Wounded (24 page)

She has no idea what she’s doing to me.

I’m so close.
 

What the fuck do I do?
 

I wrestle with myself, trembling, trying so hard to hold back as she fondles me, examines me. She traces my length, grips me, lets go, cups my balls in one hand, touches them and explores them, then returns to my cock.
 

I’m leaking. I’m about to come, and I have to hold it in. Have to. She’s just exploring. This isn’t sex.
 

I can’t wait much longer.

RANIA

His whole body is shaking, as if he is flexing every muscle. His back is stiff, his eyes closed, his fingers tangled in my hair.
 

His manhood is a thing of contradictions, so soft yet so hard. It is long and straight and thick, lying flat against his belly. It seems so big, and I am a little frightened of when we will have sex, even though I know it will be okay. I push those thoughts away. That is not for now.
 

I let myself touch him. It is okay to touch him. I like touching him. I like the way it feels in my hand, filling my fist. He is making little noises in his throat, although I do not think he is aware of it. His other hand is clenching into a fist in the sheet of the bed. I glance down at his feet, peeking out from beneath the blanket, and his toes are curled. His arms are flexed, his stomach muscles are flexed.

He is tensed, and every time I touch his manhood, he flinches, moves his hips slightly into the touch.

“Why are you making muscles?” I ask. I have been trying to use only English with him, and he tries to answer in only Arabic.
 

This time, he answers in English. I do not think he is capable of Arabic right now. “I’m…holding back.”

I do not understand at first, but then awareness dawns on me. He is about to release, but is holding back.

“Why hold back?” I ask, gripping him more firmly now and sliding my hand on him.

He laughs once. “Because this isn’t…about…me.” He is moving his hips to the rhythm of my hand on his manhood. “It’s about you. Doing what you want. Learning to want. Also, because it’ll be messy.”

 
I know what I should do. I am not quite ready, but it is the best way. I start unbuttoning my pants. Hunter stops me.

“No, not like this. I want it to be special. Just…stop touching me for a minute and I’ll…I’ll be okay.”

“You do not want to have sex with me?”

“No,” he says, and my heart shrivels, hurt. But he continues, “I want to make love to you. It’s different.”

My hand is still on him, but not moving.
 

“Oh,” I say. “But not now?”

He shakes his head and takes my wrist in his hand, tries to pull me away. “No, not now. When we have all the time in the world. When we have a big bed and privacy.”

I do not want to stop touching him. I want to see him release. I do not care about a mess, or privacy. I like touching him. I understand a little now what he said about enjoying making me feel good.

“Do you like how I am touching you? Does it feel good?” I ask.
 

He gasps and releases my hand. I move my fist around his manhood, and I feel more confident in it now. His face gives me my answer, but he nods anyway.

“Yes,” he says. “God, yes. It feels so good. I love it. I don’t want you to stop. But…I can’t hold back much longer.”

I continue to move my hand on him, and now his hips are starting to jerk. Leaning close to his ear, I whisper to him, “I want you to feel good. I am enjoying this. I do not want to stop. I do not want you to hold back. You can release.”

I know something I could do. Before I have a chance to think about it, I move my head down toward his manhood. He stops me.
 

“No, Rania. Not that.” Something in his voice tells me he is serious, so I return to leaning on his arm.
 

I can hear beneath his voice what he may be thinking of, and I think of it, too, but push it away. I am glad he did not let me. It would have given me memories of other things, bad things.
 

I kiss his jaw and taste his sweat, his stubble, his skin. I had slowed my hand on him when I began to move down, so now I speed up. My fist is loose around him, skin barely brushing skin. Now I hold him more tightly, move slowly, from the top of him to the bottom. He is jerking, shifting up and falling down. He gasps, tilts his head back.
 

“Oh…oh, god…I’m about to…” He grates the words past his teeth, and then falls silent and arches his back.

Now.

He goes still at the apex of his arch, and his manhood jerks in my hand. A thick stream of viscous white seed spurts from him, shooting hard across his torso, in his belly button. I keep moving my hand on him, and his hips swivel his manhood into my fist. Another stream overlays the first, not as much now, nor does it shoot quite as far, and then a third jet, even less, and his body flops down against the bed. He is gasping, writhing his hips.
 

“God…goddamn.” He is breathless, amazed, flushed.
 

I feel a thrill of something powerful inside me, hot and swelling through every inch of me. It is a pleasantness, happiness. He liked it, and so did I. I made him feel good, and I felt a joy in return for having given it to him. I feel content.

He laughs, a low rumble in his chest. “Shit, now I’m a mess.”

I look at him, at the thick river of white seed on his belly. “I will clean it.”
 

I go to the bathroom not far away, wet some paper towels, and return to the bed.
 

“I can do it,” Hunter says, reaching for the towels.
 

“No,” I say. “Let me. Please.”

He drops his hand and watches me as I scrub the seed from his flesh, folding the towels and wiping until he is clean, the fine curly hairs low on his belly damp and sticking to his skin. I throw the paper towels away and lie down next to him again. He drapes the blanket over us and pulls me across him.
 

“Rania, that was—”

I kiss him, and he goes quiet as we kiss. “It is a beginning,” I say.

FIFTEEN

HUNTER

All the paperwork has been signed. She’s officially Rania Lee now. Goddamn. I’m a married man. Crazy.

I’m officially honorably discharged and we’re on the way home. Well, back to the States. I haven’t mentioned to her that I don’t have an actual home yet. If it was just me, I’d probably bunk out on Derek’s parents’ couch, but that’s not an option. Too many questions.

Derek. Fucking Derek re-upped. Says he wants to make sergeant. I could kick his ass for splitting us up like this, but it’s his choice, I guess. It just sucks. This will be the first time since goddamned second grade that Derek and I won’t be doing the same thing together. I’m going home to make a life with my wife, and he’s staying behind to do another tour in the clusterfuck that is OIF 2—maybe Afghanistan next, if the scuttlebutt is true.
 

We’re on a plane headed west. Rania is in the seat next to me, clutching my hand so hard I think she might actually be bruising bones. I don’t blame her. We’re in the middle of an awful goddamn thunderstorm and the plane is bucking like a roped steer. Poor girl’s first plane ride, and it’s the roughest one I’ve ever been on.

I need to distract her.

“Hey, Rania.” She turns to look at me, teeth clenched, eyes wide. “So when we get to Des Moines, we’re gonna look at houses. That’ll be fun, right?”

She just looks confused. “Look at houses? What does this mean?”

“It means we’re going to pick out a home.”

“I thought you said we
were
going home.”

I shrug. “I just meant the city, Des Moines, where I grew up. I don’t have a place of my own. I joined the Marines out of high school, so I never had a place.”

“So we are alone together with no home?”

“Yeah, baby. It’s just you and me. We’ll find a nice place together.”

“Baby? I am not a baby.” She wrinkles her nose.

I laugh. “No, I know. It’s…a term of endearment.” She gives me a blank look. “It’s like ‘honey’ or ‘sweetie.’”

She still doesn’t seem to know what I mean.
 

I laugh and shake my head. “It just means I love you.”

“If you say so,” she says. “But it is strange, to call the woman you love as a baby. But then, Americans are strange.”

“It is kind of weird,” I agree. “I never thought about it before. I guess it’s a cultural thing. We call each other pet names. It’s a way of…showing affection, I guess.”

She nods. “Ah, now this I understand. Like to call a son or a little brother ‘
habibi
,’ even if he is no longer a little boy.”

I nod. “Yeah, basically.”

She changes the subject. “So we will choose a home together? Do they not cost much money in your country?”

“Yeah, but we’re not going to buy it outright. I have a good bit of money saved up, and I know the loan officer at a bank in town, so we’ll get a good deal. We’ll have a nice place.”

“If you say so.” The plane hits a rough patch of turbulence, and she shuts down, clenching my hand again.
 

I let her crush my fingers and try to imagine having a home of my own, with Rania. It’s a nice image.

*
 
*
 
*

I lease a furnished condo in the downtown area on a month-by-month basis until we find somewhere permanent. Rania has no clothes, nothing of her own, so the first thing I do is take her shopping. At first she just wanders between the racks at Macy’s, looking puzzled.

Eventually she stops and turns to me. “What am I supposed to do? There are too many things here.”

I laugh. “Pick what you like. Pick a bunch of stuff that you like and try it on. Keep the stuff that fits you good and looks good, and leave the rest.”

She takes a skirt off the rack, then puts it back. She does this a dozen times. “I do not know what I like.”

In the end, I ask one of the Macy’s associates to help her, and she ends up with a bunch of nice outfits. She’s wearing one of them now, a skirt fitting tight around her hips and thighs and loose at the ankles. The top is a button-down blouse that accentuates her frame without being too revealing. I was careful to make sure none of the clothes even remotely resembled her old outfits, all miniskirts and low-cut tank tops. Everything is tasteful and modest, skirts down to her knees, at least, tops that don’t show too much cleavage. I get her bras and panties, makeup, pajamas, shoes, sandals, shampoo, conditioner, all the stuff I know girls like.
 

Rania seems overwhelmed. “Why do I need all these things? I have never had any of this. A little makeup, some clothes to wear. All this…it is so much.”

I laugh. “You don’t
need
it. But I want you to have it. It’s just stuff.”

“More
stuff
than I have ever owned in all my life. You should not waste so much money on me.”
 

I lean across the cab and kiss her. “It’s not wasted, Rania.”

“If you say so.”

I growl. That’s her fall-back phrase when she disagrees but won’t say anything else. “Rania. Seriously. Disagree with me sometimes. Don’t just accept whatever I say. I want you to tell me your opinion and stick with it. If you don’t like what I’m saying, tell me. If you think I’m wrong, tell me.”

“You are my husband. It is my duty to support you.”

“Bullshit. You’re my wife, and it’s your duty to tell me when I’m being a stubborn jackass. Don’t just roll over and accept everything.”

She stares out the window without answering for a long time. “I have never had the luxury of opinions,” she says in Arabic. “Like so much, I will have to learn.”

“You will learn. I will help you,” I tell her in Arabic. “I want to you become the person you want to be. Who is Rania? What does she want? What does she like? What are her dreams?”

  
The cab pulls up and lets us out, and I carry the bags into our condo. Rania crosses the room to stand at the window, arms akimbo under her breasts.
 

“I do not know the answers to those questions. They are the questions of someone who is living, not only just surviving. I do not know how to live. How to be…a person.”

I stand behind her and wrap my arms around her waist. “I’m not sure what you mean, ‘how to be a person.’ You
are
a person.”

She shakes her head, her hair tickling my nose. “No. Well, perhaps now I am becoming one. Before, I was only a whore. A whore is a thing. Like a refrigerator, or a cow used for milk. I was meant for use. A whore does not have dreams or desires for the future. There is only the next client.”

“That’s not who you are anymore. You’re a person, now. A wonderful person.”

She spins in my arms to face me. “You think I am a wonderful person?”

I smile and kiss her lips. “Yes.”

She lays her head on my chest. “Then that is who I am. Your wonderful person.”

The first night we were back, we were so tired from travel that we could only fall asleep, collapsed side by side but not touching. Tonight, I hope for different.
 

And then I realize that her whole life has changed, her entire reason for existence has been stripped away, and she’s faced with the task of reinventing herself in a new country, married to a man she’s known for maybe a month.

Maybe I should just give her space. Let her adjust rather than pushing her into things.
 

I want her so fucking bad, but again…I can’t rush her.
 

I show her the shower when we finish eating our dinner. I ordered pizza, and Rania was in awe of it. She only ate a little, which was probably smart. I ate most of it myself. Pizza is one of the things I always miss the most in the desert.

She strips unselfconsciously, stands at the open door of the shower, one arm across her breasts, the other hand beneath the spray, testing the temperature. Her shower in Iraq was almost always cold. She sets the water hot, scalding hot. I can’t help but watch her, long legs flashing in the steam, wet skin glistening, tempting, tantalizing. Her long blonde hair drapes wet across her back, hanging down between her shoulder blades.