28. ABRAHAM
AbrAHAM
IUNLOCKED THE DOOR TO OUR HOME, Nineah’s bag hefted over my shoulder.
The hour trip passing in silence, she hadn’t made an attempt to converse again and I hadn’t blamed her.
It was pure entitlement, fucking a woman with intentions to abandon only to get upset when she stopped entertaining you.
Still. I already missed the lightness she instinctively injected into a heavy fucking situation and I didn’t even want to think about my restless night ahead.
Nineah walked in front of me, slowly taking in the house, stopping to touch things as if studying the wall art was going to make her remember she’d lived there.
Taking the stairs, bypassing the guest rooms, I dropped her bag into the master bedroom.
I probably should’ve taken her to the rented bungalow in Maryland she’d been staying in these last few months while we hashed out the details of the divorce, but at the very least, the house was secure and I could get Bishop or Carletti to check in on her.
Not to mention, part of me wanted her here.
Knowing she was in our home would make it easier to sleep. Easier to keep my distance.
I quickly unpacked her things, storing the bag in the closet with the others when I was finished. By the time I returned to the main living area, I found Nineah curled up on the sofa, eyes closed. She snored softly as she slept, no doubt worn from the events of the last couple of weeks, as was I.
I told myself I’d sit for a while, just until she woke so I could administer another one of her pills, and grabbed a blanket from the hall closet. I draped it over her, then took the other side of the sectional and closed my eyes.
WHEN I opened them again, the house lights were off.
Moonlight filtered in through the windows and stole over the living room. I glanced at the sofa where the blanket lay on the floor and Nineah was missing.
I paused to listen. The telltale sounds of moving pipes and running water came from one of the upstairs bathrooms. Instantly hard thinking of our glass walk-in shower, I briefly considered bringing her a glass of wine so I could watch her run her hands over her wet body.
She’d come so fast when I’d slid inside of her, it was difficult not to wonder how long it’d been since she’d fucked anything but her manicured fingers.
If I had to guess, nearly twenty two months and I wasn’t being egoistic, I just knew her.
Nineah was chaos in a skirt, but she accepted no half measures.
Not with work, not with anything. Our sex life had been no different.
Two days out of the week, I’d pound her until she couldn’t move, then the other three, I’d use her mouth, her hands, her feet, or her ass while her pussy recovered.
I’d never met anyone who needed to be fucked like her.
Who needed me the way she did. If nothing else, I could concede that that’d been the hardest part of the withdrawal process.
My emotions, I’d been suppressing since grade school, but biology was harder to beat into submission.
My one track mind dragging me by its short leash, I followed the rainwater sound of our shower head toward the master where steam fogged the bedroom, and went for the sinks. I grabbed one of the travel toothbrushes from the basket under the sink and brushed my teeth while I listened.
Then I heard it.
The soft pitch of offkey humming.
I nearly rounded the wall that separated the sinks from the shower just so I could verify it was really her inside. For the last few months before Nineah moved out, she’d barely spoken and here she was, fucking humming.
Rinsing the brush, I tossed it into the holder and started for the door when the water shut off. The door opened, sending a fresh wave of steam into the bathroom and Nineah stepped out, naked with her hair wrapped in her towel, dripping water all over the damn floor.
She ignored me as she moved into the bedroom and toward the walk in closet. I followed her, hanging in the doorframe as she pulled open drawers. “I thought you were leaving.”
“I wanted to make sure you got settled in, first.”
She fished out a white thong she didn’t even look at and pulled it up her thighs. “Is that what you’re doing? Settling me in?”
The bite in her tone was sexier than it should’ve been. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Her tits jiggled as she yanked another drawer open.
Rummaging around for something, she came away with a blue nightdress I knew barely covered her pussy.
“About what? Our drive-by sex? Nope. Adults do this all the time. Just… rub their parts together and go their separate ways. I’m a big girl. I can handle—”
I crossed the small space and locking my hands around her waist, I lifted her onto the dresser and shoved her thighs apart with my hips. Her mouth parting, her eyes widening like I surprised her every time I breached her personal space, she tensed.
“What can you handle, mon joli bébé?”
Her throat moved as she swallowed and the dress slipped out of her fingers. I picked it up and unfolded the garment. “Hold your hair.” Using her uninjured arm, she gathered her curls, held them up and I draped the dress over her head. Carefully working her arm through, I then zipped the back.
“What happened in Riga wasn’t drive-by sex,” I told her. “You wanted grounding and I wanted to feel like the world as I knew it wasn’t ending. Taking you within days of an injury was selfish, not insignificant.”
Nineah hid a smile with her hand. I frowned. “What?”
“Nothing. You just make it sound like I spread my legs for you out of hero syndrome or something,” she explained, wrinkling her nose.
“Not in the sense that you think I’m easy, but just that you think I’m a wounded little woman who’s easily manipulated out of my panties and I can’t tell if that’s worse. ”
“You were crying.”
“I was ovulating, too,” she murmured. “If you need to blame my decisions on something, you’re welcome to use that excuse. Speaking of ovulation, we should probably like, overnight a Plan B or something.”
I tensed. “That’s unnecessary.”
“Oh.” She frowned. “When the doctor got my medical records in, she mentioned I hadn’t had a birth control shot in like, two years and I didn’t find any pills, so…”
“I had a vasectomy,” I explained.
Nineah’s shoulders dropped in relief. “No four sexier words in the English vernacular.”
“How’s your arm?”
She shrugged. “It’s fine.”
It wasn’t. She was frustrated as fuck at not being able to dress herself. Lifting her by her waist, my guilt intensifying, I picked her up. Her legs hooked around my hips and she grasped my shoulders.
“You know, at first I wasn’t sure how I felt about being carried everywhere like a disabled koala, but it’s kind of growing on me,” she said. “Is this your kink, then? You can tell me. I’m discreet.”
“No.”
“See now, I’d have thought sexually transmitting our DNA meant we were past single syllable answers, Abraham.”
“You asked a yes or no question.”
“Hm. I did, didn’t I? Okay, I concede. Are we going to the kitchen, then? Because I’m starving. Are you not starving? I know your minimum protein intake has to be like, in the single-cow-per-day range and I haven’t seen you eat anything.”
“I know what you’re doing,” I said, descending the back staircase toward the kitchen.
She snorted. “If you think I have any agenda right now past shoveling something more edible than hospital food down my throat, sorry to disappoint.”
In the kitchen, I set her onto her feet and moved toward the refrigerator. The contents of our freezer were meager, being that neither of us had lived here in over a year. I closed the door and faced her. “Looks like you’ll have to settle for takeout.”
“So… like normal, then?”
“Believe it or not, the kitchen no longer fears you,” I told her. “You’re welcome.”
Her mouth fell open. “Wait you cook? Like, well?” she frowned. “Why exactly did you marry me again? I’m basically useless.”
“Your mouth works just fine.”
Her eyes narrowed to slits and I smiled. Retrieving my phone, I pulled up a delivery app and handed it to her. “Pick something and order three of it. I’ll place a grocery order in the morning.”
While she scrolled through the phone, I went to the wine rack and glanced at the options. For someone hellbent on marching double time toward a diabetic coma, Nineah had excellent taste in whites.
“Erm, I think one of your jump-offs is calling.”
I grabbed a Riesling I knew wasn’t too sweet and set it on the counter. Grabbing two glasses from the cabinet, I checked them for dust. “Answer it.”
She hesitated. “Is this some kind of weird power play?”
I went to grab the phone from her and read the caller ID. I accepted the call. “Lawton.”
The familiar voice came over the line, instantly. “Did you forget you were supposed to call me?”
“You’re on speaker, mom.”
“I don’t give a rat’s backend. I thought when you left the military you’d be done with all of the secrets and going off-grid at a moment’s notice. Now I find out from your sister you’re back working again and you’re not answering the phone. You promised me we were done with this shit, Abraham.”
“I wasn’t working, I was drinking, which is why I called Lila in the first place,” I said, sifting through the drawer for a bottle opener. I found one and started on the cork. “She made assumptions. As for the rest… Family emergency. Now it’s handled.” Sort of.
I glanced at Nineah and nodded at the cell. She licked her lips. “H-hi.”
There was a pause. Then, “Oh. Hi, sweetheart. Sorry, I wasn’t expecting… how are you?”
Nineah looked at me and I nodded.
“I’m… injured,” she admitted. “And scared. But alive because of your son.”
My mother was silent for a few moments. “This has already been a long year for me, young lady. And you know how bad my nerves are.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Well, I’m sure you need to rest so I won’t keep you. Son?”
“Ma’am?”
“Call your father.”
She cut the call. I handed Nineah the phone back.
“Okay, in my defense, whose mother’s name is Baby?”
I popped and discarded the cork. “Mine.” Though my back was turned, I could still feel her staring at me. I poured her a glass and brought it to her.
“She doesn’t know everything. I warned her that I had to leave town for a couple of days. If I left her in the dark, she’d have called every news station from Georgia to DC.”
“She sounds lovely.” It wasn’t sarcasm. Her eyes swirled with guilt and something I could only interpret as acute envy.
“You have family, too,” I told her. “And you’ll get to know them again.”
Frowning into her wine, she ruminated on that for a beat, then swallowed half the glass. Setting it on the counter, she blew out a sigh. “I think I want something stronger.”