by CD Reiss
He wanted a life with me. I was torn between talking him out of it and agreeing to everything. Was there a middle way? Someplace between him pursuing a Stateside medical career in the army and me taking off my uniform forever?
I alternated between frustration and an uncomfortable feeling of validation. Why do I have to think about this now? soon became Being wanted by Caden feels too good to refuse.
I saw him briefly in the hospital, sitting and talking to one of four guys hit by a suicide bomber. I didn’t bother him. When we’d met, his compassionate side had been shut away so he could perform surgery after surgery, and I liked seeing that, somewhere in there, he had a warm heart.
“Welcome back,” he whispered from behind me later as I logged a script into the computer.
“Glad to be back.”
“You feeling one hundred percent?”
“Ninety-eight.”
“Close enough. When do you get off?”
“Whenever you say, apparently.”
“Good answer.” I faced him to make sure he got the double meaning, and his smile told me he had. “See you in my bunk at nine?”
“Twenty-one hundred. On the dot.”
* * *
The lamp glowed dimly, and the blinds were shut, but he wasn’t there.
There were rose petals on the bed. I didn’t know what he’d had to go through to get that many rose petals delivered to Balad Base in Fallujah in November. When I got close, I saw they were orange and purplish-red. Insane colors.
A square of paper lay on the pillow.
Naked.
A man of few words.
Languidly, I undressed, peeling off layers with increasing anticipation. Would he come in before I was through? Would he make me wait until I lay down on the bed of petals?
The trailer was heated, but the air was chilly, and my nipples twisted on themselves, hardening to erect points.
I ran my hand over the medical texts he’d brought. There were no family photos taped to the wall. No mementos or tchotchkes. He’d given me the rabbit’s foot. Outside that, he was a man without sentiment.
At a soft rap on the door, I tucked myself against the wall and rapped on the window. Caden entered in scrubs and boots, closing the door.
“You’re late, soldier,” I said from the darkness.
He joined me in the shadows. “Complications.”
He ran his finger over the little scar in my chest. It was still red and raw, messier than a surgical scar, cleaner than any shrapnel wound had business being. When he touched it, the nerve endings jumped and vibrated as if they were facing all the wrong directions.
“Ninety-eight percent,” he said, letting his finger drift down to my navel.
“Give or take.”
“I have to be careful with you.”
“Why?”
“You don’t know your own limits.”
He pulled off his shirt, and I ran my hands down his chest and torso while he got his pants off, letting his erection pop out. My fist curled around his shaft, his hand stuck between my naked legs, and we kissed as if our tongues were magnetized at opposite poles. With one of my legs around his waist and my back against the wall, he put three fingers inside me. I gasped when he stretched me.
“I don’t want it to hurt,” he said into my cheek.
He rubbed circles around the nub of nerves inside my vagina wall.
“Doesn’t hurt.” My spine curved toward him as he rubbed inside me, stimulating the spot so few could find. “Quite the”—I groaned—“contrary.”
When I was barely verbal, he ran the head of his cock along my seam and slid inside, hoisting me up from behind my knees. Arms around his neck, I leaned on his shoulders as he thrust sharply, pushing me against the trailer’s wood veneer. Slow, with jerking movements that pushed on my clit and the spot inside me, he brought me close, but I couldn’t get over the edge. The logistics of fucking against a wall sapped my attention.
“I don’t think I can like this,” I groaned.
Kissing me, he reached behind him for the desk chair. He sat, slid down, and reached for me. When I went to him, he turned my back to him. I bent, impaling myself on his dick over and over. Our hands met between our legs, touching him, touching me, feeling the place we were coupled as we moved with each other.
I went blind with pleasure, speeding up with him, focusing on the hard nub where my orgasm waited.
“Can you come with me?” he asked.
“Now?”
“Yes.”
“Yes.”
We came together in a twist of stiffening muscles and deep-throated grunts. When his climax dripped out of me, he used it to rub me all over again.
“I can’t,” I said.
“Do it anyway.”
With the warm liquid lubricating me, the sensation escalated all over again. I leaned my back on his chest, legs thrown over the arms of the chair as he rubbed my clit to a second orgasm.
“Stop, you’re killing me,” I squeaked.
He cupped his palm over my overstimulated clit. “I love it when you tell me to stop.”
“That’s… weird.” I was still gulping for breath.
“It means I took you as far as you’ll go.”
“Ain’t that the truth.”
He got his arms under me and stood, carrying me one step to the rose-petal-covered bed.
* * *
I was as sleepy as I’d ever been, trying to make sense while wrapped in his arms.
“We’ll get R&R when we can,” I said. “ABG isn’t far. Not from here.”
“We’ll be fine.”
“For the deployment. After that… you’re resigning your commission, right?”
“Yes.” He peppered my face with gentle kisses. “My obligations are done.”
“I don’t want us to get our hopes up. The odds of us staying together—”
“Hush.”
“They’re not good.”
“You’re being a pessimist.”
“I’m scared,” I said, making fear my final negotiating point.
“Of what?”
“That you won’t be able to stand the long distances or moving around or any of it.” I didn’t mention that I could retire my commission. Of the few commitments I’d ever made, the only one I could see myself sticking with was my commission.
“You don’t think much of me.”
“No, it’s not that.”
“I’m not a child, Major. I’m a grown man who can make his own decisions.”
“And you’re going to decide to have a life because you’re normal.”
“No one’s ever called me that before.”
“It’s a compliment.”
“So, a complimentary thing about me is something you’re going to use to argue that we can’t be together?”
I sighed and closed my eyes. “My brain can’t get around what you just said.”
“What I said was…” He kissed my nose. “Your thinking is incomplete. Your way of seeing me is limited. You need to give me a chance.”
“Why?” I made a mm sound in my throat to stop his reply, waking up a little. “That came out wrong. I’m just… I want to. But outside dual deployment for married people, the army doesn’t care about anyone’s love life. There’s no way we’re going to be together much. Not for a while. I won’t be surprised when you tell me you can’t wait around for me.”
“I’ll be surprised.”
“Okay. You be surprised. But I don’t want to be hurt either. And, to quote a very sexy man, you can hurt me.”
“I won’t.” He unraveled his limbs from mine and stood over me.
“Where are you going?”
“I have a shift.” He got dressed, hiding his beauty from me one piece of clothing at a time. “You should stay here and get some rest. Think about it, then tell me you want me as much as I want you. Tell me you’d feel broken without me.”
Asking that of me said more about how he’d feel than how I’d feel.
Lying in his bed, sticky and sore, I was thrown by his need.
“I don’t want to disappoint you,” I said. “This life is hard, Caden. It’s hard on women who grow up knowing what it’s like. I can’t imagine how it will be for you.”
Above me, in the half light, his eyes were dark and unreadable, but his body language—the deep breath, the articulated fingers asking me to hold on, the squared shoulders—spoke of preparation to say something uncomfortable and serious.
“I’m a practical man,” he said. “A surgeon has to be. If you cut somebody open and you’re careless, you’re going to kill them. It’s not bad luck. It’s not bad karma. If you’re casual or cavalier about germs or how you’re holding the knife, you can kill somebody. That’s just the long and the short of it. So, when I met you, I figured… pheromones. Early imprinting. Reproductive instinct. You meet all the standards for beauty and then some. I’m a straight guy. My brain and my spinal cord and my dick are wired to find a female of child-bearing age. My body reacts to you because my brain releases certain hormones at the sound of your voice or the smell of apples on your skin. It’s all science…until it’s not.”
He sat on the edge of the bed and put his shoes on, continuing as if he were describing a surgical procedure. “You know I had you down for a few fucks and a friendly good-bye. Probably about the same as you had me down for. We’re adults. It’s not like either one of us hasn’t ever had a pheromone-induced hormone rush. But it got weird. Somewhere in those eight days when you were checking on me, it became about more than the chemicals in my brain. I panicked. I went outside the wire because I was afraid I’d lose you if I didn’t. And I’m on that fucking Blackhawk, asking myself what the hell I’m doing, because the way I needed you wasn’t normal. Not for a man who knows how the body and the brain affect each other.”
He’d never told me what happened that night, and it looked as if that wouldn’t change. He stomped his foot on the floor when he was done lacing the second boot, then he leaned over me, placing an elbow on the mattress. “I don’t believe in the Universe with a capital U, and I don’t believe in God. I believe in brain signals and blood. But now? I’m willing to think maybe I’m wrong about everything. This is what it comes down to. You expanded my view of the universe. I don’t know what to do with that. I’m not saying I believe in fate or karma or ‘meant to be’ now, but my thinking got bigger because of you. I feel woken up.” As if he was uncomfortable with his own feelings, he got off his elbow and hunched on the edge of the bed, looking at his laced boots. “I feel ignorant and ordinary but awake. If that means we have a long-distance relationship until you retire, then that’s what it’ll be.”
“Okay.” My voice cracked in two syllables.
“Good.” He slapped his knees and stood. “Do you know when you’re heading out?”
“Tomorrow afternoon.”
If he was shocked by the compression of our time together, he didn’t show it. “Fine. I’m off work in the morning. We’ll eat, then I’ll take you to the air base.”
He kissed me quickly, then opened the door, letting in a blast of cold air, and shut it behind him. I heard him clop down the three wooden steps, heard his boots crunch on the rocky sand and fade into nothing.
Chapter Eight
Lunch wasn’t happening.
Every scrap of paperwork had to be completed before I left, and everything had to be in order for my replacement if they decided they needed another psychiatrist.
Ronin had traveled light, so by noon, he was spending most of his remaining hours in Balad helping me clear out. He had gotten us sandwiches from the chow hall. We had the radio on as we went through the office. The amount of administrative work I’d built up in a short time was staggering.
“What’s this?” Eyes wide with stories untold, he held up Pfc. Sanchez’s sonogram.
I snapped it out of his hand. “Mine, that’s what.”
“Is there something you want to tell me?”
“Yeah. Mind your business.” I put the photo in my pocket.
He held up his hands as if he wasn’t now, nor had he ever, touched on the subject of the sonogram or anything else. “Should we break down the desk?”
“Someone will use it.” I picked up the sandwich he’d brought. “Like me.” I hoisted myself onto the desk and opened the paper on my lap.
Ronin sat next to me and opened his. “We have a nice office in ABG.”
“We’re sharing an office?”
You don’t get far in the army without sharing, but I was a full major in a different unit, and I might need to see patients. Or not. He hadn’t told me much about what I’d be doing.
“You’re on loan to Army Intelligence. We’re pretty much in each other’s business.”
I bit my sandwich. “We’re clear on the other part of this offer, right?”
“The other part?”
“The you and I fucking part.”
“I figured you would have mentioned it if it was on. What’s keeping you? My breath? Different cologne?”
“My availability’s compromised.”
“Let me guess. Cap’n Fobbit.”
“He went outside the wires, so you can stop that.”
“He sure did.” Ronin chewed his sandwich pensively.
I wiped my mouth, choosing my words carefully. “Did you hear what happened out there?”
“Yup.”
“What did you hear?”
As soon as he looked at me, I knew he could tell I had no idea. He picked a limp tomato out of his sandwich and answered, “I heard he overstepped for a Haji.”
Haji was a pejorative for Iraqi civilians. Maybe Caden didn’t want to tell me because he thought I’d be upset with him. Maybe the whole thing had been traumatic.
“He didn’t tell you.” Ronin read me like a book.
Caden appeared at the door in his uniform, cap pushed back on his head. He stood there, holding a rolled-up paper plate with two sandwiches in the curl.
“Hey,” I said. “Is one of those for me?”
He stepped in. “Yeah. But you have one.”
“I didn’t know you guys had a date.” Ronin folded the paper over his sandwich and slipped off the desk.
I took one of Caden’s sandwiches. “I’m pretty hungry. Thank you.”
“I’m going to pack up my trailer,” Ronin said. “See you on the airfield.”
“See you there.”
Caden held out his hand, and Ronin shook it. When he was gone, Caden sat next to me and unwrapped his lunch.
“I’m not going to sleep with him,” I said.
“I know.”
“Then why do you have that look on your face?”
He shrugged. “I asked to be moved up there and got a no. Flat out. No.”
“You seem absolutely stunned by that.”
“I’ve never wanted to be anywhere but where I was before. So, it’s different. That’s all.”
We ate in silence.
“I feel guilty,” I said.
“You shouldn’t.” He cracked open a bottle of water and set it beside me. “I’m going to figure it out.”
“One man against the US Army and the woman who won’t leave it.”
He opened a second bottle and tipped it toward me. “I’d rather take on the army than you.”
He would. He was reckless and brave, like David running after Goliath with a slingshot.
“When you went outside the wire that time?” I said. “What happened?”
He shrugged and counted on his fingers. “Brogue. A guy from Georgia and an Iraqi lady. All patched up and sent to Baghdad. Done.”
“You came back barely moving.”
“I had a virus that laid me up for a few days while you were in recovery.” He leaned into my cheek. “That was how I got the R&R to come see you.”
A virus. Possible. But the deadness in his limbs had seemed far more serious, and I didn’t remember a fever, though admittedly, I hadn’t checked.
I nar
rowed my eyes at him as if the smaller aperture would bring the truth into focus.
It did not.
* * *
My stuff fit into three milk-crate-sized containers and a duffel. The bed was stripped to the mattress. I had no attachment to that or any space I’d ever occupied in my adult life.
Caden closed the door behind us. “We have half an hour,” he said, putting his arms around my waist. “It’s seven minutes to the airfield.” He kissed my neck. “Four to board. Five or six for in-between bullshit.” He pressed his pelvis into me so I could feel his erection. “Enough time.”
I let out a compliant sigh. “Barely.”
“I won’t even undress you.” He unbuckled my belt. “I’ll just bend you over the desk and fuck you from behind. I want the taste of your cunt on my fingers when you leave.” Fly open, pants halfway down my ass, I was already wet for him. “I want you to be sore so you’re thinking of me when you land.”
“I’ll be thinking of you. I promise.” I undid his pants, reaching in for his cock.
“Promise.”
I turned away from him and leaned over the desk. He pulled my pants down to mid-thigh and kissed my bottom, leaving a trail of spit where his mouth had been. He bit the flesh. I gasped from the surprise of the lovely, light pain.
He stood behind me and ran the head of his dick along my seam, then he grabbed my hips, keeping me still enough to push inside. He ran his hand up my back and grabbed a handful of hair. “You all right?”
“Yes,” I breathed.
He moved out of me slowly and thrust back in, pushing my body’s limits. “I want you to think of me when you land.” He yanked my hair until my face was far back enough to see him.
“I will.”
“Promise.”
“I promise. When we touch down, I’ll say your name.”
He let my hair go and curved his body along the shape of mine, reaching between my legs. “Every morning, when you wake up. Promise.”
“I’ll think of you first thing. I will.”
He drove into me, rotating his fingers against my clit. “Before you go to sleep.” He pushed so hard it hurt, and I yelped. His next was gentler. “When you’re fucking yourself under the sheets.”