Opening myself up to Erica was the hardest damn thing I’d ever had to do. I wasn’t on any time constraints like I was during my therapy sessions, and she didn’t stop me to analyze every little thing I talked about, which was a help. Instead, she just listened intently, only questioning things she didn’t understand and offering a different view on the things she did.
For the first time in forever, I felt the burden I’d been shouldering finally lift. I was free to some extent. I still had things to work out and process, but for the most part, I understood that some of the things that happened were not in my control.
I definitely still had survivor’s guilt from my last mission, that much was obvious, along with abandonment issues from my mother, but I finally had someone who wanted to be by my side to help me work them out instead of pushing me to go it alone. That got me thinking: could fate be so cruel to bring Erica into my life through harsh circumstances because I needed her? I did have a lot of darkness in me, but with her…she was the light my soul desired in order to break free from its chains of confinement. She’d finally done it, broken down the last barrier surrounding my heart.
Moving over to the side, I pulled her against me and ran a hand over the tattoo on her inner thigh. I took a deep breath in, and then let it out. “I don’t know about you, but I feel like I’ve run an emotional marathon. Now, how about you shed some light on this little ‘carpe diem’ number.” I leaned over, taking in a closer look at the ink, when I realized, “Is this another date inside the wording? What does it mean?”
She shook her head and tried to grab for the covers to conceal things. “You’re tired. You’ve been through a lot today. Why don’t we just take a nap and deal with this later.”
“Not happening, princess.” I grabbed the covers and pulled them away from her reach. “I had my turn; now it’s yours. So start talking or when I get you tied up, I’ll punish you, bringing you close to the edge of orgasm and denying you the ability to come, just like you’re refusing me the right to your story, your past.” I noticed her brows furrowed after I said that. Shit. That wasn’t the reaction I was going for. I didn’t want her to pull away from me now that I felt her close in my heart. I quickly needed to redirect my questioning.
“Okay, maybe that was the wrong approach to get you to open up, so let’s start with a different question. Will you tell me about why you got into mental health counseling? What inspired you?” Call me curious, but not everyone was cut out to deal with people who’d seen the hell that war brought with it. It took a special breed or quality in a person to want to help others, and I wanted to know what made Erica tick.
To my surprise, her face cheered up and became very animated with her tale. “I saw the damage PTSD did to each of my parents and, later on, to my sister after her abusive relationship, which was before her husband, Rafe, came along. They were fine, but I saw the fears they had and the things they had to push through in order to regain some sense of purpose and focus in life. They might not be in the military, but their struggles with stress disorders were just as severe and exhausting. I knew I might not be able to help them, but I might be able to help someone else. That’s why I decided to become a counselor with an emphasis on stress and anxiety disorders associated with PTSD.”
Wow. I’d definitely had Erica pegged wrong from the get-go. She devoted her life to studying a science that could help others, and I bet she was great at it. She’d gotten me to open up with just a couple of questions, something no one else had ever done.
Now it was my turn to press forward. I tapped her upper thigh again. “And now back to my question about your tattoo?”
She crossed her arms over her chest and pouted. Why is it that women think we’ll bend to their every demand when they do that?
Hoping she’d finally relent, I stared her down with my best puppy-dog eyes. Erica lowered her arms and, reluctantly, her guard. “Fine. I got the tattoo the day after my sister Dawn married Rafe Prescott. I’m sure you’ve heard the story of how my parents used her to draw out that maniac that was seeking revenge for my father killing his dad on an assignment gone wrong.”
I nodded. Ivan and Sophia’s story still continued to circulate through Titan’s office despite it being years later.
“When that jerk died, our lives were free again. We no longer had to hide, so I got the tattoo because I wanted to ‘seize the day.’ The date above the ink is the day my original life ended, when I was no longer known as Lucia Annica Evonovich but, instead, as Erica Lynn Jamieson. The date inside the cursive lettering is the date of my sister’s wedding, the date our lives were free to be lived as we pleased.”
Okay. I expected more of a story from her than just a brief summary. “And why, amidst your nightmares, do you yell out in your sleep, ‘Daddy, Daddy, don’t let them get us’?”
Her eyes widened. “But I haven’t been having nightmares lately. I don’t know where you’re getting that from?”
I shook my head. “You have, love. You just don’t wake up screaming anymore, but you have had some doozies, and that’s what you mumble when you’re restless in bed. I’ve been whispering sweet words in your ears, trying to calm your dreams while holding you tight for reassurance. It’s only then that you settle.”
She tried to turn her body away from me, but I reached over, latched on to her wrists, and pulled them over her head before I straddled her. I would tie her up if I needed to but felt this might work just as easily to get her to loosen up.
Erica sighed reluctantly. “All right, I’ll let you in on a little secret. My parents don’t know that I remember this, but the first place our family was taken for protection after my father had to kill the head of the Irish crime syndicate in Atlanta, GA, was a safe house in Savannah, GA, guarded by several government officials. We weren’t allowed to leave the place to play out in the yard, so we only had the walls to stare at, a little television to watch, and a lot of time to listen to the men guarding us play their card games. From what I understood, they hoped to corral many of the group’s members, which would allow us to return to our normal lives.”
Her body began to tremble as the words started flowing freely from her lips. “One of the guys guarding us had taken a bribe and had told the crime syndicate where we were located. They came in with an explosion and guns blasting. My father just missed getting caught up in the force of things. My mother provided cover for us with her gun as she ordered Dawn to get me out. I thought we’d lost Dad, but he soon followed, shot in the leg and limping, but alive. That’s the day the primary owner of Titan—or as we call him, Uncle Tony—had us put into witness relocation. He handled all the paperwork and sought out the place we’d live. It was the day we all ceased to exist as the Evonoviches, and the day we took up residence in a small town in the Florida Panhandle where we lived as the Jamieson family, only my parents pretended to be my grandparents. As far as anyone knew, my parents had died in a car crash when I was only a year old. At least that’s the story everyone believed.”
She went on to add, “I spent most of my life keeping to myself, not making many friends, and not knowing whom I could put my faith into and whom I couldn’t trust. I’ve had to deal with a hell of a lot of emotional baggage, stuff no kid should have to grow up with, but I take life one step at a time and deal with the stumbling blocks as they come, trying to either work through things or find a solution to go around them.”
Pressing my forehead to Erica’s, I was only a hair’s breadth away from taking her lips. I wanted to feel the touch of them against me, but first I needed to know if we were on two very different planes of existence or if we were traversing the same road. “You’re from a large city but grew up in a small town, and now you live in the midst of an ever-growing metropolis. Do you like city life, or do you prefer to be on the outskirts of things?”
When I first met her, I hadn’t given Erica a chance. I assumed, because her parents and sister were comfortable in the Orlando area, that she was one who also craved big-city life. I instantly wrote her off as incompatible and too young. Now, I saw what a big fucking mistake that was. All this time, I had someone with similar likes and dislikes within arm’s reach of me, and I couldn’t see her through the stupid wall I’d put up to block her out.
Me? I hated city living with a passion. I did fine as long as I could go to the outskirts of town to do my shopping and live my existence. I was grateful to take over the lease of Derrick’s old place, a small apartment just outside the Orlando city limits, when he moved down to Tampa to live with and marry Jesse Bradford, Doctors Kent and Carol Bradford’s eldest daughter.
I didn’t like the hustle and bustle of fast-paced society, but I dealt with it to keep the job I had with Titan Security and Prescott International. I preferred to work on the Prescott’s estate, since it was on the outskirts of town, whereas the office was downtown and made me feel like a damn sardine stuffed into a suit and fit into a tiny space where I couldn’t breathe. If that was what Erica wanted, then we couldn’t take things any further. She’d already been forced to do things she hadn’t wanted to do in life. I wouldn’t cause another shift in her living if…Don’t go there, man. Why not let the topic go? If she says the opposite of what you want to hear are you willing to give her up or are you willing to change to be with her? You know you’ve already formed an attachment in just a short time. Are you ready for your heart to be broken now that it has been exposed? My mind was right, but at the same time, the question was already out there waiting for a reply.
She smiled. “If you’re trying to find an excuse to get rid of me already, you might as well give up.” She shook her head at me, “When are you going to learn you can’t push me away?” Her eyes got very serious as they met mine. “You’re self-sabotaging, trying to find excuses for this,” she nodded her head between us, since I still had her hands pinned down with mine, “not to work.”
I let go of her hands and held mine up in the form of surrender. “You’re right. I’m not used to having things go my way. I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. All this time, I thought we were as opposite as night and day, but to my surprise, we have more in common, making me wonder if this isn’t destiny’s way of bringing two lost and hurting souls together.”
She ran her hands up over my shoulders and down my chest. “Why do you think I’m so content here? If I was a city girl, I would’ve already been going out of my mind, trying to figure out how to sneak out while you were sleeping and hot-wire either a jet-ski or the ski boat to get off this island.”
“You like it here? But I thought—”
Erica pressed her lips to mine in a gentle, sweet, and enticing kiss, which offered the promise of more to come. “Silly, I don’t fit in easily. I was at a super small university in a small town that was miles away from the hustle and bustle of life. The only reason I moved to Orlando was to be closer to my family. Finishing up my degree at the university there in East Orlando had me on edge, nearly caused anxiety attacks. The place was too big for me. I only made friends this last year, because I felt disconnected and noticed they kind of kept to themselves too, so we started talking, and, suddenly, I had other people in my life.”
I watched as a few tears fell across her cheeks. I cradled her head in my hands and wiped the tears away as I shifted us so that she was lying on my chest. “You know Casey and Hannah are heading back to Orlando for rehab. I talked with Rick earlier, and he said Derrick is borrowing a plane from his boss to arrange their trip back. Your friends are doing good and are so concerned about your well-being.”
“They’re coming back?” Erica started to cry. I wasn’t sure if they were tears of happiness or sadness, but I let her get her emotions out and just surrounded her with warmth and strength.
I hadn’t expected her to pick up our conversation, but after a few minutes of silence, she started talking again, filling the void. “I hated doing clinical rotations at the hospitals in the heart of Orlando and Tampa. The cities and the number of people coming and going from the places scared the crap out of me.” She laughed a bit, “Imagine a counselor for mental health being in a continual string of anxiety attacks due to fear of large crowds.
“That’s why I was thankful the new Veterans Administration Hospital opened up out in the middle of nowhere, with one of Kent and Carol’s colleagues heading up the psychiatry program. I could help the veterans suffering from various issues and be away from the rush of everyday life.”
Damn this woman was perfection personified. I couldn’t have asked for a more ideal mate if I’d designed her myself. Is she your mate? I only wanted to explore the pleasures of the flesh with Erica, but the more I got to know her, and now that I’ve had a taste of how amazing we could be together…yes, I definitely wanted to explore this further, see where it goes. For the first time in my life, I wanted this and would fight to get it.
We lay in silence for a long time, her legs wrapped with mine, her body lying against my chest, our skin pressed against one another, making my cock twitch back to life. We were in a perfect bubble, and I didn’t want to burst it with the news of some hired guns being discovered on the mainland or about the storm that might be coming our way. I wanted to enjoy this calmness while it lasted, because, eventually, perfection would have to come to an end and the new bonds of our relationship would be tested with rough waters to come. Sir Isaac Newton could stick the phrase “for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction” where the sun didn’t shine, because I didn’t want to deal with that possibility, but that seemed to be my life.
I had to wait to cook Erica her special belated birthday meal until the next evening. We’d been so tired, we ended up sleeping through dinner and had a midnight snack of anything we could find and put together quickly.
Calling Rick at the specified time didn’t yield us any further information. The storm was stationary for the time being, thanks to the high pressure system stalling out. Cat and Jasper had a major breakthrough with their case and wouldn’t be able to shop for us for another day or so, and then would have to make special arrangements to fly it in, because most of the planes were already booked. However, we were assured we’d have food to ride out the storm should it hit.
Erica was not happy to hear about any of the new developments. Her worst fears about a major storm hitting the island and possibly interrupting our security system were on the edge of becoming a reality.
She begged for us to go to the mainland, where she thought we’d have a better chance. I showed her the schematics of the house proving that everything inside and out was up to hurricane code and even exceeding it in most cases. It was at this point that I finally offered up the information about the hired guns being in the area, asking questions about her. Frankly, we had to wait it out, see what happened, and hope for the best.
The birthday meal turned out amazing. There were a couple of full lobsters in the bottom of the freezer. I thawed them out and used olive oil—since we’d run out of butter—garlic and some other spices to flavor them. We discovered a package of frozen broccoli, so we steamed some along with our last two potatoes. It might not have been a luxury meal at a five-star restaurant, but it was as good as the island offered, only made better with the beautiful woman I was sharing it with.
I had wanted to bake the cake by myself, but a lack of ingredients to complete the mix had me relying on Erica for assistance. We substituted applesauce for the oil, since we finished that with the lobsters, and used some kind of egg whites we found in a container at the bottom of the freezer. We were desperate, so don’t judge.
The cake came out tasting okay, but when we mixed the instant vanilla pudding mix with the thawed whipped topping, and then topped that with fruit…let’s say the only thing better than the taste was spending time wrapped up in my girl’s arms. My girl…that sounds rather nice. And you know what, she is your girl!