by Ranae Rose
“I want to be inside you.” He’d never wanted anything as badly as he wanted her every time he saw her naked. “I want to feel you wrapped so tight around my cock that I forget I even have a head, let alone that it hurts.” Her body had the power to do that. He knew it and he craved it.
“Why don’t you lie back down, like you were before? I can grab a condom out of your drawer – the second one down, right?”
“Yeah. And I was hoping you’d say that.” He reclined against the mattress, like he had when she’d kissed his neck. “Best view ever from down here when you’re on top of me.” There was nothing better than lying back with her pussy hugging his cock as he looked up at her breasts bouncing, round and hard-tipped.
She got a condom out of the dresser drawer where he kept the box and returned to the bed, pausing to look at him as she tore the package open. He could practically feel her gaze roving up and down his body. Did she want him as badly as he wanted her? It didn’t seem possible, but he could hope that she did, for some crazy reason.
She put the condom on for him, her fingers sliding down his shaft and making him tremble as he watched, dick throbbing. Moments later she was on the bed, straddling him, gripping his cock by the base and lowering herself down.
The way their bodies fit together was too mind-blowing to truly be remembered. This wasn’t their first time or their second, and still, the feeling of being enveloped by her heat and wetness was shocking. It squeezed his mind like her pussy squeezed his cock, reducing him to an entity of pure sensation. She rolled her hips and gasped, sending a wave of inhibition-melting heat through him.
He flexed his hips, pumping into her and watching her breasts rise and fall as he rocked her. Placing one hand on her hip, he reached for one of the soft mounds, palming it while rubbing and pinching the nipple until it looked as hard as he felt inside her. The way her cheeks flushed deep pink and her mouth hung open in a perpetual ‘O’ as she breathed hard prompted him to lower his hand, rubbing between her hips instead.
He’d only been touching her clit for a few moments when her pussy seized up, clenching around his thrusting dick. He had to fight not to come too when she gasped his name, her pussy shrinking and releasing around his shaft, only to tighten again, gripping him as she bore down.
When her gasps faded to a breathless rush, he slowed his motions, resuming a steadier pace.
It didn’t last long. Soon, she began to ride him, rolling her hips and sending him deep into her pussy with each rocking motion. Within seconds, he was the one breathing hard.
He tipped his head back against the pillow and said her name as every muscle in his body tensed, flooded with sudden energy. He focused it all on thrusting into her. She rocked her hips harder too, and between their combined efforts, every stroke sent a jolt of mind-numbing urgency straight to his dick. Balls tight and shaft achingly hard, he slipped over the edge and into raw pleasure.
The rush of come was thought-shattering, the sensation too overwhelming to leave room for any of his other senses. Eyes shut tight, he thrust to her rhythm until every last trace of ecstasy had faded.
When he’d been still for a little while, she slid off of him, settling beside him on the bed.
“God, Ally…”
“Yeah?”
“That was good.” Biggest understatement of all time, but he had to say it. He rose, rolling his shoulders, which had been left tight in the wake of such fierce sensations.
“How do you feel?”
“The pain’s not that bad, but I can still feel the pressure behind my skull and see silver lights. I’m going to go to sleep while I’m still feeling good. Unless that will bother you?”
“No.” She rose from the bed. “It’s late anyway. You should get some rest. We still have tomorrow morning.”
“Okay. You’re still staying the night, right?” He reached out to brush her cheek with his knuckles, letting them skim the soft edge of one lip. All that and he still craved the feel of her skin beneath his fingertips.
“Yes.”
“Good.” A distinct feeling of relief washed through him, unknotting the tension in his shoulders. Yeah, they’d already had sex, but it mattered that she wanted to spend the rest of the night with him. It mattered a lot, because it proved that she liked being with him even when sexual tension wasn’t running high.
He pulled on underwear before exiting the room with her following close behind.
He paused at the bathroom door to watch her bend over the couch, retrieving the bag she’d left there. The position granted him a view of her ass that threatened to revive his erection. Reluctantly, he turned away. With a migraine brewing and his fights just hours behind him, the fresh cuts and bruises still aching, a second round of sex would be like begging for misery.
That didn’t mean there wasn’t the morning to look forward to. The thought was enticing, but as he brushed his teeth and rinsed with mouthwash, his thoughts centered more on the hours between now and then. Asleep or not, the night was going to be different than any other. Different in ways that mattered, even if her overnight stay was a matter of convenience.
When he emerged from the bathroom she slipped past him, still naked, with her hands full of toiletries.
He retreated to the bedroom, sank onto the bed and closed his eyes. It didn’t matter whether they were open or not – all he could see was her perfect body.
“Could I borrow a t-shirt?”
He opened his eyes to see her standing in the doorway, no longer naked, but topless.
Cotton hot short panties clung to her hips, but there was nothing to hide the rest of her from his gaze. She’d put her hair up into some sort of knot; it left her shoulders bare and their graceful slopes complimented the fuller swells of her breasts. “I would say no, if the idea of you wearing one of my shirts didn’t turn me on even more than you being topless for some reason.”
Though the thought of sleeping with her bare breasts against his chest or resting in his palms was undeniably appealing, so was the idea of her body draped in his clothing. “They’re in the drawer with the condoms.”
She opened the dresser drawer, selected a t-shirt and pulled it over her head. His eyes lingered on her breasts until the garment slipped over them, draping them in cotton. Her nipples were still discernible, dark peaks that pricked against the fabric.
When the hem hit her hips, she met his gaze. “Want me to shut off the light?”
“Yeah.”
She came to him in the dark; it was clear she’d made it to the bed when she bumped the edge of the mattress with her knees, making it tremble.
He reached out and pulled her in, wrapping an arm around her and drawing her onto the mattress.
She slipped beneath the covers, her bare legs sliding against his, creating gentle friction as she settled beside him, her back against his chest.
The position felt natural; there was just something about the way her curves fit against his body that banished whatever awkwardness he might have expected. His t-shirt didn’t do much to hide the shape or softness of her breasts. With his arm crossing them, he could even feel her heart beat. Lost in the feel and smell of her, he slipped into sleep without realizing it, without dreaming.
* * * * *
The Humvee rolled forward at a steady pace. There was no sign of an impending explosion in the air or on the road, which was pockmarked here and there with pot holes, but nothing really treacherous. Still, Ryan could feel the possibility deep in his bones, where dread blossomed and multiplied in his marrow, spreading throughout his entire body. His mouth went dry and he sweated even more than the sweltering heat accounted for. Any second now, the Humvee would set off the IED, or maybe not.
The engine rumbled, a constant droning, and someone said something he didn’t really hear. He couldn’t focus on the words when he was bracing himself for the explosion, for the loudest sound he’d ever heard. Just the thought of it dulled his hearing.
A drop of sweat slipped into his ey
e and burned. He lifted a hand to wipe it away, but only made things worse. Fuck it. There was no escaping the sweat; his uniform collar was damp against his neck and perspiration beaded on his upper lip, liquid slipping over the edge and coursing over his mouth and chin like a little waterfall.
As the salty taste entered his mouth despite his best efforts to keep it out, he raised his eyes and dared to look at the desert beyond the Humvee’s window.
It was ugly – he’d always thought so. But a sharp-edged sliver of hope slipped into his head as he stared. There had been no explosion yet, and it had been forever. Or at least, it felt like it. They had to be past the place where the bomb would’ve been hidden.
He’d finish his deployment and return to the US when it was time, then finish out his four-year contract. Maybe re-enlist. The hope was vicious; it snaked through him, tearing him up inside, inciting a kind of happiness that hurt. No bomb. No injury. Not this time. It didn’t make sense that he’d been given a second chance – when he thought about how it’d happened, his thoughts jumbled together, refusing to yield a clear explanation. Still, all that mattered was that he was in uniform again and in one piece.
He’d fixed things, somehow.
Maybe there wasn’t even a scar beneath his pants. His heart picked up pace as he lowered a hand to his thigh, fingers spread over the camo pattern in search of a telltale bump, the edge of a ridge of twisted flesh.
The world exploded in a burst of light and sound. Thoughtless moments passed by – how many, it was impossible to tell – and the entire universe shook. His head ached and his ears rang. His sense of equilibrium was obliterated; there was no telling if he was upside down or not. Some vague memory told him he probably was.
He could tell, though, that there was no scar. The flesh beneath his fingertips was wet, open. His fingers rested in a trench of bleeding meat. Had they been shredded, too? He looked down, but everything was too red to tell.
“Holy fuck.” The words echoed through the Humvee, anonymous and familiar.
Something warm hit his cheek and ran down his jaw. He turned his head and looked to the right, toward the source of the wetness, more as an excuse not to look at his own leg than for any other reason.
His stomach cramped with regret as his gaze settled on something more blood-soaked than his own leg – Gibson’s neck. A long, twisted piece of metal stuck out of it, buried in tender flesh. Blood was spurting from the wound like gas from a broken fuel line. A coppery taste hit the tip of Ryan’s tongue, overpowering the salty traces of sweat that had seemed so distasteful before.
Every muscle inside him tensed, squeezing his stomach so hard he was going to puke, upside down or not…
“Ryan?”
More blood sprayed onto his face – his forehead, this time.
No, not blood. Someone was touching him. Someone was saying his name.
A woman. There were no women in the Humvee, only men, now dead or broken. He remembered that, somehow, even though he was hearing the echoes of the blast and seeing red.
“Ryan?” Her touch was impossible, and it set off alarm bells inside him.
And no one called him Ryan. He was Moore. Nothing made any sense; maybe his brain really had been ruined by the blast. She was smearing the blood across his face, letting her fingertips streak through the wetness. How could she stand it? He couldn’t. Shivers of disgust raced up and down his spine.
A particularly strong one shot through his entire body, causing him to jerk like a fish on the end of a line. He drew a deep, desperate breath and suddenly the desert sun filtering through a cloud of dust and debris was gone.
Everything was dark. No one was touching his face anymore, but there was something wrapped tight around his left thigh. A tourniquet?
No. A bed sheet. A fucking sheet. He was awake, in his bed, in Baltimore.
With Ally. The revelation turned the contents of his stomach sour as the last traces of the dreamed-of explosion faded, leaving his senses in working order despite the fact that he would rather have been left senseless, unable to hear or see anything that would heap more shame on top of him.
“It’s just me.” Her voice was a whisper in the darkness, unbearably soft after the noise of the blast, even if it had only been a dream.
“Sorry.” His voice didn’t come out right. It was too breathy, scraping. Like he hadn’t spoken in ages. “Nightmare.”
“I woke up and you were sweating and shaking. I thought you were having one.”
“Sorry.”
“It’s okay. I get them too sometimes, so I didn’t want to let you suffer through it. I hope you don’t mind that I woke you up.”
“No. Thanks. I’m going to get a glass of water.”
He had to pull the sheet away from his thigh before he could swing his legs over the side of the bed. His left thigh ached in protest and he pressed a hand over the scar, beginning a rough massage.
The knots in his muscle were so thick they felt like golf balls under his hand. The urge to escape the room and Ally’s presence was riding him too hard for him to spare much time, but he worked just a little of the tension out of his leg, enough that he could stand and walk away.
In the kitchen, the linoleum floor stuck to the soles of his bare feet. Like the sweat that coated his face and body, the sticky feeling was disgusting. Still, he needed to wash the remembered tastes of sweat and blood from his mouth more than anything else.
He took a glass from the cabinet, filled it to the brim at the kitchen sink and drank every drop.
Though the water was gone and another mouthful would’ve made him sick, he couldn’t go back to bed the way he was. Instead, he went into the bathroom, where he ran a towel under cold water and used it to wipe the perspiration from his face and body. The resulting chill made him feel clean, if uncomfortable.
He returned to the bedroom because he had to. If he didn’t – if he abandoned Ally and spent the rest of the night on the couch because of a dream – she wouldn’t stay with him again. And besides, as real as everything seemed to him, she had no way of knowing what was going on inside his head, as long as he didn’t tell her.
He climbed back into bed and lay down in the position they’d started in, with his chest facing her back. He didn’t trust his limbs to be steady enough to wrap around her, but he laid a hand on her arm and let his fingers curl around her bicep. She didn’t say anything, and neither did he.
Chapter 12
Daylight had a way of fading the memories that came to him in dreams. Or maybe he was just relieved when he woke up, saw the sun and realized he had another eighteen hours before he had to face the night again. Either way, when he woke up, Ally’s nearness seemed like a blessing instead of a curse. One look at her ass cheeks peeking out from her hot short panties and his cock was aching.
“You would’ve been better off without that shirt.” He wrapped his arms around her, embracing her from behind.
She laughed. “Why?”
“Because I can’t let you out of bed with it on.” His shirt was loose on her; it was easy to slip a hand beneath the hem and cradle one of her breasts.
She arched a little, pressing the full curve of it harder against his palm, and he squeezed in reflex. “You can have it back,” she said. “I only wanted it for the night.”
His fingertips slipped over her nipple and then her belly as she sat up. The sheets pooled around her hips but were twisted in places that conveniently revealed tantalizing peeks at her thighs. She pulled his shirt over her head in an easy movement, suddenly topless.
His dick twitched against the sheets as he studied her breasts. He’d never get tired of looking at them. Not even if he simply stared for a year straight, which he would’ve seriously considered doing if looking at them didn’t fill him with an irresistible urge to touch and taste them, to get inside her.
“What about these,” he asked, hooking a thumb into the waistband of her panties, “can I have them too?” He reached deeper, letting his fingerti
ps glide over her silky-smooth skin until they reached the swollen little nub of her clit.
“You can borrow them.”
He helped her out of them and took a moment to admire the way her naked body seemed to glow in the morning light drifting through the blinds that hung over the room’s only window. After removing his boxer briefs and tossing them aside, he reached for her, letting his fingers cast a shadow across her sunlit cheek as he reached for her hair.
She’d secured the knot she’d twisted it into with a single elastic band. It was easy to remove, and when he pulled it free he was rewarded by the sight of her hair tumbling across her shoulders, more voluminous than he’d ever seen it. “Your halo’s back.”
She raised a hand and started smoothing her hair.
He stopped her by gripping her wrist. Her bones were slender, and though he’d seen her fight, he was struck by how delicate they felt beneath his own. “It looks good. And you shouldn’t worry about it now. Your halo’s going to be twice its current size by the time we’re done.”
“So you’re going to make me look like one of those saints in a stained glass window.”
A spark of amusement lit inside him. “Pretty much. Though I wouldn’t call the way I’m going to make it happen saintly.”
He let go of her wrist and wrapped his arms around her from behind, letting them cross beneath her breasts, raising their swells so that he couldn’t help but stare down at her nipples. Gently, he brushed his lips across the side of her neck, imagining the hardness of a nipple inside his mouth, the softness of an areola against his lips.
“Don’t hurt yourself. I don’t expect you to kiss me until your lips heal.”
“Can’t wait that long.” He pressed a light kiss against her skin. “Hurts to talk, anyway. And to eat and drink. I’m not going to stop doing those things, so I might as well not stop this either.” He’d rather starve or dehydrate than go without contact, and silence would be fine as long as he wasn’t cut off from communicating by touch.
She turned her head until their mouths met. The kiss she gave him was light, like a careful brushstroke, but gratifying. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end, as if he were standing outside in the middle of a lightning storm, and urgency surged into his erect cock.