Charlotte Chronicles, Part XLVIII

October 3, 2014  | Charlotte Chronicles  | (0)

“This is the perfect house Charlotte. Thank you for helping,” Charlotte’s client says. Her name is Peyton, like the legend Walter P, although that’s probably not who she’s named after.

“My pleasure,” Charlotte says but her voice is muffled because her face is stuck in the belly of Peyton’s baby. An urge to pick her up and take her back to the hotel so we can start baby making rocks me. Literally. I stick my fists in my pockets and pretend I’m intentionally moving back and forth on my heels when really I’ve had a Teutonic shift in my world view.

“So man, I have to admit I don’t know your team,” Peyton’s husband says apologetically.

“No team. I’m in the Navy.”

Having assumed I’m neither famous nor rich, he dismisses me and turns to run his eyes over Charlotte. My pockets are doing double duty now. Keeping me from hauling Charlotte away from here and preventing me from decking her client. It’s a wild guess, but I bet she wouldn’t approve of that. Although…if he keeps staring at her legs he’s going to have a hard time seeing the batters after I gouge both of his eyes out.

“Ohh, a military man,” Peyton stage whispers. Her husband shoots her an annoyed glance. I wink at them just to piss off the husband even more. “How does he look in uniform?”

“I don’t know, do you Nate?” Charlotte gives me a hungry look that causes my shorts to get a bit tight and the baseball player next to me to swallow his tongue. After that long appreciative perusal, I’m not irritated with the guy next to me because I’m the one who’s going to be in Charlotte’s bed tonight. Not him.

“I look like a man in uniform.”

“Nate’s actually a Navy Seal.” The words pop out unexpectedly of Charlotte’s mouth. I raise an eyebrow at her. I don’t care what these random civilians think of me. The wife’s expression says that she’d like to see me out of uniform and the player is recalibrating his quick dismissal.

Then, because he’s an asshole, he asks the stupid question. “So how many ways do you know how to kill a man?”

“Too many and not enough,” I answer tersely.

Charlotte recognizes that I need to get out of here and quickly finishes her business. Watching Charlotte smooth ruffled feathers and close her deals shows me a different side of her, one unfamiliar but no less attractive. Various family members have told me that she’d begun to build an exciting and successful business. She’d come a long way from Cancergirl—the one that I was afraid couldn’t walk down the hall by herself, the one who I hid in the boy’s locker room at high school.

Mom had told me that demand for Charlotte’s business is so high she can’t keep up with all the requests. I get it. If I was a young athlete with no family going to a new territory, I’d want some bright young thing smoothing out all my details. It’s like having a hot wife without any of the responsibilities. But the women like her or at least Peyton does. And she doesn’t look at Christian with anything other than the fond regard you have for someone paying you five figures to help you move.

I’m anxious to get her alone.

A beep of my cell phone signals an incoming text message. I tip my head toward Charlotte but she waves me off. I smile to myself. We’ve already started our nonverbal communicating, as if there wasn’t years of separation.

The message is from Cab.

Bring your girl to Flannery’s. That’s an order from your LT.

Did you get a promotion when I wasn’t looking?

No, but I’m sitting next to LT.

Incoming picture.

Sure enough Cab is sitting next to LT with two big beers on the table in front of them. Fraternizing with officers is usually frowned upon but not on the Teams. We’re encouraged to be up in each other’s business constantly. It’s how the unit operates as one.

You’ll be drunk by the time we get there. I could bring a clown and you’d hit on it thinking it was her.

We’re golfing! This is the seventh inning stretch! … Wait, LT says it’s 9 hole break. Ha! Golfing is dirty! Anyway don’t bring the clown. You know I’m afraid of them.

“What’s making you smile?” Charlotte taps me on the arm. Beyond her the realtor is getting into his car and Peyton and Christian have moved toward the house.

“We done here?”

“Yes.”

I take her hand and we walk toward my jeep. “The guys want to meet you.” I tilt the phone her way so she can read my messages.

“Is that a bad thing?”

“I’m afraid their version of welcoming might cause you to run away.”

She scoffs. “I work with athletes. I’ve been in locker rooms before. It can’t be worse than that.”

“But you’ve never seen another naked man, right?” The thought of her around a bunch of unclothed athletes bothers me.

Her face turns away but not before I see a smile she tries to hide. “Of course not Nate. Yours is the only body I’ve ever seen without clothes.”

I can’t tell if she’s serious but I’m accepting it as true or I’ll have to do something like give her a ring of hickies so that everyone knows she’s off limits.

“Before I throw you to the wolves, want to come and see my digs? Maybe check out of the hotel and save a few dollars?”

The reference to saving is an in joke and she grins saucily. We both know that even if she didn’t have her job, she had her trust fund just like I had mine. Freedom Funds, our parents co owned hedge fund, had made both her family and mine very rich. Charlotte’s dad had made a mint in construction too so she probably never had to work a day if she didn’t want to.

“Yes, I’d like that very much.”

“According to my government issued timepiece, it’s been about four hours since I last kissed you.”

She reaches up and runs her fingers lightly across my forehead. “Is that right?”

Drawing her into my arms, I lean back against the jeep. “That’s right.”

In the middle of this posh San Diego suburb, I pull her tight against me and kiss her. My jaw isn’t so freshly shaven but she rubs against me as if the burn feels good. Our tongues clash against each other and soon I want to strip her clothes off and lay her down on the soft grass, uncaring what the residents might think. I break it off before I lose all control.

Panting roughly in her ear, I tell her, “We need to get going before I’m arrested for lewd and indecent conduct. Navy frowns upon that.”

A smug satisfaction fills me at her glazed expression and I help her into the Jeep. As we drive toward her hotel, I hold her hand against my thigh, not wanting to have any break in our connection. “I didn’t know you were proud of me,” I comment recalling how she quickly corrected Christian’s impression of me as a no name sailor.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“I thought you might be resentful because it took me away from you.”

“It wasn’t your job that took you away from me,” she says quietly.

And she’s right. The mood is less passionate and more somber when we arrive at the hotel. I try to lighten it up by describing my ratty bachelor pad. “It’s in an apartment building with a bunch of other sailors and Marines. Cab doesn’t understand why I haven’t moved away.”

“Why haven’t you?” she asks as she carefully stows away all of her clothes and sundry items. She’s as neat as a sailor.

“It’s not like I spend a lot of time there.”

“Still, it’s not like you couldn’t afford something better.”

“I don’t like to flaunt the family money. It’s not really mine. I didn’t earn it other than by being born and a lot of the other guys don’t come from money. It’s why so many SEALs sell their stories when they’re out. That and they want to be famous.”

From her skeptical expression, I can tell she doesn’t fully buy into my excuse but I don’t have a better one.

“No matter. Take me to your  lonely bachelor apartment and make love to me in your virgin bed,” she declares zipping her suitcase shut.

I grab it from her. “Is it still virginal if I’ve beat off to pictures of you?”

“It’s pure as the driven snow until you take me there and pleasure me in all the ways that you have fantasized about.”

I break a lot of laws getting to my apartment. Halfway there, though, she kills my erection.

“I live in Dallas now, near Nick.”

Nick. God, the poor bastard. I’ll need to call him and so will Charlotte. “That’s right. Weren’t you living with him for a while?”

She nods. “For a few months after he first moved there. We didn’t know how long he’d need me and then, after a while, I became a really easy excuse for why he couldn’t bring women home.”

“He said you were his girlfriend?”

“No. His sister,” she grins. “But after the third woman showed up in a trench coat and heels, I moved out.”

We shared a laugh but when I pull into the parking lot of my building, Charlotte grabs my arm before I can jump out.

“I can stay a couple of days but then I have to go back and take care of another client. My life is in Dallas, Nate.” The turmoil of our uncertain future is clear in her eyes.

“I’ll fly to Dallas for the rest of my leave. We can head up to Chicago and see the parents too.”

“What are we going to tell everyone?”

“Stay there,” I order. I can’t do this sitting in the Jeep. I need to be able to see her straight on.

“This whole situation is emotionally confusing for me,” she says.

I round the front of the Jeep and then haul her out. I hadn’t planned on doing this right now. There were better, more romantic ways but I can’t wait another minute. The box in my pocket I picked up before I sent the letter might burn a hole through the cotton.

Ignoring the every increasing male eye pinned on the spectacle I am making, I grip her shoulders. “I love you Charlotte. I want us to be together. I’ll do anything it takes to keep us together. I want you to come to see where I live. I want to see where you live. I want to meet your friends. I want you to meet my friends. I want our families to know we are together. I don’t want Nick to feel that he is in the middle of a bad divorce.”

“So you know it has been a strain on him.” She’s wide eyed wondering where I’m going with my crazy rambling.

“Of course I knew.  Half the reason he can’t settle down is because I’ve screwed him up so bad. All he sees is his big brother turning his back on something wonderful and how much pain it has cost both of us. He’ll take the hits on the field but doesn’t want suffer them off of it.” I hadn’t just pushed Charlotte away but I’d placed a wedge between our families, harmed my brother, and made my own life miserable.

I bend down on one knee, in the middle of the parking lot, next to my dirty jeep surrounded by salty military men and women.

I take her hand in mine. “Charlotte Randolph, since the moment I held you when you were an infant and I was two, I knew that we were destined to be together. I fought that destiny but no longer. Living without you is merely existing. And it’s impossible. I’ve tried it for so long. I’m only half a person. You are so courageous having fought for your life, and then for me. I don’t deserve you. I don’t deserve another chance. But you’ve told me you’ve loved me, that you always have, that you always will so I can’t turn away even if I should.

I am here before you, on my knees, to not only beg you to forgive me but to allow me to show you how much I love you for the rest of my life. Will you please marry me.”

Her shocking blue eyes, the blue the color of the pure ocean, of the clearest sky, fill with water and spill silently down her cheeks.

I don’t so much hear her response as feel it inside me, as my entire body vibrates with her choked and shaking, “yes!”

I sweep her up and crush her mouth to mine. Around us are laughter and cheers and people taking pictures that will be the source of mocking for years to come. But I don’t care.

I run up the stairs, still holding her, still kissing her. I somehow manage to fall into my apartment and into the bedroom. We rip at each other’s clothes, our mouths feverishly attacking one another until we are skin to skin. She takes me in her hand and guides me to her hot wet center that I’ve come to identify as home.

Her eyes are wide and her body is welcoming. I take a moment to appreciate the vision. The strands of her wheat colored hair and spread across the navy blue of my sheets. She’s an angel spread for my enjoyment.

I bracelet her two wrists in one hand and pin them above her head, stretching her body to accommodate me in every aspect.

Her head thrashes as she moans my name. “Nathan, please.” She strains against me. Her legs widen and the heels of her feet press hard against my ass. “I never imagined we would be together again.”

“I know, baby. Push your hands here,” I whisper into her skin. I press her palms against the headboard so I free my own hands. One I use to brace myself and the other to reach under her bowed back. “I can’t go slow and I can’t go easy.”

She nods, “I want you. Take me hard.”

Rearing to my knees, I fold her legs up and thrust into her with as much finesses as a juvenile. I have barely any rhythm and almost no conscious thought. I am only blood and nerves. My focus is narrowed down to the pinpoints of sensation that are electrified by each slam into her body.

Forward and retreat.

Forward and retreat.

We are animals, recklessly straining for pleasure. Beneath me, her body jerks with each deep thrust. I’m abusing her, but I can’t stop. The way she’s locked around my body, I don’t believe she’d let me stop.

“Fucking come with me now,” I roar as the familiar tension starts to coil inside me. Licking my thumb, I press the dampened tip on her sensitive clit. She screams in response and her cunt grips me like a vise. We wind tighter and tighter together until I feel her release shake her body.

I power forward, hips jerking and then I’m coming. My hot seed jets inside her, coating her walls. That’s right, I think, that’s my seed marking my territory inside your sweet body.

After the storm is past and we lie in a pile of destroyed sheets, abandoned clothes, and sweaty limbs, I press kisses all over her bare skin. There’s the hollow of her throat that I’ve not paid enough attention to or the valley between her breasts that call for my touch. I haven’t completed charted the rises and dips in her back or the location of each beauty mark. Even her toes are sexy. I want to suck and lick every part of her again and again.

“You’re going to have to marry me now,” I say.

“Why is that?” She says lazily tracing my back with her fingernails.

“Because Mom will force you to make an honest man out of me. You can’t expect me to keep sleeping with you without the protection of marital vows.” I fall to my back and clasp a hand over my heart.

She pounces on me, her fingers digging into my hard muscled sides. When I don’t laugh from her tickling, she pushes her lower lip out. “I have serious doubts about how this is going to all work out if you aren’t ticklish.”

“I can pretend for you.”

Her face grows sober. “Don’t ever pretend. Let’s always be real with each other.”

“Always.”