DISARM (DISARM Series #1) Read online

  Henry cast that blue gaze at me, his eyes once again doing the sexy slide down my body that felt very much like a caress.

  I turned away, sick of my body’s disloyal reaction to those looks. It wasn’t as if I was really attracted to Henry; I just needed a good lay and he happened to be the nearest available guy. That’s all it was. Surely there were other guys who might be interested.

  I excused myself, deciding a long run at the park was just what my body needed.

  Nearly an hour later, I was back at the apartment, sweaty and still frustrated. I’d run four miles, yet my mystery runner never showed up. I hopped in the shower, hoping to cool down—which worked for the most part, until afterward, when I came out to the living room completely dressed to find Henry definitively not. His shirt was off (did the guy even own one?) and he was sweaty from helping Jack move his stuff up the three flights of stairs.

  He had his back to me so I was able to leisurely look over his muscular back, from his wide shoulders that tapered down a lower back sporting two dimples that dipped below the waistband of his jeans.

  He turned around, wiping his chest with a balled-up shirt. “Hey, what do you want to do tonight?”

  Hmm, what did I want to do tonight, apart from the obvious? “I was just going to eat a peanut butter sandwich and read a book,” I said as casually as I could.

  He raised his eyebrows. “You sure? I was going to order a pizza.”

  My eyes flicked down to his torso—he had the nicest six-pack abs of anyone I knew in real life—before I looked away. “I’m sure.”

  He cocked his head. “Come on. I’m leaving next Friday. Spend some time with me.”

  Well crap, why did he have to put it that way? Still, his words helped because the impending deployment was the sexual damper that I really needed. The fact was, he was leaving and I should be spending time with him. “Okay, fine,” I said with an exaggerated sigh. “But please put a shirt on.”

  He grinned and lobbed me the phone. “Call the pizza place, will you? I’m just going to jump in the shower.”

  Henry and I ate sitting on the carpet, leaning against the suede couch. The couch had been Jason’s first major purchase and had ordered a five-foot no-food radius around it when it was still brand new. After his death, it became a ritual we observed to preserve Jason’s memory.

  I put on a movie about superheroes as we ate, glad to have some distraction for a while.

  “If you had any super power,” I asked. “What would it be?”

  “What would I choose, or what would I be born with?” he asked, balancing a beer bottle between his legs. “Because if I was born with a superpower, I’d say it’s being really, really ridiculously good looking.”

  I threw a crumpled napkin at him. “No, I meant what would you choose?”

  He took a large bite of his third slice of pizza and chewed a moment before saying, “I would choose the ability to fly.”

  “Huh, I would have chosen invincibility for you.” So you could come out of the war unscathed, I wanted to add, but didn’t want to ruin the mood.

  “So I can sneak into your shower and see you naked?”

  I smacked his arm. “No, invincibility.”

  “Oh, that invincibility,” he said with a laugh, looking happier than I had seen him in months. He took a swig of beer then said, “So hey, are we going to talk about what happened this morning?”

  The question caught me by surprise and my brain struggled to come up with an elegant response. “I, uh…”

  “Because I think the elephant in the room needs to be addressed,” he said. “And I’m not referring to my colossal size.”

  I burst out laughing, finally finding my voice. “You’re not that large, my friend.”

  “How large would you say then?” He held his hands two feet apart. “So about this big, right?”

  “Riiight.” I chuckled, feeling the embarrassment melting away. “I’m sorry. I don’t know what that was about.”

  “I think that was about your hand on my dick.” He laughed at my shocked reaction and continued, “Would you rather I call it my phallus? My Hammerjack? How about my porksword?”

  I spit out my drink, having never heard the last one before.

  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 hands 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.”

  4 | DETONATION

  I couldn’t sleep that night, my brain on 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 of 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 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 take-out from Chili’s. I pulled out plates and started setting the food 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 everyday.”

  I was thinking up of a suitable retort when the food caught his attention. “What’s all this?” he asked, standing in front of the counter.<
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  “Just wanted to remind you of what you’d 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 damndest to stay out of 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’d 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 the edge of the counter, essentially 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 they 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 upwards 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 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 sunk 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, when I was just fifteen and Jason and Henry were about to head off to college. Henry had always sported longer hair that sometimes got so long it 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 of 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 through the mirror, and gone was the boy that I once knew. In his place was a clean-cut young man, ready to take on academia and the world, and it finally sunk in that he was leaving me. He would never again live only two blocks 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, 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’d somehow taken back all of the pleasure he’d given me only a few minutes earlier. I shook my head, wondering how the hell things got 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.

  5 | 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 was nearly a year before and if I thought I looked grown up, Henry had me beat. I was driv
ing home from school when I saw this person standing on my porch with his hands in his jacket pocket, 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 had always been 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 came 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 of this time?