9. Harris
9
HARRIS
T he morning sunbathed the front room in bright, friendly light. I sat in the window seat, soaking it up. I’d already picked up the items on Rachel’s grocery list, along with a brand-new coffeemaker and a fresh bag of beans. (I might have shown a bit too much aggression destroying the old machine before I chucked it in the trash, but no one saw a thing.) From now on, I’d lock both the machine and the coffee grounds in the apartment at night. Anyone wanting to tamper with either would have to go through me.
With a fresh pot percolating in the coffeemaker, I had moved into the den so I’d know for damn sure it wasn’t tampered with, I continued my research on the pirate’s treasure. It was something to do while I waited for Rachel to wake up.
Satisfaction stole through me as snatches of yesterday afternoon replayed in my mind. The moment we’d hit her bedroom, my craving for her had become ferocious. Still, when I’d touched her, I’d found myself wanting to take my time and explore every inch of her, every sound she could make, what made her shiver. Not needing a condom didn’t seem like a big deal, until it was— the moment I was inside her our connection felt huge , stronger and more powerful than ever before. I’d only gotten to claim her once before I left for therapy, but she’d attacked me in the middle of the night, so of course I had responded…again and again…
I smoothed my finger down the spine of an aging book that smelled faintly of mold. Its frontispiece was a treasure map, a rudimentary sketch. I slid the book to one side and reached for another that had a map of its own. I compared the two treasure maps with a scowl on my face. Of course they didn’t match. Still, looking was fun, and Rachel’s library was extensive. It warmed my heart to explore her secret romantic obsession.
Spreading Tammy Winchester’s latest contribution across the table, I scrutinized yet another version of the property’s layout with the supposed location of the treasure marked, then I noticed faint writing on a curled corner. Smoothing it out, I blinked at what I found: tiny, scrawled diagrams and hastily scratched notes, alluding to hidden passageways in the house itself. But that was impossible. I’d been over every inch of this house, and the spatial circumferences of each room were exactly what they should be.
I slapped the paper back down and rubbed the bridge of my nose. A headache had begun to form behind my eyes. All the small print in the books was driving me to distraction, to say nothing of the conflicting maps. I needed to walk the property once I was through with my tasks for the day. I had a knack for surveying and understanding land. More than once in my Raider unit, my innate sense of direction had come in handy. It wasn’t a trained ability—it was just instinct, one I’d had since I was a kid. I’d always been able to find my way home, to pick the best path based on just intuition…until the day I’d gotten my best friend killed. It’d been my instinct that’d had us humping through the forest, and it’d been my responsibility to?—
Stop . I pressed my palms to my temples, trying to hold it all in. I didn’t want to remember the yelling, the chaos. That bright white explosion, hot as the sun.
“No.” Curling over the table, I knocked into the books, desperate to shove the visual and auditory replay back into the dark hole where they belonged. Dwelling on the events in therapy was making the flashbacks worse, not better.
“Harris?”
Something touched the back of my head, and I jumped out of my seat, ready to defend myself against all comers. Rachel backed away from me, hands in the air.
“Rachel,” I croaked, heart pounding in my throat. “You’re awake.” Duh. Get it together . I pointed to the coffeemaker in a frantic bid to keep her from seeing the ghosts dancing behind my eyes. I’d rebury the memories—I just needed a second. “I made coffee,” I said, and the words came out steady. “It hasn’t left my sight.”
Her eyes flicked to the new machine, then back to me. “Are you okay?”
“Fine.” I attempted a smile while forcing my muscles to relax.
“Hmmm.” She canted her head. “Not very believable, Mr. McCallister, but I won’t press. I’m here if you want to talk.”
Relief helped drain the last of the tension from my flashback, and I straightened up the books to dispel my nervous energy.
Rachel strolled to the coffeemaker and poured herself a cup. “I see you’ve been a busy bee this morning. Besides grocery and appliance shopping, what else have you accomplished?”
“Not much.” I began putting the books away. “Just reading up on the treasure. Now you’re awake and you know the coffee’s safe, I’m going to tackle the trim outside.” I tipped Rachel a wink before I strode from the room. Okay, fine, I fled, but I fled like a man , because men fled to work. I marched out to the shed and muscled the long, aluminum ladder to the front of the house.
Buckling on my tool belt, I climbed the ladder I’d propped against the house. The three second-floor guest bedrooms each had their own balconies. Two were facing the ocean, and the other faced the landscaped lawn. Rachel’s apartment sat at the back corner, one bedroom facing the lawn, the other, the ocean. She also had an office she’d converted from a smaller bedroom on the lawn side.
The inspector had marked the loosening trim above the balconies as a safety hazard. An exaggeration, if you asked me, but the delicate, lacy-style wood was easy to work with, and nailing it more firmly in place was a quick fix. After this morning’s flashback, I craved the mind-numbing task. It had been a while since I’d had something simple to handle, a straightforward task with simple rules and logic.
I was soon lost in my task. I worked my way around the house, from Rachel’s apartment along the rear wall, and before I knew it, I was securing the last of the trim. My stomach let out a growl, and I blinked in surprise. Huh . The sun was high in the sky, letting me know I had probably missed lunch. At some point, I remembered waving to the nice family checking out. They were on a leisurely road trip, heading to Disney World from Maine before school started in three weeks.
I’d lost track of time, but it was worth it to stand back and see a job well done. I couldn’t wait to tell Rachel she could check one more task off the list.
Sauntering inside, I found her in one of the guest rooms, plumping a set of pillows on a freshly made bed. She bent to gather a pile of sheets off the floor, only to startle at finding me in the doorway.
“Oh. Hey.” She gestured behind her at the spotless room. “I just finished cleaning up.”
“Looks good,” I said, but I frowned at the tightness around her eyes. “Not feeling good again?”
Rachel sighed and slumped down on the bed. “I swear, this baby isn’t satisfied unless I’m constantly queasy.”
I sat down beside her and stroked her tense back. “Well, then,” I said. “We’ll just have to see what we can do about that.”
Rachel huffed laughter. “Not sure there’s much to do, but thanks for the thought.”
I just smiled. I had a plan, but I’d need a few things from town. “Clear your evening,” I said. “I might have a surprise.”
“Walk with me.” I leaned in the doorway of Rachel’s office. The sun hung low in the sky, and I’d marked two more items off my to-do list, but now it was time to focus on the mother-to-be.
“Huh?” Rachel looked up, bleary, from her computer. She’d been working on marketing, from the looks of her screen, all glamor shots of the building and its private beach. Her eyes had gone glassy from too much squinting.
“You need a break,” I said. “And I want to see the property. All those books contradict each other, and I need to see the layout for myself.”
Rachel rubbed her eyes. “ I’ve seen it. I told you, I know this land like the back of my hand. I searched every inch of it when I was a kid.”
“Then you’ll be my guide.” I refused to give up. “If you don’t start moving, the nausea’s going to get worse. You need endorphins to feel better, and walking is a great way to fire them up.”
Rachel sighed, then snapped her shoulders back. “This is your surprise? You’re going to put me to work?”
“The first part is your workout, then you get your surprise.” I tried not to smirk, but Rachel made it tough, pouting outrageously and poking out her tongue. When I didn’t budge, she got to her feet.
“All right,” she said. “I’m willing to try anything to keep from hugging a toilet bowl.”
I laughed. “That’s the spirit.”
It didn’t take us long to settle into an easy gait. I hadn’t realized how much property she owned. Beyond the sweep of white beach, her land went on for acres. Trees, tall grass, and what had probably been farmland formed a vibrant green tapestry. As we walked, I pointed out landmarks that seemed obvious to me—a lightning-struck stump with a new tree growing through it; a flat, mossy rock nestled into the weeds—that Rachel admitted she’d never noticed.
“You’re really good at this,” she said. Her skin was practically glowing from the exertion of the walk.
“My unit calls me Pigeon. Like a homing pigeon.” I chuckled. “Not the manliest nickname, but they mean it with affection.” I shrugged. “I’ve just always had an affinity for the land, a great sense of direction, and a sixth sense for?—”
My throat closed, and I tried to unlace my hand from hers. Rachel held on tighter and turned me to face her.
“What’s going on? Talk to me, Harris.” She squeezed my hand gently. “I’ve been dumping my burdens on you since you got here. I want you to know you can do the same with me.” She bumped my bicep with her shoulder. “We’re a team, remember?”
I swallowed. A team. Me and my unit, we’d been a team too. And now we were down a man, all because of me.
“Harris?”
I stared at an oak tree spreading high overhead as I fought the visions trying to take over. “I let everyone down the one time it counted most.”
“Harris. What happened?”
I took a deep breath. It caught in my throat. “My last mission,” I said. “My sixth sense crapped out, and it cost my best friend his life.”
Rachel stilled, then she pulled me into the shade of the oak I’d been staring at. She nudged me to sit with her, between its gnarled roots. “Go on.”
I tried to get comfortable, but my heart hurt too much. I picked up a fallen leaf and turned it over in my hands. Did I really want to talk about this? I got enough grilling in therapy, but Rachel had a point. It wasn’t fair if I kept this bottled up from her but asked her to confide in me.
I twirled the leaf by its stem. “I can’t tell you everything,” I said slowly, still trying to figure out how much I wanted to share—how much I even could share, given that some of the details were still classified. “We were in the Amazon rainforest, hunting a drug cartel that’d branched out into arms dealing. The jungle was thick, really rough terrain. It was my job to lead us. To find the safest path through the thick vegetation. And I did, until…”
I stopped talking. Rachel rubbed my arm. I set my hand on hers and twined our fingers together, an anchor to hold me in the here and now. If I blinked, I’d be back in the deep, humid green, slapping off clouds of tiny black bugs. I could hear my unit, their heavy breathing. That last hasty conference.
“We’d lost the trail,” I said. “We were all arguing about where to go next. It’s hard to describe. I had an intuition. So I said, ‘Okay, that way,’ and that was that.” I dropped my head into my hands and shuddered. Rachel moved closer, but she kept silent.
“I’d give my right arm to go back and pick another path.” I focused on Rachel to keep from flashing back there—her sparkly nail polish, a scrape on her hand. “We started moving,” I said, tensing as I got to the hardest part. “I should’ve been leading, but Shawn—my best friend—somehow beat me to the front of the line.” Helplessness pulled me down and tried to drown me. “He took my position. I shouldn’t have let him. But we were all tired, and the jungle was dense. It would’ve been noisy, all that shuffling around. So I gave him the nod, and he flashed me this smirk…”
When I closed my eyes, I saw that damn smirk. I smelled wet leaves, mud, and rank day-old sweat. I felt an insect biting my neck and dirt in my boots, Rachel’s hand gripping my?—
Rachel.
Rachel.
Rachel stroked my hand with her thumb, but she still remained quiet, not rushing me or pelting me with questions.
“That was the last time I saw his face. He took two more steps, and bam . Fucking IED. They’d buried it in the leaf litter. He never had a chance.”
Rachel dropped my hand and wrapped her arms around me, helping to anchor me in reality instead of the nightmare.
“It was my fault,” I whispered. “I chose the path that killed him.” I fought against the numbness trying to close in. Rage rose in its place and turned inward, a sick, rotten rage that made me want to scream. “It should have been me,” I said.
“Hey.” Rachel forced my chin up. “Don’t say that. If you had died, then our baby wouldn’t exist.”
I turned away, anguished. “Rachel…”
“I’m so glad you’re here, Harris.” She kissed me on the forehead. “I’m glad you’re alive.”
I closed my eyes, caught between feeling nothing and feeling everything at once. I wasn’t sure which was worse, blocking the world out or letting it in. Letting Rachel in, letting her see me, as flawed and broken as I was.
“Stay with me,” she said.
“I don’t know if…”
She kissed me again, this time on the lips. It was a gentle kiss, more invitation than demand. I felt it as though it was happening to someone else. As though I were watching from outside myself.
One last press of her lips, and then Rachel pulled away. “It’s okay,” she said. “Come inside, and we’ll?—”
“No.” I pulled her toward me, into my lap. I kissed her back hard, and this time I felt it, the heat of her lips, the catch in her breath. The weight of her body pressed against mine. I felt my pain too, my shame and regret, but with it came tentative joy and excitement. Rachel, our baby—they were mine too. Part of my life now. Two fresh sparks of hope.
Rachel shifted against me, brushing against my cock. Electricity roared through me, sparking an inferno deep in my chest. I flipped her over and laid her on her back.
“Don’t stop,” she said, and I attacked her mouth, plundering its depths with a newfound ferocity. I needed to feel her, every glorious inch. Needed to make her feel the same fire I did.
She met my fever with her own, tearing at my T-shirt. I wrenched away to rip the damn thing off, then did the same with her tank top and tossed it aside. Her bra was red today, a bright, flaming shade. I jerked down the cups to feast on her breasts, teasing her nipples with the tip of my tongue.
She cried out and arched, digging her nails into my shoulders. The sharp points of pain made me gasp with desire. I nipped her in turn, teeth scraping a nipple, and she made a sound I’d never heard before—a desperate mewling, hungry and hot.
“You like that?”
“Oh, God!”
I savored the taste of her skin as I worked my way down her torso, following the sweep of her floral tattoos. Reds, blues, greens, and purples danced with her movements, a rainbow of color coming to life.
“My fierce fairy,” I murmured, and bit her right hipbone. I unsnapped her denim shorts and pushed them down, revealing red panties as bright as her bra. “So full of life and color. You’re a work of art.” I tugged her panties aside and inhaled her sweet scent. Parted her pink lips and darted my tongue in between. She snatched at my hair and bucked up to meet me, and I licked her from her opening to the tip of her clit. That made her cry out, so I did it again. And again. And again.
I pressed my lips to her slit and hummed deep and low. Rachel gasped and she stiffened all over. A wail broke from her throat, and she clutched my head with her thighs, riding out her orgasm without shame or restraint.
The moment she’d finished, I unzipped my pants, pushed my boxer briefs down, and rubbed my cock on her clit. I caught her eye.
“Yeah?”
“Don’t you stop, or I’ll smack you.”
I plunged inside, and she fluttered around me. Wet heat gripped me hard, and I groaned at the exquisite feel.
“Harder,” she demanded, raising her hips to meet mine.
I rolled over, still holding her, and settled her on top. “Go on and ride me. As hard as you want.”
Rachel did as I said. Planting her palms in the dirt on either side of my head, she bent forward and set a blistering pace. She took me deep and hard, like she couldn’t get enough. Her breasts swayed with her movements, and I surged up to lap at them.
Thrusting upwards, I fucked her brutally. She gave as good as she got, grinding her hips in tight circles. We grunted like animals, breaths coming fast. My dick pulsed inside her, and she tightened around me. My balls drew up, my orgasm close.
“Rachel, I’m about to come,” I warned gutturally.
She cut me off with a cry, and this time, I got to feel her climax around me—a sweet, violent storm milking me dry. My orgasm barreled through me, and I moaned so loud birds flapped off cawing.
Rachel slumped against me, her body dead weight.
Neither one of us could catch our breath, and she rose and fell with the heaving of my chest. After God knew how long, I heard a small sigh of pleasure, and I opened my eyes to find her smiling down at me, her face full of joy. I couldn’t help but smile back.
“We’re lucky,” she said. “Those birds could’ve taken out their displeasure in a nasty way.” I laughed and Rachel laughed along with me. I hugged her tight, savoring the breathless moment.
“That would have royally sucked after such an epic orgasm,” I said, as my laughter died down. “Seriously, you’re amazing. I’m not sure I can keep up with you.”
“Oh really?” She sat up and rocked her hips.
My cock twitched, still semi-hard. I felt it start to rise again, and I grinned unrepentantly. “You’re sexy as fuck. What can I say? My dick really likes being inside you.”
Rachel leaned closer, and her blue hair fanned forward. I tucked it back neatly behind her ears. She settled against my hips, and I skimmed my fingers over the tattoos down her ribs.
“Tell me about these,” I said. I traced the petals of an exuberant orange daisy down its curled stem, to a nest of azaleas. “What made you start? Which one was your first?”
Rachel rolled off me and cuddled up close. She bent her leg at an athletic angle—something I’d have her duplicate when I was deep inside her—and tapped a sparrow in mid-flight tattooed on her ankle. “It started as rebellion. I figured I should live up…er, down?...whatever, to everyone’s expectations. But then I found the experience surprisingly empowering.” A blush stole over her face, and she ducked her head. “Sounds stupid, I know.”
“It doesn’t,” I said, toying with her hair. “You let them get in your head too much—those folks like, what was her name? Cara Whoever.”
“Levine,” Rachel said.
“What you gotta ask yourself is, who’s she to judge? What makes her so special she gets to decide who you are?” I rose on my elbow to look in her eyes. “I’ve told you repeatedly, I think you’re amazing. I’ve never met anyone as special as you. You’re smart, beautiful, kind. As for your tattoos…” I ran my hand down her ankle to touch the little sparrow. “These tattoos are a part of you. Part of what makes you special. Of course it’s empowering to choose them. You’re choosing what people see and that’s sexy as hell.”
Tears glistened in Rachel’s eyes, and she blinked rapidly. “You get it.”
“Some people might look at you and see what they want to see. But these—these are you . What you decide to show them.”
“I wish they’d see.”
“ I do,” I said. “I see color and happiness, plus a whole lot of life. I see strength and courage. I look at your art and see someone I respect. I’ve always seen that. Right from the start.”
Rachel sniffled, but she was smiling. She reached for her top. I grabbed mine as well, and we got dressed. The sunset was fading as we headed languidly toward the beach. Something caught my attention in the dying light, and I paused. “You see that?” I pointed.
Rachel turned to look, but she only shrugged. “See what?”
“It’s a divot in the land.” I led us over and stood beside the indentation. As if the land spoke to me, I knew exactly what I was seeing. “A tree used to be here.”
Rachel smiled wide, her eyes beginning to twinkle. “The one from the map?”
“Maybe someone cut it down. Someone who didn’t want it to be found.”
I gauged how close we were to the beach and her house.
“Or it could’ve been hit by lightning or riddled by rot.”
“ Or it could’ve been one of the markers.” I bumped her shoulder. “C’mon, I thought you were getting into our treasure hunting adventure? We need to look at those maps again.”
Rachel groaned. “Right now?”
“We could do that,” I said. “Or you could have your surprise.”
Rachel smacked me playfully. “It wasn’t the sex?”
“Well, that was a surprise, but no. No, it wasn’t.” I led her back to the house and up the porch steps, sliding my hands over her eyes to keep her from peeking.
“Ugh, I can’t see!”
“What, don’t you trust me?”
Rachel just giggled. I guided her inside, leading her to sit down at the big kitchen table.
“Okay, you can look.” I pulled my hands off her eyes, and Rachel gasped.
“What is this, a gift basket? Ooh—is it chocolate?”
“Not exactly,” I said, and tugged on the ribbon. It came loose with a soft hiss, and the foil fell away. “It’s kind of a care package. For your morning sickness. See, you’ve got ginger—tea, ale, and chews—plus vitamin B6 and herbal teas. Then there’s saltines for snacking, and lavender oil. You put a drop on a cloth and keep it handy to smell when the nausea hits. They say it helps. And these wristbands?—”
“Harris!”
“You wear them, and I guess they do something . The lady in the shop said her daughter swore by them.”
Rachel stared at the basket. “You got me all this?”
“Well, it wasn’t Santa.”
She turned to grab me and pulled me down for a kiss. “You’re the best,” she whispered. “And guess what?”
“What?”
“Once we’ve got the house fixed up, we’re going after that treasure.”