by Dani Stowe
“Stop it,” she says softly as a pair of nurses walk past us. One of them waves to her then turns to eye me up and down with a nasty look. Camilla waves back then tries to hide her face in her palm. I watch the nurses enter the hospital doors.
“Why are you here?” I ask.
Camilla’s eyes peep at me through her fingers. “You need to leave,” she says.
I shake my head and cross my arms. “I’m not fucking leaving,” I say. “I’m not fucking leaving until I get some answers.”
Camilla tilts her head back and looks at me. “I have a family member who’s sick upstairs. I had to fly her in a few weeks ago.”
My heart breaks, not for Camilla or her family, but for myself. “Why couldn’t you just tell me? Why can’t you just talk to me? Tell me things.”
She chides, “Because I don’t think you’ll understand, Gunner. When we started out, our relationship was just about fucking around. I could’ve got kicked out of the Army for it and I don’t feel like you understood. I don’t feel like you understand things the way I do.”
“Why?” I ask. “Because you think I’m too young? How about you? You think you know how to act. You think you know how to behave because you’re so much older than me, but you can’t even be honest with the one person who genuinely loves you. I understand people get sick. Do you think I’ve never had to deal with sickness? You’re not being honest because you think I’m a kid and I’m dumb, but I’m not. You’re dumb for being dishonest.”
She steps back and her face frowns. She looks upset.
“I’m not being honest?” she asks, raising her voice. “You’re the liar. You’re the one living in some fantasy world. You don’t think I don’t know what you were trying to do the last night we were together?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I lie.
“Now that’s dumb. I’m forty, Gunner. You don’t think I know that you were trying to get me pregnant? I’ve seen you with Buckler’s kid. I know you want a family.”
“So, what’s wrong with that?” I ask. I’m honestly confused. “What’s wrong with wanting a family? What’s wrong with wanting you to be a part of—”
“I can’t have kids!”
I don’t know what to say. I take a breath, thinking she means she can’t get pregnant. Now I feel really stupid and foolish. I have no idea why I like kids so much. It’s probably because I love my brothers so much. Sure, I hated them when we were little. We were all a couple of rascals—each with a dark history, each orphaned without parents until our mother and father came looking for us without even knowing us and adopted us. As a younger child I remember thinking how I wanted to have parents so badly. When I finally got them, I was nothing but a rude punk. Nevertheless, my parents continued to love me; they loved my brothers and I as we were their own. I guess I always figured I’d have kids of my own and I do want kids, as much as my adoptive parents wanted us.
“You see?” Camilla starts to sob. “Now, that’s honesty. That’s the look of an honest face. It’s not just that I’m too old for you, Gunner, but I can’t give you what you want. I can’t give you the family you deserve.”
A few tears roll out of Camilla’s eyes. I’m not sure how to feel about it. I am sad, but I feel worse when she turns to walk away.
I grab her hand. “You know what I really want?” I ask pulling her back.
“Please don’t, Gunner,” she says as she tries to pull my grip off.
“I want a kiss.”
She laughs halfheartedly.
“I’m leaving in a few days, Camilla. After everything we’ve done together and for the sake of my sanity, can I just get one? I think I deserve one, especially after everything I’ve been through this month worrying about you. If you want honesty, I will tell you I would rather go to a war zone than sit around and be at war with you. Can I just get one kiss that says to me you’re going to be okay so I can go on my way?”
Camilla bows her head and stares at her toes as she fidgets with them between the straps of her sandals. I cup each side of her face with my hands and I tilt her head up to look at me.
This is the other part I love.
Our cycle has changed a little. She disappeared, but that was a family emergency—I can get over that. So, now she’s back to fighting with me and I’m about to win the battle again by making everything all okay.
I dip my head low to get down to her level and watch her eyes close as I press my lips against hers.
Her body falls limp. I quickly wrap my arm around her back and pick her up as she allows our lips to melt together.
She’s surrendering.
I kiss her hard. I kiss her until she can’t breathe and I let go of her mouth to let her catch her breath and I whisper in her ear. “Can I go in there with you? Whatever it is, I can handle it. I can handle family shit.”
She lays her head in my shoulder. I think she’s happy to be carried in my arms with her legs dangling until she sniffs me.
“That’s not a good idea,” she says. “You smell like beer.”
“So, I’ll take a shower and come back. What room is it?”
I feel the warm heat of her sigh in my neck before she speaks. “Why don’t you meet me at my place. I need to go home and shower, too.”
I’ve won.
I put her down, giving her another kiss before pulling out my phone to message for an Uber to pick me up. “I’m going to your house right now,” I tell Camilla. “You’d better show or I’m coming back here to find you and I’ll make an ass of myself as I do it. Those nurses will have to sedate me to keep me from tracking you down.”
“I’ll be there,” she says with a smile and turns to walk into the hospital doors.
I’m just about finished soaping up when I hear Camilla come into her bathroom and my dick gets hard in my soap-lathered hand. I open the shower curtain and her eyes immediately gravitate towards my cock.
She bites her lip, like she’s worried, yet titillated, as she stares at it.
“Listen,” I tell her, quickly rinsing off and shutting the water before stepping out with a big smile on my face. “I’m not going to stick it all the way in, okay? I’m all about making you feel good, all right?”
“Gunner,” she chuckles, “you’re getting the floor all wet.”
“I’m about to get you all wet, too,” I say, as I reach for her hips to pull her leggings, along with her panties, down and then pick her up putting her bare ass on the wide counter.
I pull at the leggings, being careful at her feet to keep the black high-heeled sandals on and I look at her pussy. It looks like she hasn’t shaved it in a month. She really has been stressed. I think about the first porno I ever saw when I was younger—hair everywhere; it looked like it had been filmed long before I was born, but it still got me hard.
I’m so fucking hard it hurts. My whole body hurts. I want her so much. As angry and as worried as I’ve been, it all comes down to this. This is what I’ve missed. This is what I’m committed to.
I lift off her shirt and look in the bathroom mirror behind her to help undo the clasp to her bra. I watch her in the mirror as she takes off her bra; she looks so small compared to me.
I finally understand why our cycle works the way it does. She fights me because she’s under the constant threat I can hurt her physically with my huge cock. I, on the other hand, live under the constant threat she will reject me—for my age, for my size, and for a future she thinks she can’t give me.
I spread her legs and wedge myself between them, pulling her closer to me on the counter.
“I don’t want you to go,” she says.
“What?” I say as I dip my head down to look in her face. I don’t understand what she’s talking about.
“I don’t want you to deploy. I’ve done it myself and many soldiers have gone before us, but I don’t want you to,” she says with eyes so big and sad it makes my insides crumble.
“I’m coming back,” I tell her.
; Camilla reaches up with both hands and pulls at my wet neck, pulling me close so she can speak in my ear. “Hurt me,” she says.
“What?” I’m confused.
“Hurt me,” she whispers again. She grabs tight to the back of my neck. “Fuck me so hard and so deep that I will hurt for months to come. Months from now, I want to still be thinking about this moment, reminded by the pain only you can give me.”
I shake my head, but she leans back on the counter and rests her head, which bends forward against the mirror. I look down at her little body with perfect hand-sized tits. I grab one that fits perfectly in my hand and reach to grab my cock with the other before helping myself to glide inside her.
“Hurt me,” Camilla says again.
I shake my head again.
Camilla huffs. “Listen to me, soldier,” she snaps. She sounds like her old self; she sounds like a commander. “When a woman tells you she wants you to fuck her, you don’t just pull out your gun and point it in the direction it needs to go. You bring everything you’ve got and rain all hell on that pussy. Now, fuck me like you intend to fuck shit up—the way you always talk like you’re going to do.”
An enormous smile spreads across my face and I ram her.
Camilla starts with a hum in her throat as I fuck her, but the sound quickly escalates.
I look at her face and then into the mirror because it’s obvious she’s in pain. I’m raining all hell on her as the hum turns into what sounds like intense high-pitched screeching. I slow down, but she begs me not to stop, so I keep pounding her. I lift her sandaled feet in the air and look at her legs spread eagle in the mirror.
“Oh God, it hurts,” she squawks.
I lick my thumb, look down at her pussy, and rub at her clit.
“Oh God, I’m going to come!” she yells.
I look back in the mirror and see her legs twitch as she sounds off like a siren and comes on my cock.
I keep at my pace until I know she’s come down from her climax and I stop and pull out.
She sits up, breathless. “Did you come?” she asks.
I take a breath. “No,” I tell her.
Camilla pouts and reaches down to grab my dick, but I push her hands away.
“Let me help you,” she says.
“No, I told you. This was all about you.”
She smiles and leans in to put her head in my chest as I wrap my arms around her body. I look at us in the mirror, holding one another. For the first time, Camilla finally seems content. For the first time, she’s not trying to get away; but for whatever reason, I’m ready to go.
I just know my bullets are not blank, but it feels like they are. I feel empty, like I’m never going to hit a target I’ve been aiming for my whole life.
Chapter 6
Eight months, three weeks, six days—that’s how long I’ve been in the desert. I was surprised at how cold it is during winter. I hadn’t seen many images of snow-capped mountains prior to arrival in this Middle Eastern country. I had no clue I was going to freeze my ass off here. Now it’s fucking hot and the heat is uncomfortable. It makes my balls sweat and everyone else stink.
We are supposed to go home—back to the States tomorrow, but of course that’s been delayed. So, it’ll be another few days before we can get on a plane. We all cannot wait, as we are already packed and ready to go.
Home. I can’t wait to get back because I also have to find the kid. Buckler’s kid—he needs a home.
Four months into deployment, our Forward Operating Base, or FOB as we call it, took on mortar fire from insurgents. I remember waking up in the dead of night to the sound of the siren amid explosions as we all grabbed our guns, rushed out of our tin can aluminum one-story buildings, and headed to the bunker. Buckler didn’t make it.
Her death changed us—all of us. At first, we lived in a state of shock. The absence of her fruity smelling body wash among the sour stench of desert air was like a missing piece of a puzzle that would never be complete. And the puzzle kept crumbling. Two months later, we heard her father had a heart attack. As hard as Buckler says her father was on her, I figure the ex-commander died of a broken heart.
But Buckler’s father’s death left Carrot Top without a family. No father was listed on the kid’s birth certificate, so he’s been placed in foster care.
I’ve been in communication with a lawyer back at home. Adoption is not looking good for me because I’m a young, unmarried soldier. I’m always too fucking young.
I also can’t wait to get back home so I can sleep. I have not slept in months. Everyone seems to have adjusted just fine. There were a few nightmarish behaviors after Bucklers death, but we haven’t taken on heavy fire like that inside the FOB since then. We increased our number of weekly patrols and the Army beefed up our air support with Apache helicopters.
But none of that helps me sleep. As soon as I get comfortable in my bed and block out Harris’s snoring, Davis’s constant scratching at his ass, and Morris’s sleep talking, which is always about pussy, I think about Camilla.
After I fucked her that last night, I didn’t call her. She sent me texts in the days before I deployed, but I didn’t respond. She emailed me several times while I’ve been here, but I deleted every message.
But in the last two months since Buckler’s father died, I can’t stop fantasizing about Camilla and the Carrot Top kid. I stay up dreaming about them both. I dream about Camilla and the kid waiting for me in the hangar with all the other families when I arrive home. I know these dreams are just as stupid as the one I had about knocking up Camilla.
It’s not just the dreams that keep me awake though. I worry, especially for the kid and Camilla.
Word got back that Camilla was seen with General Spencer and his kids. But I know Camilla. She won’t be happy with a guy like that—a general. His kids? Maybe. She might be happy with his kids, but the general is not the kind of guy who’s going to cater to her the way I do, the way my father taught me—by example.
He’s not going to have her coffee pot timed to brew fresh coffee for her in the morning. He’s not going to fold her clothes and do laundry. And the general is certainly not going to bake or knit or sew and do all that wifey shit with her. If I’m honest with myself, I’m not going to do the latter half of all that shit she wants to do either—but I will eat her cookies.
Just thinking about some other guy, some old fucker, with his hands on her ass makes me sick. Of course, I called my older brother and whined to him about it because I knew exactly what he was going to say—if I really want something, I might need to “fuck shit up” to get it.
My older brother, who is stationed near D.C. for now, didn’t seem worried about the fact if I chose to fight for Camilla, I’d be dealing with a much higher-ranking general who could make my life a living hell.
That’s why I sent Camilla an email and another and another; today is the twenty-third one in a row. Again, I wrote to Camilla telling her I’d be coming home and apologized for being out of touch and behaving like a kid, not to mention how I hoped I could finally take her out to dinner. In the past, I might have mentioned the part where I’d love to see her ass jiggle, but I left it out because I really would love to see her ass in a chair at a table in public with me. It’s never happened and I fear I fucked up and now it never will.
So, as usual, I can’t sleep.
But it’s not just Camilla and the kid that keep me awake. I’m also worried for myself. I’m worried about how I’m going to feel when I arrive and there’s no one to welcome me back home.
Chapter 7
I step off the bus and look up at the huge aircraft hangar. The vast doors are shut to keep us, the returning soldiers, separate from the families waiting inside. This part of deployment—the return, is ceremonial. When they open the doors, we will march in uniformly as music plays and our families scream and cheer. Despite our exhaustion after having travelled for days, our march into the hangar will still be impressive because it’s meant to be sym
bolic.
I’ve seen it before when my older brother arrived from his first deployment. His uniform looked clean, but it was wrinkled. His face looked as though it had been stained with foreign dirt, which was really just a dark tan, and his shoulders were slumped from fatigue.
But his head remained held high. His face spoke of what he was thinking—what a soldier is always thinking. Despite his fatigue, his personal desires, and his aches and pains, a soldier is ultimately determined to follow through with the first and final order of the day, which is always to keep going. It’s what makes a soldier a badass. My father always said it didn’t matter where we came from, but we were born to wear his name—Badass.
I’m not remotely interested in all this ceremonial crap and I’m sure most of the other tired soldiers aren’t either. But I’m among the least interested; there’s no one here for me, as most others have family to welcome them.
We all line up as the doors open and cheers and screams begin from families sitting in bleachers to the sides of the hangar. They have signs and balloons and wave their arms around like fans at a football game as we stand at attention.
We are ordered to march in as uniformly as we have since basic training. Music plays and I feel a sense of pride, but I also can’t help but think this is a last-ditch effort for the military to remind our families and us that down to the very last second, the Army takes precedent over everyone and everything else.
A few speeches are made, but I don’t think anyone’s listening. We sing our cadence, our company song, which doesn’t sound pleasant at all. It sounds like a bunch of pissed off drunks who are still looking for attention after a night of not procuring any pussy and are now looking to get into a fight.
We are finally released and I admit my heart floats with the balloons that flood the hangar floor held by wives, parents, and children. They are all crying...and smiling, searching frantically for their soldier while most of us stand around waiting and, if I’m honest, hoping to be found.
