by CD Reiss
I could have taken her right on the ground. Let the loose thorns and splinters cut our skin. Let the rain soak our hair to flat masses and our fingertips to prunes.
Not this time.
Bending, I kept one arm around her waist, put the other behind her knees, and lifted her.
“I can walk.” Her eyelids flicked against the rain. She licked sky water off her lips.
“I know.”
I carried her out of the thorn bed, up to the porch, where she opened the screen door with an outstretched hand and I kicked it open. Squeaking wet shoes left a trail on the wood floor. Up the stairs, I walked by feel and habit. She laced her hands around my neck. I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
The goggles were still pushed up on her head, and dirt speckled her cheeks like freckles. She was so perfectly flawed, so precisely herself, the sum total of all the meaningless moments in her life leading up to me taking her down the hall to my room. She was the cement holding events together. The darkness after the lightning and the thickened silence before the thunder.
It was rainy-day dark at the top of the stairs. She leaned hard to the left until I let her go. Once she was on her feet, I couldn’t keep off her. Lips first, I pinned her to the wall. She wrapped her legs around me, and I drove against her until I felt her heat. She grabbed at my shirt as if she wanted to shred it, and I pulled hers up so I could get at her skin.
We took unsure, turning steps to the room I called mine, with hands everywhere. I got under her bra. Her hard nipple was like a completed pilgrimage. The pressure at the base of my cock was unbearable, and for the first time since I was fourteen, it threatened to relieve itself without my say so.
“Hold on,” I said.
“No, no.” She reached between my legs. Thank God the sweatpants cut the sensation, or she would have pulled back a sticky mess.
I took her by the wrist and kissed her hand. The back of it was scraped as if she’d gotten into a fight with an alley cat. “You poor girl.” From wrist to elbow, I kissed her wounds to the crack of thunder. “You got scraped up for me.”
The wind slapped the balcony door open, unleashing her hair. She touched my face. It stung.
“You look sexy with a little blood on you.” She pulled my head down and kissed my forehead.
A feather floated to the floor at her feet. It blew across the worn wood, getting stuck on the bed leg.
I put her hand against my chest. “I want you. I haven’t known what to do with how you make me feel. But I feel…” I shook my head. “Like the world is bigger with you.”
Her eyelids fluttered, and the tightness of her smile told me she wanted to hide it but couldn’t.
“I want to take care of you. Everything is going to go your way. Do you hear me? You’re a queen, and everyone’s going to know it. No one’s going to treat you the way I did ever again.”
She put her fingers on my lips. “Hush. You can’t promise that.”
“I can.” I pulled on the shoulders of her vest. “Starting with me, right now.”
She put her arms down, and I slipped the vest off her. The shredded back panel leaked feathers. They blew in the wind like snow. I held it up. The thorns had ripped clear through. I closed the window and tossed the vest in a corner.
“Come.” I held my hand out and led her to the bathroom.
The light from the window was enough. I pulled off her goggles before I kneeled at her feet and tapped her boot. She picked up her foot, and I slipped off the boot. Then the sock, kissing her instep before moving to the other foot. She giggled.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m ticklish.”
“I’ll make a note. Arms up.”
Standing, I lifted her shirt over her head, revealing a plain white bra that was half off where my hand had intruded. I reached around to unhook it. She winced. I went around her and moved her hair to the front. A three-inch gash was drying between her shoulder blades, and a half dozen little ones surrounded it. Her jeans were ripped at the top of her butt and the backs of her thighs.
“The thorns got you good,” I said, going around to her front and slipping off her bra.
“That thorn bush always hated me. It was waiting for the day it could get at me.”
“We should cut it down.” I kissed between her breasts, kneeling to get my lips on her belly.
She put her fingers in my hair as I undid her jeans. “It’s my sister’s. It’s her way of protecting the family plot. It’s nice when it blooms.”
I pushed her jeans down slowly, trying to keep the fabric from rubbing where she was hurt. “Step out.”
She picked her feet out of her pants, and I pushed the jeans away. I could smell her. She was so close. A big part of me demanded I take her right there, any way she’d let me. But the smaller part, the part that seemed as though it had been dormant my entire life, demanded I take care of her first.
The medicine cabinet was full of shit. Expired, half-used, dried-up bottles of vanity goop, amber bottles of medicine, bandages, makeup. No alcohol. No gentle astringents. I found a brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide and a few loose cotton balls in a Dixie cup.
I sat on the toilet with the bottle and cup between my legs. “Come. Let me see your back.”
She stepped forward, spun on the ball of her foot, and swung her hair out of the way. “Thank you.”
“I haven’t touched you yet.” I tipped the brown bottle over a cotton ball. “I might suck at this.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
I touched the cotton ball to the deepest gash. She sucked in a breath.
“Told you.” I dabbed around it before going for the raw parts. “I need practice.”
“We’ll have to get in more adventures.”
I stretched a Band-Aid over her shoulder blade cut and worked on the backs of her thighs. “More adventures?”
“Yeah. Like wrestling alligators in Florida.”
“We could take a dog team across Alaska.”
She got one Band-Aid across the long cut and a circle on a particularly deep one.
“Percy needs to be on the back with us. We can take pictures of him and send them back. Like people do with the lawn gnomes.”
I kissed the place where her back met her ass and turned her to face me. “Whatever you want.”
“I like the sound of that.”
She ran her fingers through my hair, and I took them away so I could see the damage to her hands. It wasn’t too bad, but I wanted to heal every wound she’d gotten for me.
“You know what though? I’m going to kibosh the dogs and the alligators and every other animal. Not even a kitten,” I said.
“No?”
I put the bottle and compressed cotton ball to the side, looking up at her naked body with my hands gripping her elbows. The rain hadn’t let up a bit, but the thunder had gotten farther away. “Not until you swear you’re giving up on Fitz. The whole plan. Get him here by getting Badger to promise tax breaks or whatever. Show him how committed you all are. But he can’t have you. You’re mine. Only mine. And I know you care about this town. I’ll give up everything to save it if it makes you happy. But I cannot let another man touch you. Do you understand?”
She didn’t answer. She didn’t nod or give me a signal. She picked up the wet cotton ball. “Stay still.”
“That’s not an answer.”
She dabbed my forehead. It stung. She moved the cold pad to my cheek then my chin. The pain followed. It was bearable against her not answering.
“Well?” I asked.
“It’s complicated.”
“No. It’s very fucking simple.”
She tossed the cotton ball onto the vanity. “Taylor Harden, I thought I could just keep hating you. I figured you’d help me then go away. I swear to you, on everything I love, that you opened a door in my heart and walked right in. If I knew how to unlock that damned door and throw you out, I would. The way you act. The way you treat me. You’re too big in there, and it’s uncomfortable.”
“That’s. Not. An. Answer.”
She swallowed hard. “There’s no one else. Not after you.”
She bent her knees and straddled me. I pressed her down against my erection. She swayed a little, rubbing herself against the length.
“Swear it,” I said with my lips on her collarbone. I couldn’t kiss the entire surface of her body fast enough.
“On a stack of Bibles.”
I kissed her mouth between words, and she kissed me between syllables.
“I’m going to be your first.” I stood, holding her. She wrapped her legs around me as I carried her to the bedroom. “Right now.”
“Yes. Be that.”
“I want you to come your first time. I want it to be good.”
I laid her on the bed. She was so fully naked. All cream skin and smooth perfection in the light of a rainy day.
“I’m a mess,” I said, pulling my sweatpants down. “I should shower.”
“If you shower, I’m going to put my clothes back on and make lunch.”
Crawling onto the bed, I hovered over her. My dick weighed a ton, dropping against her belly as if her body were a magnet and I were iron.
“You will not.”
“Don’t test me, Beeze. We were both out there.”
My lips ran down her neck, landing on a sweet, pink nipple. “You smell like the roses. I smell like the thorns.”
When her back arched into me, I gave up on a shower. I took her breast, her belly, the sensitive places between her thighs with my mouth. I tasted the nectar between her legs. Gently, I circled my tongue at her opening, tasting the tight ring I was about to break. She dug her fingers into my shoulders, and I backed off. I didn’t want her to come, but I wanted her to be close.
“I hate to do this,” I said, reaching for the night table.I grabbed my wallet and flipped it open. “I need to take care of you.”
I put the condom in my teeth and tossed the wallet on the floor.
She snapped the packet away. “I got this.” She ripped it open with her teeth, spit the strip, and took out the condom. Would she ever stop making me smile?
Yes. When she stroked my cock, she wiped the smile right off my face.
“That’s good?”
“Yes.” I was lucky to form a coherent word.
I helped her roll the condom on. That was one thing I didn’t want a first-timer to be in charge of, though I felt like a first-timer myself. When she spread her legs wider and lifted her hips, I was overwhelmed by her needs and mine.
I ran my finger over her clit once more, then I pressed against her opening. Her lips parted. The rain pounded the windows, and the drops cast moving shadows on her cheeks.
“Say good-bye to this.”
“Yesokaygood-bye.”
One finger inside. So tight. I was stalling. I didn’t know how I was going to last.
“Fuck me,” she squeaked. “God, could you just fuck me?”
“Is that how we ask for something?”
“Please. Fuck me, please.”
My cock throbbed in my hand as I put it against her. She put her hands on my cheeks and mouthed please one last time before I pushed forward.
I felt the break immediately, and the arousal on her face twisted into pain.
“You okay?” I didn’t move. Couldn’t. One stroke and I’d be done for.
“Yeah.”
“I’m going to go slow. It’s going to feel good. I promise.”
She nodded as if she trusted me because she had no choice. “I want to do it right.”
“You’re beautiful, goose. You’re perfect.” I could see that wasn’t what she needed to hear. “And you’re doing it right. Very right.”
I moved inside her, taking it slow and easy. I kissed her frequently. Reassured her constantly. When she seemed less pained, I reached between us and touched her clit with my thumb.
She gasped.
“Is that a yes?” I whispered.
“Yes.”
“Does it still hurt?”
“Only a little. Oh, God, but not when you do that.”
I pushed deep inside her and circled her clit with my thumb. The pressure to come was building, but she had to come first.
Her legs shuddered. Her knees spread wider. Lips parted, letting out a soft groan, eyebrows knotted.
I wanted to take that moment and live it forever. That second before her fingernails dug deep into my back and her spine twisted. But it was eaten up by her orgasm and my need to keep my thumb on her clit.
When she moved my hand away, I leveraged my knees and fucked her faster, getting as deep as I could and letting go.
Nothing had ever felt that good. Nothing except falling on her and burying my face in her neck, drinking in the scent of infinite possibilities.
XLII
I hadn’t curled up with a woman like this since the first week of college, before Soo and I had been too hosed to fuck or even see each other outside study group.
When I woke, very early in the morning, Harper still slept on my arm, still naked and probably so sore she wouldn’t be able to walk. My phone wasn’t broken. It was charging on the chair seat, silent but flashing. I’d woken to the glow half an hour before, but I didn’t have the willpower to let Harper go. Somewhere in Silicon Valley, my life was falling apart, and the umbilical cord to that clusterfuck was calling.
I wished I’d put the phone in another room so I could live in a bubble. Just for one full night, I wanted to take in the smell of her, the satin of her skin, the sound of the rain, and the whoosh of her breath.
A man has to make a choice at some point. Either do great things or enjoy half sleep in the rain in the arms of a woman. I’d chosen a long time ago to do great things.
There was always the possibility I could do both. I’d been wrong before. I had been wrong about the type of person behind my destruction. He wasn’t a sociopathic criminal, and he wasn’t even a he. He was a she, and she was as warm and bighearted as could be.
I had been wrong about my immunity to women like her, if another one even existed on the planet. I thought about that for what seemed like a long time.
“Can you get that please?” she mumbled. “It’s making me crazy.”
“It’s not even on vibrate, and you’re facing the other direction.”
“I can feel it flashing.”
“Fine.”
We untangled. She dropped back onto the pillow, and I sat up. The sky outside was opaque grey, and the sunlight said five o’clock. My watch disagreed by four and a half hours. It was nine thirty.
Jesus. I hadn’t slept that late in years. And it was before work hours back home.
Still naked, with a streak of blood on my thigh, I picked up the phone. Harper rolled out of bed and trotted into the bathroom, clicking the door shut behind her.
Deeprak had been trying to get me.
You become incapacitated, control of QI4
reverts to your main investor.>
“Shit.”
I called Deeprak.
“You need to get back here,” he said without a greeting. “Now.”
“Where is he?” I sat on the edge of the bed. “Let me talk to him.”
“Are you kidding? I’m not going in there. He wants to know where you are. Please tell me your phone is cloaked.”
Harper came out of the bathroom, naked as a Renaissance painting. Fuck. I’d been doing everything except what I was supposed to be doing.
“Of course it’s cloaked. What’s he doing?”
Harper kneeled behind me on the bed and put her hands on my shoulders. She rubbed them and kissed the back of my neck. I was crazy about her, but I wasn’t crazy. I knew she was listening.
“Once he locked the system? He made phone calls. Dozens. Jack found him on a Tor forum offering to make QI4 boot sector open source—”<
br />
“What? No!”
“If anyone could get past the lockdown. There was a feeding frenzy. He’s stirring the pot. He’s connecting to Wi-Fi and opening the cage in six days for day one of GreyHatC0n.”
He couldn’t do that. There was no coming back from the system becoming open source. Anyone could use it. Anyone who wanted to be a star could build an OS on it. It would flush everything down the toilet.
“Has anyone talked to him?”
“Once he got off the forums, he was gone. We all tried.”
“Don’t go code black. We’ll fix this.” I said it to myself more than Deeprak. I had to believe it. I had to talk myself out of a meltdown. The OS had been the easiest part to build. Anyone could do it.
“Fix it? Tell me how!” he shouted loud enough to hurt my ear.
“The quantum circuits are still ours.”
“Until someone reverse engineers them.”
“It’s six days until the convention,” Harper said.
“Is that her?” Deeprak asked.
“Yes. Have you checked—?”
“Fuck you, bitch!” Deeprak shouted to Harper.
“Deeps, do not—”
“Then fuck you too, bro.”
Harper tapped my phone to turn on the speaker. “We fix it the same way I broke it. Does he have a company credit card?”
“Yes,” Deeprak and I answered together.
“Does he use it?”
“It’s a Grand Cayman bank,” I objected.
Deeprak chimed in. “It’s totally cloaked.”
“Gentlemen.” Her eyes met mine and were so clear that if I’d thought she’d need help standing or doing anything, I was wrong. “It was a yes or no question.”
“Yes,” we answered in unison again, like busted third graders.
“Can you see purchases from the past few days?”
“Raven has that stuff,” Deeprak said. “She’s probably stuck on 101 right now. She’ll be here in half an hour if there’s no traffic.”
“Do you trust her?” Harper asked. “Yes or no?”
“Yes,” I said without thinking.
I didn’t have to think. I trusted Raven. She didn’t need the job, but she stayed and it wasn’t for the sex. She was the only woman in an office of men. She was oft-maligned, the butt of jokes, well-paid, overworked, and underappreciated. Plenty of other jobs waited at other companies, yet she stayed.
