by Reiss, CD
I laughed, running my fingers through her hair, fully hard in under five minutes.
“You wanted to drive?” I asked.
“Yeah.”
There wasn’t enough furniture in this apartment. Or at least not the right furniture. I helped Greyson up and led her to the cheap loveseat. I sat on the edge and pulled her close until her knees were on either side of me, and I leaned back as I let my hands roam her body, finding the crook between her legs.
She stayed my hand. “Don’t.”
She put my palms on her hips, lowered herself onto me. I watched my cock disappear inside her. When I moved my hands to her breasts, she moved them to her hips again.
“You’re getting bossy.”
“No backseat driving.”
I let her set the pace. Let her push against me. Let her move any way she liked. She was unbelievably sexy when she was in charge.
“Fuck,” she grunted, leaning over me. “I can’t.”
“I have all night, baby.”
“I need… something.”
“I can hurt you a hundred ways. Just say the word.”
She thought about it, then sat straight again. “Something else.” She took my right hand and laid it between her breasts. “I’m spinning.” She put my hand on her throat, pressing my thumb and middle finger to opposite sides. “I need a straight line out. Give it to me.”
Her veins pulsed under my hand, and the lump in her throat shifted when she swallowed. The control she offered was so precious that I took a moment before agreeing to it.
“Come on me.” I tightened my hand just a little. “Use me to fuck yourself.”
Her eyes on me, her jaw in the cradle of my hand, she moved again, and I drove a little, moving with her. All my focus was on her reaction, her pleasure, the release of tension from her face.
When her lips opened and her eyelids fluttered, she was back on the edge. I tightened my hand. “Say no while you still can.”
“Yes.”
She groaned under my hand. The orgasm was pushing at the boundaries, looking for a way in.
Tighter.
She went rigid mid-orgasm, shaking uncontrollably. I wrapped my other arm around her to bring her into me, pushing her clit against my body as the last of her air gave out. Her pussy squeezed, pulsing around my shaft, but I couldn’t come. I couldn’t lose control while I had her life in my hands.
When I was sure she’d peaked, I let go, and she pulled in air like a drowning woman, then let out a long vowel sound that told me her body had elongated the orgasm while it dealt with the lack of air and exploded when she breathed again.
She collapsed on me.
“Hey,” I said, pulling her hair away from her face. “Let me look at you.”
She groaned, getting her arms under her with her head still bowed.
I reached past the curtain of hair for her chin. “Hey. Come on. Look at me. I need to see if you’re all right.”
I wanted to check her body, but when she looked at me, it wasn’t her body that needed my attention.
“Greyson?”
She just looked at me, and I wondered what her name was.
Chapter Six
GREYSON
Distant in the darkness, a blue dot appeared, coming faster and faster, revealing its shape.
Speeding toward me, the blue rectangle glowed and shimmered. Under the water, black lines divided lanes.
Diving pools didn’t have lanes, but the one hurtling toward me did.
Black hashes joined the lines, defining themselves into letters, numbers, instructions. The edges of the rectangle curled, and when I hit the surface at an impossible speed, the water was as dry as paper, and I was plunged into darkness so Respite could remember.
* * *
SAN DIEGO
JULY - 1992
I tried to keep my printing tight and clear, but I didn’t feel well. My stomach felt like a dirty washcloth, wrung out and stuffed too high up my rib cage, regurgitating bitter yuck into my dry mouth that toothpaste couldn’t cover. My head had a rock embedded on the left side where my brain should have been.
I saw through a layer of gunk as I tried to copy my driver’s license number onto the blue form. I shook the pen. Copied the first three characters. Blinked gunk away.
Was that a 5 or an S?
“Do you have an idea when you’d like to start?” The recruiter folded her hands over the stack of papers I’d brought. She was white with a gash of red lipstick at the bottom of her face and flat platinum hair tied into a bun. It had the faintest line of brown at the roots.
My purple nail polish was chipped, and I had to tilt my head just so to see her through the fall of hair over my face. I’d dyed it Nuclear Black in the bathroom sink. I liked the idea of a black so black it could wipe out a city. “I get to pick?”
“You test now but… might want to go to college first?”
I went back to the forms. “I’m done.” The pen made a colorless M-shaped furrow in the paper.
“Get married?”
“Not happening.” I shook the pen and made circles in the corner of the page until the ink ran.
“Those are just examples.”
“I can start right away.”
She cleared her throat. “Do you have any idea what you want to do? As a job?”
“Whatever.” I stopped writing. Tapped the pen. Put my nail between my teeth and removed it quickly. I wasn’t supposed to bite my nails. I looked at her to see if she’d noticed, then I realized my answer wasn’t going to fly. “I don’t…” Tap-tap. “I don’t want to hurt anyone. I want to serve. Not kill.”
“There are plenty of ways to try to avoid that, but in the end, you’ll have to serve in the capacity you’re required.”
“I can live with that.”
“You’re probably going to want to cut your hair before you test.”
I flicked my head to get the fall of hair off my eye. “Sure.”
“And if you come in without makeup, that’s fine. Just get it all off.”
She touched the outer corner of her eye, and I mirrored her. A streak of sludge was left on my fingertip.
“Yeah.” I snapped a tissue from the box on her desk. “Okay.”
“Greyson?” Her voice was kind but firm as she tapped my hand. “Don’t worry. We’re going to turn you into a soldier.”
I believed her, and in that belief, I found comfort.
* * *
Fear didn’t keep me still, nor did an inability to leave. I didn’t want to move. I wanted to watch my story play over and over. The phones ringing at the recruitment office. The way the recruiter’s lipstick ended in a crisp line across a bump that crested the boundary of her lip. The tang of alcohol seeping through my skin. I could remember every detail as if I was living it—except the reason I was there.
When I got up to go to the bathroom, it was with a certain resentment of my bodily functions. Caden was gone; I didn’t know for how long. I was supposed to go to work but wouldn’t.
A part of me was crying to get the fuck up, get the fuck out, move it like it mattered, but that part of me wasn’t in charge.
The part of me on an infinite loop of past details was in complete control, and I had no choice but to watch as the story unspooled backward.
* * *
Jake pulled into the strip mall recruiting office and put the car into park. It was hot as hell, and it wasn’t even noon.
“You go quicker if you have everything.” His eyes were red-rimmed, and he smelled of sanitary wipes. “Passport. Driver’s license.”
“I have them.” I pulled my knapsack out from between my knees.
“All your transcripts?”
“Back to third grade.”
“Did you find the immunization records?”
“Jakey, I have everything.”
He looked in the rearview. I didn’t know what for. Maybe he was checking his own face to see if he’d aged in the past six hours. He had. “All right. I�
��ll go talk to Mom and Dad.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know.”
I pulled the latch on the car door. The dashboard beeped. This was it. The moment my life split into the dozens of things I could have done and the one thing I did.
“Thank you,” I said without looking at him. I was looking into my lap, where I could see my raggedy nails half-covered in chipped purple polish. I’d wanted to clean them up but had run out of time.
No. It hadn’t been time.
I’d run out of desire to do anything to make this easier on myself.
“I love you, sis.” Jake laid his hand on the back of my neck and gave me a little shake.
“I love you too.”
“You’re going to be fine.”
“Don’t make me cry, fuckhead.”
He put both hands on the wheel. “Then get out of here.”
I flipped the fall of hair out of my eyes and got out, dragging my knapsack. I closed the door, took three steps to the double glass doors, and…
* * *
“Grey, baby.”
His voice overlaid the hundredth time I walked the strip mall pavement from the car to the recruiting office, skirting a beige wad of gum shaped like a rabbit.
Grey baby grey baby grey baby.
My face tickled when he pulled hair away from it. The screen telling the story flickered, and the details got muddy. They needed my attention. They needed to be memorized and cataloged. But with the flicker of that screen, desire came through. A desire to do things. To move. To lurch forward with big steps toward a goal.
The flicker straightened itself again, and I read every sign, decal, and flyer on the glass doors as if time had slowed down and I’d stopped myself from going in.
“How long has she been like this?”
That was Ronin.
“Twenty-three hundred.”
“What was happening right before?”
Before.
His hands were on my throat, and I was having the longest orgasm of my life. Would he tell Ronin that? Because then he’d know, and I’d know, and everyone would know how to stop the story so I could move and breathe again.
“She slept for a moment.”
Had I? I’d felt awake. Maybe he thought I’d gone black. I could have corrected him. We could have talked about it. But I didn’t want to. Or more accurately, I didn’t want to want to.
Caden: “I’m taking her to the hospital.”
Ronin: “Let us take her. We know what we’re dealing with.”
Caden: “No, you don’t. I’m not interested in protecting you or the people you work for. I’m interested in protecting my wife. Get in the way of that. Just try.”
Ronin: “I’ll get the car.”
Footsteps and a door closing. None of it was as clear as the changing smells and sounds as I walked into the army’s office in a strip mall in San Diego.
“Grey,” Caden said, “I’m going to take this sheet off you and get you dressed. It’s just me here.”
The sheet tickled my torso as it slid down. Cool air on damp skin. His hand on my shoulder to turn me. The touch wasn’t sexual, but it was a flicker in my attention. A place where two universes melted together.
I felt the desire to desire again. It pushed through and grabbed his hand.
“Grey.”
I was too muddled for words, but actions were feasible. I pushed his hand to the place my legs met.
“What’s happening?” he asked.
I kept the pressure on his wrist as a world opened up in the places our bodies touched. Everything was there. The screen sped up, flicked, went slow. Where we were together was where the loop ended.
“I didn’t know if it was the orgasm or the lack of oxygen that changed you. I guess you’re telling me.”
He removed his hand. The recruiting office smelled of coffee and off-gassing. There was a tip-tapping of keyboards and the buzz of overhead lights. A deadbolt slid and clicked. The bed leaned, and Caden’s voice was in my head.
“I want you to know,” he said, running fingertips along my collarbone, breaking the loop, “I know what you’re going through. I think I do. If it’s similar.” His hand circled my right breast, leaving a line of vibrating nerve endings in its wake. “I’m trying to stay calm about it because I can’t help you otherwise. But I have to tell you…” He went down my belly, to the space where my thighs met. “I hate to see you like this. I hate it. I know this is as much a part of you as the woman I married, and I love every fucking piece of you. But I’m afraid we’re being forced to live our lives in pieces.”
With two hands, he opened my legs. I was on fire. Bloated with desire. The insides of my thighs were tender where he stroked, sensitive as new skin. My universe revolved around his touch. Everything else was bathed in a silvery gray that shimmered like a movie screen.
His hand stopped. There was a fly in the recruiting office. I heard it buzzing like a circular saw.
“I need you to say yes,” he said. “I can’t do this without that.”
My will was tied up in my backward story, but another will needed to speak, and it would not be denied.
“Don’t…”
He stopped. That wasn’t what I wanted.
“—ess.” I couldn’t make the Y. I could only hope I was clear enough.
Caden didn’t say anything. I wondered for a moment if he’d heard me, then the bed shifted with him. His hands ran the length of my body and back again, pausing to toy with my hard nipples. He opened my legs all the way, leaving me exposed, unable to resist or comply. A doll in his hands as he stroked and kissed inside my thighs before bending my knees over his shoulders.
Cool fingers slid inside me, and his thumb rubbed against my clit. I screamed for more, harder, faster, but nothing came out. I was trapped into submission by my own fugue.
“I can tell you like it,” he said. “Your tits are standing on end, and you’re getting wetter.”
All that was true and more. The story had been mixed into the pleasure between my legs, and my will found a place to speak through. “Yes.”
Fingers gone, I heard his belt. His button. A zipper. The rustle of clothing and the creak of the bed, and he bent over my folded body.
“I can’t wait to hear your voice again,” he whispered in my ear.
The smooth head of his cock ran along my seam, then into me, stretching me open, pushing deep against me until his body pressed my clit and jerked side to side. Warmth spread like a stain into me. My knees were pressed against my chest as he fucked me.
As the pleasure grew, so did my will. It pushed through the screen in the shape of a woman trying to run through a latex wall.
“Come on, baby,” he said. “Give it to me.”
The rubbery wall broke at the sharpest points. Knuckles. Knee. Nose. Yielding to the force of the oncoming climax, giving way with tiny rips that grew around the contours of my body, breaking as I came through and living inside a pleasure whose gratifications were so satisfying, so all-consuming, so temporary.
The screen was in tatters.
I was out.
* * *
Caden sat on the edge of the bed, rumpled but clothed.
“What do you remember?” he asked as I got dressed.
I didn’t care. Remembering was the past, and I was in the future, living my next second, not my last. But where was I going? What was my future? “Nothing.”
“Noth—?”
“Like I said…” I pulled my button-front shirt over my head. Easier than fastening and unfastening a bunch of—
“If you’d stop moving for a second, you might.”
“I’m hungry.” I jammed my heel into a shoe. “I can’t think.”
“It’s been three days since you—”
“Let me eat first.” Second shoe.
“Ronin’s bringing the car. I want—”
“There’s an American place a few blocks away.”
I opened the door. The wor
ld. The earth. Huge. Massive. Accessible through a doorway, sucking me into the curve of infinity. I could walk straight forever and wind up exactly where I’d started… but only if I got out.
He stood. “I’ll walk with—”
“You can catch up.”
“Can you let me finish a sentence?”
Sure. He could finish a sentence. Outside.
* * *
The sun was a diffuse disk behind a thin veil of flying sand and heat. A convoy rolled by at half a mile a fucking hour. Five tanks and a bunch of Humvees draped in armed men. They waved. Some nodded. Two jumped off and kept us from crossing the street.
“You need to get out of the way,” I said. “You’re going so slow I can make it between.”
“Sorry, ma’am.”
I wanted to slap the mirrored sunglasses off his fucking face, but Caden had my right arm in a vise, and he growled in my ear, “Calm the fuck down.”
“I can’t.”
“Listen to me. Just pay attention to my voice. You’ve been in a fugue since last night. Ever since the last time I fucked you. Do you remember?”
The sex. I’d ridden him to orgasm. Could I walk down the block and go around this snail parade? No. They were standing at each intersection to prevent exactly that.
“Do you remember?” he asked again.
“I remember.”
“What happened after that?”
If I wanted to think about it, I’d be thinking about it. I swung my gaze away from the troops at the corner to his eyes. The blue was not comforting. It was a reminder of everything that was broken.
“Please.” I didn’t know what I was pleading for.
“After that. What happened?”
I swallowed, paying attention to the way my throat opened and contracted. Sand bit my eyes. I narrowed them, bringing my husband into greater focus.
“I was enlisting. I remembered that day. It was with Jake, and I’m sure it’s because he’s on my mind. But it feels bad. I don’t know how else to explain it.” Bouncing, I looked up and down the block. Still trapped for the next few minutes. “It was the shot. The BiCam. Not a placebo, Caden. Not a placebo. I don’t know what effect it would have had on you. Jesus, I want to strangle someone for trying to do this to you. It’s awful. So awful. This isn’t worth it. Nothing’s worth it.”