10. Aspen
Chapter ten
Aspen
I can’t stop thinking about all the things I shouldn’t.
Like butt cheeks. Perfectly formed, muscular, amazing butt cheeks. And me, leaving my finger marks in them. In ways other than hanging off the railing.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I fell asleep easily after that visit to the park, but ever since I woke up in the morning, my body was a beastly livewire. And it was like that all day. I watched Rick moving furniture, hauling things out, and taking the house apart like a man possessed. I tried to help, but he really wouldn’t let me. Instead, I made breakfast, lunch, and dinner, went for a walk a few times, read some of the books I brought even though I couldn’t concentrate, and tried to make plans for a dubious future. Throughout the day, crews came in and out. I think there were three different ones. Two in the morning and one in the late afternoon. Right now, the house is almost totally stripped.
Maybe I can’t sleep right now because I didn’t do enough to tire myself out.
Maybe I’ve done nothing to excise the butt images from my mind, and I’m haunted. Or maybe I’m still a broken series of short-circuiting hormones.
It could be that I’m lying here wide awake because I can’t turn my mind off either. I saw those dark circles under Rick’s eyes. I saw how tired he looked with every fiber of his being. I know he’s not going to sleep tonight. Where would he? I doubt he even has a bed left. One of the crews disappeared upstairs with him and came down with a split box spring, a mattress, and a whole bunch of pieces and parts. I don’t know if there’s another bed in the house. The couch is gone. The chairs too. Other than his office furniture, I’m not sure there’s much left. I didn’t want to go poking around in rooms that weren’t meant for snooping.
I know there’s one bed left in the house.
This one.
I’ve been riding that train of thought for the past few hours as I tossed and turned, and things have gone from being a regular temperature to just about blistering hot in here.
Cold showers never work for me, even in the summer. I could be boiling yet I still can’t bring myself to get under a frigid spray. What I need is a glass of water to try and put out this fire. A glass of what the fuck am I even thinking? I need to stop thinking about it, feeling it, and wanting it.
I can go right from my room to the top of the stairs since it’s the first one down a hallway that only goes in one direction. The other direction is the bathroom, but I doubt there’s a glass for water in there. I’m going to have to go down to the kitchen, and I can do that without disturbing Rick.
I think he’s in his office. I heard the desk chair creak an hour ago. Maybe that’s where he sleeps. Or doesn’t sleep. He could be one of those people who’s been trained to literally sleep with their eyes open. Maybe he just goes into catatonic states, and that’s how he’s survived without sleeping for days already. I’ve been here long enough that he should look well-rested, yet he doesn’t. I’m not sure if not sleeping can be termed as a pace, but if so, I’m not sure he can keep up the pace. Not even downing copious amounts of coffee will help, and I was serious when I told him it isn’t healthy. Just because he doesn’t require much sleep doesn’t mean he doesn’t need any.
I should leave well enough alone. I check the stairs. Rick isn’t hanging off of them or over them, so that means he’s probably okay. A crew came today—part of the morning move-out people—and wrenched the offensive painting out of the wall using a proper ladder with two guys supporting it at the bottom. I’ve never seen anchors like that. No wonder Rick couldn’t get it out by himself. The house is starting to look less like a home—or less like a super minimalistic home—and more like a shell. It looks like Rick is moving out. I know he’d like to do that. I doubt he’ll buy a bunch of new furniture that’s more to his taste and stuff it in here when he doesn’t want to be here in the first place. Honestly, I have no idea what he’s going to do.
Take care of him. He’ll need it. He’ll act like he won’t, but he does.
My reasons for that aren’t purely honorable. I’m still on fire. My ovaries sit up and do a happy dance when I change directions and walk back up those stairs. My nipples join in, tangoing in time to the steps I take back past my room and past a closed door to the one that’s only partially shut. Rick’s office.
It would be a darned relief if Rick weren’t there. Or at least, I tell myself it would be. I would have time to take a breather and talk myself down. Go back to my room, forgo the water, and screw myself. What I need is a good orgasm. The trouble is, I’ve never been very good at it—at giving them to myself. I know it’s mostly mental, but I’ve always felt so pathetic that I’m just not that into pleasing myself because it’s healthy and good, and it’s right to be able to know your own body. It’s not that I haven’t tried. I mean, I haven’t invested heavily in toys or tried anything kinky. I don’t think it’s wrong. I just haven’t. I’ve tried pretty much every trick I can think of with my own hand and once with the detachable showerhead in my apartment back in Atlanta, but nope. Just no. It doesn’t work.
For real.
Who can’t get off with a detachable showerhead? Those things are pretty much the salt of life when it comes to orgasms.
One time, I confided this shit to a good friend. I don’t have any real best friends, but I do have a number of good ones I’ve kept in contact with since high school and college. Anyway, back when we were supposed to be studying for finals in our last year, we were both a few beers in. While she was supposed to be quizzing me on statistics problems, she decided the night was too dry and served up a few beers from her fridge. It wasn’t anything crazy, but I’m not a drinker, and it was enough to make me say things I wouldn’t normally say. It was actually my friend Lisa who started the conversation about how, since she’d broken up with her boyfriend, she’d discovered the joys of pleasing herself.
We quickly forgot all about stats and discussed the merits and drawbacks of masturbation. She got way into it. She talked about technique, gave me pointers, asked questions, and was totally fascinated. Then, she ended the discussion by telling me that some women just need the D, and I appeared to be one of them.
Thankfully, she didn’t rattle off a list of plastic toys that serve as what she termed D. She meant the real thing.
I think what she actually meant was that there has to be an emotional investment. Just getting myself off through basic biology and the science of stimulation isn’t satisfying. Does it feel good? Yes. Does it feel good all the way to a mind-blowing or even semi-satisfying climax? No.
Good lord.
This isn’t about sex. It doesn’t matter that my body has done a complete one-eighty about its opinion of Rick’s attractiveness, and now, instead of thinking he’s not so attractive, I can’t stop watching him. I can’t stop analyzing the way he moves and the way his muscles look under his clothing. I can’t stop noticing how strong and sometimes how lethal he moves, all with a crazy amount of grace.
Also, his butt.
Maybe it would all be okay if it weren’t for his butt.
It’s burned into my brain the same way my science teacher used to literally shout about things he was adamant we remember forever. BIB. Burn in brain. Or as my computer teacher from elementary school used to call it. Brain mapping. Memorize the keyboard and imagine yourself hitting that key in your brain. It will make you a better typer.
I’ve memorized the wrong things and brain-mapped them into all the parts of my brain where they’re burned in for life.
Rick’s bum + my brain = together forever.
Fuck.
I just want to check on him and give him a hard time about not sleeping. Maybe make sure he does it, even if it’s just to take a quick nap on my bed. Without me in it. I’ll even take that chair if he can get a good sleep sitting up, and I’m not convinced he can’t.
He told me enough stuff last night in the park that it makes me wonder what else is going on. There’s probably a lot. I don’t know if that’s why he can’t or won’t sleep, but there are a few things he said that we left off, and I want to pick them back up. Mostly because they’re like little pins pressing deeper and deeper into parts of my heart that I would do better keeping closed off. I can take care of him without risking my out-of-control hormones masquerading as emotions.
He’s in his office, and he’s not sleeping. I know that because he’s angled in his desk and facing the windows, but also half facing the door like he doesn’t want there to be any way anyone can sneak up on him. His head jerks up as soon as my shadow casts into the room. It’s the hall light that does it. He’s sitting in the dark, the bright light of his laptop screen illuminating his face in a ghostly way that makes it very obvious just how amazing his bone structure is in his fascinating face. Yes, I’m at that point. The point where I’ve looked at him enough now to have changed the word from interesting to fascinating.
I’m so full of shit.
He’s beautiful.
In a very masculine, rugged, tough guy, still not at all conventionally attractive kind of way.
Also, in the most perfect, lovely, gorgeous, I’m losing myself to whatever this is kind of way.
“Rick?”
He shuts his laptop and leans back in the chair. What was he doing in here and looking at that I couldn’t see? Maybe he likes the cover of darkness. Maybe his eyes are bugging out from all that screen time in the dark, and he needs to shut it down. I don’t think that’s healthy. He could have been doing nothing at all, zombified from a total lack of sleep.
“What’s wrong?” he asks.
“Nothing. I just couldn’t sleep and wanted to check on you.”
He quirks a brow. “On me? Because you couldn’t sleep?”
“I couldn’t sleep because I was thinking about you.” Oh! Oh, shit. That’s the wrong thing to blurt out. I must either be more tired or more sexually charged than I thought. Wound up. That’s the word. I feel like my nipples are little wind up dials, and right now, they’re maxed right out. One more spin and any more tension, and something is going to bust or start smoking.
My clit feels the same.
A smoking vagina. That should not be funny.
“About what you said last night,” I hurry to add. “About being soiled on the inside.” That’s a shit recovery. I watch the shadows move over Rick’s face. I watch him shut down. He closed off this subject last night, and the last thing he wants to do is go there right now.
But I also see the other shadows. The ones that move into his eyes. The ones that haven’t ever really left them. I recognize them now. I see the truth plainly on his face. More than what Jace wanted draws me to him, and I can’t resist whatever tugs me across the room. I walk until I’m standing right in front of him, our knees almost brushing. He leans as far back in his desk chair as he can get, but I lean too. I lean in, getting too close. I need to back off and back away, but I can’t. I can’t just go and get a drink of water. Not now. Not when he’s fire, and I think playing with it might actually be good for us both.
If he shoves me away, I’ll go. If he tells me to take a step back, I will. And if he tells me not to touch him, I won’t. He groans, the sound doing feral things to my blood, my nipples, and the rest of my south-of-the-border zones. That sound breaks what little reservations I have left. My hands need to find a landing, a safe spot, and what could be safer than this man and his strong shoulders?
He jerks back, scooting the chair rapidly in the other direction before I can touch him. “No.” He lets out another groan. “You can’t. We can’t do this, Aspen. I’m dirty.”
“Patrick McDonald, you are not dirty,” I say firmly.
“I am. I am, and you’re Jace’s little sister. You’re my best friend’s little sister, and you’re always going to be his little sister, just like you’re always going to be sweet and pure and underserving of this burden that’s been placed on you and the cards that life dealt you.”
“I’m my own person. I have an identity other than Jace’s kid sister. I’m also more than old enough to know what I want, and as for the dirty talk, I never want to hear you say that about yourself again unless you’re truly dirty talking.”
I think it’s prettyyyyy obvious what I want.
Rick knows. He knew it from the second I appeared in the doorway. I probably looked like a sexed-up wreck. He’s older, so he could very likely see it written all over my face—how much I want him.
“You can’t ask me that,” he mutters weakly. Both his hands rake through his hair. He’s clearly so worn out. I don’t know why he keeps fighting this. “You can’t—”
“Come here.” I wrap my hand around his upper arm and pull. I know defeat when I see it, and I know he’ll probably shake me off and give me a stern set of objections if he weren’t too tired to fight me anymore.
He gets out of the chair. My fingers are on fire, and they tingle all the way downstairs, out the back door, out onto the deck, and then into the wreck of a backyard. Actually, there was another crew here this morning. I forgot about them. There were four crews, not three. They came in the morning and worked until evening, clearing it out. All the dead stuff is now gone. Trees have been uprooted, and vines have been cleared away. Anything still living, Rick wanted them to transplant into pots, take somewhere else, and give them away to people who want them and will care for them. I’m not sure there was much left alive other than what trees could be uprooted and dug out, but others just had to be cut down. It’s a shame. It hurts to see the backyard like this.
There’s dirt back here. So much dirt. The whole backyard is upturned, uprooted, messy dirt.
I point to it. “That is dirt, Patrick McDonald. That. Not you.”
He shakes his head. I have to drop his arm, and I feel the instant loss of our connection as soon as I do. I walk a few steps, bend, and pick up a handful. I let it sift through my fingers. It’s still warm from being baked out in the sun all day. San Jose is ridiculously hot. It’s hot enough right now that my T-shirt and shorts feel like too much clothing.
To be fair, they felt like that all night as well. It’s humid out here, but in my room, I was burning up at the core. Like, literally at the core.
“I know that’s dirt, but there are different kinds of dirt.”
“Oh really?” I rub dirt down my arm. Rick’s eyes widen. I do it to the other arm. The humidity makes my skin sticky and wet, and some of it sticks in blackened smears. The backyard is bright enough for me to watch how Rick’s face pinches and his lips purse.
“That’s too far. I would have understood if Jace just said we should be friends. He went too far. I can’t be close to you. You know that.”
“I don’t know that. And neither do you.”
“Our marriage isn’t real,” he says.
I scoop up a clod of dirt and chuck it lightly at him. It hits his shoulder because he’s shocked and doesn’t spin away. I rub another great big handful over my arm. And then my other arm, my neck, and my face. “If you’re dirty, then I’m dirty too.”
“Aspen! Stop it!”
Exasperation screams in a tone he struggles to keep neutral, but maybe there’s a little bit of playfulness in it too. I get another large handful and throw it up in the air above my head. It falls down around me, landing in my hair and all over my clothes. I let out a whoop as Rick sighs, and then I throw myself to the ground. With a laugh, I spread my arms and legs wide and make a dirt angel.
I don’t know if Rick can’t take it or if he’s worried that I’ve lost it, but he walks over. He stands over me, and then, after a momentary pause, he sticks out his hand. I take it but grab a clump of dirt, and when I stand up, I smear it over his jaw and rub it into his beard. My laughter is way too loud in the night. The neighbors are probably going to wake up, and they’re probably going to complain.
Rick doesn’t react to what I’ve just done. Instead, he lets go of me and brushes dirt out of my hair. Or tries to, at least. I think the dirt is pretty hard to remove, just like sand. He doesn’t look amused. But he doesn’t look pissed either. His face is so calm and controlled. I want to break past that reserve. I want honest emotion. I want the parts of him that he won’t show the rest of the world because the rest of the world isn’t me. I want, even if it’s just for a moment, to be special. To share something with him that no one else has ever shared.
“Let’s go back inside. This isn’t funny.” He says that, but he sounds faintly amused anyway.
He’s so close that his breath fans out against my cheek when he speaks. I want his hand back on me. I want both his hands all over my body. A shiver of desire ripples through me. I lean into him and reach up, bracketing his face with my hands. He doesn’t jerk away, and I can see something break through his impartiality. Finally .
“The only thing that matters is if you want this.” If he tells me he doesn’t, I’ll tuck him into my bed and find a guestroom. Or a couch. Shit, even the floor. Anything.
“I can’t.” The strain is so evident all the way through him, but especially in his voice. He sounds like he’s going to crack. He sounds like he’s going to break down. I’m afraid it’s going to happen. However, I’m afraid I’m not ready and that I’m not enough to put him back together.
His eyes get hard again. He won’t let it happen. No matter how tired he is, he won’t let himself lose control.
“You can,” I breathe. “You can. Do you want me or not? That’s the only thing that matters. The only thing .”
“That’s not fair. This isn’t a real marriage.” He repeats it, which is how I can tell he’s close to breaking.
“Last time I checked, wanting someone doesn’t have to have anything to do with being married or not. Do. You. Want—”
His hands grasp my waist, and he hauls me up against him. Dirt shower or not, smudges of dirt all over both of us or not, his lips crush mine.
I haven’t wanted this man from the moment I saw him. There was no instant, burning attraction. We didn’t even like each other at first, but now I know I’m in way too deep. I’ve been falling this whole time, slowly, but sometimes a slow burn is the most deadly and destructive burn. You don’t know it’s happening until you’re scorched down to the bone, and then there’s no putting out the fire because it has already worked its way under your skin. It’s inside of you.
I don’t even know if falling is the right word, but there’s something that’s been growing on me, and it’s led to this. It’s me learning who Rick is. Learning to see past his fake placid surface, the neutrality he puts on for show, the nothingness, and the rest of the time, the gruffness.
It’s possible that I’ve felt this since the first instant we met, and I didn’t know it. Maybe I did think he was beautiful but I didn’t understand because I was expecting one thing and I got another. Perhaps I’m seeing the beauty of his spirit and his personality, and despite what anyone says, that alone can make a person so freaking attractive.
It’s me learning to see him, to see all his hurts and wonders. The thing that’s been growing is this. It’s me feeling something for this grumpy man with the huge heart that he’s tried to protect so hard all his life. The heart that’s been broken over and over by the family that should have wanted and loved him but didn’t, as well as by the losses he’s suffered and the things he’s seen and done. Also, not forgetting the parts he calls dirty and all the parts of him I know that aren’t.
I’m kissing the man who still wants to laugh and smile, be playful and goofy, and love life despite all the trauma and neglect, the iron-hard training, and the years of deprivation and rough living. I’m kissing him so fucking furiously with teeth, with my tongue, and with all of me behind it. My hands grasp his shoulders, my fingers curling into the fabric of his Henley. The cotton is so soft. I’m not going to let go. I’m not going to let this stop happening. We both need this. Even if it’s only a kiss, we both need it, so I throw my whole being into it, arching against him. His body pulls me to him like a black hole that I’m only too happy to step into and get lost in.
This man has been a weapon for our country. He’s done things I know are going to weigh heavily on his soul for the rest of his life. He’s seen things that have caused real, lasting damage. But despite all that, buried in the rubble of himself, deep down in there, I know is a good, hopeful, daring, lovely soul.
I want to believe it. I want him to believe it.
I plunge my tongue into his mouth, and he groans. His hands fist my T-shirt to pull me up harder against him, but I’m already there. There isn’t even room for air between us. I didn’t think it was possible, but it was. And I’m there. I can feel the hard outline of his erection through his jeans. I squirm, whimpering, kissing him harder, and trying to rub myself up against him.
“I know your past is going to haunt you. I know it’s hurting you. But it doesn’t have to stop you from having a good life. It doesn’t have to stop us from doing this. It won’t stop me from kissing you.”
“I know,” he grunts, licking along my bottom lip.
“I don’t care about your money,” I tell him.
His fingers curl against the waistband of my shorts. “I know.”
“And you can be a real asshole sometimes,” I continue.
“I know.”
I stroke along his jaw, his now neatly trimmed beard bristling under my fingertips. I find the break in it right by his ear, where a small scar starts. I trace the slightly raised outline of it. I don’t ask what happened. He won’t tell me anyway. He doesn’t want to think about it, and I don’t want him to think about it either. There are flames in his dark eyes, but there are dark circles that are very apparent too. Along with lines at the corners of his mouth that I think a few good hours of rest will erase.
I need to put this man to bed and make him sleep.
Alright, I want to put him to bed, fuck us both senseless, and then let him sleep. Everyone sleeps better after a few good orgasms, right? Or so I’ve heard. Because I can’t claim a single fantastic wild night in bed so far in my life. It has all been quite mediocre.
I actually truly don’t get what people see in sex.
But now I do. I get it. Just from bumping up against Rick’s solid body and from the heated, incredible kiss—an orgasm of a kiss. The rest of it with him…well, it would be fantastic. I know we’re combustible.
His hands are frozen on my shorts.
I would like it very much if he tore them off.
Except maybe not outside.
“Will you take me inside?” This time, I’m the one who licks his bottom lip. I’m the one who suckles it into my mouth, who uses the edges of my teeth to make it hurt just a little.
He sweeps me up in his arms and carries me across the backyard, up the deck, and back inside. Right inside the back door that we came out of, he sets me down and tries to pull away like this is the end of whatever moonlit spell happened out there, but I won’t let him.
I drag my T-shirt up and over my head, and I swear his eyes nearly pop out. He looks like he’s going to pass out or have a stroke. The light further down in the hallway does wonders for him. He looks like a bronze statue. So astoundingly beautiful. He’s still frozen, breathing hard. I take his hand and skim his rough fingertips up my belly, up my ribcage, up to my breast. I make him cup it and guide his palm up to my nipple. I arch into his touch, closing my eyes as the raised callouses on his hand scrape against my already hard, oversensitive skin.
“Oh god,” I moan.
“Oh god,” he echoes. He sounds panicked.
I need him to stay with me. He needs to get over the best friend’s little sister business. The dirt business. I’m my own person. I’m more than just that label. It’s not wrong. Not the years between us, not the life we’ve lived, nothing. There is nothing wrong with us taking pleasure in each other. There’s nothing wrong with making ourselves feel good. No one even knows I’m here. I’ve struggled with that—how this has an expiration date written all over it—but it doesn’t make this wrong either. If we’re both consenting and we both want this, then…
Jesus, I want that to be enough.
I don’t want to think about how incredible it would be if we could do this more than once. More than just one night and more than the time we have left. I don’t want to think about how a real marriage would look between us. This man isn’t mine. He’s not going to be mine. Not even the last will and testament of my brother or legally binding marriage vows can tie him to me.
I start to feel Rick pull away. Like, mentally. Bodily, he’s right here. His hand is still cupping my breast, and his erection is still throbbing against my hip. I need to keep him here with me. I need him out of his head where he keeps counting and cycling through all the reasons this could be wrong.
“I’m—”
“Shh.” I take his hand and guide it from my breast to my mouth. I unfold his fingers and suck on the tips of two of them. “What did I say about that nonsense? You aren’t allowed to speak those words anymore. Don’t even think about them. Don’t go back there. You aren’t doing that job anymore. You’re now here in this beautiful, cold, empty house.”
“I’m cold and empty too,” he mutters.
“No.” I lick at the underside of his fingers before I kiss his palm over and over again until he makes a noise he can’t control. He sounds like a wild animal.
“Please don’t…don’t touch my hands. They’re not good hands. They’ve done—”
“That’s right. They’ve done things. Things you can’t talk about. But it’s over, Rick. It’s over. You can’t change it. You might regret it for the rest of your life, but you can’t change a single thing. The only thing you can do is move forward now. Start living right here, right now. There can be good things, even if you don’t feel deserving. You’re going to be okay if you want to be. There is forgiveness. There is some amount of absolution.”
“Your brother—”
“My brother would never, ever have sent the letter if he thought you were a bad man. You were his best friend, and he knew you better than anyone. He knew your heart, and he handpicked you for me.”
“We’ve both said it was a mistake.”
“I think it’s definitely possible both of us could have been wrong,” I say.
I kiss his palm again. Then, I bring his other palm up and paint it with kisses too. I feel the way his hands start to shake, but he doesn’t pull them back. He doesn’t try to hide from me. The tremors pass through them and work their way into his whole body.
“You’re tired,” I point out.
“I’m fine.”
“Exhausted.” I let his hands go, but only so I can plant my palms flat on his chest. He’s definitely trembling. So warm. I run my palms down, feeling every hard muscle beneath the thin cotton. I need skin. His shirt has to go. If I can’t feel him, taste him, and make him mine, even if it’s just for tonight or a few nights, then I’m going to die.
I grab the hem of his shirt and work it up over washboard abs that make my mouth go dry, over tight pecs and a broad chest, and over huge, muscled shoulders. By the time I get his shirt over his head, I’m the one who is trembling.
“You’re beautiful,” I whisper.
He wants to say something. Probably more protests about how he’s not and how he’s tainted by the past, blah, blah, blah. I know it already, and I don’t agree. He can’t go on thinking like this, or he’s going to waste his whole life, which would be a real fucking shame. He has the potential to do so much good. This man never knew friendship or love until he met my brother. He never knew what it was like to have a family until he joined the military. He wasn’t wanted until he knew them. All the men and women he can’t talk about, at least for the most part.
Rick might have had other women love his body. It’s hard to think about that, but he’s old enough that duh, obviously. But I don’t think he’s ever let anyone inside. I want to do more than just run my fingers over the hard ridges of his abs. I want to do more than brush his nipple or stroke his shoulder. I want to touch all the parts of him that he’s very carefully kept locked away. I want him unleashed. I want the good and the bad. I want his soul and his spirit and his heart, even if it’s only temporary. I want him to know he’s not an orphan and not without family. Even though the man he loved like a brother is gone, I’m here, and right now, he belongs to me.
“I’m—”
I pinch his nipple, and it cuts off what he was going to say. I look up at him and find him frowning at me, but his eyes are shimmering with raw need.
“Aspen—” he groans.
I pinch it again and give it a good twist this time. “Bed. Now.”
“I don’t think you know what—”
“I know if I don’t have you inside me in the next five minutes, I’m probably going to be the one who strokes out.”
“Jesus, god, don’t say that,” he rasps.
“What? That I want you inside me?”
“We’re not doing that.”
Fuck. “Okay, I can work with that.” If I don’t…yeah, the internal combustible death thing. I’ll burn up like the tray of fries I once forgot in the oven for an hour and a half, and I didn’t know anything was wrong until I started smelling the char. They were probably legit about to combust when I finally got the smoking tray out of there, and my god, they were black little strips by that point.
I tangle my fingers in his hair—the length always surprises me—and drag his face down. I kiss him hard while I bump into him, backing him up.
I don’t know what he decides or if it’s just that he can’t take it anymore, but he finally grasps my waist and spins me around. He lifts me clean off the floor, and I do the first thing I think of, which is to climb him like he’s my new favorite tree.
We smack against the wall. I kiss him hard, brutally. Such that we both can’t breathe. He spins me and kisses me hard enough to drive my head into the wall. Well, no, not really. There isn’t a dent or anything. Just enough that it feels good. It feels like the wars he participated in are behind us, and there’s just this war between us.
A perfect war.
We battle it out, kissing and licking and fucking with our mouths all the way through the house. We bump into walls a few times, but he doesn’t ever waver. He would never drop me. He makes it to the stairs and climbs them. When he gets to the bend, I tear my mouth from his.
“When I grabbed your ass right here, did it leave marks? Are my fingerprints bruised into your skin?”
“No, they didn’t. They aren’t.”
“I could fix that,” I tease.
“Holy cantaloupe.”
His lips claim mine again, and he kisses me all the way into my room.
When we tumble to the bed, it’s so expensive that it catches us and somehow lets us sink in without making so much as a ripple or rebound. He’s all hardness above me, and he feels huge, while I feel soft and small.
I’m pretty much pinned down until Rick gets his hands under him, then his elbows. He’s got a knee between my legs, and I can’t help it. I grind against him, pressing my clit and all the aching, empty parts of me against the hardness of him, any hardness I can get.
The sounds he makes.
Oh my god, the noises.
It’s half animal, half man, raw and feral and delicious sounding.
He has his face turned so I can’t kiss him. The light from my open door paints him in the most gorgeous golden shadows. I take his earlobe between my teeth, but I’m gentle. I suckle it instead of biting down. This time, there’s a surprised gasp. I trail my tongue up, up the shell of his ear, and then down, down until I find his neck before I suckle the sensitive skin there too. He tastes good. He smells good. I love that he’s all around me.
I need him inside me, even if that’s not an option. I need something of his inside me. His fingers. His tongue. My fingers and his together.
He still has his knee between my legs, which makes it so I can’t reach much of him. But I need to. I need to change this position. This is about both of us, not just me. I want to make Rick feel good. I want him beneath me in every way I’ve imagined. I want to be on my knees in front of him, stripping away his clothing and—
I have to wriggle out from under him before I explode.
He lets me out, rolling away.
I can tell, as soon as I catch sight of his face as it turns to me, that he thinks I’ve changed my mind. That this is it. He’s too bad, too wrong, too filthy, too much of all the things I could never want. I see the doubt and the instantaneous flash of hurt before he blinks to wipe it away. This is just another rejection for him. Another loss. His jaw is already hard, his face settling into lines of stone. He’s already guarding himself against feeling the sting of it.
I won’t let him do that. I won’t let him hurt like this.
He’s on the other side of the bed, so I scramble up and walk around it. He sits up slowly, watching me, confused about what my next move is. What his next move is.
I tug my shorts down. Followed by my panties. I’m completely soaked and hot between my legs.
“Fucking… god…” he gasps out.
“Come here.” I take his hands and pull him up.
I need to touch him. All over. So I do, memorizing each plane and angle. I tip my head forward and taste him. I run my tongue over the flat of his nipple. Then down, down until I sink to my knees. I’m lucky enough that his jeans give way under my fingers, and I don’t have to work at them. I pull them down. His boxers too. He’s too stunned to fight me.
He steps out of them, one leg at a time, and then he lets me push him down to sit at the edge of the bed.
I think he’s so tired that his brain isn’t processing as fast as it should be. I don’t think he’d let me do this if he wasn’t freaking exhausted. How many days can a person stay awake before their health is literally at risk?
When I climb on top of him, spreading my legs so freaking wide to fit him between me, he finally starts to fight me. He takes my shoulders when I bend. I wrap my hand around his cock, curling my palm around his shaft. He’s ridiculously huge. He tries to get his hand around me, but I knock it away.
“Rick?”
He groans. “Yes, Aspen?”
“I’m sure about this. So fucking sure. Surer than any kind of sure that was ever sure. But I need to know you’re okay.”
“I’m not okay. I’m not.”
God. “Are you okay with this ?” I release him and arch back, naked and unashamed. He devours me, his eyes sweeping over me like he needs to memorize every single detail before I vanish. I brush my fingertips over the muscles in his thighs. They start to shake as soon as I touch them. He’s still trembling.
“Fuck.” He throws both hands up to his face and over his eyes. “I want you. I shouldn’t want you, but I do. I want to touch you. I want to worship you. I want you as the goddess you are. I’m going to sully you. I’m going to break you. I’m going to—”
I put my hand over his mouth. Instead of telling him to stop it, to stop saying those things, things that aren’t true and that I don’t want him to believe because they’re hurting him so very badly, I scoot forward and replace my hand with my mouth.
I kiss him softly for the first time tonight. I try to kiss healing into him. The goodness and light that will come in and soak up all those hard memories and work their way into the cracks in his soul.
His erection is trapped between us, and he throbs against my stomach. I can feel the wetness of him seeping between us. I’m wet too, so wet and so hot, but my heart and chest hurts too.
“Rick.” I kiss his lips and then his cheek. His nose. His other cheek. I kiss his forehead and his temples. I taste the salt there and feel the wetness.
He covers his eyes, but he’s not crying. They’re just…leaking a little. I know he wouldn’t want me to think he’s capable of it.
I kiss my way back to his cheeks, then his jaw, and down his neck. “No dirt, Rick. Nothing. Only you. It’s only you, and you taste wonderful. I love kissing you.” He groans like he’s in pain. He reaches for me, running his hands down my arms and up again. His body is hot, and he’s still shaking slightly. I press my lips to the spot right above his heart. “It’s just warm skin here. I can feel your heartbeat.” I press my hand there, letting the thumps kick against my palm. “It’s a beautiful, regular heartbeat. Nothing black here.”
“You know that’s just an expression,” he mutters.
“I do. But do you?”
The muscles of his stomach clench when I kiss my way down them. “You’re beautiful, and I love your body. I love the way you taste. I love your scent.”
“I have no one.” The final, broken words, torn from the most wounded part of him. “I…it wouldn’t have mattered if it had been me. No one would have missed me.”
No. My heart breaks wide open. This isn’t what he needs. I thought it was, but it isn’t. He’s not ready. And maybe I’m not ready either. My body is ready, but the rest of me? It’s hurting. Hurting for him.
He’s so much bigger and stronger, but he lets me move to curl up at his side and rest my face against his chest, against his strong, steady heartbeat. I need to hold it together, even when it feels like my chest is going to rip in half. I can spend the next few minutes being strong when this man and men just like him and my brother gave their youth and spent the whole of their adult lives being stronger than anyone could ever imagine. I’m not going to get into the morals of it. I know I won’t agree with everything he’s done or that Jace might have done, but I do know it’s not black and white. I know it was their job, and they were following orders. Sometimes, choice isn’t an option.
Did Jace know he was going to do things he didn’t want to do? Did he know he was going to have regrets? Yes. Yes, he probably did. Was he haunted by some of the things he did and saw? I don’t doubt he was. But he’s still my brother, and if he had made it back home, no matter how much PTSD there was to work through, I would never have abandoned him, and I would never have stopped loving him or looking up to him. I would have hoped he’d be able to get healthy again, that he’d heal and find someone who would love him. I would have wanted him to have a family, to grow old, to be loved by so many people, and also love in return.
Gradually, Rick’s arm slides around my shoulders. He’s trembling less now.
I reach down, grab the sheet, and wrap it around both of us.
“Even if you were the biggest mud bog this planet has ever known, with slime and quicksand and a prehistoric monster living inside you, you wouldn’t be too dirty for me, Patrick McDonald. You might have had no one, but that’s not true anymore. Don’t you ever say that you wish you could trade yourself for my brother or anyone else. I do not freaking accept that trade, and neither would Jace.”
He’s so quiet. Even his breathing is still. But when I shift to curl my face into his neck and breathe him in again, to feel his pulse there too, and I brush my fingers over his face, they come away wet.
I’m too small to hold him properly, but I get my arm halfway across his chest and slip my leg over one of his. We’re totally naked, and it feels good to be skin-to-skin.
I might be burning and burning, but right now, this is what we need. Just this level of closeness. Neither of us needs to be fucked seven ways to Sunday. We need something so much harder and deeper. A thousand times more intimate. We just need this. Each other. Folded over one another, protecting each other, and keeping each other safe.
“When you first got here, you looked at me like you wanted him instead of me. Like I was the wrong one,” Rick says.
My poor heart is broken glass, but his? It’s been obliterated. It’s been ground to sand. Ashes to ashes. Glass back to sand. Does it work that way?
“No.” I trace a pattern on Rick’s broad chest, rubbing a small circle with my palm after. “No. I’m so sorry if you thought that. I never meant to ever have you feel that way. I never, ever thought that.”
“I wanted out. Before I ever went home. Before my grandpa was ever dying, and pulled all those strings to get me back here. I. Wanted. Out. I used that as an excuse. I abandoned Jace and the others. I made them a promise. They were my brothers, and I left.”
I take small breaths to keep the tears stinging my eyes at bay. “Wanting out isn’t a crime. Feeling trapped isn’t wrong either. It means we need to make changes. It’s your mind’s way of telling you to listen or your body’s way of telling your mind that you’re done. You didn’t abandon anyone. You didn’t choose for anyone to get hurt or die. You had no control over that. If you were there, it still might have happened.”
“Not Jace. It wouldn’t have been Jace. I wouldn’t have let it happen.”
“Sometimes, Rick, things happen whether we want them to or not. You can’t torture yourself thinking you could have saved him. You might have died too,” I say.
“Or it could be him being home safe with you and the rest of your family.”
“Stop it.”
Rick sighs. “I can’t stop. I don’t think I’ll ever stop thinking about it.”
This time, when I stroke his cheek and put a finger to his lips, it’s not to tell him to be quiet. I don’t want him to be quiet. He needs to get it out. I was wrong before not to let him say what he needed to say. I wait, my fingers resting against his bottom lip. Maybe that’s all there was. Maybe there is nothing else.
I look up, even if he wouldn’t want me to see him flayed open like this. His cheeks are wet, but his eyes are closed. His breathing is deeper.
“When was the last time you slept?” I whisper, smoothing his hair back. It’s damp along the edges of his face. “I mean, really slept?”
He doesn’t open his eyes, but he does lean into my touch. “Don’t know. A long time.”
A few of the wrinkles smoothen out on his forehead. He looks younger, smaller somehow. This hard, highly skilled, deadly man who needs someone to care so badly. Someone to keep watch. Someone to need him and want him, a heart for a heart.
It’s been over a year since my brother passed, and while I’ve been fighting with the grief, he’s been fighting too. Fighting the guilt along with the pain.
After I know he’s sleeping because his breathing is so even and peaceful, and he’s finally, finally not battling it out with me or himself or anything else, I slip out of bed. I pull up the covers, tucking them around him, and then I put on a fresh T-shirt and a pair of shorts. This night is probably going to feel like a fever dream for him. It feels a little bit like that for me too. It feels like I was dismantled and put back together all wrong. Painfully. All of me hurts for all of him.
He’s wrecked me and ruined me with his honesty and our shared pain, with his heavy loneliness and the simple human need to connect with another person.
I slip back into bed, on the other side, above the covers, but I rest my hand on Rick’s chest. He’s still breathing deeply and evenly, the way he should. If he has nightmares, I don’t think they’re hounding him now. My body is still electric, but I close my eyes. They’re heavy and gritty. My brain is exhausted, and I know if I lie here long enough, my body will eventually be as well. I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to keep watch. Even if I do that while I’m sleeping, I won’t leave.
This marriage, this agreement, and the letter might all have an expiration date, but I think we’re always going to be connected now. As more than just pen pals or text buddies or people who married and got an annulment.
Jace thought we needed each other.
Honestly, I thought he was wrong. But that was before.
Now? I think he might be so, so right.