“So what did you tell her?” I snuggle back against her side.
“I said the piece of paper might be nice to have, but it couldn’t make us any closer, so I’d just go home and ask my wife.”
“We might as well humor her, then. Set a good example.”
There’ll be more to say later, and plenty of time to say it. Now, with the afterglow of lovemaking intensified by the hum of the motor, we don’t need words at all as the chair I built carries Sgt. Rae, and Sgt. Rae carries me home.
DEAD ON HER FEET
Elizabeth L. Brooks
Jamie kept her eyes closed, even though the plane was descending and she couldn’t sleep. Nonessential travel, like finally coming home after two years in the godforsaken desert, was slow. And frustrating. She’d caught a supply truck from her unit’s camp that ran three hours into the city base, and then waited around for most of a day for a military transport plane that had room for her, which had flown eight hours to Germany. Then it was a bus to take her to the commercial airport in Munich, where not a single ticketing agent could be found who spoke English. She’d made do, though—a soldier made do, even in some crazy backwater where a shovel-dug latrine was a luxury and female soldiers couldn’t leave base without escort and even the kids you were there to help hated you for the uniform on your back.
But this was Germany, which was friendly and civilized and where the only thing in the way was words. That was easy, even allowing for her being tired and discombobulated from travel already. She’d pulled out her BlackBerry and loaded up an atlas and pointed and zoomed and pointed and zoomed until she’d finally made the crisply-dressed, ultra-polite young man understand her destination. Then it was commercial transport all the way, with its much more comfortable seats but its annoying security protocols (didn’t they understand how goddamn hard it was to get in and out of combat boots?) and its annoyed civilians. Munich to London, London to New York, in and out of customs and security, retrieving and then rechecking her duffel every time she went through customs in a new country...
Thirty-four hours on the move and counting, dead on her feet, but this was the last flight and her ears were popping with the descent. Maybe another hour now and then she’d step out of the Atlanta airport into the lush, thick humidity of proper Southern air, maybe even one of those summertime afternoon deluges and she would stand there and just let the rain soak her right to the skin. Then she’d take a bus a couple of hours down into Georgia, to a tiny little town that no one had ever heard of who hadn’t been born there, and then it was only a couple of miles from the bus depot to Casey’s mama’s house. To Casey.
Eyes still closed, Jamie’s hand stole up to her shirt pocket where she kept the most important things: her passport, the receipts for all those planes and buses, her ID cards, the cash she’d drawn to pay for food...and the picture of her and Casey at his sister’s wedding two years back. She’d looked ridiculous in that bridesmaid’s dress with her fresh-from-basic close-cropped hair and those mannish muscles on her bare shoulders, but Casey had looked so very, very fine in that tux, and he’d pulled her close while they danced and told her she was the most beautiful woman there, and they’d snuck off down to the basement and almost not made it back in time to see the cake cut. Luckily the tux jacket had covered where she’d got lipstick on his cummerbund.
She didn’t take the picture out, not here on the plane where everyone around her would be able to see her face, but she didn’t need to. She’d looked at it so many times back in her sweltering bunk back at camp that she had it memorized. It was the image she called up in her mind’s eye when she was trying to ignore hostile allies and murderous opponents, drinking two gallons of water a day just to keep her sweat glands from going into revolt, her teeth crunching on the nasty gray dust as she got into it yet again with those clowns from HQ who couldn’t comprehend why shit kept breaking and she began to wonder if “back home” had ever even existed or if it had all been some kind of elaborate mirage or heatstroke hallucination.
Sometimes she was pretty sure it had been a hallucination, because men like Casey just didn’t exist, not like she remembered him: tall and strong, drop-dead sexy when that mischievous twinkle shone in his pretty brown eyes; a good man who took care of his mama and adored his little nephew but wasn’t averse to a little hell-raising to liven up a Friday night; a man who knew her better than she even knew herself sometimes. They’d grown up together; Jamie’s mama and Casey’s had been friends from the cradle, just like Jamie and Casey themselves, right up until they were fourteen and Casey had kissed her in the church basement while they were supposed to be counting up the pies for the mission bake sale. But he hadn’t protested three years later when she’d told him she was going to enlist, hadn’t tried to turn it into something about him or taken it as any kind of slight on his manhood or his ego. He’d told her he would miss her and told her he would write, and he’d promised to be waiting for her when she came home again.
And that part was the craziest of all, that he loved her—her, knob-kneed and flat-chested as she’d been all the way through adolescence, and he’d never so much as looked at another girl, not that she’d ever seen or even heard about, and even though she’d up and enlisted for five years, and still had two left to serve, he was waiting on her.
And that was where Angie down in motor pool always laughed and called bullshit on her. Most of the time, Jamie figured that was just jealousy, but sometimes she wondered. Angie’d taken Jamie under her wing when she’d arrived and she’d been right about all kinds of stuff that Jamie would’ve sworn was pure nonsense before she’d seen it play out just the way Angie’d said it would. And when Jamie had arrived with her unit fresh from the states, there’d been eight of them with girls back home (or guys, Jamie thought, since she was including herself in that, and Joe hadn’t exactly been subtle, even before DADT had been repealed) and now, after two years, they were down to two of them. This long-distance stuff was hard.
But the plane was touching down now, and soon they’d be getting off and hiking through the terminal to the baggage claim and collecting her duffel full of dirty clothes and presents and then catching the shuttle over to the bus station for two weeks of leave before she had to report to her new post stateside. Casey, she thought, I’m almost home. Just a couple more hours.
Duffel. Shuttle. Bus. The list of steps that had been so long when she’d started her leave was now down to just these three short items. She repeated them to herself like a litany as she joined the flow of passengers streaming off the plane. Duffel. Shuttle. Bus.
Everything here was in English, but Jamie was so tired that the words on the signs were blurring. She had to ask the gate attendant which way to go even though she’d been through Atlanta a dozen times or more. She got on the tram that would take her to baggage claim. There were seats available, but Jamie knew if she sat down she’d fall asleep. She waved forward a short, plump woman shepherding two small children. The woman smiled gratefully and thanked her before lifting the little boy up into a seat beside his sister. Jamie leaned against a wall and closed her eyes. Maybe she’d be able to nap on the bus a little. It’d be a shame to waste any of her precious leave at home with something as mundane as sleep.
Duffel. Shuttle. Bus. The tram lurched to its final stop, and Jamie stumbled off with the rest of the crowd. There was a large board there that would tell her where to go for her bag, but it had white text on a blue background that was all but impossible for Jamie’s exhaustion-fogged eyes to read. Dead on her feet, she squinted to make the words readable and tried blearily to recall what her flight number had been.
“Jamie Kaye!”
The airport disappeared around her, fading into utter insignificance as she whipped around in shock. He’d put on a little weight, but it looked good on him—he’d always been so skinny his mama had threatened to hire him out as a scarecrow. He’d let his hair grow out a little, too; it wasn’t long, but it wasn’t the buzz cut he’d maintained since
the eighth grade, either. That would take some getting used to. His eyes were the same, though, the exact same dark golden brown as the filling in his mama’s homemade pecan pie, and just as sweet, crinkled with his smile.
“Casey,” she whispered, and then she shrieked, “Casey!” and flung herself into his arms.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she demanded, and then kissed him so he couldn’t answer; it was a stupid question, she didn’t care about the answer, she just wanted him to kiss her until they’d made up for six months of letters and whispered phone calls and for-fuck’s-sake awkward video chats in the base’s computer lab.
And he did. He kissed her like she was the last drop of water in the desert, the first taste of a decadent dessert, like she was the only thing in the world that mattered. His hands were in her hair, on her shoulders, pulling her hips into his, everywhere. When they broke apart because they had to breathe, he nuzzled at her neck, his breath sighing down to tickle her collarbone. “Goddamn, you smell good, Jamie Kaye,” he groaned.
Jamie laughed hoarsely. She hadn’t showered in two days, hadn’t changed her fatigues or put on deodorant in nearly as long. She was amazed he could stand to be so close to her, frankly. She pulled away to look at him again, still not certain she wasn’t dreaming. “Casey,” she started to say, and then she registered the way he was dressed.
He was in a tuxedo, all black, with a blackberry-colored tie and cummerbund. His wavy, honey-colored hair had been slicked back into something resembling neatness and a spray of flowers decorated his lapel. Jamie blinked at him again.
“Casey,” she said again, her mind reeling, “what the hell is this?”
He glanced down at himself, self-conscious grin briefly teasing his lips. “Well,” he drawled sheepishly, “when you sent me that text message when you got to New York with your flight info to Atlanta, I...kind of had me a notion.”
“A notion?” Jamie asked skeptically.
Casey was not often the kind of man who had notions. Far more often, it was his dumbass cousins who had the notions, and then a week or two later, when the bail had been paid or the insurance had been settled up, Casey would send her a letter and tell her all about it. She crossed her arms over her chest and waited expectantly.
Casey knew exactly what she was thinking, she could tell by the sudden uncertainty in his eyes. “See,” he plunged onward, “I’ve been thinking... You remember my sister’s wedding, I expect—”
Jamie did not—did not—touch her shirt pocket with that picture in it, but she could feel her face begin to heat. “I remember,” she allowed.
Casey grinned at her again and her blood heated, her nipples and cunt tingling like they always had when he’d flashed that grin her way, though she was damned if she’d let him know it right now, standing here in the middle of the goddamn Atlanta airport.
“I’d been meaning to ask that night,” he said. “After Sue and Darryl were safely away, I mean. But then you told me about your posting, and...it didn’t seem quite the right time, anymore.”
Jamie was frowning. “The right time for what?”
Casey shrugged, a ripple of wiry shoulders. “But now I think maybe I just chickened out. I’ve been thinking about it so much these last few weeks. I know you’ve still got a couple of years left before you have to decide if you’re going to re-up, but the thought just wouldn’t leave me, and when I knew you were just a few hours from home, I decided I couldn’t wait even an hour longer than I had to.”
Casey knelt down right there in the airport. People were watching, most of them looking amused. “Jamie Kaye Carmine,” he intoned solemnly, though his dark eyes sparkled, “I’ve loved you for all my life, and I intend to love you for every bit of the rest of it, too. Would you do me the honor—”
Jamie’s face was flaming. “Damn it, Casey, get up off the floor and stop making a spectacle!”
“—of consenting to be my bride, to have and to—”
“Yes!” She laughed, yanking at his arm. “Yes, you idiot, of course I will, but get up!”
Casey surged upward and pulled her back into his arms and she didn’t resist, even though their audience was laughing and applauding. His mouth tasted of peaches and whiskey and breath mint, and it was the taste of home. She melted into the embrace, holding him tighter, letting him hold her up since she was so damned tired. Rumpled and filthy with the detritus and sweat of what seemed like dozens of airports and bus stations—and he still wanted her; she could feel his arousal even through the clothes that separated them.
Jamie plunged into the kiss, giving him every lonely and frightened night halfway around the world when she’d wished for him to hold her, every furtive and half-frantic scramble for relief while her bunkmate was in the head, every desperate kiss she’d used to seal her letters.
It was Casey who broke this time, panting hard as he leaned his forehead against hers. “God,” he muttered, “I don’t know if I can stand to wait till we get home.”
A soldier makes do. Jamie looked around quickly, not quite daring to hope, but—there were four soldiers coming out of the men’s restroom, huge duffels over their shoulders. She grabbed Casey’s hand and dragged him along in her wake.
They halted at her approach. Automatic as breathing, Jamie checked their insignia. “Sergeant,” she offered in greeting to their leader.
“Private,” he returned. He glanced at Casey and then back to her, and his mouth curved. “Just getting home, Private?”
“Haven’t even got my bag out of claim yet,” she said.
“Baggage claim takes forever,” opined one of the other men, another private.
“Yeah,” said a third. “And there’s always a line for the damn head.” He glanced around quickly for patrolling airport security, then gave a quick head jerk toward the restroom door.
Jamie grinned. “Thanks, guys.” She would have dragged Casey into the bathroom with her, except that he was already pushing her forward.
There was no lock on the door, but Jamie didn’t care. She leaned against the wall between two urinals, already yanking her shirt loose, pulling it over her head without bothering to unbutton it.
“Those guys won’t prank us, will they?” Casey asked, lips already at her throat, his hands fumbling behind her for the hooks on her bra. “They’ll keep everyone out?”
Jamie yanked her hands free of her shirt cuffs and dropped it to the floor. “Dunno,” she admitted.
Her own unit wouldn’t do that to her—but they might do it to someone else that they didn’t know. “Doesn’t matter, really.”
She yanked at the cummerbund, pushing it up and out of the way so she could get to the fly of his pants. She couldn’t help but giggle at the memory of his sister’s wedding, but it turned into a gasp as Casey’s mouth closed on her breast.
After six months of nothing but her own hands and memories, it was electrifying to feel his tongue on her nipple, sliding and flicking, hot and wet. Casey moaned and his hips thrust, his hardness unmistakable. She resumed working her way into his pants.
When her hand closed on his cock, he grunted and thrust again, and she squeezed gently. “God, you feel good,” she groaned.
His hand was inside her pants now, and she was already wet, had been since he’d gone down on his knees in front of her. Jamie tried to lift a leg and give him greater access, but her pants were trapped by her boots—why the fuck hadn’t she changed into civvies back in New York?
“Dammit!” she cursed, struggling with the fabric.
“Shh,” Casey soothed. Two steps put them in front of the bank of sinks, facing the mirrors. Casey stood behind her, his hands on her breasts, stroking and circling. Jamie watched, fascinated, as his fingers plucked at her nipples, pinching and then soothing, until she was trembling with need. He pushed gently then and she leaned over, bracing her arms on the countertop and opening her legs as wide as the binding pants would allow. Casey’s eyes met hers in the mirror as he pressed in close.
&n
bsp; It was even more awkward than at his sister’s wedding—at least she’d been wearing a dress then—but they were both needing each other so damned bad right now. Jamie couldn’t open her legs any wider, but she managed to lean onto her arms until her toes barely touched the floor, lifting her hips higher. Grateful for every damned push-up the fucking drill sergeant had put her through, she twisted and contorted until—ohfuck-inghellfinally —his cock was in her, hot and heavy.
Each thrust made the whole countertop quiver; the vibrations in the mirror bank leached some of the heat from his reflected gaze. Jamie felt a hysterical giggle threaten to rise but it felt good, better than good, nearly perfect, and the laughter died in her throat to be reborn as a moan. Casey’s hand slipped between her legs and he growled possessively when his fingers slid between her folds. His rough calluses were the perfect friction against her swollen clit, and Jamie had to bite her lip to keep from screaming with pleasure.
“Oh, God, Jamie Kaye,” he groaned, “you feel so good, so damn good…” His movements were growing jerkier, rougher. “God, Jamie,” Casey panted. His voice was carried away as he came, and Jamie could feel him spurting, the pulsing spasms of his cock stretching her in the best possible way.
He froze for a moment, catching his breath, and then redoubled his efforts between her legs. His fingers dragged and teased and tugged, pitting their roughness against the slick wetness of her need, his cock still inside her, softening but still big enough for her to squeeze with each tremor of her body. She became aware that she was whimpering but her voice was no longer under her control.
The orgasm started in her toes and rushed upward like a desert sunrise, hot and crackling, leaving her body trembling and weak in its wake. Casey held her upright and gently stroked her skin until she could stand again, then turned her to kiss her.
Duty and Desire: Military Erotic Romance Page 12
