DISARM (DISARM Series #1) (5 page)

When I was
done, I looked at him through the mirror, and gone was the boy that I once
knew. In his place was a clean-cut young man, ready to take on academia and the
world, and it finally sunk in that he was leaving me. He would never again live
only two blocks away, never again come over to hang out and play video games.

My heart
had broken ten times over that day.

But now
that same boy was in my arms, telling me that he was in love, which left me
confused as hell. I used to think I could read his every thought, but his
confession blindsided me, made me wonder if I knew him at all.

“I didn’t
know…” I began. “I thought this was just sex.”

He jerked
back as if I’d pressed a hot poker to his chest. “In all the time that you’ve
lived here, how many times have you seen me
just have sex
with a woman?”

I shrugged,
thinking back to all the women that had accompanied Henry to our home. He had
had two girlfriends since I’d lived here, and both of them lasted at least a
few months—definitely longer than a one-night stand. “None,” I said in a
tiny voice.

I felt
hollow when he pulled out of me and pulled up his camo pants, as if he’d
somehow taken back all of the pleasure he’d given me only a few minutes
earlier. I shook my head, wondering how the hell things got derailed so
quickly. “This isn’t how it’s supposed to go.”

He gave me
a disquieted look that told me he hadn’t expected this ending either, but like
a gentleman, he helped me down from the counter and straightened my clothes.
“Well,” he began, trying for a lighter tone, “thanks for the good sex. I’ll eat
the ribs later.”

If he was
trying to wound me, he had succeeded. With an aching chest, I watched him grab
his keys from the hook and leave.

5
 
|
 
UNDER RUBBLE

During my
senior year in high school, Henry came home for the Christmas holidays a few
days earlier than Jason. The last time I’d seen Henry was nearly a year before
and if I thought I looked grown up, Henry had me beat. I was driving home from
school when I saw this person standing on my porch with his hands in his jacket
pocket, looking awfully familiar but too grown up to be the boy I knew.

I parked in
the driveway and ran up to him, forgetting myself for a moment as I launched
myself into his arms. “Henry!” I cried, wrapping my arms around his neck. “When
did you get here?”

He laughed
and set me down. “Just an hour ago.” He held me at arm’s length, a small smile
playing at the edge of his lips. He touched my hair, which I wore shorter now
that the curls had relaxed a little. “You look so different.”

“Well you…”
I looked up at him, searching for the words. He had always been tall, but over
the past year, he’d filled out a little and had actual beard stubble. I rubbed
his jaw and laughed, tickled by the sensation and the guy before me.

“Elsie…”

We both
turned at the voice, and I remembered with a start that I had a passenger in my
car that day. I pulled away from Henry as if I’d been caught doing something
indecent and turned to Zach, my new boyfriend.

“Hey Zach,”
I said in my most casual tone. “This is Henry, my brother’s best friend.”

I turned
back to Henry and was taken aback by the look on his face, a confounding
mixture of betrayal and disappointment. The expression dissolved into a cordial
smile a moment later, and I never saw that look again. Until today.

Henry
hadn’t made it home by the time I went to bed. I checked my cell phone several
times, sure that he would have texted me by now, even if to just berate me. He
and I fought like brother and sister on a regular basis, but never before had
it actually hurt. Never before had we made each other feel one inch small.

He loved
me.

That was a
bombshell of a confession that came when I was least expecting it. Now all of
his actions, all of those long, silent looks he’d been giving me came into
question. What had been going through his mind all of this time?

I guess no
matter how much you think you know someone, the harsh reality is that you never
really know anyone at all.

I woke up
some time in the night when the hinges of my door squeaked open and Henry’s
soft footsteps crossed the room. The bed gave way under his weight as he
climbed in and curled around my back. “I love you, Elsie,” Henry said, burying
his face in my hair. “I just wanted you to know before I left.”

My heart
skipped a beat at the tenderness in his voice. “Thank you for telling me,” I
said. “Why didn’t you say anything before?”

He shifted
around and rested his cheek on the side of my head. “I don’t know. You used to
be just a little girl, but somewhere along the way, you went from Jason’s
bratty sister to this beautiful woman with a glow about her.”

I grasped
his wrists and pulled his arms around me, his words warming me from the inside.

“After
Jason died, I felt like I needed to take his place and be your big brother. I
wasn’t supposed to have romantic feelings for you,” he said. “But God help me,
I couldn’t fight it. Not when we live in the same apartment, spending too much
time together.

“Look, I
don’t need you to tell me you love me too if you don’t actually feel that way.
I just wanted you to know that tonight, being with you, meant something.”

I twisted
in his arms and faced him. “It wasn’t just sex for me either. And I do love
you, Henry, but I don’t know yet if I’m in love with you.”

He nodded,
pressing his forehead to mine. “I can deal with that.”

“But I do
need you.”

“Yeah?” he
asked with a saucy grin.

“I need you
to stay if this thing between us ends. You can’t just move out and cut me out
of your life.”

He nodded
solemnly.

“And I need
you to come back safe and sound.” My chest felt tight with that certain
knowledge that he would never come back, but I pretended not to feel it. After
all, what did I know? I was no psychic.

“I’ll try
my best.” His hands stole inside my shirt and ran up and down my back. “I need
you to do something for me.”

“Anything,”
I breathed, the sensation of his rough palms sending tingles up to my scalp.

“I need you
to be here when I get back.”

I kissed
the tip of his nose. “I’ll be here. I’m not going anywhere.”

And then we
were on each other, our hands rubbing, grabbing, fondling with complete
abandon. We shucked our clothes with a speed born of need. I moaned when his
bare skin touched mine, my breasts crushed against his chest as we kissed. He
bent down and took one nipple in his mouth, sucking hard, and I arched my back
and rubbed my fingers along his scalp, urging him on. He moved to the other
breast, laving it with the same attention as the one before. I squeaked when he
bit down on my nipple, causing an instant rush of moisture in my crotch.

He licked
the valley between my breasts then moved lower, pressing kisses on my stomach,
my belly button, and the insides of my thighs. A grin flashed across his face a
moment before he disappeared between my legs.

I’d
received oral from a man before, knew what a tongue felt like down there, but
Henry was in a whole other league. I didn’t even want to know where he’d
learned the moves, but his tongue was masterful as they licked and glided
through my folds in a languid but firm manner. I sucked in a breath when he
pushed his tongue inside me and his entire mouth covered my mound, forming a
pressurized vacuum of pleasure.

“Oh God,” I
breathed, grabbing his head as my insides clutched at his tongue, wanting more.
There was not nearly enough of him inside me. My back arched up off the bed
and, just as I was about to explode, the wretched man pulled away. “What? Why
did you stop?” I shrieked.

He
positioned himself above me. “Because,” was all he said before he slammed into
me and the orgasm raced through my body. He pulled out and slammed back to the
hilt, giving me another wave to crest. I screamed the third time he pounded
into me, the orgasm going on and on.

He stilled
then, his eyes closed and eyebrows drawn together, enjoying the sensation of my
vaginal walls convulsing around him. “Elsie,” he said with a trembling voice.
He withdrew slowly and entered even slower still, continuing the relentless
torture at a pace that had me clutching at his butt, urging him to go faster, but
he kept the unhurried pace, his arms on either side of my head as he kissed me
tenderly.

Henry was
making love to me.

The
realization hit me like an avalanche and I was buried under the rubble. Tears
pooled at the corners of my eyes as I gazed up at him, unable to believe that
this man, who was once just a boy, was mine. At least for the moment.

I wrapped
my legs around his back and urged him deeper into me. He never picked up speed,
never wavered in his steady thrusting, and I felt another orgasm building
charge. With each drawn-out stroke, my muscles wound tighter and tighter, my
body coiling into him until the final stroke that snapped me, made me scream
his name as he shuddered his release.

Afterward,
he did the atypical and stayed in my room, slept on the bed that he’d deemed
“too soft and girly smelling” forever ago, wrapped around me like my very own
man blanket. For the first time in a long time, since Jason’s death really, I
fell into a deep and contented slumber.

~

You know
that saying about taking a step back to get a fresh perspective? Well, I didn’t
really need to step back to clear my mind; all I needed was six hours of sleep.
When I woke the next morning to the sight of Henry’s calm face beside me, my
heart just about burst with a feeling so acute, so fierce, that only a fool
could have mistaken it for anything else.

I had been
deluding myself all of these years, thinking I could live my entire life as
nothing but his roommate. I thought I’d successfully extinguished the torch
that I held for him, but in the space of a few days, the embers had been
rekindled and the whole damn thing caught fire.

I was madly
in love with Henry: always had been, probably always would be.

Admitting
it exhilarated and scared the hell out of me. It was akin to leaning all the
way back on a swing, feeling the rush and seeing the world in a new angle yet
knowing there was a very real chance of crashing to the concrete below.

Still I
knew, as I traced my finger gently down his forehead, along the bridge of his
nose, that this was one risk I was willing to take. When I reached his lips, he
opened his mouth and bit my finger.

“Good
morning,” he said with a sleepy smile. He touched my shoulder and ran a palm
along the contours of my waist and hip. “I’m a little sad to wake up to you
touching my nose instead of… other things.”

I reached
down to straighten out the situation when I spied the clock on my bedside
table. I sat up with a heavy sigh. “I have to get ready for work.”

He buried
his face in the pillow and grumbled. “No, no, no.” He then waved a hand across
my face and said, “You will take a sick day today.”

“If only I
could, Henry Wan Kenobi, but I have important clients coming in,” I said,
giving him one last, lingering kiss. “To be continued.”

Work was
excruciating. My meeting with The Oklahoman about their website redesign took a
long time as we hammered out the concept. To be honest, it probably took longer
because my mind was not in that conference room but far off at Tinker Air Force
Base, where Henry was trying to complete his pre-deployment checklist. We only
had a week left together, it seemed such a shame to waste it apart—but
what could we do? We were adults with responsibilities, even if we were acting
like lovesick teenagers.

Right
before lunch, a client’s website crashed and, since it was my project, I was
forced to ditch my idea of taking a long lunch to visit Henry and fix the
problem instead. So I put my head down and got to work, hoping to be able to
skip out of work early at least.

Around
twelve-thirty, there was some commotion outside my cubicle, but I wanted
nothing to do with it. Gideon, my gay hipster cubicle neighbor, popped up over
the wall and gave me a rare smile. “You have a visitor,” he said and jabbed a
thumb towards the reception desk.

I looked up
to find a handsome Captain in his ABUs—short for Airman Battle
Uniform—walking towards me, a beret and a single red rose in his hand. My
heart did a happy little jig at the sight of him, looking so dashing in the
uniform I’d seen him wear a hundred times before. He slipped his beret in a leg
pocket and held out the rose.

My
co-workers’ heads popped up from their cubicles one by one, like little prairie
dogs, flashing knowing smiles and popping back down again. I pulled Henry
inside my cubicle and forced him down onto my chair, hoping a member of
management wouldn’t decide to walk by at that moment.