At Your Service: Tammer (8 page)

“Have you considered maybe he’s not testing you, but himself?” he asked, sitting up and letting one leg dangle off the side of the bed. “I can’t imagine this has been the easiest thing for him, but it’s something he clearly recognized you need and he’s willing to bow to. I understand he’s shared you before under orchestrated circumstances, but never like this. Don’t you imagine it’s testing his boundaries as much as it is yours?”

Before Nina could answer, the front pocket of Tammer’s discarded jeans lit up and his phone rang. She bent and retrieved it to see he had an incoming message.

“Speak of the devil,” she mumbled, tossing the device at him and moving to sit with her back to him on the end of the bed.

“He couldn’t get you so he messaged me. Wants to know if you’re okay. Where is your phone exactly?”

“Downstairs on the catch all.”

“Note to self, buy a damn chain to tie Nina’s phone around her neck,” Tammer said. “What would you like me to tell him?” When she didn’t answer, the mattress lifted and Tammer came to stand in front of her, holding his phone up the screen flashing with Joel’s words. “What would you like me to tell him? Answer me.”

“That I’m fine,” Nina said lifelessly. “He never knows anything other than that. It’s not safe for him to think anything’s wrong. Distracted men make mistakes.”

“Don’t I know it,” Tammer seemed to force out, his fingers flying with his reply. In a matter of a few seconds, his phone buzzed again. “If you want me gone, now’s the time to speak, Nina. I can put a stop to all this right now. The choice is yours. Make it.”

Nina’s heart clutched at the thought of never seeing Tammer again and again at the thought of not pleasing Joel. As miserable as she knew she’d be playing pretend in this game of charades, she could only concede to one answer. “I don’t want you gone,” she said, bowing her head and running her hands through her hair, acknowledging the truth.

After a few more exchanges between the two men, Tammer closed his text function and after placing his phone on the dresser, he came back and held his hands out toward her. “Come on. Come to bed. He told me I could spend the night. All night.”

“He what?” he clipped, running her arms under her breasts and glaring at him. “Why would he do that?”

“Because I didn’t lie for you. I told him you weren’t feeling quite up to par and he told me to stay with you.”

“Do you realize what a bad idea this is?” Nina asked, scowling.

“Yeah, I do and I’d be lying to you, myself, and my maker if I tried to deny what you’ve decided we can’t say out loud. But I know what I want. I want you. In my arms. All night. Even if I can’t kiss you or make love to you completely, I can hold you. Your Liege just broke rule number three for me so I can do just that.”

“You must be fucking shitting me. Is there no regard for the truth or is that one of the golden rules you choose to ignore?”

“I just said I didn’t lie. And I didn’t ask to stay with you. That was his suggestion and if the cards falling the right way makes me a bad man, well, sweetheart, guilty.”

“You know this will never be enough,” Nina said, climbing into bed then curling up on her side while Tammer shut the lights off then climbed in behind her and pulled her against his chest. “The longer we pretend it is, the worse it’ll be when…”

“Let me worry about what happens when. And just so we’re clear, that’s not a question, it’s an order.”

Chapter Ten

Could anything possibly feel more right and at the same time be so damn wrong? Tammer hardly believed he loved Nina, hardly thought it was feasible to grow to love anyone so quickly. But if love was something that just happened then he couldn’t fully deny the plausibility of what his heart pointed out every single time she invaded his thoughts, every time he laid eyes on her. He also couldn’t deny that what was happening was as foreign to him as Chinese so he couldn’t be certain where the line became shady and more than liking someone turned into an emotion he’d never held for anyone in his life. Why the hell now? More importantly, why did his heart have to think it was perfectly acceptable to initiate the scariest feeling he’d ever felt for his friend’s wife, who was off limits in that department?

There were rules.

Rules. That was a joke. When had Tammer ever been one to walk a completely straight line anyway? Never. In his former and current line of work, there was a gray area in which people played around with the rules, bent them, found loopholes, read into them whatever it took to be able to use the rules to one’s advantage. They used people, places, things, and assets to get what they needed and stay alive when it came down to it.

But Tammer wasn’t in the field. He was in his friend’s house in his friend’s bed with his friend’s wife and the harder he tried to convince himself he could walk a straight line where she was concerned, the harder it became to believe it.

While Tammer could argue with himself all day long that Joel had put him here and Joel knew the risks, the fact remained this was a business arrangement. One he could have turned down upon request. Or was it? The truth was, Tammer erased a line of his own from the beginning by refusing payment from Joel. They were friends. How did he even begin to label this thing at all? And who did he really have to blame for what was all too evidently transpiring between he and Nina, the very vulnerable woman who’d fallen asleep in his arms not minutes after finally succumbing to the fact Tammer wasn’t going anywhere.

He couldn’t blame Joel for her state because the man hadn’t neglected Nina on purpose. The Corps was an evil mistress who’d been forcing men to make a less than savory choice for over two hundred years. Tammer didn’t know a single marine he’d come in contact with and had a significant other who’d not struggled at one time or other with putting their career above a spouse or lover. It wasn’t an easy decision to make and as a result, the Corps was responsible for more military divorces than any other branch of service. It was because he realized what Joel went through and had walked that mile, Tammer couldn’t let himself believe he was some savior sent down to pluck Nina from a bad situation. Yes, he’d been asked to help, but he’d not been asked to steal someone’s wife.

But Tammer also realized he had other choices now and could offer Joel more of a choice than he’d initially conceived of. Tammer was no longer owned by the government and the choices he found himself toying with had him questioning his honor as a man and a friend. And as he lay awake listening to Nina breathe and watching her facial movements as she slept, he wondered how strong a friendship had to be to share something as sacred as a woman.

The bigger question was how he kept Nina happy, managed to not allow her to push him away, and maintained the boundaries until he figured it all out. Seeing her miserable while a silent pissing contest went on between him and Joel was the last thing Tammer wanted. Joel thought he knew what was best for his wife, but Tammer had a feeling his continued absence jaded his opinion and while he didn’t want to trample on ten years of marriage and a lifetime of love and devotion, being directly involved lent to a perception not visible from ten thousand miles away. Tammer knew without a doubt when he broached the subject, a pissing contest was exactly what he’d start.

Although Tammer had a hard time believing the thought of something more permanent hadn’t at the least crossed Joel’s mind at some point. He had to be almost half-way home with the concept if he was willing to hire a friend and not a total stranger. It seemed to him a total stranger might have been the easier choice.

He wasn’t sure what time he finally fell asleep, but when he woke at just after seven to discover he was running late, Nina was gone and from the coolness of the sheet he figured she’d been gone a while. After borrowing some Scope and washing his face, Tammer pulled his clothes on and made his way downstairs wondering where she was so early. Surely speech writing didn’t start until a decent hour.

It didn’t take him long to determine where she’d gone. Half-way down the stairs the dull, rapid thud of footfalls echoed from the back of the house telling him Nina was on the treadmill and apparently practicing for not just the female PFT but the male version. He was fairly certain she was running about an eight minute mile and when he rounded the corner, he discovered she was barely winded. He knew she couldn’t hear him because she had ear buds in and her eyes were closed as her lips moved in a mantra only she heard. So he leaned into the door jamb and watched her, ponytail bouncing with every step, sweat running down to fall off the end of her nose. The smell of adrenaline made him want to jerk her off the damn thing, rip her baggy shorts off, and fuck her into next week.

Boundaries. They taunted him at every turn.

It wasn’t until she opened her eyes and reached down to reset her iPod that Tammer approached her, touching his ears so she knew he wanted to talk.

“What?” she huffed out, jerking one ear piece out and never missing a step.

“I have to go,” Tammer said, placing his hands on the front of the machine.

“’Kay. Have a…good day,” she managed between breaths.

“Stop this thing or I will,” Tammer said, realizing she was blowing him off and not liking it one damn bit.

Her forehead furrowed as she hit the reset button slowing the equipment a bit at a time until it stopped altogether. “What?” she asked, grabbing a hand towel off the hand rail and running it over her face.

“Just how long have you been at this?” Initially he thought she was just getting her morning run in, now he believed from her curt attitude she wasn’t just exercising but exorcising.

With a shrug, she consulted the Garmin device on her wrist which he could see was flashing her heart rate which was remarkably low and steady. “Almost an hour. Why?”

“You’re not just wearing yourself out for your physical well-being, are you?” Tammer asked, reaching out and brushing back a sweaty tendril that had fallen across her eye. “You running from me? Joel? Yourself?”

“Does it matter?” Nina snapped, grabbing her water bottled, tilting her head back with her mouth open and streaming what appeared to be a sports drink of some sort in.

“As a matter of fact, it does,” he insisted, grabbing her chin when she looked away from him and drawing her gaze back to his. “If you’re running from Joel, he’ll be home eventually. If you’re running from yourself, that might work until you go upstairs and look in the mirror. If you’re running from me, I’ve got news for you. I’ll be back. Make no mistake, yeah, things are getting plenty complicated. Do I fully get what’s going on? By all means, no. But I’m not going out that door and not look back because whatever’s going on is too
scary
.” Tammer threw an arm out and pointed toward the front of the house, anger rushing over him. “I have to go right now, otherwise we’d spend the morning talking about all this and figuring out what we do about it, but know this. I’ll be back later and you better not be back on this damn thing
running
from anything,” he nearly shouted before spinning on his heel and stalking off.

Forty-five minutes later, still dripping from his shower, Tammer sat at his desk staring at a blank email box, still trying to figure out what to tell Joel. What was it they said? Less was more?

Hey man, when can you live chat? I’m going back to your house around dinner time. If you have a chance, hit me up before six local. We need to talk.

Without further hesitation, he hit send.

When he walked back through his door a little after four, his first stop was his laptop where he found an answer.

What the fuck? Will be on at five your time. Don’t. Be. Late!

Shit. Tammer knew he couldn’t be nailed to the wall for screwing his friend’s wife because Joel knew about that. He couldn’t be in trouble for staying over. Joel knew about that. Just what the hell had happened in the six hours he was away?

He didn’t even have time to take off his over shirt which was coated with a thick layer of dust from hours of being on his belly at the range behind a new operator his boss had hired helping him hone his aim. He turned on his heel headed toward the kitchen for a beer and was stopped three steps later by a droning beep coming from his laptop indicating Joel was thirty minutes early. Spinning back around, he slid into his chair and hit
accept call
.

“What the hell is Nina so upset about?” Joel asked, his brow knitted and his eyes looking like he hadn’t slept in days.

“You have to ask?” Tammer snapped back. “Are you fucking kidding me, man? Where do I begin?”

It looked like Tammer wasn’t going to have to piss first. Joel had done a fine job of that by insinuating Tammer was the source of all Nina’s ills.

“Try beginning with what happened between last night when she was a tad under the weather and this morning when I finally got her to answer me on here and she couldn’t look me in the eye and looked like she’d been crying,” Joel ground out. “What the fuck did you do to her? I thought I could trust you.”

“Try what I
didn’t
do to her and neither have you in God knows how long,” Tammer shot, his fists curling on top of his thighs. “You can trust me. If you couldn’t, I’d have already done what I didn’t do.”

Joel shook his head and blinked a few times. “What the hell does all that cryptic bullshit mean?”

“It means your wife is emotionally starved, man. She needs a lot more than a damn fill in Dom in case you hadn’t noticed.” Tammer unfurled his hands and slammed both palms on the desk top. “She needs to be held and kissed and made love to. Not just tied up, whipped, and fucked. She’s dying on the inside and so scared of betraying you she rarely leaves the fucking house.”

“What happened last night?” Joel asked, much calmer than Tammer expected him to be once he spelled out his observations.

“We had sex, we didn’t cross any of your lines, and when it was over, she hid in the bathroom for a while.” Tammer sighed and dropped his head. “I think she felt as empty as I did. Then you messaged me, I spent the night, still didn’t cross the lines, and this morning I woke up to find her on the treadmill running like her ass was on fire.” Swallowing the voice screaming at him to just stay quiet and gut it out for Nina, Tammer lost all the steam he’d built throughout the day, steam he planned on using to present his cause, and looked back up. “I can’t do this. I thought I could, but I can’t hurt her like that anymore. If all you want is a sitter for her, someone who can just come in and do what you ask without feeling anything, I’ll help you find that person. But I’m not him.”