by CD Reiss
“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.
“Greysen.” 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 that 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.”
Damon hadn’t seemed threatening until that moment.
“How will you stop it?”
“I can keep him from coming back.”
“What if you fail?”
“He already warned you. He’s going to kill you.”
He wouldn’t. If he’d released Damon to protect me, then something inside him didn’t want to hurt me. But the man in our living room wouldn’t be convinced. His whole existence depended on believing I was in danger from Caden.
“I’ll take the room across the hall from ours,” he said, putting his hand on my cheek. I pulled away. “Tomorrow, we can both sleep in. You can use it.”
* * *
In the space under the bedroom door, the light from the bedroom across the hall went out. He’d waited for me to turn my lights out first, but he had no way of knowing if I was sleeping, and he had to realize how impossible that was. I crouched at the head of the bed and listened to the night sounds of the city. People passing by, talking. Cars inching toward Amsterdam Avenue in the constant traffic that was Manhattan.
I had to talk to someone.
I couldn’t do this myself.
I loved him, and turning him into a patient rankled that love. He was mine. We’d made promises. Vows. We were a unit. His secrets were sacrosanct.
Me.
Caden.
And now, a third uninvited person who held the same love in the same heart.
I loved him. I loved what we had together. I had to be the one to get it back.
Standing at the window in an army T-shirt and underwear, lost in thought, I watched New Yorkers do what they did best. Cross in the middle of the street, barely looking both ways as if they were protected by an invisible force field.
What if he tried again to kill me?
He couldn’t. Not if I didn’t give him the opportunity. I was the one who had spent a decade in military training. He was a surgeon. A well-built surgeon with a military fitness regimen but still just a doctor. I could take him in a fight as long as I was mentally prepared.
Jenn would know what to do, but she’d tell me to get out of the house. I wasn’t giving up that easily. Not on my marriage. Not on Caden.
I fooled myself into thinking there was some quick solution that would bring us back to the way it had been. Some trick I could implement and boom, life would go back to normal. We’d be back on track in no time. But if I went through channels, brought in other people, spent weeks on an official diagnosis, there would be no going back.
Even as I convinced myself that was possible, I knew it wasn’t. I was con man and mark. Thief and victim. A willing dupe in my own web of lies.
A yellow taxi narrowly missed a canoodling couple
, honking and getting flipped the bird in response. The shock of the noise opened my defenses enough to let in a thought I’d been holding back.
I wanted Damon. I wanted his touch. I wanted him to stay long enough to convince me he was my husband by another name. Which he was. At least as much as the detached monster who fucked like an animal.
One more day, then he was on call Sunday. If they called him in, I’d block the door, and by Monday, I’d know if he could do his job safely.
I’d let it go one more day, then decide.
Chapter Thirty-Four
DAMON
Caden put up a fight at dawn, trying to wrestle past the room he’d given me, but I got away. All I had to do—and this should have been obvious from the start—was bring to mind Greysen motionless on the couch while he spurted cum down his leg.
When I showered, I couldn’t help but feel the firmness of this body I’d taken. It wasn’t just the realness that fascinated me, but the way the desires I’d felt through Caden didn’t float free but were connected to the body. Hunger was in the stomach. Thirst was in the mouth. Wakefulness in the mind. Anxiety in the chest. Lust was deep in the balls.
Last night, I’d smelled how much she wanted me. The apples he’d always tasted on her skin went fermented with arousal, soured by hormones and the wetness I sensed between her legs. When I’d touched her ankle, her nipples had hardened under the tank top, and my tongue had gotten fat in my mouth with the need to suck them.
Stroking the erection that appeared, I let out a relieved breath. I could finally make love to her. Taste her for myself. Enter her slowly. Savor her groans. Guide her to orgasm after orgasm. Keep her safe while I came inside her.
The release weakened my knees. I knew the mind emptied with his orgasms, but the physical sensation was more than I expected. It had direction. Forwardness. It was a barrier shattered with a battering ram.
“Wow,” I said, jerking out the last drops. Doing this inside her would be more than pleasurable. More than a release. It would be a culmination.
As I dried off by the bed, I heard her leave her room. I waited for her to knock. Instead, the stairs creaked when she walked down them.
I knew how to do it. I’d watched him love her, felt a facet of what he’d felt, noted her reactions. I could give her so much more than he could—and without pain or control.
The man in the mirror was hers. He’d always done his hair with quick, efficient precision. I ran my fingers through it and went downstairs to convince my wife she was mine.
* * *
Greysen was standing at the counter, a hand on each side of the gurgling coffee maker.
“Good morning,” I said.
“How did you sleep?” She didn’t turn to look at me but reached into the cabinet for two cups.
“Not great.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“I was thinking about how shocking this must be for you.”
“I can handle it.” She poured the coffee. “I’m just worried about you.”
A cup in each hand, she faced me for the first time that morning. She froze for a second, as if seeing me for the first time, then dropped her gaze to the island counter, where she put the cups.
“I’ve never been better,” I said. “Honestly.”
“You’ve never actually been.” She put sugar and a pitcher of cream near my cup and took her own, sipping it black. The dark patches under her eyes were mostly gone.
“Do you have plans today?” I asked.
“A little follow-up work.” Waiting for something, she watched my hand resting on the cup. “Transcribing notes. Prepping for the meeting with the Mt. Sinai board. Should be done by lunch. Your coffee’s getting cold.”
Right. I hovered over the cream and sugar.
Both? Either?
Why couldn’t I remember how I drank my coffee?
Had she set me up?
“Is this how it’s going to be?” I said, taking neither sweetener nor cream.
“How what’s going to be?”
“Testing me? Would Caden wear this belt with these pants? Brush his hair like this? Does he like it light and sweet or black and bitter?”
“Milk, no sugar.” She put her mug to her lips with both hands. “Straight black on deployment.” Her face disappeared behind the tilt of her cup.
I flipped the top off the sugar, dropped a teaspoonful into the black coffee, and replaced the lid with a clack.
“I have an idea,” I said. “Let’s do something fun this afternoon.”
I took a big gulp. It tasted as sweet as spite.
* * *
My strategy was to act sane. I knew that didn’t sound like much of a plan, but she needed to imagine herself with a man who was exactly the same as her husband, but different. Better. For one, I didn’t want to kill her. I wasn’t a simpering child encased in a rock-hard ego.
His phone rang.
No.
I had to stop pretending he still mattered.
My phone rang. It was Danny. I flipped it open slowly, trying to recall my history with him. Nothing came to me.
“Hello,” I said.
“I’m going to be ten minutes late,” he said. “You can warm up.”
Late. He was going to be late. It was Saturday. What did he do on Saturday morning?
Shit.
“I don’t think I can make it,” I said. “I’m taking Greysen out to lunch.”
“Yeah. With me and Shari at the club. We switched it to today. Did you get the email?”
Suddenly, I knew the password. I hadn’t even wondered about it a second earlier. “Where were we meeting again?”
“We’re playing the blue ball at eleven, and the girls are coming for lunch at the club at noon-thirty.”
Blue ball.
Racquetball.
The club. Got it.
“Yes. Right. I’m sorry. It’s been a little busy around here.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yeppers!”
“Yeppers? You sure you’re all right?”
Every word was a damn minefield.
“I have to go. See you there.” I hung up before I had the chance to screw up good-bye.
* * *
Danny’s lateness had given me a chance to both brush up on racquetball rules and remind Greysen she was meeting us for lunch. She knew already. She was a worthy adversary, and she’d be a worthier partner once I convinced her I was permanent.
As far as racquetball went, what my mind didn’t know, my body remembered enough to pass.
“God, you suck today,” Danny said when I missed the final shot of the final match.
“Tired.” I wiped my face with the white towel I’d found in the gym bag.
“Maybe it’s finally getting to you.” He clapped my back as if this was an old joke he shared with my body.
* * *
Lunch was at a round table in the center of the room. Shari had dark hair and brown eyes. She laughed a lot and smiled like a kid on Christmas when Greysen asked to see her ring.
“He picked the perfect cut,” she said.
“It’s gorgeous,” my wife replied. The room was hot, and she’d stripped down to her camisole. Her skin was going to drive me wild.
“When are you getting your wife a rock?” Danny pointed his water glass at me.
“It’s not a priority,” Greysen said before my surprise could register. I didn’t know if she was covering for me or the husband who hadn’t gotten her a ring.
Danny turned to his fiancée. “Apparently they don’t have diamond rings on the front lines, and when they came home on leave for the wedding, they didn’t have time to get to Tiffany.”
Greysen stabbed her lettuce. I couldn’t tell how she felt about it, but I knew how I felt about it.
It was unacceptable.
“That’s interesting.” Shari tucked her hand in her lap. “Hey!” She brightened. “I heard you’re a candidate for the new mental health division the hospital’s putting in?
”
“The Gibson Post-Trauma Mental Health Center,” Greysen recited the long name as if it was a joke, but she was beaming just enough.
I put my arm across the back of her chair. I ran my thumb along the skin between her shoulder blades. Her eyelids fluttered at my touch.
Danny kicked me. “You didn’t tell me.”
“I’m one of two,” Greysen said. “The board has my proposal. We’ll see.”
“I have something planned,” I said to her profile.
She faced me. “Really?”
“To celebrate. I didn’t want to blow it, but it was this afternoon anyway.”
“Well, well,” Danny said with a smile. “You do have a romantic side.”
“I do.” Though my words answered my friend, I said them to my wife.
* * *
“If a diamond ring was important, I’d have one.”
She sat so far against the other side of the cab she was almost out the door. A sheet of plexiglass separated the back seat from the front, where the driver patiently navigated the miseries of Manhattan traffic.
“Maybe it doesn’t matter to you, but it matters to me.”
She held up her hand so I could see the gold band. “This is all that matters.”
I’d spent hours trying to understand what consciousness was and when mine began. I’d had to do it without a single human reference. If this had happened to anyone before, I had no access to them to ask how I should feel or what I should think. I had no way of knowing if I was my own person or another man’s setback. In moments like this, when I had to define the indefinable, I was the loneliest man on the planet.
The traffic on Fifth Avenue was almost sadistic in the accuracy of its obstruction.
“I wish I could marry you in that church right there.” I pointed at St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
She looked, folded hands pressed between her knees. “Why?”
“It’s the richest, most beautiful cathedral in the country.”
“I bet plenty of people who got married in there are divorced by now.”
“Before Caden opened the bag, I could sense some of the things he wanted or knew. He wanted to marry you in that church, but there was a two-year wait list, and he thought he’d lose you if he waited.”