Rough Edge (The Edge #1)

Rough Edge (The Edge #1)

C.D. Reiss



Part One


HOMECOMING



Chapter One



GREYSON

NEW YORK CITY

NOVEMBER - 2006





He was a son of a bitch, a cold-hearted compartmentalizer with a heart of solid stone. His hands were instruments of brutal precision, and his cock was a means of punishment.

He wasn’t the man I’d married, but he was my husband.

I couldn’t see him, even though he was kneeling between my legs. My jaw was pushed back so far, I could only see out the window next to the bed. Two fingers were jammed in my mouth. His other hand was inside my knee, pressing it to the mattress until my legs were open as far as they could go.

“Suck,” he commanded with a voice drained of emotion. A flat order, like “sit” or “heel.”

I curved my lips around the fingers and sucked on them. They tasted of rubbing alcohol and pussy.

“Harder.”

I sucked harder and he pushed my jaw up, restraining me with my position. He ran his other hand from my knee to the inside of my thigh. When he got to the fleshiest part, he tightened his grip until pain blossomed under his fingers and grew outward, lacing my arousal with its companion—pain.

When he let go, I whimpered around his fingers, and he responded by pushing them deeper down my throat. As he leaned over me, I felt his rod of an erection where I was wet.

He whispered into my cheek, “Take them. All the way.” I opened my throat and he pushed his fingers down. “Beg for it.”

I couldn’t speak with his fingers in my mouth. I couldn’t even breathe.

“You’re not begging.” His fingers were down to the webs and my body contracted around them for air. He pulled them out. “Beg.”

“Fuck me. Please fuck me.”

“What?” With his spit-soaked hand, he reached between my legs and pinched my swollen clit.

“Put your cock in me. Fuck me hard. Take what you want. Please. Please.” The last word came as a whisper.

He got on his knees, magnificent, cut like a god from jaw to abs to the hard heat of his thighs. One hand on my sternum to hold me still, the other guiding his cock between my legs. I was so wet, open like a hungry flower, still whispering please please please as he leaned his weight on my chest and drove into me. He was long and thick. Without prep, he could hurt me, and he did.

I knew when to look for the change. I knew how to see him recover himself in the violence. In the moment he drove through me so hard he cracked, went supple, and became my husband again.

The first orgasm came on the third thrust and lasted until he joined me in heaven.



* * *



GREYSON

FORT BRAGG

AUGUST - 1992





Basic training was a cakewalk. Last course. Blue group did belly robber, high step over, low wire, weaver, and island hopper. Halfway through, I fell fifteen feet off the confidence climb. I thought I’d wiped out for good with my full weight on my right wrist and the rest of the blue group’s boots smacking the mud all around me.

“Get up, you little fucking shit!”

Ronin.

That was Ronin yelling, and Ronin grabbing me under the arms to throw me toward the next obstacle.

“Move it!” He pushed me. “I’m staying behind you, so if you go pussy, you’re answering to me!”

I tucked my wrist under my breasts, dropped to my knees and crawled under the low wire. He was behind me, shouting a litany of encouragements and insults. I climbed the wall with one hand and my teeth and stumbled over the line in the middle of the pack, aching, bruised, tears streaking the mud on my face. Ronin was at attention behind me.

“That doesn’t look like attention, Frazier!” Sergeant Bell shouted.

I put my right arm to my side and straightened my wrist. Pain shot through to my shoulder, but still, I stood at attention. Bell didn’t seem satisfied.

“You’re up shit creek now, Private One More.”

“Fuck you, Ronin.”

Bell stormed to me, hands clasped behind his back, nearly crashing into Rodrigo, who was trying to get into the line. Rodrigo buckled and found his space. Bell was not deterred. I put my eyes at attention and tried to tamp down the heavy breaths. Everything hurt. I felt as if I’d flung myself out of a moving car, but I stood still.

When Bell got uncomfortably close, I expected him to shout, but he murmured two words so low, only I could hear them.

“Stop smiling.”





Chapter Two





Greyson - september, 2006





The sky in Iraq was the bluest blue I’d ever seen. It had a flat depth, as if thin layers of glass, each a slightly different shade, were stacked together. Sometimes I’d dream about that sky. Either I’d be floating in it, blue everywhere, above and below, at each side and pressure point, squeezing the breath out of me, or I’d be falling from it, from blue into blue, no Earth barreling into greater and greater detail. Just a single direction in the never-ending cerulean sky.

Caden and I had been separated by an ocean and a war for ten months. We’d married while I was on leave and spoke when our schedules matched and the wind blew the wi-fi signal in the right direction. I thought I hadn’t known him long enough to miss him, but I did.