Soak (A Navy SEAL Mormon Taboo Romance)

by Loren, Celia

  But Ryder had always been a doubting man, even during his brief flirtation with Catholicism. Alone in his room, he stretched his long body below the austere, somehow religious-feeling sheets, trying to get comfortable. He hated the night-time. Under cover of darkness, demons sprouted from the shadows and made games of his mind.

  He pulled a battered book from the depths of his duffel bag, an old friend: A Confederacy of Dunces. He flipped to a page at random. In the early days of his service, he’d circulated this novel through the barracks like it was a good luck charm, hooking all his fellow SEALs on the exploits of Ignatius Reilly. Tonight, the book felt like a security blanket. He gave himself permission to laugh out loud, when prompted to.

  Weed would make this perfect, he murmured to himself. Then just as fast, he felt guilt. Johnny had made it crystal clear at the hospital that there was to be no “perks” to his stay at the family house. On the long list of no-nos for the Mormons, it turned out that marijuana (medical, or otherwise) ranked pretty high. Even if it had been specially recommended for a soldier with night terrors.

  Out of habit, Ryder flicked his Zippo back and forth, pawing through the pages. Silence engulfed the house. He kept laughing out loud at the easy jokes he knew so well, even when he didn’t quite feel it. Laughing in the face of darkness made his nightmares feel a little further away. The screams that plagued his sleeping life, the pools of blood, the anguished faces of his brothers, his peers—they could not tempt him away from a good time.

  “Is everything okay?”

  Ryder, operating on reflex, assumed an offensive position when he heard the voice in the doorway. He reached for a weapon that had long ago been confiscated. His heart hammered in his chest.

  “Oh no! I didn’t mean to scare you.” When the invisible smoke cleared, Strong saw that the phantom was, in fact, flesh. There was Ms. Chloe Christiansen, apparently a fellow insomniac. Chloe was dressed as she had been at dinner, in the lumpy frock and shirt. But she’d let her feathery-looking blonde hair fall all about her shoulders, free from its binding ponytail. Her hair was what his ex-bunkmate would have called “mermaid length,” in that it fanned out in pleasing waves right where her nipples would be, covering her breasts.

  “I’m so sorry!” she continued, stepping into his room. Ryder tried to pull himself out of “battle pose” in as gallant a way he could muster, which was unfortunately not very gallant. He tried to look cool and relaxed, feigning a yawn and stretch. But one look at Chloe revealed that she wasn’t fooled.

  “I shouldn’t have snuck up on you like that. I just heard the laughing, and I...” she gestured limply. Once again, she was hovering in his doorway, like a clueless housefly. What was with these Mormon girls? Didn’t they get the first thing about social etiquette?

  “Well I’m fine, ballerina,” he said, making a show of tapping A Confederacy. No sooner had he made the “I’m-busy” play than he noticed Chloe was toting her own book, which she clutched to her side. One of her slender fingers was still saving her page.

  “Whatcha reading?” he asked, sitting up a little straighter. His heart rate, thank God, had resumed a steady pace. Chloe’s serious little face twisted a little. Was it, could it possibly be? The hint of a...smile?

  “Madame Bovary,” she said. “But mum’s the word.”

  “Why? Is Emma too scandalous for this crowd?”

  The smile went South. He should have figured.

  “You really think we’re all such prudes, don’t you?”

  Ryder shrugged. He was officially bored. Pretty girls came a dime a dozen, and he sure as hell didn’t need one lecturing him on the tenets of the faith.

  “Look, I don’t know you personally. Just going from what I’ve read...” he swept his arm about the room in a gesture he hoped would encompass the house, the town, that big creepy temple he’d seen on the drive in.

  “We’re a cult, right? Racist, polygamist, homophobic freaks?” His eyebrows arched; he had to admit a little surprise that homegirl even knew those words.

  “Well...yeah.”

  “You know, most assumptions betray a prejudice.”

  “Where’d you read that?” And then, because he couldn’t resist: “The Lizard King scrolls?”

  “Where do you get off, exactly?”

  “Why do you care? And hey, lighten up! I’m joking. It’s like you people can’t take a joke.”

  Color was blooming along those high cheekbones, and Ryder was surprised to see that his body—if not his mind—was responding to the sea change. Chloe certainly looked a little warmer when she was riled up. Too bad there was nothing to be done about the stick up her butt.

  “You know my brother is one of ‘us people.’ And my father. You know, the guy who took you into his home?”

  “You’re right. I shouldn’t have said anything.” This was true, he had to admit. It was just difficult to check social impulses after...well, after everything he’d seen. So little of this life seemed important to Ryder. Not the documents humans lived with and for, not the rules they fabricated. He expelled a long stream of air between his lips, letting the sound flutter. (Another relaxation technique.) Still, Sister Christian held her ground. She crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows as if awaiting his come-back. Ryder couldn’t help but notice how round her breasts looked, smashed together like that. He looked away.

  “Chloe, look. I’m really tired. I think I should go to sleep.”

  “Great. So long as you stop laughing like a hyena. Lots of people live in this house, you know.”

  Boy, did he.

  There was no time to deliver this last lash to Sister Christiansen, because she flounced off in the direction of the twins’ bedroom just as words formed in his mouth. Ryder realized he had no idea where she’d been hiding the past few hours. Some secret goblin cranny in the house, no doubt.

  He tried to get back to the book, but Chloe’s speech persisted. He snapped off the bedside lamp, and prepared himself for a long, typical battle with the monsters. He breathed deep. He rolled to and fro, trying to get comfortable.

  Then, just for shits and giggles, he pretended Chloe was still in the doorway, watching over him like a schoolmarm. The thought was so amusing that it managed to keep most of the demons at bay. Ryder fell asleep with the book still on chest, which hadn’t happened for months.

  Chapter Five

  “I’m not saying it’s not against doctrine,” Gwen Lilly murmured, in between sips of a strawberry milkshake. “But there’s a distinctive grey area around the ass. Ask anyone.”

  “Really, Gwen? You want me to ask anyone? Elder Andrews? My Dad?”

  “You’re being literal again.”

  “I thought that was what we did for the most part,” Chloe continued. This got her a laugh.

  Gwen and Chloe, best friends since as long as either could remember, often went to one another for the more dubious kind of “spiritual guidance.” Gwen was one of the more radical members of their sleepy community, and a liberal interpreter of the sacred texts. Her father had famously left the Church when she was young, and shortly afterwards announced himself homosexual. As a result, Gwen had grown up the subject of plenty of torment: their peers often referred to her father as a disgrace, especially after he’d gotten married to his long-time partner, incurring “apostasy.” Though the church elders also made no small show of their disapproval, Gwen had finally brought herself around to speaking terms with her old man, who now lived in Olympia with his sculptor husband, Alton. But Gwen’s mother, Sister Lilly, was not so generous with her forgiveness.

  “You’re telling me that you’d let someone put it in your butt?”

  “‘Put it in my butt?’ You realize you sound like your little sisters.”

  “I’d never do that.”

  “Never say never, darling.”

  They were taking one of their Sunday strolls, in between church and the large dinners their families tended to host in the evenings. These brief meetings had originated sweetly en
ough, as excuses to get milkshakes and gossip about their classmates—but over the years, Chloe had come to cherish the time. There were days when Gwen felt like her sanest friend. She never judged her, for one, no matter how much more experienced she always seemed to be. And together, they felt free to bat around the questions they had about their faith. The kinds of questions that no one else in the community would ever have been able to hear.

  Gwen, largely because of her family back-story, wasn’t permitted in the large Provo temple. Her mother was a devoted servant of the church, but many people in the community had found their own ways of blaming Sister Lilly for being entangled with a “sinner.” This kind of thing didn’t fly with Gwen, who was technically still on extended leave of absence from BYU. She’d arrived there six years ago (in Chloe’s family car, in fact), but had never quite completed her Pre-law coursework. She maintained that she didn’t “jive” with the school’s mission, and had done exactly what Chloe had in lieu of making a larger life decision: bounced right back to Provo. Picked up the old habits, and a few more household responsibilities.

  “It doesn’t matter anyways,” Chloe’s friend sighed. She waved her milkshake straw around like it was a cigarette. “Sister Lilly wants me to get married ASAP. And when you’ve got a nice LDS husband, anything goes in the bedroom.”

  “Now I know that’s not doctrine.”

  Gwen shrugged. Her wild red hair was beginning to escape its already insecure moorings. Chloe thought she looked like a Pre-Raphaelite woman in a painting. Everything about her best friend she found thrilling, precisely because she was so different from everyone else in their town.

  “Umm. Chloe?”

  “What? PS—can I have the last sip of your strawberry thing?”

  Wordlessly, Gwen handed the plastic cup over. Chloe tracked her friend’s slack-jawed gaze, straight to her own front-yard. A spring sun beat down on the day, and it was mild verging on warm—but there was Ryder Strong, mowing the lawn shirtless. Like one of those Hollywood types.

  “Your father’s not gonna like that,” Gwen purred, though it was clear from her tone that Elder Johannes couldn’t be further from her mind. Gwen was notoriously boy-crazy, and had always loved to brag about what she considered the “creative,” ways she’d found around the no-sex-till-you’re-married part of doctrine. It was only in her friend’s company, in fact, that Chloe felt keenly aware of lust. As a prospect, as a shameless feeling and—alas—as a sin.

  “You’re drooling, lady,” Chloe snapped. She tried to keep her eyes on the frothy contents of the shake, but her glance kept slipping. Ryder was rounding a corner with the push-mower, and his torso twisted with the maneuver. Once again, it was uncomfortably easy to be drawn in to the fluid movements of his body. She sucked at the straw.

  “Takes one to know one,” Gwen replied, in the whiny tone they both invoked when they were making fun of Celeste and Marie. “What’s his deal, anyway? Is he part of the church, or what?”

  What was Ryder Strong’s deal? Chloe certainly didn’t feel equipped to answer. It had been three weeks and change since the strange military man had crossed her family’s threshold, and she still couldn’t say that she knew more about him than most of his government ID forms did. Since that first awkward evening, they’d been avoiding each other. Each time Ryder saw fit to make some smug, anti-Mormon “joke,” she rolled her eyes—and each time she opened her mouth, she imagined she could feel him sighing from across the room. It was a tense game of chess they were playing, made doubly uncomfortable by the fact that she’d never thought of herself as boring and prudish before. Though it wasn’t like she had anything to prove to Mr. Secular Shirtless, over there. Flashing off his muscles and those ugly symbol tattoos.

  “He bugs you that much, huh?” Gwen was intuitive as ever, and Chloe could only nod. She gathered her cardigan tighter around her skinny frame; more out of revulsion than the cold.

  “He’s just very arrogant. And it’s very clear in the house that he only really respects my brother.”

  “He’s rude to your parents?”

  “Not rude, exactly. But he’s made his feelings about the Church pretty obvious. And I know what he must think of me and Mama.”

  “Oh, pish posh. Who’s he to judge? Just a big army meathead.”

  Navy SEAL, Chloe fought the urge to correct. Then her mind darted to the growing pile of books on the houseguest’s nightstand. Ryder Strong was a lot of things, but he definitely wasn’t a meathead.

  “I’m gonna go say hello,” Gwen said at last, making a miniature show of batting her eyelashes like Betty Boop. “My mother wants me to meet men, after all.” They shared a titter at the image of Sister Lilly sanctioning a marriage between her only daughter and a fallen, tattooed, brawny hooligan. And before Chloe could think to stop it (but then, why would she stop it?), Gwen had switched her heart-shaped ass across the street and onto the lawn.

  Chloe watched them. She couldn’t help it. Gwen looked so natural, with her hair tossed back, her hand on one hip. Even though much of what the gossip magazines classified as “flirtatious body language,” was frowned upon in this neck of the woods, Gwen sure knew how to work what the Good Lord gave her. Even in her Sunday finest, with a Peter Pan collar and thick stockings, she looked like a girl who knew how to have fun.

  And Ryder responded. He ran his forearm over his face, and Chloe could see that he’d collected sweat while hard at work. His breathing came hard, too; she could tell from how fast his chest rose and fell. A dark, strange knot began to form in her belly, or somewhere just below it. She sighed, and let air flutter through her lips.

  Now Gwen was motioning to her. Ryder bent a hand to shade his eyes against the sun. Chloe’s heart began to pound, and for no reason at all. He’d been under her roof for weeks and now, now she was beginning to respond to his... physicality? None of her emotions made any sense to her. So, she didn’t trust them.

  And Chloe had had boyfriends before, at BYU. A slim parade of those upstanding scholars, who had big dreams but precise responsibilities within their families. A lot of those boys were married now. Two of them had even asked her for her hand (Jackie Rommel and Hector Elvarez). Each beau had been kind, respectful of her boundaries, and pleasant with her family and friends. Yet not one of those men had sent her insides plummeting the way Ryder was doing now, as he stood panting and heaving in the almost-heat.

  “What’re you doing prowling around across the street?” the man himself asked her, once she was in proper ear-shot. Gwen smiled like a celebrity presenter, flashing all of her pearly white teeth.

  “We’re just taking the long way back from church,” her girlfriend offered up when no words occurred to Chloe. Just then, the front door opened, emitting her older brother. Johnny was still shaky with his cane, but he smiled and took a big step onto the lawn when he saw Gwen. They’d always been close. At one point, Chloe had thought there might be something more to their friendship, but Gwen had assured her that this was not the case.

  “Gwennifer Love Hewitt!” he called, ambling toward their little party on the grass. “How come you haven’t come by the house?” Gwen made some snappy reply, but Chloe didn’t hear it. She’d somehow been sucked into the orbit of the panting stranger.

  They stood in awkward silence for a few beats, until it felt unbearable.

  “You want a lemonade or something?” Chloe came up with. Ryder grinned at this.

  “Yeah, a lemonade would be swell.”

  She moved to dart across the grass and into the kitchen at the same moment that Ryder bent over the lawn-mower, and for one mortifying moment Chloe felt half of her body pressed against Ryder’s sweaty torso. She could smell him again (less cologne, more cut grass), but this time the smell didn’t jar her. She realized she’d become adjusted to it, after all his days in the house.

  “I’m sorry,” she grumbled, knowing full well she sounded angry. Ryder recoiled as if bitten. Their eyes met then disconnected, swimming somewhere between shame
and revulsion—and just like that, the spell was broken. Chloe couldn’t imagine what she’d been seeing moments before, as she stared at Ryder like a fallen woman. That arrogant grin, those thick lips, the bulging biceps...heck, maybe he was a meathead. He certainly wasn’t worth her extra time.

  “I’ll be back,” she said, trying to sound casual. She didn’t meet her brother’s or Gwen’s gaze as she sidled into the kitchen. But she thought she could hear them laughing once she’d cleared the foyer.

  “What’s all that ruckus going on outside?” It was her father’s voice that greeted her. He was flipping through a book of Joseph Smith’s sermons and sipping on his own glass of lemonade, looking fully at peace. Sometimes, Chloe envied her father. He seemed so perfectly at home in his kitchen, leading his upright life.

  “Gwen is visiting,” Chloe said, reaching for a glass. “And Johnny came out to say hello. I suppose you saw Ryder.”

  “He asked if he could help with anything around the house,” the older man shrugged. But his face bunched into a rictus. Chloe should have known better than to mention Gwen; her father didn’t think she was “high caliber company.”

  “Tell them to stop raising Cain in my yard,” he said, after a few moments. “It’s Sunday.”

  Back outside, it was like the whole world had gotten wind of Ryder Strong. Her younger siblings had seemed to arrive out of the woodworks, and each had their paltry excuse to watch Ryder mowing the lawn. Even little Martin brought his homework outside, enticed by all the activity. Gwen had taken up residence on the porch, where she sat gabbing freely with Johnny. Chloe tried to keep up with their conversation, but was just as content to listen to the pair of them matching wits. It was nice to hear Johnny returning to his former high spirits. He was slowly becoming the bright teenager she recognized. The friend before the officer.