Cutting Edge_The Edge_Prequel

by CD Reiss

  “You,” I gasped.

  “You’re going to come.” He sped up.

  I was going to come, but I couldn’t get my thoughts together enough to tell him what he already knew.

  “Say my name,” he demanded.

  “Caden.”

  “Every time.”

  “Caden.”

  “When you think of fucking.”

  “Caden, I’m…”

  The orgasm ripped through me like a mortar attack, with a whistle in the air before an earth-shaking explosion that knocked me off my feet. He held me up through it, grunting like an animal as he filled me.

  “Greyson,” he uttered from deep in his chest. “You…” He thrust twice more before planting his lips on the back of my neck.

  I twisted around to look at him. “You too.”

  We kissed, and he slipped out, leaving raw soreness and satisfaction behind.

  “We have three minutes,” I said.

  “Three and a half.” Kissing me quickly on the cheek, he stood straight and slapped my ass with a crack. “Get moving, soldier.”

  * * *

  Caden carried my duffel to the tarmac even after I insisted I was perfectly capable.

  “There’s no chivalry in the army,” I hissed as he took it from me. “That would ruin everything.”

  “I’m a civilian in a uniform.” He hitched the duffel strap up. “Deal with it.”

  The Chinook’s rotors were getting started.

  “God, I hate these things,” I said as we walked toward it.

  “Yeah.” He was agreeing, but he was also staring straight at the open door where Ronin waited, which explained the single-word answer.

  “I’m sore,” I said as reassurance, but my words were lost in the din of helicopter blades.

  Caden stopped short and dropped the duffel. I reached down to pick it up, but he put his hand on my shoulder.

  “What?” I shouted. “It’s not too heavy.”

  “Marry me.”

  “What?” I must have misheard in the thupping noise.

  “Marry me, Greyson. Be my wife.”

  “Are you serious?” I asked, knowing full well he was dead serious.

  “You said it was a unicorn assignment. You said you never heard of any one you could get out of. Well, maybe if that’s the case, there’s a reason for that. Maybe you shouldn’t go.”

  I was thrown. We were supposed to kiss before I got on the helicopter and write letters and then break up.

  “I can’t marry you to get out of going.”

  “Marry me because you want to. 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!”

  His face fell. I’d spoken too soon, but it was loud and the Phrog was waiting.

  “Maybe!” Trying to make it better was making it worse. I wanted him, but he’d caught me off guard. “But you can’t stay.” My cap almost blew off. I had to hold it on.

  “I will.” The clipped demand of his voice cut through the wall of noise. “They’re begging me to 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.” I glanced at the helicopter.

  It was ready. Ronin was waiting. The pilots were waiting.

  “Marry me.”

  My life was waiting. But this beautiful man was waiting for me too. He was resilient and fragile, made of rock and flesh, with a strength that lunged forward only to tear him apart.

  “You can’t redeploy,” I insisted. “That’s off the table.”

  “Marry me, and I’ll do whatever you want.”

  Marry him. What would I have to give up? What would I gain?

  This man with strands of hair trilling in the wind and his powerful voice demanding more from me than I’d thought to give. He held me there, in his gaze, nailing my feet to the ground until I answered.

  I barely knew him except by his loyalty, his passion, his vulnerability, his honesty.

  I knew nothing of his life, his habits, his choices.

  “Marry me. Don’t go with him.”

  “Is this about Ronin?”

  “No! I just… I have a feeling. A bad feeling about you going up there.”

  “You’re lying.”

  My accusation rang more false than his denial. He wasn’t lying. If his demand was about Ronin, he would have said it, and if he didn’t have a feeling, that would be the last thing he’d claim. I hadn’t known him that long, but I knew him that well.

  “I love you, Greyson.” He raised his voice as much as he had to and no more. Just enough to sound serious and straightforward. “Stay here with your unit. Marry me. I love you.”

  I barely knew myself or what I wanted from a man.

  What was I supposed to say?

  “Major!” The pilot’s voice lifted over the wind.

  He’d be here in a moment to hurry me away from Caden, who pinned me in place with his eyes. I’d be torn apart between the two.

  His lips made the shape of words marry me without engaging a voice that wouldn’t be heard over the sound of the Universe he didn’t believe in.

  Did I believe?

  With a glance at the pilot and back to Caden’s eyes, the color shaded by the brim of his cap, I answered.

  Epilogue

  What happened next wasn’t a fairy tale. We didn’t connect the dots in number order until we could see the outline of something identifiable. We made something messy, uncomfortable, distorted beyond recognition.

  It was the sinking feeling you got when you feared you’d made a mistake.

  It was the strength that came from knowing you only had one shot at happiness and you’d taken it.

  It was looking at the face of the person who’d broken down your defenses, whom you’d shown your soft belly to, and seeing a stranger.

  His proposal was the start of something I’d never expected, never wanted, never could have predicted.

  After that, everything went sideways.

  * * *

  Click to get Book One - Rough Edge

  The Edge Series is four books.

  Rough Edge | On The Edge | Broken Edge | Over the Edge

  A few chapters of Rough Edge follow.

  Text cdreiss to 77948 to get a message when I release something new.

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  Rough Edge

  A Few Chapters

  Rough Edge

  CD Reiss

  The Edge - Book One

  ISBN: 9781718830844

  © 2018 Flip City Media Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  If any person or event in this book seems too real to be true, it’s luck, happy coincidence, or wish-fulfillment on the reader’s part.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE: I did research. A ton of it. But I also make stuff up for a living.

  There are a thousand ways to break something and more than one method of repair. Institutions we think we know from experience have engaged thousands of others in their own, equally valid experiences. What you assume is an error may be something else entirely. Or I might have fucked up.

  You can poke me with corrections on any number of subjects and if I can fix an error, I will. I’m wrong a lot.

  Also, liberties were taken.

  Contents

  Part I

  Part II

  Rough Edge

  Also by CD Reiss

  Part One

  HOMECOMING

  Chapter One

  GREYSON

  NEW YORK CITY

  NOVEMBER - 2006

  He was a son of a bitch, a cold-hearted compartmentalizer with a he
art of solid stone. His hands were instruments of brutal precision, and his cock was a means of punishment.

  He wasn’t the man I’d married, but he was my husband.

  I couldn’t see him, even though he was kneeling between my legs. My jaw was pushed back so far, I could only see out the window next to the bed. Two fingers were jammed in my mouth. His other hand was inside my knee, pressing it to the mattress until my legs were open as far as they could go.

  “Suck,” he commanded with a voice drained of emotion. A flat order, like “sit” or “heel.”

  I curved my lips around the fingers and sucked on them. They tasted of rubbing alcohol and pussy.

  “Harder.”

  I sucked harder and he pushed my jaw up, restraining me with my position. He ran his other hand from my knee to the inside of my thigh. When he got to the fleshiest part, he tightened his grip until pain blossomed under his fingers and grew outward, lacing my arousal with its companion—pain.

  When he let go, I whimpered around his fingers, and he responded by pushing them deeper down my throat. As he leaned over me, I felt his rod of an erection where I was wet.

  He whispered into my cheek, “Take them. All the way.” I opened my throat and he pushed his fingers down. “Beg for it.”

  I couldn’t speak with his fingers in my mouth. I couldn’t even breathe.

  “You’re not begging.” His fingers were down to the webs and my body contracted around them for air. He pulled them out. “Beg.”

  “Fuck me. Please fuck me.”

  “What?” With his spit-soaked hand, he reached between my legs and pinched my swollen clit.

  “Put your cock in me. Fuck me hard. Take what you want. Please. Please.” The last word came as a whisper.

  He got on his knees, magnificent, cut like a god from jaw to abs to the hard heat of his thighs. One hand on my sternum to hold me still, the other guiding his cock between my legs. I was so wet, open like a hungry flower, still whispering please please please as he leaned his weight on my chest and drove into me. He was long and thick. Without prep, he could hurt me, and he did.

  I knew when to look for the change. I knew how to see him recover himself in the violence. In the moment he drove through me so hard he cracked, went supple, and became my husband again.

  The first orgasm came on the third thrust and lasted until he joined me in heaven.

  * * *

  GREYSON

  FORT BRAGG

  AUGUST - 1992

  Basic training was a cakewalk. Last course. Blue group did belly robber, high step over, low wire, weaver, and island hopper. Halfway through, I fell fifteen feet off the confidence climb. I thought I’d wiped out for good with my full weight on my right wrist and the rest of the blue group’s boots smacking the mud all around me.

  “Get up, you little fucking shit!”

  Ronin.

  That was Ronin yelling, and Ronin grabbing me under the arms to throw me toward the next obstacle.

  “Move it!” He pushed me. “I’m staying behind you, so if you go pussy, you’re answering to me!”

  I tucked my wrist under my breasts, dropped to my knees and crawled under the low wire. He was behind me, shouting a litany of encouragements and insults. I climbed the wall with one hand and my teeth and stumbled over the line in the middle of the pack, aching, bruised, tears streaking the mud on my face. Ronin was at attention behind me.

  “That doesn’t look like attention, Frazier!” Sergeant Bell shouted.

  I put my right arm to my side and straightened my wrist. Pain shot through to my shoulder, but still, I stood at attention. Bell didn’t seem satisfied.

  “You’re up shit creek now, Private One More.”

  “Fuck you, Ronin.”

  Bell stormed to me, hands clasped behind his back, nearly crashing into Rodrigo, who was trying to get into the line. Rodrigo buckled and found his space. Bell was not deterred. I put my eyes at attention and tried to tamp down the heavy breaths. Everything hurt. I felt as if I’d flung myself out of a moving car, but I stood still.

  When Bell got uncomfortably close, I expected him to shout, but he murmured two words so low, only I could hear them.

  “Stop smiling.”

  Chapter Two

  Greyson - september, 2006

  The sky in Iraq was the bluest blue I’d ever seen. It had a flat depth, as if thin layers of glass, each a slightly different shade, were stacked together. Sometimes I’d dream about that sky. Either I’d be floating in it, blue everywhere, above and below, at each side and pressure point, squeezing the breath out of me, or I’d be falling from it, from blue into blue, no Earth barreling into greater and greater detail. Just a single direction in the never-ending cerulean sky.

  Caden and I had been separated by an ocean and a war for ten months. We’d married while I was on leave and spoke when our schedules matched and the wind blew the wi-fi signal in the right direction. I thought I hadn’t known him long enough to miss him, but I did.

  Painfully. Tenderly. Thoroughly. Our separation stretched the bond between us to a thin, translucent strand, but did not break it.

  Caden’s eyes had the color and layered depth of the Iraqi sky.

  When I missed him, I looked up. When I wrapped his T-shirt around my neck, my dreams of the blue sky lost their nightmarish edge, and the bond became a little less taut.

  Jenn and I flew to New York in our uniforms. She remained on active duty and had a job waiting at the VA Hospital in Newark. I had a husband and no job.

  “You want to put on some makeup or something?” she asked.

  “Why? You afraid they’re all looking at me?”

  The crew had moved us to first class. I craned my neck to see a jowly businessman sleeping with his mouth open. A mid-level rap star with cornrows and a name I couldn’t recall was reading a book to his daughter, and two middle-aged women chatted in the row across. No one was giving my lashes the side-eye.

  “Hell, no. But maybe you want to look nice for your husband?” She rooted around a quilted pink bag and found a black stick. “Here. Lip gloss.”

  “It’s only going to wind up on his dick.”

  She burst out laughing and replaced the lip gloss with mascara. “Here. Doll it up just a little. You’re a civilian now.”

  I took the mascara, and she handed me a compact with a mirror. I flipped it open and looked at myself in circular sections.

  I was a civilian now.

  I had no idea how to be that.

  * * *

  As the only girl in a military family, enlisting wasn’t encouraged. It wasn’t unexpected either. It made them proud. And disappointed. And worried. A mixed bag of emotions that probably had nothing to do with either parent and everything with how I felt at every time I wondered what they thought.

  I would have stayed in the army my entire life, but Caden happened, and he saw the army as his duty to the country. A debt to pay, not a way of life.

  At the gate, a little girl of about six ran up and gave Jenn and me flowers. “Thank you for your service,” she said.

  This wasn’t uncommon. I’d learned people were in awe of my career choice and the risks it involved.

  I kneeled and took the flowers. “Thank you for the flowers. And thank you for appreciating us. That means a lot.”

  Suddenly shy, she curtsied and ran away to her mother, who waved at me. I gave her a thumbs-up.

  “Is it wrong to wish she was a single, six foot-tall black man with a nice bank account?” Jenn asked quietly, sniffing the flowers.

  “Her mother might be a little surprised.”

  Jenn chuckled and pointed at the sign above. “Baggage claim, this way.”

  We didn’t get two steps before I saw Caden waiting for me. He had flowers tied with stars and stripes printed on the ribbon, a grey suit, and smile that told me he saw me the way I saw him—with a certain amount of surprise at the easy familiarity, and another bit of gratitude at the fulfilled expectations. It was as if we were
seeing each other for the first time, and coming back to something very familiar.

  I dropped my bag and ran into his arms. We clung to each other, connected in a kiss that held nothing back. Cocooned, shielded by love and commitment, the airport terminal fell behind the wall of our attention to the kiss.

  He jerked me away with a sucking sound and a drawn breath, but kept his nose astride mine. “Welcome to New York, Major.”

  That was when I heard the applause.

  “Are we making a spectacle of ourselves?” I let my body relax away from his.

  “I fucking love you so much, I don’t even care.”

  I looked at the people surrounding us. I was in camo and he had a flag ribbon on the flowers. We were indeed making a spectacle of ourselves.

  Jenn dropped my bag at my feet. “That was so sweet I almost clapped.”

  Caden took it before I could. “Thank you for not.”

  The crowd dispersed, and we headed out of baggage claim without further incident.

  * * *

  “What do you want to see first?” Caden asked after we dropped Jenn off at her parents’ brownstone in Fort Greene. His wrist was draped over the steering wheel of his Mercedes. The band of his expensive watch caught glints of the sun. The seats were soft black leather. There was no dust or sand on the carpets, and none of the upholstery was torn.

  “The inside of my eyelids.”

  “Come on, Major. Push on.” He squeezed my knee and kissed me at the red light. “You’ll sleep when you’re dead.”

  I put my hand over his, and he stroked my thumb. “Were your eyes always this blue?”

  “Probably.”

  They looked bluer against the New York sky, which was fluffed with late summer clouds. I sat back and looked out the window. Maybe tomorrow I’d see the color I’d fall through.