by Reiss, CD
“No.”
“Say it!”
“Any. Time.”
He reached under my skirt, fingers limited in their movement from the wrapping, and ripped through my stockings. “I’m going to fuck you now. Now.”
“Yes.”
“You’re not going to like it.” His fingers drove roughly under my panties.
“Try me.”
He spun me and pushed me face-first into the bookcase. Heavy medical textbooks fell around me. I grabbed a shelf as he yanked my skirt up and my underwear down to mid-thigh, restraining me and exposing me at the same time.
“You knew I wouldn’t like it,” he said, grabbing my ass with a painful grip. “And you did it anyway.”
“It’s my right.”
With a thwack and a stinging sensation, he slapped my bottom so hard my knees buckled and my pussy flooded with arousal. He pulled my hips toward him, forcing me to bend deeper and grip the shelf harder.
“You can’t just leave me to explain to the other guy that I can’t have sex with him,” I said.
“So, you don’t want to?”
“I do. I like him. He’s not perfect, but he’s nicer.”
I got a hard slap.
“Since when do you like nice?”
“Sometimes. And you were nice. You were. You were sweet and conceited and rough and sincere. You were everything. Now you’re just someone else.”
His belt buckle clacked. I looked around to watch him get his dick out.
“Face forward.” He slid the belt out of the loops. “Don’t look at me unless you’re telling me to stop.”
I turned back to the books. Essentials of Surgical Medicine. Post-Operative Technique. “You were so real. You wanted me to be happy. You were so dominant but so confused by what you felt for me. And just impulsive. But remember when you asked me to marry you? You freaked you out.”
A sharp pain burned my ass. I gulped and cried a clipped vowel at the same time.
The belt. He’d used the belt. Without a moment to breathe, he did it on the other side, searing the skin under the leather.
“That’s enough, Greyson.”
“I was reassigned to ABG, and you were staying at the combat hospital. Right on the tarmac, you threatened to redeploy if I didn’t marry you.”
He swatted me hard enough to make me grunt. He’d have to gag me to shut me up.
“I realized,” I choked through tears. “You were so desperate, I realized if you redeployed, it would break you. I could save you and keep you at the same time.”
Two hard thwacks stung me.
The sensible part of me wanted him to stop. Caden was trustworthy when he was whole, but who was this? Could I trust him? The insensible part of me did trust him. That part was an animal. She wanted to see how far he’d go because the animal was stupid, and the animal had something to say.
“I miss my husband,” I spit out.
The animal was exhausted.
She wanted fight and pain.
She was so strained, so tired, so bottled up keeping it all together.
The animal was aroused by surrender and subjection.
She wanted to break.
I gave in to myself before I gave in to him. Sensible had surrendered to the animal by the time the third stroke hit even harder on already-enflamed skin. He grunted behind me for the fourth, and I bit back a scream.
If I screamed, he might stop.
He moved to the side, and I turned my head away so I wouldn’t look at him.
The bandage on his left hand was rough on my lower back when he pressed it down. “Put your ass up where I can reach it.”
I heard the whoosh as the belt cut the air and landed over and over across the tender backs of my thighs. The pain was its own thing. It pushed out worry. Muscled past responsibility. It had weight of its own, a density to its throbbing need, lasting even after the blows stopped.
“Stand up.”
I straightened my back, cringing from the burn where he’d beaten me. He took me by the chin and made me face him, but I averted my gaze.
“You’re crying.”
I didn’t say anything. I was crying with a sort of relief I’d never felt before.
“You want your husband.”
I nodded, unable to speak.
“You have him.”
I shook my head, denying his truth.
He took half a step back. “Tell me to stop.”
“No.”
“I’m going to use you like a piece of meat if you don’t make me stop.”
I met his gaze then, and again I saw that flicker of wholeness. But though I tried to hold everything still, it was gone in a breath. “Use me.”
He dropped the belt and undid his pants. “On your knees so I can fuck that beautiful face.”
I dropped to my knees, and in half a second, my face was impaled by his erection. I reached for it to get some control, but he pushed my hands away.
“Behind your back.” I boxed them like he’d showed me. “This is how you take your husband’s cock.” He shoved himself deep down my throat, until my nose was touching the hair of his belly. When he pulled out, I looked up at him. “Does he fuck your mouth like that?”
I shook my head, and the animal told me to open my mouth for him, so I did.
He smiled an evil, emotionless smile, that flicker of wholeness a distant memory, and took my mouth again, thrusting twice before giving me a breath. Twice. Breath. The rhythm sang through my body, pulsed with the pain on my thighs and bottom, until he yanked out with a gasp.
“Fuck.”
I knew that face. He was close. Fighting it.
“On the desk. Move.”
Like a good girl, I pulled the chair out and sat on the desk, bottom burning when it touched the wood. My ripped stockings were mid-thigh, and my skirt was pulled over my waist. My hair was half out of its ponytail. I was a wreck, but Caden’s eyes burned bright blue with a desire to tear me apart.
God, I wanted to be shredded.
He unceremoniously pulled off my stockings and underwear and jerked my legs open so violently I fell back on the desk with my knees up. He bent them back and ran his eyes over my bottom and thighs, his dick glistening with my spit.
When he touched the raw skin, it burned all over again. “Hurt?”
I nodded, biting my lower lip.
“You know what to do if you don’t like it.” He swatted me hard, sending a shear of pain through me, then waited for my objection. “Fine.”
He guided his dick along my wet seam, sliding in with no resistance. With my body brought to the edge of unbearable pain, the pleasure of his cock shook the foundations of my resistance. I let out an uh when he buried himself to the root and pressed against my clit.
“You look like you want to come.”
I gave him a short nod.
“Yes?” A quick, deep thrust.
“Yes.”
“You want my permission?”
“Please.”
He leaned over me and whispered, “I don’t care when or if you come.”
I didn’t have time to be insulted because he started pounding me mercilessly, and despite what he’d said, he angled his body to stimulate my clit, jerking when he was deepest to rub it sideways. He ripped my shirt open, put his lips on my breast, and sucked on the skin, clamping his teeth together in an agonizing bite.
Pain soared through me, morphing into pleasure, pushing me over the edge of sense. Every part of my body that had been subject to his cruel touch had the orgasm. The bruised and beaten skin on my ass. The fucked throat. The bitten breast. I came so long and so hard that when he pulled out and put the head of his wet cock at my asshole, I was still reeling.
“Breathe,” he said as he pushed in.
I breathed, and slowly, he stretched my anus, spitting for more lubrication. He used the moisture from my pussy on my ass to help him slide inside, watching my face.
“I know this hurts,” he said, pulling out a
little for a better angle. “Tell me how much.”
“It hurts.” Deeper. My face twisted in pain. “You’re ripping me apart.”
It hurt, but I was getting stretched, not shredded. It was what he wanted to hear, and saying it made me wish he was. I put my hand between my legs and rubbed my clit.
“Am I stopping?” he asked.
“No. God. Fuck.”
He pushed my knees back and looked down, watching his cock slide out, then back in. “Does he come in your ass?”
“No.”
“The ass is mine.”
I didn’t answer as he slid out. I was busy breathing. The pain had subsided and was replaced with the surrender of violation and a tingling response to my fingers.
He slammed into me, pushing the air out of my lungs. “Did you hear me?”
“Yes. The ass is yours.”
He took me as I fingered myself to orgasm, coming inside me with a grunt as my ass pulsed around him. He bent over me, breathing in my ear, and kissed my cheek.
“That’s going to hurt tomorrow,” I said softly as he popped out.
He opened his mouth to answer, but as if the Universe was out to prove me right, the last of the sun fell beneath the horizon. Before he got a sound out, he blinked and was changed.
“What’s going to hurt?”
Chapter Fourteen
DAMON
I entered consciousness in my office with her crying beneath me. There were books all over the floor, and my belt was out of the loops. She was on the floor, sobbing. I tried to pick her up, but she ran to the guest room and crawled onto the bed.
He’d beaten her bottom raw. As she lay on the bed, still sobbing, I soothed it with a cream even after she told me to get away from her.
That was when I saw the deeper red around her anus.
I’d already been upset, but seeing that brought on a sadness so deep I had to hold back my own tears.
She excused what he’d done to her with my body, saying she’d liked it. She’d wanted it. She’d asked me to hurt her in bed, but I didn’t understand how she could have meant what I saw.
Once she was asleep, I scrubbed every inch of myself so hard I exacerbated the wrist sprain I didn’t remember getting.
Was he sending me a message? He could bruise her and harm her. He could leave her broken for me. This must have been his response to my threat to use our body with other women. The soulless fuck had taken it all up a notch. I admired and feared his callousness.
He’d be back when the sun came up. He’d do it again to spite me. I couldn’t cut off his desire for her, but I could make sure he couldn’t act on his desires. He wouldn’t hurt her tomorrow, or the next day, or the next. Not if I could help it—and I could. I had weapons in this war.
I wrapped my hand around our dick and jerked off.
Two could play at that.
* * *
BALAD BASE AIRSTRIP
FALLUJAH, IRAQ
DECEMBER, 2004
After she’d told me she was going to Abu Ghraib, I tried to hold it together, but the brittleness of the world persisted.
I’d wondered when I sprung into existence as Damon. No one knew when they were born, but I had become conscious somewhere between her telling me she was going to ABG and the airfield with the chopper waiting to take her away.
I was still him. I hadn’t broken away yet.
“God, I hate these things,” she said.
He/I was carrying her duffel. She’d already tried to take it back, but its weight on my shoulder tied her to me/us.
“Yeah,” I agreed. She and I shared a rational fear of heights. I had an irrational fear of Ronin, who was waiting for her at the open door.
She said something I couldn’t hear over the whooshing rotor blades. It was probably good-bye. Probably the quick snap of a bone that would never heal right. I stopped short and dropped the duffel. She tried to pick it up, but I stopped her.
“What?” She held her cap down, shouting. “It’s not too heavy.”
“Marry me.”
“What?”
“Marry me, Greyson.” I was speaking at the top of my lungs. Saying it glued me to my future. “Be my wife.”
“Are you serious?”
Of course she didn’t believe me. Who would have?
“I’ll be the best husband you ever heard of. I’ll take care of you. I’ll stay in the army, and we can dual deploy.”
“No!” No. It didn’t have a chance to sink in before she shouted over herself. “Maybe! But you can’t stay.”
“If you don’t marry me, I’m redeploying.”
“Are you threatening me?”
“It’s the only way to stay close to you.”
“This is weird, Caden.” She glanced at the helicopter.
It was ready. Ronin was waiting. The pilots were waiting.
“Marry me.” I didn’t have anything more flowery. I didn’t have a ring. I only had a stupid impulse forcing me to do the smartest thing I’d ever done.
“You can’t redeploy,” she insisted. “That’s off the table.”
“Marry me, and I’ll do whatever you want.”
She was thinking. Taking stock of me. She didn’t see where we’d been ripped up. Caden didn’t either. She didn’t have to. If she married me, it would be fixed.
“Marry me.”
“Major!” The pilot’s voice lifted over the wind.
I mouthed the words marry me, letting the demand become part of the wind and the rotors.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes.”
Her assent was one of my first conscious memories.
* * *
Three in the morning. She woke when I crawled into bed again.
“Hey,” she said sleepily.
“Hey. It’s early. You can go back to sleep.”
“I wanted to talk to you.” She sat up. I tried to ignore her cringe. “I want to see a specialist.”
“In what?”
“Dissociative disorder.”
“Ah.”
How could I refuse her after what she was going through? But how could I agree to what would be my own destruction?
“It’ll mostly be in the day, but I’m letting you know.” She squeezed my hand. Her lips set in the dark as if she was about to say something difficult. “This is not optional.”
I cupped her face, running my thumb under an eye still swollen from tears. “All right.”
She curled into my arms. I kissed her head and looked out the window, wondering how to save her when she was trying so hard to save me.
“Thank you,” she said with her hand on my chest. She was wearing the ring.
“I’m sorry about what I did.”
“You apologized already, and there’s nothing to apologize for.” Her hand drifted down my chest and to my waist. I stopped her.
“Let me take care of you,” I said, rolling on top of her.
“No, stop, don’t,” she said with a smile, but I straightened to get off her. “Joking. I’m joking.”
“Good.”
I kissed her face and neck, lifting her shirt to caress her breasts with my lips. I slid off her underpants and kissed inside her thighs, running my tongue along the soft skin, careful to avoid the places she’d been hurt.
I kissed her sweet pussy, demanding nothing but her acceptance of my tongue inside her, gently guiding her to orgasm. She pulled my hair, pushed me into her, dug her nails into my shoulder as she bucked and groaned.
When she was done, I wiped my mouth on my sleeve. She took my face in her hands and kissed me.
“Your turn.”
She reached for my dick, but I guided her away. “I’m tired, and so are you.”
I took her in my arms and stroked her arm, kissing the top of her head until her breath fell into a soft, steady rhythm.
When she was asleep, I went into the bathroom.
Chapter Fifteen
GREYSON
“Gah!” He cried from the bathroom. “What t
he fuck?”
I tilted toward the door. “Caden?”
No answer. The medicine cabinet clicked open, then closed. Drawers went slide, snap, slide, snap.
The door opened suddenly, leaving me too close to the threshold. We were face-to-face. Caden was in a T-shirt and shorts, looking through me, then directly at me as a barrier.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
I didn’t move out of the way, and he didn’t reply. I took in his form, looking for a reason for his dismay, not expecting to find one painted clearly on his body.
My expectations were defied by a tiny dark spot that soaked through the fabric of his shorts. “You’re—”
“It’s fine.” He pushed past me.
“Is the blood from your dick or on it?” My snappish, accusatory tone was meant to stop him, and it worked.
He froze before leaving the room and looked over his shoulder. “What do you think?”
I didn’t know what to think, but it didn’t take long to dismiss my immediate paranoia that he’d run out and had sex with a random, menstruating woman. I held the possibility of relief from my worst suspicions and their confirmations in my heart.
“I think there’s a part of every person that wants to have sex with multiple partners, and I don’t know if that’s attached to your Damon part,” I said. “Or if Damon has the will to act on it. But I think you’re surprised you’re sore.”
“I’m irritated.”
“I’ll forgive the pun.”
“Where were you?” His words carried a tinge of accusation. “He wasn’t fucking you?”
I went toward him and laid my hands on his body. “Would I lie?”
He nodded with an understanding that cut through assumption.
“I hate him.” He growled deep and low.
“What did he do?” I asked, newly alarmed.
“Made sure I couldn’t fuck you.” He whipped open the tie on the drawstring and lowered his waistband below his dick. It was hot red, with a spot under the head so raw that spots of blood soaked through the mesh of skin to form a heavy red drop.
“What the—?”
“Punishment.” He pulled his pants back up. “He jerked his own skin off to punish me for hurting you. Maybe he’s punishing you too.”
