by Loren, Celia
“Lucky toss,” Ryder grumbled, taking up his own baby-sized ball.
“Nah, baby. That was all skill.” John swished back into the little bowling seat. He leaned forward and took a sip of his Coke, all cat-that-ate-the-canary. Ryder leaned over the alley, and threw...a gutter ball.
“What happened to that perfect aim, soldier?” John hooted. Damn—the man was so giddy he could have been drunk. That is, he could have been drunk if he’d ever touched alcohol in his life, which Ryder didn’t believe he had.
“Guess I’m going soft in my old age,” Ryder snapped back, hoping this would bury the truth. Which was something closer to: I’m distracted, man. Because I’ve been basically slipping it to your baby sister in your family’s basement—and your church’s—every night for the past week plus.
It sounded so terrible in his head, or at any other point during the light of day. He saw his sins like a headline, or the text of a seedy marquee: Disgraceful Former SEAL corrupts Mormon town; dishonors the sister of his blood brother. It was true that he’d never felt more guilty about anything than he did when he was hanging out with John—his only real confidant and friend in the world, besides Chloe. Then again, he was pretty new to feeling guilty about anything, period.
“Glad to be out of the house?” John ventured, as they paused to tally scores. The rest of “Guys’ Bowling Night” consisted of two or three of John’s “cool Mormon friends,” one of which boys he’d done his missionary trip with: Alexander and Todd...something. They were pretty cool, but palpably shy around Ryder. They kept avoiding eye contact with the bigger man. He felt, as usual in Provo, like something of a pariah.
“What makes you say that, man?”
“Nothing.” John knocked back some more pop, as Todd assumed a power stance. “You’ve just seemed a little edgy lately. Figured it was cabin fever.”
All Ryder could manage was a smile. Oh fuck yeah, he was feeling edgy. But not a one of his reasons for behaving oddly would float in this room.
The thing besides the obvious—his nightly playtime with Sister Chloe—was to do with Elder Johannes. Though the older man had become kinder to his guest in recent days (suspicious timing, as far as Ryder was concerned), it hadn’t taken long to figure out Mr. Christiansen’s angle. Lately, whenever the two men were stranded in a room together after or before a meal, Elder Johannes would begin to talk about the tenets of the faith. “Especially good for the troubled mind,” he’d begin, “is a commitment to something higher, young man. Have you given serious thought to the Mormon church?” Et cetera, et cetera, blah, blah, blah.
He should have figured that the conversion talks were forthcoming, and he also knew he had no real reason to be impolite about such conversations. He had been crashing at the Christiansens’ place for a month, impeding on every aspect of their daily lives. The only time he was apart from all of them was on Sunday mornings. As he became closer to the younger members of the family—little Martin especially—it became apparent that he’d need to do something in return for the family, and something more than “mow the lawn for free.” They wanted his faith.
“I’m sorry about my dad,” John said, invoking some eerie intuitive powers. “It’s not about you, remember. It’s how he gets with everyone who’s not involved in the Church. You just have to remember that he really thinks he’s doing good.”
“By trying to save my heathen soul?”
John twisted his mouth wryly, letting the constant smile lapse for one precious second. “Sure. Something like that.”
The quartet continued to bowl in silence for another frame. Ryder instantly wished he hadn’t made the Mormon jab. But just as quickly as the weirdness had descended, it disappeared. John took another sip of his Coke and cracked his knuckles, bouncing up for his second turn.
“You’re cocky, Strong,” he called over his shoulder, grinning like a Cheshire cat. “You’ve gotta surrender to someone, sometime.” With these telling words, he threw another strike, obliterating the rest of the bowlers with his score. Ryder tried not to think of this as a sign.
Just the night before, as he’d held a quivering Chloe in his arms, post-orgasm, guilt had entered their sacred space for the first time. They’d created an unspoken pattern these past few nights. Each night, Chloe or he would find some excuse to hang back downstairs after the rest of the family went to bed. The other would tiptoe up the stairs, pretending to be tired, and then shimmy back to the basement once it seemed like the rest of the Christiansens had gone to sleep. The deception had evolved, but then, so had their foreplay. He’d gotten well-acquainted with her naked body. The urge to fuck, already deferred longer than any other time in his life, was growing hard to ignore. He’d never wanted anyone more than Chloe Christiansen, yet no one had ever been so forbidden.
“Ryder,” she’d cooed into their usual silence. (The worst part of every night, in his opinion, was the moment when they peeled their slow-breathing bodies apart and muttered the first non-dirty words of their day to one another: “Good night.”) “What are we doing?”
“We’re fooling around.”
“Ryder...”
“Just a couple of fools.”
“Please don’t make a joke of this,” she’d said, turning to him. And oh, her pretty face. He’d brushed the soft skin of her cheek. It had seemed like there was nothing right to say.
“We’re getting to know one another,” he’d said, finally. “Under...less than ideal circumstances.”
“‘Getting to know one another?’”
“Well. Yeah?”
This response had disappointed her, but he hadn’t known how to backpedal. While he and Chloe were literary equals—and had, in fact, recently passed many pleasant, chaste afternoons talking about their favorite books—it had recently become clear that she was a lot smarter than he was in her sneaky girl way. She had information he needed, wrapped tight to her heart.
He’d continued to pet her cheek, flummoxed—and Chloe had screwed her eyes tight and put on an adorable pout. “I’m starting to feel really strongly about you,” she blurted. “I can’t even look at you when I say this. But. I guess I have to ask. Do you feel—?”
“Yes.” He hadn’t had to think. “Yes.” He’d kissed her soft mouth, and pulled her close.
This maddening, crazy, Mormon woman, with her convictions, her confusing mood swings. The furrow in her brow whenever someone said something she didn’t understand, or deemed inappropriate. The easy, shocked way she would laugh, around Gwen or her brother or occasionally, him. He was growing strong feelings for her, alright. But what to do with these? How to improve this impossible, impossible situation?
“Well, that’s nice to hear.” She’d bit her lip. “I just don’t know what to do now.”
Something in her kiss had emboldened his next words.
“We could do anything, Chloe. We’re two consenting adults.”
“You know it’s not that simple, Ry.”
“We could leave this house. We could leave Provo.” The world began to spin before his hazy, post-coital eyes. “I could take you back to New York, show you where I grew up. I still haven’t seen my aunt, for godsakes. She’d like you! We could do literally anything we want to.”
“Ryder.” Her voice had been a curb: sharp, halting. “Look at me. This is who I am.”
If she’d been a different woman, this would have been the overture to the ending. But because she looked so beautiful lying there, and because they’d already wasted so much time arguing, Ryder let it be. He’d held her close. The storm clouds were certainly hovering, but the rain hadn’t fallen yet.
“You’re getting along a lot better with my sister,” John noted, once the bowling group had disbanded and the two friends were walking back toward the borrowed family car. A dry but frigid cold suffused them, despite the fact that it been a warm-enough spring day.
“What makes you say that?” Ryder ventured, carefully. But John said nothing, which was the worst and weirdest thing he mi
ght have done. John almost never said nothing.
When they reached the van, he whipped around, unsteady on his new foot. “Look, man. I’m not dumb. And I know you.”
“Where is this coming from?”
“I’ve just been seeing the way you look at her, is all. And... I want you to be careful.”
The wind seemed to spiral to a hush around them.
“Are you threatening me, man?”
“Ryder, you’ve got to be joking. Do I look like I’m in a position to threaten you?” He gestured vaguely toward his prosthetic limb. “You’re my best friend in the world. But Chloe is my sister. And I see the way you look at her, we all see. That’s it.”
John climbed into the passenger seat, but Ryder remained in the cold for a moment, gathering his thoughts. All this time, he’d figured John’s suspicion had been about marijuana—but could it be possible that he knew something about him and Chloe? Ry became awake to a familiar fury, teeming below his skin. The irrational rage. It had been a long time since this side of him had cause to come out.
“Does this have to do with your Dad?” Ryder asked slowly, once he’d slipped into the front seat and secured his seat belt. “And my heathen soul?”
“No. It has to do with my sister, and you, and my family’s hospitality. I know you take risks. I know you’re the dreamy bad boy. But I’m just nicely asking you not to cross this line.”
“Because I’m not good enough?”
“Dude, NO!” John’s face had, for the first time in ages, completely sacrificed its giddy smile. “Because she’s my SISTER. And you need serious help, you need to get your life back together, and I think if you really thought hard about things you’d know it was a bad fucking idea.”
For a moment, the only sounds in the car were the rattling breaths of the two friends. Ryder fought to stay rational, to not explode. John didn’t disapprove of him and Chloe because he was a classist snob or a religious extremist, Ryder reminded his angry self. His friend was perfectly within his rights and reason to suggest that the timing was off. Still, the whole conversation left a sour taste in the air.
Ryder turned to his friend, willing him to apologize. But out of the corner of his eye, he spied John’s hand darting in a strange way. A moment later, he took a hearty swig from a bottle of Diet Coke.
“What was that, Jay?”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Did you just take something?”
“You’re acting crazy, Ryder. See, this is why I didn’t want...”
“Be straight with me, John! I saw you pop a pill just now!”
The silence thickened between them. Ryder’s mind began to race toward the worst case scenario. But not John, he told himself. It wasn’t possible. His upright, eerily cheery Mormon friend? No way would he be using. No way. He abhorred drugs in others. He’d refused painkillers in rehab. He had even called marijuana a crutch and a weakness to his friend’s face.
John didn’t respond, but he did fold himself over, making a sagging comma of his body. His reddish blonde hair caught light from passing cars, so Ryder could see the fat tears worming down his face. He had his answer.
“Let me see it, man. I would never judge you.”
Moving like molasses, John Christiansen drew a prescription bottle from the pocket of his jeans. Ry read the label: Oxycodone. Well, this was one mystery solved. There’d apparently been a reason, all this time, for his buddy’s extra-giddiness in the face of extreme rehabilitation. Though he’d made such a point to disdain drug use in others, it seemed that even conviction could not heal all wounds.
“How long have you been taking these?” Ryder asked, kindly. John continued to weep. His big, meaty hands covered his face, reminding Ryder of a dozen nights they could no longer speak of. For a few terrible seconds, it seemed like they could as easily have been in Turkey, moments away from burying friends.
“My PT got me a prescription. She said: ‘I think you can handle these.’ I never intended to even fill it, man. It’s just so...” John trailed off. He sighed, with all of his body. Ryder didn’t need any more of an explanation.
“Do you still have the dreams?” John righted his spine, and looked at Ryder. It was hard to meet those watery blue eyes.
“Sometimes,” Ryder replied. But no sooner had he said the words than he realized it wasn’t true; a night terror hadn’t visited him in weeks. Now was certainly not the time to explain the reason, though. Not when John couldn’t possibly ever benefit from the cure.
“God damn!” John punched the glove compartment, and the car filled with a sick, crunching sound. Ryder yelped, and moved for his friend’s hand—but John just waved him away. He tilted his shaggy head back and screamed. It was long, high and terrible, but there was no one around in the parking lot to hear the sound. The Utah valley seemed to bounce the noise right back to them.
“I just want to be happy, you know? I want to be happy for my Dad. And my Mom. And my sisters. Why aren’t we allowed to be happy anymore?”
But I am happy! Ryder wanted to say. Your sister makes me so, so happy! Things will never be like they were, but if I could just make you understand how we make each other feel, I know no one could object. Not even your God. John looked at him with imploring eyes, and Ryder’s heart sank.
“I don’t know, man,” was all he managed to say. “I don’t know.”
Chapter Thirteen
“Just like that,” Chloe cried, mashing her face further into the pillow to muffle all sound. She was on all fours, naked and supine under her man. His engorged cock was already tickling her outer walls, pressing lightly against the slick surface of her pussy. It took almost all of her strength not to bear down and against him, sliding him inside. She was so certain it would feel like Nirvana.
It was the ninth night of their “awful bliss,” (or she called it, rather literarily, in her head) and as electric as their connection was, Chloe—the new Chloe, Chloe 2.0—was growing impatient. She knew that she wanted Ryder like a wife wanted a husband. Unfortunately, it turned out that her shamelessness did have a ceiling, even in the new world.
It wasn’t that she hadn’t thought about making love to Ryder, fully and totally. Only the night before, she’d been shaken awake by Celeste in damp sheets. Her sister had looked concerned, claiming that Chloe had been moaning in her sleep like someone possessed. It was the closest she’d ever come to getting caught, and it had happened in her dreams. While she slept, her imagination was free to place Ryder in any of a dozen of her favorite romantic stories. He appeared to her as Rhett Butler, in his soldier’s uniform. He appeared to her as George Emerson, or Mr. Darcy. In each dream, the fictional encounter would end with the pair of them on the floor, sighing and sore amidst a bed of torn petticoats. It was no small wonder her sisters had started to notice such an active fantasy life.
But whereas in dreams she was thrilled to “jump the final hurdle,” (to be ravished, to be fucked...) it was quite another thing to think about intercourse in Uncle David’s old bedroom, in a hand-made pillow-fort in her family basement, where she lay surrounded by Mormon relics. The more time she spent with Ryder, the more doubtful she became about her future with the church and the fictional whole-milk handsome man—but traditional intercourse still felt like a line in the sand. Were she to have sex, properly defined sex, with Ryder before marriage—she could technically be ex-communicated from her Church. What remained of her covenant with God restricted such flaunting of His doctrine. Chloe was certain that once she and Ryder did the deed, there would be no returning to the way things were. And a small part of her was pleased enough to keep all their naughty fun in an imaginary-world, where it still lacked consequences. Where all still might be undone. Where dreamers could wake.
He nudged up against her again, so Chloe felt a pinch of pressure on her ass. He was gunning for her. While Ryder had been very respectful of her boundaries so far, Chloe knew enough from Gwen’s teachings to recognize blue-balls when she saw them. H
e bent over her body now, beginning to paw at her low-swinging breasts. In his arms, she’d just begun to think of her naked self as desirable—contrary to every small slight Mrs. Christiansen had made in the last twenty-five years. Ryder tugged at her nipples. He kissed her back. Chloe, alert with excitement, backed herself into his erection once more.
“Fuck,” he hissed, into the nape of her neck. “Fuck, Chloe. I want you so bad.”
“I can’t, Ryder,” she said, barely convincing herself. But he was a real man, observant of every ‘no.’ She continued to tease him, toying with his flesh. Then, it was like a light-bulb went off in her head. Gwen appeared, in her mind’s eye.
There’s a distinctive grey area around the ass...
No sooner had the idea occurred than Chloe blushed, even though Ryder couldn’t see her face. She couldn’t bring herself to ask for it. Anal sex. Even the words sounded dirty. Yet the craving for closeness was not easily sated; she had to admit that she needed to feel Ryder inside of her.
“I want you inside me,” she said, tentatively, whispering the words. Ryder ran his palms up and down her flanks. He roared back like a lion and slapped her ass, so hard that she cried out. It shocked her, how the pain transformed so quickly into pleasure. She leaned into him, indicating he should spank her again.
“I brought something,” Ryder murmured, biting her earlobe. “Just in case.” His breath was hot. It curled like smoke down her neck.
He leaned back on his knees, drawing his body heat away. Chloe missed him instantly.
“What are you doing way over there?” she called coyly over shoulder. Ryder didn’t answer right away. She heard the sound of a jar being manipulated, and just as quickly, Ryder engulfed her again, mounting her from behind. His erection was as persistent as ever.
“I want to get inside you, too,” he murmured, gripping her middle, seizing her curves. Chloe gasped, putting two and two together. Ryder waited for her assent, moving slowly back and forth, rocking. She spoke without thinking first: “Yes.”