I nod, but I’m very persuasive. “That was a comfort kiss between friends. I thought you needed it.”
“That sounds like pity.” He raises a brow at me.
“Would you stop it. There are more important things that I pity over you, like … people who wear Crocs.”
“People who wear Crocs rank higher than a wounded veteran?” He smirks.
“They are an abomination. And you asked me not to pity you, so you can’t be butt hurt now when I don’t.”
“What am I going to do with you?” He chuckles.
I lean forward and whisper in his ear, “How about we go to your bedroom, and comfort kiss some more.” I nibble on his ear, making him groan.
Next thing I know, the man is picking up all six foot and ninety kilos of me from the sofa like I’m a delicate flower, and walking us into the downstairs bedroom. Slamming the door behind us, he then lays me down on the bed, while he hovers over me.
“No funny business,” he warns before placing a kiss on my cheek then pulling away.
“Me. Never.” I wink at him.
He shakes his head with a laugh. “Let me message Everly to let her know we’re hanging out and it’s safe for her to come home.” Well, if that’s not a boner killer. While he does that, I snuggle in under the covers, not that it’s cold or anything. He takes a seat beside me and sighs as he joins me under the covers. First step in seducing this man is complete. “Guess, we should probably start over, we seemed to have done this friendship thing all backwards.”
“I think we are exactly where we need to be,” I tell him, resting my head on his shoulder.
I hear Charlie swallow harshly, but he settles into the bed and embraces my touch. “What do you want to know?” he asks.
“I want to know about that asshole ex.”
His body stiffens, and I hear him suck in a couple of deep breaths before releasing them. “He worked in a different unit to me, but we were both in Afghanistan together. He was a higher rank than me, which isn’t allowed. Technically, relationships while on deployment are not allowed, but everyone bends the rules, especially gay personnel. Our options are limited. We met, and it was a whirlwind romance. We snuck around, no one knew, they thought we were friends. He wasn’t out of the closet because he wanted a career in the military and didn’t think he could get the advancements if he was out. Then my accident happened, and the wild thing was that morning before I left, I told him I loved him. He didn’t say it back and I thought it was because I was running late. Now in hindsight, I know it was because he didn’t feel it. I think I was a warm hole in a cruel place for him. I could have been anyone. When the accident happened, we were airlifted to Germany to be looked after there, then we were sent home when we were fit enough. I’m thankful my parents had the money to be able to help me when I came back, others were not so lucky. Anyway, while in Germany, I kept asking to see him. Every day I would open my eyes and wish I saw him until one day I did, he was on leave and came to check in on me. I was so happy when I saw him, but he didn’t look that happy when he saw me. Guess, I should have appreciated that he had the balls to visit me to break it to me that he no longer found me physically attractive, and that he didn’t want to look after a cripple for a partner.” I gasp. What the hell is wrong with people? Who the hell says that kind of thing to someone they had a relationship with? “I lost it. I threw a vase of flowers at him. I turned into someone I’m not proud of, they had to sedate me. It wasn’t because of what he said, it was because of what I now thought I had lost. That this would be the reaction I would get from every man I tried to date from then on. That I would be deemed too much trouble. Damaged goods.”
My heart breaks for him. Now I understand why he was reluctant to attempt dating. I thought it was because of something else, not this.
“Now this is not pity …” I warn him, “… but what a dick. It’s a leg, not a big deal, you have another. If it were an arm, that would certainly make things harder. How do you jerk off with one arm? Oh, are there arms you could get that have like a dildo attachment on them? Now that would be cool, imagine that you’re like, ‘oh I need to rub one out, let me switch arms’ and grab your heavy-duty jerking off arm and it automatically milks you. Man, that actually sounds pretty cool.”
“Fuck your brain is scary.” Charlie chuckles.
“I know. Imagine living with it.” I smirk.
“I will say the jerking off arm does sound awesome. I’ll let my robotics guy know about it.”
“Hey, let’s patent it first, and we can become rich.”
“What would we call it?” he asks, indulging in my madness.
“Jerk free?”
“Free willy?”
We both crack up laughing. “You really don’t care about my leg?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Did you want to see it?” he asks tentatively.
“Hell yeah, as long as it doesn’t hurt you,” I say. Don’t want him to hurt himself indulging in my curiosity.
Charlie throws back the covers and pulls up the leg of his sweats to show me his carbon fiber leg. He looks like a cyborg.
“That is so cool. Can you put different designs on it?” I ask.
