Love Untold

Love Untold: Chapter 4

Love Untold: Chapter 4

Chrissie’s heart stopped beating the moment his lips touched hers.  From fear, she told herself, but she knew she was lying.  His lips were warm and strong, yet tender at the same time, and she’d not been kissed this way since...well, hell!  Not even Joe kissed her this way.

At first she struggled, because face it, that was a stranger attached to her mouth, and she didn’t know him from the Devil Himself.  This man could be the Devil.  He could be the embodiment of all things evil in this world, wrapped up in a very tempting package -- the Devil wasn’t above a little lustful provocation, after all -- and he was sucking the life right out of her.  Well...maybe not her life essence, but she certainly felt the strife slowly drain from her pounding heart.

His hands released her arms and drew rough, calloused palms up to cradle her head under her jaw.  With gentle pressure by his thumb, he tilted her head to deepen the kiss.  She jerked when his tongue slipped past her lips, but -- the Devil take her! -- she moaned and kissed him back...

*****

Twenty minutes earlier...

“Hullo?” her sister answered her phone in a grumbling, groggy voice.

“Dena!  You’re in big, big trouble!  I’m going to get you for this!  Do you hear me!”

“Chrissie?”

“Of course, it’s Chrissie,” Chrissie said.  “Who did you think it was?”

“Why are you calling me so early?”

“It’s nine o’clock,” Chrissie said.  “And if you think I’m going to let you off easy because you’re still asleep, then think again, Sis!”

Dena groaned and huffed and scuffled around through the phone.  Finally, she said, “Okay, I’m up...what’s going on?”

Chrissie closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She dragged a kitchen chair across the house to jam under the knob of the front door.  This worked in the movies, so hopefully it’ll keep that man out of her house.   “It wasn’t funny, Dena.  He scared me out of ten years growth.”

“Who did?”

“The man you dumped on my couch last night!”

Suddenly, Dena sounded very alert.  “There’s a man on your couch?”

“Don’t act like you don’t know anything about it.”

“What did Race say?”

Chrissie grabbed another chair from her kitchen and wedged it under the back door’s knob.  “Ha!  I knew you were responsible!”

“It’s too early for this, Chris.  What am I responsible for exactly?”

Chrissie pushed her hair out of her face.  She mentally checked her preparations.  Windows locked.  Doors barricaded.  A pile of books on the ottoman in the living room to throw in case he managed to get into the house again...and a stack of coffee mugs on her kitchen island.  She’d been eying a new set at Target for a while, but she couldn’t justify buying new ones when she owned perfectly good coffee mugs.  This might solve two of her problems.

“The man on my couch!” she reminded her stubborn sister.  “He wouldn’t leave this morning.  I had to call the police--”

“Oh, gawd, not the police again,” Dena moaned.  “You’ve got to stop doing that.  They can arrest you for tying up the emergency systems like that.”

“But he wouldn’t leave my house!”  What was wrong with these people?  Couldn’t they understand that she was the victim here?

“He was probably someone from Race’s crew.  What did he say?”

A throbbing headache started in the base of her skull.  “Dena!  He said his name was Race!”

“Two Races?”

Chrissie screeched, picked up a mug and smashed it on the floor -- just because.

“Are you throwing things again?” Dena wanted to know.  Chrissie ignored that.

“No, there isn’t two Races.  I only had one Race in my house, and he wouldn’t leave!”

Chrissie heard her sister sigh heavily, her breath making the phone staticky for a second.  “Oh...I see.  Listen, I know you’re upset with him -- I am, too.  We both told him not to go.  Thirty is an important birthday for a woman, but denying his very existence never got you anywhere.  Just cut him off from sex for a week.”

“Sex?!  I’m not having sex with him!”

“Well, see?  Then you don’t need the whole ‘I don’t know who you are’ act.”

Chrissie thought about throwing another mug, but she wanted to make sure she had enough to plaster that man’s face with.  Instead, she stomped through the house and snatched the vacuum cleaner out of the spare bedroom.  “Dena,” she began in a serious voice, “you are a piece of work, you know that?”

“Hey, thanks, Sis,” Dena said cheerfully.  

“It wasn’t a compliment,” Chrissie growled as the flipped on the vacuum.  

“What is that noise?”

“It’s the vacuum.  I want to make sure I have enough coffee cups for when he gets back,” Chrissie said over the loud hum.

“Oh...that upset, huh?”

“You don’t know the half of it...You drown me in tequila, stick a wedding ring on my finger and a man on my couch...yeah, I’m mad.  It wasn’t funny, Dena.”  Chrissie furiously shoved the ottoman out of the way to get the rug under it.  The books toppled to the floor.  Chrissie screeched and bent to pick them up while cradling the phone against her shoulder.

“Now wait just a damn minute,” Dena said loud enough for Chrissie to hear her over the vacuum.  “You can play that alienation game with your husband all you want, but I won’t put up with it.  I took you out last night to get your mind off of his leaving you, but don’t you dare involve me in this.”

Chrissie moved into the dining room, swiping at that rug.  “You involved yourself...and he’s not my husband!  So you can stop the charade!”

“What charade?!”

Just then, she heard a knock on the door.  Chrissie, already on the edge of her nerves, bumped into the china cabinet.  Her favorite crystal bowl rocked off the top and crashed to the floor.  Dang it!   She rushed to the front window.  “Oh no!  He’s back!”

“Good!” Dena harrumphed angrily.  “Play your games with Race...he enjoys them!”  And she hung up.

“Go away!” she screamed at him through the window.

He rattled the doorknob.  “Chris, open the door!”

“No!  Go away!  Leave me alone!”

She waited a beat, clutching the phone tightly.  Then he said, “Chrissie!  If you don’t let me in, I will break a window!  You’re taking this a little too far!”

She didn’t answer again.  She backed into the house, hiding behind the corner that rounded into the kitchen.  Chrissie almost called Dena back, but then she peeked out toward the window again...he was gone.  That really didn’t make her feel any better because she had no idea where he went, but as the seconds ticked by, she started to relax.  He was gone.

Crash!

She whirled around in mid-air as her feet left the ground.  Glass from her back door shattered to the tile floor.  He broke her window!  That bastard!

Chrissie dropped the phone as she grabbed one of the mugs from the island.  She let it fly as soon as his head popped through.  Missed!  Dang it!  She reached for another...and in the next minute, her body was held captive and her lips were dancing willingly with his.

Talk about falling from grace...

Oh...but falling never felt so wonderful.  She could almost forgive him for the couch thing due to his incredible kissing skills...the broken window, that was another matter entirely.  As the kiss moved beyond a controlling act, she found her hands linked around his neck.  Kissing this man was something she could probably do on a daily basis...if she knew who the hellion he was!  She’d never kissed a stranger before.  It was kind of thrilling and scary, and she wondered if insanity ran in her family.  Dena had it, for sure.  After all, this was the South, and every family had a nut or two.

Eventually, he let go of her mouth.  Chrissie’s eyes blinked open.  His were dilated to near black.  He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, smiling softly.  “Forgive me, Chris?”

“I...”  She squeezed her eyelids tightly again, still feeling the warmth of the kiss on her lips, still reeling from the surreal experience.  The red metal doors of her vintage-reproduction refrigerator cooled her back.  The white tile of the floor chilled her bare toes.  The small draft coming through the broken window pane sent a scattering of goose bumps across her skin.  But inside...inside, a long-forgotten ember had been stoked, breathed upon, spreading a fever throughout her veins and igniting a current of tingling electricity that sparked along her nerve-endings.

The man said, “Now, that’s a look I know well.”

Chrissie opened her eyes and whispered, “Who are you?”

His finger traced down her temple, across her cheek to her lips.  “I’m the man that loves you.”

She shook her head.  “You can’t...you just can’t...”

“Oh, yes, I can,” he said sincerely.  “I find it very easy to do.  From the moment I first saw you, I knew I could fall in love with you.  Continuing to love you?  Well...”  He laughed quietly, still stroking her lips, her cheeks, her brow.

“You don’t even know me.”  Chrissie found it very difficult to look away from those dark blue eyes.  Ever so slowly, his pupils contracted, showing more of that mystifying, midnight color, slashed through with lighter steaks of a sapphire blue.  She’d never seen the like.  Her own blue eyes were standard issue, no mixing of tints or shades.  His were a creation from Heaven...doorways to that spiritual plane, and suddenly she wished they had met under different circumstances.

“Oh, I know you better than you think,” he replied.

She swallowed, breaking the trance he captured her in.  “No...I mean, you don’t know me.  Dena put you up to this.”

His midnight blue eyes narrowed.  “Chris, no more playing around.  I’ll do anything to make up for missing your birthday, but please, no more.”

Her vision blurred as tears formed.  “Don’t,” she said quietly.  “I’m scared.  I really don’t know who you are.”

He sighed, wiped a drop that crested on her eyelash.  “Chris, come on...please, for all we’ve been through, just stop.”

She pushed tiredly against his chest, making him stumble back, because they hadn’t met under different circumstances and he was still someone that trespassed into her home and persisted on tormenting her like this.  “You stop!  I’m not an idiot!  I can’t take this any longer.”

“You can’t take it any longer?  Chris, I’m tired, I’m sore all over, and I just want my sweet, loving wife back.”

“I’m -- not -- your -- wife!”

A red flush swelled up his neck and soaked through the skin of his cheek, making his dark eyes glitter dangerously.  Chrissie scooted away from him, thinking he was turning violent on her.  He’d yet to do that, and she didn’t know what he was capable of, other than breaking into her house.  “Okay...let’s play, shall we?” he said in what sounded as very hateful to her frightened self.

His fingers circled her wrist painfully, jerked her forward, and he picked up her body with ease, tossing her over his shoulder.  “What are you doing?”  Her heart crashed through her ribcage...oh, God!  He was going to rape her!  She struggled, kicking at him and pounding on his back...reaching out to grasp at door frames, furniture, anything, but his grip around her waist and across the back of her legs was like a steel vice.  He was too strong.  He slapped her on the rear, telling her to “be still,” but she only screamed louder.  He hauled her through the house toward the bedrooms.  Chrissie dug her nails into his back and screamed and screamed and cried, but he ignored her.  He kept moving...past the bedroom to her office in the back.  He shoved open the door and flung her into the room, her knees buckling under her as she fell.  Immediately, she put as much distance between them as possible, scrambling on all fours to the farthest corner, pushing upright, ready to fight him with everything she’s got.

“Stay away from me!”

He walked stiffly over to the bookshelf and pulled out her scrapbook.  Slamming it down on the desk and making her jump, he flipped it open to a page in the back.  He thumped his finger on a newspaper clipping with a blatant, colorful picture taking up most of the page.  “This is us, Chris...last year in Wisconsin at the Tour de Road.”  He jerked to the next page.  “Here we are in Italy last summer...”  Another page.  “This one is from last month...in Pennsylvania...”  He looked up at her, glaring with rampant fury.  Chrissie blinked at him, growing cold inside.  Impossible...  Then he snatched a photo album from the shelf.  He dropped that one on top of the scrapbook.  Chrissie flinched.

“The day after we met,” he said, rotating the album so she could see it.  Chrissie inched forward for a better look, not able to believe her eyes and ears.  But that was her face under that fleece hat surrounded by snow-capped mountains, and that was her sister, standing next to her...and him -- Race -- on her other side, gazing at Chrissie with an ecstatic grin on his face.  He nearly tore the pages out as he turned them.  “Christmas with your family...Easter!...vacationing at the Grand Canyon!...our wedding day!”

Chrissie stared with horror at the photos before her.  The two of them, smiling, happy, very much in love with each other...evidence of a life with a man she never met before this morning.  He opened a desk drawer and yanked out her fire-proof box.  Rifling roughly through it, he started tossing documents at her.  “Your passport...a letter you wrote me after we met...our marriage certificate!”  Chrissie picked the last one up off the floor with shaking hands and gaped at it.  He stomped out of the room.  She couldn’t move, she couldn’t speak, she couldn’t breathe.  The scrapbook clippings...the photos...an embossed, legal document...

Her head hurt...her lungs stopped working...her pulse was a drum of ice shards...

He came back and slapped a pile of letters in front of her.  Picking up one and waving it in her face, he snapped, “Our mortgage statement...look, Chrissie!  Both our names on the envelope!  Oh, look here...”  He shoved a home decorating magazine under her nose.  “Chrissie Willard!  Right there in black and white!  You -- are -- my -- wife!”

He took her by the shoulders, commanding her to look at him.  “I love you, Chrissie, I truly do...but sometimes...sometimes you...you make me so...Agh!”  The room spun around her.  His face shimmered oddly like a thumping stereo speaker.  Sound rushed in her ears.  She saw his mouth moving, calling her name...”Chris?...Chrissie?...Look at me, baby,”...his eyes blinking and widening...his hands cradling her face gently...

Then nothing else.

*****

(This story is a finalist for the Non-Teen category of the 2011 Watty's.  Vote and support if you love it.)