Rough Edge: The Edge - Book One

by CD Reiss

  Rough Edge

  The Edge - Book One

  CD Reiss

  Rough Edge

  CD Reiss

  The Edge - Book One

  ISBN: 9781718830844

  © 2018 Flip City Media Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  If any person or event in this book seems too real to be true, it’s luck, happy coincidence, or wish-fulfillment on the reader’s part.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE: I did research. A ton of it. But I also make stuff up for a living.

  There are a thousand ways to break something and more than one method of repair. Institutions we think we know from experience have engaged thousands of others in their own, equally valid experiences. What you assume is an error may be something else entirely. Or I might have fucked up.

  You can poke me with corrections on any number of subjects and if I can fix an error, I will. I’m wrong a lot.

  Also, liberties were taken.

  Contents

  Part I

  Part II

  Part One

  HOMECOMING

  Chapter One

  GREYSON

  NEW YORK CITY

  NOVEMBER - 2006

  He was a son of a bitch, a cold-hearted compartmentalizer with a heart of solid stone. His hands were instruments of brutal precision, and his cock was a means of punishment.

  He wasn’t the man I’d married, but he was my husband.

  I couldn’t see him, even though he was kneeling between my legs. My jaw was pushed back so far, I could only see out the window next to the bed. Two fingers were jammed in my mouth. His other hand was inside my knee, pressing it to the mattress until my legs were open as far as they could go.

  “Suck,” he commanded with a voice drained of emotion. A flat order, like “sit” or “heel.”

  I curved my lips around the fingers and sucked on them. They tasted of rubbing alcohol and pussy.

  “Harder.”

  I sucked harder and he pushed my jaw up, restraining me with my position. He ran his other hand from my knee to the inside of my thigh. When he got to the fleshiest part, he tightened his grip until pain blossomed under his fingers and grew outward, lacing my arousal with its companion—pain.

  When he let go, I whimpered around his fingers, and he responded by pushing them deeper down my throat. As he leaned over me, I felt his rod of an erection where I was wet.

  He whispered into my cheek, “Take them. All the way.” I opened my throat and he pushed his fingers down. “Beg for it.”

  I couldn’t speak with his fingers in my mouth. I couldn’t even breathe.

  “You’re not begging.” His fingers were down to the webs and my body contracted around them for air. He pulled them out. “Beg.”

  “Fuck me. Please fuck me.”

  “What?” With his spit-soaked hand, he reached between my legs and pinched my swollen clit.

  “Put your cock in me. Fuck me hard. Take what you want. Please. Please.” The last word came as a whisper.

  He got on his knees, magnificent, cut like a god from jaw to abs to the hard heat of his thighs. One hand on my sternum to hold me still, the other guiding his cock between my legs. I was so wet, open like a hungry flower, still whispering please please please as he leaned his weight on my chest and drove into me. He was long and thick. Without prep, he could hurt me, and he did.

  I knew when to look for the change. I knew how to see him recover himself in the violence. In the moment he drove through me so hard he cracked, went supple, and became my husband again.

  The first orgasm came on the third thrust and lasted until he joined me in heaven.

  * * *

  GREYSON

  FORT BRAGG

  AUGUST - 1992

  Basic training was a cakewalk. Last course. Blue group did belly robber, high step over, low wire, weaver, and island hopper. Halfway through, I fell fifteen feet off the confidence climb. I thought I’d wiped out for good with my full weight on my right wrist and the rest of the blue group’s boots smacking the mud all around me.

  “Get up, you little fucking shit!”

  Ronin.

  That was Ronin yelling, and Ronin grabbing me under the arms to throw me toward the next obstacle.

  “Move it!” He pushed me. “I’m staying behind you, so if you go pussy, you’re answering to me!”

  I tucked my wrist under my breasts, dropped to my knees and crawled under the low wire. He was behind me, shouting a litany of encouragements and insults. I climbed the wall with one hand and my teeth and stumbled over the line in the middle of the pack, aching, bruised, tears streaking the mud on my face. Ronin was at attention behind me.

  “That doesn’t look like attention, Frazier!” Sergeant Bell shouted.

  I put my right arm to my side and straightened my wrist. Pain shot through to my shoulder, but still, I stood at attention. Bell didn’t seem satisfied.

  “You’re up shit creek now, Private One More.”

  “Fuck you, Ronin.”

  Bell stormed to me, hands clasped behind his back, nearly crashing into Rodrigo, who was trying to get into the line. Rodrigo buckled and found his space. Bell was not deterred. I put my eyes at attention and tried to tamp down the heavy breaths. Everything hurt. I felt as if I’d flung myself out of a moving car, but I stood still.

  When Bell got uncomfortably close, I expected him to shout, but he murmured two words so low, only I could hear them.

  “Stop smiling.”

  Chapter Two

  Greyson - september, 2006

  The sky in Iraq was the bluest blue I’d ever seen. It had a flat depth, as if thin layers of glass, each a slightly different shade, were stacked together. Sometimes I’d dream about that sky. Either I’d be floating in it, blue everywhere, above and below, at each side and pressure point, squeezing the breath out of me, or I’d be falling from it, from blue into blue, no Earth barreling into greater and greater detail. Just a single direction in the never-ending cerulean sky.

  Caden and I had been separated by an ocean and a war for ten months. We’d married while I was on leave and spoke when our schedules matched and the wind blew the wi-fi signal in the right direction. I thought I hadn’t known him long enough to miss him, but I did.

  Painfully. Tenderly. Thoroughly. Our separation stretched the bond between us to a thin, translucent strand, but did not break it.

  Caden’s eyes had the color and layered depth of the Iraqi sky.

  When I missed him, I looked up. When I wrapped his T-shirt around my neck, my dreams of the blue sky lost their nightmarish edge, and the bond became a little less taut.

  Jenn and I flew to New York in our uniforms. She remained on active duty and had a job waiting at the VA Hospital in Newark. I had a husband and no job.

  “You want to put on some makeup or something?” she asked.

  “Why? You afraid they’re all looking at me?”

  The crew had moved us to first class. I craned my neck to see a jowly businessman sleeping with his mouth open. A mid-level rap star with cornrows and a name I couldn’t recall was reading a book to his daughter, and two middle-aged women chatted in the row across. No one was giving my lashes the side-eye.

  “Hell, no. But maybe you want to look nice for your husband?” She rooted around a quilted pink bag and found a black stick. “Here. Lip gloss.”

  “It’s only going to wind up on his dick.”

  She burst out laughing and replaced the lip gloss with mascara. “Here. Doll it up just a little. You’re a civilian now.”

  I took the mascara, and she handed me a compact with a mirror. I flipped it open and looked at myself in circular sections.

  I was a civilian now.
/>   I had no idea how to be that.

  * * *

  As the only girl in a military family, enlisting wasn’t encouraged. It wasn’t unexpected either. It made them proud. And disappointed. And worried. A mixed bag of emotions that probably had nothing to do with either parent and everything with how I felt at every time I wondered what they thought.

  I would have stayed in the army my entire life, but Caden happened, and he saw the army as his duty to the country. A debt to pay, not a way of life.

  At the gate, a little girl of about six ran up and gave Jenn and me flowers. “Thank you for your service,” she said.

  This wasn’t uncommon. I’d learned people were in awe of my career choice and the risks it involved.

  I kneeled and took the flowers. “Thank you for the flowers. And thank you for appreciating us. That means a lot.”

  Suddenly shy, she curtsied and ran away to her mother, who waved at me. I gave her a thumbs-up.

  “Is it wrong to wish she was a single, six foot-tall black man with a nice bank account?” Jenn asked quietly, sniffing the flowers.

  “Her mother might be a little surprised.”

  Jenn chuckled and pointed at the sign above. “Baggage claim, this way.”

  We didn’t get two steps before I saw Caden waiting for me. He had flowers tied with stars and stripes printed on the ribbon, a grey suit, and smile that told me he saw me the way I saw him—with a certain amount of surprise at the easy familiarity, and another bit of gratitude at the fulfilled expectations. It was as if we were seeing each other for the first time, and coming back to something very familiar.

  I dropped my bag and ran into his arms. We clung to each other, connected in a kiss that held nothing back. Cocooned, shielded by love and commitment, the airport terminal fell behind the wall of our attention to the kiss.

  He jerked me away with a sucking sound and a drawn breath, but kept his nose astride mine. “Welcome to New York, Major.”

  That was when I heard the applause.

  “Are we making a spectacle of ourselves?” I let my body relax away from his.

  “I fucking love you so much, I don’t even care.”

  I looked at the people surrounding us. I was in camo and he had a flag ribbon on the flowers. We were indeed making a spectacle of ourselves.

  Jenn dropped my bag at my feet. “That was so sweet I almost clapped.”

  Caden took it before I could. “Thank you for not.”

  The crowd dispersed, and we headed out of baggage claim without further incident.

  * * *

  “What do you want to see first?” Caden asked after we dropped Jenn off at her parents’ brownstone in Fort Greene. His wrist was draped over the steering wheel of his Mercedes. The band of his expensive watch caught glints of the sun. The seats were soft black leather. There was no dust or sand on the carpets, and none of the upholstery was torn.

  “The inside of my eyelids.”

  “Come on, Major. Push on.” He squeezed my knee and kissed me at the red light. “You’ll sleep when you’re dead.”

  I put my hand over his, and he stroked my thumb. “Were your eyes always this blue?”

  “Probably.”

  They looked bluer against the New York sky, which was fluffed with late summer clouds. I sat back and looked out the window. Maybe tomorrow I’d see the color I’d fall through.

  “What are my choices?” I asked.

  “The house, your new office, or any restaurant in the city.”

  That was more choices than I was used to, and none involved getting sand in the crack of my ass or telling a man it was okay to kill people.

  “Can we eat in?”

  “Yep.”

  The seams in the bridge’s surface went puh-puh-puh under the tires and the web of cables holding it up blurred in my peripheral vision. Manhattan stretched ahead of me like a dense construction of grey bricks. I didn’t know where people fit into such compactness.

  “Okay,” I finally said. “The house.”

  * * *

  Caden put the car in a garage a block away. Apparently he’d bought the spot years ago. It required a mortgage and operating fees. Where I grew up, you parked in a lot someone else owned, your own driveway, or on the street.

  This was my new normal.

  On the walk along Columbus Avenue, I felt as if I were wearing a camo clown suit. Caden put his arm around me and kissed my temple as we waited at the light. The crowd crossed before the light changed to green, but I followed my husband.

  “We’re on 87th between Columbus and Amsterdam,” he said. “Avenues run north-south, streets run east-west.”

  “Got it.” We turned onto a narrow, tree-lined street. “This is a nice block.”

  “It is.”

  The houses were stone and connected to each other on the sides. Some were slightly set back from the street to accommodate a stoop and a few steps down to a garden apartment.

  He stopped by one such house and held his hand out while the other took my duffel off his shoulder. “Here we are.”

  I looked up. Garden apartment. Three stories. An attic with stone carvings around the leaded windows. “Is it all yours?”

  He threw the duffel up the steps. It made it halfway. “It’s all ours.”

  He picked me up in his arms before carrying me up the stoop. I squeaked in surprise. We laughed as he tried to unlock the door without dropping me, and when he managed to do it, I cheered.

  He retrieved my bag and dropped it in the foyer. We were at the base of a flight of stairs. Everything was polished dark wood carved at the corners. A beveled mirror was set into a frame with three brass hooks under it. I took off my cap and let my hair fall.

  I was fully overwhelmed. He took my cap and put it on a hook before taking my face in his hands and kissing me.

  “I have your back,” he whispered. “Okay?” I nodded, and he kissed me again. “Say it for me.”

  “You have my back.”

  “And your front.”

  I smiled into his kiss. “You have my front.”

  “I can take you to the bedroom if you insist or on the stairs right now.”

  “Will you give me a minute to shower?”

  “You have rank.”

  “That’s an order then.”

  He got his hips under me and his hands under my ass, hitching me up until I could get my legs around his waist. He carried me to our room. I didn’t see anything but his face on the way up. I only knew there were wood floors and windows. Two flights. A tower with me on top.

  * * *

  He sat me on a bench in the bathroom and turned the water on in the white claw-foot tub. He kneeled in front of me to unlace my boots. I couldn’t stop looking at him in his fancy suit, kneeling on the bathroom floor to service me.

  “I hate that they make us wear this shit on the way home,” he said. “It’s total PR.”

  “Yeah, well, the military is nothing without its symbols, and that’s what I am.”

  “Were.” He pulled off the boot. “Now you are Dr. Greyson Frazier, MD, with a psychiatric practice in Manhattan.” He peeled off my socks. “And my wife. Stand up.”

  Still on his knees, he undid my buckle and fly and pulled my pants down, letting his palms spread out over the skin of my thighs. I stepped out of them and he tossed the pants aside.

  “Ah, I missed this.” He lifted my shirt and kissed the silver scar over my heart. He kissed my belly and the triangle below. I put my fingers in his hair, and he reached up under my clothes until he found my hardened nipples.

  “Caden,” I groaned. “Bath.”

  With a gentle suck on my belly, he stood. I started unbuttoning from the top and he unbuttoned from the bottom. We met in the middle and got all my clothes off until I wasn’t wearing anything but the dog tags that hung between my breasts.

  He laid them in his palm and looked at them, letting one clink against the other.

  “Take them off,” I said.

  He clos
ed his fist around them and pulled them over my head. The chain slid against my long, straight hair, and I was free.

  Caden coiled the chain on the vanity. I shut off the water and tested it.

  Scalding hot.

  No one in the world knew me the way he did.

  * * *

  He’d taken his jacket off, rolled up his sleeves, and bathed me, touching every part of my body. His hands knew exactly how to tease me. They were accurate and subtle, driving my desire forward without letting me come.

  He tossed the towel away and threw me on the bed, soaking wet.

  He didn’t even undress to fuck me. Not right away. He just spread my legs and slid his fingers inside me, then took out his monster of a cock and fucked me as if we hadn’t seen each other in four months.

  The sheets were white.

  The furniture was honey, and the lamps were Tiffany.

  Day turned into evening, but the street didn’t quiet.

  That was all I noticed between orgasms.

  In the darkness, we curled under the covers. He stroked my arm with his thumb, appreciating every inch of skin.

  “I haven’t shown you the house,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you going to show me all your childhood secret hiding places?”

  “The speakeasy in the basement? Yes.”

  He’d told me about the Prohibition-era space the first owners had dug out of the basement. How it had false walls, a mosaic tile floor, a mahogany bar, and secret places to hide customers and almost a century later, small children.

  “It’s a really nice house,” I said. “Is this a good neighborhood, as neighborhoods go in New York?”

  “This block is unattainable.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “This house is priceless. I could name a number and get it.”