Kissed by Reality

by Carrie Aarons

  "We are in The Big Apple, so I had to come see it for myself. What's the point of sitting inside, when you can look at this view?"

  She looped her arm through my elbow resting on the steel balcony and snuggled her head into my shoulder. Involuntarily, I leaned down and pressed a kiss to the top of her head.

  I sighed and looked out, surveying the skyscrapers dominating the landscape and secretly wishing for the farm and country back home. It would be so easy to fall in love with Erin. She was easy. Not that kind of easy, but just...easy to be around. Easy to talk to. Easy to laugh with. Life with her would be a walk-in-the-park, an enjoyable Sunday drive.

  But as much as I was a simple guy, for some reason I just couldn't settle for easy. No, I couldn't get stubborn and difficult out of my head.

  "You don't need to punish yourself for still being in love with her, you know." Erin's raspy voice touched my ears and mixed with the orchestra of the street sounds below.

  "Huh?"

  "Leighton. I see the way you look at her. The way you look at each other. It's clear you still love her."

  "Erin, I..." She'd caught me off guard and my tongue couldn’t seem to come up with anything to say.

  "No, it's okay. I understand. You two shared something that some people may never get in their lifetime. Yes, she hurt you beyond belief, but she's a good person deep down. Even I can admit that and I shouldn't be openly coming forth with it, especially to you."

  I stayed silent, rolling her words around in my head like marbles.

  "But Finn, you have a shot to have that twice in your lifetime. Yes, you may love her, and you may know her on a deeper level than you know me, or anyone here, but...there is a reason it didn't work the first time. I'm not one to say that it was because you weren't meant to be. I'm just going to say that you need to stop and consider the other options. I'm having some very strong feelings, and to be honest, I'm falling in love with you."

  My heart did a weird thing when she spoke those words. It wasn't necessarily a bad thing, but it was like the organ in my chest didn't know how it wanted to feel, so it just needed to move to test things out.

  "I never thought I'd be that girl, the one who admitted to getting in deep in such a short amount of time. But I really, really like you Finn. And I think you like me too. We are good for each other."

  Erin pulled on my arm, bringing me to face her. Once I did, locking my eyes with hers, she pushed up on her toes and planted a light, but meaningful, kiss on my mouth. "Just think about what a future for us would look like."

  She quietly walked inside, leaving me on the rooftop with even more thoughts swarming my brain than I'd had before she came out here.

  Did I even want a future with Leighton? Hell, I knew people made mistakes. It wasn't like I'd ever let her explain her side. We'd never even discussed it after she'd left my parent's house that night. The fact that I'd been buried deep inside of her only a week and a half ago proved that I was willing to forget about her betrayal, even for a little while.

  Was I willing to forgive too? Or could I imagine a future with another woman. With Erin?

  Chapter Nineteen

  Leighton

  The grunt on the other side of the wall was followed by a jagged wail. I felt the queen bed I lay awake in shake with the force of whatever was hitting the side of the wall.

  Perk for being a sought-after cast member on Mr. Right? Not having to share a suite with the other girls when we traveled. I got the silence of my own room on the road. That is, when no one was disturbing it by having raunchy sex on the opposite side of the wall.

  "Pete, no!"

  The muffled cry through the wall had me shooting up in bed, the force of my movement leaving me lightheaded for a minute.

  "Pete!"

  The next cry had me throwing the covers back and grabbing my room key before making sure I was sufficiently clothed. In the next second, I was running out the door.

  Because that wasn't a couple having sex. It was Finn, having a nightmare about Afghanistan.

  He'd had them only about three or four times total when we were together. He used to tell me I soothed him, kept the demons away and out of his sleeping thoughts.

  But those couple of times he did have them? Fuck. I never wanted to see my strong, solid, together man that weak or scared again. Because if he could be reduced to the shaking, frightened human that I saw when I forced him to come out of the realm of nightmares, there was no hope for the rest of us. I knew the world was a scary place. It just hadn't struck me how terrifying it could get until Finn had been hyperventilating and coming apart at the seams as I'd held him.

  I had to get him up before someone else heard. The only thing worse than Finn being trapped by his demons right now would be for him to have to explain them to the nosy women sleeping just a couple of doors down. I knew he wasn't ready for that. He'd never even told me what had happened.

  I made it to his door and began knocking, loud enough that I thought I'd wake him but cautiously. I kept looking around the hall like the crew and host from Punk'd was going to pop out and start screaming. I couldn't let anyone hear me out here, but I also couldn't let him continue to suffer in there.

  Pressing my ear to the door, I could hear the muffled sobs choking Finn in his sleep.

  "Finn!" I hissed and punched my fist aggressively into the door three times.

  Nothing. And I could still hear his nightmare sounds emanating from inside the room.

  "Fuck..." I said to the empty hallway. I pulled on the belt to the hotel robe I'd thrown on. I couldn't continue to stand here and knock. It would wake someone up eventually. And that person might be part of the production team. No way was I allowing Finn's trauma to be broadcast on national TV.

  I stood there thinking as the wall by my face shook. He must have broken something. The phone. The phone! Fuck, why hadn't I thought of it earlier!

  I took four steps over to my door and jammed the key card back into the slot until the green light pulsed from the lock. It seemed like I flew to the phone, furiously picking it up and jabbing at the numbers to call the room next door.

  The breath I hadn't known I was holding burned as I exhaled, the ringing phone sounding from behind the wall of my room. I nearly cried when finally, after five rings, the receiver crackled as someone picked it up.

  "Hello?" Finn's gravely voice was dazed and laced with sleep.

  "Let me in."

  "Leight-"

  I cut him off, slamming the receiver back down onto the dialer and fleeing my room.

  It took three rounds of knocks for Finn to finally open the door, and when he did I was greeted by a shell of a man.

  "Are you okay?" I said gently as I pushed into his room, not waiting for him to invite me in.

  I paused to look up at his haggard, pale face. Even as the world was crumbling around him he looked drop dead gorgeous. Sleep had molded his blonde hair to the right side of his forehead, and his scruff, overgrown from the day off from shooting, had little cowlicks in it from where it had been smashed into the pillow. I could see the shadows and ghosts lurking in his navy eyes. I couldn't help myself but to peek lower, my body heating and responding to his naked form even when I should be focused on what had made him cry out in his dreams. Finn's body was military grade, a lethal weapon of its own. Every muscle had been sculpted to perfection, worked within an inch of its life to maintain the perfect definition and size. His teal boxers, the only garment he wore, hugged his hips, thighs and package. A package that even soft was still at least 5 inches. I wanted to unwrap it again. But first...

  "You broke the lamp." I turned from him, surveying the room and grabbing a nearby garbage can to collect the glass fragments in.

  "I can do it." Finn limped towards me, clearly uncomfortable from putting his prosthetic on too quickly and not giving himself time to adjust it.

  "Sit down." I pointed to the bed and shooed him away, intent on getting the biggest shards picked up before I walked barefoot acr
oss the room to sit with him.

  He seemed too out of it to argue, taking himself back over to the bed and sitting down. After I picked up all of the pieces I could get without cutting myself, I sat down beside him.

  "Are you okay?"

  Finn didn't answer, just stared ahead at something I couldn't see, something I couldn't even imagine. I reached out and laced my fingers through his, rubbing my thumb over the outside of his hand. It was what I used to do when he had night terrors. I couldn't get him to talk, but I could let him know I was there for him.

  "It was a little boy."

  His voice shocked me so much that I kind of startled, dropping his hand in the process. I wasn't used to him discussing anything after he woke up from these PTSD episodes. I usually just held him until he could fall back asleep. Then I'd count the seconds between his breaths, praying that he'd dream peacefully and uninterrupted.

  "What was a little boy?" I knew as soon as I asked the question I didn't want the answer.

  Finn picked my hand back up. In fact, he moved me so that I was cradled against his side, his arms slung around me, gently squeezing my flesh. Almost as if I was a coping mechanism, an item that brought him comfort.

  "It was a little boy. Our convoy was walking down one of the town streets, just patrolling. Me and Pete were on foot, the other four guys in the tanker following us. There hadn't been an incident in weeks, we should have been on high alert at all times. But we weren't. For some stupid fucking reason we thought we were making headway in our region. I saw him up ahead, sparks flying from his hands. I...fuck. The first thing I thought was that they were celebrating something, you know? You don't think little kid and associate that with dynamite. That shit just doesn't even work its way into your mind, not with the way we were raised."

  My eyes were leaking tears and something was wrong with my lungs. I couldn't seem to operate them, holding in all of the air as Finn's monotone voice filled it.

  "Pete started doing a little dance, he thought it was some fucking festival. He began to jog a little to catch up with the kids. I only saw it when he'd gotten about 20 feet from me. The kid was holding two dynamite sticks in his hands. Some fucking bastard had sent their child out into the street with..."

  Finn choked on a sob and squeezed my arm, as if feeling my skin would make the pain go away.

  "I started running, to do what I didn't know. It wasn't going to end any other way. They said that a piece of shrapnel from the Humvee behind me was what sliced my leg off. It’s..it’s their eyes though. Both of their goddamn eyes that I see when I sleep. The little boy, he had no idea what was about to happen. He looked at me like a deer in headlights. And Pete. Fuck. Pete...he, he looked at me like we were about to have fun today. Like for the first time in that fucking god awful hell we were going to have fun."

  His neck was soaked with my tears by the time he finished. I'd had to bury my face there to get through his recounting of Pete's death. While I'd never known his best friend, I knew how much Pete's death had affected him. I'd just never known what it was that had happened, what it was he saw when he closed his eyes.

  I felt Finn's body sag beside me, as if confessing to me had just depleted him of all the energy he'd had left. There was nothing I could say that would make any of it better. That would make any of it hurt less or help him forget any more.

  So I did the only thing I could do. I lifted my head, reached for Finn's jaw, and laid my lips over his.

  Chapter Twenty

  Leighton

  Finn grasped my face like he was grasping for the chance to get out of his head space. Every swipe of his tongue over mine, every suckle of his teeth on my lips brought him further and further away from the nightmare he'd lived.

  I could taste the salt from tears in between our frantic kisses, feel the damp, almost-dried sweat along the curve of his jaw and neck. Grunts and moans filled the dark, still air of the hotel room. It was like everything else in the entire hotel, the entire city was suspended and the only moving, living things were our two bodies.

  Finn tipped me back, his knee pressing down in between my legs as he scooted us further up the bed. The robe I'd pulled on, the only piece of clothing besides my underwear between Finn and I, slid up almost to my waist, revealing the dark purple lace panties covering my most intimate areas.

  "Shit..." Finn cursed, lifting his head and glancing down the bed at our legs. Or rather, his leg. I knew it always bothered him in this position, with him on top of me.

  He reached between us for the tie on my robe and pulled slowly, unraveling the material and then using his hand to gently unwrap me.

  "Touch yourself. I want to see those rosy buds pucker."

  His sensual command sent shivers through me. I knew he loved this, watching me squeeze, massage and pull at my breasts and nipples. He flipped to a sitting position at my feet, my body laid out before him. As I got to work, tweaking and rolling while moans mixed with my breath, Finn unstrapped his prosthetic. He unlatched the apparatus and took the cup off all while his eyes bored into me, never leaving the ministrations I was performing on myself.

  The artificial leg fell to the carpet with a soft thud as Finn twisted back over, crawling his way up the mattress to stop as his face came parallel with my knees.

  "Let me help you with that."

  The minute I felt his tongue lash against the flesh on my inner thigh I cried out, a guttural, primitive sound breaking from my throat. I hadn't felt his tongue on my body in months, but it felt like my entire being had been barren of feeling for years by the way it reacted.

  "You always were so vocal when I did this."

  His mouth nipped higher, in the juncture where thigh met lips, so close to where I needed him. My head spun from the high of it.

  "Let's see what kind of opera I get tonight."

  I felt his warm breath before he sealed his lips over my slit and the room went around like a Tilt-a-Whirl.

  "Ahhh!" My high-pitched moan echoed off the walls, more sighs and wails following it.

  Finn lapped, sucked and tongued me, milking the sharp release that was about to slam into me like a supersonic jet.

  "Please..." He knew what I needed.

  "You want me to use my fingers, Leighton?" Finn looked up, a grin spreading his lips.

  He'd stopped touching me altogether and I squirmed, the tip of my clit so sensitive and ready to burst that maybe a jiggle of my hips would set off the cataclysmic orgasm threatening to wash over me.

  "Yes...god, please..."

  "Well, since you said please. You know I've always had a thing for manners."

  His two thick fingers invaded my wetness as his teeth came down on my clit. Two curls of his fingers inside of me and the pressure of his suction on my nub and I saw white. My body shook harshly and a ragged breath tore from my throat as he continued to pump his fingers into me.

  "That's right, unravel around my fingers. Fuck Leighton, that's so beautiful."

  As I came down, breathlessly and blissfully, it felt like my heart was beating out of every single pore. I barely registered Finn hoisting himself up to kneel on the bed.

  I watched through heavily lidded eyes as he pulled his boxers past his hips, his thick, hard cock springing free and jutting out, proud in its stance. Finn maneuvered the material over his legs, awkwardly freeing it from his amputated limb.

  From this angle, you couldn’t even tell his lower right leg was missing. Both knees jammed into the mattress between my thighs, his strong body towering over mine, you wouldn’t even know he’d been injured. And I never thought of him that way. The first couple of times we’d fucked, he’d made me look that other way until he could hide his half-leg in some position I couldn’t see it in. I’d told him to cut that shit out quickly.

  I thought it was fucking beautiful, his strength, his imperfection. And I thought it was ridiculously sexy. If that made me kinky, so be it.

  “Do you want me inside of you?” He gave himself a long stroke, cupping his
balls and pulling on them as his hand milked his shaft.

  “Yes.” My voice sounded needy and reed thin.

  “How badly have you missed me? How much have you thought about me filling you since Dublin?”

  I sighed, wiggling in my desperation. “Only every second. Please, fuck me Finn.”

  He held off more, moving his hand in a steady rhythm, working his dick. “How about the four months we were apart? You really held off? You’re telling the truth when you say you craved my cock and my cock only?”

  I got it now. He was punishing me, using the information I’d let spill in Ireland against me. Two could play this game.

  I sat up on my elbow, my arousal still sharp and all-consuming, but it took a backseat to the fire of anger licking up my spine. “I did, unlike you. I mourned the loss of you. I got no relief except from my fingers. How about the other women, Finn? Did they replace me so easily? Did you picture my face as you fucked them?”

  My head connected with the pillow, and if it was any other object I would probably have been concussed Finn had shoved me down so hard. The next second my scream was resounding off the four walls as he pushed into me in one long, stretching stroke. Pain and pleasure mixed as he hit the back of my walls and my G-spot at the same time. I dug my fingers into the sinews of his back and heard the clenching of his jaw.

  “Of course I pictured you. As hard as I fucking try, I can never get you out of my damn head.” Finn gritted the words out, his teeth grinding together as his hips undulated a slow, punishing stroke.

  “Good,” I spat. “I’m going to haunt you forever. Because we belong together.”

  I grabbed his face, crushing his lips to mine in a kiss that was both bruising and frantic. The room around us was tumbling, the world tilting on its axis as Finn slammed his cock into me over and over again. The sound of skin-on-skin reigned through the room as my muted screams filled with his growls.