Damaged

by R. R. Banks

  "Go take a hot shower," I told her. "I'll make some cocoa and have it ready for you when you get out."

  "Cocoa?" she asked, one eyebrow raised. "That's manly."

  "It's dark cocoa."

  Charlotte let out one of her intoxicating giggles and headed toward the room that I had begun to think of as hers. I went into the kitchen and took out a pot. Setting it on the stove, I went to the refrigerator for the milk and cream. I didn't need a recipe. The process of making the cocoa that I had gulped by what felt like the gallon when I was younger was deeply ingrained in me. I could probably have done it in the dark. There was a sudden scream of wind from outside and I glanced up at the light fixture, wondering if there was a possibility that I would be doing it in the dark. As the milk and cream heated, I crossed the kitchen to pantry and took out the rest of the ingredients. Soon the room filled with the heady smell of chocolate, a smell that always managed to make me feel comforted. Yet in that moment all I could think about was how that chocolate would taste if I licked it from Charlotte's skin.

  I was so lost in the thought of my tongue sweeping a drop of the hot chocolate from the valley between Charlotte's hips that I wasn't thinking when I reached for the handle of the cast iron pot. The heated metal seared into my skin and I snatched my hand back, hissing as I shook it, trying to cool it in the air.

  "Mother fucker!" I shouted.

  Scout rushed to my side as I grabbed my wrist and gritted my teeth against the pain of the burn. I walked over to the sink and turned on the cold water, putting my hand beneath it.

  "What happened?"

  I turned around and saw Charlotte standing in the doorway to the kitchen. I had to turn my hips back toward the sink to hide my quickly hardening cock as it strained against the front of my pants at the sight of her. She wore only a towel wrapped around her, the top low enough to see the upper swells of her breasts and the bottom revealing a few inches of her thigh. Her wet hair hung around her face and down her shoulders, but she hadn't yet washed away her makeup. The effect was intensely sexy, and I could barely contain myself.

  "I burned myself," I told her, trying now to concentrate on the pain rather than my arousal.

  "Let me look at it."

  She rushed up to my side and took my hand from under the water. She cradled it in one of her palms and I felt the warmth of her skin against mine.

  "It's fine," I told her.

  "You should still put something on it," she said. "Where's your first aid kit?"

  I directed her to it and she guided me back toward the kitchen table. I sat in the same chair where she had sat her first morning in the lodge while I remedied the cut on her forehead and allowed her to gently dry my hand. She dipped her fingers into burn salve and rubbed it into my skin. Her breath seemed to become deeper as she touched me, and I noticed a slight flush cross the swells of her breasts. The pads of her fingers swirled over my hand for several seconds longer that was needed to coat the burn, but I didn't want her to stop. She was leaning close to me and I could see the beads of water from her shower slip over her collarbone and down between her breasts. My hunger for her swelled in my belly and I couldn't resist it any longer. I leaned forward and swept my tongue between her breasts, collecting the drops of water and bringing them into my mouth with the taste of her skin. Charlotte drew in a shuddering breath and I reached forward to take hold of her hips. My fingers pressed into her skin through the towel and I pulled her forward toward me, drawing my tongue up between her breasts again.

  I felt Charlotte's hands rest onto my shoulders and for a moment her fingers pressed into me just as mine were into her hips, but then I felt her push away and take a step back. She didn't look at me, but tightened the top of her towel and started toward the door.

  "I should go finish my shower," she said. "It's getting cold."

  She rushed out of the room and I resisted the urge to let out a growl. I wasn't used to feeling this way. I didn't think that I ever would again. After Helen, I shut down that part of myself, not wanting to deal with the frustration and anger that came from trying to maintain a relationship. But now I couldn't get my mind off of this woman, a woman who had first caught my attention, so many years before and now didn't know who she was. I wanted her like I had never wanted anyone before, but I didn't know how to reach her, or if she would have ever given me the time of day if she did remember.

  Charlotte again spent the rest of the evening in her room. I couldn't sleep that night and found myself walking quietly into her room to check on her, ensuring that she was sleeping peacefully. I felt a strange, cold tension in the air when I woke up the next morning. I decided to pretend that the night before hadn't happened. As much as it was killing me not to touch her, I didn't want to scare her. It was more important to make her feel safe and secure. I was in the kitchen when she walked in. It seemed that this was becoming our customary meeting point and she crossed the room with familiarity to fill a mug with coffee. I liked that she was starting to feel comfortable, but I had to remind myself that this wasn't the way that it was going to be soon. When the storm was over and the mountain was less dangerous, she would be gone. The radio sitting on the counter crackled slightly as another warning came over the waves. I tensed just as I had every time that happened since finding Charlotte. I was waiting for them to announce that she was missing or that her family was looking for her. When I talked to the rangers they hadn't had anyone report a woman missing on the mountain and even after I directed them to her car, they made no mention that anyone had requested the car be recovered. I couldn't understand why no one would have reported that she was up on the mountain and hadn't returned, or that her car hadn't been seen. Was it possible that no one had noticed that Charlotte was missing? Or did someone know that she hadn't returned, but not think it was important to let anyone know? Neither option was particularly encouraging. It meant that if I hadn't found her, it was likely that no one would have. In this weather, she wouldn't have lasted for long.

  The thought of the announcement eventually coming through the radio, though, wasn't something that I looked forward to. I knew that when it did, I would have to tell her that it was for her and I didn't know how she would react.

  "Happy Thanksgiving," I said as she took her first sip of coffee.

  "It's Thanksgiving?" she asked, looking surprised by the revelation.

  I nodded.

  "I don't really do the whole feast, but I'm going to roast a chicken and warm up some vegetables."

  "That sounds delicious."

  She was looking at me now and I didn't see the hesitation from the night before. Instead, there was curiosity and hunger in her eyes.

  "I watch football on Thanksgiving," I said.

  Charlotte shrugged.

  "I don't know what I do on Thanksgiving, so watching football sounds fine to me. You'll have to explain the game to me. I don't think that I know anything about it."

  I smiled at her and nodded.

  "I can do that."

  Her tongue slipped out and glazed across her bottom lip.

  "I'm going to go back to the library for a while and finish that book." She walked to the door and glanced back at me. "Call me if you need me."

  It took all of the control I had not to follow her, but I let her disappear into the hallway and then went to work putting together our makeshift Thanksgiving dinner. Two hours later she walked back in, a smile on her face as she smelled the air.

  "Are you hungry?" I asked.

  She nodded.

  "It smells wonderful in here. Thank you for doing this."

  "Not a big deal," he said. "I'm not into the whole idea of the pathetic bachelor subsisting on nothing but frozen meals and boxes of meal helpers so I learned to cook."

  I held a plate out to her and then filled mine with the food I had made. I picked up a napkin and carried the plate and a beer into the living room. Charlotte followed and settled onto the opposite end of the couch.

  "Is the game on?" she asked.<
br />
  "Yeah. I hope you don't mind eating in here."

  She shook her head.

  "Not at all."

  I turned the game on and within minutes it was clear that she really didn't know anything about the game. Whether this was another layer of her memory loss or a hint at her interests in life before the crash, she seemed completely lost. I eased closer to her on the couch and gestured at the TV.

  "I'm rooting for the ones in blue," I said.

  "Alright," she said with a nod. "I will, too."

  I laughed and started to explain each step of the game with her. It was the first time that I had talked about football with anyone in years and I found myself enjoying it much more than I thought that I would. Rather than the sadness that I had become accustomed to feeling every time that I turned football on, this game felt different. Suddenly it didn't feel as though I was watching something that I had lost, but rather like I was helping her to discover something new. I delighted in watching her as she stared intently at the TV screen, trying to reconcile what I was telling her with what she was seeing. There were several times when she glanced over at me, her beautiful face contorted with a look of confusion, and I had to remember that she didn't understand some of the terms that I was using. I would go back and explain it to her in better terms, and Charlotte would nod. I didn't know if she was actually interested in what she was watching, or if this was just something that she was doing because she really didn't have much else choice, but I enjoyed having her there with me.

  We were in the second quarter of the second game of the day when it became clear that the novelty of watching football head worn off and Charlotte was beginning to get bored. She had stopped asking questions and instead was just curled in the corner of the sofa staring out of the window and occasionally glancing over at me.

  "We don't have to watch this anymore if you don't want to," I said.

  "It's alright," she said. "I know that this is your Thanksgiving tradition and that you love football. I wouldn't want you to stop on my account. We can keep watching."

  "It's fine," I told her. "My team is losing pretty badly anyway. I don't particularly want to devote the next couple of hours of my life to watching them get stomped. We can do something else."

  "What did you have in mind?"

  Her eyes slid over to me and I saw a smirk on her lips.

  "Do you want to play a game?"

  My stomach clenched, and I felt my lips curl up into a smile.

  "Sure."

  Well, shit. She actually meant a fucking game.

  "How is it that you have no memory, but somehow you're able to play a board game?" I asked.

  Charlotte shook her head, shrugging as she looked over the game board she had set up on the table in front of us. I had barely even remembered that I had a stack of old games in the library, but she had emerged carrying the Clue game with a delighted, excited expression on her face and I knew that I couldn't turn her down. This was nothing like the game that I wanted to play with her. I wasn't much interested in finding out who had murdered the mysterious Mr. Body in any of the rooms of his nonsensically designed Mansion. I would much rather be exploring Charlotte's body in every room of my lodge.

  "I don't know," she said. "It's just kind of there. Maybe I didn't lose all of my memory. My brain just decided what it wanted to hold on to."

  "So, you think that you have selective memory loss and your brain decided to keep cooking eggs and how to play Clue."

  "Apparently."

  I laughed and reached for the die. I rolled, landing on one for the third turn in a row. Charlotte laughed as I picked up my game piece and set it down sharply on the next square. She rolled and ended just beside me.

  "Hi," I said.

  "Hi."

  I picked up the die and rolled again, finally creeping into the room in front of me.

  “I suggest that it was Colonel Mustard in the drawing room with the revolver.”

  Charlotte checked the cards in her hand and held out the drawing room card.

  “What is a drawing room, anyway?” she asked.

  “I thought you would know something like that,” I said, jotting the clue down on my paper.

  "Why would you say that?"

  I realized what I had said, and my mind went blank. I didn't know what to say. Now didn't seem to be the best time to just slip 'because you come from one of the wealthiest new money families in the town where I used to live' into the conversation. Finally, I shook my head.

  "Just something about you," I said.

  Charlotte looked at me strangely, then looked at the door to the hallway.

  "I'm getting hungry again," she said. "Is there any dessert?"

  "There's a pumpkin pie," I told her. "It's just one of those frozen ones. I might be able to pull together a halfway decent dinner, but my skills draw the line at baking."

  "That sounds amazing. I'm going to go get a piece." She walked to the door and then looked back at me. "Do you want some pie?"

  Dear lord, you have no idea how much I want pie right now. I'll make sure yours has plenty of cream.

  Chapter Nine

  Charlotte

  I thought about watching the football game with Micah as I dished out huge slices of pumpkin pie and carried them back into the library where we had set up the board game. His face had changed as we sat there in the living room watching the game unfold in front of us. It had brightness, some of the darkness and severity that I had seen in it disappearing as he told me about the rules of the game and explained each of the plays to me. I could see the love that he had for the game and could only imagine how passionate he must have been when he played. Something about him talking about football had stuck with me, prickling in the back of my mind like the look in his eyes and the black bird on the football jersey in his memorabilia room. It was like a flash of a memory that I couldn't quite touch. It went through my mind so quickly that I couldn't even concentrate on it long enough to really know what it was that I might be remembering. The more that I thought about it, however, the more I worried that it wasn't really memories at all. It was entirely possible that I wasn't actually remembering anything or even getting close to remembering anything, that it was the desperation of my mind trying to cling to anything that might seem familiar. I wondered if it was possible that my mind wanted so much to remember things that it had started to make up these supposed memories, the sense of familiarity to give me some sense of identity, a past, and a place in the world.

  As I walked out of the kitchen holding the slices of pie my eyes flickered over to the chair where Micah had sat at the table the night before. My heart pounded, and the insides of my thighs trembled as I thought of his tongue touching my skin. I'd been nearly overwhelmed by the touch, not knowing how to respond to it. Even though I wanted nothing more than for him to touch me more, I had run away from the situation, the moment that it was threatening to make me lose all control.

  I handed Micah his plate and curled up into the chair beside the fireplace where I had sat to read. This was quickly becoming one of my favorite places in the house and I wanted to spend as much time in it as I could. I took a bite of the thick, spicy pumpkin filling and a sense of nostalgia surrounded me. It was a purely sensory memory, but it was something that I knew, something that was concrete and familiar. I looked at Micah and watched as he took his first bite, the expression on his face telling me that he felt the same emotional reaction to the flavor. I felt more connected to him in that second. It seemed so strange and almost ridiculous for me to feel that way, but the sense of distance between us seemed to lessen and the connection that was growing between us, the powerful attraction that I couldn't deny, intensified as I realized that we had this shared knowledge, this shared memory.

  "Tell me more about when you used to play football," I said.

  I didn't know how he was going to react to the question and I hoped that it wouldn't make him upset. He had seemed so happy when we were watching the game and I
wanted to see more of that sparkle in him, and learn more about that part of his life. Even though he hadn't played in many years, it was obvious that the time that he had spent on the field was incredibly formative for him and I wanted more insight into what had crafted this extraordinary man in front of me.

  "It was something that I always wanted to do" Micah told me without hesitation. "I don't even remember when I started wanting to play. It's like it was always a part of me. I tried out for the high school team as soon as I was allowed too and made JV for my freshman year. I was on varsity for the next three years. It didn't just feel like a sport to me it was like it was a part of me, like I didn't know who I was without football. If someone had told me that I would grow up and not be able to play anymore, there's no way that I would have believed them. I would have told him that there was absolutely nothing that would have kept me from a field. I truly believed then that I would have to die in order to not play anymore." He gave a short, mirthless laugh. "I guess that's just part of being a teenager. You think that you're invincible. You don't understand that the world around you is just one big bitch and eventually it's going to come up and bite you in the ass."

  "You did everything that you could to keep playing," I tried to reassure him. "It's not like you just gave up."

  "I know. But that doesn't make it any easier. I think that's why I was able to be a successful in my career as I was. I was so angry."

  "Angry?" I asked. "Angry that you couldn't play?"

  Micah nodded.

  "Angry that I couldn't play," he agreed. "Angry at the man who was stupid enough to get drunk and then get behind the wheel of a car. Angry at the car itself. Angry at the world around me. Angry at myself."

  I stood up and put my plate on the table before crossing to Micah. I leaned down and nuzzled the tip of his nose with mine. I wanted to comfort him, to reassure him. He tilted his face toward mine and I felt his lips. That first brush of our mouths against one another I felt as though it could have been an accident, but it instantly fueled Micah forward. His mouth captured mine and his tongue touched my lips, coaxing them to part so that he could explore my mouth. I complied, opening my mouth and welcoming his tongue in to tangle with mine. The kiss was hungry and passionate, the culmination of the intense draw to him that I had felt since the first moment that I saw him. I had stepped forward, wanting to settle into his lap and further the kiss, when there was a loud popping sound and the lodge went dark.