Charlotte Chronicles – Chapter Twenty-nine

October 30, 2014  | Charlotte Chronicles  | (0)

Nathan

My body wakes up at dawn as it always does. Charlotte is on top of me, legs sprawled on either side of my hips and her head tucked under my chin. I’ve a raging boner and an equally strong need to piss. With great reluctance I shift her to her side but the motion wakes her.

“Go back to sleep,” I say and she responds by mumbling something into the pillow.

In the bathroom, I take care of business, splash water on my face, and brush my teeth. As I turn to leave, the jetted bathtub catches my eye. It’s about the only thing worthwhile in this entire dismal apartment.

I’ve had to soak away a lot of bruises and sore muscles after beachside and ocean training maneuvers. I flip on the hot water and go hunting for the right supplies. Under the kitchen sink, I find four sterno cans from a camping trip I took with Cab a year ago. Two matches later, I have the bathroom lit up with my makeshift candlelight. The room smells vaguely of alcohol from the gel fuel and I have no fruity shit to erase the smell, but fuck, it’s the thought that counts, right?

In the bedroom, a sleepy Charlotte is sitting on the edge of the bed, yawning and stretching. Her heavy tits move enticingly and my previous boner perks up in attention.

Someday soon, I need to fuck those tits.

“I’m too sore for whatever you have in mind and I have to pee.” She holds up a hand as if to ward me off.

“I’ve a better idea.” I stride over and scoop her into my arms. I nudge the bathroom door open with my shoulder and set her on the edge of the sink. “How about an early morning bath?”

Charlotte looks at the tub full of water, steam rising in small wisps above the surface and purses her lips together in approval. “I like this.”

Then she sniffs.

“Don’t have candles,” I admit. “I’m using camping fueling.”

”This is the most romantic candlelight bath Ive ever taken,” she declares.

I leave her to use the bathroom in private and scrounge up an apple and a banana and a couple of pieces of toast. I don’t have much food but there’s no point in buying anything. We’re going to take off to Dallas soon.

Charlotte is already in the tub by the time I return. I place the plate of food on the side of the tub and climb in behind her. “Want the jets on?”

She nods and I flip the switch. As the jets motor up and the bubbles rise, Charlotte leans her head back to nestle into my shoulder. I tuck my rock hard cock into the hollow of her back and arrange her legs over mine. The tub isn’t made for two people, especially when one is my size but as her slippery bodies rubs against mine, I can’t find a thing wrong with the situation.

“Mmm, this is a good idea…camping candles and all.”

I remind myself that she’s sore and that her soft moans and wet skin isn’t an invitation. The big head is paying attention; it’s the head between my legs that’s acting like a heat seeking asshole.

“Tell me about your business, baby,” I ask, anxious to take my mind off of how easy it would be to lift her up and thrust my dick inside her hot hole.

“What do you want to know?” The little devil shifts again and I’m half convinced she’s mocking me with her body, testing the limits of my self control.

Desperation has me searching for a topic to get my decision-making process out of my cock. “Worst client,” I blurt out.

She ponders this thoughtfully and then says, “I don’t really have a worse client because I try not to work with assholes. I’ve only ever taken on clients who’ve been recommended and that cuts down on the bad seeds. Plus, you have to keep in mind that they’re going through a huge change in their lives and so it’s going to be stressful. And you just have to take that in stride and know that whatever the source of their unhappiness as it isn’t you. You can’t take it personally.”

“Like Patricia,” I grunt thinking to the scene at the bar last night that Charlotte pretends didn’t happen.

“Oh you know?” she asks in surprise.

“Everyone knows.” I roll my eyes. We’ve all had our Patricia run-ins but like Charlotte we kind of understand why she’s uptight and unhappy. “LT is a good man but he fucks around on her a lot. She could probably report him for conduct unbecoming an officer but she likes her position as LT’s wife too much.”

“I thought the SEALs were a largely male organization.”

Before I answer, I flip off the jets. They’re noisy and Charlotte appears in the mood to chat. “Plenty of women around. When we’re stationed overseas, there’s a ton of support positions. There are women in supply, nurses, lots of women in the Air Force, and there has women so there’s always opportunity. Plus, not every place is as restrictive as say the Middle East. Far East or South American assignments has plenty of hired help.”

“So your nine year celibacy is a pretty big deal.” She tips her head back to stare at me.

She has no idea. A rueful smile tips one side of my mouth up. She pokes a wet finger in the corner of my lips.

“You can’t smile like that and not spill.”

Playfully, I bite her finger. Then I suck on it. Her mouth falls open and her breath catches. Yeah, how about a little payback you tease. 

Out loud, I answer, “A guy on another team was gay but pretty far in the closet. Even with the new policies, almost no one admits their sexual orientation and in the special forces, we’re all aggressively heterosexual.” I correct myself. “Or at least we pretend we are. When I wasn’t hitting all the available women on leave, rumors started spinning. Never bothered me but it led this guy to develop some ideas. He came on to me. I turned him down and shared a little about you.”

“You sound mad.” Little lines appear on her forehead. She’s probably concerned because her friend is gay.

I hurry to assure her that who a guy enjoys fucking makes zero difference to me. “What I was pissed off about was that this guy thought I was going to rat him out to his teammates and so he retired. Last I heard he was working for a contractor and stationed somewhere in the Middle East. I’ve got no problem with one of my teammates being gay because who they spend time with says fuck all about their ability to handle a weapon and think on their feet. If he’s a good teammate, a good brother, what he does in his bedroom is none of my goddamn business.”

“It’s too bad that he left then.” She shifts again and my cock slides between her cheeks. Fuck, that feels good.

“Um, yeah.” What we were talking about?

She giggles and shifts again. The little minx knows exactly what she’s doing to me. I pump between her ass cheeks and she pushes back against me. Just when I think we might be getting somewhere she starts talking.

“I think Nick was my worst client.”

Muffling a sigh, I say incredulously, “Nick? How come you moved to Dallas with him anyway?”

“Because he needed me.” Her shrug implies the answer was simple but Nick wanted her to come to move to South Bend when he was at Notre Dame and she refused. “I didn’t realize how truly lonely he was in college. Because he has so many people around him, it’s easy to scoff at that notion but when these high school boys go off to college they get as homesick as anyone. There is the physical stress of bulking up and realizing that everyone on your team is awesome, not just you. The competition is fierce and the pressure to win placed an immediate strain on him. I never really understood it until I saw what a mess he was leading up to the draft. So after the draft I went to down to help him out, run errands for him, and try to make it so the only thing he needed to worry about was getting to training camp at the time.” She turns and rubs her cheek against my chest in a kittenish fashion. The small caress is enough to cause me to catch my breath. “He abused me though and that’s why he’s my worst client.”

“How so?”

“He’d either use me as a shield or a voucher. He’d tell girls he wanted to avoid he was taken and then put his arm around me or he’d say, see, I’m with this nice girl Charlie so I’m nice too.”

I laugh hard because I can totally see Nick doing that. “So he calls you Charlie?”

“A teammate of his started calling me that and it just caught on.” She lifts a hand and watches the water drip down. She does it again and again as if the answer to some terrible question can be seen in the drops. Finally she asks, “Why didn’t you ever tell me you wanted to join the Navy?”

My erection wilts at her obvious dismay, at the remembered pain, at the distrust. I need the Men in Black pen that erases memories.

“I was scared.” And weak but I suppose that’s implied. “I figured if I told you and you objected I wouldn’t go. I wanted to do something with my life, Charlotte, and not live off being the son of Noah Jackson. I didn’t want to be one of those trust fund kids who got a job because his father called in some connections. Whenever Gray would visit our dads would reminisce about their time in the Marines and it just sounded like something I could do. It seemed like I could be part of something bigger than myself.”

A sigh big enough to lift her out of my arms runs through her body, as if she’s experiencing the hurt I inflicted on her all those years ago.

“I was resentful. I wanted to blame everything but us for being separated. Then I wanted to believe that our letters would see us through. When your mom came to me and showed me the pile of letters that she had exchange with your dad, I conjured up this fantasy that the ink and paper would bind us together.”

Her words hang in the air and I’m chilled despite the hot water because I’m the reason that our childhood bonds had been broken.

“I love those letters. I read them constantly and they got me through a lot of hard times. Some guys in the service never get one thing. It was wrong to not write you back and expect you to continue to correspond with me but I was selfish. I could not give those letters up.”

Charlotte turns in my arms and wraps a pair of wet arms around my neck, awkwardly lying sideways between my legs. “It doesn’t matter. Not now. Not anymore.”

I crush her to me, wanting to write those words in indelible ink on our skin. The only thing that matters is that we’re together now. The past is over. I plunge my tongue deep inside my mouth, letting her know exactly what I want and how I want it. She kisses me back just as aggressively and my cock rises out of the water seeking appeasement.

Unfortunately, she breaks away and lays her head on my heaving chest. “Tell me what it’s like to be a Navy SEAL.”

“It’s a lot less romantic than the movies and books make it out to be. Every day is a training day even the days in which your actually conducting an operation.” I don’t want to talk anymore but I’m not going to push myself on her if she’s hurting.

“Nate,” she says after I fall silent.

“What, baby?”

“I don’t think I’m that sore after all.”

“Thank Christ.” I lift her and in one hard thrust fit my entire shaft in her cunt. Still holding her back firmly against my chest, I slide all the way down to the end of the tub, jerk the handheld shower off the hook. With one hand I catch it and with my other hand I hit the water.

“What are you going to do with that?” she asks suspiciously.

“Make you scream, baby.” I turn the shower head dial to pulse and place it directly over her clit. Kneeling against the tub base, I jack my hips against her from behind while the water strikes her tender pussy. Our bodies are slick and leverage is hard to attain and we slip around the tub as I pound into the tight clutch of her cunt until we reach the end of the tub. Our hands hit the tile and she braces as I thrust. It doesn’t take long for the low keening cry to erupt as she convulses around me. The non stop pressure from the dual assault triggers a second orgasm.

“Nate,” she cries. “I can’t take it.”

“Oh yes you can,” I grunt, digging my knees into the hard surface and thrusting upward with as much power as I can muster. I want her to come again and again until all that exists for her is me and the pleasure I can bring to her. Back arched, neck exposed, she allows the tsunami of feeling to overwhelm and I finally allow myself to come, spurting hard threads of come inside her sex. When it was over, we rested against the wall, my arms are weak like jello and my heavy weight bearing down over her slighter one.

After I recover a small measure of strength, I carry her, half dazed, from the bathroom into the bedroom.

Laying her on the sheets, I cover her and pull on my jogging clothes. I should be tired but I’m not. Every inch of me is alive as if I’ve just finished a successful mission. And I suppose it is a successful mission. Charlotte’s in my bed, wearing my ring, and sporting the best just- fucked smile this side of the Pacific.

She’s still sleeping when I return from my run. I toe off my sweaty shoes and socks, tossing the smelly things into a laundry bag.

A knock on the door interrupts my journey back to Charlotte. A look through the peephole gives me a jolt a surprise. Yanking the door open, I greet my former teammate.

“Ford, what’s up man?”

“You got a minute?”

“Yeah come on in.” I open the door wider and gesture for him to enter. He shakes his head in refusal.

“How about out here.” He jerks his head toward the hallway.

“Sure.” I can count the times Ford has sought me out on my one hand. He might be a spook now but he was my teammate once. I’d do pretty much anything for a teammate. I step out and close the door behind me. “Sorry, I just got back from a run.”

“Yeah, no problem.” He glances around me to the closed door, rubs his head, looks down the hall. I’ve never seen Ford nervous before so it takes me a minute to recognize that he’s not checking for targets but searching for the right words to say.

“Your girl is fine,” he says finally returning his attention toward me.

“Thanks.” He’s not coming on to her but I can’t guess where he’s going with this.

“The journalist…” he trails off. “You remember her?”

“Yeah.” I’m still lost.

“She asked me to come with her. She was moving back to her hometown because she was tired of trying to kill herself in pursuit of the next big story. She’d had enough danger for three lifetimes, she told me. Her plan was to write a children’s story or something that was helpful and innocuous.”

“Sounds like that was a good plan for her.” The light is beginning to dawn.

“Yeah. She asked me to leave the Team and come with her. We…ah, connected after she returned stateside. I couldn’t stay away.” His anguish and guilt is evident in every line in his body, every syllable of his words.

“Don’t know that you did anything wrong, brother. We all felt for her. If you provided her a little comfort after it was over, it is no one’s business but yours and hers.” That’s not technically accurate but I’m not going to shovel any more shit onto this poor man’s shoulders.

He ignores my lame attempts at reassurance. “I kept thinking I needed to save more people, like some kind of fucking penance. Then I got the offer to join the Joint Ops program and I was chuffed about that. So I told her no. I regretted it almost immediately but didn’t get to tell her that because I was shipped off for a mission and didn’t get back for months. But the moment I’m back, I get in my truck and drive up the coast. She lives in Northern California. Found her small town. It was fucking beautiful. Right on the coast. Lots of water access. Trees. It was fucking Mayberry on the ocean. I asked around and found she was living with some other guy. I sat outside the house, saw them go into it together. Saw the lights turn off. I felt like I was living in a stupid fucking country song so I punched myself and drove back to Coronado.” He rubs a hand across the jaw as if remembering the blow. I kinda think he did punch himself and it’s not some kind of metaphorical thing. He continues, “And now? Now my life is drinking until I’m too numb to care that the only women around me who are willing to fuck are those who care more about my uniform than the man wearing it.”

I was right that he was broken but wrong about the cause.

In the silence he presses on. “I regret my decision. My career makes a cold lover at night. No one will take the place of her in my mind and I’ll never have her.”

“Jesus, Ford.”

“Yeah.”

That one word says so much. I stare at him, unable to look away from the torment in his eyes. Is this what I looked like day in and day out? As if I had lost all meaning in life and that putting one foot in front of the other was it’s own pathetic victory. He nods solemnly and places a hand on the back of my neck. Pulling me close enough that his forehead almost brushes mine, he squeezes hard as if he can somehow impart his message, if not through words, through osmosis. “Don’t become who I am. Who you were.”

“What’s that?” I don’t really have to ask but I can’t help myself.

“Dead man walking.”