Lightning lit the room and was followed a few seconds later by a crack of thunder. Jack winced. Mei’s arms tightened around his chest.
“I’m sorry.” He’d never had trouble apologizing before, but now the words stuck in his throat, trapped by shame and fear. Coming home, getting back into the family routine and relaxing his guard was never easy, but this was different. He could have hurt her.…
“Jesus.” He lunged to turn on the bedside light. When he twisted back toward her, the shock on her face made him pause, but only for a moment. He wanted to cup her cheek, check every inch of her skin for bruises, but he hesitated, not knowing how she would react. His hand, suspended between them, was shaking, his heart pounded in his throat. “Did I hurt you?”
“No!” Mei clasped her fingers around his and pressed his palm to her chest, right above her heart. “You would never hurt me, Jack.”
He wished he had her certainty, tried to bring his dream into focus so as to know for himself whether she was telling the truth. But it was all a blur. “Are you sure?”
“Positive.” She feathered her fingertip over his cheek to his lips. When she traced back and forth across the lower one, a shudder tripped down his spine. “You blew my mind.” A little frown wrinkled her brow and she glanced down for a moment. When she lifted her gaze back to his, determination firmed her lips. “I just wish it hadn’t all been part of a dream—a nightmare—for you.”
He couldn’t deny it—hated that he couldn’t—but he also couldn’t let her think of it that way. In the army they taught you not to let small problems become big ones, to deal with things immediately so no one got hurt. Risking her rejection, he reached for her, sighed with relief when she came to him willingly, eagerly, like she always had.
“It wasn’t a nightmare, Mei.” Gently settling her back on the bed, he leaned over her, giving himself permission to caress her torso until his hand came to rest on her breast. Her nipple immediately began to tighten and he couldn’t resist playing with it, rolling it slowly until it became a stiff peak once more. She drew in her breath with a little hiss, her eyelids drooping slightly, and he felt the tension in his gut ease a little more.
“When we’re apart, thoughts and dreams of you keep me sane.” Bending, he pressed a soft kiss to her solemn lips, spoke against them. “I remember everything about you—the way you look coming out of the shower or brushing your hair, cooking, cuddling with the children—everything. I lie in bed pulling out memories and playing them in my head like movies, hurting and longing just to see you. And when I come home, it’s as though my brain can’t quite accept that I’m back and keeps doing the same thing, thinking of you, longing for you, even though you’re right beside me.”
The tip of her tongue swept his lower lip, and she lifted her arms to twine around his neck, one hand sweeping down his back, the other curling around his nape. “So all we did are things you dream of doing to me while you’re away?”
“Those and more.” He inhaled sharply as her palm slid around to his groin, her fingers finding his cock and bringing it back to full erection with just a light touch. “You know I have a really good memory.”
Her little laugh, the slow pump of her hand, brought the fire back to raging life under his skin. Following her lead, he cupped her mound, parting her pussy lips and sinking his fingers into her heat. The instinctive upward jerk of her hips, the parting of her thighs to give him full access, caused a rush of desire so powerful it made his head spin.
“What do you think you’d have dreamed next?”
Jack rolled on top of her, settling between her thighs, both of them moving with the ease of long, satisfying practice so that his cock was immediately perfectly positioned.
“I’m sure this was it.” He sank into her slowly, gritting his teeth against the intense pleasure of having his hardness surrounded, welcomed by her slick, hot walls. Holding back when all he wanted to do was thrust them both to orgasmic oblivion. “I wanted to watch you come. I need that so much.”
Mei moaned, closed her eyes. Soon she was panting and whispering how much she loved to feel his cock inside her, how hard he was, how close she was to coming. So delicious to hear such dirty words from that prissy little mouth again, and the sight and sound sharpened his need until it bit at his belly, gathered like a conflagration in his veins. Jack kept his movements long and powerful, the way she liked them. A flush rose to stain her cheeks again and her pussy clasped him, the contractions getting faster and stronger as she rocketed toward climax.
Suddenly her eyes popped open and the look she gave him, filled with love, overwhelming passion and that funny, adorable hint of surprise, made his heart swell. The heat in his groin coalesced, dropped into his balls and pushed him into orgasm just as she cried out, her pussy milking his cock until he thought he’d pass out from the pleasure.
As he rolled over, pulling her against his side once more, he wanted her to understand. He wasn’t good with words or emotions, but she needed to know. So he tilted her head up to look at her and whispered, “You’re home to me, Mei; home and peace and sanity. I can do anything when I know you love me.”
Then he kissed her once more. Her answer came in the sweetness of her response, the tightness of her arms holding him as close as possible. Outside, the storm moved farther away and sounds of war retreated from his dreams.
SERGEANT RAE
Sacchi Green
Sgt. Rae was so strong she could carry me at a run through gunfire and smoke and exploding mines. Two years later, she’s that strong again. With just one hand she can hold me from getting away, no matter how hard I struggle. Even her voice is enough to stop me at a dead run, so it doesn’t matter that she can’t run anymore. And anyway, I’d never want to run away.
I’m smaller, but I’ve got my own kind of muscle even if it doesn’t show. A mechanic in an armored tank unit has to be strong just to handle the tools you need, and if you’re a woman doing the job you need a whole extra layer of strength. I’m not an army mechanic anymore, but I can still use tools; Sgt. Rae isn’t an army sergeant any more, but she’ll always be in charge. At the town hall where she’s the police and fire department dispatcher, they tell me she’s got the whole place organized like it’s never been before.
In our house or in town, I’m supposed to just call her Rae these days, and mostly I remember. I’m just Jenny. In the bedroom, we don’t need names at all except to wake each other when the bad dreams come and whisper that everything’s all right now. Or close enough to handle, as long as we’re together.
Out here on this trail I’ve made through the woods and across the stream, we play by my rules, and that means I’m Specialist 2nd Brown and she’s the ball-buster staff sergeant, even though neither of us has any use for balls.
She’ll be coming along the trail behind me any minute, coming to see what new contraption I’ve constructed. What she expects is something like the exercise stations I’ve built for her into every room in the house, chinning bars and railings and handgrips at different levels, and in a way that’s right, but with a different twist. She expects I’ll want her to order me to drop and do fifty push-ups or sit-ups, or run in place until I’m panting, but this time I want more.
I check the gears and pulleys one more time, even though I already know the tension is set right. It’s my own tension that’s nearly out of control. The posts and crossbars are rock-solid while I’m shaking in my old fatigues, so nervous and horny that I can’t even tell which is which.
I hear the motor now. I could’ve made it run quieter, but if you’ve been where I’ve been, where we’ve both been, you want to be sure you know who’s coming around the bend.
She’s crossed the rocky ford in the stream where no regular wheelchair could have gone. I salvaged tracks from old snowmobiles at the repair shop where I work and they’re as good as any armored tank tracks, even though they’re made of Kevlar instead of steel. Fine for this terrain, and even the steel kind got chewed up in the desert
sand in Iraq.
Mustn’t think about the desert now. Here in New Hampshire, green leaves overhead are beginning to turn orange and red. This stream flows into a river just beyond our house, and we can watch canoes and kayaks pass by; no desert in sight. This is home. We’re together. Safe. Except that safe isn’t always enough, when you’ve known—had to know—so much more.
Now I hear Sgt. Rae veering back and forth through the obstacle course, steering the mini-tank around trees, stumps, boulders, right over small logs. With a double set of the tracks on each side, the only way to steer is by slowing one side while accelerating the other, and that takes strength. I think of her big hands on the levers, the bunched muscles of her arms and shoulders, even stronger now than in the army because she insists on a manually powered chair anywhere but in these woods. Gloves help, but her hands get calloused from turning the wheels. Calloused, and rough even when she tries to be gentle… Anticipation pounds through my cunt.
I kneel on the ground, close my eyes, try to clear my mind—but on the distant bridge over the river a truck backfires. In spite of the leafy dampness the desert flashes around me again, the clouds of dust, the explosions, the machine-gun fire on that final day. I think of Sgt. Rae’s powerful voice, how it cut through the pain and confusion and kept me breathing when I didn’t think I could last another second. “Brown!” she bellowed, again and again, coming closer to where the shattered truck cab trapped me. “Brown, damn you, report!” That sound gripped me, forced strength into me, so that I moved just a little, no matter how much it hurt, and she found me.
I never remember what happened next. I don’t think Sgt. Rae does, either, but somebody told me later they found a bent assault rifle barrel nearby, and maybe she levered the truck cab up enough with that to drag me out. I just remember being slung over her shoulder, feeling her run and swerve and run some more, and hearing her voice drilling right through to my heart in a tone I’d never heard before. “Jenny, Jenny…hang on…”
Right then, with bullets still screaming around us, it was like I’d died and woken up to a new world. Ever since the day we met, Sgt. Rae had mesmerized me, obsessed me, and I’d worked to hide my foolish longings behind hard work and casual jokes and chatter. But in that moment, as her strong voice shook, a window opened in the midst of hell and gave me a glimpse of a heaven better than anything they’d ever preached about in church.
I passed out when she set me down behind a sand bunker some of our guys had piled up in a hurry. Maybe I heard somebody say another soldier was still out there, or maybe I just heard later how she went back into that hell. Either way, I know she went.
It was a month before I saw Sgt. Rae again. I was still bandaged, but up and walking. She wasn’t. At first, when I stood beside the hospital bed, I wondered whether she was really there at all until she saw me.
“Jenny?”
I could scarcely hear the word. But then strength came back into her voice, and the power I’d always felt surrounding her was there again as though a light had been switched on. “Specialist Brown, report!”
So I did, listing my injuries and treatments and recovery, even though her half smile softened the formal order. Later, when she’d had her meds and fallen asleep, I pumped the nurses about her injuries and prognosis, and from that day I was never away from her for more than a few hours. There were some rough parts, and sometimes I had to be the strong one to get her through. A nurse or two caught on that there was more to it than just that she’d saved my life, but they never made any fuss. It helped that I could fix mechanical glitches in the orthopedic ward’s equipment and even make some things work better than originally designed; I think somewhere along the line they claimed me as an adjunct physical therapy technician.
The dampness of the ground soaking through my jeans brings me back to the present. Sgt. Rae is coming around the clump of hemlock saplings. It’s time and now I’m ready, in position, on my knees, hands clasped high above my head, ropes wrapped around my wrists, head bowed.
“Brown!”
I can’t salute in this position, but I try to sound as though I were doing it. “Sergeant, yes Sergeant!”
“What do you think you’re doing, Brown?”
“Sergeant, I’m kneeling, Sergeant.”
“I can see that. But do you know what you’re doing?”
Without looking I can tell she’s surveying the situation. A pair of leather-wrapped rings hangs right where she can stretch up and reach them. The system of gears and pulleys is rigged to offer just the right amount of resistance and stability for her to pull herself to a standing position, brace with forearms at chest level on a crossbar, and then lower her weight slowly back down. Three of the doorways in our house have similar setups, but this one is more complex—and in this one, the counterweight is me.
“Sergeant, yes Sergeant, I do know what I’m doing.”
There’s the slightest of creaks as she begins to rise. The ropes tighten, and I rise, too, until I’m dangling in the air, helpless—or as helpless as I can make myself seem. My wrists are padded just enough to keep the circulation from being cut off. I could thrash and kick—I fought off rape a time or two in the army before I got to Sgt. Rae’s squad, where you’d better believe no woman ever had to fear attack by fellow soldiers—but now I’m sinking into sub space, wide open, vulnerable.
“What’s got into you, Specialist? What do you think you want?”
She knows, of course. By now we know almost everything about each other. My face is level with hers, a rare treat, and I try to focus on her face through my fog of obsession. The hair that was mostly dark two years ago is more salt than pepper now, and brush-cut shorter. There are lines around her eyes from more than the desert sun. The squareness of her face, so like her father’s, is softened just enough by the graceful curve of her cheeks that I want to stroke it with my fingers and then my tongue, if I could only earn that privilege.
Sgt. Rae shifts so that her weight is mostly on the crossbar and slides one hand free of its ring. “Speak up, Brown!” She grabs my brown ponytail, yanks me close, and then shoves me away so that I spin one way and then the other as the ropes twist, untwist, and twist again. When I sway close enough she swats me across my ass, or as close as she can reach, and I feel it all the way down my butt cheeks and between my thighs. She does it again, and then again, until the heat flows so deep inside me I think I might explode.
With all her weight on the crossbar through her chest and armpits, she reaches out to grip me by the shoulders, hard, hurting me just the way I like it. Then her big hands slide under my armpits so she’s partly holding me up. My upstretched arms raise my small breasts; she rubs her thumbs across my nipples so hard and fast they must be standing out like bullets, and when she pinches them, sharp pangs of pleasure shoot down through my b elly.
She knows where the worst of my scars are and works around them down my sides and ribs, trying not to be too rough even when I squirm and squeal and try to get even harder pressure from her fingers. I’m not silent any longer. It doesn’t matter how I sound, what’s pain and what’s pleasure; all that matters is getting more and more.
Sgt. Rae’s the one who has to use her safeword first. “At ease, Brown!” She grips the rings again and sinks slowly back into her chair.
My feet touch the ground. My arms drop, and I loosen the rope loops with my teeth, getting free just in time for her next order.
“Get over here, Jenny, stat!”
So I leap to straddle her lap, and she lifts me tight against her shoulder, right where I belong. Her free hand kneads my butt hard enough to make my cunt grind into her. I could come from that alone but she needs more, more of my skin and heat and wetness, so she gets my pants down and sighs approval when I’m slippery enough for her calloused fingers to move easily between my folds. Back and forth, teasing, pressing deeper, a knuckle nudging my clit on each forward stroke; I want it all now, now! But I have to wait for her to drive me even harder, higher. This isn�
��t just for me.
“Now.” Rae’s voice is strained. “Feel it. For both of us.” I’m rocking with her thrusts, howling with need, taking everything she can fit inside me, and when the pleasure bursts through all control, I shout my joy to the treetops loud enough for two hearts, two bodies.
She holds me tight while my breathing slows toward normal. When I raise my head I see a tear trickling down her cheek. This doesn’t scare me the way it used to; I’ve figured out that it’s her own release of tension after she’s made me feel what she can’t feel any more except through me. Being strong when that’s what I need makes it safe to be vulnerable afterward. Besides, now’s my chance to lick the tear away, kiss my way all across the face I love, ending with the lips that say more this way than words ever could.
Rae sets me gently away sooner, though, than usual. “Jenny, there’s something… Well, something that needs saying.”
Now I’m scared. Hasn’t everything already been said?
“You gave me back my life,” she says, and pauses to search for the right words. “And I know you think I saved yours. So you could say there’s no owing anything on either side.”
I couldn’t say that at all, so I just look at her. She sees my expression and strokes my face with such tenderness that fear melts away.
“I didn’t mean… It’s just that whatever we do, it’s by choice. Maggie Burnside stopped by my desk today and asked, out of the blue, when we were going to get around to making things legal.”
“Maggie the town clerk? Old Maggie Graniteside?”
“She’s not so bad when you get to know her. And I guess she’s come around to thinking we’re not so bad, either. Or maybe she’s decided to catch up with the twenty-first century without being dragged there.”
Duty and Desire: Military Erotic Romance Page 11
