Broken Edge

by CD Reiss

  “Some of the subjects are active military,” Ronin had said. “They’re in your files. Major St. John and Specialist Leslie Yarrow have placebo instead of serum because we can’t predict how they’re going to react.”

  That was how I got confirmation on the other subject with childhood trauma. That was too bad. I liked her. I didn’t want her to suffer, and I didn’t want her to see me reenter Iraq as a contractor. I’d thought I didn’t have a bone in my body that could feel shame, but I was wrong.

  “What is it?” I’d asked.

  “It triggers the bioenergetic breathing response. It opens doors. One dose for each subject, premeasured. When the hub touches skin”—through the plastic, he pointed at the rubbery white base of the needle—“it turns blue, and when it’s removed, it’s self-sealing.”

  I picked one out of the box. “Why?”

  “To make sure the BiCam goes into a body, not another vial.”

  “To prevent corporate espionage, I presume?”

  “Only the latest and best technology.”

  The latest and best was strapped down tight, and didn’t budge when the Chinook swooped around, dropping in a stomach-twisting plunge that brought me closer to my husband and his grounded blue eyes.

  Blackthorne HQ occupied a U-shaped, three-story gray brutalist shithouse in the Green Zone. After they took our bags and we were split into military and personnel specialists, we were led to the plaza in the center of the U, next to a dry fountain. Birds chirped. Flowers and tree branches swayed in the breeze. People walked the verandas above, hustling from one place to the next.

  Dana sat to my right. A rabbi in his twenties named David was on my left. To the left of him, two men who looked like really tough accountants stood in the shade. Dana and I were partnered. She could administer medications but not diagnose. David was a psychologist. We were the new mental health team.

  “It’s so nice,” Dana said, indicating the trees, the birds, the infinite blue sky. “You’d never think there was a war going on.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed, but I didn’t.

  A man in a dark suit approached with a file tucked in his elbow. He was six-four, under two hundred pounds, with a rubbery gait that made him look as though he’d fall down with each step. He was in his fifties, with black hair graying at the temples and a widow’s peak.

  “Good morning! I’m Ferhad Ghazi.” He had a slight accent I couldn’t place, and when he opened his arms, I saw a small notebook clipped on top of the papers. Like everyone there, he kept a handgun in a shoulder holster. “Welcome to Blackthorne HQ.” He smiled like a salesman. My first instinct was to stand when approached, but I wasn’t in the army anymore. “I am your ambassador for the Green Zone office.”

  How far away was Caden? What was he doing? Who was he with? He hadn’t responded to my flight plans. Had he gotten the email? Did he know I was on the same continent, under the same flag, flying against the same sky?

  We shed the accountants on the first floor. They went behind a set of double doors with a guy built like a toolshed. Ferhad brought David, Dana, and me to a large space with dozens of desks. Plants dotted the corners, and motivational posters hung on the white walls. Metal grates over the windows cut the sunlight in half.

  “We take pride in our people,” Ferhad said as we walked through the room. His voice was smooth and sonorous indoors. “So, we’re fully staffed to take care of them. We utilize the military’s medical facilities, but as you know”—he nodded to the three of us—“we supplement with our own professionals.” He stopped on the other side of the room, at a door with a black box by the handle. “Your ID cards open this area.”

  He swiped his ID card over the black box. The red light turned green, and the door clacked. He opened it into a reception area. We were introduced to the receptionist and led to a clinic on the other side of the building. Examination rooms. Crash carts. Gurneys. Labeled plastic bins. The only thing that differentiated it from a military hospital was the quiet.

  “Your office, Mister Rothstein.” Ferhad opened the door to a relatively pleasant office with a desk and worn but cushioned chairs.

  “Ladies…” Ferhad took us to the office next door.

  Dana was shown her desk in the clinic. My office looked much like David’s except for the cold case of syringes sitting ready on my desk.

  “We need a refrigerator for this case,” I said, pointing at the cooler of BiCam.

  “Down the hall,” he said.

  I heard a loud ho from outside. Looking out the window, I saw a man fall off the roof of a four-story building. I gasped and pointed.

  Ferhad laughed.

  “Did you see that?”

  “Yes, yes,” he said, waving me to the window on the other side of the room. “Look from here.”

  He showed me the angle to look from. Another figure jumped, but now I could see them turn midair and rappel from the side of the building. “It’s our training facility.”

  “That’s so cool!” Dana exclaimed.

  “That’s so scary.” I was still shaking.

  “Yes, but look at the bottom. The blue and yellow?”

  At ground level, around the corner of another building, I saw a sliver of blue and yellow stripes, like a pillow covered in a termite tent.

  “I see it. Is it an inflatable bag?”

  “Yes. So see? You don’t have to worry.” He pressed my shaking hands in his in a gesture that was not seductive but healing. “Have you seen your quarters yet?”

  “Not yet!” Dana was chipper. You’d never have known she’d just been on a military transport.

  “We got you a lovely place very close by. Let’s get that put away, and I’ll have a car bring you.”

  I helped Dana unpack her apartment first, then she helped me. It only took a few hours.

  We were in furnished apartments in the Green Zone. The building wasn’t new, but it was made from sturdy brick and cracking stucco.

  Caden was inside the hospital compound, just under a quarter mile away. It was visible from the third-floor cafeteria at work, and if I could get to the roof of the apartment building, I’d bet good money I could see it.

  My bones were made of iron filings, and he was a magnet, drawing my body’s brittleness to the surface. Tonight, I’d go there. I’d fight exhaustion and jet lag. I’d see him. Touch him. Smell the coffee grounds and cut grass on his skin. I’d let him have me. I’d beg him to break me.

  “You’re smiling,” Dana said as she wiped down my counter.

  “Weird, right?” I put the last of my clothes in the old armoire and closed the door. It was next to the couch because there was no space in the bedroom.

  “There’s plenty to smile about,” she said with the twang of an accent I’d noticed before. “We’re making good money. Helping the country. Having an adventure. It’s great.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “New Jersey. You?”

  “All over. But I landed in New York last.”

  “We’re practically sisters!” Dana opened a can of Coke she’d picked up from the chow hall and leaned on the counter. “Have you seen the guy I’m next door to?”

  “Nope.”

  “Name’s Bob Trona, and he’s totally hot in this Tom Hardy kind of way.”

  “Hm. Name rings a bell.”

  She picked up the novel I’d set aside and flipped to the inside flap. “He was in Band of Brothers and—”

  “I mean Trona.”

  Putting a few cups and plates in the cabinet, I saw out of the corner of my eye a piece of paper slip out of the book. She picked it up and gasped so loudly I thought she’d hurt herself.

  “What?”

  She held up Grady’s sonogram with a big shit-eating grin. “This! You’re—”

  “No, no. That’s not me.”

  She turned it over to look. “The name’s all rubbed off.”

  “It’s been through a lot. It came from a soldier in Fallujah I never met. His wife. It’s a long s
tory. It’s… I don’t know. I feel obligated to take it around with me in case I meet a relative or something.”

  “You’re so nice,” she said, placing it on the table before turning back to the book.

  I smiled. Of course she thought I was nice. That said more about her than it did about me.

  I couldn’t walk to the hospital alone, especially after dark. Green Zone or not, security was locked down. I caught a ride with a guy armed to the teeth on his way to train the Iraqi Army in counterintelligence. We were stopped twice in the quarter mile and waved along once.

  As the hospital came into view, my heart raced. Soon, soon.

  Caden and I hadn’t been separated that long, and I’d thought I was handling it okay, but I wasn’t. Not until I stepped through the hospital doors and knew I could see him at any minute did I realize how nervous I was. Not until I was standing in the middle of the admitting room with no idea whom to ask what did I realize I was out of place. I approached the desk.

  “Can I help you?” A uniformed woman looked up from a clipboard. She had a touch of lip gloss and had given her lashes a quick brush of mascara. Her long, straight hair was wrapped tight in the back of her head. It was lighter than mine and matched her eyes. She had a colonel’s bird on her collar, and her name tape said DeLeon.

  “I’m looking for Dr. St. John.”

  “Oh, yeah?” She put down the clipboard and looked me up and down.

  No leaf cluster or name tape told her who I was. I could have been anyone or no one.

  “I’m his wife.”

  Her gaze flicked over me again, making a different assessment. I held up the Blackthorne ID around my neck.

  “Well, it’s nice to meet you.” She held out her hand. I shook it. “He’s in surgery.” She called to a black man who was passing, “Stoney. Asshole’s wife.”

  Asshole?

  “He’s… wait…”

  Not an asshole.

  But Stoney was shaking my hand, as was a white guy with curly red hair and a short black woman in scrubs. They expressed surprise and shot questions about how long I was going to be around and why I’d come so far to see such an egotistical jerk. Good, solid army ribbing.

  “All right,” DeLeon said, putting her hand on my shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go see what he’s up to.”

  She brought me down a wide, well-lit hallway with a clean tile floor.

  “This is much nicer than Balad,” I said, letting her know I wasn’t some civilian rube. I was jealous of her access to my husband and the place she had in his world.

  “It’ll do. Were you also there for Fallujah part two?”

  “We met right about then.”

  “And now you’re contracting?” The question was loaded, and the answer was worse.

  “It’s complicated.”

  “He’s a complicated guy.” The words left her lips with a touch of bitter syrup.

  Something was going on with her. Any doubt I’d had about coming to Baghdad was swept away. I needed to be here.

  DeLeon opened the door to a scrub room. “We got a medevac in about two hours ago.” She went to the other side of the room to a set of double doors with windows. “He should be finishing up.” She peered through. “Yep.”

  I looked through the other window. Caden’s head was bowed over the patient, and his fingers nimbly threaded the wound closed. DeLeon tapped the window. He looked up, saw her first, and smiled warmly.

  Too warmly.

  When he saw me, the smile dropped into a frown.

  Every drop of fluid in my body boiled.

  DeLeon was gone, leaving me in the scrub room alone. When the surgery was done, the team came in, chattering about the operation. Caden entered last, snapping off a glove and yanking his mask down as if he wanted to say something. But nothing came from his beautiful, generous lips. He held them tight together as mine quivered, locking me in his gaze. The noise of the room was on the other side of a long tunnel.

  He was here. No screen. No camera. No microphone. He was a foot away, living, breathing, sucking all the energy in the room. The sun was tucked under the horizon, but in his eyes, it was always daytime.

  Wound tight as a man who’s been disobeyed for the last time, he peeled off his other glove without looking away from me. “Welcome to Baghdad, baby.”

  His space was the size of a dorm room. Still in scrubs, without saying any more than “Follow me,” he’d led me across a narrow street to a heavy door, up a flight of stairs, and down a hall that echoed my footsteps.

  He had a twin bed made so tightly I could have bounced a quarter on it. A sink with a mirror. A cheap pressed-wood wardrobe. His trunk. A desk with a plastic chair. He closed the door to his room and locked it but didn’t turn to me. He just kept his hand on the lock.

  “Greyson.” The muscles of his back were defined against the fabric stretching across it.

  “Caden.” I held my hand out to put it between his shoulder blades and draw it down to his ass but pulled it back before touching him.

  “You’re here.”

  “I told you I was coming.”

  He put his forehead on the door. “I’m so disappointed I can barely think.”

  “I know.”

  “In myself.”

  “It’s not your fault.” Taking a deep breath, I put my hand on his back.

  He curved away, turning around quickly, as if I’d stung him. “That’s not what I meant. It’s all locked up. I don’t feel anything. I’m detached from myself. And when I see you, all I can think about is how you’re the cure for everything that’s wrong with me.” His hands flexed open and closed as if they were ready to grab something and hold it tight enough to crush it.

  “I am the cure,” I whispered, unbuttoning my shirt. “Take your medicine.”

  Watching me unbutton, he considered, then put his hand on my bare skin. “I want to lay everything at your feet.” He took me by the throat, digging his thumb and middle finger into each side of my jaw. “Leave it all on the table.”

  “Take it. Leave it.” I undid the last button, exposing my simple white bra. He tightened his grip just enough to see if I was scared. I wasn’t. I was a node of firing desire. A liquid conductor of sexual electricity. “I’m yours.”

  He murmured close to my face. I wanted a kiss so badly I was drunk with the need for it, but his lips didn’t touch mine.

  “Take off your clothes.” He put upward pressure, making his hand the one thing to unbalance me and the one thing to keep me upright. I undid my pants on my tiptoes as he murmured to my face, “You’re going to break without a sound. Not a word. Not a scream. If you want me to stop, you better say it quietly.”

  My pants fell around my ankles. I still had my boots on.

  “Do you hear me?”

  I nodded as much as I could.

  “Say stop.”

  I shook my head. The choice was enough to drive more fluid between my legs.

  He let me go and leaned back, taking me in, then walked behind me. I felt his sky-colored eyes along the length of my body, from the hair coming out of its ponytail to the pants pooled around my ankles. He unhooked my bra and slid it off, then yanked my underwear down around my thighs.

  “I can smell your cunt,” he whispered into the back of my neck. “It’s apples.” He laid his lips on the muscle between my neck and shoulder. “It’s delicious, just like your pain.”

  With that, he bit me slowly. His teeth were all pleasure with an increasing tension. I gasped, swallowing a cry. With the same slow control, he reduced the pressure of the bite.

  “Caden,” I whispered, feeling him getting his cock out of his scrubs.

  “Are you telling me to stop?” He wrapped his arm around me, grabbing a tit at the base and working up to the nipple.

  “No.”

  “I need something from you.”

  “Anything.”

  “If I go too far and you say stop… if I don’t, I want you to bite. Kick. Punch me in the face. These wa
lls are thin.” He twisted the nipple, brushing his erection against me. “If you scream, someone will hear you. If I don’t stop, you need to scream.”

  I nodded. With his other hand, he pressed four fingers between my legs, opening me. He ran his lips to my other shoulder and made a matching bite with excruciating slowness as he circled his hand over my clit. The pleasure was overwhelming, but the pain was too much to let the orgasm loose. I bit back a cry. Tears dropped down my cheeks.

  “If you have something else to say,” he said when he released my flesh, “do it now. Quietly.” His hand stopped moving.

  “Have you been faithful to me?”

  I felt him shake his head, and taking that as a no, my tears increased.

  “Oh, baby.” He came around to face me. His magnificent cock held down the waistband of his scrubs and his hand cupped my chin. “There’s no one who can love me like you do.”

  “So, you didn’t?”

  “Never.”

  I tilted my face to kiss the palm of his hand. He stayed in the caress for a moment, then kicked off his shoes and twisted out of his shirt. Then he leaned down and unlaced my boots. He sat on the chair. I stepped out of my boots and pants, fully naked.

  “Sit here facing me.” He patted his thigh and maneuvered me until I straddled his leg, then he put a hand on each of my hips and moved me back and forth. My wetness got all over his leg, helping me slide against it. “Make yourself come.”

  He leaned back and watched me like a casual observer. When I put my hand on his dick, he moved it away. “I was going to make you do this when we Skyped again.”

  I gripped the arms of the chair and moved against him. When I was close, he pinched my nipples so hard I choked on a scream.

  “Come on, Greyson,” he said softly. “This is nothing. I haven’t even fucked your ass yet.”

  I came at the thought, bending back and lurching forward again, clamping my lips shut. He let my tits go and turned me around until he was fucking my pussy from behind. I made a sharp hm when he entered me, and he groaned low in this throat.