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WHEN ZAN NOTICED that every song she played as she waited for Rainer to come to her apartment was about love, she thought it might be better if she put down the guitar to clean her messy living room, cluttered with songbooks, a couple of amps and piles of junk mail.
Eh, screw it. How much progress could I make before he gets here anyway?
Instead, she shifted into songs about good-for-nothing heartbreakers.
Lord knows there’s enough of them.
Rainer had texted her to say he would bring some Thai food. Zan placed the odds that they would sit down and eat when he got there at zero. When she opened the door at his light knock, he was laden with cloth bags emitting a scent of curry.
“Hi,” Zan said, as she stretched up to kiss him. He returned her greeting and leaned down so she could reach his lips. They went into the living room and stood there staring at each other.
“Let’s take this food into the kitchen,” Zan said. Rainer followed her in there and placed the bags on the counter. She got plates out of the cabinet.
“Your kitchen is nice,” Rainer said. “I like the French doors.”
“Thanks. I like it, too. Lots of light.” Zan rooted around in a drawer for a serving spoon.
“How was your week?” He asked with an intensity that seemed odd for so mundane a question.
Zan stopped taking containers out of bags. “I thought a lot about taking off your clothes.”
His expression told her his thoughts had been the same. He seized her in his arms and carried her back into the living room, his mouth covering hers. She luxuriated in his touch for a minute, then told him to stop, leaving him puzzled. She grinned and backed away so she could admire the sight of him in her small apartment. Pulling off his shirt, she touched his face then pressed her palms to his chest before slowly running her hands down his rippled torso to unbuckle his belt. She unzipped his jeans and pulled them down, freeing his erection. She ran her hands over his beautiful ass.
“Mmmmmm, Zan.”
She wet her hand then, with a lick, and brushed it along his cock. This was too much for Rainer. He growled, grabbed her shirt, ripped it open then pulled it off. He bit her neck, holding her flesh lightly in his mouth as he held her against him. He picked her up and walked over to the doorway between the living room and the kitchen where Zan had installed a chin-up bar.
“Hold on to the bar,” he murmured. Zan complied, half hanging as Rainer kissed her breasts, her hair falling behind her in a black cascade. He removed her pants and slid his hand between her legs, holding her perched on his other arm. Returning to her mouth, he kissed her hungrily as he stroked her with his artful fingers. She broke the kiss to inhale sharply, overcome by sensation. She strained against the bar.
“Ahhh, now, oh god, now.”
Rainer placed his hands on her hips as he entered her. He gyrated, slowly at first, the crown of each circle of his movement capped with a slight thrust. She pulled on the bar at the same time she threw her hips forward, again and again, sweat rising on her skin. She cried out. Her legs clamped tight around Rainer’s body as his incursions grew deeper. He growled with pleasure with every surge of his hips, fast and deep. He grabbed her ass, pulled her closer and threw his head back. A chain of sweet implosions made her body convulse in release, the resolution of lust.
As he finished, Rainer pressed Zan’s body to his own. She let go of the bar, put her arms around his neck and clung to him, panting, her wild, damp hair covering his face.
“I was so hungry for you,” Rainer whispered.
“Me too,” Zan said. “I didn’t know I could be so hungry for someone.”
They kissed, calmly and sweetly now, Rainer still inside her, Zan’s legs still wrapped around his body. After a time, he set her down. She picked up her ruined shirt.
“A casualty of passion,” she said.
He touched the torn fabric. “If you’re going to do things like that to me, be prepared for your clothing to suffer the consequences.”
Zan and Rainer ate their reheated Thai food on her balcony, watching the people on the noisy street four stories below. When they finished, she knew she should tell him it was time to leave, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
I can’t even follow my own rules.
After they cleaned up, they sat together on the couch. Rainer picked up her guitar.
“Can you teach me?” he asked. “Guitar is much different from violin.”
“Sure.” She showed him how to play a G chord, which he did quite easily. “You’re a natural, as if I had any doubt. Your hands are so large that even a difficult chord like an F would be easy for you.”
“Show me.”
The F chord was indeed easy for him. She thought she might demonstrate a few common chords so he could play a simple song, but if she didn’t stick to her rule and ask him to leave at that moment, she wouldn’t do it at all.
“Rainer, I don’t know how to say this without sounding rude, so I’ll just say it. I think you need to leave soon, like we agreed.”
He searched her face, silent. Zan found it hard to meet his eyes, but she forced herself. As he continued in silence she felt a touch of anger that made it easier.
“I agreed to no such thing,” he finally said.
“Yes, you did. You agreed that an uncomplicated relationship was best for you, too.”
“That is hardly an agreement to come over here, fuck you, and leave.”
“I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear. I don’t want you to spend the night.”
“I’m not leaving.”
Zan couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “Yeah, well, this is my goddamn house and I asked you to leave.”
“I told you. I want to wake beside you.” Rainer stated this calmly, as if he had every expectation he would indeed wake up in her bed.
And he says I’m strong-willed.
“Rainer, we discussed keeping it casual. That’s not casual.” She walked over to the kitchen doorway, feeling that his proximity was hazardous to her plan. She heard him inhale and stand.
“I have no problem with purely physical relationships, Zan, but that isn’t what’s happening here.” His voice made her think of velvet and chocolate.
“After we finished and I held you close to me, still inside you, what did you feel?” he asked. “That was not mere satisfaction of a need.”
Zan went into the kitchen. She pretended to be fascinated by the view out the French doors. Rainer followed.
“Why are you lying to yourself?” he asked softly. “What frightens you?”
She was close to tears.
I have to explain. It’s not fair to him.
When she turned all she could do was stare at him wide-eyed. She rushed past to sit on the couch, her forearms on her knees, her hands clasped in front of her. He sat down beside her but she couldn’t look at him.
“Um, I told you I’m a recovering alcoholic, but I, um, I never told you what it was like for me.” Zan squeezed her eyes shut. She didn’t want to start blubbering.
“I got sober pretty young, so I was lucky in a way. I try to remind myself of that, but I was only thirteen when I started to binge drink and the same thing happened to me that happens to a lot of girls.”
She let out a bitter laugh. “I was a pretty little thing. You always hear how it’s so wonderful to be pretty, but it isn’t. Not if you don’t know how to guard yourself. People just want to use you up.”
Rainer reached for her but she pushed his hand away.
“At least in Idaho, there were people looking out for me. The army was worse. A lot of men wanted to fuck me. I let them. I guess at first I was looking for love. Acceptance, maybe. But then I got worn down. I started to think it was all I had to offer. All I was worth. None of those men ever cared about me at all. It was like they could smell it on me, how much I hated myself.”
This time, Rainer did not let Zan repel his hand. He grabbed hers, but she yanked it away a moment later.
“Please,” she whispered. She glanced at him. He looked horrified. Zan’s chest tightened. Shame crept up on her. She was afraid Rainer wouldn’t want her anymore.
And here I am, right back where I used to be.
Afghanistan, Earthly Year 2003, Phase 18902
The few soldiers standing outside the gray Quonset Hut leered at Zan as she approached along the row of CHUs, the containerized housing units that passed for barracks. Her urge to smack the skeevy fools had gone away.
Par for the course, being ogled.
Zan showed up at these pathetic socials for one reason. To hunt for booze. The tight-assed U.S. command structure had forbidden alcohol at Bagram Airfield per a NATO agreement. It surely sucked, but you could usually get your hands on some. Care packages from home. Black market shit peddled by Afghans. How could command blame them? Life in the sandbox was hard enough.
The soldiers inside the door sniggered as she entered. Their female colleagues rolled their eyes or joined in the sniggering. Zan preferred not to hear the epithets they said under their breath.
A few men headed her way. She’d fucked the paunchy one a few weeks back, though she didn’t remember it clearly. She didn’t even remember his name.
Thank Christ for small favors.
“Well, hello, darlin’,” Paunchy said. “Come on back to my CHU. I’ve got some stuff.” He smirked and invaded her personal space.
“What’ve you got?”
“Vodka. From the Polacks.”
Maybe she could suck up all his vodka then walk away. She could handle this dweeb if he got insistent. Then again, there were plenty of guys she could’ve smacked silly, but didn’t. She scanned the room. She spied Kyle—her current fuck buddy—as he came through the door.
Kyle was a quartermaster who could get his hands on some high-caliber whiskey. He seemed like the answer. She’d been having a bitch of a time finding booze. Sure, she’d tried the other stuff a few times. Afghanistan was awash in opium, hash, and heroin. Lots of soldiers did it. Anything to alleviate the boredom. Or the fear, depending on your duty. But that stuff didn’t work on Zan. She wanted alcohol, her best friend. Her one true love.
So, whatever. That left Kyle. He was no worse than anyone else.
Paunchy took her hand and stuck it on his cock. He tried to pull her out the door. She jerked her hand away.
Sorry, asshole. I’m not drinking your fucking cheap vodka. And you’ve got bad breath.
Given the hour, she guessed Kyle had just finished his dinner, a meal way better than what they fed the grunts. Quartermasters were always skimming the officers’ stuff, booze and food alike.
“Hey, Zan. You’re off duty, aren’t you?” he asked. “I’m heading to the double-wide. Wanna come party? I scored some whiskey.”
The double-wide. That’s what Kyle called the officer’s lounge. He was responsible for keeping it stocked so he had the keys and he knew when it was empty. She’d got many a rug burn from its cheap carpet.
Two other guys were waiting when they arrived. Zan knew them to see them. Kyle’s buddies. A sickly pain gathered at the edges of her chest and coalesced around her heart. A lost little girl whimpered in her head. She could not abide it. She hated it so much she couldn’t think straight. She zeroed in on the three bottles of Bushmills sitting on one of the rectangular tables.
“C’mon, Zan. Look what we’ve got. The good stuff. We can have a few drinks.”
Kyle handed her a glass of whiskey. She drank it down. Then another and another. One of the other soldiers, a helicopter mechanic, griped about breathing in dust all day. He described the big clouds that got kicked up by the rotors.
“Shit’s gonna kill me,” he said.
Zan barely listened as she sucked down the Bushmills. She approached her blissful state of numb.
Before long, Kyle and his buddies started gibbering about Man Love Thursday. Rumor had it, Afghan men like to hump little boys on Thursdays so they’d be calm for prayers the next day. Zan doubted it was true.
The other guy, a grunt with a skin condition, went on and on about how the dick must be served, but “he wasn’t no fag.” He smirked at Zan.
“Those poor fucks,” Kyle said. “Nice we’ve got some pussy, isn’t it boys?” He licked his lips and ogled Zan all glassy-eyed. The others blathered obscene things. She didn’t listen. She gulped her whiskey and poured herself more. Kyle backed her up against the table and groped her. Then his friends joined in, roughly squeezing her tits. One shoved his hand down her pants, clawing at her. Zan let them do it. She didn’t know why. Like it wasn’t her place to stop them.
Bottle No. 2 almost gone. They gonna crack the other?
After they mauled her, the one with the skin condition slurped along her neck while Kyle unzipped his pants. He took out his dick.
“Suck me off,” he ordered.
“Wait up, buddy. Let me fuck her doggie.”
The one who’d spoken last, the mechanic, pressed Zan against the table and fumbled with her pants. She ignored him while she poured another whiskey then raised it to her lips with trembling hands. She closed her eyes and concentrated on the wonderful burn as it slid down her throat.
When the mechanic bent her over a chair, she spilled the whiskey. She cursed.
Kyle approached her. He took the glass out of her hand, then shoved his dick in her mouth, his hands squeezing her head, preventing her from moving it. She tongued him. Maybe she could make him come fast. Maybe she could end this.
The mechanic had his hands on her hips. He shoved into her from behind. She didn’t feel anything. The skin condition guy rubbed his cock and panted.
They shifted her onto the table after that and fucked her, one after the other. She didn’t look at them. She kept her eyes on the amber whiskey. The beige walls. The drop ceiling. The church-basement tables and chairs. The lights someone had strung up in a pathetic attempt to make the place look festive.
It’ll be over soon.
Philadelphia, Earthly Year 2014, Phase 18997
As Zan finished her sordid tale, Rainer wiped his eyes. He reached for her, but she jerked away. She wouldn’t look at him. She felt the weight of the memories pressing down. She burned with shame, but not only because he might judge her behavior. She had let herself down. And now, years later, when she tried to understand why she’d hated herself so much, all she got was a head full of static.
She’d tried to work it out in therapy. She’d talked to Mel. She wanted to detach, as if it were someone else’s past.
“I didn’t even realize how messed up I was,” she said to Rainer. “But that night changed me. I wasn’t passive anymore. I became almost predatory about sex. I would decide. I would use them before they could use me. It was better that way—some kind of twisted control—but I hardly ever got any pleasure from it. I was seriously fucked up, headed for a dishonorable discharge. Then I got a new commanding officer, a good man. He got me help. He saved my life.”
Her voice broke, so she fell silent for a minute. Rainer wiped at his eyes again. One look at him and she knew he understood the pain, if not the circumstances.
“Things got better.” She nodded, more for herself than for him. “My CO got me in with the sober drunks and all of a sudden I had friends. I threw myself into my duty. By the end of my second deployment I was doing so well they recruited me for a special recon unit. They shipped me off to Firebase Gardez, near the mountains. A fresh start.”
“I remember,” Rainer said. He reached for her hand. She let him take it. “You tracked the Taliban.”
“Yeah. I was proud. I needed to feel proud. Things got better, they did, but the damage was done.” She was ready to look at Rainer now. Ready to talk to him instead of the floor or the air.
“I think maybe that’s why I’m confused now, by you. I have no idea what to do, how to act. I can only guess at what’s normal.” She snorted at how ridiculous it was.
“I’ve had heavy-duty therapy, and I’ve tried. It’s not like I’ve stayed away from men, but it’s always been bad. Now I realize it was because I didn’t feel anything. I was just going through the motions. After a while, I told myself I could never have a healthy relationship. That it was too late. But you, um, you make me feel things.” She squeezed his hand.
“So I wanted to keep you at a distance, to see if I would feel a little less out of control. I’ve been imagining things. To be honest, I feel like I’m going nuts. The weekend we spent together was amazing, but it scared me.” She withdrew her hand from his. When she spoke, her voice was small and weak. “It still scares me. I’m a wounded person, Rainer.”
He made a sound, something like a moan, then he reached for her. He tipped her chin so she would look at him and placed his hand gently on her neck. She felt its warmth, somehow bigger than the gesture, like he could shield her from all harm so long as he was touching the slightest part of her. He drew her head to his chest.
“I will heal you,” he said.
Zan rested against him, savoring how he felt, his reassuring solidity. Her whole life, she had rarely leaned, but now she let herself be cradled.
In the office Monday morning, Zan was hoping Mel would not ask about Rainer, given that she hadn’t followed her friend’s advice. After the revelations about Zan’s miserable, drunken past, Rainer had cherished her so completely that nothing could have pried her away from him before that morning. She wondered how she would explain it.
I don’t understand what’s happening to me at all, but I don’t care as long as I can be near him.
“Morning, Mel,” Zan said. “Check this out. Those clowns Jamal arrested might not have told us anything, but we might be close to getting ourselves a surveillance target anyway.” She held out a lab report.
“Lemme see.” Mel snatched the report and squinted at it. “They raised the serial numbers? How great is that?”
“Yep. The ATF can help us trace the guns, and hopefully, we can stake out whoever sold them. And just when we thought our straw-purchasing investigation was going nowhere.”
“We owe Jamal a bottle of Johnnie Walker.”
“We do. So you want me to fill out that ATF request?”
“I’ll do it. I’ll call my friend over there and email it right to her. Might be faster. I know it’s tedious, but you should really keep looking through the files for known associates of convicted straw purchasers, see if there’s anyone we have the means to squeeze. It could pay off. You never know.”
“All right, but most of these bastards are so ugly, I have to keep picturing Rainer to cleanse myself.”
Oh shit. Why did I mention Rainer? It’s like I can’t help it.
“Speaking of Rainer, how’s it going with the plan to keep things casual?”
Zan offered Mel the kind of smile a little kid gives to a mall photographer because her mother told her to. “Um, no, not so good.”
“What do you mean?”
Leaning to the side in her chair, Zan contemplated the ceiling for a moment before she told Mel that, far from keeping her distance, she had opened up to Rainer about the days when she was at her worst.
“What can I say, Mel?” Zan smiled so hard her cheeks hurt. “He saw right through me. He pushed me, and at first, it made me angry, but then he made me feel more supported than I’ve ever felt in my life.”
Mel gaped at her. Zan tried to remember the last time Mel had been left speechless. She couldn’t think of one.
“That’s wonderful. I mean, you deserve it.” Mel mustered some enthusiasm in her voice, but her eyes still had the quality of a stare. “So, now what? A serious relationship?”
“Who knows?” Zan shrugged. “All I know is, I’ve admitted it to myself. I want to be with him as much as I can. We’re both busy, though, and he travels a lot, so I’ll probably have plenty of time to get some perspective, even if I failed to do it on purpose.” She shook her head at the situation. “He’s leaving town early tomorrow morning and he’ll be gone all week, so I’ll have time to think.”
“Good. I mean, I’m happy for you, but you need to watch your ass. Hot men are dangerous. Any more signs of craziness from him?” Mel looked like she was bracing for a negative reaction, but Zan laughed.
“What, like on the boat? No, he’s not crazy. He just doesn’t put up with asshole frat boys. I like that in a man.”
Mel frowned, but Zan could tell she was softening. “We’re having dinner tonight. I’m meeting him out front. Do you want to come down with me? I’ll introduce you.”
“Okay. I guess it’s time for Rainer to meet the family. And to find out that FBI agents are scarier than overprotective dads.”
Zan could not stop smiling. “Especially you, mighty Mel.”
The two agents worked hard for the rest of the day. There was no better way to take Zan’s mind off Rainer. Around 6:30 p.m., she and Mel left the office to wait for him near the stairs leading to the side entrance. A few minutes later he came gliding down the street wearing a tailored, light wool suit and a pale blue tie. Zan’s body shifted into a higher gear at the sight of him.
As if I ever stood a chance to resist someone so beautiful.
Rainer kept his eyes on Zan as he approached. When he reached her, he took her hands in his and bent to softly kiss her. He nuzzled her cheek for a moment.
“Mmmmm. Hello, Zan.”
“Hi,” she said, a little breathless. The way he looked at her made her forget everything, including Mel’s presence. After a few seconds of dewy-eyed gazing, Mel cleared her throat. Rainer glanced down at her with an imperious look, but Zan snapped out of it and remembered to introduce her.
“Oh, sorry, Mel. Rainer Barakiel, this is Melissa Romani, my FBI partner extraordinaire.”
“Mel!” A megawatt smile spread across his face as he shook her hand. “Zan told me all about you. She said you taught her everything she knows.” Mel seemed mesmerized. Zan almost laughed.
Even Mel falls before the power of a full-on Rainer smile.
In a few beats, her friend recovered. “Zan has taught me a few things, too.”
“No doubt,” Rainer said. The three of them made small talk for a few minutes. Rainer said they should get together some time, he and Zan and Mel and her husband. Mel said she would love that.
“Oh, the time,” Zan said, checking her watch. “When’s the reservation for, Rainer?”
“7:00.”
“We’d better head off then. I’ll see you tomorrow, Mel,” Zan said, raising her hand in a half wave.
“See you tomorrow. It was great to meet you, Rainer.”
“Wonderful to meet you, Mel.” Rainer gave her a parting dose of his dazzling smile and took Zan’s hand. They walked off.