“You were…captured?”
I could barely hear her words, but I knew what she was saying – I’d heard similar reactions many times. It was part of the reason why I didn’t talk about it. It was everyone’s initial reaction – the disbelief that seemed to turn itself to some sort of plea to be told it was all a sick joke.
Like anyone would joke about that shit.
“The rest of my unit was killed a mile from our camp,” I told her. “Since I was the only officer, they figured I must have information, so I was taken prisoner and tortured for eighteen months.”
“Oh my God,” she whispered under her breath.
“Don’t do that,” I growled. I turned my eyes on her and glared. “It was years ago. I don’t want that shit from you, got it? That’s just why I left – they said after all of that, the doctors didn’t think I was fit for combat any more, and I didn’t want some fucking desk job, so I was discharged.”
My head was pounding again, and my chest ached with the labor of breathing. Aside from that, I still felt absolutely grimy, and talk of what had happened to me just made me think of sweat, sand, and dust.
“I need a shower,” I muttered as I tried to push myself back out of bed.
As soon as my feet hit the floor, I got dizzy and stumbled. I didn’t quite fall, but I had to put the palm of my hand on the mattress to keep the floor from coming right up to my face.
Bridgett practically had to walk me all the way to the bathroom. Once I was there, the dizziness left just long enough for me to take a piss in private. I turned on the shower but immediately starting cussing the damn thing out when I couldn’t get the temperature right.
“How about I help you?”
Bridgett opened the door and moved up beside me. She reached around, adjusted the water, stripped, and then got in with me.
“I need to shave first,” I told her as she reached for the bottle of shampoo.
She looked up to my face.
“I’m not sure I could do that for you.”
“I can do it.” I wasn’t sure, but it was going to drive me crazy if I didn’t. She got the razor for me and helped me lather up my face, and then I used the little round mirror in the shower to make sure I didn’t miss anywhere.
I felt a thousand times better.
“We’re going to have to make this quick,’ Bridgett said when I was done. “You look like you’re going to pass out. Just lean against the tiles.”
I was too weak to argue with her.
The tiles were cold on my back, but the water and Bridgett’s hands were warm. She started with a small handful of shampoo, and I had to lean forward a bit so she could reach around my head and wash my hair. Her fingers massaged my scalp, and I didn’t want to think about how good it felt.
She moved down my neck to my shoulders, filling her hands with liquid body-wash and coating my skin in lather. She washed my chest, my stomach, and down my legs. My eyes closed as she ran her hands all over me, and my cock remembered the way she had touched me in the past.
With my eyes opened just a slit, I watched her mouth move close to the head of my cock as she washed my feet and legs. As my body reacted to her on her knees in front of me, Bridgett glanced up at me – her look questioning.
I shook my head.
“I’d just fall over,” I informed her, and she nodded.
Her hands still ran over me, cleaned me from top to bottom, and I made a mental note to bring her back in here when I was healthy again. Images of her sucking my cock or with her back up against the tiles floated around in my dizzy head until she pulled me into the water, rinsed and dried me, and then hauled me back to bed, naked.
By the time she got herself dried off, I was already asleep.
* * * * *
The next morning I was markedly better. I even took Odin out for a quick trip to the grassy area of Lake Shore East Park. It ended up being all I was up for, but I figured it was still progress. The air was warm for the end of February, and after I brought Odin back up to the apartment, I went out on the balcony and looked over at the lake.
“You have such a beautiful view up here,” Bridgett said as she came up behind me. She wrapped her arms around my waist and placed her head against my shoulder. “Is that Millennium Park over there?”
She pointed off to the south.