Rough Edge (The Edge #1)(3)

“Okay,” I finally said. “The house.”



* * *



Caden put the car in a garage a block away. Apparently he’d bought the spot years ago. It required a mortgage and operating fees. Where I grew up, you parked in a lot someone else owned, your own driveway, or on the street.

This was my new normal.

On the walk along Columbus Avenue, I felt as if I were wearing a camo clown suit. Caden put his arm around me and kissed my temple as we waited at the light. The crowd crossed before the light changed to green, but I followed my husband.

“We’re on 87th between Columbus and Amsterdam,” he said. “Avenues run north-south, streets run east-west.”

“Got it.” We turned onto a narrow, tree-lined street. “This is a nice block.”

“It is.”

The houses were stone and connected to each other on the sides. Some were slightly set back from the street to accommodate a stoop and a few steps down to a garden apartment.

He stopped by one such house and held his hand out while the other took my duffel off his shoulder. “Here we are.”

I looked up. Garden apartment. Three stories. An attic with stone carvings around the leaded windows. “Is it all yours?”

He threw the duffel up the steps. It made it halfway. “It’s all ours.”

He picked me up in his arms before carrying me up the stoop. I squeaked in surprise. We laughed as he tried to unlock the door without dropping me, and when he managed to do it, I cheered.

He retrieved my bag and dropped it in the foyer. We were at the base of a flight of stairs. Everything was polished dark wood carved at the corners. A beveled mirror was set into a frame with three brass hooks under it. I took off my cap and let my hair fall.

I was fully overwhelmed. He took my cap and put it on a hook before taking my face in his hands and kissing me.

“I have your back,” he whispered. “Okay?” I nodded, and he kissed me again. “Say it for me.”

“You have my back.”

“And your front.”

I smiled into his kiss. “You have my front.”

“I can take you to the bedroom if you insist or on the stairs right now.”

“Will you give me a minute to shower?”

“You have rank.”

“That’s an order then.”

He got his hips under me and his hands under my ass, hitching me up until I could get my legs around his waist. He carried me to our room. I didn’t see anything but his face on the way up. I only knew there were wood floors and windows. Two flights. A tower with me on top.



* * *



He sat me on a bench in the bathroom and turned the water on in the white claw-foot tub. He kneeled in front of me to unlace my boots. I couldn’t stop looking at him in his fancy suit, kneeling on the bathroom floor to service me.

“I hate that they make us wear this shit on the way home,” he said. “It’s total PR.”

“Yeah, well, the military is nothing without its symbols, and that’s what I am.”

“Were.” He pulled off the boot. “Now you are Dr. Greyson Frazier, MD, with a psychiatric practice in Manhattan.” He peeled off my socks. “And my wife. Stand up.”

Still on his knees, he undid my buckle and fly and pulled my pants down, letting his palms spread out over the skin of my thighs. I stepped out of them and he tossed the pants aside.

“Ah, I missed this.” He lifted my shirt and kissed the silver scar over my heart. He kissed my belly and the triangle below. I put my fingers in his hair, and he reached up under my clothes until he found my hardened nipples.

“Caden,” I groaned. “Bath.”

With a gentle suck on my belly, he stood. I started unbuttoning from the top and he unbuttoned from the bottom. We met in the middle and got all my clothes off until I wasn’t wearing anything but the dog tags that hung between my breasts.

He laid them in his palm and looked at them, letting one clink against the other.

“Take them off,” I said.

He closed his fist around them and pulled them over my head. The chain slid against my long, straight hair, and I was free.

Caden coiled the chain on the vanity. I shut off the water and tested it.

Scalding hot.

No one in the world knew me the way he did.



* * *



He’d taken his jacket off, rolled up his sleeves, and bathed me, touching every part of my body. His hands knew exactly how to tease me. They were accurate and subtle, driving my desire forward without letting me come.

He tossed the towel away and threw me on the bed, soaking wet.

He didn’t even undress to fuck me. Not right away. He just spread my legs and slid his fingers inside me, then took out his monster of a cock and fucked me as if we hadn’t seen each other in four months.

The sheets were white.

The furniture was honey, and the lamps were Tiffany.

Day turned into evening, but the street didn’t quiet.

That was all I noticed between orgasms.

In the darkness, we curled under the covers. He stroked my arm with his thumb, appreciating every inch of skin.

“I haven’t shown you the house,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“Are you going to show me all your childhood secret hiding places?”