Fragmentary

by LeAnn Mason

  Where’d you go? Holden waved a hand in front of my face to break my blank stare.

  My cheeks flushed, heat rushing up the back of my neck to paint the tips of my ears. “Sorry.”

  I was just saying that I understand your reaction to… meeting my mother. She’s not the warm and fuzzy type, especially not toward me. I can only imagine her thoughts about me. He hung his head, his mind flashing. Just a second of sight. A memory. Not a pleasant one from his reaction. He struggled to pull himself out of his past without reliving it. I would have loved to see her go down. He took a deep breath and continued, but you can’t go around hitting people when you’re an enforcer. You could lose your spot on the team, at the least.

  “If I had hit her, I’d have lost my job?” That was an eye opener.

  They could have pressed to throw you in jail for assault. The councilman would love to do it right about now. Prove that he has some control after this morning’s failure. Anyway, back to the reason I interrupted your escape. I thought maybe you’d want to get ready for bed now. It’s after twenty one hundred.

  Really? It was after nine? Summer always threw me for a loop. The sun staying high for so long messed with my internal clock. “Yeah, I guess it’d be best to head that way. Zero seven hundred creeps up bright and early.”

  I took one more lingering look at the beauty dusk brought before vacating my seat and turning for the door, which Holden now held open, once again giving me his Prince Charming arm sweep of chivalry. Play it up buddy. I just smirked as I passed him to enter the house’s confines.

  The round robin of bathroom occupation was old hat by now. We all knew each other’s habits and had established a generally accepted order and time table. Just another aspect of teamwork we were forced to emulate for the sake of peace within the ranks. I changed into a comfy short and tank pajama set while Holden grabbed sleep shorts from his room. That seemed about all he did in there anymore. He’d slept in my room every night since that first time after I’d broken my foot. It’d been the best and worst week of sleep of my life.

  The intimacies we enjoyed before attempting sleep sometimes made it so sleep wasn’t fast in coming. There were too many other thoughts running through our heads to be able to shut down. Still, we’d not done more than heavy petting, both of us utter newbies in the intimacy department and taking our time. Being that we each repelled the opposite sex just as much as those of our own gender, we were both new to such things. Crazy, I know, but we dealt with it. it was fitting, really, that we should explore these feelings together.

  Was there such a thing as soulmates?

  Hey, the bathroom’s open.

  And that ended my wayward thought train. I didn’t need to get all sappy. I didn’t want to. I nodded and followed him into the cramped room to brush my teeth and wash my face. My time out on the porch had allowed the humidity to cling to my body like a water glove, but I didn’t want to take a shower. Maybe I’d just take a rag to my arms along with my face and neck to help feel fresh. I didn’t want to gross out Holden with my stickiness and possible stink issues. A quick rinse would hopefully quell that – possibly completely imaginary – problem.

  Once back in my room, we snuggled together on top of the light blanket, not bothering to get beneath. The heat would just force us to kick the covers off later. This way we didn’t run the risk of complete entanglement with the grasping vines that were the bedsheets.

  Holden settled himself on his back and pulled me to lay on his chest, my arm and leg thrown over his body while his arm encircled me around the shoulders, making sure I was firmly glued to all his muscular glory. My hand did its customary wander across the bulges and dips of his hard chest and abdomen. It didn’t matter how many times I saw him, felt his smooth, warm skin under my fingers. I explored the rigid planes my digits encountered with great care.

  Every night, it took my breath away and made my eyes water. I had to remind myself to breathe, to blink. Holden would still be there after I did. I drew letters and words onto the bronzed flesh under my body, my mind reeling with how to ask Holden what I wanted to know. I wanted to ask about his mother, about his past. About how he’d come to be under the care of his uncle.

  Just spit it out.

  I looked up at him without lifting my head from his pectoral. Indecision made my mouth dry like I’d sucked on cotton all night, but Holden’s open features and resigned mind spurred me on. “Will you tell me about her?”

  Holden breathed deeply, trying to relax his reaction to being asked about his family. How bad must it have been if just thinking about her brought forth both mental and physical tension? I laid quietly in my position as human drapery, continuing to write my invisible questions and deciding to focus on them and not Holden's face. I didn’t want to seem like I was pressuring him. I didn’t want my attention to be an added layer to work through. He had enough on his mind.

  Blowing out a heavy breath, my head dipping on his chest with the forced exhalation, he began. When I was young, I got so anxious around people that my mind locked up. Panicked. I couldn’t speak to people though I could think just fine. Apparently, I had what they call “selective mutism.” He made quotes with his hands, which squeezed me tighter into his body, and I took full advantage to snuggle in further while he searched for how to continue.

  Growing up in a Primal family, this limitation was frowned upon. After a while, it progressed from strangers and uncomfortable situations to my home, my sisters, my parents.

  “You used to speak?” That caught me off guard. I’d assumed he’d never been able to and was shunned for it, eventually going to a more understanding home with his uncle, Commander Travis James.

  I did. But then the anxiety came, and with it went my speech. My family thought I was defective. They didn’t understand that it was a mental disorder, not a physical one. I didn’t either until… after.

  He was so rigid that he resembled a rock more than a nice pillow, but I couldn’t move, didn’t want to even breathe. He was actually talking to me, confiding in me, and I was afraid to break the spell. After a weighty pause, he continued again.

  Their rages became more intense, more frequent the longer I didn’t speak, and only scared me more. They thought they could beat me into compliance, he scoffed.

  I was stunned stupid. I had guessed as much really, but having it confirmed only brought forth the rage I’d felt while in Elle’s presence earlier that day. I couldn’t call her his mother. She wasn’t that. She was just Elle. And evil. “She beat you?” My voice was distant, back to the scathing tone I’d spewed while in the she-devil’s presence.

  Well, no. She was the mouthpiece. My father was the hammer.

  I tried to pull away then. I was livid and didn’t want Holden to see my tension, my anger at his family. I needed space to deal with it, but he wouldn’t give it to me. Instead, he wrapped me up in his arms in a horizontal bear hug and rested his chin on top of my head.

  Don’t leave. Holding you is keeping me from drowning in the memories. The words weren’t muffled as they should have been when someone had their face buried in your hair. Nope, he couldn’t verbalize with his mouth, so there was no impediment. There was no rumbling in his chest, no vibration as my ear lay over his heart when he spoke. Nothing. The only reason I could hear him was because of my telepathy. And I was coming to the conclusion that his parents were the reason that was the case. The reason he was considered defective.

  They’d insured it.

  CHAPTER 15

  I LAY QUIETLY FUMING, caught up in his words, in his memories as they flashed to the forefront. I knew there was more to the story, but I wasn’t sure I could handle it right now. I had no idea how either of us was going to get to sleep after this revelation. The dam had been broken, and if we didn’t find something to take our minds off the disturbing reality of Holden’s past, we’d both lose ourselves somewhere dark, and I’d most likely be asking Trent to locate Mrs. James so I could make good on my earlier threat to put
her in the ground.

  I had a feeling the world would be a better place without her in it. I’d had this thought multiple times, about multiple people this week. It seemed that even though I’d known the cruelty and bigotry of the ninnies, I’d forgotten that all humans had that capacity. We all fought similar struggles whether we were free to roam or confined behind walls.

  Holden’s hand on my back began rubbing up and down as his mind recounted one childhood incident after another. It was like his petting me was grounding him, keeping his head above water. It gave me an idea of how best to pull us both from the oppressive blanket of dark memories. We needed something good to hold onto, a soft and reverent caress to wash away the stain of hurt.

  I moved my head so my lips brushed across the smooth, heated skin of his pectoral, giving small, admiring kisses to each inch I came into contact with. He needed to know that he was wanted, perfect in my eyes. I moved to hover over him, my arms helping to complete my cage around Holden’s prone body. Hooded turquoise eyes watched my progression. The thoughts tumbling around becoming decidedly less somber. I continued my ministrations, attention now on the center of his chest, in the dip between muscles. Silky, tanned skin beckoned as I moved lower to run my tongue over each rigid groove of his abdominals, marveling at my vision of the man beneath me.

  “You are perfect,” I uttered into the welcoming heat of his body, each word punctuated with a kiss that trailed lower toward his navel. The perfectly round little indentation was like the trailhead for the start of a narrow path of dark hair leading to forbidden territory. A hidden treasure I wasn’t ready to excavate, yet. Luckily for me, my distraction tactic seemed to be working. Holden was definitely not thinking about his mom in this moment. My hands had felt left out and now roamed of their own accord as I moved upward once more.

  Come here. Holden noticed my direction change and decided to take charge, hooking his large hands under my arms and moving my body to align with his. As I came to rest atop him, he moved a finger under my chin and met my lips with fervor. Apparently, he was done being a passive participant. With my hands resting on his chest to keep myself steady, I met his onslaught head on, our tongues clashing, teeth nipping, and heads tilting as needed to gain the best angle of attack.

  And it was an attack. A coupling born of desperation, the frantic need to forget that fueled the ever present desire.

  I couldn’t stop the moans that escaped as Holden moved to cradle my neck and maneuvered his mouth in a trail from my lips across my jaw and behind my ear. A quick nip to the lobe had me sucking in a noisy breath before he moved lower to focus on my neck. My heart was running away like a freight train, his talented mouth now on my chest. I was going to explode. Not like this, Nat, I scolded myself harshly. I didn’t want my first time to be born of desperation to forget.

  The thought was like a bucket of ice water thrown atop hot coals. It was effective in dousing the flames, but the steam that rose in its wake was enough to set off its own alarm.

  I pulled back, but Holden hardly noticed, lost as he was to the sensations. When it seemed I couldn’t deter him, I pushed off and rolled to the side, landing in a heap next to him on my bed, which seemed narrower than normal in that moment. We both stared at the ceiling breathing like we’d run a marathon, our bodies slick with sweat, both from the lingering temperatures of the day as well as the heat of the moment we’d conjured. Two minds reeling. This time from sexual tension as opposed to helplessness. I’d take it.

  “Sorry,” I licked my lips and tried to steady my breathing. “I-I didn’t think our first time should be in... retaliation of your parents’... opinions.” I shrugged into the mattress and cut my eyes over to Holden. “I knew we couldn’t go to sleep with the thoughts we were thinking, so I figured I’d erase them.” My cheeks pinked, and I moved to stare at the ceiling again. Geez, how humiliating is this?

  A calloused hand reached out to tangle with mine, becoming a knot between us. Thank you, and you know I’ll never turn down a make out session with you. His lips tipped up, his eyebrows waggling lewdly.

  I barked a laugh and rolled my eyes at his antics. “How is it that you are now comforting me?”

  His big shoulder shrugged against mine. I guess I’ve become good at deflection over the years. Then, he once again dragged me over to drape across his body and brought his chin to my hair, inhaling deeply.

  “Do you think it will be any different for us on the outside?”

  Hmm? Holden returned sleepily, his hand once again rubbing along my spine.

  “Will we still be outcasts? Will you – will I –still be looked at with distrust? Will we be accepted or will we be feeling the same scrutiny but on a much larger scale?”

  Why do you want out? To be out or to be accepted?

  I wasn’t sure anymore. I knew I wanted to see all the things that I couldn’t while the doors were sealed but did I hope for more? Was it stupid to?

  At my silence Holden continued. I don’t think opening the doors is a fix-all. I wish it was… but I think we will face hate and fear like we’ve not known before. His chest expanded and then shrank under my ear as he expelled a deep breath. I think I’ll still need you once we can leave.

  Dang it, I was going to cry again. “I’ll still need you too,” I whispered.

  Sleep, Nat. We both need it.

  He was right, so I closed my eyes and breathed in all that was Holden trying to forget all the deep and somewhat anguishing thoughts of the day, the smell of soap and pine filled my head and easily lulled me to the land of slumber.

  Everything was sore. I dragged in a ragged breath only to realize I couldn’t get air. There was a vise wrapped around my throat, squeezing. I clawed at the fingers keeping oxygen from my lungs—lungs that were now burning in want, causing my vision to blur and tunnel at the edges. I was going to pass out if I didn’t breathe soon. I tried to look around but couldn’t. Please! A frantic voice sounded in my head. A very young voice. A voice that was not my own though I felt the plea as if it were. A voice that couldn’t be heard. Please, stop!

  Tears streamed from my eyes, but no words escaped while my lungs burned like fire and my heart thumped erratically in my chest, expending energy which rapidly waned as the blackness progressed across my vision. Hands that were too small continued scrabbling, scratching frantically at the much larger one belonging to the man with the angry eyes I now stared into. Dark green eyes that would be beautiful, like emeralds, if not for the pure hatred emanating from their depths. Hatred aimed at me.

  A familiar voice, one now permanently seared into my mind was spewing her hatefulness with abandon somewhere behind the beast of a man currently doing his best to kill me. No, not me. Holden. This was Holden’s memory, one that was seared into his mind for eternity. One that upon seeing his mother, along with my questions after, had obviously dragged from the deep, dark recesses of Holden’s mind, the wall they’d been safely behind now a crumpled heap.

  With the realization that I was not actually in imminent danger, my eyes flew open and my lungs inhaled greedily. As I launched to sitting, I tangled in sheets and large, masculine limbs which were practically granite, locked as they were in the nightmare. There was no noise, no flailing. Holden just lay there, deceptively peaceful-like. The only indication of his pain seen in his rigidity, which extended to his jaw, the furrow between his brows, and ragged breathing.

  Once my heartbeat slowed and I was able to take deep breaths, I turned to focus on bringing Holden out of his nightmare— out of his past.

  “Holden,” I laid a hand on his chest. Nothing. I moved it to run my fingers lightly across his forehead. I didn’t think harsh movements or demands would do any good, not with his mind currently experiencing those things on an extreme scale. My strategy was going to be to do the opposite—soft touches, calm words. Anything that didn’t fit with what he was reliving. I hoped the conflict of sensation would be enough to break the hold the memory had on his mind and body.

  �
�Babe, you need to wake up,” I continued stroking. Moving slowly, tenderly across the exposed flesh of his upper body. I was conscious to avoid his throat as I didn’t think any sensation in the area would be helpful. “C’mon, you’re safe. I’m with you, I won’t let anyone hurt you ever again.”

  Nothing. No reaction. His muscles were still clenched. His mind hiding, burrowed deep. My eyes welled with tears, my jaw working to contain the tears. I couldn’t lose it, not now, not while he was still stuck in there with his abusive parents, struggling with death. I needed to find a way to reach him.

  Well, here goes nothing. I threw a leg over his rigid body, which now glistened with beads of sweat that had nothing to do with the lingering heat of the day. Leaning forward I brought my lips to his, moving to kiss his upper lip before pulling the bottom into my mouth and sucking lightly.

  I avoided the bite that I really wanted to deliver, not knowing how that would go over. So, instead, I just asked for permission to enter, my tongue flicking out to lick at the seam of his full lips.

  There! A flicker in his torment, a break in the movie reel as it were. With the promise of being his instrument of escape, I redoubled my efforts but decided on a new tactic. One that would certainly wake me up.

  I spread my fingers and curved them into claws, bringing them to his ribs just under his armpits, and tickled. I scrunched my fingers and roved, looking for the best reaction. He tightened up and squirmed a bit. Progress. I moved a little higher.

  Just as I was preparing the big guns, getting all up in those armpits, Holden's eyes flew open. He gulped huge, noisy lungfuls of air much as I had in my own escape.

  “There you are. You're okay. They're not here. You're not hurt. You're all right.” I was wrapped around him now, those tears I couldn't shed before now falling unchecked onto Holden's warmth as I ran my hands across as much bare skin as I could reach from my new cocooned position.