by Mj Fields
“Oh, you see, boss number one, she isn’t an early riser. So, that’s not going to—”
He looks at me. “Am I mistaken?”
“No.” I follow him back inside where the sound of classical music comes from Tris and Matteo’s room.
Once inside, he shakes his head and tsks at me.
“What?”
“Zack is here, so he can watch the tigress while you make the kitten purr.”
Motherfucker, I think, but I say not one thing as I walk him to the door.
“She’s beautiful. Looks Middle Eastern.”
“She’s Italian.”
“Ah, I see.” He nods.
“You may see, but the rest of them don’t. I aim to keep it that way.”
“And when you part ways and she must leave you, how will you fare?”
I have no idea why he’s asking me questions like this, but it’s starting to piss me off. “I’ve parted ways with many people, and here I am.”
“Yes, but you’ve never loved.”
“Cairo, I don’t do love.”
“You’ve never met the one you’re meant to be with.” He throws his hands up in the air. “I’ll say no more.”
Once he’s gone, I go back out onto the balcony where she’s still taking pictures. I lean against the wall and take her in. Linen white shorts, a black tank top, and a white gauze shirt that’s caught in the breeze, fluttering in the air like wings.
“Is it weirder I know you’re there, or that you’re watching me and not saying a word?”
I push off the wall and take a seat in the chaise beneath the fabric-covered frame above me. “None of the above,” I answer, pulling out the elastic band in my hair to relieve the tension headache that’s been there since we started descending and I could see thousands of miles of sand below, getting closer and closer.
“I hurt for you right now and wish you could talk about it. It would save us both the pain.”
“And I wish you’d come over here and sit between my legs.”
She looks back. “Sit?”
I shrug. “Take off the shorts and underwear. Better yet, stop wearing them altogether.”
Walking toward me, she wears a smile. A soft, beautiful smile. “I see you. And regardless of what we do in the dark—”
“And, at times, mid-afternoon and early morning.” I sit up and pull down her shorts and panties, tossing them to the ground. Then I grab her around the waist and lift as I lie back and bring her down, making sure her sweet pussy is on my face.
“Ohmygod,” she cries as I shove my tongue inside her.
Gripping her hips, I rock her wet center up and down my hungry mouth.
After she comes, I slide her down, and she rests her forehead against mine, trying to catch her breath, her hands gripping my shoulders.
“You’re so fucking perfect, you know. Every part of you. Even the parts you hide.”
My chest tightens in a place it never did anything but hurt from pain and fear and hopelessness.
I sit up then stand with her ass in my hands and carry her inside, down the hall, and then inside the room that she’ll be sleeping in for the next week. I kiss her forehead then drop her onto the bed. “Get some sleep, little bit of—” I stop before the word hanging off the tip of my tongue, by one hand about to fall to its death, can actually do so.
“Little bit of what?”
I smile. “Sass.”
She pulls her knees up to her chest and rests her chin on them. “Stay with me tonight?”
“You know I can’t do that.”
She turns her head and rests the side of it on her knees. “Do you know how long it took me to learn to ride a bike because I had that same mentality?”
I shake my head. “Not gonna happen, so—”
“You have to try at some point.”
I open the door and step out.
“Ranger?”
“Yeah?
“Something I can do to return the gesture?”
“Sleep well, Brisa. See you in the morning.”
“Ranger,” she calls at my cowardice, retreating back, “sleep well.”
“Gonna sleep better now, thank you.” Before I can say anything else that I will immediately regret, I shut the door behind me.
She’s sprawled out on only half the bed, sound asleep, and I wish that I could be the one filling it, if only for the next nine weeks. But I know the likelihood of that happening is shit. She would end up bruised or, worse yet, as broken as me.
What I can do is make her feel good.
Closing the door behind me and turning the lock, I then walk over quietly and take her nipple between my teeth and tug. Her back arches as she takes a deep breath. I grab the other and roll it between my finger and thumb.
“Holy shit,” she gasps.
Smiling, I step back and watch as her eyes adjust to the dark.
“You better get back here and finish what you just started.”
“You have twenty minutes to get your sexy self dressed so you and that camera can catch the sunrise and get back here before Trouble wakes up.”
“You ever heard of a quickie?” she says, throwing her long lean legs over the side of the bed.
“Been inside you for about three weeks now; you tell me.”
She grabs my shirt and shoves me on the bed.
“You’re damn lucky I wasn’t expecting that.” I start to sit up, but she climbs on top of me and starts unbuckling my jeans. “Brisa, you know the—”
“Yeah, Daddy, I do.” She pulls my cock free. “You’re supposed to take care of me and, right now, I need to ride your beautiful dick.”
“We have …”
She slides down on me, stealing my fucking breath.
“… Rules.”
“Fuck,” she whimpers as she rolls her hips, stretching her hot, wet little cunt to better fit me inside.
The feeling of her raw shreds all my reserves, every-fucking-time.
She freezes and looks down at me, looking completely shocked. “I’m so, so—”
“Fuck that.” I grab her hips and rock her back and forth.
“You sure?” she whimpers.
Teeth clenched, ignoring the question because, again, fuck that, I thrust my hips upward. “You hurt your pussy?”
“Yes.” She rocks, her head falling back, mouth hanging open. “So good.”
“Should you have listened to me?” I thrust deep again.
“No!” she cries.
I grab her ass and squeeze it tightly. “Should you have listened to me?”
“Harder,” she moans, her eyes closed and smiling.
“You being a brat for a reason?”
“So what if I am? I’m gonna ride you till we both come so hard it won’t even matter.” She pulls her shirt over her head then leans down, her tits in my face when she whispers, “Daddy.”
And ride she does.
Sitting in the back of the car while Cairo drives, holding her hand, watching her face light up when I rub my thumb over her knuckles, I could easily forget who I am and who she is, and what we are. I know it’s stupid to do so, but right here is the closest thing I’ve ever felt to being comfortable around a woman and not wondering what she wants from me, what she’ll take from me, or what fucking good I could do for a woman who I’d even consider spending even a year with when I have no fucking clue what’s going to trigger a nightmare. How fucked up is it that I’ve rolled around this desert and haven’t once thought about where I am? Pretty fucked up.
I know what she wants from me. I know exactly what she wants from me. Hell, I’m not even thinking about her being that fifteen-year-old little shit. Truth be told, she wasn’t a shit; she simply had a good soul.
Unbroken.
I like watching her take pictures, her being in awe of everything new, even if it is mostly crumbling rocks. To each their own, right?
Aside from the sunrise that I knew she would flip shit over being able to catch, the fact that I’m able
to stand back and get pictures of her doing her thing, seeing all the beautiful things in the world, things that she can look back on to remind her that the shit she feels she’s getting sucked into, those people, their situations don’t own her or her happiness. These pictures will remind her how fucking beautiful she is to anyone who spends more than ten seconds with, and that will, God-willing, give her a bit of reprieve.
Once the sun is almost fully over the pyramids, she comes bounding down the stairs and is dead-ass sprinting toward me.
“Take a selfie with me, pretty please?”
“Yeah.” I nod. “Of course.”
Mozambique
Fun in the Sun
Brisa
“He looks like hell,” Zack says as he plops down on the couch next to me.
“Who?”
He looks over at me, rolling his pale blue eyes. “Do I have to actually play along with—”
“Yep,” I answer, looking back at the TV.
“Wyatt Dalton, aka Ranger. Your sister, Tris Steel-Arias’s security—”
“Got it.”
“So, you’ve noticed he looks like hell?”
I don’t answer, because on no planet does that man look like hell.
“Okay, well, he does. He’s not sleeping, and when he’s not laser-focused on your ass, he looks like he wants to crawl out of his skin.”
My heart sinks because this is something I should have definitely noticed but have been counting the minutes until he shows up in my room so I can touch him and be touched by him.
“He ever tell you about his past?”
Again, my lips are sealed, because he has, yet he hasn’t. Either way, I would never betray his trust.
“He tell you about being in a pit for three weeks, after being captured, while fighting the fucks across the sea in the desert? Did he tell you that’s how he met Cairo? His team went in as Egyptian alliance on a rescue mission and were attacked. All the prisoners survived, but all but three guys he went in with were killed when our own drones dropped a bomb too fucking early. The three of them left for dead. When Ranger got them out after digging for days, the other two were in critical condition. He dragged them through the desert to get them help. Did he tell you, when he was given the purple heart, he told them to shove it up their asses?” He looks at me and shakes his head. “He hates the fucking desert.”
“Why didn’t he tell me?” My voice shakes as tears spill down my cheeks.
“Probably thinks you wouldn’t give a damn. Do you?”
Batting away tears, I snap at him, “Of course I care!”
“Then figure this shit out, because another four days here …” He shakes his head. “I don’t know, but it isn’t right what they did, and it isn’t right torturing him anymore.”
“Okay. We leave in the morning. First thing.” I stand up and head to my room.
“Brisa,” Zack calls after me. “Don’t tell him I said anything. He’ll be pissed.”
“I promise I won’t.”
Sitting on my bed, music playing as I rearrange flights and hotels, I don’t hear the knock, and I don’t see him coming up behind me, but I feel him immediately.
“Busy?” he asks, sitting down.
“Just give me a minute,” I say, confirming the change in flights and the reservation.
“You’re what …?”
“The beaches at Mozambique are calling our names.”
“Brisa, it’s not—”
“It is. And what’s worse is I’ve been feeling you”—I glance down at his crotch twice a day since we got here—“but I wasn’t feeling you”—I put my hand over my heart—“here.”
“I’d choose you feeling me here”—he reaches between my legs and presses his palm against me—“than—”
“Fine.” I bat his hand away. “But that’s connected, you know.”
He eyes me skeptically. “That’s not how we roll.”
“Like hell we don’t. Friends take care of things that matter, and you being stuck in a sucky headspace isn’t good for you.”
“Brisa, I—”
“Just shut up.” I throw my arms around him and pull him in for a hug. He tenses. “God, you’re horrible at this part.”
We spend two and a half weeks on Tofo Beach, in Mozambique, just chilling. The beaches are pristine, and we often drive around in the rented 4x4 and find completely empty beautiful spots, spending the entire day there. It feels more like we are living and not tourists. We ride horses, hike with no destination or hurry, kayak daily. We snorkel, whale watch, and Tris and I teach Matteo how to surf. Ranger and Zack, also Jersey boys, haven’t in years, but they pick it back up almost instantly.
Ranger fishes daily and fucks me as much. I have sex on the beach for the first time, something I have always romanticized, and if given the opportunity to choose the beach or a bed, I would definitely go with a bed. Sand in wet, sticky places … not sexy at all.
We have bonfires, eat at little local restaurants, and Ranger and I sleep together for the first time. It’s totally on accident, while entranced by a full moon, in a hammock. We drift off, but it totally happens without incident, giving me hope it will happen again soon.
Tris, who hasn’t touched a guitar, which she admits is mostly for show, learns how to play the ukulele, and she actually writes a few things, while Matteo builds sandcastles. I have seen his work online, work that sells for insane amounts of money that I don’t quite understand, but the castles, I get. He builds with my baby sister who, to anyone else, would see flaws in her, but he sees the love she has to give and, more importantly, he wants to give that love a home, with him.
I watch her, before my very own eyes, even out, and Matteo seems to come alive. It’s quite beautiful to watch them; one picking up where the other left off. It’s like a ballroom dance.
I also not only feel but see the deep love they truly have with each other, even in the short amount of time they have been together, and although I felt it before, it’s when she evens out that I feel it deeper.
Saying goodbye to Mozambique is definitely harder than any of the other places we have been. Not only has it been amazing, but we are now past the halfway mark. And I find myself wishing on twinkling stars for the first time in years that he will fall in love with me … the way that I have with him.
“She’s okay, right?” I ask Ranger as we walk the path from the hotel I booked that has tours of Iguazu Falls.
He only looks at me from out of the corner of his eye.
“I knew it. She’s getting low, isn’t she?”
“Not sure if it’s that, or she’s tired.” He gives my hand a squeeze then drops it immediately and continues. “Last time, Patrick or I were carrying her to bed by the end of the day, and that’s not the case now.”
“Then I want this to end. Her being well is a hell of a lot more important—”
“Than you ticking off your list?”
I nod. “Yes.”
“No.”
“What?” I laugh.
“You still have Machu Picchu. And you told your old man you wanted to swim in the Ik Kil Cento in Mexico, too—”
“And she and I can do that any time in the future. Hell, we all can.”
“You think we’re all just gonna get together every, like, seven years, like it’s some itch, and travel the world together?” He chuckles.
Ouch. “I mean, why not?”
“Because in a year, or seven years, I’m sure all of our lives will be different.”
“Well, of course, but that doesn’t mean we can’t all be friends and get together. And once friends, always friends, you know?”
“Your heart’s a beautiful thing, Brisa. You are beautiful and smart and caring. But friends come and go. You’re so lucky that you have the people you do to fill the family and friends roles.”
My heart begins to beat at a rhythm I’m not accustomed to. It hurts. It aches. It’s … ending. I feel it. I feel his doing the same.
I shake
my head as if it will relinquish the reality of the situating, tear it from the roots that I planted when I told him this was just sex. It was never just sex.
I grasp for the only thing I can—hope.
“Ranger, you’re part of that now, too. Forever Steel and—”
“Stop,” he says firmly, turning his beautiful eyes from me and looking in front of us. “Look ahead of you.”
When I turn and look at the sight before me, I freeze.
Never in my life have I seen anything so spectacular, and yet so very, very … sad.
I’m sure that, one day, they had hearts that they had wished didn’t feel, so they turned to stone. And now water rushes over their faces, so grand, so strong, yet they feel … they feel … everything still. They’re weeping, crying, sobbing, and there isn’t anything they can do, because they’re stuck in a place they will never leave.
I’m not sure they would move on if they even could …
Argentina
Plus Two
Ranger
Watching her stand in a place that has been important enough for her to add to the list of beautiful places she wanted to visit before she entered college, tears falling like a torrential downpour, hurts like hell. Knowing the tears are, in part, caused by me, hurts far more than any physical pain I have ever endured, and I’m no stranger to pain.
But what hurts the worst is seeing her force a smile as she wipes them away when Tris hugs her and she asks, “Have you ever seen anything so tragically beautiful?”
Tris shakes her head then nods and hugs her. “Yeah, yeah, I sure have.”
After they hug for a moment, Brisa steps back and takes her hands. “You ready to get on with your new life?”
“I am. Are you?”
“Yes. Back to Europe we go.”
After we return to the resort, I ask Tris if I could have a minute.
She kisses Matteo on the cheek. “I’ll be in soon.”