Undertow

6. Graveyard For The Living

6

GRAVEYARD FOR THE LIVING

“Your favorite movie can’t be a documentary!” Julia cries in mock reproach.

“Why not?” I say through a laugh.

“Because! That’s so… so… ugh.”

“What should my favorite movie be?”

“I don’t know.” She throws her hand up in exasperation. “A cheesy action film. Superheroes? Spy thriller? Any escapist fantasy.”

Escapist fantasy? She just outlined my entire biography. Documentaries are my escape. Real life that isn’t my nightmare.

“Okay, fine. What’s your first memory then?” she asks, shifting closer.

She’s been playing with the hem of my shorts for the last several minutes, running her finger up and down the stitching in a silent message.

I want this to be your skin.

I want to explore more than your mind.

We watch her finger cut a weak line between our fused bodies on the couch. All night we’ve inched closer and closer, magnetized by a rare oasis of authentic conversation and laughter, all while defying the insidious truth that we’re both exploiting each other.

Because not all the saturated looks have been fake.

The heated touches.

The very real sparks snapping between us.

I’ve learned a lot about this woman, and each secret trips another alarm in my head.

You can’t do this, Shaw. You’re playing with fire. You can’t have her. You can’t have anything. You know that.

“Hey, did I lose you?”

I look over, blasted by blue eyes that know too much. Give too much.

“Sorry. Got lost in my head for a second.”

She likes that. I knew she would.

Better. Stay focused.

“So where did you go?”

“In my head?”

She nods, her fingers now streaking chills down my arm. “You go there a lot.”

“I like it there.”

“Must be an interesting place.”

The only place I’m safe.

Free.

“Tell me a memory,” she says when I don’t respond.

I huff a short laugh. “Like what?”

A smile flickers over her inviting lips. “Anything.”

I pull my gaze away, focusing on the far wall like I’m thinking. Maybe I am, but not about memories. There is nothing in that graveyard appropriate for the living. No, I’m thinking about the mess I’m making with this girl. How terrified I am that I won’t be able to dig myself out of it if she keeps looking at me like I matter, touching me like it means something. Treating me like… I’m a person.

Her affection might not even be real, but the effect certainly is.

“There was this lake by my house growing up. One of those mossy, mystical ones, you know?”

She smiles in encouragement when I pause, which means she’s buying my act so far.

Clearing my throat, I study the wall again. “Everyone used to say it was haunted by the ghost of a woman who drowned back in the eighteen hundreds.” I shake my head like I’m lost in a fond memory. “All the other kids were afraid to go near it. If they did, it was on a dare or some kind of punishment for losing a bet.”

“Not you, though,” she says confidently when I stop again.

I send her a weak smile. “No. Not me. I loved it there. It had a story separate from our time and reality. It had its own soul, which meant when I was there, mine could rest.”

You could hide.

Be.

Breathe… underwater.

If only that was the whole story of that lake.

“Did you go there to write?”

“All the time.”

“Damn,” she mutters. “Why do you have to be so interesting?”

She smacks my chest in playful irritation, and I trap her hand against me. “I’m not. Maybe it just takes the right person to see it.”

Her amusement fades into something more intimate. We thread our fingers, and she flips our hands to trace my favorite tattoo.

“This one is so beautiful,” she says softly.

Beautiful? No one else has ever thought so.

“Most people find it disturbing.”

She runs her finger over the outline of the eye, across each exposed bone and ligament. “That’s what makes it beautiful. The graphic pain of it. Its heartbreaking honesty. Such a potent glimpse of what tortures you. What is it saying? What’s trapped inside that intricate soul of yours?”

An ache lodges in my chest. A strange desire to confess.

If I did, she’d be the first to hear it outside of the only person who’s ever truly loved me.

“ I see you, son. I know you.” Frail arms crushing my resistance. Making me believe, for a fraction of a second, I wouldn’t have to be what I’ve become.

The truth rests on my tongue. What’s the image saying? It’s the reason I can never tell her.

I offer a casual shrug instead. “Nothing really. I saw it on a website and thought it was cool.”

Her disappointment is palpable, and I swallow a twinge at the lie.

“No way that’s true.”

“Oh, you know so much from our eight hours together?” I tease.

“I know if it was, you’d at least make up a good story.”

A shiver runs through me at how well she can read a part of me I’ve spent my life learning to hide.

I smile at her scolding. “What should the story be? What do you think it means?”

Her smile dims as she searches my face. “You’re the writer. You tell me.”

I look away. I don’t know how to lie this close to the truth. “Maybe it’s an alien lifeform breaking through my skin,” I joke to distract her, but she doesn’t take the bait.

Instead, her stare intensifies, probing deep for secrets I can’t reveal. Truth that can’t exist outside of a single hidden notebook.

I retreat behind my mental wall, but a sudden shift in the silence blocks any escape. I’ve stumbled upon a mind as deep and complex as my own. And it turns out she’s not the only one who finds that addictive.

Electricity buzzes through me when her gaze sinks to my lips. Her free hand lifts and presses over my heart in a bold appeal. Can she feel the tension of my pounding blood? She must. I see the invisible rush of hers, feel it in the heat of her palm.

Strategic kisses have smoldered into authentic desire, and I want— need —to taste her.

“I’d love to read your work,” she says, tracing the dark angel on my neck with morbid fascination. Her fingers mold over it, claiming it. Me. Her thumb rubs slow arcs along my jaw in a clear message.

I want you. I don’t know how much longer I can hold back.

“Maybe I’ll show you one day.” I add a smile to soften the blow.

Her eyes dim like she knows I’m lying. Hiding. But I don’t have a choice. My words are my soul. My true identity. The only place I’m real. I will never turn them over to someone else. I can’t. There will be nothing left of me.

“Why do I think you won’t?” she says quietly, searching my eyes. “Why do I think you’re going to crush me one day?”

I don’t know how to answer that. I could say the same, but we can’t afford a sentimental debate. Instinctively, I lean in to silence the voices in her head with the distraction I’m trained for.

Her sharp inhale shudders through me when our lips meet. Her grip tightens around my neck, dragging me deeper into the kiss. Searching. Demanding. I test her with my tongue, growing more confident when she parts her lips so I can invade her fully.

She clutches my shirt in a tight fist, the other still locked around my neck. I thread my fingers in her hair, reading every sound and movement of her starving body like a map that will drive her desire into desperation.

My tongue battles hers.

My fist tightens in her hair.

Learn what they want and offer just enough to trigger their lust.

This one likes being in control but also challenged. It will be a fine line to give her both.

I match her urgency, sucking, tugging, licking, until she’s on the verge of submission.

Her soft moan fires straight through me. I have her.

This is the script, when their hunger becomes a trap. When their essence opens up and they become mine.

Her mouth, her chest, her thighs, her entire being surrenders to my will as she adjusts to straddle me. I could incinerate her right now. How many times have I molded lust into whatever it needs to be to get what I want?

But in this moment, what I want is to be lost.

To not think.

To not manipulate.

To inhale desire.

The one scorched by fire.

I want to dissolve like they do.

She laces her fingers through my hair, locking me in place as she sinks down hard on my hips, triggering a violent rush of heat. Fire rips through me, limb to limb, igniting long dead embers snuffed out years ago. Her hips slide in a natural pulse. Grazing me over and over in sweet agony. Trapping me , betraying me with traitorous cravings when I harden against her.

“Shaw,” she breathes out, reaching for the hem of my shirt.

She shoves it up my chest until we separate just enough to yank it over my head. Her eyes go feral as they trace my body, greedy with possessive lust. Her hands demand submission when they claw a burning path down my stomach. Lower, firmer they push, triggering hot streaks of anticipation.

I grip her wrist, stopping her at my zipper just to watch the pain of desire flash over her face. To remind her for a brief second who’s really in control.

Maybe a dark part of me wants to see her beg—just see, because she would never say the words. I wouldn’t want her to.

Releasing my hold, I lift my hips in silent encouragement and curve my hand over her ass instead. She reaches past the zipper, torturing me with a wave of swelling pressure.

Her hesitant touch becomes deliberate when my body responds, her hum of approval, intoxicating. She wrecks me with a firm grip, and my mouth finds hers again. I know this craving, live for it— literally —but right now it’s a drug, not a weapon. We both know what she wants—what I want? Yes. This time, it’s also what I want.

Flames surge with each insistent stroke. Scorching. Aching as the driving rhythm ignites a reckless inferno I can’t control. My lungs burn. A groan threatens low in my throat as my hips lift, my hard body desperate for relief. Slipping my hands beneath her shirt, I run them over the bare skin of her back, provoking one throbbing rush after another.

Her kneading hand continues to torment me, her lips deadly when they harmonize with the steady rhythm of her grip. Her other palm pushes up my chest, fingers sinking into tense muscle primed for explosion, trained to respond with devastating precision.

Hunt and devour.

But this time is different. This time she’s not the only victim.

I feel a piece of my heart chip off and lodge in hers.

You can’t do this, Shaw. You don’t have control.

Blood pounds to the symphony of our gasps, the cry of starved lungs that seem intent on breathing desperate kisses instead of air.

A warning is muffled beneath the strange hypnosis she has over me. I’m lost to smooth skin and tempting curves that beg to be tasted. Touched. Freed from the small scrap of fabric holding them hostage.

You’re the hostage.

Because we both know what’s happening right now isn’t a game anymore. It’s a threat. Worse than that, it’s war. And we will be casualties.

Maybe we already are.

I abruptly pull back with a painful exhale, feeling like I’ve already lost something I can never have.

We stare into each other’s eyes, acknowledging the intense connection with our inability to break apart and go back to being enemies. Her skin is still hot in my hands, her taste on my tongue. Her scent infects my brain, and my heart… thumping, battering my ribs with something new. Something terrifying.

A spike of fear impales me to the moment. A vicious truth.

I feel.

And in my world, feelings are deadly.

My head is in a tailspin when I return to Adrian’s house for the night. After breaking free of the heated trance, I managed to salvage enough of my brain to tell Julia I’m seeing someone. Usually, my strategy is to appear as available as possible, but in this case, being unavailable is the only smart play. She’ll want me even more now that I’m off limits, and I’ll have a barrier to bolster my resistance against her dangerous pull.

She was visibly upset when she learned I have a girlfriend, confirming her feelings for me are genuine as well. My own reaction to that fact further cements the need to keep my distance—emotionally.

Physically, I still have to live with her as part of my cover for both undercover missions.

My stomach clenches at the thought of being immersed in her orbit while fighting my well-trained libido.

But personal relationships aren’t an option for me. I can’t give my captors any more leverage than they already have—another lesson learned with painful clarity.

And a personal relationship with a mark? The fact that I’m even asking that question is answer enough.

Nothing good will come out of sincere attraction to the person I have to betray.

Why does she think I’m going to crush her one day?

Because I will. It’s what I do. An enslaved hurricane of destruction wherever they direct my fury.

Tonight’s words will be an explosion.

It’s the first day of Spring and I don’t care if I have to beat persuasion into these lungs,

they will not sink.

I am playing with colors and watching the grass grow as slowly as I have,

and though my diaphragm is filled with disappointment,

I know things are beginning to change.

There’s a virus destroying the people and filling their lungs with fluid.

I’ve been sick for years so there’s no way of knowing if this virus has been the reason I’ve been fighting to breathe for so long,

but I’m beginning to like the idea of water in my lungs.

The world is waiting on answers,

and I’m waiting on a cure.

I’m waiting to feel the flowers bloom,

breathing less and wanting more.

-JD August 12, Part 3