by June Gray
I guess no matter how much you think you know someone, the harsh reality is that you never really know anyone at all.
I woke up some time in the night when the hinges of my door squeaked open and Henry’s soft footsteps crossed the room. The bed gave way under his weight as he climbed in and curled around my back. “I love you, Elsie,” Henry said, burying his face in my hair. “I just wanted you to know before I left.”
My heart skipped a beat at the tenderness in his voice. “Thank you for telling me,” I said. “Why didn’t you say anything before?”
He shifted around and rested his cheek on the side of my head. “I don’t know. You used to be just a little girl, but somewhere along the way, you went from Jason’s bratty sister to this beautiful woman with a glow about her.”
I grasped his wrists and pulled his arms around me, his words warming me from the inside.
“After Jason died, I felt like I needed to take his place and be your big brother. I wasn’t supposed to have romantic feelings for you,” he said. “But God help me, I couldn’t fight it. Not when we live in the same apartment, spending too much time together.
“Look, I don’t need you to tell me you love me too if you don’t actually feel that way. I just wanted you to know that tonight, being with you, meant something.”
I twisted in his arms and faced him. “It wasn’t just sex for me either. And I do love you, Henry, but I don’t know yet if I’m in love with you.”
He nodded, pressing his forehead to mine. “I can deal with that.”
“But I do need you.”
“Yeah?” he asked with a saucy grin.
“I need you to stay if this thing between us ends. You can’t just move out and cut me out of your life.”
He nodded solemnly.
“And I need you to come back safe and sound.” My chest felt tight with that certain knowledge that he would never come back, but I pretended not to feel it. After all, what did I know? I was no psychic.
“I’ll try my best.” His hands stole inside my shirt and ran up and down my back. “I need you to do something for me.”
“Anything,” I breathed, the sensation of his rough palms sending tingles up to my scalp.
“I need you to be here when I get back.”
I kissed the tip of his nose. “I’ll be here. I’m not going anywhere.”
And then we were on each other, our hands rubbing, grabbing, fondling with complete abandon. We shucked our clothes with a speed born of need. I moaned when his bare skin touched mine, my breasts crushed against his chest as we kissed. He bent down and took one nipple in his mouth, sucking hard, and I arched my back and rubbed my fingers along his scalp, urging him on. He moved to the other breast, laving it with the same attention as the one before. I squeaked when he bit down on my nipple, causing an instant rush of moisture in my crotch.
He licked the valley between my breasts then moved lower, pressing kisses on my stomach, my belly button, and the insides of my thighs. A grin flashed across his face a moment before he disappeared between my legs.
I’d received oral from a man before, knew what a tongue felt like down there, but Henry was in a whole other league. I didn’t even want to know where he’d learned the moves, but his tongue was masterful as they licked and glided through my folds in a languid but firm manner. I sucked in a breath when he pushed his tongue inside me and his entire mouth covered my mound, forming a pressurized vacuum of pleasure.
“Oh God,” I breathed, grabbing his head as my insides clutched at his tongue, wanting more. There was not nearly enough of him inside me. My back arched up off the bed and, just as I was about to explode, the wretched man pulled away. “What? Why did you stop?” I shrieked.
He positioned himself above me. “Because,” was all he said before he slammed into me and the orgasm raced through my body. He pulled out and slammed back to the hilt, giving me another wave to crest. I screamed the third time he pounded into me, the orgasm going on and on.
He stilled then, his eyes closed and eyebrows drawn together, enjoying the sensation of my vaginal walls convulsing around him. “Elsie,” he said with a trembling voice. He withdrew slowly and entered even slower still, continuing the relentless torture at a pace that had me clutching at his butt, urging him to go faster, but he kept the unhurried pace, his arms on either side of my head as he kissed me tenderly.
Henry was making love to me.
The realization hit me like an avalanche and I was buried under the rubble. Tears pooled at the corners of my eyes as I gazed up at him, unable to believe that this man, who was once just a boy, was mine. At least for the moment.
I wrapped my legs around his back and urged him deeper into me. He never picked up speed, never wavered in his steady thrusting, and I felt another orgasm building charge. With each drawn-out stroke, my muscles wound tighter and tighter, my body coiling into him until the final stroke that snapped me, made me scream his name as he shuddered his release.
Afterward, he did the atypical and stayed in my room, slept on the bed that he’d deemed “too soft and girly smelling” forever ago, wrapped around me like my very own man blanket. For the first time in a long time, since Jason’s death really, I fell into a deep and contented slumber.
~
You know that saying about taking a step back to get a fresh perspective? Well, I didn’t really need to step back to clear my mind; all I needed was six hours of sleep. When I woke the next morning to the sight of Henry’s calm face beside me, my heart just about burst with a feeling so acute, so fierce, that only a fool could have mistaken it for anything else.
I had been deluding myself all of these years, thinking I could live my entire life as nothing but his roommate. I thought I’d successfully extinguished the torch that I held for him, but in the space of a few days, the embers had been rekindled and the whole damn thing caught fire.
I was madly in love with Henry: always had been, probably always would be.
Admitting it exhilarated and scared the hell out of me. It was akin to leaning all the way back on a swing, feeling the rush and seeing the world in a new angle yet knowing there was a very real chance of crashing to the concrete below.
Still I knew, as I traced my finger gently down his forehead, along the bridge of his nose, that this was one risk I was willing to take. When I reached his lips, he opened his mouth and bit my finger.
“Good morning,” he said with a sleepy smile. He touched my shoulder and ran a palm along the contours of my waist and hip. “I’m a little sad to wake up to you touching my nose instead of… other things.”
I reached down to straighten out the situation when I spied the clock on my bedside table. I sat up with a heavy sigh. “I have to get ready for work.”
He buried his face in the pillow and grumbled. “No, no, no.” He then waved a hand across my face and said, “You will take a sick day today.”
“If only I could, Henry Wan Kenobi, but I have important clients coming in,” I said, giving him one last, lingering kiss. “To be continued.”
Work was excruciating. My meeting with The Oklahoman about their website redesign took a long time as we hammered out the concept. To be honest, it probably took longer because my mind was not in that conference room but far off at Tinker Air Force Base, where Henry was trying to complete his pre-deployment checklist. We only had a week left together, it seemed such a shame to waste it apart—but what could we do? We were adults with responsibilities, even if we were acting like lovesick teenagers.
Right before lunch, a client’s website crashed and, since it was my project, I was forced to ditch my idea of taking a long lunch to visit Henry and fix the problem instead. So I put my head down and got to work, hoping to be able to skip out of work early at least.
Around twelve-thirty, there was some commotion outside my cubicle, but I wanted nothing to do with it. Gideon, my gay hipster cubicle neighbor, popped up over the wall and gave me a rare smile. “You have a visitor,” he said and jabb
ed a thumb towards the reception desk.
I looked up to find a handsome Captain in his ABUs—short for Airman Battle Uniform—walking towards me, a beret and a single red rose in his hand. My heart did a happy little jig at the sight of him, looking so dashing in the uniform I’d seen him wear a hundred times before. He slipped his beret in a leg pocket and held out the rose.
My co-workers’ heads popped up from their cubicles one by one, like little prairie dogs, flashing knowing smiles and popping back down again. I pulled Henry inside my cubicle and forced him down onto my chair, hoping a member of management wouldn’t decide to walk by at that moment.
“Well hello,” he said and pulled me onto his lap.
I wrapped my arms around his neck and took his gorgeous face in hungrily. “Do you want to go to the conference room upstairs?” I whispered in his ear. “It should be empty at this time of day.”
Henry looked extremely tempted, but he shook his head. “I really want to, but I have to head back to work. I just came here to deliver this,” he said, tipped me back, and planted a searing kiss on my lips.
We surfaced a few minutes later, utterly turned on without any way to deal with it. With a sigh, I pulled him up and we emerged from our own little world.
He gave me a courteous nod. “Ma’am,” he said formally then leaned down and blew in my ear, “to be continued.”
After he left, a few people walked by my cubicle to ask about the rose and the handsome airman who’d brought it. The inevitable question, “So is he your boyfriend?” was asked, but for once, when it came to my relationship with Henry, I didn’t know what to say.
~
On my way home I got stuck behind every slow car or truck in Oklahoma. It was a conspiracy; that’s the only way I could explain why everyone seemed to be in on some big plan to keep me from getting home. But as soon as I opened that front door, I ran to my man—yes, in my mind I’d claimed him already—and leapt into his arms. To say I devoured his face was kind of an understatement.
Henry backed up into the couch and sat down, taking me with him. He grumbled something about putting steaks on the grill, but a tornado could be whizzing past our window right now and you couldn’t have peeled me from that couch. Instead, I unzipped his pants, drew aside my thong panties and pulled him deep inside me.
Later, after we finally got around to cooking and eating dinner, we lay on his bed sated and drowsy. He was lying on his back and I was sideways across the bed, my head resting on his stomach, as we talked about the past, too afraid to talk about the future in case we didn’t have one.
“How about that guy in your senior year?” Henry asked. “Did you guys date long?”
I smiled against his stomach. “You jealous?”
“I was.”
I ran my fingers over the soft skin covering his ribs. “We only went out until after New Year’s,” I said. “I’d have broken up with him sooner if you’d told me how you felt.”
“I almost did a few times.” He twisted his finger around a lock of my curly hair. “I came home early that Christmas to spend some time with you without Jason around.”
“Would you have told me then?”
He shrugged. “Maybe. If all the stars aligned. But I guess they didn’t.” His blue eyes took me in for a long time until I became uncomfortable.
“What?” I asked, covering my face with my hand. I peeked through my fingers and grinned.
He pulled my hand away. “I was just wondering what Jason would think.”
“He’d probably tackle you to the ground, maybe give you a black eye or bloody lip,” I said. Jason would have grumbled but, deep down, I liked to think he would have been happy for us.
“Sounds like Jason,” Henry replied with a rueful smile. He pressed his palm to my cheek. “I think he knew. I was always asking about you, trying to sneak your name into conversations. Every time we talked about coming back home, he’d ask me if I was looking forward to seeing you, but I’d just ignore him.”
I beamed so hard my cheeks hurt. “You wanted to huuuug me, you wanted to kiiiss me,” I said in a singsong voice.
He sat up and tickled me and we wriggled around on the bed like children until his cell phone vibrated on the nightstand. He looked at the caller ID and said, “I need to take this.”
I went to use the bathroom to give him some privacy. On my way back out, I caught a glimpse in the mirror that gave me pause. My hair was tangled and any trace of makeup had been wiped off my face, and yet I looked positively delirious with happiness. I finally saw the glow Henry had been talking about.
He was wearing pants and a grave expression when I rejoined him on the bed.
“What’s up?” I asked. “Everything okay?”
“That was the commander,” he said in a voice that made the hairs on my arms rise.
I didn’t want to hear whatever bad news was coming, but I had asked for honesty and it was too late to take back. “What is it?”
“The deployment date has been changed.”
A hopeful little thought bubbled up from my chest. “It’s been pushed back?”
“It’s been moved up.”
I spoke around the thought that had lodged painfully in my throat. “When?”
A gloom settled over Henry’s handsome features. “To this Friday. As in two days from now.”
That was about the time I fell off the swing and fell face first into the ground.
6 | OVER AND OUT
We held each other that night, never once losing contact as we slept. I clutched him to my chest, afraid of losing his warmth, and in turn he nestled me in his arms with his lips pressed to my head.
I woke with a start around two a.m., nearly hyperventilating from the thought that I hadn’t even told him how I felt. “Wake up,” I whispered against his chest, pulling away.
He was hard to rouse after the night we’d had, but I needed to tell him. We were fast running out of time. “Henry, wake up.”
“Yes?” he rasped, keeping his eyes closed. He pulled me back against his chest.
“I have to tell you something.”
“Can you tell me tomorrow? I was having a nice dream.”
I pushed against him. “No, you need to know now.”
His eyes remained shut. “So...?”
“I love you,” I whispered.
Henry was so still that if it weren’t for his rapid heartbeat, I might have thought he had fallen back asleep.
I pushed up to one elbow. “I said I’m in love with you.”
One corner of his mouth curled up. “I already know.”
“What? For how long?”
He finally opened his eyes and fixed them on me. “You’ve always been in love with me. You just needed time to remember.”
“But…”
He laughed at my dumbfounded expression and pulled me back down into his arms. “I love you too, Els. Now go back to sleep.”
I wanted to call in sick the next day, but Henry had a lot of last minute things to take care of, like making sure his training and medical papers were up to date. “I also have to update my will,” he said as we sipped our morning coffee with my sitting on his lap.
His will.
My spine stiffened, that one word bursting my happy little bubble. All of a sudden my fears came racing back, crushing my lungs.
Henry felt the sudden change of mood. He squeezed my side and said, “I will be okay. Updating my will is just customary.”
I stood up and faced him, intent on swallowing my fears. “Of course it is,” I said, giving him one last kiss. “Well, I should get going.”
His hands rested on the back of my legs and slid up my skirt. “Have a good day,” he said huskily, his fingers playing with the edge of my panties.
I kissed him and pulled away. “Bye.”
I ate my lunch at my desk, turning my head every time someone walked by, hoping that Henry had found a sliver of time to come see me again, but he didn’t come. I stared at that red rose sitt
ing inside an empty glass water bottle and ate my food like a zombie. I couldn’t even tell you what I ate, I was so out of it.
After work I rushed home, jittery with the knowledge that the seconds were ticking by. As I drove I convinced myself to live for the moment, to pretend that tomorrow didn’t exist—and almost succeeded until I walked in the living room and found a pile of his stuff on the floor. Two dark green duffel bags with his name embroidered on the side, folded ABUs, tan boots, gloves, a helmet. My heart stopped when my eyes rested on a body armor vest. I picked it up, wondering how it could possibly protect Henry when it hadn’t been enough to save my brother.
This was really happening. Henry was really going to leave tomorrow.
I dropped the vest, suddenly too exhausted to even hold myself up. I sank to the floor and stared at the deployment pile, trying to convince my lungs to simply keep breathing.
“I didn’t know you were ho—” Henry stopped when he saw me. I must have looked like a hot mess, but he didn’t mention it. “I have something to show you.” He held out his hand and pulled me up off the floor. We walked through the living room and he opened the sliding door that led to the balcony.
“I wanted you to have your camping trip,” he said, stepping aside so I could see. He had placed one of our kitchen rugs on the cement balcony and erected a tent on it. Beside it stood a camping stove and two metal skewers.
I peered into the tent and found our sleeping bags zipped together to make one oversized one. “Nice.”
“But there’s more,” he said and produced a box of graham crackers, a bar of Hershey’s chocolate, and a bag of marshmallows.
“You’ve thought of everything, Captain Logan,” I said with the best smile I could manage. I gave him a kiss, pushing the sad thoughts to the back of my head, pretending for at least tonight that the pile of stuff in the living room didn’t exist.
Having sex in a tent is not that hard, but when you’re suspended three floors up with a six foot man on top of you, it can get downright tricky. So we switched positions and I rode him, hoping that the tent’s walls were not in any way transparent. My head kept hitting the metal rods, so I had to bend down, which provided Henry ample access to my breasts. He grasped them in his hands, devouring each one in turn, while I rocked back and forth carefully. I tried to memorize the way he filled me up, the sexy growl he made when I squeezed him extra hard. He was in so deep, he was pressing against my core.