I blushed even more.
We landed, we were introduced, given an efficient tour of Bagram’s neatly ordered sprawl of barracks, mess halls, laundries and medical facilities, and then ordered to present ourselves at 0900 the next day to brief the brass. I was shown to a small room that was as flimsy and cheap as an interstate motel’s, but it was brand new and after the dusty hovel that was our base back at Musa Qala, it felt like fucking paradise. It was no secret why we were given such comparatively nice rooms—my father, of course, and that far-reaching Benjamin name—but I didn’t care about that either. If having a monster for a father was the price to pay for this unexpected luxury of a door and a real mattress, I’d take it.
I plopped my small bag of shit on the floor and went right to the showers, do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars. After the tented shower room with its weak dribbling bladders of lukewarm water, a real shower in a tiled space felt better than a day at a Swiss spa.
Clean and scrubbed and hornier than ever, I went back to my room.
I’d dressed after the shower for the walk back to my room, back in the good old olive drab T-shirt and a clean pair of cammie bottoms, so it took me a minute after I shut my door to unbuckle the woven belt and kick off the pants, leaving me only in boy shorts and the shirt. I had one knee on the bed and one hand in my boy shorts when the door opened.
Opened.
Leaving me exposed: bare legs, hair wet, nipples hard. Hand shaped to the swell of my long-denied cunt.
My head swiveled in panic as I tried to stand on both feet and pull my hand free at the same time, and ended up performing an awkward, jerky hop in front of my intruder.
It was Devon.
She was in a clean uniform, the chain of her dog tags gleaming around the slender column of her neck, and the way her booted feet filled the threshold of the doorway sent a long, slow squeeze down my spine.
She kicked the door shut behind her and then stalked towards me, her expression the same starving one from the plane, and I was frozen in place now, my fingertips still trapped under the waistband of my panties and my wet hair dripping onto my shoulders.
Her hand came up underneath my chin, lifting my face to hers, and she smiled. I’d noticed before when Devon Jesse smiled at anyone, she had the power to make them feel like the only person in the room, a combination of all that focused willpower and energy and conviction. And now, as she smiled at me with her fingers under my chin, I felt like the only person in all of creation.
“Sometimes you look at me like I’m the only one who can save you,” she said.
I had a moment of real, true fear then, the sensation of being poised on a blade. My father was powerful, my superiors liked me, but there was no such thing as safe while being queer in the military. I wasn’t flirting only with the usual regs about fraternization if I messed around with her, I was flirting with some real serious shit. Investigation. Discharge.
Fuck.
But when I looked into her eyes, dark and framed by impossibly long lashes, I couldn’t doubt what I saw there. Desire, pure and simple, except maybe not so simple, because I had a feeling that Devon’s desires were different than those of other lovers I’ve had.
“I can, you know,” she added softly.
I sounded dazed and doubtful when I asked her to clarify. “Can what?”
“Save you.”
I needed to be saved from celibacy, of course, but I felt like she was talking about something else, something I didn’t even know about myself. I shivered, silently asked myself if I was willing to learn, decided I was, and then shivered again. “No one can know,” I said on a swallow.
“Certainly.”
“And why me? Why now?”
Her eyes ducked down, a becoming sweep of inky lashes on her perfect cheekbones. If I didn’t know her, didn’t know she was a hero and tough as nails, I would’ve thought she was feeling shy.
“Because you’re the only one I even see any more. You’re all I can think about, all I can fantasize about, and I can’t stand having you so near, all warm and wet and waiting, without doing something about it.”
She was raw and honest, her voice low and trembling and her fingers shaking ever so slightly around my chin.
“Okay,” I whispered. “Okay.”
I was rewarded with a hard kiss to the mouth, a kiss that tore the breath and uncertainty away from me, and then she pulled back, her mouth a little swollen and her pupils wide.
“There’s a way it has to be between us,” she told me. “And if you don’t like it, at the beginning or at any point after, you tell me to stop and I’ll stop, got it?”
“Got it. But what are you talking about?”
She gripped my chin harder and I whimpered.
Fuck, but I was innocent then. Sure, I’d screwed a healthy number of women in college and before deployment—being femme and a Marine put me at the center of a very fun Venn diagram and I never had to look hard for bedmates, provided I was looking in the right places. And yes, within that number, there’d been a smattering of playful bondage scenes and some interesting toys employed, but never what Devon needed. Never what Devon was.
I’d never looked someone in the eyes and known, gut-deep, that they would feed on me like a vampire if I let them.
It was exhilarating and terrifying, and suddenly I knew what she meant about saving me, because I realized I’d been waiting, possibly all my life, to be fed on.
“Show it to me,” she said abruptly. “Your cunt. I want to see it.”
Oh God, this was more than sex, she wanted more than a lush body to use. She wanted my dignity, my vulnerability, my doubt. That’s what she would feed on, that was her blood.
And sure enough, when I swallowed and tugged the waistband of my boy shorts down past the pouting lips of my pussy, her nostrils flared and her pulse pounded at the side of her neck like she was running a race. She dropped my jaw, stepping back to look at what I’d exposed for her, her sides heaving with quick, rough breaths.
“Bad girl,” she said, her eyes hot on the place where I ached. “Keeping that hidden from me all this time. You didn’t think I needed it? All those cold nights, you didn’t think I could use a nice, warm cunt to cheer me up?”
“I—”
“You don’t speak unless I give you permission,” she grated out. “And right now, you don’t stand unless you have permission. On your fucking knees, Marine.”
I went to my knees. Without hesitation, without argument or resistance, and I could easily have blamed it on my slick pussy, which was currently willing to beg, borrow or steal any possible means of getting attention, but it wasn’t just lust. It was because I belonged there, at her will, at her beck and call.
It was because I already belonged to her, and I’d known it for weeks, I just hadn’t realized how I belonged to her. But now I knew.
Now I knew.
It was harder to keep my pussy open to view like this—I had to spread my knees an uncomfortable amount—but Devon didn’t seem to be particularly concerned with my comfort. Instead, she squatted in front of me, slid her hand past mine, and palmed my pussy with an authority that made me want to kneel down for her all over again.
“This is mine now,” she informed me, two fingers breaching my entrance so there could be no doubt about what she spoke of.
And herself? Would I be the only one to kneel for her and pleasure her?
She seemed to read the question in my eyes. “Yes, Jace,” she said, in a somewhat gentler tone. “I’m all yours too. I don’t want—” She blinked, as if she were surprised to realize this. “It’s only you, and it has been since the moment I met you.”
I let out a long, breathy noise at that, my heart hammering with shock and pure joy.
“You have permission to stand, to undress and then back on your knees,” she said matter-of-factly, standing and pulling at her belt. “You’re going to eat me, and you’re going to eat me g
ood. Fuck knows I’ve waited long enough for it.”
I was out of my clothes like Superman, back on the floor and ready when she stepped within reach. I instinctively knew I shouldn’t touch her, that touching her would be outside the rules of the way it has to be, but her naked body was like a revelation, like the landscape of heaven itself, and I had to touch her, I had to. Those bladed hipbones, and that taut stomach. Those small, pert breasts with their caramel tips. And that pussy, like a rich gift between her thighs.
I touched her.
Her ass pushed against my palms as I brought her to my mouth, and I reveled in the feel of it, of her, of the firm but plush curves so round and soft and strong all at once. And I held her as long as she let me—which wasn’t long, because she gave my hair an eye-watering yank after only a few seconds.
“Only your mouth,” she commanded.
“Or what?” I provoked, peering up at her with my lips still against her mound.
She arched a perfectly winged eyebrow at me. “Or I’ll stripe your ass with my belt. Is that enough of a what for you?”
I had to say, it didn’t sound so bad, not if it involved Devon and me with my pants off. But I obeyed for now, sliding my tongue over her erect clit and into the heart of her. She smelled of her own shower—soap-scented and clean and warm—but her taste, her taste was all her—a little tart, a little sweet, and all Devon. I could’ve stayed like that for the rest of my life, with my nose buried in those glossy curls and her core exposed to my mouth.
I shuddered. Again and again. I felt almost dizzy from her, light-headed with lust, about to pass out from the throb of my blood-swollen cunt and the raw desire twisting my stomach. Without realizing it, I’d started rocking my pussy against the empty air, seeking out friction or stimulation or anything, and that earned me another hair-pull, although when she spoke, she sounded amused.
“Poor Jacey,” she taunted. “Needs to be fucked so bad she’s trying to fuck the air. What would you be doing without me, hmm? Fucking your bedpost? Humping a pillow?”
I could only moan against her in response. Mapping out the forbidden-until-now folds and wells of her female flesh with my tongue and lips had me mindless, panting, and despite her almost cruel teasing, she was now stroking my hair affectionately, as if I were pleasing her beyond simply tongue-fucking her.
It pleased her to have me humbled. Stripped of clothes and dignity. Desperate.
And who would have guessed?
It pleased me too.
I licked and sucked and swirled, until my face was covered in her and she had both hands cradling the back of my head, holding me tight to her while she took over and fucked my mouth like it was a spoil of war. The world disappeared, or rather, she became the world, my only world, her silk on my tongue, her arousal smeared all over my mouth and cheeks and chin, and the sinuous roll of her hips as she fucked my face, the only things I was sensible of.
She came like a queen.
She threw her head back, dark waterfalls of hair everywhere in a sinfully tempting display, her belly quivering and her hands still forcing me to her, forcing me to eat her orgasm and drink her pleasure in using my mouth. From below, my vision was a collage of regal sex—the long, delicate arch of her throat and glimpses of richly colored hair and the pebbled points of her nipples. I could feel the tantalizing contractions of her climax against my mouth, and I stabbed into her with my tongue over and over, ignoring every ache in my jaw and neck, because her satisfaction was the only thing that mattered. She was the only thing that mattered.
After a long minute of pleasure, she moved my face up a little higher to her clit. “That’s right,” she said. “Nurse on it.”
I was squirming, aroused to the point of pain now, by her words and her body and the preemptory way she handled me—tugging down on my jaw when my mouth wasn’t open enough for her or pressing my nose into her curls when it amused her to toy with my breathing.
And this time when she came, she murmured my name. Jace, Jace, oh God, Jace, you wicked girl.
When she finished, she made me suck her clit again and give her a third.
Then a fourth, this time with my fingers inside her and her hips rolling like mad.
Finally, finally, she took pity on me. I was nudged onto the bed and straddled, and she took my tits in hand, obviously pleased by their size. She’d hold one in a punishing squeeze and then slap the tip, free it and then slap it harder, she’d lean down and bite and nurse, and after my hands instinctively went to her head the first time my nipple was treated to the hot suck of her mouth, I was indeed striped by her belt. You’d think it hard to get a good sting out of a woven belt, but Devon managed. Oh, how she managed.
When she finished, she straddled me once more, and she was a queen again, and I was her steed or her throne, and then her fingers pressed against my clit and I was nothing at all. I was wet, screaming, the release so big and so pent up that it was agony to let it claim me, and it was only after it subsided and Devon removed the hand she’d clapped over my mouth to smother my screams that I realized I was sobbing.
I’d never had sex like this.
I only wanted to have sex like this for the rest of my life.
Devon had me stay in bed while she got me a bottle of water and some baby wipes. And after we were all clean and hydrated, she climbed into bed and curled her supple form against my back, stroking my arm as I still flew high on endorphins. It was unexpectedly tender after being used so thoroughly, and that’s when I knew.
I was going to fall in love with her.
* * *
Now
It’s too late.
But my thrumming pulse doesn’t know that, nor the tightness in my belly nor the aching points of my nipples. They all seem to say, would it really be so bad? Just once? Just one goodbye fuck?
“I know I’m supposed to back off now, I know I’m supposed to leave, and I swear to God I will,” she says, and I believe her. Unlike most of us, when Devon swears to God, she means it. As much as He means what He swears to her, I suppose.
“But please, Jace, let me do something, let me do anything to show you how fucking sorry I am.”
There’s a part of me that thinks, this is still about her. Like her need to atone is bigger than my need to be away from her.
But with a crumpling, sinking feeling, I realize that’s not entirely true.
It’s never that I needed to get away from her—she was right about that. Everything that’s happened since my ill-fated trip back to Helmand was because I wanted to hurt her, I wanted to hurt her like she hurt me. Recklessly and without pity. I wanted her heart clawed from her chest and torn to pieces by jackals.
The very thought deflates me. Who have I become? And why? What is the point of hurting her when hurting her means hurting myself?
I slump against her and she catches me, holding me against her.
“Please, Jace,” she begs softly, her lips in my hair. My nervous system catches fire at the feeling of her mouth on me after all this time; my blood sings. “Please.”
It will never matter how selfish she is or how cruel.
I still want her.
“Yes,” I say, my mind defeated and my heart victorious. “Yes.”
* * *
Then
We fucked constantly.
We fucked when it was dangerous and stupid, and when it was safe and sedate. We fucked on leave and we fucked on base. We fucked slow and fast, quiet and loud, with toys and improvised bondage equipment and sometimes only with bare skin and imagination.
But all of our fucking was like the first time. Devon was my queen and I was her subject, and whatever pleased her to do, we did.
I loved it. I loved her.
She said it first though, my hero, my woman sent to war by God. We got back to Musa Qala after three days of furtive sex at Bagram, my ass beat raw and my stomach festooned with bite marks, and she threw her bag on her cot, turned to look a
t me and declared, “I love you.”
“It’s only been three days,” I said. My chest felt like birds were trapped inside. I couldn’t breathe, but in the best way.
Devon smiled that esoteric smile again. “It doesn’t matter.” And then she pushed me against the wall, shoved her hand down my pants, and made me come.
I didn’t say it back to her for a whole year. I don’t know why. Maybe it felt like it was cheap to offer it up in the face of her dauntless certainty, or maybe it felt like I was already vulnerable to her in every way and I couldn’t bear to give up this one last vulnerability. Whatever the reason, I was only able to muster up the courage to say it after our deployment ended and we were back at Pendleton.
It was the day before she met my brother.
Looking back, I see the mistakes—and the mistakes were mostly mine. She made no secret of her awe of my father and my family, she often talked about wanting to know Saul, wanting to learn from him. And when I was candid about the fact that he’d never been more than coldly accepting of me, that he’d never accept giving power in the company to someone openly queer, she made only a small noise of rumination, as if it were a problem to be solved.
I should have asked her then, I should have pressed her, told her more, explained to her my hopes and wishes and needs. But she was so fearless in the face of bullets. Why wouldn’t I have assumed she’d be fearless enough to marry me?
We had four good years after that. We were young and being stationed all over the place and so it wasn’t until I’d done my four years of active duty and resigned my commission to work for my family’s defense contracting company that I wanted to start making plans. I wanted to get married, I wanted to buy a house. I wanted children and backyard barbecues and Disney vacations and all the twee family shit I never had being raised by a cold, powerful man.
I told her on a cool, fall day, sitting outside my family’s house in Virginia horse country. We were on the long verandah watching the wind toy restlessly with the almost-turned leaves, and I loved her and it was time.
Mixtape: A Love Song Anthology Page 12