“Yeah, I wouldn’t keep asking you to go out if I knew you were seeing someone.” Owen grunted. “All you had to do was say the word, bud.”
“We’re not really . . . dating,” I hedged, lifting my head to glance at Max. “We just . . . we’re casual. We hook up when we can.”
“You’re fuck buddies?” Max’s mouth fell open. “Damn. Samantha’s going to freak out.”
“You don’t have to tell her. As a matter of fact, I would consider it a personal favor from both of you if you didn’t say anything to—well, anyone. It doesn’t matter to me, so much, but it’s Harper’s secret. She’s not comfortable talking about it. This whole arrangement is dependent on me being discreet.”
“Damn, Jake. I don’t keep secrets from Samantha.” Max looked seriously stressed. “I can’t lie to her.”
“Can you avoid bringing it up?” I fiddled with a pen on my desk top. “Bros before ‘hos, man.”
He pointed a finger at me. “Don’t you fucking call my fiancée a ‘ho. But . . . if Harper really feels this strongly about it, I can keep my mouth shut, as long as Samantha doesn’t ask me directly.”
“Thanks.” I let out a long sigh. “I appreciate it.”
“But Jake, dude, do you really like Harper? Is it more than just the banging?” He frowned at me.
I lifted a shoulder. “I wish I could say no, that it’s just convenient, but . . . yeah. I like her. I like her a lot. We get along, and we have fun. But it’s not a big deal, and she doesn’t want to make it one.”
Both men studied me until I squirmed, feeling like a bug under a microscope.
“Jake, as long as I’ve known you, I don’t think you’ve ever dated any woman more than a week or two.” Max shook his head. “That’s not much different from the rest of us. We all have had our fun over the years.”
Owen cleared his throat. “Some of us are still having fun.”
“Yeah, I know. But we’re talking about Jake here. He’s found someone he likes, and it’s been . . . how long? Two months?”
I nodded. “Yeah. About that.”
He grinned at me. “Maybe this is it for you, man. Maybe it’s time.”
“She’s not interested,” I blurted out. “She . . . I promised her, no strings.”
“She might have changed her mind, too.” Max tapped on the corner of my desk. “Girls do that. Samantha felt the same way at first, you know. We weren’t going to be serious. But we both realized that we wanted something more.” He paused. “Having a real relationship doesn’t mean your life is over, Jake. It usually means the best part of your life is just beginning.”
“But what if she doesn’t want a relationship, and I say something, and then she doesn’t let me bang her anymore?” I grimaced. “Then I end up getting the worst end of the deal. No fucking, no girlfriend—nothing.”
“Maybe work up to it slowly,” Owen suggested. “Like, don’t go in gangbusters, telling her you want things to change. Ease into it. Make her see it could work before you even bring it up.”
“The man’s got a point.” Max nodded his approval. “Owen, maybe we need to find you someone, too. You give good advice.”
Owen spread his hands. “I’m always looking, man. Haven’t found anyone yet who’s been willing to take me on.”
“It’ll come when you least expect it, trust me.” Max rubbed a hand over his short hair. “Hey, not to change the subject, but I was coming over here to talk with you about Derek. Samantha and I stopped by to see him yesterday, to drop off some cookies and talk to him about being in our wedding. Holy shit, things are bad over there.”
I felt a little guilty. After we’d all spent that one Sunday with him a few months back, I’d promised myself that I’d be better about visiting him and forcing him back into mainstream life. But I’d been preoccupied, and so my interaction with my friend had been reduced to the occasional text. I knew I needed to do better.
“What can we do?” Owen stretched out his legs, crossing his ankles. “We can’t make him do anything he doesn’t want.”
“Right. But I talked to Colonel Debbings, and she said Derek’s got one more chance to pull himself together and work with this new physical therapist. If he blows off this appointment, they’ll start the ball rolling to discharge him medically.”
“Shit.” I sighed heavily. “What are we going to do?”
“I’m thinking we’re going to have to make sure he gets to those first visits. We have to find out when they are and drive him there. He might be pissed as hell, but it’s for his own good.”
“Count me in.” I leaned back in my chair. “Just text me when I need to pick him up, and I’ll make it happen.”
“Excellent.” Max turned to leave. “Oh, and Jake, I feel like I need to say this: you’re my friend, my fellow soldier, and I’ve always got your back. But if this deal between you and Harper fucks up anything with Samantha and me—if it makes my girl at all unhappy, your ass is mine.”
He looked so serious and fierce that I was legitimately freaked for a moment. “Message received. Don’t worry. I think I have some ideas to bring her around to my way of thinking and make everyone happy.”
* * *
Late that night, Harper and I were lying in her bed, after I’d just made her come for the third time. I had my hands behind my head, staring up at the ceiling as I thought about what Max had said.
“Hey, have you had many long-term relationships?” I hadn’t meant to speak aloud, but apparently now my mouth was operating independently of my brain.
“Random much?” Harper’s voice was sleepy. “But if you want to know . . . no. I haven’t. There was one guy I dated for a year in high school, but then we graduated, and neither of us wanted to do the long-distance deal. We parted as friends. Still are, I guess, though I haven’t seen him in a while.”
“Hmmm.” I frowned.
“How about you?” She shifted a little; her head had been resting on my chest, but now she tilted her chin up, as though to look at my face. I felt the brush of her hair on my neck, but I didn’t move my own gaze toward her.
“Ah . . . pretty much the same, I guess.” I swallowed, wondering why the hell I’d opened this can of worms. Still, we’d promised honesty, and I didn’t want to break that agreement. Also, I was hoping this might be step one in my long-term plan to ease Harper into the idea of . . . us. “Except instead of breaking up with my high school steady, I married her.”
Harper reared up, the top of her skull narrowly missing cracking into my jaw. “Get the fuck out.”
I smiled a little. “I’d rather not. I’ve got an extreme case of nakedness going on right now, and I don’t think your neighbors would like to get an eyeful of my bare ass high-tailing it to my car.”
She rolled her eyes. “Nice divert there, buddy. But no go. Seriously, you were married? What happened? Was she really your high school sweetheart?”
I sighed. In for a penny, in for pound, I guessed. “Yeah. We started dating when we were sophomores, and it was pretty serious. I told you I grew up in Alabama . . . well, our town was damn small, one of those that you see in movies or on TV, where everyone knows everyone else. And once you were linked with a person, everyone expected the two of you to go the distance: marriage, kids and happily-ever-after.”
“Even if you were only a teenager looking for happy-for-right-now.” It was a statement of understanding, not a question. “Yeah, I get that.”
“Exactly. I always knew I wanted to go to college. When we were seniors, I won a baseball scholarship to a good school. Not huge, not a big name by any means, but it was a full-ride education, which was more than my family would’ve been able to afford. I was so excited . . . but taking it meant moving to Georgia, about ten hours away from home. Caren—that was my girlfriend—was really smart. She actually graduated with her associates degree at the same time she graduated high school, and she was qualified to work as a certified nursing assistant, which was exactly what she wanted. She’d never bee
n interested in a four-year college.”
“Hmmmm.” Harper drew small circles on my abs with the tip of her finger, and I shivered a little. “But . . .”
“But we were in love. Or we thought we were, anyway, and maybe that amounts to the same thing. It seemed like a no-brainer. We got married the month after high school graduation, and we moved to Georgia together. We rented half a duplex in the town next to my college. Caren got a job at an assisted living home, and I worked landscaping until classes began. And for a while, it was great. I felt like we were playing house, you know? Playing at being grown-ups. We cooked dinner together, we cleaned the house together every weekend, we spent our Sunday afternoons at the laundromat, doing our laundry . . . it was all new and novel.”
“Until it wasn’t.” Harper sighed, and the brush of her breath teased my nipple. My cock began to harden again as I tried to stick to my train of thought.
“Uh . . . right. Exactly. When classes started up for me, everything changed. I was still working part-time, but it was at the college, as part of my scholarship. And suddenly, everything was different. Caren was still who she was, working a real job and doing the housework and cooking and all, but I was a college student now. I was surrounded by people who were like me, the way I’d never been before. I’d go to study sessions and stay up half the night with them, just talking philosophy or shit like that. I went to lectures on campus, telling Caren it was required for my coursework, when it technically wasn’t.
“Things got tense, but it wasn’t horrible. Not yet. And then after Christmas, my commitments with the baseball team intensified. Now I had practice all the time, and I spent any time I wasn’t studying hanging out with the guys on the team. Caren and I started fighting just about every day, it seemed like. I tried to do better about pulling my weight around the house and paying attention to her, but I was being pulled apart. It felt like I couldn’t do anything right.”
“You were so young.” Harper pressed her lips into my pec. “And you were kind of in an impossible position.”
“That’s how I felt, but the guilt was intense. It all built up to one night in the spring when we had a huge argument. She said things about my maturity and lack of commitment and how I wasn’t ready to be a husband, and rather than respond, I stormed out and drove around. I knew I should go back home to her, but every time I thought about it, I got madder and madder. I ended up staying out all night.
“Early the next morning, I went to this coffee shop, not too far from our house. I was going to pick up coffee and Danish to take back to Caren, kind of a peace offering, but the place wasn’t open yet, so I sat on a bench outside, waiting. While I was there, this guy comes up to the shop next to the coffee place. He was wearing a uniform, and I realized he worked at the Army recruiting center. Later, he told me I looked so rough, he thought I was a homeless dude, and he’d been about to offer me money, but when he got closer, he realized I was just exhausted. So he unlocked his storefront, invited me in for some coffee, and he offered me a listening ear.”
“He sounds like a good man.” I could hear the smile in Harper’s voice.
“He was. He still is.” I smiled a little, too, remembering. “We talked a long time, and eventually, he told me about how he’d ended up in the service. He loved his career, and by the time I left, I was excited about the prospect of joining the Army. I don’t know why, but it sounded like the best idea ever. Maybe because Caren had said I was immature, I wanted to prove I wasn’t. If I signed up, I could be in the ROTC during college, which would help us out with money, and then after I graduated, we’d have the greatest life, being able to travel around the world and getting paid for it. I thought Caren would jump at this.”
“I take it she didn’t.”
I gave a huff of humorless laugh. “Not exactly. I came home right as she was getting ready to leave for work. I had all the papers and brochures, and I told her this was what I was going to do. I found out in that moment how stupid and blind I’d been. It turned out that Caren and I had very different goals. She wanted to move back to our small town and live there forever. She’d figured we’d have our big four-year adventure while I was in college and then go back home for real life to begin. I’d never planned to move back there. I loved my family and my home, but it felt stifling to me, the idea of being in one place the rest of my life.”
“Ohhhh.” Harper shook her head, her hair tickling me. “And you’d never talked about the future before that? You never realized it?”
“I think I didn’t want to realize it. In my mind, I guess I figured Caren would come around to my way eventually. Or maybe if I didn’t acknowledge it, the difference didn’t exist.”
“But it did, and she didn’t. How long did it take you to come to that conclusion?”
“Not long.” My tone was dry. “After we talked—argued again—that morning, she went to work and I went to class. I was a zombie, since I hadn’t slept, but I was young and I pulled through. Even survived baseball practice—thank God we didn’t have a game that day. I dragged my feet going home, even though I wanted my bed and sleep more than anything else in the world. When I finally skulked back to the house around eight that night, I was surprised that Caren’s car was still gone. Then I went inside and pretty quickly realized her clothes were gone. All her shit was gone.
“She was gone.”
I remembered that night and that feeling all too well. My immediate sense had been relief—I didn’t have to deal with her and I could sleep before I thought about reality again—and then that had been colored quickly by guilt, that I’d been happy she wasn’t there. Both of those were followed up fast with hurt and regret when I’d read her note, telling me that she’d realized what a mistake we’d made in getting married.
“She just left you?” Disbelief infused Harper’s voice. “With a note?”
“Yeah. She said it wasn’t anyone’s fault, but it was clear that we wanted different things. She said she was going back home, and that maybe once we’d both had time to think and grow up a little, things might be different between us.” I paused. “I guess it’s possible she really believed it when she wrote it.”
“What did you do?”
I shrugged, my shoulder moving against the pillow. “Our lease on the duplex was just about up, and I couldn’t swing it without her paycheck, so I moved out the next month. I lived in campus housing, in the ROTC dorms for the next three years. I spent that summer—and all the next ones—training, and after graduation, I went active duty.”
“What about Caren?” I detected a slight note of derision, but I ignored that.
“Six months after she left, I got a letter from her, telling me that she was filing for divorce. She’d met someone—a guy who’d gone to high school with us—and they’d started dating, and now they wanted to get married. I signed the papers and wished her well, and that was the last time I heard from her.” I chuckled a little. “My sisters were furious, though. They wanted to egg or TP her house.”
Harper laughed. “How old are your sisters?”
I smiled wryly. “All three are older than me. Old enough to know better.”
She giggled again. “I think I’d like them.”
I rolled a little, lying on my side and caging her in with my arm. “Yeah, they’d love you. You’re spunky like they are. Feisty.” I nuzzled her neck. “Some might even say trouble.” My fingers dug into her ribs, tickling.
She shrieked, trying to get away. “Stop! Stop it. Or I’ll . . .” Her hand shot out, and she wrapped her fingers around my balls. “Or I’ll make you sorry.”
Immediately, I thrust my hands into the air. “Okay, okay! You win. I give. Just let me keep my nuts.”
“I’ll think about it.” She gentled her hold, and her thumb stroked the underside of my dick. “After all, I do have a vested interest in keeping this part of your anatomy intact.”
“Oh, really?” I shifted again, this time so that she was beneath me. “Are you saying that my cock
keeps you satisfied? Do you mean that if my dick was somehow injured, you’d miss it?”
Harper closed her eyes and fisted me, pumping not so gently in the way that drove me crazy. “I’m saying that I know a good thing when I’ve got it in my hands.” Her eyes popped open, full of mischief, and she began to wriggle down the bed. “Or in my mouth.”
She took just the tip between her lips, and what was mere interest a few seconds before shot immediately to DEFCON 1. Damn, this girl. Just like she’d boasted during our first night together, she blew my mind, even while she was blowing my cock. And although I’d expected to have been a little reluctant to open up about my brief and disastrous marriage, sharing that with Harper felt . . . good. There was something in being a little bit vulnerable that made the sex even better. That connection was different than anything I’d had with any other woman, an intimacy that amped up the heat between us and made me hungry for even more.
Even as she devoured me with tongue, teeth and lips, I found myself wondering if she’d be interested in spending time together outside of bed, when we weren’t ravenous to fuck. If I asked her to go out and have dinner with me, would she say yes, or would she accuse me of breaking our agreement for sex-only and flip out?
I wasn’t sure about how she’d respond, but to my utter shock, I realized that it mattered to me . . . she mattered to me.
It was a disconcerting discovery, and I didn’t know how to deal with it. But at that very moment, Harper moaned, the vibration traveling through my dick, and suddenly, nothing else in the world existed.
Chapter Six
Harper
There was a loud pounding in my head . . . and it wouldn’t stop. I stuffed my pillow around my head, covering my ears, but then the ringing began.
“Make it stop,” I moaned, reaching out to the other side of the bed. But my hand only encountered empty space, and I remembered blearily that Jake hadn’t stayed over last night, because he’d had an early march or something like that. I hadn’t paid much attention when he’d talked about it, mostly because I’d still been blissed out from my last intense orgasm.
Zone of Action: A Career Soldier Military Romance Page 8
