Disarm (3 page)

Henry's eyes glinted with mischief. “For the record, you are more than welcome to churn my butter any time. Seriously, morning, noon, night, whenever.”

My laugh caught in my throat as his words painted a very vivid picture in my overactive imagination. I took a large drink from my glass of water, torn between changing the subject and pressing him for more details about what I could do with his penis.

I started when he pressed the cold bottle of beer to my cheek. “You're all red,” he said, his face suddenly closer than I remembered. He touched his thumb to my cheek and traced along my jawline. “Have I ever told you that I love your complexion? It's like milk, so creamy but always quick to take on color.”

I couldn't breathe. I didn't know what the hell had happened to me, but somewhere between finding out his secret and waking up with my hand in his pants, I had devolved into someone who could barely form a coherent sentence. I didn't want to be that girl who got all googly-eyed when an attractive guy paid attention to me, but I couldn't react to his nearness any other way. Henry had me stupefied.

When his thumb traced my lower lip, I lost it. Or rather, I let that thin wire of control snap. I spanned the space between us and kissed him, and he, thankfully, didn't pull away. Instead he grasped the back of my head and deepened the kiss, our tongues a slippery, tangled mess. He gently bit down on my lower lip, then pulled away, giving me that dark, heated look I'd fantasized about. “Elsie, I . . .”

I waited for the rest of the words, but he said nothing else. He just ran a hand through his hair, then rubbed his forehead.

“What is it?” I asked, ready for him to get it out so we could get back to kissing already.

“This can get complicated,” he finally said.

“It doesn't have to.”

He looked at my lips for a long time, then, with a sigh, finally met my eyes. “We'd better not,” he said, leaning his head against the couch and closing his eyes. “I'm sorry.”

DETONATION

I couldn't sleep that night, my brain in overdrive from the porksword fondling and the kiss and what Henry said about complications. He was leaving in eleven days and would not be back for half a year; it wouldn't do us any good to start anything now, especially something as tricky as sleeping together.

But a small part of me wanted it anyway, wanted to push through the barrier that had held us back all these years and find out what the hell was on the other side. All these years I'd held my crush at bay, thinking that nothing could ever happen between us, that we were forever banished to the friendship wasteland.

What if there was somewhere else, a terminal in between where we could be together in body and keep our hearts separate so as to not endanger the friendship? Did such a place even exist?

I finally fell asleep when I came to the only logical conclusion, the possibilities filling me with a sense of hope.

The next day I came home from work with a plan and a bag of takeout from Chili's. I pulled out plates and started setting the table when Henry came walking out of my bedroom wearing camo pants and a tan undershirt that hugged his muscles.

“What were you doing in my room?” I asked with a raised eyebrow.

He held up a pistol leg-holster that I'd used last Halloween when I'd dressed up as Lara Croft. “I was getting my stuff together and couldn't find my other holster. And lo and behold, it was in your room.”

“Sorry,” I said. “I guess I forgot to return it.”

“Ah, yes,” he said with that sexy, sliding look again. “You can have this one if you would just wear that costume every day.”

I was thinking of a suitable retort when the food caught his attention. “What's all this?” he asked, standing in front of the counter.

“Just wanted to remind you of what you'll miss out on while you're gone.”

He dipped his finger in the barbecue sauce and sucked it into his mouth. “You are not playing fair.”

I leaned over the counter and pressed my arms together, just like I'd done at the bar, the V-neck of my wraparound dress the perfect frame for my assets. “Hey, when you've got 'em, use 'em.”

Henry's eyes tried their damnedest to stay off my cleavage, but in the end, the gravitational pull was too much. He swallowed, frowned, then tore his eyes away from my chest. “What are you doing?”

I held his eyes, trying to convey my message. “Reminding you of what you'll miss out on.” My heart pounded wildly as he studied me, his expression changing from doubt to desire.

After what seemed like forever, he pushed away from the counter and stalked over to my side, placing his hands on either side of me, trapping me in place. With his face mere inches from mine, he asked in a pained voice, “Do you have any clue what you do to me?”

I shook my head, but I really did.

He took a half step closer, pressing his erection into my stomach. “You drive me insane,” he said in that gravelly voice. He lowered his head and I felt his breath on my neck, on my ear. “You make me want something I can never have.”

My breath came out in ragged gasps when I said, “I'm all yours, Henry.”

His hands grasped at the skirt of my dress, balling them up in his fists. “I've wanted you for the longest time, Elsie,” he said. “If you're unsure about this, tell me now and I'll step away and we can go back to pretending that everything's the same.”

The hem of my dress rose a few more inches up my thigh as he gathered more fabric in his hands. I was transfixed by the curve in his upper lip, the way it offset his thick lower lip.

“Elsie, tell me,” he ground out.

I pulled on his dog tags and brought his face to mine. “I want you just as much as you want me,” I whispered against his lips.

His hands gripped my butt and lifted me up on the counter at the same time his head dipped down for a kiss. He slid my dress up my thighs, his palms warm on my skin, and suddenly, his hands were inside my lace panties. I gasped when his fingers found my entrance. He pushed one long finger inside, and I squeezed him as I moaned.

“You really want this?” he asked, uncertainty still evident in his voice. Or maybe he just liked hearing me beg. He pushed another finger inside and started a slow and slippery stroke. “Or this?”

“What do you think?” I asked, knowing I was soaked.

“I think,” he began, flicking his fingers upward in an exquisite way that made me gasp, hitting just the right spot.

“That—” Another flick.

“You—” I gasped.

“Are—” I squeezed him hard, intensifying the sensations.

“Sexy—”
So close.

“As fuck.” With that, he began to move his fingers rapidly, and after only several seconds, I threw my head back and came around him, my legs and my insides trembling as he kept up the assault.

I grabbed his head and kissed him, moaning into his mouth. “I want to feel you inside me.”

He hesitated, glancing at his bedroom, when I grabbed his head and kissed him again. “I'm on the pill,” I said. “And I'm clean. Are you?”

“Oh yeah,” he said and swept me up in more kisses. I unbuttoned his pants and slipped a hand into his boxer shorts, wrapping my fingers around his hard shaft. He gripped my wrist, preventing me from stroking him.

“No. I want something else.” He pulled down his pants and boxer shorts, his large cock flying free.

I looked down at it properly for the first time, impressed not only with its length but its girth. Henry was a big boy with a big toy to match.

“You ready?”

When I nodded, he pressed the head to the entrance and then slid inside in one clean stroke. I gasped, feeling so full I could burst. I squeezed him as he pulled almost all the way out, then slid back in, inch by delicious inch.

I pressed my mouth to his neck to keep from screaming out loud, my body a jittery bundle of raw nerves.

“Elsie,” he said between his teeth, his hands on my butt as he began to increase the pace. I wrapped my legs around his waist and he sank in even deeper. “You feel so fucking good,” he groaned against my hair.

I came again, the orgasm bursting through my body like a white-hot tidal wave. Henry gave a little grunt and pumped faster, gripping me so tight against him he was very nearly lifting me off the counter. With one final thrust his body went rigid and he pressed his face into my neck, trying to catch his breath. I grasped the back of his head and held him tight, never wanting to let him go, wanting to keep him inside me forever.

After a moment, he looked up, his eyes an ocean of emotions. He looked grave when he said, “There's something else I haven't told you.”

My heart stopped. It couldn't possibly take more bad news, not now.

“I'm in love with you, Els,” he whispered, as if afraid of being heard. “I've loved you since that day you first cut my hair.”

Instead of dealing with the startling confession, I jumped right into the memory. I was just fifteen and Jason and Henry were about to head off to college. Henry had always sported a longer style that brushed his shoulders, but he needed to have short hair for ROTC. Since our mother wasn't home, I was the only one qualified to use the shears, so I had performed the difficult and heartbreaking task of buzzing off all that beautiful dark, wavy hair. I had felt his eyes on me through the mirror but kept my focus, careful not to send Henry off to college with a wonky buzz cut. Sabotage did occur to me in a moment of pure selfishness—thinking that the college hussies might leave him alone if he had a bald spot on the side of his head—but ultimately I could not do it. I was already defacing something beautiful, cutting off the thing that bound us together, and couldn't possibly mar him even more.

When I was done, I looked at him in the mirror. Gone was the boy that I had once known. In his place was a clean-cut young man, ready to take on academia and the world, and it finally sank in that he was leaving me. He would never again live only two houses 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 with me, 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 could somehow take back all of the pleasure he'd given me only a few minutes earlier. I shook my head, wondering how the hell things had gotten 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.

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 had been nearly a year before, and if I thought I looked grown up, Henry had me beat. I had driven home from school when I saw this person standing on my porch with his hands in his jacket pockets, 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 was already 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 had come 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 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 sometime 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 you.”

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 it 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. 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, sleeping 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 carried 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 at 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 predeployment 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 toward the reception desk.

I looked up to find a handsome captain in his ABUs—short for airman battle uniform—walking toward 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 coworkers' 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.

“Well hello,” he said and pulled me onto his lap.

I wrapped my arms around his neck and took his gorgeous face in hungrily. “Do you want to go to the conference room upstairs?” I whispered in his ear. “It should be empty at this time of day.”

Henry looked extremely tempted, but he shook his head. “I really want to, but I have to head back to work. I just came here to deliver this,” he said, tipping me back, and planting a searing kiss on my lips.

We surfaced a few minutes later, utterly turned on without any way to deal with it. With a sigh, I pulled him up and we emerged from our own little world.

He gave me a courteous nod. “Ma'am,” he said formally, then leaned down and blew in my ear. “To be continued.”

After he left, a few people walked by my cubicle to ask about the rose and the handsome airman who'd brought it. The inevitable question “So is he your boyfriend?” was asked, but for once, when it came to my relationship with Henry, I didn't know what to say.

On my way home I got stuck behind every slow car or truck in Oklahoma. It was a conspiracy; that's the only way I could explain why everyone seemed to be in on some big plan to keep me from getting home. But as soon as I opened that front door, I ran to my man—yes, in my mind I'd claimed him already—and leapt into his arms. To say I devoured his face was kind of an understatement.

Henry backed up into the couch and sat down, taking me with him. He grumbled something about putting steaks on the grill, but a tornado could have been whizzing past our window right then and you couldn't have peeled me from that couch. Instead, I unzipped his pants, drew aside my thong panties and pulled him deep inside me.

Later, after we finally got around to cooking and eating dinner, we lay on his bed sated and drowsy. He was lying on his back and I was sideways across the bed, my head resting on his stomach, as we talked about the past, too afraid to talk about the future in case we didn't have one.

“How about that guy in your senior year?” Henry asked. “Did you guys date long?”

I smiled against his stomach. “You jealous?”

“I was.”

I ran my fingers over the soft skin covering his ribs. “We only went out until after New Year's,” I said. “I'd have broken up with him sooner if you'd told me how you felt.”

“I almost did a few times.” He twisted his finger around a lock of my curly hair. “I came home early that Christmas to spend some time with you without Jason around.”

“Would you have told me then?”

He shrugged. “Maybe. If all the stars aligned. But I guess they didn't.” His blue eyes took me in for a long time until I became uncomfortable.

“What?” I asked, covering my face with my hand. I peeked through my fingers and grinned.

He pulled my hand away. “I was just wondering what Jason would think.”

“He'd probably tackle you to the ground, maybe give you a black eye or bloody lip,” I said. Jason would have grumbled but, deep down, I liked to think he would have been happy for us.