by Reiss, CD
It was morning. No time for that.
I got out from under the covers. My wife leaned a little in her sleep, ass getting closer to the edge of the chair. It pivoted. She was going to fall.
I picked her up under the shoulders and knees. She nuzzled me as I laid her on the couch. After covering her, I grabbed the cold water bottle and went upstairs.
Damon was gone. I’d felt exorcised of him after I’d broken Greyson before, but this time was different. He wasn’t hiding where I couldn’t hear or see him. He wasn’t a pressure in the back of my consciousness. He wasn’t a missing voice in the hiss of the shower or a potential presence from the darkness in the drain. Like a dead thing, he only existed in memory.
I was free of him, and that satisfied me.
After putting my wife under the bed covers, I jerked off in the shower, imagining the tiles I came on were my wife’s face and tits. In the fantasy, I pulled her shirt on over my cum so she could wear my mark all day.
I got dressed before I checked on Greyson. She opened her eyes enough for me to see the bleeding capillaries in the whites. She smiled and patted my hand as if she was too weak for words. I’d taken everything from her the night before. Satisfied again, I went to work.
* * *
During the first eight days of the Second Battle of Fallujah, when I’d stopped seeing the men under me as people and started seeing them as puzzles with broken or misplaced pieces, I’d had a sense of personal authority similar to the feeling athletes describe as “the zone.”
At work in New York, even though it wasn’t a cutting day, the pieces of the world clicked into place according to my actions, my will, my desires. I didn’t crave praise or recognition. I wanted nothing more or less than control over what I could see and touch.
Greyson, kneeling in the dark, her skin cast in blue from the streetlights on 87th Street filtering through the curtains. The dark fracture between her legs and the eggshells of her ass…inviting me to use her. Waiting for me with her forehead on the rug and her hands boxed behind her back, wrist to wrist, she was no less a lioness.
That was what I wanted.
I left a message for her. “I’ll be home at nineteen hundred. Be naked. On your knees. Forehead to the floor. Hands behind your back. Be ready for me to enter you anywhere I want.” I hung up.
Who would be there when she heard it? A patient? One of the military men she spoke with all day? A colleague? Would they see her blush? Would she smile?
No. She wouldn’t see anyone today. Not with the bruises under her eyes. The bloodshot whites would be almost healed by now, but the rest would linger, reminding me I’d done something I couldn’t remember. Something terrible. Something that had chased Damon away for good.
She’d want to talk about it. All I wanted to do was fuck her in celebration.
I could do both.
Doing the last of my paperwork for the day, I decided she was welcome to talk about it either after we were both satiated or with my dick in her mouth.
That should be more than satisfactory.
Outside, the last of the sun disappeared behind the western horizon.
* * *
COMBAT SUPPORT HOSPITAL
BALAD AIR BASE
FALLUJAH, IRAQ
NOVEMBER, 2004
The second time I saw her, she was talking to Ronin in the field between the hospital and the medical officer trailers. He had a football under his arm, and they were scraping at the dirt with their boots.
A totally innocuous action. They weren’t touching, and I’d only spoken a few words to her in the changing room. I wanted her the way I might want any woman who could be that beautiful in an army uniform. It was nothing.
When I kept an intake appointment later that day, she was sitting behind a desk made of a plank and sawhorses, and I was struck again by how few trappings she needed to be magnetic. Her eyes were a rich, warm chocolate that never wavered when she was listening, and her hands were slim and long-fingered. I could trace the shape of her naked ring finger and extrapolate the curve of her tits and the slope of her belly.
“Major,” I said, trying not to smile. She outranked me, and that had appeal.
“Captain.”
I sat across from her, taking off my cap.
“Thank you for the show in post-op,” she said, referring to our first meeting in the locker room. She’d caught me with my pants down. So to speak.
“It’s a changing room. You can’t be shocked I was changing.”
“It takes more than a penis to shock me.”
“A quality I admire.”
God, I liked her. She was shameless. Proud—yet vulnerable enough to be attentive and open to every word.
She asked me about the last surgery I’d done. Every word was a challenge to my assumptions, and every space between her questions was an opportunity.
“In an emergency,” she said, taking a slim packet of paper from a folder, “we may have to administer psychotropic medications before we can evaluate their safety for you. So, we do this assessment before we need to.”
She pushed the questionnaire toward me. I flipped through it.
Family history.
Bipolar disorder. No.
Depression. No.
Anxiety. No.
Childhood abuse.
“About the changing room,” she said.
“You see something you like?”
Childhood abuse.
“Why did you feel the need to express your dominance over a woman you didn’t even know?”
She was talking about the fact that I’d made sure she saw my dick. A childish and petty move I wouldn’t defend, but I wouldn’t apologize either. She should only know the effort it took to keep it from standing at attention at the sight of her hard nipples.
“I was getting changed.”
Childhood abuse. No.
“Denial is a river in Egypt, Captain.”
“What exactly do you mean here…” I tapped the pen on a question about sexual activity. I was outside myself, watching as I acted like an obnoxious ass. “Forty-seven. Part B. Does jerking off count?”
Her neck broke out into a pale pink rash from the blood rushing to the surface of her skin. I wanted to touch it so badly I had to clench my fist.
“Sexual activity is with a partner,” she said. “Masturbation is covered in question forty-nine.”
“Ah.” I answered the rest of the questions and pushed the papers toward her.
“Thank you, Captain.”
“My pleasure.”
She stood, dismissing me. “I’ll let you know if I have any follow-up questions.”
“Nice to meet you.”
She looked at my outstretched hand for a beat before she carefully grasped my palm. She pressed and clasped without sliding her skin against mine and removed it before we could exchange heat. The choreography was too careful. I wanted her to admit she wanted me—if not with her mouth, then with her body. I couldn’t leave without the assurance that I wasn’t throwing my desire into a void.
“In the changing room,” I said against my own better judgment, “I showed you my ass because I was annoyed that you came in. I showed you the rest because I want to fuck you.”
Her lower lip twitched. She swallowed. Her jaw moved a little, as if she’d moved her tongue from one side of her mouth to the other.
Her reaction had satisfied me.
“That is highly inappropriate,” she said.
“I know.”
Chapter Three
greyson
I’ll be home at nineteen hundred. Be naked. On your knees. Forehead to the floor. Hands behind your back. Be ready for me to enter you anywhere I want.
The contents of Caden’s message had been spoken clearly and without an ounce of doubt that he’d be obeyed. His demeanor was so commanding that I at once felt a flood of arousal so strong it hurt…and looked at the clock to see if I had time to shower before nineteen hundred hours.
That
didn’t last long. I wasn’t getting on my knees and offering my body to him until we talked about the previous night. I’d had Friday off sessions as usual, but I’d had to cancel the gym and meetings to hide the way his hands had used me. I spent the day reading journals and studies on dissociative disorders. Dry, hopeless reading.
Until I knew who I was fucking, or what I was fucking, there would be no fucking.
Bottom line? I wasn’t in the mood for Caden’s controlling voice or his precise pain. I was tired from the night before. My back ached. Swallowing hurt. If there was going to be any sex, it had to be the kind that made me fall asleep with confidence in my heart and a smile on my face.
He arrived at seven on the dot. In the crack between curtains, he popped up the stoop with his jacket flowing behind him. I sat on the couch, under a tall lamp, fully dressed in a sexless sweater and jeans. I was a wife waiting to speak to her husband, not a woman getting on her knees for kinky time.
The door clicked shut. I heard fussing with keys, coat, a cleared throat, and he appeared in the entrance to the living room. I could tell who I was sharing the room with right away.
Not Caden. At least not the man calling himself Caden.
“Damon,” I said.
“Greyson.”
“What the hell is going on?”
It wasn’t for him to answer. I should have known that, but it was impossible to be a trained therapist about my own husband. I wanted an answer, and the way he smiled was just that. It wasn’t an answer I liked, but it was unlike anything I’d seen from my husband except when he was at his most vulnerable. It had no underlying meanings. No sexual overtones or cynicism. It was a happy smile.
“May I sit?”
I realized so much about my husband when he became someone else. Caden never asked to sit. He just sat. He identified the straightest course of action to a result and took it.
“Please do.”
The person in my husband’s body sat on the other side of the couch, leaving a full cushion between us, and twisted around so one arm was draped over the back of the sofa. He pressed his thumb to his upper lip and regarded me as if seeing me for the first time. Admittedly, I felt as if I was seeing him for the first time as well. A jaw that had been as angular and unyielding as his personality was now a counterpoint to a softer line of his mouth. The color of his eyes was less a challenge and more of an invitation.
“I can’t believe how beautiful you are,” he said.
“Bullshit me later.”
The fact was I couldn’t believe how beautiful he was.
“To your question,” he said. “What’s going on… I’m not really sure.”
“I have an idea.”
“Good.” He nodded and waited.
“Can you tell me who you are first?”
He smiled ruefully and ran his nails along the damask upholstery. The pairing of gestures was surprisingly sensual, and nothing like Caden, who delivered answers like an automatic weapon.
“I am your soul mate.” He laid his hand down and looked at me. “I’m the only person who truly fits with you. I admit I wasn’t born in a normal way, but we were created for each other. Maybe there was some mix-up and the body I was meant for went to someone else?”
“There was a movie like that.”
“Then it’s not unheard of.”
“It’s a made-up story.”
“You’re saying I’m made up? That what I’ve been going through is fake?”
Invalidating a personality was dangerous territory. I was tired, aching, in a state of emotional shock, and in no condition to maintain my therapeutic detachment. But I wasn’t going to swap ghost stories either. “Here’s what I know—you’re my husband, and you’re a dissociated personality.”
“No, I’m sure I’m not.”
“How are you so sure?”
“I was my own person before. I had a name, and I’ve loved you from the beginning.”
“Before last night, where were you?”
“You really want to talk about this?”
“What are the options?”
The way he looked at me told me what he thought the options were. “I’ve waited a long time to kiss you. I guess I can wait another few minutes.”
Another few minutes? I wasn’t sure I should even let him touch me, much less kiss me.
“Can you describe your life before last night?” I asked.
“I wouldn’t call it a life. I saw out through his eyes. I heard with his ears, then forgot a lot of it. I wanted things. You, mostly. But getting out was all I could think about.”
“Getting out of what?”
“I don’t know. It was a kind of box. Or a bag around me. Tight. I think it was him. He kept me in it.”
“Him?”
“Caden.”
I was looking right at Caden, but he referred to himself as a nemesis. Not uncommon in these cases, but still strange. “What’s the first thing you remember?”
“My name.”
“Do you know where you were? Where Caden was?”
“No idea. I was blind. I could stretch the limits around me, and I could hear better. See better. Your voice.” He shook his head as if amazed. “Went right through me. I couldn’t always understand what you were saying, but it always called me. And when you… when he started hurting you and you liked it, that was when the bag got tight.”
“Except last night.”
“He almost killed you.”
“And you opened the bag?”
“I didn’t. He did.”
Rain patted the windows, leaving diagonal lines across the glass. Caden had released this monster to protect me from the other monster. I rubbed my eyes, shutting out the sight of the rain as it increased, distorting the view.
“Greyson.” His whisper reached through my self-imposed darkness. “It’s for the best. I won’t hurt you. You’re safe with me.”
A touch fell on my ankle, so gentle and tender I was comforted without wanting to be. I was faltering. I couldn’t. Not yet.
But when he touched me, I knew I would.
“Where were you all day?”
He paused before answering. “At work.”
I moved my fingers away, blinking the light back in. He slid his hand over my ankle, the closest piece of bare skin to him.
“Did you leave me a message this afternoon?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I couldn’t imagine the man on my couch issuing the short list of commands that I’d had to remind myself to disobey.
He was lying.
I could press him about the content of the message, but it could trigger a reaction I wasn’t ready to defend against.
“I didn’t do what you told me to,” I said. “You didn’t seem to mind when you got home.”
“I was just glad to see you.” He stroked my ankle with his thumb with the perfect amount of pressure to awaken the nerve endings. Caden always knew how to touch me, but this simple change in pressure was lateral in its difference in that it had the same effect. He shifted closer to me. “I want to kiss you.”
No.
My first thought was a negative. I didn’t know him or what would be too much for him. My arousal was bad enough. Letting him touch me was worse. My heart thudded like a caged madman bouncing off the bars.
This man looked like Caden, smelled like Caden, sounded like a man using Caden’s voice. It was his body, his mind, just a different piece of it.
Reaching for my cheek with his ever-perfect touch, he repeated, “I want to kiss you.”
Leaning forward, cut grass and fresh coffee beans, rich and sharp. Same pheromones. Same man. I countered him, meeting him in the middle until I could feel his breath.
“I’ve wanted to kiss you as long as I can remember.”
“What was the first moment?”
He looked down at my lips. The curve of his eyelashes against the sine of his lids was so much my husband. But the hesitation was not. “Now is the only moment tha
t counts.”
Pseudopsychology frayed the rope connecting me to my desire.
“You don’t remember,” I said, pulling back enough to yank the rope taut without breaking it.
“I’ve always wanted you. That’s all there is to it. Past, present, future. It just is. There’s no starting point, and there’s no end.”
His voice wasn’t shot through with rainbows and unicorns but with a pure statement of fact. This was what it was, and something about that tone resonated with every other voice I’d ever trusted.
What would happen if I made love to this man, this creature, this being? Could I get him to pack up and move out of this house? Probably. But what about the man still calling himself Caden? He’d return, and we’d unpack.
“Then you won’t mind sleeping in the guest bedroom?” I asked.
“Of course not.”
“Good.” I slapped my hands on my knees and got up.
“What are you going to tell him?”
I knew who he meant.
“When he comes back,” Damon continued, “which he will, and he’s on the guest bed, what are you going to say?”
“He and I will have a conversation. Same one you and I just had.”
“What if he doesn’t come back?”
“What do you mean?”
He took his arm from the back of the couch and put his elbows on his knees, locking his gorgeous fingers together between them. “The contusions on your neck are light, but I can see them. You have broken blood vessels under both eyes. Your voice is hoarse from windpipe damage.”
“Just breath play gone too far.”
“The only reason he didn’t finish the job was that I came for him. I resuscitated you. He was standing over you, paralyzed with fear over what he’d done.” His voice went serious again. “When he’s in the zone, he loses control.”
Terror plucked the nerves of my spine, woke my glands, sending messages to my body I couldn’t obey. “No. That won’t happen.”
“Damn right.” He stood. “I’m not going to let it.”
