“Not that I mind the floor but a bed sounds better,” Robert said, still catching his breath.
Leslie chuckled and simply nodded.
“I wish my legs didn’t feel like jello,” she said lifted her head to look up at him.
“I can assist with that,” Robert said as he lifted himself up and picked Leslie up along the way. Leslie wrapped her arms loosely around his neck surprised by the sudden height difference.
He carried her to her bed and laid her down, placing the covers over her before getting in with her. He drew her close to him and Leslie responded by nuzzling against his chest. Her eyes were already closed and she was feeling her body succumb to sleep.
“What? No pillow talk?”
Leslie opened one eye to find that Robert’s eyes were closed as well. She let out a soft laugh at the comment as Robert’s chest began steadily to rise and fall. He was fast asleep. Leslie wasn’t far behind but the last thought in her mind was how Robert had used sex to avoid talking about what had happened to him in Cuba.
*****
Leslie wasn’t sure how many hours had passed after they had gone to sleep. She didn’t dream, just blackness, but through the darkness an ear-piercing yell broke the barrier of sleep. Leslie shot up from her bed and looked around, her eyes adjusting to the darkness, and went to the spot beside her where Robert lay thrashing about. A moment went by and another yell vibrated the walls.
Leslie threw the covers from her body and hopped up off the bed to turn on the lights. She went to Robert’s side hoping the lights would wake him, but they didn’t.
Leslie looked at the man who was fighting some sort of invisible opponent. She wasn’t sure how to approach this sort of thing, and painfully, Max’s earlier words rang in her ears. Those types of guys have mental issues. They see a lot of messed up stuff.
Leslie slowly approached the thrashing man. She called out his name, trying to wake him from his nightmare. She found herself slowly getting on the bed trying to stay clear from flailing arms.
“Robert wake up,” Leslie said. She placed her hands firmly on his chest trying to shake him awake. Robert, who was still very deep in his nightmare could only see the black shadow that was coming for his life. He tried his best to fight but was no match for the strong shadowy figure. Robert felt its hands on his chest and he grabbed at it with all his might.
In reality, Robert had grabbed Leslie and threw himself and her onto the floor with a painful thud. Leslie let out a cry as she felt the painful impact with the floor along with Robert’s weight on top of her.
“Robert wake up!”
Leslie struggled under the weight of the sleeping Robert who felt that she was the enemy in his dreams. His hands went to her throat and she immediately began to claw at his bare chest. When that didn’t work, Leslie gathered all the might that she had and threw a fist at him.
Finally, the grip on her throat loosened allowing air to properly enter her lungs. She scooted away from him until she hit a wall as she gasped and coughed. Robert looked around dazed and confused before locking eyes with her.
“Leslie,” he said, as he slowly made his way to her, still getting in touch with reality. “I did this to you?”
Leslie, who was still trying to get a normal breathing pattern in her lungs waved off his concern. She was scared, more than scared but she didn’t want him to see that, as crazy as that felt.
Robert came close to her trying to touch her but stopped inches short. He was scared to touch her now.
“I can’t stay here,” he said as he hung his head, avoiding her eyes.
“You have to tell me,” Leslie said as she placed a hand on her chest feeling the pain in her chest subside. “You have to tell me what happened, you need to tell someone, or things like this will keep happening, to whoever is near you.”
Robert nodded slowly; she was right and he knew it. He hadn’t told anyone. Not even his superiors at headquarters knew. And yet he was about to tell Leslie his deepest darkest secret.
*****
Leslie found herself sitting at her coffee table with Robert at 2 in the morning. He stared into his steamy cup of coffee as he prepared to tell Leslie what broke his mind in the Navy. A secret he was so scared to let out that even his superiors didn’t know.
“I killed my superior officer.”
Leslie’s eyes widened as the words came from his mouth so straightforwardly. Robert took Leslie’s silence as a sign to continue with his story.
Robert told Leslie that during a night watch, he and his superior officer were taken hostage by native thugs.
“We had been drinking so we weren’t on our best game,” Robert admitted. He continued on, telling her that despite his urging, Robert wouldn’t leave his superior side. Later into the night, they had been taken, tied up, and blindfolded. They were taken to the thugs’ hideout. Robert at the time didn’t know the exact outcome but he figured it would go something along the lines of torture and death.
“We got to the hideout and they took off my blindfold but something was weird.”
Leslie saw Robert shift in his seat pausing to recall the painful memory.
“My superior wasn’t there beside me, scared of death like I was but he was in front of me standing next to the thugs who had taken us.”
Leslie’s eyes widened as she immediately took his hand into hers.
“Apparently he was in deep with some sort of drug trade and something big was going down that night. I wasn’t supposed to be there with him. I was supposed to get drunk and pass out or leave so he could sneak off and handle business.” Leslie felt Robert’s hand tighten under hers then.
“Anyway his plan was to kill me off, take care of the deal, then run back to base to tell them I had been taken hostage by some thugs. The ending of that would have been that they would find me dead and mark my superior a hero and send my body home telling my family – telling you – that I had died bravely and honorably.”
Robert took a sip of his coffee and took in a deep breath; he rubbed his eyes momentarily before continuing.
“I chose to fight, even if I was going to die I would take him down with me, and that’s what I did. I broke free of the ropes and I strangled him with them. One of the thugs knocked me out with a rifle butt. They must have thought I was dead, because they dumped both our bodies in some ditch. I crawled out barely conscious.”
Robert looked up at Leslie and flashed her a small smile.
“If it wasn’t for some family taking me in I wouldn’t have survived the night. I had to go back to my base and lie. For the sake of his family I lied and told them he died a hero, he died protecting me.”
Leslie stood up and went to him cradling his head in her chest.
“It sounds horrific,” Leslie said as she sniffled trying to stop the tears from coming. She lifted his face to look at hers as her tears trickled down her face.
“Shit, I made you cry again,” Robert said with a chuckle, as he stood up and hugged her close. “This time I know what to do to make you feel better.”
Robert leaned down grabbing her face and pressing his lips against hers. She smiled against his lips after a moment at the same time wiping the tears from her eyes.
She leaned back and looked into his eyes, they looked sad and that was understandable considering what he went through.
“I’m happy you told me but, this is messing you up Robert, you need to see someone, get professional help about this.”
Robert looked at Leslie and shook his head.
“I don’t think I’m ready for that,” he said as he picked her up and walked her over to the bed.
“Fine, I guess letting the cat out of the bag was enough for tonight,” Leslie said as Robert placed her on the bed gently.
She got up and pulled him down on the bed before mounting him.
“You have to tell me when it’s bothering you okay? You may not want to talk to a shrink but holding it up inside will kill you.”
Robert looked
up at her, a look that Leslie couldn’t decipher just then. His hand went up and stroked her cheek, a smile tugging at his lips.
“You’re amazing,” Robert said as he pulled her down to plant a kiss on her. “I didn’t think you would understand but—”
Leslie placed a finger to his lips and shook her head.
“I want you to know that I’m always here for you, no matter what.”
Leslie leaned down and kissed Robert deeply, a kiss that had a certain appendage poking at her in seconds. She pulled away with a smile as she began to trace kisses down his jaw, then to his neck, and his collar bone.
She tugged his shirt over his head throwing it to the side. She began to trace kisses down his smooth chest while she worked at removing his boxer shorts. Leslie stopped what she was doing to sit back and admire the magnificent body that lay under her. Leslie smirked and continued trailing kisses down her body until she reached his hard-on.
She wrapped her fingers around it sending visible shivers up and down his body. She moved her hand up and down slow at a steady pace. His breath increased as her hand movements did. Robert’s hand snaked to her curly hair and his fingers entangled in it as her mouth soon replaced her hand. A deep groan escaped his lips as the warmness of her mouth engulfed his throbbing dick.
She continued this until she felt his hips thrusting upwards into her mouth. She moaned against the hard member adding her hand into the mix of things causing the moans from his lips to grow louder.
Robert swallowed hard as he felt himself close to coming. He tugged at her hair then, urging her to stop. Reluctantly, Leslie eased off his dick and looked up at him, licking her lips. The look on her face was utterly erotic and would have been enough to make him lose it.
He leaned down and grabbed her, pulling her up and onto his still-hard member. She slid onto it with a low moan before moving her hips back and forth. After some time their hips moved in sync. Leslie’s arms wrapped around his neck as his nails dug into her butt bouncing her up and down on him. She felt his teeth sink into her shoulder causing her to cry out as both their orgasms crashed through their bodies like a wave.
The two fell onto the bed in each other’s arms, exhausted and satisfied. Leslie smiled at Robert as he pulled the covers over their damp bodies.
“I could get used to this,” Leslie panted before placing a kiss on his chest.
“Yeah, me too,” Robert responded with a laugh as he returned the kiss.
*****
“I’m going to have to face Max soon,” Leslie said the next morning as she watched Robert, in nothing but a robe, cook breakfast. She definitely was not complaining about the sight.
“Yeah you’re right,” he said as he placed the French toast neatly on Leslie’s plate.
“I mean he was a prick, and now I need to talk about what happened with Bri.” The thought alone was making knots out of Leslie’s stomach.
Robert went over and placed his large hands on her shoulders massaging them a bit.
“Haven’t you had enough drama for one week?”
Leslie laughed and shook her head.
“Apparently not.”
One other thing that was bothering Leslie was that Robert would be leaving soon. She would be alone again waiting for him to come back and that put more knots in her stomach than the Max situation.
“Do you really have to go?”
Robert stopped flipping the French toast and turned around to look at her with a serious look on his face.
“You want me to stay?”
“You sound surprised,” Leslie said with her eyebrow raised, genuinely wondering why he’d be so shocked.
“Well with everything, I just thought…” Robert didn’t finish his sentence but instead smiled and walked back over to Leslie seating himself beside her.
“I’ll stay,” Robert said simply before placing a kiss on her hand.
“That easy?”
Leslie was dumbfounded; as far as she knew he had to go back to duty the following week.
“Well you could say I’m retiring. I did my time and I’m grateful for it, even before all that bad stuff happened, I was ready to be leave.”
Leslie playfully hit his chest.
“Should have told me earlier,” she said before leaning in to give him a kiss. That was a huge load of her mind. She didn’t realize how much she had missed him until he was here. Even with the craziness she missed him like mad.
“Think you can handle even just one more week of me?”
Leslie tilted her head in the air pretending to think before facing him once again with a grin.
“Only if you teach me how to throw a punch like the one you planted on Max.”
Robert let out a hearty laugh and nodded his head.
“Anything for you.”
THE END
Bonus Story 24/40
Embraced by the Dragon Prince
The wind lightly rustled the leaves in the trees above Geneva as she stalked through the woods. The hot afternoon sun left spots on the forest floor that highlighted the dead leaves of early fall that had mixed into the undergrowth. Squirrels and other small rodents scampered up and down tree trunks as they searched for nuts and seeds to store away for the impending winter.
Her soft boots muffled her steps while her eyes and ears remained alert for her prey. Ahead of her Geneva heard the low grumblings and lumbering rustles of a mountain grizzly foraging. She halted in her tracks to discern the direction of the bear. It was heading east perpendicular from her path, safely away.
She waited a moment to be sure that the bear had not caught on to her presence and then breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn’t that she didn’t think she could handle herself if she was confronted by the grizzly, but she was glad to avoid the encounter all together. She was filled with a burning vengeance and she did not want to delay for any other creatures besides the one she hunted.
Onwards she travelled, up into the foothills of the southern mountains. This was the direction the great serpent of fire had fled when her arrows had torn its’ wing. The long wailing cries had stopped hours ago, but Geneva knew that the beast could not have gotten far on a wounded wing. Her anger boiled at the thought of the events that had set her forth on this journey. Only a day ago, things had been perfectly normal.
It had been late in the evening when Geneva finally returned from her hunt. Her friend Winda, a wild haired young girl much like herself, walked alongside her. The pair of them had been hunting together since they had come of age and were such close friends they might as well have been sisters.
The two laughed and joked as they made their way home on the familiar paths of the forest. Over their shoulders they towed the ropes of a small litter that dragged the carcasses of their respective kills. There was a fat boar that Geneva had killed, a young buck that was Winda’s, and a few small gamey squirrels and fowl all piled on the litter so they could be transported back to their small village without leaving a trail of blood for other predators to follow.
Between the spoils of the two huntresses it would be enough feed their little village for the next couple of weeks. Geneva and Winda would stay for the first few days while they rested and replenished their packs before they returned to the forests of the foothills for their next hunt. Being the only ones who actively hunted, the young women had taken it upon themselves to provide for their village, the small refuge that it was.
It was an unofficial community called Haven. It was full of runaways; children and adults who needed to escape their lives elsewhere. They were a community of victims banded together to build a new life away from their oppressors, abusers, and persecutors. Their unofficially elected matriarch, Brigid, united their little ragtag bunch of misfits.
There was a small congregation waiting with lit torches and lanterns at the edge of the village when the huntresses emerged from the forest. The older children that had been allowed to stay up late rushed out to meet them and relieve them of the great weight of the litter.
They eagerly dragged the meat into the village, to the butcher’s house where it would be prepared.
Brigid, the matriarch, was present. The weathered old spinster, with her silver hair pulled back tightly and her wrinkled face all warm smiles, gave Geneva and Winda a strong hug with her sinewy arms. “We’re always so glad to see you return.”
“Well there’s no way we’d miss your smiling face,” Winda laughed as she pulled away from the embrace.
Geneva remembered fondly how the light of the torches and lanterns gave a halo to Winda’s wild dark hair. Her green eyes were glowing with happiness and her smile lit up the darkness of the night that was settling in.
Geneva held the image in her mind as silent tears escaped her eyes as she walked through the woods. She wanted to always remember Winda like this, not as how she found her that later that night. It was just as she found the rest of the members of her community, or rather, the few that remained. She knew a few people had escaped the horrors of the dragon’s fury by fleeing into the night, but most of her quiet community had perished in the fires.
The initial sound of the beast was a horrible shriek that had sent a cold rush of terror into her bones and woken her from the deep abyss of her sleep. Instinctively, she had reached up and grabbed her bow and quiver of arrows where they hung above her bed as she rolled off the mattress and into a low crouch. The air was silent as her eyes opened wide in the darkness, looking for what had woken her.
Quietly, Geneva stepped out the door of her little house just in time to see a couple of the village dogs scampering away, escaping the village. Heading the opposite way, towards the unknown danger, her bare feet crept quietly in the dirt paths between the houses.
In the doorway of her neighbor’s house, Geneva saw that she was not the only person who had been awakened by the sound. She nodded to the mother and child to stay inside while she searched for the disturbance.
Reaching the large central area of the town where the well stood, she looked around and noticed that Winda was just across the way to her right. Winda also had her bow out and was searching for what had woken the town. Signaling her with a birdcall, Geneva got her attention and the two began to head towards one another.
In the Arms of the Dragon Princes Page 76