by Reiss, CD
“Jake?”
“Yes.”
Jake had been her protector and mentor. She loved him with a fierceness she usually reserved for me.
“Are you sure?”
“She confirmed.”
“Fuck. How is she?”
“Motivated. I’m taking her to the Royal Rose tonight to pry one of my contacts for details.”
I didn’t know whether to thank her or stop her. Greyson already wasn’t herself. How was she going to react? How was she reacting right now? Would the news make the split I suspected even worse?
“Cancel it,” I said. “Say something came up. Go without her. But cancel. Please.”
“Only for you, blue eyes.” She started to walk away, then spoke over her shoulder. “Only for you.”
I was upset about Jake. He was a good man, but my wife wasn’t going to have such a blithe reaction.
* * *
I should have told Ronin about my suspicions about her split, but I wasn’t in the mood for him. I didn’t want to commiserate or brainstorm with him about the state of my wife’s mind, especially with Jake in Iraqi hands.
Finding her was like hitting a moving target. Someone said she was in the supply room, then the chow hall, then the parking lot, then the landing pad. Once I got off work, I continued the chase to the Blackthorne office, where she was on her way out of a tiny refrigerated room.
“What are you doing here?”
I held the door open before it could close behind her. “I want to talk to you.”
I nudged her back into the room. She didn’t budge. Not an inch. She pursed her mouth tightly and tried to stare me down. What game was she playing?
“I said I wanted to talk to you.”
“If I wanted to go backward, I’d have moved already.”
The longer the staring contest went on, the more convinced I was that I was looking at half a woman. Greyson in her full splendor would never have looked away, but she never fought me over small things. She never grasped at winning for the sake of it. She would have explained why she couldn’t go back, made plans to meet elsewhere, all while staring me down. No woman’s submission had ever been more voluntary than hers.
But this woman?
She was egging me on for the sake of it. It was either back down or be baited, and I would not be baited.
Nor would I back down.
“I heard about Jake.”
“There’s not much I can do, is there?”
“I know you. You never do nothing.” I stood immobile and locked hard on her face.
“My office,” she said.
I broke the stare, stepping backward so she could lead me.
* * *
“I’m sure they’re going to find him,” I said when she closed the door, cutting off the sound of keyboards and ringing phones, leaving only the traffic and wind from the open window.
“You don’t look sure. You look hopeful. Not sure.”
“Fine.” I threw myself onto the couch. “Hopeful. He welcomed me into the family on day one, and he was always good to you.”
She didn’t sit next to me. She leaned on her desk with her arms crossed. “You’re talking about him in the past tense.”
“Are you all right? Are you upset?”
“Of course I’m upset. What do you think? Who knows what they’re doing to him? I don’t know if he’s even alive or if he wishes he was dead.” She covered her face with her hands as if she wanted to mask her emotions with her hands. “And I can’t do anything. I’m a few miles away, and I can’t do anything.”
“You’re going to meet an intelligence guy tonight apparently?”
She dropped her hands. “I just want information. I have to know as much as they’ll tell me.”
“What are you going to do with that information besides make yourself crazy?”
Her lips tightened to the length of a matchstick. She bowed her head quickly, turning away so she could face the open window. She hooked her finger in the grate.
“If you’re at the right angle, you can see the Tigris River from here.” She pressed her cheek to the grate to find the angle. “Sometimes I watch the Humvees and trucks going out to the port and see the boats and I wonder what it’s like to go someplace. To just run into the unknown. It’s like I’m stuck in a matrix of limited possibilities. Going around in a circle, like that carnival ride where you stand against the walls of a round room and it spins and spins. Then the floor drops out, and you don’t fall, but you’re stuck to that wall by centrifugal force, just spinning and spinning.” She turned to me fully, leaving her thumb and pinkie hooked in the grate. “What does it take to get out of it?”
“The walls drop, and you go flying.”
She sat in the chair perpendicular to the couch, knees apart, leaning forward with a keen attention to what she said and what she meant. “My brother is outside that spinning room.”
“You’re not talking about going. You’re talking about being thrown. You’re talking about being powerless.”
“I don’t think I can find out how far I can go on my own. I don’t think any of us can.”
“Greyson.” I sat up.
“Listen, think about it.”
“What, exactly, are you talking about?”
“We can’t push against our own limits because they’re our limits. It’s like a pot can’t ever get any hotter than the flame under it.”
“I mean, what are you trying to do? You want to get out of some loop, but you can’t do it yourself, and hell knows I’m not on board for this. Who’s pushing? What’s pushing?” My hands were clawed as if I wanted to strangle her. My muscles were coiled tight.
She saw my frustration, and it did not interest her. “Don’t worry about it.”
“Greyson…”
“I’m just thinking out loud.” She dropped her hand and stood behind her desk, shuffling papers from one side to the other. She stopped at a small slip of paper I couldn’t see from my angle. She slid it away from the stack and continued moving the papers around.
“Did you split?” I asked.
She froze with a page in each hand, six inches over the desk, hovering.
“After the shot, did you split like I did? Is there a part of you trapped in darkness?”
“No.” She put both pages in a single pile. “I just want to know where my brother is.”
Her intercom buzzed, and Dana’s voice came over it. “Dr. Frazier? Your appointment is here.”
“Please excuse me,” she said. “I have work to do.”
I stood. She put her hand on my arm to guide me out, but I didn’t move.
“You’re not going tonight,” I said. “I’ll see you later.”
* * *
I thought my respect for my wife immense. I’d assumed I was maxed out on admiration. But when I realized what was happening, that respect unfolded again and again, taking up more space in my heart than I’d thought I had.
In New York, she’d faced an impossible situation. A new city with few friends. A husband acting in strange and dangerous ways. She’d stayed strong and competent where I would have fallen apart.
At least, I assumed I would have. Faced with her need, maybe I had the strength. I wouldn’t abandon her.
Maybe I was the one unfolding.
Ronin had to meet me at the hospital. A medevac landed before he got there. He waited for me to get out of surgery. I chalked that up to him either giving a shit about Greyson or being worried about his job.
“So?” He stood when I met him in the administration waiting room.
“I don’t have a lot of time.”
“Fine. How is she?”
“Passive one minute, aggressive the next.”
“Are you sure it’s not mood swings?”
That comment didn’t deserve a response.
“We’ve got to get her in for more sessions,” he said. “The last one was inconclusive.”
He was worried, insomuch as he ever showed me anything
but distant professionalism. The slight concern I detected rang like an alarm.
“She thinks she’s fine,” I said.
“Does she?”
“Her brother was captured. She’s not fine.”
“I was wondering if I should tell her.”
“You don’t have to. I can’t tell if she’s acting strangely because of the shot or what, but I want you to keep an eye on her.”
“That I can do.”
* * *
DeLeon cancelled their date. I half expected my wife to find a way to run across the Green Zone by herself so she could ask random intelligence officers about Jake, but she answered the door to her little studio with the phone wedged between her shoulder and ear.
“Okay, I understand,” she said into the phone. “I love you too.” She hung up.
“Who was that?”
“My mother.”
“How is she?”
“We agreed on twenty-two hundred,” she said, closing the door behind me. “You’re late.”
I looked her up and down. Her hair was brushed and clean. She wore sweatpants low on her waist and a tight, dull-green tee that ended just above her navel, casually exposing the soft curve of her hips and stomach. Her feet were bare on the cheap Persian rug.
“Nice to see you too.”
Her hand was still on the knob, as if she wanted to open it and run out. I flipped the deadbolt.
“Were you the one to tell your parents?” I asked.
“They knew. Dad blew it off. Says Jake’s going to be fine. Worrying won’t help.”
“And?”
“And he’s right. I know he’s right. But I still feel trapped in a spinning room.”
There were a few ways to ground her. One came to mind quickly.
“Take your clothes off,” I commanded.
She walked to the other side of the room. Not walked. She stalked there as if she was agitated and there was a purpose to the relocation.
This was new. All of it was new. I had no idea what she wanted, much less needed. Did she need to release her energies? Go for a run through Baghdad? Did she need to be soothed? Controlled?
I sensed the adrenaline running through her veins. I wanted to take her pulse, but I already knew her blood was pounding.
“We should go to Royal Rose,” she said.
“It’s past curfew. Go tomorrow.”
If she wasn’t Greyson, I would have thought she was avoiding me. But she was who she was, and I was her mate. She wanted to leave, and it wasn’t because of me.
That confidence bore another conclusion.
Whatever I did was what she needed.
“Remember a second ago?” I said. “When I told you to take your clothes off?”
“I can’t… I have to keep going.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere. Something isn’t finished, and it’s not getting finished here.”
When she finally met my eyes, I saw dark circles under confusion and aggression. She’d gotten up before three in the morning, and unlike me, she was a sleeper. Ten hours if she had her way.
I stood in front of her. She looked at me, then over my shoulder.
“You keep looking at the door like someone’s going to walk through it.”
She looked up at me. All the confusion and aggression were there, along with something else. A plea for help.
“You don’t need to go out. You need to get some sleep.”
And, with that, maybe the change. I needed to see if she’d wake a different woman.
Again, I was struck with my ignorance of how to help her and my trust that whatever I did was what she needed. I couldn’t imagine one without the other. My ignorance without confidence would break me. Confidence without knowledge of my ignorance would break her.
“I can’t sleep,” she said. “I tried.”
“Do you want to speak frankly?” I said. “Or do you want me to take what’s mine?”
“Are those my only choices?”
“Following you all over Baghdad isn’t on the list.”
“Don’t follow then.”
She tried to push past me, but I wrapped my arm around her, pulling her close so I could growl in her ear. “I’d rather you tell me what’s going on.”
“Noted.”
“If you insist.”
I threw her on the bed. She landed on her back, and I expected her to leap up and punch me in the face. Instead, she got up on her elbows.
“Are you going to take your clothes off, or am I going to do it?”
“Is this how it’s going to be?” The question was so pointed it had a vector all its own.
“You tell me.” I leaned over her, knees on the bed, knuckles digging divots into the mattress. “Are you going to be honest with me?”
“Fuck you! I am being honest. I’ve never lied to you.”
“Then are you going to be honest with yourself? Because I’m not as patient as you. I’m not half as nice. You’re going to talk to me, or I’m going to take what’s mine.”
“What if I tell you to stop?”
“Then it’s not mine, is it?”
A shade of her aggression wore away, and a few layers of confusion turned into attention.
“Are you talking?” I asked. “Or am I taking?”
She laid her hands on my chest. She was going to push me off her, which meant she either needed space for talking or she was telling me to stop.
“I’m not in the mood to talk,” she said. “Take what’s yours. But I’m not stripping for you just because you say so.”
“Then I’ll fuck you with your clothes on.” I pulled her shirt over her bare breasts. “I really don’t give a shit.” I tweaked a nipple and sucked it between my teeth. She jerked her hips and groaned. “Are these tits mine?”
She groaned again.
“Answer me.” I twisted the other one and resumed sucking. It got hard and long in my mouth.
“The tits are yours.”
“Good girl.”
I kneeled over her as I undid my pants and pulled out my erection. When she looked at it the way she always did, like a lioness terrified of her prey but too hungry not to pounce, it throbbed harder. I swiped the drop of clear liquid off the tip with two fingers and placed them on her bottom lip.
“Is this mouth mine?”
She nodded, and I shoved them in her mouth.
“Suck.”
She closed her lips over them and pulled. The sensation went right to my balls.
“That’s good. Very good. Open wide. All the way down.” She opened her throat, and I owned it, taking her breath away and giving it back.
I took my hand away from her and wiped the spit onto my dick, fisting it for her as she watched with her shirt pulled over her hard-kissed tits. She started to get her hands at her waistband, but I grabbed her wrists and held them over her head firmly, but without aggravating her injury. With her arms up, her breasts went higher, tighter.
“Too late.” I put my free hand over the silver line left of her sternum. “Whose scar is this?”
“Yours.”
Drawing my hand down her belly, I asked, “Whose is this?”
“Yours.”
After untying her waistband, I grabbed a fistful of her sweatpants and yanked them down to just below the triangle between her legs.
“Caden,” she gasped. “My cunt is yours.”
“I knew you’d come around.” I got my fingers in her folds, and she writhed with pleasure while I held down her arms. “And this?” With my wet fingers, I circled her asshole.
“Take it. If you want it. Take it.”
Letting her wrists go, I pulled her knees up to her chest and her waistband down to midthigh, exposing her clit, her cunt, her ass. Everything. I rubbed from one end of her seam to the other, savoring the ridges and bumps, the caress of one entrance and the tension of the other. I left no nerve unstimulated, inside or out, until she broke out in a sweat, grinding her hips into me.
; “Yes.”
“You’re obsessed with finishing something. But I’m the one who’s going to finish you tonight.”
I toyed with her until her body was slick with sweat and every touch made her shudder. Then slowly, so slowly, with the sweatpants stretched between her thighs, I slid my dick inside her.
“All the way,” she whispered, hungry, begging.
“I’ll take what’s mine. Any. Way. I. Want.”
With the last four words, I pulled out and in just enough to be felt. Just enough to drive her crazy. Then I buried myself so deep she howled.
Her legs over my shoulders, the pants against my chest, my own waistband restricting me, I took her hard.
I knew my wife. I knew how to fuck her. I knew what she liked and how she got off.
But no matter how hard I drove, she didn’t come.
No matter how deep I went, she stayed on the edge.
I bit her breast, pinched her hips, gave her as much pain as I dared, and still, she cried and scratched but didn’t come.
“Fuck,” I said, coming inside her.
I kissed her neck and down her belly when her fingers tightened in my hair.
“Stop,” she said. I looked up at her, and she stared down at me. “I need to drive this.”
“Excuse me?”
She sat up and pulled off her pants. “I can’t be a passenger right now.” She peeled her shirt off as I got up and stood by the side of the bed with my dick out.
“I’m not done with you,” I said.
“I know.” Naked, she swung her legs over the edge of the bed, sitting straight. She yanked my pants down. “Foot.”
I raised one foot, then the other so she could get my pants off.
“You might need to give me five minutes,” I said at half-mast.
“I don’t think so.”
Taking my ass in her hands, she pulled my hips toward her and licked me clean from the underside of my balls to the tip of my dick.
“When we met,” I said, taking my shirt off as she worked on me, “I had no idea you’d be this filthy.”
“Would you have married me?”
“I was a nice guy back then.” The touch of her tongue went from ticklish to something deeper. “You corrupted me.”
She ran her tongue over my hardening length. “The gentleman doth protest too much.”
