CHAPTER 4

BROCK

As I sat in the woods waiting for my prey, I couldn’t stop thinking about seeing Destiny the previous day. I was glad to see that all those years in the sex trade hadn’t aged her prematurely. Who knows how she ended up psychologically, though? Maybe we would become friends and I would find out. Maybe more than friends.

I shook of that thought. What a hypocrite! Here I waited in hiding to satisfy an element of my lustful desires. I was about to behave badly with one woman, while dreaming of a wholesome relationship with another. Did I have a split personality?

In a few minutes I would be indulging in a game of lust that sometimes seemed to control me. Outwardly, as far as the world knew, I was disciplined. Inwardly, I cried along with the Apostle Paul, declaring, “Oh wretched man that I am!” But unlike Paul, at this time in my life I had yet to fully inquire, “Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

I spotted my prey making her way up the trail, and my adrenaline began to spike. She came closer and closer to my lair. Man, did she ever fill out those black spandex shorts that she ran in with a matching sports bra. Her entire lithe body was perfectly toned. The green camouflaged baseball cap that covered her short black hair sat low over her eyes, but I could tell that she was looking around nervously. As she should. This place was remote. The man about to attack her, me, was the only other person for miles.

From my secluded spot, I watched her pass as I admired her well-muscled female form. I moved quickly and quietly to another spot, a place I had prepared for an attack. She would continue to run up hill for another two hundred yards, and then the trail would loop around, winding back down the hill. When she passed my spot, I hoped that she would be tired, unfocussed, and then I would strike.

I had a dark green canvas covered with leaves and twigs positioned by a good sized rock. I hid underneath the canvas and put my feet against the rock, readying myself to spring out as she passed. We would be so deep in the woods that nobody would hear a thing. Go ahead and scream all you want, Honey. I felt like a sinister Rambo.

I could hear the padding of her feet on the trail before she came into sight. They were heavy footfalls so she was indeed tired! Suddenly she was in front of me, and my legs catapulted me off the rock. I grabbed her around the legs as she went down with a scream and then a grunt. In seconds, I had her in an arm bar and her face winced with pain.

“Tap out,” I told her.

“No,” she grunted. Then she shouted, “Get off me!”

I applied a little more pressure and waited. Her body was slick with sweat and hard to hold on to. Despite her fatigue, she was strong.

“Tap out,” I demanded.

“No,” she said with gritted teeth as she struggled against me.

I applied a little more pressure. She growled, but then slapped the ground three times and I released her. I was climbing off of her when she grabbed me and flipped me to the side of her. Like I said, she was strong. Then she grabbed my arm and put me in a wrist bar.

“What are you doing?” I asked as now I winced and froze paralyzed by pain.

“Retaliation,” she said with a cocky grin. Then she lowered her face to mine and kissed me on the mouth. A drop of her sweat fell into my eye, and I blinked the burn away.

“That’s not fair,” I said. “You’re the one that wants me to attack you. You keep begging me to play this twisted game of yours, and then you cheat?”

“I know, but I usually get away,” she said. “I guess I’m a sore loser. Nice job.”

“Thanks,” I said. “But you do know that if I really wanted to take you out, I could.”

“But you do give it your all within safer parameters, right?”

“Absolutely.”

“All right then,” she said. “So now I need you to tap out to even things up today.”

“Even things up?” I complained. “This was the first time in six or eight tries that I got you in a position to tap out.”

“Nine,” she said, “but who’s counting? And just for the record, you know you like playing this game.”

I first met Nora Medora when I lived in Miami. She was a vice detective with the Miami police department. When our occupations happened to overlap six years earlier, the sexual chemistry between us crackled, even though we were on opposing sides of a case. When the case was over, I called her. To my pleasant surprise, she agreed to meet me for a drink. She didn’t beat around the bush with what she wanted, which was a partner to be physically intimate with, period. At the time, that worked for me as well.

Nora was focused on her career, and I was enraptured in wanderlust. I was based out of Miami, but I traveled the world for my job, and loved it. Neither she nor I were good at relationships, but we weren’t into sleeping around either. We were two peas in a pod, and so began six years of being ‘friends with benefits.’ Other than sex, it actually seemed like a friendship with a guy in a lot of ways. We worked out together, watched ballgames, and talked shop about her experiences as a cop and mine as a bodyguard for the rich and famous.

In the spring of 2015, I was extremely frustrated with my life. I was tired of being a soldier for the wealthy and pampered. I also had been around the world several times, and had had my fill of travel. I also was frustrated with the shallowness of my arrangement with Nora.

Yet, I had developed feelings for her, and I went against our deal. I suggested she move in with me, and on bended knee, I proposed marriage. But she shot me down quickly and cruelly. It left me hurt and angry, but desperate for a change I might not have otherwise taken. I wanted something like a quest for truth and meaning to life. Reading Captain Kirk Samson’s book ignited a spark within me that I needed. God put it in my hands and at just the right time.

So it started with a simple vacation back home to Minnesota. I took my blue 2014 Shelby Mustang on a road trip with a plan to stop in Iowa. I wanted to meet the man whose book about faith, doubt, love and war, was beginning to change my life. I was hoping for the better. I also wanted to see the church and community vividly described in his autobiography. The heavenly quaintness of Cotton Creek Cove didn’t disappoint.

On the same trip I met Bentley Bonnano, a friend and co-worker’s brother. He was kind of goofy, but easy going. He was also a skilled mechanic, and I admired his old fashioned shop in the country, where he renovated classic vehicles. When he petitioned me to come to work with him, and also room with him, my first thought was no.

But between my rut in life, my stagnate relationship with Nora, Bentley’s offer, and Cotton Creek Cove Fellowship, I decided to move to eastern Iowa. I needed a major life reboot, and I was convinced this was it. So, I returned to Miami just long enough to close up shop, so to speak, and then I moved to Iowa. Right or wrong, I didn’t even say goodbye to Nora.

Somewhere between two and three months after I moved to Iowa, I came home to find a Dodge Charger with Illinois plates in my driveway. I walked around cautiously to my backyard. Was it a former enemy? Some type of salesperson? More than likely, it was some type of cop wanting to question me about something from my old job. I was right about the cop part.

“Hey, you,” a sultry, familiar voice said from behind me.

Have you ever been thrilled and devastated at the same time? Even in khaki shorts, a Miami Heat T-shirt, and aviator sunglasses, Nora Medora looked smoking hot.

“What are you doing here?” I asked matter-of-factly. But I felt a little creeped out, like she was stalking me or something. But at the same time, I was a bit excited. Seeing her felt, for lack of a better word, nostalgic. Yet my better judgement made me very skeptical.

The rare smile on her face faded, and she defiantly put her hands on her hips. “That’s how you’re going to greet me?”

“Apparently,” I said.

She tried to smile again, but it flickered and went out. She actually seemed to be fighting off tears. Tears would be another rare thing for Nora Medora.

“This your car?” I asked, groping for something to say as I pointed to the Charger.

“It’s a rental.”

“I see,” I said. “So how’d you find me?”

“I’m a detective,” she said.

We stood and stared at each other for a long minute.

“I’ve missed you,” Nora finally said quietly.

A third strange set of words from her. I just gazed at her blank faced. A lone tear leaked from under the aviators.

“You haven’t missed me at all?” Nora asked in a croaky whisper. Maybe she was more thoughtful and caring than I gave her credit for.

“Sure I have,” I said. “But the last time I saw you, you threw the roses I bought for you after I asked you to marry me. Then you punched me in the stomach after I said that I loved you.”

“It wasn’t that hard of a punch,” she said calmly as she removed her sunglasses, revealing bloodshot eyes. “You broke our agreement, and it took me by surprise. But now that I’ve had 72 days to think about it, do you know how I would have responded in hindsight?”

“How?” I asked, intrigued.

“I love you, too,” she said stepping toward me, drawing the words out slowly and passionately. Our mouths came together like they had over a thousand times before. But never with this much desperation. After a couple minutes lost in a lip lock, she pushed away from me.

“I need to tell you something,” Nora said as we came up for air. “I’m taking a job with the Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation. I’ll be based out of Des Moines.”

“What?” I said, incredulously, my whole body going stiff. “That was rather presumptuous.”

“You don’t understand,” she said. “I needed a change, too. Plus I was lost without my best friend.”

“Your only friend,” I added.

She just shrugged, and continued. “Anyway, right after you left, I started applying around the Midwest. Regardless of whether or not you want to resume our, um, relationship, the IDCI seems like a perfect fit for me. I’ll have a chance to be a bigger fish in a smaller pond, rather than remaining stuck as a small fish in a bigger.”

“I see,” I replied, still getting my mind around Nora possibly being back in the picture. Again, I was both apprehensive and thrilled at the same time.

“So, would you be interested in resuming what we had?” Nora asked with a coy, seductive smile.

“Just so you know, I’m at a point in my life where I want a normal relationship. That’s why I asked you to marry me.”

“Are you seeing anyone?” she asked.

“No.”

“Great, let’s resume then,” Nora said with a strange, bright smile.

“I said I want a normal relationship,” I insisted.

“What exactly do you mean by normal?” Nora asked. I could tell she was holding in frustration. I think she was hoping I’d be so ecstatic to see her, I would cave. I’m ashamed to admit that Nora always controlled me by sex appeal. So why the drab shorts and a t-shirt that was a size too big? It might have been a psychological ploy. If it was, once again I’m ashamed to admit, it ended up working.

“I want to settle down,” I told her with a shrug. “It’s as simple as that. I want a wife and kids one day.”

She pinched the bridge of her nose, closed her eyes, bowed her head, and then shook it. Then she looked at me. “I’ll consider marriage, but no babies are gonna take up residence in my womb.”

“Fair enough, we could adopt. I’m sure there are plenty of orphans in the world.”

She nodded, then snorted, and then shook her head.

“What was that?” I chuckled. “First a yes, then a maybe, and then a no?”

“If we were to have kids, adoption is the way to go. However, can you really see me as a mother? I’m not exactly a warm and fuzzy female. Like you insinuated, I don’t have many friends. I’m self-aware. I know I’m cold and prickly. That’s why I was stunned that you want to marry. So tell me, why do you?”

I shrugged. “We have a history, I’m loyal, and we get along pretty good.”

“We’ve always got along pretty good because never lived together.”

“We could adjust,” I tried.

“Okay,” she said with a sarcastic chuckle. Then she put on a seductive grin. “Now, how about you give me a tour of your house, and conclude it with your bedroom. We could try this adjustment you speak of by me spending the night.”

Now I had my first real struggle with sexual urges since I started attending Cotton Creek Cove Fellowship. The last time I had been intimate was actually with Nora a few months previously. Was I the last for her? As attractive as she was, I suspected so. That’s probably why she seemed as desirous as me. Even more so.

But I had a new dilemma in my psyche. I had been trying to walk with God the last couple of months. I had come to believe fornication to be a sin. But there was a problem with my flesh. My walk with God wasn’t with all my heart. Yet I still tried to do the right thing, but my flesh was weak, despite my strong body. I tried to explain my situation to Nora. In a nutshell, I told her that we needed to be married before we became one physically again.

“Well, I’m not marrying you today,” she told me. “I need to get my head around our situation, and you getting all religious now. So how about we compromise? We’ll get together on my days off, and I’ll even go to church with you when I can. But we need to resume our, um, thing post haste.”

“By thing, you mean sex?”

She smiled seductively, stepped toward me, and took my hands in hers. Her lovely dark, intense eyes gazed into mine. “How about we call it making love?”

“Nora, like I explained, we need to be married before we resume intimacy.”

Nora tended to be a hot head. Up to this point she had been patient and reasonable. But I knew her well and braced for a verbal explosion. So I was surprised when she simply nodded, shrugged, and took a step back from me.

Before I comprehended what she was doing, her t-shirt seemed to shoot off the top of her head. Rather than a bra, she was wearing a tiny red bikini top. Placing hands on her hips, she grinned mischievously and inquired, “Well?”

“I see you’ve still been working out in my absence,” I replied as I tried to stuff down temptation.

She stepped toward me again. “I’ve had to work off frustrations. Lots of frustration! It seems you have too.”

She ran her left hand over my right bicep, and her right hand over my left pectoral muscle. She complimented me on my build. I have often received comments and compliments on my muscles. This was ironic as my flesh had never been weaker under her touch. She kissed me deeply, and I kissed her back enthusiastically.

“Come on, show me your bedroom,” she said coyly, as she took my hand and began to lead me toward my house.

I began to follow as if in a trance. But then I stopped after a few steps and pulled my hand from hers. Lamely, I said, “Nora… I can’t.”

“Wow, you really have changed,” she replied as if appalled. But she seemed to be enjoying herself. Then she sighed. “Well, I certainly don’t want to force you against your will. But I do want to show you one more thing before I leave. I want you to know what you’ll be missing out on.”

Off came her khaki shorts, revealing the other half of her bikini. Her tiny bikini. All of the reason seemed to drain from my brain. She did a quick little parade, then opened her arms and asked, “Well, do I stay or do I go?”

“Stay,” I heard myself say.

Thus Nora Medora reentered my life and drastically impeded my spiritual progress. After I caved in that first time, it only became easier to give in. Especially when some new twists were added to our relationship. Some good, some bad. Nora began attending church with me every few weeks, and I played a bizarre little hide and seek game with her. Actually it was more like hunt and escape.

With all of the remote areas close to where I lived, she had me stalk her and try to attack her when she went for a run. This was supposed to hone her skills as an officer of the law. I suppose it did, but our exercise also always ended with sexual overtones.

After more than half a decade together and her skill at manipulation, she knew how to play me. Nine months into her move to Iowa, and we were still no closer to marriage. She was my biggest stumbling block. Not only sexually, but she knew a secret of mine that she held over me.

Before I began seeking God, I had been a vigilante killer. Nora Medora had found out. However, it was some pretty evil guys I had eliminated, so my girlfriend cop had been an ally. But then my destiny changed by reacquainting with Destiny Knight. This made my girlfriend ally a potential enemy.