“Why you stalking the men’s showers?”
“I’m waiting on a tired surgeon.”
“St. John?”
“Yeah. He’s had five hours but needs a week.”
“They need him.”
“I’m going to use the Defense stuff.”
He nodded. “I’ll go get it.”
“Wait.”
“What?”
I didn’t want him to see me give the shot. He’d see how much I admired my patient’s bottom, and I’d be ashamed. “Wait on my order.”
He smirked. The effort to not look at my tits after getting an order from me was tearing him in two. I could see the thoughts behind his eyes like a movie. “Roger that.”
He took off toward the psych office.
* * *
Caden got out of the shower trailer looking cleaner and smelling better.
“Your boot’s untied.”
He looked down. “Huh.” Surprised, he crouched and laced it up.
I crouched with him. “Caden.”
“Major.”
“This isn’t giving me confidence that you should be in an operating room.”
The thup-thup-thup of choppers came from the sky.
“It’s an untied boot.”
“I’m going to give you a shot before you go in.”
“More speed?”
“Yes.”
“Can you do me a favor?” he asked as we stood.
“Depends.”
“Go in my trailer. In my footlocker’s a set of keys with a rabbit’s foot. It’s right on top. Take the rabbit’s foot off and put it in your pocket.”
“For what?”
“For you. You need it.”
“What do I need a rabbit’s foot for?”
“It’s a useless talisman but might take the edge off your worry.”
I put my hands on my hips. Was he being a jerk? Or was he doing something helpful and nice? I couldn’t assume malice. “Thanks, I guess.”
“Combination’s 2259.”
“See you in the scrub room.”
* * *
After I gave him the shot, I went to his bunk. I slid his footlocker from under his bed and opened it. The scent that came from it was concentrated sex. Freshly ground coffee. Wool. His clothes were neatly pressed and folded. He might have learned that in the military, but I doubted it. A man was born with this level of precision.
His keys weren’t on top. They were under the first layer of army-green shirts.
A car key for a Mercedes. A house key. A metal keychain inscribed with “Never Forget 9/11.” A white rabbit’s foot.
I removed the furry knob and replaced the keys. Before closing the lid, I inhaled deeply and ran my hand over the shirts, pretending he was in them.
Chapter Four
DAY EIGHT
14:56:00
The battle took five weeks, but the initial offensive was over after eight days.
Caden had gone three more nonstop. No catnaps. No lie-downs. The synthetic speed did its job twice over.
When the last soldier was sewn up and the party had started in the mess hall, he was in no condition to celebrate. I found him standing shirtless over the linen hamper, scrubs balled in a fist, a marble statue of a man.
“Hey,” I said. “It’s over for now.”
He opened his fist and let the scrubs fall into the bin. “I’m tired.”
“Ya think?”
I reached for his hand so I could check his pulse. That was what I told myself. But when I took it and slid my hands to his wrist and down to his elbow in a long stroke and he lifted his arm to cup my jaw, there was no more lying.
He kissed me as if he’d been on hunger strike and our first kiss was the nourishment he’d been denying himself. As if he couldn’t bear to not kiss me for another second.
Or maybe that was what I was feeling, because I clutched the back of his neck like a woman terrified of losing something. My mouth devoured him with the force of a catapult held in tension for too long yet sprung too fast. My hands released his neck and ran over the crests and valleys of his body. He pushed me against the table and pressed his fingers between my legs. The fabric was damp and hot.
“Fuck,” he growled between his teeth before planting his mouth on mine again.
I wrapped my legs around his waist, and he pushed his erection against me. Through three layers of army-issue garments, he was hot and hard, pushing against my pussy as if he could disintegrate everything between us. He jerked his hips to stimulate my clit, and I shifted mine to rub against the length of him.
“Yes,” I groaned. “That’s good.”
He jerked again, and I shifted again, until we fell into such a hard rhythm we couldn’t kiss anymore. We rubbed together, hard against hot, watching each other’s faces, panting against the other’s lips.
His eyes scrunched, and his jaw clenched. He planted his elbows behind my shoulders and held my head.
“Close, I’m—” I gasped.
He ground against me harder. Faster. “Yes.”
The orgasm went on and on—a gradual release of pressure through the tiniest hole. Even as he thrust his cock against me, the incidental stimulation wasn’t ever enough all at once. It was cumulative, and I broke slowly, over and over, spilling my climax into tears and long, hitching sobs as he had his own orgasm, exhaling into my neck.
My tears didn’t stop. I wept onto his skin, shaking under him. The stories I’d heard. The pain I’d seen. Everything. The brain-injured bodies being shipped home. I’d watched so much suffering and bottled it away. Caden shattered it, then kissed the tears off my cheeks.
He reached for a towel and wiped his semen off the front of my uniform as I wept. His dick had come free of the drawstring scrubs. He wiped off his belly, redid the string, and reached over me for a new shirt.
I tried to get up, but that only drove me into his arms. God, I wanted him.
“Sleep with me,” he said.
“Like last time?”
“No. This time, I’m going to try to fuck you, and you’re going to let me.”
* * *
My trailer was nicer, but we went to his without discussion. The entire camp was relaxing with music and alcohol, but when he closed the door, we were in our own world. He peeled off his shirt and dropped his scrubs, stepping out of his underwear in one move.
The floodlights came through a crack in the blinds, casting his cock’s shadow over his leg. I unbuttoned my shirt, and he got on his knees before me, undoing the metal belt buckle.
“You hungry?” He slid the belt through the metal clasp.
“No.”
“Thirsty?” Button and zipper undone, he kissed the panties under it.
“I’m all right.”
“I have bottled water for later.”
“How much later can you stay awake?”
He slid my pants down as I got my shirt off.
“I can stay awake long enough to come in you. Come on you. Come with you.” He looked up at me and pulled my panties down. “I can stay awake long enough to suck you, finger you, fuck you.” His hands ran down my legs to get my underwear off. When he got to my feet, he pushed them apart. “As long as you can stay awake tonight.” Watching my face, he ran his fingers from deep in the crack of my ass, to my wet pussy, to the throbbing nub at the other side. “That’s how long you’ll be coming.”
He slid two fingers inside me. “Look at me.”
I did. Even from waist level, he was in charge.
“Birth control,” he said.
“I’m on it.”
He spread the lips apart and laid his fluttering tongue against my exposed clit. My knees turned to jelly, and I nearly fell over. He stood and whipped the chair from behind the desk, guiding me into it.
“These past eight days,” he said, lifting one of my legs over an arm of the chair. “Eight days of hell. You made them bearable.” He draped the other leg over the other arm, until my wet pussy was fully expos
ed to him. The way he looked at it was more arousing than my previous lovers’ touches. “I trusted you with myself, and you did right by me.” He was on his knees again, a hand on the inside of each thigh. “Thank you.”
“You could just write me a note.”
“I might still,” He kissed my knee and all the way up to the center. “But I’ve wanted you since the minute I saw you.” He gave my clit a little suck. “You came off the Chinook like you could conquer the Republican Army all by yourself.” Another suck, and I put my fingers in his hair. “So fucking sexy.” He took my hands away and laid them on my knees. “All I wanted to do was conquer you.”
He held my hands and knees together and went to work with his tongue. Sucking and licking until I was close, then stopping to circle my entrance to bring the sensations there. Back up to my clit, over and over.
“Let me come,” I gasped, looking down at him. “Don’t stop this time.”
“You don’t rank me here.”
“What do you want?”
“Say please.”
“Please.”
He brought me close again, then stopped to run his tongue over my opening again.
“Please, Caden.”
“You’re too sexy when you’re close.” He sucked me gently. Stopped.
“No! God, please let me come. Please. I’m begging.”
“I like that.”
“Please,” I whispered.
He ran his tongue along me and put his lips over my clit, locking on it with a hard suck that he continued while flicking his tongue against the raw, needy flesh.
The climax was blinding. My body pulsed, pushed, throbbed with him.
His lips were on mine, and I tasted myself in his mouth. He lifted me onto the bed. I was overstimulated, still shaking when he put the head of his cock against me and pushed. I wasn’t big enough for him, but I was so slick he got in, stretching me to pain I didn’t find unpleasant.
Holding my hands over my head, he kissed me, fucked me, owned me. When I came again, he drove harder and deeper, as if he wanted to bury himself inside me, and the pain grounded me and drove me over the edge at the same time.
“Take it,” he gasped his last command.
He came in a twist of muscle, gripping tight, white-knuckled, red in the face, then releasing like a shattered glass in an explosion of potential energy gone kinetic and dissolving into sweat and gulped breaths.
“Wow,” he said, kissing my collarbone, still inside me.
“Wow is right.” I held his cheeks while he caught his breath.
“Wow.”
“Right. Yes…”
“That was a great start.”
* * *
Late in the night, pleasantly sore and sticky where it counted, I drifted off to sleep while he stroked my shoulder in a way that was both casual and intentional.
“Why aren’t you sleeping?” I asked with the last of my waking energy.
“I fell asleep first last time.”
“Didn’t count.”
“I like looking at you.”
“Mm.”
He kissed my shoulder. I hoped he didn’t want to fuck again. I was tired, and I was sure that if he wanted to, he’d need thirty seconds to make me want him again.
“All the time,” he continued. “You’re hard to not look at. When you’re working with some jarhead who would rather be dead than talking to a psychiatrist, the way you listen? Even if he’s got his back turned to you or he’s telling you to fuck off? Like there’s no one else in the world but that one guy? You’re stunning. If you ever looked at me like that, I’d tell you everything.”
I wanted to say, “Tell me everything right now.” But my lips wouldn’t form the words, and my lungs could only breathe in the rhythms of slumber.
Part Two
After the eight
Chapter Five
The week after the first surge, the doctors went on doctoring while the surgeons were put on rest. Casualties came in at a manageable rate for the normal rotation, which I no longer oversaw.
After our first night together, Caden had slept for twenty-four hours. Most of the surgeons had. He owned me the two nights after that. Rotation last night. And tonight? If it was up to me, I’d be his again tonight.
The army was a huge net of people with tight knots of community. The way Ronin and I had found each other from basic, to Walter Reed, back around again to a common assignment in Iraq wasn’t unheard of. But Caden? He wasn’t part of the net. He’d sought out a commission during a time of war. As soon as his obligation was done, he could, and would, leave to pick up his life where he’d left it.
Like a soldier who’d witnessed the unthinkable, I tried not to think about it.
“Captain Fobbit!” Sergeant “Little Red” Ryder cried from across the dusty field, a football crooked behind his shoulder.
Caden, the fobbit in question, held his arm out to indicate he was open. Ryder released the ball across the sky like a drill, cutting the blue only to have it enfold around its wake. Caden picked the ball out of the air but was tackled by Ronin and Pfc. “Salt Mine” Trona. They slapped his back when they got off him. I held my hand out to help him up.
“What’s with that Ronin guy?” He grabbed my wrist so I could pull him up. “He was all over you. He think you’re Jerry Rice or something?”
“Ryder usually throws to me.”
He snapped the ball back to Ryder without an answer, and we headed for the line of scrimmage.
“You shouldn’t let them call you fobbit,” I said. “It’s not nice.”
“How’s that?”
“Means you never go outside the wires. Means you don’t know shit.”
“Maybe I don’t.” He smirked as if he really believed he lacked a necessary piece of knowledge about anything important.
Sergeant Ryder called out the play numbers, and we fell back. This time, I got the jump on my coverage, and the ball landed right in my hands. Ronin got to me, knocking me three feet out of a run in an attempted tackle, but I wouldn’t go down. He reached around me, trying to strip the ball away.
I cried, “Foul, foul,” but we were both laughing and fighting to the death as I pushed toward the Humvee tire marking the end zone.
Ronin’s weight was suddenly off me, and I ran for the line, where I spiked the ball into the sand.
My victory was short-lived. Caden was on top of Ronin with his knee in his back, pushing his face into the ground while Ryder and Trona were arriving to pull Caden off.
“You don’t touch her like that, you hear me?”
Ronin was on his feet. “What is your fucking problem?”
“Watch your goddamn hands.”
Ronin held up his palms. “I don’t know what the fuck is going on here…”
“Like fuck you don’t,” Caden said.
Trona picked up the ball and tossed it to Ryder.
“All right, whatever. Fuck this.” Ronin slapped the dirt off his hands and walked away.
Ryder and Trona passed the ball between them. Game over.
“What was that about?” I asked Caden.
“What’s going on with him and you?”
“Football.”
Of course, I knew what he meant. And yes, my answer was evasive. But he was acting like a child, and children aren’t owed explanations for adult decisions.
“Why are you lying?”
I got right in his beautiful fucking face. “Because you’re being an asshole.”
I stormed off.
* * *
That night, in chow hall, he sat with the other surgeons, and I sat with Ronin. It was as if, after the bell, we’d gone back to our respective corners of the ring without even knowing we’d been boxing.
How did I know he was watching me? How did I know every time he glanced my way as if he happened to be looking out the window?
I was watching him as well.
“I got orders to go to Abu Ghraib,” Ronin said.
“Are
you even allowed to tell me that?”
“If I did, then I am.”
I pushed corn around my plate, trying to pretend Caden wasn’t there. My will was weak. When I lifted the fork to my mouth, our eyes met across the room, and he looked away.
“Well, I guess your work here is done,” I said.
“The army’s work.”
“Yeah.”
Caden got up with his tray. Why did that tie my heart into a knot? The surprise of seeing him get up? The broken string of our mutually denied gaze?
“Before I go, I want to make you an offer.”
“That’s intriguing.” Not as intriguing as Caden leaving his tray on the pile and walking out of chow hall with one of the guys on the Australian surgery team, chatting and laughing over who even knew what. Livers and spleens.
He had no business laughing over internal organs when I felt so crappy about fighting with him.
“I’ve known you since the beginning,” Ronin said. “Since you broke your wrist in basic.”
“And you pushed me over the wall.”
“Any other guy would have laid you down gently and called for help. I made sure you finished the course.”
I nodded. “You did the right thing.”
“I know. Because you and me? We understand each other. I need to not be tied down. You need to be pushed.”
“And you have an offer to push me?”
“The offer has two parts. You can take one without the other.”
“I’m listening.”
“Part one. I’m going to Abu Ghraib in advance of a different kind of battle. A psychological one. We’re going to be fighting the enemy using a new weapon: their own culture.”
“How?”
“I can’t say, obviously, but it’s within the Geneva Convention protocols. It’s a war of the mind. No bloodshed. No death. None of this shit.” He checked to make sure no one was in earshot, then leaned forward. “You have a way with talking to shell-shocked men. You get it. And you speak Arabic. I want to talk to my command about loaning you out from your unit. Now this is up to you, and it’s totally voluntary. It’s a unicorn. Cherish the moment. You have a choice in the matter.”
Dark Romance Collection: A Sexy, Dark Bundle Page 27