Page 39 of The Lies We Tell
Can she give over her control to my safekeeping? Will she trust me to know what she needs? I imagine her on her knees, ass in the air and face on the sheets, hands tied behind her back while I fuck her into the mattress.
I feel the rush of the orgasm before I start to come.
“Fuck,” I mouth. It comes out on a breath.
Stars spin in the corner of my eyes, and the hand that was tugging on my balls slams against the shower wall to keep me upright.
Even though she’s not here with me, just thinking of Briar makes it one of the best orgasms I’ve ever had.
I milk every last sensation as my cock softens.
Perhaps I should have gone to the club, found one of the girls. Reminded myself why what I’m about to do is such an awful goddamn idea. Instead, I towel dry myself off, including my hair. Then I pull on the clean gray sweats I picked up on the way out of the bedroom.
I use the towel to wipe some of the steam from the bathroom mirror and look at myself.
One of the ways I keep myself level is looking the mirror and reminding myself of why the job I’m doing is so goddamn important. Tonight, I repeat the action, even as I know I’m going to walk straight out of here into the arms of Briar and fuck everything else up.
Even so, I go to her.
Briar is in bed, fussing with the sheets. “How old are you?” I ask.
“Twenty-eight. Why? How old are you?”
“Forty-one next birthday,” I answer honestly. One of the best tips I ever got about doing undercover work was to keep as many details real as you can get away with.
“Practically an old man,” she says, but there’s humor on her lips and mischief in her eyes.
I glance down at the body I work hard to keep in shape. Some parts of military discipline are hard to let go of. “I like to think of it as maturing like a fine single malt.” I rub my hands down my chest, over my abs, then back up again. Her eyes shamelessly follow the action. “Stop looking at me like a Popsicle, sweetheart.”
Even though I really want to give you something to suck on.
She yawns as she pulls the sheet up to her chin. “Sorry.”
I go to turn off her nightlight before placing my hands on either side of her head. “I like you looking. So don’t be sorry, even if I’m an old man.”
She smiles sleepily, and after a day that contained tears and sadness, it looks especially good on her. I kiss her lips, softly. I don’t want to rev anyone’s engines. Hers or mine.
Instead, I walk to the other side of the bed and climb in before turning the light off.
“Where do you think people find courage, Ryker?”
The sound of my real name from her lips is sweet, even as I realize she shouldn’t be saying it at all. If she gets in the habit, she might say it at the wrong time. But here in the dark, I don’t have it in me to berate her for it. Not when it sounds so perfect. Not when I rarely hear my own name these days.
“There was an army chaplain I once knew.” I shouldn’t tell her about Phillip, the man whose name I’m using for cover, but the moment calls for it. “One day, while I was in Afghanistan, I’d been called to disarm a bomb. Pretty routine. I identified the detonator core that was going into the main charge, started to break down the explosive frame before I pulled the detonator cap out of the fuse well. All standard stuff. Then I found this other wire, and when I followed it, I realized I was standing in the middle of a daisy chain bomb. One bomb linked to another bomb and to another bomb. It was the only time in my life my courage wavered.”
“Ryker,” she whispers. Her hand slips into mine, and I close my fingers around hers as I put myself back in that day. In the heat of my bomb suit, sweating beneath it. Knowing that I didn’t know where the other bombs were, only seeing the junction where the wires all met.
“That night, after I’d disarmed all those bombs, I found the army chaplain. He said there were two types of courage. Faith-based courage. ‘Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, blah, blah, for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest.’ ‘And the Lord is my light and my salvation ... though war be waged against me, even then do I trust.’ ‘You of little faith, why are you so afraid?’ Some people are bolstered in their faith that someone has their back, and if it is the end of their days, it was part of the plan of their lives.”
“So you believe in God?”
“I’m the son of a Baptist preacher with a passion for brimstone, damnation, and alcohol. So, no. Not in the purist sense. But Phillip said something that stuck with me. It’s possible to have that kind of faith in yourself. The words still work. I could be strong and be of good courage because I will always be with me. I can be my own light and salvation, even though warwaswaged against me, because I will always trust in myself to do what is best for me. There is no need to be afraid if I have faith in myself. And that bolstered me.” I pause for a moment, the question getting stuck in my throat for a second. “When they took you, did you believe you were going to be saved?”
I hear her sigh. It’s an intimate conversation. I almost wish I could see her face, but sometimes things are easier to discuss in the dark.
“At first, I was convinced I would be. I remember thinking someone will see this, they’ll report it, they’ll get license plates, and all that stuff you see on crime shows. I live in a city filled with cameras. But they put me in a room with walls of smooth gray concrete. And it was set up like a prison cell, only the bed was made up with soft bedding. There was a toilet in the corner. No windows. There were a couple of narrow vents that I assumed were heat and air ducts. That’s when I struggled to remain positive. Nobody goes through that much trouble to create that kind of room for a one-off abduction. There must have been more women than me. That’s why I searched tonight to see if I could find any of them.”
The picture she paints in my head is terrifying. I don’t know who’d want to destroy the spirit of someone so lovely. “But you found your courage again, the night we met.”
