by Zoe Dawson
She sat down on the bench, fingering the lace, thinking about him picking them out. He had to have gone to a lingerie store to get them. That big man amongst all the pretty satin, silk, and lace. He probably hadn’t been at all embarrassed about picking out women’s underwear. She just got that sense about him. She suspected that he figured out her size by having his hands on her ass as he thrust into her, sending awareness tumbling her gut over and over again.
That shiver that had begun at the airport when she’d met him and got the strangest urge to tie him up increased tenfold until she was fighting off the need to touch herself.
She got up and opened her locker and tucked the thong inside. She had no idea how this trust building thing would go, but however it did go, he was off to a fine start.
She headed to the mess after that and got herself something to eat. She had another class in an hour, then a shift with the swim locker.
The next day, unable to help herself, she looked around the busy Mess Hall to see if he was there. Sure enough, he was sitting alone, eating. His body language told her he was either consciously or subconsciously isolating himself, on guard, like he didn’t want anyone to approach him.
Made total sense to her. He was consumed with what had happened to him, and there were probably many triggers that would bring back the trauma. She was wondering how he was functioning at all.
Unable to help herself, she walked over to him and slid her tray onto the table across from him. He looked up, his expression closed until he saw that it was her. His jaw clenched, and he asked, “Are you stalking me?”
“Yes,” she said as she settled on the bench.
Lo and behold, she got another smile. It was smaller than what she had been able to get out of him while they’d been running. She could also see he wanted to know her reaction regarding the underwear, so she deliberately avoided talking about it. Let him stew and ask about it. Bringing it up would bring up more conversation that could only benefit him.
Instead, she had more strategic questions of her own. “Why are you guarding yourself so hard?”
“I’m not,” he said, his eyes snapping, immediately going into defensive mode.
“Oh, you totally are. Why?”
He looked down at his meal and toyed with his food. “I get certain reactions if I’m not vigilant.”
“Reactions? Like what.”
He huffed a breath and jerked up from the table. Without a word, he left her and strode across the Mess, dumped his uneaten food in the trash, sent his tray crashing into the others, and exited the dining hall.
Okay, that was a loaded one. Had to have something to do with being socially unacceptable. He had no idea how much personal power he had. How much strength. She would show him that, too.
He might not realize it, but he was using that power to keep himself in check. Take each day as it came. He was completely demoralized by getting kicked off the teams. There was something fundamental going on there, too. She ached to get to the meat of that issue as well, but at this point, she wanted to see his reactions when she asked him something hard. Building trust was a bitch, but without it she couldn’t move forward with him.
He was scared as hell. That flash of anger was masking his fear and, she was sure, his disgust. Until he got everything out, that poison that Natasha had fed him would kill him slowly. It had to be eradicated.
She really needed to know about that psycho bitch as well. She wanted to know what she had done to him, what she had specifically said to him. Had she used force, coercion, drugs, manipulation to get him to reveal the information she’d used to hurt him so deeply? It was a core injury, a moral injury that was at the root of this. She wasn’t going to pull any punches to get him to open up.
When he sat down abruptly, she let herself rejoice just a bit. She hadn’t seen him come back in, but she was glad that he had.
His hands were clenched on the table, and she ached to touch him, but he wasn’t ready to accept that, and this was much too public a place for them to engage in any body trust. She settled for picking up the apple on her tray and holding it out to him. It required him to open at least one of his hands and accept it. Relieve some of that tension.
“What do your parents do?” he asked, and she could barely contain her excitement at how hard he was trying.
A lump formed in Charlie’s throat. She never talked about her parents. It was just too damn hard. But she’d promised this man she would build trust with him, and at the first moment when he reached out, she couldn’t balk. She set her hands in her lap because remembering her father made her ache with such a terrible pain, she almost couldn’t breathe.
“My dad owned a multinational pharmaceutical company. He was an M.D. and started it later in his life. He wanted to make a difference in people’s lives, and he had so many programs and ways to try to make drugs available to the people who really needed them.”
“He doesn’t own the company anymore? He retired?”
“Something like that.”
“And your mom?”
She closed her eyes, and she could almost smell the beautiful, clean scent of her perfume, see the understated way she always looked so put together, the way she’d laughed and played with her and her sister. Her mother had been a rock, supported her father through every damn thing he’d wanted to do. She’d been there for him in medical school, during his residency, through the company’s initial development, and for the huge success afterward. She fought back the tears, but the joy her mother had possessed shot through and hit her heart like a battering ram, and some of her armor loosened.
“A stay-at-home mom. She raised us, and that was more than enough fulfillment for her. She planned the meals, supported my dad, and was there in every way for my sister and me.”
“Sounds like my mom.”
She could hear the love and affection in his voice. He was making more connections to his childhood. “Do you have a picture of her?”
With a sheepish half-smile, he pulled out his wallet and opened it. She took the leather warm from his body. The heat of it absorbed through her skin, running through her like wildfire. She looked down into a beautiful smiling face. It was clear where he got his looks. He was a male version of her. The same expressive eyes, the same bone structure. Where hers was delicate, his was strong, her lips finely formed, his full and thick. And that smile of hers was as bright and stunning as Blue’s.
She felt that loosened armor slip a little.
“Wow, you look just like her.”
She didn’t want to let go of his mom or the warmth of her smile. It made her hurt so much for her own lost mom and how she had been the last to go, pleading with Charlie to survive, to live, to fulfill all her dreams and never forget them.
Her chest filled, and her throat clutched, the memory of those words burning her brain. She had done that, moved forward, but she had, by necessity, relegated her parents to a part of her heart that she had closed off. She hadn’t remembered them; she had closed them out along with the memory of how they had so courageously died.
She thrust out the wallet, her throat so tight, she wasn’t sure she could get anything out of it, but she rose, glancing at her watch. “Oh, God. I’ve got to go. What time do you want to come over tonight, so we can talk some more?”
“Talk? That’s it, no…um…tying?”
“No, we won’t be doing that for a while. Relax.”
Her eyes were burning, and she needed to run. “What time?”
“Six. I’ll bring dinner.”
“All right.” She bolted because she couldn’t handle the crack of the door that she had opened on her family and the memories that flooded her as she took care of her uneaten food and stacked her tray. As soon as she stepped out of the Mess Hall, she bolted into the alley next to it and leaned against the wall.
Holding back the tears, she worked hard to handle the breaching of her armor, the opening of the flood gates of all that she had buried in the past. She might be
helping him to get back to what he had lost, but he was giving her what she needed, too.
What was she thinking? Of course, he would ask about her life and her family. She just wasn’t at a place where she could let go and tell him everything. She pushed off the wall to go, but her name on his lips stopped her in her tracks.
“Charlie.” His voice was so close to her ear, the warmth of his body at her back. She swallowed her pain and her memories and turned. Damn, he was so close. The scent of him screwed with her system so bad, she just stared up into those aching blue eyes.
His expression changed when he saw her face. With a slow, gentle movement, he brushed the backs of his fingertips against her cheek.
She got lost in his eyes, a tumbling, pull-the-rug-out-from-under-her sensation, and then it was as if she were freefalling into open space, one that was warm and comforting. He leaned in and said, “When I kissed you for the first time, I thought you were someone else. That wasn’t exactly a good way to get acquainted. Let me try that again stone-cold sober because, damn me, I can’t think of what I have to do next today until I see what this is like.”
All she could manage was a hard breath. Without any protest from her on the subject, she lifted her chin, offering her mouth like a sacrifice. His full lips were so tantalizing.
Then they were pressed against hers and she realized that the kiss he’d given “Elena” had been more innocent, as if he was taken by her purity, but this kiss was carnal from the first touch, filled with white-hot heat and yet softness beyond belief. There was shock and awe and a melting she’d never felt in her life. He wasn’t kissing his dead girlfriend. He was kissing her.
She could only compare this…this amazing kiss to the ones she’d shared with Sam. They seemed almost chaste compared to the way her body responded to Blue…to Ocean. Saying his name only made her sink deeper into his kiss as she wrapped her arms around his neck, trying to get as close to him as she could, pressing her body against him. This…her breath suspended in her chest…this was passion. This was what she was looking for in her relationship with Sam. All of a sudden, vulnerability wasn’t just about telling him things about her family and her own trauma, vulnerability was all about opening herself up to him as a man, intimacy that would mean something.
Oh dammit, she was getting herself into some major trouble here and they had only begun.
7
He wasn’t sure what the hell he was doing, but damn if she hadn’t already gotten inside his head. Damn if she hadn’t made him think about his childhood and how wonderful it had been. How much he’d loved surfing. For just a little bit of time, it seemed as if the darkness had lifted, and he was feeling the weight of it lessen just a bit.
Jesus, her mouth was incredible. He was pissed that he had treated her so poorly the night he’d kissed her and embraced her soft, wet body against his. He’d been acting out of inebriation and guilt, but she didn’t deserve being treated like that.
Then she’d just taken him into her arms and given him the comfort that Elena surely would have. She’d listened to his gut-wrenching confessions and hadn’t judged him at all. She insisted on trust, and that was not only hard, but scary.
Then the next morning, he had been that ravenous beast. Taking her like that was all about him straight up fucking her. God, he needed it, and she’d wanted it.
She stirred something in him that was primal, possessive and beyond his control. She set her hand against his chest, and he tolerated her touch because it was so comforting and stirring at the same time.
The kiss continued, and he reached out and went to cup her face, but her hair brushed against his wrist and he gasped and pulled back, everything shooting through him like the adrenaline that drop-loaded into his system.
Natasha’s face, her smug, triumphant smile at the way he urged her to fuck him. His bound hands that were as ineffectual as his pleading, caught up in the powerful drugs that she had given him. All he could hear was his pitiful, weak begging.
“Breathe,” Charlie whispered close to his ear. “Take a big breath now. Like you’ve just cleared the surface and are starved for air. What you’re seeing, what you’re feeling was in your past. You’re here with me, Ocean. You’re safe here with me.”
He doubled over, sweat slicking his body as he struggled with the overwhelming fear of that moment when he realized that he had fragmented completely. That he would tell her anything if she would let him come. The guilt twisted inside him, making him wonder if he had fucked over Speed. That she had manipulated him to her own sadistic end so that she could murder one of them to hit him where it hurt the worst.
“Breathe, baby Blue. Come on,” she said softly.
He dragged in air and then leaned his head and back against the wall, his groin on fire, his dick so hard it strained against his underwear and pants. His chest heaved, his face contorted in disgust as revulsion swept through him that his reaction to these thoughts made him hard, as if he was conditioned by Natasha to respond this way, reaching out from beyond the grave to continue to torture him.
“Don’t let her have the power. She doesn’t have it, Blue. It’s yours and always has been. You’ve just lost touch with it. Claim what is yours. The only thing that is ultimately real about your journey is the step that you are taking at this moment. That's all there ever is.”
The wisdom of what she had said reverberated through him, and he gritted his teeth as the memory and the terror flowed over him. He made a soft sound and slipped to his knees, the effort of staving off the living nightmare taking everything he had. The truth of her words sent a fission of white light into his brain, and he wanted to follow it, to bathe in it, but the darkness of what Natasha had done to him eclipsed the light.
He sensed her kneeling beside him, and the warmth of Charlie’s presence cascaded over him. But the memory of Natasha intruded, wiped out any comfort Charlie was trying to give him. He cried out, the pain of the knife to his flesh a stinging, piercing slash. He couldn’t tell if Natasha castrated him even as she worked to emasculate him with all the accumulated hate she had built up in her evil life.
Her husband watched and laughed, praising her like she was his pet dog.
He squeezed his eyes closed and wanted to curl into a ball of dread and misery at the humiliation of having another man watch his helplessness for his own pleasure. He thought of Scarecrow and Wicked and how they had reacted to his mutilation and torture. How Wicked couldn’t look him in the eye. He wanted to kill both of his captors all over again. Craved it like a blood-crazed lunatic.
The vividness of the memory drowned him in a choking, stinking morass. How could he get his peace back when violence was so much a part of him? The kind of violence that wasn’t connected to combat, but was all about vengeance.
“Blue,” she said, touching him gently on the back of the neck, jarring him out of his own terrifying thoughts. “You don’t seem broken to me at all,” she whispered, her mouth hovering over his. He had crossed the line here, and the consequences would be he’d lose everything, but somehow it didn’t matter when it came to her. “Besides, being whole is over-rated. I want to know all your bits and pieces before I go mad.”
He took a hard-gasping breath and grabbed her wrist, hauling her against him. He buried his face in her neck, breathing deeply of her scent, that clean, gorgeous smell that reminded him of the ocean. She cupped his head. “It’s all right,” she whispered over and over again.
He sagged against her, and they sat quietly until his breathing returned to normal. When he raised his head, there were tears in her eyes, and she said, “Is it over?”
He nodded. He realized that he was still holding her wrist and he opened his hand. Her skin was red, white where his fingers had gripped her. “Oh, damn. Did I hurt you?”
“No, it was tight, but I’m fine.”
Then he looked into her eyes, the warmth of the Floridian sun beating down on them. They were sheltered from the street by the dumpster. A breeze ruffled h
er hair, and his chest tightened, his heart skipped a beat.
“You are so beautiful,” he whispered. The ugliness of Kirikhanistan faded like a bad dream. Her eyes shone blue-green in the bright light, and he couldn’t take his eyes off hers.
“Oh, Blue,” she said, her voice saturated with compassion. “I’m so sorry this happened to you.”
A knot loosened in his chest. He let her go and rose to his feet, bringing her up with him. “You think you can help me?”
“Haven’t I helped already?”
He nodded, a slight wry smile appearing. “I guess you have.” He brushed at a strand of loose hair that had escaped her bun. “I have to go. Class.”
“Me, too,” she said.
“You go first.” She nodded and turned away from him, then turned back.
“Just for the record. I think you’re the bravest man I’ve ever met.”
Her words coiled around his heart, and he tried to reconcile his view of himself to what she saw in him. He’d lost so much since that explosion, but he wasn’t quite sure it had all been about courage.
He touched her shoulder, and she turned back for the second time. “Everything is in relationship to everything else.”
She nodded as if she completely understood his cryptic message.
“You aren’t alone. You never have been.” Then she smiled softly. “I’m wearing the thong you gave me.”
He watched her walk away, leaving those words like pearls of wisdom for him to think about.
Not the thong part, which, he had to admit, was wholly distracting as he imagined her heart-shaped ass bare, the scrap of his lace between her legs.
He went to class with a burgeoning hard-on, then home, his mind completely on delectable Charlie and the lesson she had taught him in the alley. He sat down, crossed his legs and tried to get to a good place, to the edge of peace. But even after fifteen minutes, there was nothing. Just when he was about to give up, he felt it, a connection, but it was quickly gone.
He opened his eyes, and for the first time since he’d been dragged down the stairs of the Kirikhan rebel basement, he had hope.