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AFTER I FALL: CHAPTER 5
Eli
I don’t take advantage of people. My tactical officer at West Point tried to make me into a leader who could squeeze the most out of his people with the minimum amount of effort.
I was supposed to get shit done. Not ask how it got that way.
And why in the fuck am I thinking about that forty-seven month experience at Castle Grayskull right now?
The woman in front of me…there’s more to this story than a sorority sister out for a casual fuck. That might have been what I thought she was after back in the bar, but now, out in the open, I’m no longer certain.
She’s not being coy or shy. There is genuine uncertainty in her eyes. As though she just realized she’s stepped into a secluded alley with a dude twice her size, sporting a beard and enough ink to make her mother drag her back to church.
And damn it, I don’t want this. I thought…I thought she would be a nice distraction from the memories tonight.
But it won’t be what either of us want. Or need. I honestly think she might shatter if I touch her, and not in the good kind of way.
No matter how much she might try to pretend otherwise.
I push off the wall and step into her space. Slowly, giving her time to back away. I lift my hand again, making sure she sees it coming. Someone hurt her and the bruises are recent enough that it might have been earlier today, maybe last night.
A spike of violence hits my blood, causing my fingers to tremble. I release my breath through clenched teeth as I gently trace the edge of her tender flesh. “Whoever did this doesn’t deserve you,” I whisper.
I want my words to matter. I want them to sink in. I want her to walk away and be okay.
I know it is infinitely more complicated than that.
She closes her eyes as I slip my fingers down the smooth line of her throat. She trembles, a subtle movement I wouldn’t have noticed had I not been completely engrossed in the moment.
In the simple act of touching her.
Her skin is soft, her pulse a scattered race beneath my fingertips. I cup her face. Gently, so gently. She presses against my palm, exposing her neck just a little.
The urge to press my lips to that pulse point pounds through me. I close my eyes, breathing deeply, reminding myself that I am not an animal. I will never again release the beast inside me.
I am…I am me. Not the shadows and pain. Not the war, etched into my skin.
I am not the callous bastard the Army tried to make me into.
Only when I am certain of my control do I lean closer and press my lips to her neck. She makes a warm, smooth sound, deep in her throat.
“It’s soft.”
I nuzzle her skin. “What is?” I whisper.
“Your beard. I didn’t imagine it would be soft.”
I smile at the amazement in her voice, nuzzling her neck. “What did you think it was going to feel like?”
She shifts and looks up at me. The shadows in her eyes are still there. No magical sex to clear away the pain.
Maybe that should be hell on my ego but it’s not.
I’m too cynical about the cost of war to think it can be healed with a good cry and a bottle of Jack.
Her lips curl slightly at the edges. “I don’t know. Scratchy?” Her palm comes to rest over my heart. “This isn’t exactly what I had in mind,” she whispers. She doesn’t meet my gaze when those words cross her lips.
“I kind of figured that.”
I lower my hands, leaving her in control, letting her set conditions here.
She narrows her eyes at me. “Any other red-blooded American male would have had me naked up against that wall in thirty seconds flat.” She tips her head. “Why didn’t you?”
There is uncertainty in that question. A painful kind. The kind that tells me about wounds that run deep. Very deep.
“Maybe I wanted to know your name first.”
She shakes her head. “That’s not what this was supposed to be.”
It’s a single sentence, the sharpest blade. Honest, even as it cuts me. She’ll be perfectly happy to fuck me here in this alley but can’t be bothered to ask me my name.
Something about the acknowledgment that she’s using me for a cheap, anonymous fuck burns on a fundamental level.
“Why are you here tonight?” There is an edge to my voice.
Her eyes sweep down over the full sleeves of tattoos and back up to my beard before she meets my eyes. “Why are you asking questions?”
There’s something deeply unsettling about this moment.
I step into her space now, unreasonably angry at what she’s trying to do here. I back her up against the wall. “So tell me. Is it the tattoos, the beard, or the fact that I work in a bar that made you want to fuck me tonight? What points were you trying to score with your ex? Or is it your daddy?”
She flinches but doesn’t look away. She holds my gaze for a long moment, maybe more. Then she finally looks away, into the darkness at the end of the alley. “Neither.” It is a long time before she looks back at me. “I just wanted someone to touch me.”
She ducks out beneath my arms and disappears. Into the darkness. Away from me.
And I am alone once more. Just like I will always be.
Parker
It would have been simpler for me to go back into the bar and get hammered with Kelsey but I have some pride. I honestly can’t face the burning embarrassment of my failed attempt to be something more than a doll playing dress up. It would be awkward as hell but if I got drunk, I wouldn’t care about the shame of rejection, right?
Except that I can see him looking at me with the same level of disgust I see in the mirror and, well, I get enough of that on a daily basis.
My apartment isn’t far from The Pint and honestly, it’s better if I go home. I can drink alone and no one else will get hurt. At least not tonight, anyway.
I guess nobody gets what they want these days.
I am running away again. Something I’ve never been particularly good at.
My apartment is silent.
I was trying to get away from the silence. I want it to stop. I don’t want to hear the ridicule in my Davis’s voice. I don’t want to hear the sound of my voice. I don’t want to relive the shame or the hurt or any of it.
For just one night, I wanted to be a regular girl having a regular hookup at a regular bar.
But there was nothing normal about tonight. Not the way he looked at me. Not the way he touched me.
I crawl into bed. I can still feel his lips on my throat, the touch of his beard against my skin. It was soft; his lips warm and moist where they traced over my flesh.
And then he stopped. Just as quickly as he started, everything came to a screeching halt.
And he knew. He fucking knew I was not there to feel good, not there for me, but to lash out. I don’t know how he knew, how he saw it, but he did.
He was actually pissed about it. I could have walked up to any other guy in that bar and asked them to take me outside and fuck me and they would have. I don’t say that to brag, but I understand how men work. They are wired to their cocks.
So why didn’t he?
The street lamps cast long pale strips of light across my bed. I lie there, wondering about him. What is his name? He has so many tattoos. I’ve never seen a man with so much body art. I suddenly very much want to know if the tattoos extend across his chest, his back.
Why couldn’t he have kept kissing me? His touch made me feel desirable. Like a real person, not the shadow of who I am supposed to be.
He could have backed me against the wall. It would have hurt. Brick does not feel good against skin. I wish I didn’t know that, but I do.
He could have lifted my skirt with those big, rough hands. God, but it would have felt amazing. The bite of pain mixed with the pleasure of his touch.
I squeeze my thighs together. My hand drifts down my belly. I know what I’ll find. I know what pleasure can and cannot happen between my thighs.
Davis has made it abundantly clear that I’m inadequate in all the important ways. There’s really no coming back from that in a relationship. Not that there was ever really a relationship there to begin with.
I have some pride, after all.
But him—that’s how I think of the man at the bar—his touch would have been good. He would have known to slide his finger over me until I was wet. He would have waited until I was ready instead of pounding into me and telling me I don’t love him because I’m not wet enough.
It would still have hurt with him. It might not have come even remotely close to the fantasy that is making me arch my back and spread my thighs.
In my head, he is standing there, watching me, urging me on. Stroking my thighs with his big, rough hands. Whispering encouragement.
Whispering my name.
Covering my hand with his. Slowly drawing our index fingers through the slick, wet heat that doesn’t exist in my reality. Slowly drawing the pleasure from the pain.
Slowly, slowly filling me.
Showing me that it doesn’t have to hurt. That it doesn’t have to be like it always has been.
That there is someone out there who will see me for me. Who will not be drawn in by my father’s money or the power my name evokes.
Someone who will stroke me with his fingers as I come and whisper my name and hold me as I shatter.
Tomorrow. Tomorrow, I will start to take back my life.
Always tomorrow.
Because the pain of today hurts too much.