I Dream of Spiders

by Keating, Elle

  I search her eyes and see true fear there. I know I shouldn’t, but I find myself crawling into bed and positioning her so her back rests against my bare chest. I’m wearing lounge pants, but I intentionally situate myself so my cock isn’t flush against her.

  “I’m scared, Griffin.”

  Somehow, I know that it takes a lot for her to admit this, especially to a total stranger. I get the sense that she isn’t used to letting her guard down. “I know. And we’ll figure it out. Together,” I say.

  She sighs and then shifts, causing her naked body from the waist down to mold to mine. I resist pulling her closer, locking her in my arms. I pretend that it’s because I don’t want her to feel trapped, especially after having such a horrible nightmare. That I’m not spooning her properly because, although she is scared and doesn’t want to be alone, she needs to feel in control and not confined. These are the lies I tell myself as I lay there, my cock aching. Her breathing becomes steady, and I know she has drifted off to sleep. I contemplate peeling her off me and sneaking out of bed, but I don’t in fear that if she has another nightmare, I won’t be here for her. So, I decide to suffer in silence with the most painful hard-on in recent memory.

  • • •

  ?

  I may not know my name, but I am fairly certain that sleeping in a man’s arms isn’t a daily event for me. Because if I do have a boyfriend or a husband, wouldn’t my subconscious tell me that I should feel guilty, that I shouldn’t love how protected I feel in Griffin’s embrace?

  The fire is about to die, which isn’t good since the heater is on the fritz. Griffin must have gotten up a few times during the night to throw some logs on to keep it going. Which means that he left me to tend to the fire just to crawl back in and sort of spoon me. He could have done anything while I was in that state. Killed me in my sleep, violated me in multiple ways. Is it common for me to trust someone so completely?

  No, says a small but crystal-clear voice in my head.

  The knowledge that I don’t trust easily sobers me. Do I have a rough past? Was I wronged somewhere along the line? Those are the questions I am asking myself when I try to creep out of bed to feed the fire. But my movements only make him wrap his arms around me and press me against his muscular chest. I can feel his warm breath brush against my neck with each rhythmic exhale. My skin goosepimples as heat rushes to my core. It is then I remember that I am lying with this man wearing just his t-shirt and no underwear. I ripped my pants off last night while I was in the throes of a nightmare. It was so vivid, so real that I actually felt hundreds of tiny, hairy legs tickle my skin as those spiders swarmed my bed.

  My bare ass brushes against something hard and I freeze. I don’t need my memories to know what it is. Griffin’s arms retract, and he scoots away from me. “Sorry. It’s…uh…been awhile,” he says. He flings his legs over the side of the bed and stands. I can’t help but look at the tent in his pants. He follows my gaze. “I promise I can control myself. It’s just while asleep it seems to have a mind of its own,” he says, his lips curling to form a boyish smile. He looks embarrassed, and I am surprised at the rare grin he is giving me.

  Even now with his cock straining against his pants, begging to spring free, I’m not worried that he will attack me. But I am nervous at what he may see in my eyes if he keeps staring at me. I look away and pull the blanket closer to me.

  “Are you cold?” he asks.

  “A little,” I say. “I was going to throw another log on the fire.”

  Griffin goes to the fireplace and places a log on top. He looks incredible squatting there, barefoot in just his pajama bottoms, his hair messy from sleep. Griffin takes the poker and stokes the fire until it is roaring once again. Satisfied, he returns the poker to the holder and then sits at the edge of my bed. He is still sporting a hard-on. Again, I try not to stare.

  “How are you feeling today?” he asks.

  Turned on, aroused as fuck.

  My thighs clench beneath my blanket and I discover that I’m wet. Thank God he can’t see that. “I feel a lot better. My head still hurts a little, but that’s normal, right?”

  “As long as it’s not getting worse, a slight headache is normal. I’ll get you some aspirin for the pain.”

  I expect him to get up and retrieve the medicine, but he doesn’t. He just sits there, his arms resting on his thighs and blocking my view of his erection.

  “Do you think you’ll be okay while I run to the store? I need to pick up a few things, the part to the heater being one of them. Snow is in the forecast and we can’t rely on the two fireplaces to keep us warm.”

  I know what else can keep us warm.

  As if reading my dirty, messed-up mind, his eyes darken and he clears his throat.

  “Yeah, I’ll be fine.”

  He stands, gives me a curt nod and leaves the room. I’m all set to follow him when he returns with my medicine and a handgun. He sets the medicine on the nightstand and then sits next to me on the bed. “I’m leaving my gun with you,” he says. “To make sure the safety is off, you switch this over,” he instructs, flicking his thumb. “Then you just aim and pull the trigger.” He hands me the gun, but I can’t dismiss what looks like apprehension in his gaze. He isn’t entirely comfortable with me having a weapon. Does he think I’m going to accidentally shoot myself? Or him? The cool metal feels foreign in my hands. Nothing seems familiar which makes me think that I have never handled a gun before. I take that as a good thing. “I won’t be long, but I’ll leave you my phone. If you need anything, you can call Trent. His name is under my contacts.”

  His tone is all business again, making me miss the man I woke up with, the guy who smiled sheepishly and had massive morning wood. I look down and discover he is still hard. How long can it stay that way? Is it still morning wood, or is he legitimately aroused? And that’s when I recall what he said.

  It’s been awhile.

  Awhile since what? Since he slept next to a woman? Since he had sex? I can’t imagine him having trouble finding women. Griffin is rugged and beautiful and so goddamn sexy. My eyes are fixed at his groin when I feel two fingers lift my chin. Blood rushes to my face.

  “Do you need something?” he asks with a smirk.

  I can’t speak. I can barely breathe. His eyes drift to my mouth and I see his pupils dilate. That naughty smile of his fades before my eyes and his fingers fall away. Griffin takes the gun from my hands and sets it on the nightstand.

  “I was planning on picking you up some clothes and shoes from the store. Is there anything else that you need?”

  “Um…no. Thank you,” I manage to get out.

  “There’s fruit in the fridge and cereal and oatmeal in the pantry if you’re hungry.”

  “Oh…yeah. Thanks,” I say, holding the comforter to my chest.

  Griffin glances at my breasts and quickly looks away. “Okay…I’ll be back soon.”

  I barely manage a nod before he is rushing out of the room and slamming the door behind him.

  Chapter Five

  Griffin

  I sprint to the bathroom down the hall. Once inside, I strip away my pants and leap into the small shower. I don’t even wait for the water to heat up. I soap up my cock and frantically begin stroking my length from root to tip. I know it won’t take long. Not when I remember how incredible she felt in my arms. And not when I recall how she eyed me this morning. It took the strength of three men not to rip that comforter away from her body and sink into her.

  I steady myself by placing one hand on the tiled wall while the other works my dick. My mind conjures up the sexiest image, of her on her knees as she takes me to the back of her throat. I increase my pace and my balls tighten. In my fantasy, she is looking up at me with those haunting blue eyes of hers as her lips tighten around my cock. I explode all over my shower wall, threads of cum shooting everywhere. When I am drained dry I finish my shower, get dressed and leave without even checking on her.

  I have to get my mind back o
n track. I have things to do today. I make it to The Home Depot in fifteen minutes. I pick up the part I need for the heater and then I go to the Verizon store and Best Buy, which luckily are all located within the same complex. I end my shopping excursion at Target, which I am dreading. I don’t like shopping for clothes, but there is no way around it. I throw at least a dozen t-shirts, two hooded sweatshirts, a few pairs of yoga pants and some jeans into my cart. I have no idea about sizes, so I make my best guess. As for sneakers, I cheated and looked at her shoe size before I burned her blood-covered pair. I toss a pair of sneakers, boots and some slippers on top before I head over to the lingerie section. Again, I guess on the sizes, but I’m pretty sure she’s a C-cup. When she was in my shower, completely incoherent, I couldn’t help but notice how full her breasts were, how they would fill my hands completely if I cupped them.

  Christ, just thinking of her perky breasts and tight nipples makes me hard again, right here in the middle of Target. Pissed, I continue shopping and throw in some supplies that I hadn’t initially set out for. A pack of pads, tampons, some hair ties and a sketch pad join the mounting pile. Body wash, a hair brush and a blow dryer are next. I am just about to head to check-out when I spot a rack of condoms.

  My hands grip the cart. I haven’t bought condoms in over four years. And not because I didn’t believe in safe sex, but because I was married and didn’t think I had to practice safe sex with my own wife. The thought of Miranda makes my stomach turn. I don’t want to think about how long she was fucking my own brother while I was stationed halfway across the world. Or why I didn’t listen to my gut when I called or Skyped home and felt that something was off. She went from telling me she missed me every other second during those rare times I could contact her, to conversations that left me wondering if she even wanted me to come home to her at the end of my assignments.

  I attributed her standoffish, almost cold attitude to frustration because we were apart. Many of the guys in my unit received similar responses from their wives or girlfriends. Being separated from your loved ones is difficult and can often make those on the home front feel lonely and abandoned. For the sake of my marriage, I knew that I would have to make a concerted effort and give her the attention she seemed to need. After my tour was up I returned home, excited to surprise her. But instead I received a surprise of my own…

  Miranda didn’t take me into her arms and shower me with kisses. No, she just asked me how long I would be home this time and then told me that she had to leave for work. I wanted to tell her to call out today and lock us both in our bedroom. But I had to respect that life couldn’t just stop because I had come home after six months away. I also didn’t want to piss her off. With what appeared to be a forced smile, one that I had unfortunately grown accustomed to during our infrequent Skype sessions, she gave me a chaste kiss on the lips, grabbed her purse and phone and left for work.

  Frustrated, I went to see my brother. When I entered the police station, the guys all shook my hand and welcomed me home. Colin gave me a smile that mirrored Miranda’s, one that left me cold and my gut telling me that something was wrong. But instead of calling him out on it, I decided to enjoy my first day back in the States and grab a beer that was well overdue. Still in his blues, my older brother of two years took me out for a burger and a beer at our favorite bar down the street from the precinct. Afterwards, we went back to his rowhome and watched the Phillies game on television. I was nursing my second beer of the day when someone knocked on his door. Colin answered the door but kept his voice low. Curious to who it may be, I leaned back in my chair but could only see a sliver of a man through the cracked door. I saw the veins in Colin’s neck bulge and his grip on the door tighten. The sight disturbed me, and I went to see if there was a problem.

  “Everything okay?” I asked.

  A Latino man with a shaved head and a tattoo of an inverted cross on his right cheek looked at me and then at Colin. My brother nodded and introduced me to Raymond and told me that he was an undercover cop. “Yep, Raymond came by with an update on one of our cases.”

  It wasn’t the man’s tat or the fact that he didn’t look like a cop that bothered me. No, it was the man’s inability to look me in the eye that made me suspicious. Regardless of that gut feeling, I shook Raymond’s hand and told Colin that I had to get going. Despite my lackluster reunion with my wife, I planned on taking Miranda out to a nice dinner and then end the night at the Ritz. The fancy hotel room was more than I could afford, but we needed time to reconnect, start over, and remember better times. I grabbed my keys and wallet, said my goodbyes and headed out the door. Raymond didn’t even give me a nod, which I thought was strange. As I walked to my car, that annoying-as-fuck feeling settled in my stomach.

  Something was wrong.

  I walked back into my brother’s house without knocking. I could hear talking coming from the kitchen. I quietly drifted into a spare bedroom and listened. What I heard floored me and made me want to heave the burger I had ingested at lunch. Raymond wasn’t an undercover cop. And he definitely wasn’t here to shoot the shit and have a beer.

  I stayed hidden until Raymond left. “So how long have you been skimming off the top? How long have you been playing both sides, agreeing to look the other way as long as you’re paid, while thugs like Raymond move their shipment of cocaine?”

  Colin’s eyes widened as I stood in the doorway of his bedroom.

  Growing up, just two years apart, we had had our share of fist fights and bloody noses. He was always competitive, always trying to one-up me. But I had surpassed him in size and strength years ago and I knew that bothered him. Because he was the older brother, the son who had stayed close to home, followed in his father’s footsteps and become a police officer. Although I respected my father and his profession, I had always known, even before I picked up my first GI Joe action figure, that I wanted to join the military. That decision, as it turned out, seemed to piss Colin off even more.

  But no matter how much my brother and I fought, or how easily I could unintentionally get under his skin, we had remained close.

  Until now.

  “I’m so fucking sick of your holier-than-thou attitude. You have no right to judge me. You think you’re so perfect? That you’re better than me?” he spat. As jealous as my brother could be of me, I never thought I was better or more successful, or more anything. And up until two minutes ago, I had thought he was happy with his life. That he had a job he loved, his own home and living as a bachelor and fucking a different woman every weekend. He had even bragged over burgers that he was getting so much pussy these days and felt sorry for me because I was tied down. “I’m tired of living paycheck to paycheck while the other half lives it up.”

  “What the fuck happened, Colin? This isn’t you.”

  “You think you know me? You think because you’re some decorated soldier, you can come home after six months and preach to me?”

  “I know that you’re a dirty fucking cop. That you’ve changed.”

  “I’m not the only one who has had a change of heart,” he said. A sick, twisted smile formed on his face.

  What the fuck did that mean? I couldn’t think straight. My brother had turned into a criminal while I was away. For the first time, I was happy that our parents were dead and didn’t have to learn the devastating truth that their oldest son was worse than the scumbags he locked up. Because the truth would come out. I couldn’t let my brother flood our streets, the neighborhood we had grown up in, with drugs.

  “Get the fuck out of my house,” he said.

  I wanted to stand there and scream at him, shake some sense into him, make Colin remember the boy who had dreams of being like his dad when he grew up. But what I really wanted to do was break down and cry. Because it was at that moment I realized that I didn’t know him, at least not anymore. And who the hell could say if I ever really knew him? I had taken our childhood skirmishes and his snide comments that dripped with jealousy as sibling rivalry on steroi
ds. What if it hadn’t been run-of-the-mill sibling rivalry but something else? I didn’t want to think that my own brother could despise me, but from the way he just looked at me, with his eyes dark and so full of hate, it was impossible not to come to that conclusion.

  I returned home and found Miranda on the phone. She quickly ended her call, smiled, and asked me if we could go to Fininzio’s for dinner. I was in no mood to wine and dine my wife anymore, but I couldn’t stay home and sulk. I kept my thoughts and fears to myself and went to dinner. After we finished our meal, we left the restaurant and decided to walk the two short blocks to the hotel. I couldn’t wait to get lost in my wife, to forget my worries for the night. But just a half a block away from the hotel, a man wearing a ski mask appeared from an alleyway with a gun drawn. I positioned Miranda behind me and offered the man my wallet.

  The fucking coward laughed. “They don’t want your money…they want you dead,” he said.

  I kept my eyes on that gun, but I saw Miranda in my peripheral vision, no longer behind me. I was on the man before he knew what hit him. I knocked the gun out of his hands and beat him until my knuckles were bloody and I was breathless. “Who? Who wants me dead?” I asked between pants. Before he could answer, I heard the cock of a gun and I looked up to see Miranda holding the thug’s pistol.

  “Want to tell him, sweetheart? Or should I?” the bastard choked out.

  “Shut up. Shut the fuck up,” she said through gritted teeth. Miranda pointed the gun at the man at my feet and fired, hitting him squarely in the chest. I knew she could handle a gun. I had taken her to the firing range at least a dozen times. I reached for the gun, but she backed away from me. Her hands were trembling as she pointed the gun at me. “If you would have just minded your fucking business…” She pulled the trigger.