of our mental health unit. I’m proud to announce that from a field of highly-qualified candidates, we’ve convinced Dr. Greysen Frazier to join us.”

  Applause. Caden took his hands off me to join them.

  Tina spouted my qualifications, but Caden held my attention because for a flash I may have imagined, he wasn’t half a man. He was fully himself, and when he looked at me, he did so with a deep admiration that was more than the sum of two broken parts, a synthesis of everything he was, everything I married and everything I loved.

  Then it was gone.

  * * *

  Many of the patients I had in private practice could move to the hospital practice. Some were referred to other providers. Some didn’t need me anymore. The phase-out would be gradual for my practice but hard on my schedule. I’d have to work weekends and nights.

  Caden was in his office. I hadn’t seen the dominant side of him in a week, but there he was, in a jacket and open shirt, slashing open an envelope with a confidence that was code for fuckable. The ACE bandage was off his wrist.

  “The realtor came by today,” he said before blowing into the envelope. “If the house had a leg, she would’ve humped it.” He opened the paper inside and tossed it in the correct pile.

  “Did you call the specialist?”

  Slash. “Yes.” Blow. The single syllable carried a fifty-minute hour’s worth of irritation. “She wants me for an afternoon appointment.” Open. Toss.

  “Can she see you
this week?” I leaned on the arm of a chair.

  The second to last envelope was on top of a big Express Mail envelope. Slash.

  “Sure.” Blow. Open. Toss. “I’ll tell her I’m the Jerk-Off King of 87th Street.”

  I laughed. He picked up the Express Mail envelope and smiled as if he got the humor but wasn’t inclined to find it funny. He ripped the tab.

  “The question is…” He took out a smaller white envelope. “When am I getting inside you again, Grey? How much longer?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I’ve done everything you asked.”

  “I’m not trying to bribe you into doing what I want. I’m trying to protect you from yourself. Literally.”

  “I know you’re not sleeping with him. You know how I know?” He flipped the envelope around. The front had the army seal on it. “You haven’t been satisfied in a week and a half. When I touch you, your body hums. You lean into me. Your breath gets quicker, and blood flows to your cheeks. You want it so bad I’m starting to think refusing me is your way of getting control.” He poised the opener at the edge of the envelope, tucking it under the flap. “Look at you now. You’re wet.”

  Slash.

  I was hard and raw and aching for him. I didn’t know how much longer I wanted to stay away. Every part of me longed for every part of him. I watched his hands on the letter opener as he placed it on the desk. I remembered the way he put those fingers inside me, the way they tasted in my mouth, the way they squeezed the pain out of my skin.

  “Open your legs,” he said, then blew into the envelope with a mouth that kissed and sucked and bit.

  I hadn’t walked into the office to release my pent-up desire, but I found myself resting on the arm of the chair, setting my feet apart, hungry for his approval. “Like this?”

  He put the envelope down and stood in front of me with his crotch at eye level. “Like that.” He put a hand on my jaw, and I leaned into the caress. “Greysen. I don’t feel much. But without you, I feel nothing. You’re the only thing keeping me human.”