Kathryn poured half a glass of wine and swallowed it quickly as Bouchaule washed his face in the bathroom. He arrived late, and she had been left to wait alone with her memories and regrets.
The bliss of oblivion had been replaced by self-loathing and anger. She just wanted some mindless sex from Lani, to feel pleasure again, to come again. She got neither. Sex had become an exercise in futility. If she wasn’t faking pleasure with Jenny to hide her guilt, she was faking pleasure with Bouchaule to secure her future.
She fought thoughts of Jenny as she let Lani take her. She couldn’t help feeling she was betraying their love, even though there was no love left to betray. It made her angry. She had to move on. She went to Lani for pleasure. To give it was easy—to Jenny, Bouchaule, Lani. All she had to do was show up, but this time she wanted the satisfaction to be hers, and who better to give it than an old fuck buddy who expected nothing less.
It wasn’t Lani’s fault, she knew, but when the woman failed to move her, she got desperate, and things got rough, which wasn’t out of the ordinary for them, but it certainly wasn’t intended this time around. She wasn’t the prostitute who survived the trick by using anger to feel superior and the intoxication of power to numb her senses.
This time she only wanted to feel, to become aroused, to feel the blood rush to her most sensitive parts until any stimulation drove her to madness and beyond. She wanted to be teased until she begged for release, and she wanted to cry out in relief as her wish was granted and her body exploded with the blinding white heat of her climax.
She felt nothing but guilt and frustration as she tried to wrest the feelings from her partner, who clearly had ecstasy to spare, and as Lani lay exhausted and sated, Kathryn hated her for coming repeatedly and for reminding her how good it should be and what she’d thrown away.
Now she had to deal with Bouchaule. She took the extra shot of wine, hoping it would make her care less, or care more—at that moment, either would do. Oblivion was fine for a respite, but she found herself sinking deeper into nothingness, as the light of who she’d struggled to become was growing dim. She was not yet ready to return to what she was, not yet ready to release the last trace of the woman Jenny found worthy to love, and she started to panic, like a child lost in a crowded store. There were people everywhere, but no direction home.
It took her a moment to remember Thierry Bouchaule was her home now, and she had a job to do. The woman Jenny loved was an illusion, one visible only to her.
She filled two glasses and turned, smiling, as her new home approached.
“Cheers, darling,” she said with a grin as she passed him his glass.
“Indeed, my love.”
They took a sip, Kathryn taking a large one without being obvious, and then Bouchaule commented favorably on the fine vintage before sealing their toast with a kiss.
If she was going to survive, Kathryn decided she had to become his. She would have to own him, and he, in turn, would have to own her, move her in a way she dared not allow until now, when she had nothing to lose.
Bouchaule crossed the room to the radio and turned on some soft music. Kathryn took the opportunity to swallow as much wine as possible before involuntarily shuddering as the last in her glass slid down her throat. She set her glass down and melted into his waiting arms for a slow dance. The wine was working. Her head cared less about her guilt and more about the man in her arms and the life she would now embrace.
His touch was gentle, his movements sublime. He was a graceful man, and already his magic was stirring something in her, spreading warmth to her extremities and engorging her center with a pent-up yearning to be taken and consumed. Finally, her senses were awakening. If anyone was strong enough to make her feel again, to come again, it was him … with a little help from the wine.
Bouchaule mindlessly hummed the tune as he rested his cheek against hers and expertly led them in a close dance. Kathryn closed her eyes and held him tighter, as the prospect of his domination over her aroused her alcohol-addled libido.
“Make love to me,” she whispered.
Bouchaule stopped dancing and tilted up her chin, where he was drawn in to her submissive gaze. He kissed her gently, then harder, as she insisted, but he soon pulled back, unfamiliar with her desperation.
She wanted him to take her. Hard. This was no time for confused looks or second thoughts. It was time for his suave sophistication to yield to his primal urges. “Fuck me, Thierry.”
He was stunned by her vulgarity but was ultimately conquered by her urgent desire. She captured his mouth again and drank from his lips with a fervor she’d never used with him before. Her desperation tapped into his own, and he swept her off her feet and carried her into the bedroom, where he laid her on the bed and groped at her body as he tried to keep up with her insistent kisses. She tore away his tie and blindly fumbled with the buttons on his shirt as he aggressively pulled at her gold lamé gown, confounded by the straps, hooks, and zippers.
“Tear it off,” she pleaded between kisses.
He stopped and looked at her.
“Tear it off,” she repeated, beyond caring about the cost of the dress and the fact that it was the property of The Grotto.
He tore off his own shirt first and then made one more noble attempt at saving the dress before giving up under her deriding laughter. He snapped the thin straps across the back with an easy swipe of his hand and worshipped her exposed breasts, while she released his belt and pants.
She wanted to be controlled, debased—pleasure through punishment, and oh, how she deserved to be punished.
The sex was rough and sloppy, befitting her primal desperation, but despite Bouchaule’s best efforts, pleasure eluded her. Anger and frustration grew exponentially beside his ecstasy, as it became apparent he would not make her come any more than Lani had. She did her best to feign pleasure, but her anger would not be denied, and he was going to pay for letting her down.
She took control of her position astride his hips and kept on him, even as he came, pulling sounds from him she’d never heard before, as the pleasure consumed him and left him humbled and spent as never before.
She didn’t bother faking an orgasm for his benefit. She stared at his heaving, sweaty, exhausted body and despised him for letting her down.
She dismounted him without ceremony and went directly into the shower, where she leaned one hand against the tile wall and let the steaming hot water wash her deed away. Rage and disgust—at Bouchaule, and at herself—consumed her. She prepared to unleash a fist to the wall when the shower curtain flew open and startled her.
Bouchaule appeared before her, still breathing unevenly, fully clothed, shirt open, tie haphazardly draped around his neck, and fury in his eyes.
“Have I ever treated you like a whore?” he shouted.
“Of course not.”
“Then do not act like one!”
He threw a handful of bills into the shower and stormed out the door.
Kathryn stood stunned, and the ineffectual reflex of calling his name arrived long after the front door had slammed.
She leaned against the shower wall again and watched hundred-dollar bills circle the drain.
The hot water of the shower beat an insistent rhythm on Kathryn’s skin as she sat numbly at the bottom of the tub. She stared at the five soggy bills clutched in her hand and didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. At least Bouchaule thought her sexual prowess was worth a premium and then some. It was the best payday of her career, and it had cost her everything. She should have been wondering how she could get him back. She should have been wondering how she could have been so stupid as to let her façade slip. Instead, she stared at the bills and wondered why she couldn’t come.
She should have been devastated over the loss of Jenny and devastated over her catastrophic misstep with Bouchaule. Instead, she was empty. Her anger was gone like her assignment, and her motivation was stripped from her like her last shred of dignity, when she first spread her legs in the name of survival. She closed her eyes and lifted her face to the falling water. She wanted to be cleansed. She wanted to start her life over. She wanted to dissolve like a pillar of salt in the rain and be reborn as someone else—somewhere else—in a different time, a different place, a different world. She wanted to love without the fear of loss, and she wanted to feel without the cost of her sanity. She wanted to come.
She took control of the only thing in her power and slid her hand between her parted thighs. She felt the pain of her evening’s exploits as she slipped her fingers inside. The pain was only fitting, and it did, for the moment, bring pleasure. She massaged her swollen center and brought herself close very quickly. It wasn’t about extended pleasure, or self-control; it was an aching need to find release, to find something alive in her desolate shell.
She was so close, but relief wouldn’t come. She could find no fantasy to push her over, no memory to pull her home. The only emotion that hadn’t abandoned her returned, as anger fueled her working hand. She spread her legs wide and begged for success.
“Come on!” she ground out in frustration as she worked harder. “Come on, come!”
Her body trembled from exhausted muscles, and her center was numb to her efforts, but still she tried harder, plunging her fingers frantically, until cries of desperate encouragement turned to cries of resignation, and finally devastation, as she stopped the madness, unsatisfied.
The hot water had turned to cold, bringing a jolting slap of reality. Kathryn felt. Finally. Tiny stings of ice cold water pierced her brittle shell as she curled into a ball. Naked and raw, money clenched in one hand, the other cradling her useless sex, she finally acknowledged and despised herself for the pathetic creature she had become.
What she thought was an empty vessel, spilled its contents through her tears and cries, and the pain of what she’d lost—her family, Jenny, hope—poured out from deep within and kept coming and coming like an endless spring of sorrow, until her uncontrolled sobs gave way to silent desolation.
She had found release, just not the one she sought. She was small and alone as she accepted her fate, and under the watchful eyes of her concerned demons, she dissolved like a pillar of salt in the rain and washed away.
Kathryn stepped into the early morning darkness of her apartment and closed the door with a heavy sigh. A light suddenly went on and she jumped.
“Jesus!”
“Sorry,” Smitty said from the couch, with his hand on the end of the lamp’s pull chain.
She didn’t see his car outside, which meant he came up through the cellar. The perfect ending to the perfect night. She hadn’t seen him in weeks, and tonight, of all nights, there he was. How he always knew when she screwed up was beyond her, but tonight she had no interest in a lecture.
“Did they send you over here to check up on me? Report back on my mental faculties? Kat Hammond makes a mess and Smitty’s right there to clean it up, right?”
“I’m leaving tomorrow,” he said quietly.
Kathryn had her bitter sarcasm kicked back through her teeth, and she swallowed it whole, as she regretted not only her words right then, but also all the unkind words and unkind things she’d ever said or done to him. Her apathetic mind abandoned its self-pity, and she moved to the couch and slowly sat beside him.
“When?”
He looked at his watch. “A few hours. First thing.”
“God,” she uttered under her breath, as her shoulders slumped and she rubbed her forehead.
“I need to know you’re going to be all right, Kat.”
“I don’t think I’m the one we need to worry about now.”
He took her hand, emphatically repeating himself. “I need to know you’re going to be all right.”
She patted his hand. “I always land on my feet, Smitty.”
He stared at her, not accepting her platitudes. “Jenny came to see me tonight. She told me what happened.”
Kathryn searched his face for any hint of the scene as it played out. She didn’t need to ask how she was. He knew what she wanted to know.
“She was pretty devastated.”
His answer tore up what was left of her insides, and she grimaced, as the mantle of tormentor settled around her shoulders.
“What did you tell her?”
“I know you’re crazy about the kid, so I figured you had a pretty good reason for what you did, so I backed you up. Said that’s just the way you are and you weren’t coming back.”
“Did she buy it?”
He nodded.
Kathryn was reflexively hurt that Jenny bought it, but she had set up the breakup and acted it out perfectly. She was, after all, a professional. “Thank you, Smitty.”
“Promise me you’ll be all right.”
She squeezed his hand and looked him in the eyes. “I’ll be all right. I have to be, or it all will have been for nothing.”
She knew that’s what he wanted to hear. He knew she would focus all her pain and anguish on her assignment. God help the victim.
“Is there something I have to clean up, Kat?”
“No.”
“What happened?”
“What you knew would happen. I did what I had to do. What you knew I would have to do eventually.”
“I take no pleasure in that.”
She reassured him with a sad smile. “I know that, Smitty.”
He cleared his throat, thankfully not wanting to linger on I told you so. “Well, anyway, it must mean your assignment’s going well.”
“Yeah. Very well.”
He tugged on her hand, mistaking her lie for guilt.
“Jenny will be fine.”
“I know she will. She’s a strong woman.”
“So are you.”
Kathryn smiled. There was no way she could tell him she had lost everything, including her strength, and that she was hanging on by the barest of threads. If Bouchaule didn’t contact her again, it was all for nothing, and she couldn’t bear the thought of it or what would become of her or her sanity. She was lying to everyone—Jenny, the OSS, Smitty, and to herself—when she convinced herself her debt was reason enough to care what tomorrow might bring.
Smitty did his best to console her, unaware of her precarious position.
“The war will be over before you know it, and—”
“And then what happens to people like us?”
He thought about it seriously for a moment, but she knew the truth was nothing good, and he wouldn’t say it. He merely smiled and put his arm around her shoulders.
“No one else will put up with us, so we’ll have to marry and have ten kids.”
Kathryn laughed and rested her head on his shoulder. There were no answers for them, or the thousands like them, who, by the war’s end, would be scarred by the things they’d seen and done in the name of what’s good and right, and they would struggle for the rest of their lives to reconcile their right to happiness against the rights of the fallen.
Her entire life felt like a war. Since the age of fourteen, every day seemed like a fight for survival. And then she met Jenny and the world yawned in Technicolor to give her a glimpse of what she supposed was the real world. It just wasn’t her real world. Her real world kept getting darker. She couldn’t shake the feeling it was the last time she’d ever see Smitty.
“Please be careful. Don’t go getting into trouble over some pretty girl.”
He smiled. “You’re the only pretty girl I stick my neck out for.”
She smiled too, but it quickly faded, as their imminent separation weighed on her heart. She raised her head and they both stared into each other’s eyes. Both felt lost. Words were insignificant and emotions were too overwhelming to comprehend farewell. She wanted to be a girl again, lying by his side in a tree house, staring up at the stars while they plotted their futures with gleeful innocence only found in youth.
She had been crushed by Jenny’s loss, and the only other constant she had ever known was leaving to an uncertain future. She was not yet ready to be stripped bare.
“Stay with me tonight?”
“Sure thing, doll.”
Kathryn smiled and rested her head on his shoulder again.
There would be no goodbyes for them. Smitty would lay with his arms wrapped protectively around her until the early morning hour came and then he would slip silently from her presence and leave behind his love and faith in her and the unspoken promise that they would see each other again.