The Soldier's Poisoned Heart

1

In the heat of the afternoon, two people tangled up in sweaty bedsheets writhe with ecstatic gasps. Their touches are charged, full of primal desire. The woman's dark skin glistens with water that the man laps up at her neck. The salt brings his taste buds alive. The sensation of his slick tongue against her skin makes her clench around his manhood and moan out his name.

Gripping his back with her hands and wrapping her legs around him, she throws off the bedsheets. The man's face dips down, his soft lips sucking in her nipple.

They move in time until the woman's toes curl, her legs gripping him tighter. She orgasms around him, and then he follows her, spilling into her.

Falling down with a gasp, Charlotte Spencer's black hair cascades over the bed like serpents. The man leans over her for a kiss, which she turns away from. His hand hovers over her forehead, wanting to push a strand of hair from her skin, but she pushes him away.

“Thanks for picking me up, Max.” Leaning to one side, Charlotte grabs her phone from the table next to her bed. “I don't know what I would have done without you. I hate when Louis calls in sick, this is the third time in two months!”

Maxwell Cooper, a tall, buff man with wild brown hair and a scruffy beard that Charlotte hates, grins down at her. “No problem. You've repaid me enough.” Max nuzzles his face into her shoulder, his perpetual five o'clock shadow scratching her skin.

Today, like every other day that Charlotte might call Max to her, was nothing more than her way of dealing with stress. Friends with benefits, no strings attached. That was the deal they made after Max made his little mistake and forced Charlotte to break up with him.

Max, on the other hand, has never cut those ties. His heart lies with this woman with hair like the darkest night and eyes fierce as any lion's. He has been fighting for her love ever since they broke up, but Charlotte has never relented.

Reaching around her curvy body, Max gropes Charlotte's breast. Her brown nipple stiffens in response, but the rest of her body tenses as she sighs. She sits up, her lips tight. The sheet slips from her shoulders, her brown back glistening in the fading afternoon sunlight that streams in from the Southern window behind her bed. At all times, Charlotte looks like a goddess. Breathtaking, inspiring, terrifying. Capable of compassion and creation, or brutal destruction.

“Max, we need to talk.”

His heart leaps. He sits up straight, his eyebrows furrowing. Giving Charlotte his full attention, he hopes that maybe she'll finally relent and become his girlfriend again. He has been over to her house, in her bed, three times this week. He even fully satisfied her each time to the best of his ability. Surely, she's ready to trust him again.

“What's up, beautiful?”

“We can't keep doing this.”

“Doing what?” Max reaches between her legs while kissing her hip bone. She smells like sex and spiced apple. “This?”

Charlotte pushes off the bed, ripping the sheet from him and wrapping it around her body. With it draping down her thin frame, she looks even more like a goddess. Aphrodite, angry. “I can't keep sleeping with you, Max. I'm just leading you on, or you're reading more into this than you should be. I don't know who's to blame, all I know is I'm never going to give you the kind of relationship you want from me.”

“What?” He asks, coming to the edge of the bed. His chest tightens, a familiar ache threatening to overwhelm him.

“Please just go. I need you to leave.” Her jaw clenches, her fists at her side straining to keep her from lashing out. When Max doesn't get up immediately, she throws her arms up and turns, opening her drawers and slamming them shut as she grabs clothes. She throws them on the counter in the bathroom attached to her bedroom. The same bathroom where Max lost his virginity. “I'm going to take a shower, and when I get out you need to be gone.”

“Wait!” Max stands up, not covering himself. His cock slaps against his leg as he runs to the door, trying to stop her. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because, Max! You fucked up, and I still haven't forgiven you!”

Max grabs her arm, but she pulls away and slaps his face. He rubs his stinging cheek and tries to choke down a tear. “I thought you enjoyed this!”

“The sex is great and always has been, but it's not worth it to keep torturing myself with your stupid puppy dog looks and idiotic dream of one day marrying me! It's never going to happen! You have to go. It was so stupid of me to rely on your help to deal with my stress, and now I'm cutting you off.”

Charlotte stands there for another second, watching Max as he goes from hurt to furious to hurt again. He has a million questions he wants to ask her, and a million more insults he wants to sling her way, but before he can say anything she slams the door with a loud sigh.

“God damn it!” Max bellows, throwing Charlotte's expensive bedside lamp to the floor and shattering it. He grabs his clothes and his cell phone, pulling a framed photo of her off the wall in the hallway and breaking its glass before storming out of the house. Hopping into his Lamborghini, his radio blares speed metal and he rushes out to the nearest club. He's going to dance, drink, and then fuck someone. Doesn't matter who. All that matters is pumping up the ego that Charlotte just stepped on, cut up, and ground to a pulp.

With three stages, 10 private rooms, expensive liquor, and the students of an Ivy League college nearby, Paradise on Ten and Drive is the number one club in the city. It's a little slice of New York hundreds of miles away. Celebrities from all over the world travel to be seen at Paradise, and it's no surprise. It's been around for fifty years and has been owned by one of the top movie producers ever since then.

Only a few people are able to bypass the line and just get into the club on any given night. Politicians. Celebrities. Exceptionally beautiful women. Max slides by the bouncer with a nod thanks to his heavy investment in the club and his father's work with the owner.

The club is too crowded for bad emotions to catch anyone's attention, but Frank isn't just anyone. As soon as Max sits down in front of his bar with his head in his hands, the star bartender immediately sets down a glass of vodka and places a hand on his shoulder. “You don't look so good.”

Frank is one of the few people Max considers a real friend, even though he's as old as his father and covered in scars and tattoos from years in jail. When Max was a kid and still sneaking into the club with a fake ID, Frank was there to take away his alcohol and give him a few words of wisdom. It was annoying at first, but now Max appreciates the fatherly attention that he rarely got elsewhere.

“Charlotte shit,” Max grunts, fighting the urge to punch his own leg. Who does she think she is? Max is going to be worth billions of dollars in a few years! Who could turn someone like him down?”

“Man, tough luck. You gotta get over her, she's worse than heroin for you.” Frank knows a thing or two about heroin. You can read his history on the lines in his face.