by Karina Halle
“I want…” I take in a deep breath, my eyes breaking away. “I want…company.”
“Company?” He sounds surprised.
I nod. “That’s the truth. I’m lonely. And I’m afraid. And I’m tired of being both those things. I want to be with someone who makes me forget who I am. You make me feel fearless in a way I didn’t think possible.”
There. That’s the truth. Most of it. It hangs in the air, thickening the tension like flour to stock.
He sits down next to me, takes a drink of Scotch. “Wow,” he says, running his hand over the beard on his jaw. “And here I was thinking you wanted my cock.”
I burst out laughing. So does he, a big wonderful bellow. The tension in the room eases up a notch.
“Sorry,” I tell him when I catch my breath. “I guess they can both mean the same thing.”
He sucks in his lip briefly, his eyes taking a lustful turn. “If you want it to.” We stare at each other for a few heavy beats. Then his focus trails up and he says, “Why don’t you stay over?”
And there I have it. The chance to know what those full lips would feel like on mine, what his skin would taste like. I swallow hard. “I’m not sure I’m ready…” I’m thinking of my leg in a cast, I’m thinking of how I must look naked, so ravaged and unkempt, I’m thinking about the fear of being raw and vulnerable with him in a different way.
“It doesn’t have to mean we fuck each other,” he clarifies, and the way he says fuck makes my stomach do a nosedive, his thick accent making it sound absolutely filthy. “It means you can just stay over. For company. My bed is big enough for the both of us. I promise I won’t touch you unless you ask me to.”
“And if I ask you to?”
His gaze turns carnal, drops to my mouth. “I’ll do whatever you want me to. Just say the words, little red. You want me to kiss the whisky off your lips, I’ll do that. You want me to slip my fingers between your legs, I’ll do that too. I’m at your beck and call, every inch of me.”
Wow. I’m pretty much speechless at that. I can practically feel him between my legs already. My body is on fire now.
Time to go, the voice tells me. Put down your drink, call a cab, and go. He’ll understand. You’re not ready for this.
But ready or not, I don’t want to listen. I’ve never been ready for anything, so why start now?
“Okay,” I tell him slowly. “I’d like that. The staying over part. I’ll keep the rest of what you said in mind.”
He nods, leaning back, his arm along the back of the couch just behind me. How easy it would be to just lean back and have his arm around me, holding me securely in place.
Still, that would be rocking the boat a little when I just agreed to stay overnight.
“I don’t have anything to sleep in,” I tell him, and now my mind is going over the fact that I don’t have a toothbrush or deodorant or anything else important with me.
“Sleep naked.”
“You wish.”
“I do wish. Though it would make not touching you a lot harder. Listen, I have a shirt you can wear. An extra toothbrush too. I buy them in packs.”
“Always be prepared?”
“Exactly.” He swirls his glass, watching me. “So, seeing as it is late, is there anything you have to get up early for tomorrow or am I allowed to make you breakfast?”
“I have my meeting tomorrow night but nothing before that. Though I suppose I should text Christina right now and let her know where I am.”
As I fish out my phone, he asks, “Does she often worry about you? I mean, before the accident.”
I shake my head. “No. It was the other way around.”
“I see. And the meeting?”
I give him an apologetic wince. “It’s a support group for PTSD and the like. A range of people. I wanted to get a head start on getting better.”
His lips twist grimly. “That takes a lot of courage. To admit you need help, then to actually get it.”
I quickly type out the message to my sister and nod. “Yeah. But again, I don’t feel courageous. I don’t feel anything half the time.”
“We’ll just have to change that, then,” he says, and the rough tone of his voice tells me he knows exactly how.
Suddenly I’m nervous. Very nervous. My nerves come alive all over my body, a wash of tiny prickles followed by a cold sweat.
Keir gestures to my Scotch. “Drink up, then. Before you change your mind.”
“I’m not changing my mind,” I say, and down the drink in one go, coughing into my elbow. At least the pain in my leg has subsided.
My phone beeps and I glance at it.
Christina has written, What? Are you for real? You don’t know that guy! It’s not safe. You need to come home.
“Even after that text?” Keir asks, peering over my shoulder to read it.
I snatch the phone away from him. “Even after that.”
I text back, I’m thirty years old and I trust him. Let me live my life. I’ll call you tomorrow. Goodnight. Then I set my phone to silent.
And thus begins the slightly awkward process of getting ready for bed at a strange house with a person you find deathly attractive but still don’t know all that well. Add in the fact that you’re on crutches and have a cast to lug around, and it’s definitely not one of the smoother sleepovers I’ve had.
But Keir goes out of his way to make me feel comfortable. He gives me a worn Guns N’ Roses t-shirt that hangs on me like a nightgown, and while I’m in his bathroom taking off my makeup and brushing my teeth, he makes the bed more accessible.
Like the rest of his place, his bedroom is sparsely furnished with just a large bed and a teak dresser. No hint of his personality or the parts of him I haven’t figured out yet. The broad windows face the garden at the back, and a fresh sea breeze sweeps in through the open crack, making the bed look even more inviting.
“Need help getting in?” he asks, standing on the other side of the bed. I’m finding it brutally unfair that he’s still clothed in his shirt and jeans while I’m bare-legged.
I give him a look. “I can manage.”
“I know,” he says patiently, “but do you sleep with your leg elevated? It’s been a while since I had broken bones like that. Do you need a pillow? You need pillows.” He goes out into the hall, and I hear him rifling through the linen closet.
“I’m fine,” I tell him, but he’s already coming back with three pillows in hand.
“I’m not a doctor but I know how things work,” he tells me. “Get in bed.”
“Sir, yes, sir,” I tell him like he’s some army sergeant.
He doesn’t seem to like that.
“Just get in,” he says edgily, throwing back the grey sheets.
Okay, back to being awkward. How do I lie down in bed without flashing him my underwear? It takes a few attempts.
He’s watching me wryly the entire time. Finally I’m in the bed, and he puts his hands around my cast. I can almost feel the heat of his palms through the plaster. The sight of him just handling my leg like this does something to me that I can’t describe. Like some tiny strings over my heart are snapping one by one. I’m as vulnerable as I’ll ever be, and I’m completely in his hands.
“Nice knickers,” he says to me as he slips the pillows underneath.
And just like that, he brings me out of my head.
My hands fly down, trying to tug down the shirt but to no avail. My lord, I don’t even know the last time I got waxed. I move my good leg closer to the other, obscuring his view.
“Tease,” he mutters playfully, then inspects his pillow tower. “All good?”
“All good,” I tell him quietly.
He goes over to his side of the bed, and I expect him to switch off his bedside light before he gets undressed but to my shock he grabs the edge of his shirt and pulls it up and over his head.
The whole thing seems to happen in slow motion. The lazy reveal from the bottom up, first the V of his hips sinking into his
waistband, then the treasure trail of fine hair leading from his flat belly to down below. The individual ripples of his hardened abs—one, two, three, four, five, six pack. Then his chest, wide, massive, and hard as a rock, leading up to those mountainous shoulders. His biceps are too big to put my hands around, and his forearms are deliciously thick and veiny as before but taking on a whole context now that I know he has the upper body to match.
Holy fuck.
The man is built to fight.
And this is when I discover at least one of his secret tattoos. Latin words scrawled across his chest in a medieval-looking font: Nec Aspera Terrent.
Then he turns slightly to toss his shirt on top of the dresser and I catch something else I didn’t expect. A large swath of rigid scarring down his left side. The whole area, from his ribs to his hips is peppered with thick scrawls of scar tissue, both white and faintly pink.
I don’t want to ask what happened, and before I even get a chance to decide otherwise, he starts taking off his pants, bringing my attention to another spot.
His jeans slip off effortlessly, and he’s standing there in navy boxer briefs that hug his muscled quads and one hell of a monster bulge.
So far he’s been avoiding my eyes, even though he knows I’m staring at him like some horny teenage girl, but now he looks my way.
“You finally found my tattoos,” he says. “Get a good look?”
Tattoos? And then I notice the large, masterfully-shaded sailing ship on his thigh, an old-fashioned vessel with tattered sails and ravens flying around.
Right. The tattoos. That’s what I was staring at. Not the python in his briefs.
“It’s nice,” I say quietly, though there’s a tremor in my voice. “I mean, they’re nice.” I make a note to ask him about them later, to get a closer look, but right now I have to look away.
I immediately turn my head, close my eyes, and pretend I’m trying to sleep.
“Need anything from me?” he asks in a throaty murmur, “before I turn off the lights?”
Yeah, for you to keep your underwear on. I’m not sure what I’d do if that thing poked me in the middle of the night.
“I’m good,” I tell him, trying to sound sleepy.
“All right,” he says, and I resist the temptation to look at him one last time before he turns off the light. “Goodnight.”
“Goodnight,” I reply.
The room goes black except for the silver of the moon sneaking in through the window. After a while I can see his silhouette lying beside me, his breaths growing heavier with each passing minute. It’s the first time since the accident that I haven’t slept alone. It’s the first time I’ve felt safe.
There is an intimacy in this that I never saw coming. Just sharing a bed, sharing the night, sharing the dreams and the terrors that may come. Part of me yearns to reach out with my fingers and touch his skin, to ask him to touch me back. To feel him, all of him, with every inch that I have.
It would be so easy.
It would be so good.
I fall asleep with my hand stretched toward him.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Keir
I’m sitting in a mud-walled room with maps all over the walls and a single table in the middle. A radio sits on it. And a microphone with sand-crusted edges.
I’ve never been in this room before. It isn’t reserved for me. It’s for the ones who stay behind and get the incoming calls, the raids, the bombs, the casualties. They dictate while others fight.
But for now, I’m here, and I’m alone.
And the patrols are calling.
They need support. They need backup.
The radio waves erupt with gunfire.
And there’s nothing I can do.
Mass chaos. Mass death all around me. At a distance, I can hear their cries, their pleas.
“Help us, Keir, help us.”
My friends, my men, are being slaughtered and there nothing I can do.
Then the room goes dark. The sun is blotted out.
The hair on the back of my neck stands as the temperature drops like it always does at night. It’s close to freezing.
Then the calls stop.
Just like that there is silence.
But no relief.
Because I know the men are dead.
And there is someone else in the room with me.
I can’t see him but I can hear him. His ragged breathing.
Lewis.
“I can’t take it anymore,” he whispers, sounding just like a radio transmission, his words cutting in and out. “Why don’t people realize what they’ve done? Their taxes paid for this war, they paid for this death. It’s their fault as much as ours.”
I try to tell Lewis that it’s part of the job, part of the game, that it’s always been this way, that we knew what we signed up for, each and every one of us.
But words fail me as they have before.
“There are no bad guys here,” he goes on. “No good guys. Just a bunch of sad sacks trying to stay alive by killing each other. The best you can hope for is to live to see another day, but what’s another day? What’s the point to all of this suffering?” A lengthy pause. “They’re here now.”
Even though it’s already dark, darker shadows appear in the corners of the room.
“They took out the men you were supposed to protect and now they’re coming for you.”
The shadows get closer. I know what I have to do. I’ve been trained to the last detail.
My body is ready to spring.
“You can’t protect anyone,” Lewis now whispers in my ear. “Not you. And not her. Not from me. The damage is already done. You lost her before you even started.”
A bomb explodes in front of me, white hot terror.
I sit up and gasp for breath like I’ve been drowning then shoot up out of bed, running around the room, trying to find guns, weapons, to fight with.
I need to live.
“Keir,” a small, frightened voice says from the back of my mind.
There are no weapons, but there are soldiers around me, shadows that aren’t shadows.
I lunge for one, about to rip it apart when my hands hit the weight of my dresser.
“Keir, please, what is it? What’s happening?”
Jessica’s panicked voice breaks through my thoughts.
Jessica.
I stop, staring at the open drawer, my fingers clenched around the handle for dear life. I blink at the room, taking in the darkness, what little light from the moon is left.
Jessica is sitting up in my bed, propped up by her hands, her eyes shining with fear.
“I’m okay,” I croak. “I’m okay. Nightmare. Just a bloody nightmare.”
“Are you sure? I thought…” She trails off and I can hear the fear in her voice. Fuck me. I probably traumatized the shit out of her.
“I’m sorry,” I say, still trying to catch my breath. The last thing I want is for her to witness my night terrors. The moment she agreed to stay over, it hadn’t even occurred to me to think about it. And just as I had made up my mind to forget the past.
But the past has a way of sneaking in while you sleep, embedding itself in your dark places.
“Really, I’m fine,” I tell her. “Here, I’ll get you some water.” I stumble out of the bedroom to the kitchen where the green-blue clock of the microwave tells me it’s four a.m. At least I don’t have to spend an entire night awake because there’s no way I’m going back to sleep after this.
I down the glass of water and fill one up for her, taking it back to the bedroom.
She’s still sitting up, watching me in the darkness.
“Here,” I tell her, putting the glass beside her. “Have some water, go back to sleep.” As if she’s the one who woke up running around the room and looking for artillery.
“Want to talk about it?” she asks softly as I get back in bed.
“It was just a dream,” I tell her. “I shouldn’t drink so much tea before bed,”
I add, trying to sound convincing. “Gives me nightmares.”
“Oh,” she says.
“You’ll be able to go back to sleep?” I ask her, almost hopeful that she’ll say no, that she’ll stay up with me so I don’t have to suffer through the darkness on my own.
But she says, “Yeah. It’s a comfortable bed.”
I smile at her in the dark. “Good night again.”
***
“Do you mind if I take a shower?”
I turn my head to see Jessica standing in the doorway to the bedroom on her crutches, yawning and scratching her head. Her hair is like one red halo with the morning light streaming through the windows.
“Of course not,” I tell her. “Did you have a good sleep?” I’m hoping that she won’t mention, or even remember, what happened last night. I couldn’t sleep after my little incident. I came right out here to the living room with a book and I’ve barely moved since.
“Actually, yeah,” she says, giving me a slight smile. Her eyes are bright and beautiful without makeup. “I didn’t mean to sleep in so late, it’s just…probably the best sleep I’ve had in a long time.”
That admission does something to my heart, makes it large and warm. My bed has given me so little comfort and yet she’s been able to finally let go in it.
“Good,” I tell her. “There are extra towels under the sink. I’ll get started on breakfast.” I get out of the chair and stretch my arms above my head. “Any requests?”
With my arms raised, my shirt has risen up a few inches and she’s staring openly at my stomach. From this angle I know it’s because of my abs and not the mess of scar tissue on the side.
She averts her eyes, a faint flush to her cheeks. “Anything is fine. I’m not picky. Eggs are great.”
“Bread?”
“Is it gluten-free?”
I lower my arms and grin at her. “You’re on a gluten-free diet?”
She shrugs defensively. “It’s mainly paleo. Whole foods. That sort of thing.”
“But you drink beer like it’s going out of style.”
She chews on her lip for a moment and gives me a saucy look. “It’s my vice.”
“You’re not very good at keeping that vice under control. Got any other vices I should know about?”