He shrugged, a smile cracking his face and showing the perfect rows of teeth. “Fraternization policies. An officer can’t date enlisted members. And when you’re dodging bullets and bombs, the last thing on your mind is sex.”
“And now?” Curiosity took hold of her thoughts and her mouth.
“It’s all I can think about. Pent-up doesn’t describe half of what I am. I can count the hours and minutes since I was last with—“
“Who was she?”
“An ex. My fiancée who couldn’t take my nomadic life.”
“Was it good?”
“Not even close. It was a release. I came. That was it. Even bad sex is better than no sex. After it was done, I wished I had just watched reruns of The Twilight Zone.”
“To bad sex. May we never have it again.”
“I can’t wish that. Bad sex teaches you to appreciate the good sex when you do get it.”
“That hasn’t been often for me.”
“Who was your last?”
“My ex-boyfriend.”
“So you were coming to meet him for bad sex.”
“I like intimacy, closeness. I miss that.”
“Are we still being honest, Kalinda?”
“As honest as you need to be.”
“I can feel you on the tip of my tongue.”
She could stop this. She should stop this right now before the teasing and flirting devolved into something deeper, more complex, and pleasurable. “How do I taste?”
Colin rubbed his lips absently, his eyes focusing on the glass of ice and liquor in front of her. “Better than that, I imagine.” He looked up directly into her eyes. The invisible magnetic attraction was drawing her closer, attracting her to him.
“I do.” She leaned into him and grazed her lips over his. A simple and quick kiss just to feel his lips, taste his need, detect any interest. He took the lead and intensified the kiss, his tongue stroking hers with severe, fiery need. The kiss should have lasted forever, but he broke away, looking dazed and enamored.
Colin found her voice. “I can help you tonight. With that. If you want to do that.”
The kisses, the drinks, the man, the letdown—all of these events made her thoughts hazy and her tongue trippy.”Do what with me, Colin?”
“Don’t be coy or a smartass, Kalinda. What I came for tonight is the same thing you want.”
“I came for it with someone else.”
“I’m not trying to be a replacement.”
“I never said you were a fill-in for him.”
She slid off the barstool and tightened the belt around her sweater. Slinging her handbag over her shoulder, she charged out to the lobby, knowing he had two choices: follow or stay. Either one had benefits and consequences for the both of them. Common sense told her that this was insane taking a man she just met into her hotel room. The stranger-danger lessons from her elementary school years buzzed in her ears. He could be anybody, could do anything with her.
The bank of elevators was deserted. No one coming or going. She waited as two elevators opened, closed, and whizzed up the floors. He wasn’t coming.
The third elevator quietly dinged and opened. She stepped inside and pressed the tenth floor and leaned against the wall, clutching the rail. The doors slid closed until at the last second, they hesitated and re-opened. The pent-up breath in her lungs released. Colin moved into the space.
“I closed out your tab at the bar.” He took one hand off the rail and pressed her debit card into that. “I think you might need this when you get home.”
“I don’t want to think about home tonight.”
They appraised each other from across the elevator. The ride to her room was slowed by entering and exiting passengers unaware of the tension between the solider and the woman. Finally, they threaded through a few people when the doors opened to her floor.
He trailed as she led him down the corridor to her room. Opening the door to the room, she faced him as she backed into the room. She turned on the desk lamp and slowly unzipped her dress. He followed suit, shedding his jacket and boots.
“I don’t do this all the time.” Her stockings came off next. Standing there in front of him as nude as she had been with a man in a long time, Kalinda felt a powerful feeling that she craved for so long. To be wanted, desired.
“I don’t care about the other times. I care about right now. Why me?”
Kalinda saw the question and hesitancy in Colin’s eyes. He knew the questions racing through her head and watched her sort through her thoughts. He wanted to answer her badly. Explain how things moved so fast. Tell her that they were meant to be. It had been predestined. But those were all lies. She wanted this, needed this, had anticipated this. And he was the one who would receive it.
The words haltingly came. “I want you.”
“Any guy could have given you—“
“No they couldn’t have. I want this with you tonight.”
Colin approached her, settling his hands on the swell of her hips and drawing her closer to him. His need was obvious and flush against her. “You’re just what I imagined.”
“You just met me.” She pushed him away, taking the time to collect herself.
As he lifted the hem of his shirt, Kalinda gasped. His body was picture perfect. Her hand collided with marbleized skin and scar tissue that stretched over his abs. She was certain the craggy lines were across his back and down his legs.
“I don’t terrify you.” Colin swallowed hard as her fingers trailed and traced over the webbed skin. “Some people think scars are—”
Kalinda shook her head. “Your scars are a part of you, and I like you. What happened?”
“Work-related. It’s the price of doing business with the military,” he said. “My ex thought—“
“Whatever you’re thinking, know that I’m not her.” Kalinda smiled, daring to look into his eyes. He needed to know he was still desirable, still wanted, still a man who had survived something horrible. She stood on her tiptoes and brushed her lips against his.
Colin took that as an invitation to go deeper, kissing her breathless and dueling with her tongue. He nipped at her lips and she responded in turn. He moved her fingers away from the scars and down his belt buckle. No instructions given or needed. On instinct, she loosened the belt and the top of his pants just enough to slide her hands inside. She heard the slight intake of breath when she grazed his cock. She stroked him from the base to the tip, pulling a groan from him as she methodically massaged him to a marble hardness. His hips pressed forward naturally, following the rhythm that has seduced man and woman since the beginning of time.
They made it to the bed, the remainder of her clothes shed before they hit the mattress. The foreplay went on as they fell into an easy pattern of giving and getting, teasing out each other’s preferences and pulling and pushing the other to the brink. His hands felt better than she imagined. His tongue did more than she knew she wanted. He worshipped her breasts, kissing and biting her nipples until she broke into a chant of moans, curses and his name. She slid her hands—palms flat and fingers dancing—across his skin, trailing each touch with kisses across his body until she reached his dick. She sucked him into her mouth, enjoying his smell and taste. Loving how a few licks and well-timed strokes made him shiver and whimper when he came in her mouth, on her chest. Falling for him when he called out her name like an ancient mantra as he relaxed into the orgasm. Needing him more as he pressed into her wetness, filling her tight spaces and coaxing her to move in sync with him. Again and again and again until they came. And that was only the first time that night.
Kalinda weighed her options after she had been stirred awake by Colin stroking her nipples and his hard length nudging her bottom. Spooning and cuddling after sex, this was new, and she liked it. Just from the few hours she spent with Colin, he wouldn’t be the type to avoid handholding, touching.... She could stay cocooned in bed with this man. Forever.
Her phone buzzed on the nightstand,
and she groped to get it. Her thoughts were foggy, still clouded by drink, orgasms and a late night.
“I’ve been calling you since last night.” Her former boyfriend. Again.
“Sorry I missed the call.” She clutched the space next to her, her fingers grazing a man’s back. He was still here. She hadn’t made this night up. “What’s up?”
“You hung up on me.”
She let him talk. Colin turned into her, his sleepy mouth searching and connecting with her nipples. Her slight moans went unnoticed by the disembodied voice on the other end.
“I know you’re mad with me, about the situation. I couldn’t get out of town. Too much was happening with the bond ratings and debt ceilings...”
Kalinda murmured, prompting him to talk. But in this bed, her utterances were a call urging Colin on to do more wicked things with his tongue and hands. He smiled as he retreated under the sheets.
She stammered into the phone when he parted her labia and licked her clit slowly. A tingle etched up her spine, and she knew that within seconds, she was going to come. And the last person who deserved to hear that was her ex. “I have to go.” She powered off her phone and tossed it to the carpet.
“Later?” Colin asked, taking a condom off the nightstand and ripping it open.
“Probably never.”
“Good,” he said, slipping the condom on and twisting to pin her arms over her head. “But I should thank him for letting you wait again.”
“I know,” Kalinda said, closing her sighing as he slid inside her.
“Kalinda, I will never keep you waiting.”
“You don’t have to make promises to me, Colin. I’m not fragile. I can say goodbye easily.”
“It’s not—“
“Do you think that you can have chemistry with someone you just met?”
“Of course. Otherwise one-night stands not fueled by alcohol wouldn’t exist.”
“God, it’s been one night.” He checked his watch. “Not even a full 12 hours and I already miss you.”
“I’m here now.”
* * *
Kalinda tapped her pen against her grade book as she looked at the grades of the student sitting across from her. She hated the students who took her classes expecting something easy because of who they were and what they knew. “This is calculus. It’s a required course for business school majors. You can’t slack off.”
“Prof, how did I do?”
“Average...if I curve generously.” She opened a drawer and pulled out a stack of papers. “Mr. Williams, you have a 78. Congratulations. You passed the class barely, and you can play in the bowl game.”
Her last student raced out of the room, excitedly talking on the phone with his tutor.
Her office intercom beeped, and Kalinda grabbed her phone. “Kalinda.”
The receptionist’s voice cackled over the line. “Dr. Gregory, you have one more student who wants to see you.”
“Lynn, I can’t. My office hours are over.”
“It’s an emergency, according to him. You know how they are at this time of year.”
Kalinda dropped her book bag on the floor. “Fine, send him up. I’ll give him a few minutes.”
Lynn harrumphed into the phone. “The old Dr. Gregory wouldn’t have taken this student. What’s happened to you?”
Memphis is what happened to her. How long had it been? A week, a month? Time melted together since she got back. The spaces between his texts and phone calls had sped up, knowing that they had another excursion planned.
The knock on the door alerted her that she was daydreaming in the office again. “One minute,” she called out, dropping the phone and checking herself in the tiny mirror on her desk.
At the exact minute mark, the door opened. “Doc. Can I beg for a better grade?”
Only one person called her that. Kalinda turned to the door and burst into a smile. “You wish you were taking my class.”
Colin pointed to the sign on her door announcing her office hours for the week. “Office hours during exam week?”
“I have to be accessible for the students,” Kalinda said. “And I was, until ten minutes ago. It’s now time to go home and grade final exams.”
“You know, I’ve always wanted to seduce a professor in her office.”
Kalinda swore under her breath. If she was pale enough to blush, she would be lollipop red all over. “Stop, Colin. I thought you hated Oklahoma.”
“I may have found something that I like here.”
Kalinda bit her lip. I shouldn’t do this. I should make him stop. The office door was unlocked. Someone could walk in. But this...felt so good. “Something?”
“Someone.”
“I wasn’t expecting you.”
“That’s the thrill of a surprise.”
“You came.”
“I told you I would. I don’t welch on my promises.”
“So does that mean we’re just friends? I’m sorry—I need parameters, defined lines, because friends don’t typically do what we just did.”
“You remember what I said to you the morning after?”
Kalinda cherished those words. It wasn’t poetic, but it was powerful and centered in his heart. “I do. You said we were connected.”
“It wasn’t game I was throwing out to you. I meant it.”
“I know.” The words bubbled up in her throat, but she couldn’t speak them, give life to them. She couldn’t let him know.
“I’m not your ex.”
Kalinda blushed. He remembered the words she said to him after seeing his real scars and wounds. Now he mimicked them back to her as she revealed her battered psyche and her emotional wounds. “I won’t keep you waiting for me ever.”
“You’re in the military and travel…”
“When I met you, I was debating whether or not re-up. You won that debate.”
“Don’t make decisions for me. We don’t know—“
“I made the decision because of you, not for you.”
He was waiting for an answer, and “stop talking and fuck me again” wasn’t the best response, Kalinda thought. She had to be open. She snapped her eyes shut and let the words and thoughts process. When her lids fluttered open, she was looking at the same intense gray eyes. His gaze never left her face, searching for answers then and now. Trust him, trust this, trust the process. Take the leap, and she did.
Kalinda sat on top of the rich brown cherry desk, and Colin moved to her. His hand was on her thigh, burning a hole through her resolve. “You want to fuck me here, don’t you? You can’t wait.”
“I can wait as long as you want me to. But I’ve always had a thing for desks, women with glasses, and lots of books.” Each word was punctuated by his hand slipping higher and his lips kissing the skin his hands had set on fire. “I’ve never said some things to a woman, hell anyone. But you, I trust. I feel comfortable with you. I want to be with you, and I am willing to be whatever you want me or need me to be or do for you.”
Kalinda cocked an eyebrow and nodded. She knew just what she wanted him to do. Her. “Close the door,” she said. “I’ve always wanted to break in this desk with the right person.”
This story is part of the Dog Tags and Camouflage anthology. For more stories in this anthology, please visit our webpage at forbidden-lust.com
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