Jericho (A Redemption Novel) (20 page)

But it wasn’t enough. She wanted more of him. She wanted to be so close to him that she felt as though she was inside him. That was what she loved most about their lovemaking—the closeness. How she felt so safe with him. But she didn’t feel safe now; she felt dangerous.

“Touch me,” she ordered him.

He slid his hands up her bare back. “Where? Tell me where.”

“Here.” She couldn’t bring herself to say the word so she showed him. She moved his large hand to her breast and brushed her nipple with the tips of his fingers.

“You like that?”

She nodded, and he studied her face to see if she was sure. He pulled her nipple between his fingers, gently tugging. The heat built between her legs. She throbbed and found herself moving against his hardness to search out some relief. The contact felt good, so good that she moved against him again, unable to stop herself.

He shocked her by pulling one of her nipples into his mouth while he tugged on the other with his thick fingers. She gasped. They had made love every night since they were married, but she could honestly say it had never once felt like this. This wasn’t slow or sweet. It was need. She felt needy, as though she was discovering something new. Something she hadn’t even known she had missed.

“I want to try something with you, Georgia.” Christian set his eyes on hers. “I don’t want you to be embarrassed because it’s something husbands and wives do all the time.”

She nodded, not knowing what it was. She trusted him. There wasn’t anything in the world she wouldn’t let him do.

He lifted her off his lap and laid her back on the couch. She missed his warmth, his hardness, the protection his big body provided her with. He removed her panties and tossed them on the floor, and then he looked at her. He looked at her between her legs. He spread her open and looked there. Sometimes his fingers would brush there before he came inside of her, but this was the first time he had really looked at her. Her face burned.

“Don’t.” He gazed up at her. “Don’t be embarrassed.” He lowered his mouth to the inside of her thigh and lightly nipped her sensitive skin. She jumped. She liked that feeling, too. It surprised her.

“Do that again.”

He grinned and lightly bit her other thigh. She moaned. She shut her eyes and a thousand new sensations flooded her, and before she had time to process even one he licked her. Inside of her, one long slow lick. Her hips moved. Involuntarily.

“That’s right, sweetheart. Move for me.” His lips brushed against her as he spoke. Little fireworks went off. She bit her lip trying to hold in her cry. But it didn’t work, because he licked her again in that same moment. He licked her where she throbbed, in that place where she needed relief.

She didn’t know that this was possible, that being kissed there would feel so...so...otherworldly.

“Christian.” She called out his name and he gripped her thighs, pulling her closer to his mouth, and the long licks turned to hot, openmouthed kisses and the pressure, that feeling she always felt when they made love, started to build uncontrollably. All the thoughts fled from her mind. She just moved against him.

An explosion—she didn’t know what else to call it—struck her. Her toes curled into the couch as wave after wave of intense feeling rolled through her. She didn’t even have the chance to process what was going on inside of her.

Christian freed himself from his shorts and pumped inside of her at a frantic rate. The way his hard body felt on top of hers, the way his clothes felt against her naked body, was too much. Another wave of painful pleasure struck her and Christian fell apart. He finished with a little roar and collapsed on top of her. She wrapped her arms around him and held him close, kissing his shoulder a half dozen times.

“Christian?”

“Yes, love?”

“What happened to me?”

He looked in to her eyes and softly said, “You just had your first orgasm.”

“No. I’ve had one before. With you.” She frowned as she thought about it. “Haven’t I?”

“No, baby. I know. I can tell.”

“Really? I couldn’t, but I liked that, too.”

He smiled at her and kissed her cheek. “Georgia. You’re too sweet for me.”

* * *

“Christian! Look at this! It’s a tiny little house just like the one near the park.” Georgia picked up the miniature and peered inside. “And there is tiny little furniture in there. Even a toilet! This is just about one of the sweetest things I’ve ever seen.”

“We’ve got to get you out of the house more.” Christian grinned at her. They were strolling through the Charleston City Market, a vast marketplace filled with food and art and beautiful things Georgia had never imagined people could own.

She looked up at him and smiled. “I’m sorry. You must be embarrassed to be seen with me. I know I’m doing more than my fair share of exclaiming but I’ve never seen...so many things in one place. Well, that’s not true, my brother once took me to the town dump. There were many things there, too. Many stinky, dirty things. But I’ve never seen so many beautiful things in one place. There was a museum near Jericho. I used to take Abby there to look at the art, but it was so tiny compared to this place and we couldn’t touch anything. Here they let you pick things up!”

Christian surprised her by leaning down and kissing her square on the mouth, and in public, too. Her cheeks burned. “You did that to shut me up, didn’t you? I’m babbling. I know. But I’m so happy today. You must be ready to toss me from a roof by now.”

“No roof tossing.” He took the miniature house from her hands and handed it to the vendor. “We’ll take it.”

“Oh, no! I didn’t mean for you to buy it. I don’t need it. I just think it’s really nice.”

“You barely looked at the jewelry. Clothes didn’t interest you, but this tiny little house made your face light up. If it has that power then I want you to have it.”

“It’s silly, I know, but I never thought there could be a place like this. I rarely left Oakdale as a child, and if I did it was for church functions. When I was older, I was only allowed to go to school. And then I worked at Jericho. I thought I was learning so much about the world then, but I never really saw anything so different. There was the park and the little museum. There was the mommy-and-me story time at the library, but I never got to experience much else. I didn’t realize how much there was to see until now.”

“I’ve seen so much,” he said in a low voice. “I’ve been inside of a palace in Iraq and been in an underwater hotel. I’ve been to parts of the world I never even knew existed until I landed there, and I didn’t appreciate any of it until right this very moment.”

She looked at Christian. He seemed a little lost. Lost in his thoughts. Lost somewhere in the past.

“I would like to take you to see some of those places. Have you ever wanted to go to Europe?”

“I’ve dreamed about going to Disney World. I couldn’t even imagine Europe.”

“I’ve never been there, either.” He smiled again, but this time there was a little sadness behind it. “That’s a place we can experience together for the first time.”

She studied him for a moment. She had been worried about him lately. He was keeping himself busy. Renovating their house alone took up most of his time. And they did things together. They took Abby to the park and window-shopped on weekends. Sometimes they would just go for long walks around Charleston. Georgia was happy. She got to spend her days with her baby and her nights beside her husband. She got to weed her garden and cook the recipes she had been dreaming about trying for years. This life was good. It was better than she ever thought she would have, but something was missing.

Something was wrong with Christian. She was worried that this peaceful life wasn’t enough, but she was afraid to ask him. She was scared she would hear that this was a life that he had never wanted.

The vendor handed Georgia back her newly wrapped little house, breaking her from her thoughts. “Thank you, sir.” She looked at her husband. “Thank you, Christian. I know just where I’ll put this.”

They walked to the next little shop. This one was filled with sweet grass baskets of all shapes and sizes. “You think we should get BB a dollhouse?” Christian looked down at Abby, who was sitting quietly in her stroller, taking it all in. “I know she’s a little young for Barbie, but we could get her a little one.”

“I think you have bought her a new toy every day this week. You don’t have to do that. She loves you anyway.”

“I know. I just want her to have things from me.”

“Since she doesn’t have your blood?” She wasn’t sure why she asked him that. He loved Abby. He never gave Georgia a reason to think he was disappointed with how he’d become her father. But something was wrong and she needed to know what it was.

His eyes snapped to hers. “I didn’t mean it that way. You know it doesn’t matter to me. She’s my girl. She doesn’t have to have my blood for that.”

“I’m going to give you a child,” she told him. “As soon as I can.” She wasn’t positive yet, but there might be one on the way now. They had been married a month. They had made love every night and every night she prayed. Prayed for Christian and for Abby and for herself. She prayed about her future family and for the life she only dreamed could exist.

She loved her baby, her Abby, more than anything else in the world, but finding out she was pregnant this time would be a joy. Her pregnancy would be a joy. No being sick with worry. No wondering how she was going to support them. It would be so different from the last time. Her baby would be made from love this time. Her baby would have a father who was a good man. Her baby would be born inside of a union. The way she’d always hoped her children would be.

“Are you sure you want a baby so soon after Abby?”

“Yes.” She nodded. “She’s a year old, and I’ll have you to help me. Plus we haven’t done anything to prevent it.”

“No,” he said absently.

A child darted toward them. He couldn’t have been more than four or five.

“Jeffery! Jeffery, stop!” A frantic woman chased after him. Christian reached out an arm and lifted the child off his feet, stopping his mad dash away from his mother.

“Hey there, kid. You shouldn’t run from your mother.”

The boy looked up at him and Georgia saw it the moment it happened. The moment little Jeffery took Christian in. Fear crossed his face. He struggled against Christian and cried out for help just as his mother reached him.

“Jeffery. What has gotten into you?”

The boy buried his face in his mother’s shirt and sobbed something. “That man is a monster.”

Georgia had hoped Christian hadn’t heard what the boy had said, but the moment she looked up at him she knew he had.

She had seen many emotions cross Christian’s face in the time she had known him, but she had never seen him hurt. Not like this.

“He fought in a war,” Georgia blurted out.

“Georgia,” he warned, but she ignored him.

She went around Jeffery’s mother to her back so that she could see the little boy’s face. “He fought in Iraq in a war. He was in an explosion. That’s why his face is like that. It’s burned. He’s not a monster. He’s a hero.”

“Georgia, enough!”

“It’s not enough! He needs to understand.” She looked back to the boy. “His name is Captain Howard. He is a hero and he is my husband and we have a baby right there.” She pointed at Abby and Jeffery’s eyes followed. “He is not a monster.”

“I’m so sorry,” Jeffery’s mother said. She was near tears. “I—I... Thank you for your service.”

She turned away, but there was a little crowd there. Staring at them, at Christian, who even without his scars was a sight to behold.

“Let’s go.” His words were clipped. She knew she had done something that he didn’t like, but she felt she hadn’t done a thing wrong.

“Christian—”

“You don’t have to defend me all the fucking time,” he said in a furious whisper. “I know what I look like. I scared him. He’s just a kid. What else was he supposed to think?”

“I’m sorry you are upset, but I’m not sorry for what I did.”

He was not a monster. He was a hero. And she loved him.

Those were three irrevocable facts.

She loved him. And she would never stop defending him.

CHAPTER 20

“D
a?” Abby toddled into the kitchen alone. He looked down at the little girl—at his daughter—and smiled. He was happy for the break. He had been reading some of the financial papers from his father’s company.

He had sent for them a week ago, but he kept putting off looking at them. The house still needed to be worked on. They were turning his parents’ former bedroom back into a den, into a playroom for Abby and a sitting room for Georgia. But it was almost done. Another coat of paint, some bookshelves, some new furniture and it would be complete.

There were other projects to be done. The back porch needed to be replaced, new windows needed to be installed, but the papers from his father’s beloved business haunted him. He wasn’t sure why when being in the house, living here with his family, didn’t.

Maybe because there was so much of his father’s expectations in those papers. He had minored in business in college even though he’d told himself he was going to be an engineer. But he knew in the back of his mind that one day the family business would be his. When he joined the marines he felt he had let his peace-loving, gentle father down.

He had led men into war zones. He had learned Arabic. He could survive for days on no food and little water, but he didn’t think he could run his father’s business. He was afraid of screwing it up, of doing the wrong thing and letting his father down again.

But he knew he had to do something. He was restless. He had worked every day of his life up until he’d gotten hurt. And now he just did nothing. Nothing that really mattered.

He could go back. He could lead a unit. He could be useful again.

Georgia didn’t need him. She’d survived alone a long time before she met him.

She would be fine if he went back. Her sister was moving to Charleston soon. The general lived nearby. She wouldn’t be alone.

“Da!”

He looked at Abby again and held out his hand to her. He had been thinking about going back. He made no plans to do so, but he could. He was still on medical leave. He was still Captain Howard.

“Da, Da, Da, Da, Da,” she babbled as she waddled across the kitchen toward him. She placed her tiny hand on his leg. “Up?”

But he was Da, too, and this little girl did something to him that he didn’t understand.

“Up? You want up? I think that’s all you want from me sometimes.” He scooped her up and held her close. Her head dropped to his shoulder. “Are you tired? Do you need a nap?”

“No!” She looked at him and frowned and he could see Georgia in her features. “Out.”

“You want to go to the park? I’ll take you. Let’s go ask Mama.”

“No Ma!”

“She’s mad at me.” Georgia appeared in the kitchen doorway. “I didn’t think a one-year-old could hold a grudge, but she can.”

“You mad at Mama?” Abby frowned at Georgia, causing him to laugh. “What did you do to my daughter, woman?”

“Your daughter? Well,
your daughter
got into the diaper cream. Had it smeared all in her hair. I took it away and gave her a bath and now she’s annoyed with me. When
your daughter
is sixteen and raising hell, I hope that you remember that she’s yours and handle it.”

“She’s only my daughter when she’s good. And she’s always good for me.” He kissed Abby’s face. “There must be something wrong with you.”

“You think so?”

She crossed the room to them and took Christian’s face in her hands and kissed him. He shut his eyes and let himself be kissed by her.

A week had passed since they had made love in the den. He’d changed the way he made love to her. It was hotter, more passionate, but he still couldn’t bring her to climax while he was inside of her. With his fingers and his mouth, yes, but not while he was inside of her. It shouldn’t bother him, but it did. He was her husband. He wanted to feel her orgasm while he was inside of her. It made him feel like a failure when he didn’t.

“Are you happy, Christian?”

Georgia’s question surprised him. Nobody had ever asked him that before, and if they did he would have said no. He had been alone for so long. He wasn’t alone now. He had Georgia. He had Abby. He had a beautiful wife who would bend over backward to please him. He had the love of a little girl who called him Daddy and came to him when she needed him.

How could he not be happy? “Sometimes I think about them,” he admitted to her for the first time.

“Who...your parents?”

“Yes, them, too. They would have liked you and Abby, but I’m talking about my men. Only three of us survived. I think about all the men who died that day when I didn’t.”

She passed her eyes over his face, zeroing in on his scars. “You lived because you were supposed to, because God wanted you to.”

“Why me and not them?” It was a question he had found himself asking a lot lately. Now that he had Georgia and Abby. Now that he had a home to go to every night and all the comforts he could stand. “There were better men than me. Nicer men. More honorable men. Why did they die?”

“I don’t know, sugar.” She sighed and brushed her lips against his forehead. “I’m glad you didn’t die. I was really mad at God for a long time. I used to think why me and not somebody else, but then I met you. And you became my friend when I had nobody else. And you took my daughter in and loved her like your own. I needed to meet you, honey. Abby needs you. And if you’re thinking about leaving me here alone to raise this baby while you go off to fight some damn war, you’re not going to have to worry about getting blown up. I’m going to beat you up. I don’t care if you’re seven feet tall. I’m going to climb up there and kick your behind.”

He laughed at her bravado and pulled her face up to kiss her. “I missed the sassy girl I met in the hospital. I hate that you feel grateful to me,” he admitted to her. “I hate that you go out of your way to try to please me. I just want you to be you.”

“I am being me. I’m being your wife. I’m taking care of you, dummy.”

“This is not how my mother took care of my father. In fact, my father took care of her. I can take care of you, but you won’t let me. You don’t let me help you around here.”

She shook her head. “You do help out. You do too much for a man who not a month ago was laid up in a hospital. You want to do everything. You want to fight a war and take care of a wife and daughter and fix this house all by yourself. You say you want to be partners, but you don’t. You have this crazy need to serve. Serve me and Abby and your country all at the same time. You won’t let anybody do anything for you. It’s as if you feel as though you don’t deserve to be loved.”

Maybe he didn’t.

“It’s my job to take care of you. I got you fired. It’s my job to raise Abby because you’re my wife. It was my job to get my men out of there safely because I was their leader, and I failed at that. I failed to get my parents from the airport that day and they died because of it. I failed to protect Miko from my friends and she ended up pregnant and alone.”

“It’s not your fault that your parents died. It’s not your fault that a bomb hit your unit. It’s not your fault your friends did that to that girl. Don’t you know you couldn’t control any of that? It’s as if you keep trying to redeem yourself. You don’t need to redeem yourself. You need to—”

“No Da! No Ma!”

Georgia turned away from him, walked to the kitchen counter and rested her hands on the surface.

“We shouldn’t argue in front of her. I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, me, too. I’m going to talk her to the park. We’ll be back later.”

* * *

Georgia peered out the window for the fifth time since Christian and Abby left. They had been gone for over an hour, and while she trusted Christian with Abby, she was worried. He’d been angry when he’d left. With her. With the world. With God.

She couldn’t blame him. She had been there. Half the time she still was there. But she had Abby to keep her grounded, to keep her going. And now Christian had her, too. It was hard for her to give half her child away. It was hard for her every time Abby reached for Christian instead of her. It was hard for her to let Christian feed and dress her in the mornings, but she had stepped aside because he needed her love.

He was thinking about going back. He hadn’t said anything directly to her, but she knew he wanted to go.

Part of her thought that the right thing to do was to let him go, but it wasn’t. She knew he was restless. She knew he was used to working, but he needed a family. He was running from it, from her. Christian was wounded, but not just physically. He needed to be loved, because for so long nobody had. Nobody told him that he was good, that he was needed.

She cooked and cleaned and cared for him because that was what she did. She was a mother and a nurse. She had chosen a career that would allow her to care for others. She had grown up the oldest girl in her family. All she did was care for her family, and she hadn’t hated one moment of that part of her life. Caring for them made her happy. Caring for Christian made her happy.

The phone rang, causing her to jump. She left the window, rushing to answer it, thinking it might be her husband. They’d had their first fight as a married couple. And it had gone unfinished. He had left seething, and while she was upset with him for thinking his life was less worthy than others, she didn’t want them to stop talking.

“Hello?”

“Georgia.”

The phone slipped from her hand and bounced on the kitchen counter. She recognized the voice. She knew it like she knew her own, and yet hearing it was a shock to her. She never thought she would hear it again. She never wanted to hear it again. But there he was, calling her after she made a new life despite him. He had tried to take her dignity away, but she had never let it go completely. She wouldn’t shy away from him now. She had no reason to.

“Hello, Father.”

“Is your mother there?”

“What? Is Mama gone?”

“Don’t play dumb with me, Georgia. Is your mother at your house?”

“No, sir.” Her stomach turned over. Sweat started to form on her palms. “She’s not here.”

“Don’t lie to me again, girl. Is she there? You let me speak to her right this moment!”

“I’m not a liar.” She kept her voice low, calm, even though she wanted to rage at him. “I never was a liar. You just choose to believe a stranger over me. Mama is not here, but if she was, I wouldn’t let her go back to you.”

“I’ve been nothing but a good husband to her. She’s got no right to leave me.”

“You can be a good husband by being a good father, and you were not a good father to me.”

“You’ve got them all turning against me. My sons won’t talk to me. None of my children will come to my church all because of your lie. Why have you done this to me? I provided you with a good home. I taught you God’s word. I followed it myself. You have forsaken me and you have turned a good man into a suspect with your deceit.”

“He raped me!” She screamed it at him. She had never raised her voice to him before. She had never dared to, but she couldn’t take the accusation. Not now. Not after all this time.

“He was a good boy. He was like my son. He wouldn’t have done that to me.”

“He’s not Abel. He’s not a replacement for Abel. He hurt me.”

The phone was snatched out of her hand. Christian was there. He was there with Abby and a ferocious look was on his face. “This is Georgia’s husband. I don’t give a shit if you claim to be a man of God—if you call here again and upset my wife I will track you down and kill you. You understand me?”

He hung up the phone and slammed it on the counter so hard that it broke.

She was shaking. Violently. She hated herself for doing it. She hated that her father had the power to unravel her. Christian grabbed her and wrapped her in his body so tightly that he nearly crushed her. But it was what she needed in that moment. She wasn’t alone anymore. Because of him she wasn’t alone anymore.

* * *

That night Christian waited in bed for Georgia to come out of the bathroom. It was their nightly ritual. Each night he would wait for her, his arms folded behind his head as she bathed and got ready for bed. He wished this ritual would end. He wished that she wouldn’t hide her body from him, that she would dress and undress in front of him. But he guessed that was just part of her upbringing.

Her life had been so sheltered with her overbearing father and timid mother. He was glad he was in the house when the phone rang. He had just gotten back from his trip to the park with Abby. He was putting Abby in her crib for her nap when he heard Georgia scream.

He raped me.

Those words played over and over in his head all evening. His wife had been raped. He’d known this for a long time, but the reminder of it today triggered something inside of him. That man. That weak son of a bitch was still walking around. Free. Unpunished. Undeserving of life. He had cost Georgia. Her family. Her security. Her trust in people.

In an odd way, the man who had hurt her had brought them together. If it hadn’t been for him, if it hadn’t been for the bomb that had killed Christian’s unit, they wouldn’t be together now.

It was funny how the thought of ending the life of the man who’d hurt Georgia planted itself in his head and wouldn’t go out. He had told her he would kill for her before, but today he could imagine doing it. Beating the man till he couldn’t move, and then going after her father.

He’d had the nerve to call her. To call their house. He’d had the nerve to be demanding. To upset Georgia. He hadn’t protected her. That was a father’s job. To protect his children.

He thought about Abby. About how she turned to him when she was scared or needed something. He may not feel as though he was contributing enough to the world, but he was enough for Abby.

Georgia was his wife, and friend and lover, but he would move mountains for Abby. He had been thinking about going back. He had been thinking about it all day, but then he thought about Abby. How he would miss her growing up. How he wouldn’t be able to protect her if he was thousands of miles away.

How could he serve his country and his daughter the way he wanted to? He had to give his all. He couldn’t do either halfway.