The Complete Veterans Affairs Romances: Gay Military Romances

by A. E. Wasp

  “I kind of thought that was the whole point,” Troy chuckled darkly, rolling his hips against Dmitri’s again.

  “I can’t, I can’t. I don’t have another pair of clean boxers.”

  Troy laughed.

  Dmitri wound his fingers in Troy’s hair and yanked Troy’s mouth over his, kissing him deeply, and sucking his tongue like he wanted to be doing to other parts of Troy. At the same time, he pushed Troy’s hips away from him with both hands keeping him braced above them. Troy’s cock hung down heavy between his legs, just barely brushing against Dmitri’s.

  Troy whined against Dmitri’s mouth, and it went straight to Dmitri’s groin. He sucked hard on Troy’s tongue, biting his lower lip, just to hear him make that noise again.

  This time it was Troy pulling away with a gasp. “Now I’m going to come if you keep doing that. And I don’t have any clean sweatpants either.”

  “Well, I guess there’s only one thing to do then.” Hooking his thumb under the waistband of Troy sweatpants, he slid them down, lifting them gently over the hard length beneath them and pushing them over the sweet curve of Troy’s ass. Now Dmitri really wished he had bought new batteries. This was as naked as they had been together and he was dying to see Troy’s body.

  Troy quickly got with the program and pushed his hand into Dmitri’s boxer shorts. “Yeah,” Dmitri sighed as Troy’s hand closed over his hard length. “Please, please.”

  He almost cried when Troy pulled his hand away, shifting his weight to reach for something behind Dmitri’s head. He took advantage of the move though, and while Troy dug through his backpack one-handed, Dmitri slid his hands up under Troy’s shirt, tracing the strong muscles of his back with his fingers. His thumbs bumped up his ribs until he reached Troy’s shoulders, fingers slipping into his underarms.

  Troy giggled and squirmed away. “Tickles.”

  Dmitri heard the click of a flip top in the dark and prayed that the sound meant what he thought it meant. When Troy’s hand, cold and slick with lube, closed around him, he sighed deeply, back arching as he pushed himself harder into Troy’s hand.

  “God, Tree,” Troy moaned. “You feel so good.” He lifted up pulling away from Dmitri just a little bit. Dmitri groaned, grabbing at Troy’s hip with one hand. He felt Troy slicking himself up, then Troy’s weight dropped back down on top of him. The press of their slick cocks pressing against each other was heaven. Dmitri felt his eyes rolling back into his head as his neck arched. His hand flew up behind him to grab onto one of the totes for support

  Troy’s lube slicked hand came to rest by Dmitri’s head. “Oh, God,” Dmitri panted. “My grandma’s pillow.”

  Troy laughed breathlessly, laugh turning into a groan as he drove harder and harder against Dmitri’s body. “Well, she sure ain’t going to be happy about what’s happening with her afghan either,” he said.

  Moby whined as the truck rocked around her. She brushed against Dmitri’s leg, and he yelped. “Great, he panted, “now we’re traumatizing the dog, too. Lay down, Moby.”

  “You’re talking too much.” Troy put his mouth back on Dmitri’s, sucking the air out of his lungs. His tongue and teeth were everywhere, as he rolled and pressed against Troy.

  Dmitri braced his feet against the bottom of the truck, pushing up, giving as well as he got. He could feel the orgasm building as his hands clutched at Troy’s back. He gripped the t-shirt, clenching it in his fist, his other hand on Troy’s ass. He could feel his fingernails digging in to the skin, but he couldn’t stop himself.

  Troy pulled off, resting his forehead against Dmitri’s shoulder. “Oh, yeah, oh yeah, please, please. God, don’t stop.”

  His thrusts got more and more frantic, and Dmitri reached down further, sliding his hand between Troy’s legs to fondle his balls.

  Troy moaned on a long exhale. Dmitri’s fingers tangled in his hair, and he gave a sharp tug as he thrust up against Troy. He felt Troy’s muscles clench under his hand; then Troy came with a soft grunt. Shooting up over Dmitri’s stomach, and making the space between them hotter and slicker. Dmitri gasped for breath as he thrust harder and faster against Troy.

  Troy kissed everywhere he could reach on Dmitri’s body, below his ear, on his jawline, the curve of his shoulder, and Dmitri’s breath caught as he shuddered into an orgasm.

  Troy rolled off of him with a groan, arm thrown over his head, chest heaving. Dmitri panted next to him waiting for his brains to unscramble. He ran his fingers down his chest, grimacing when he felt the mess on his t-shirt. “Well, at least I brought extra t-shirts.”

  Troy chuckled, “Yeah, well, I brought the lube.”

  “You’re quite the Boy Scout. Always prepared.”

  “I don’t think the Boy Scouts prepare you for this.”

  Dmitri opened his mouth to make the obvious joke, but Troy slapped a hand over his mouth. “Don’t even say it.”

  Dmitri shook his head. “I wasn’t going to say anything,” he said innocently. “But I really do need to clean up. Are bears attracted to the smell of sex? Am I like, a big glazed doughnut to a bear now?”

  Troy busted out laughing so hard, he rolled over clutching his stomach. Making Troy laugh like that felt almost as good as making him come did.

  Troy finally gathered himself together gasping for breath. “You’re an idiot,” he said. He reached behind him for the headlamp he had put there earlier. “Close your eyes, this is going to be bright.”

  Dmitri did. They barely had enough energy to clean up, before they both fell asleep, Dmitri’s grandma’s blanket tucked over the both of them.

  chapter fifteen

  The banging of the back window falling closed after Moby jumped out roused Dmitri from a nice, deep sleep. He squinted, trying to see what was going on without actually opening his eyes. The gray pre-dawn light barely illuminated the back of the pickup. He snuggled closer to Troy’s warm, firm body, not quite cuddling, and contemplated going back to sleep. A sharp bark from the dog quashed that idea. Groaning mentally, Dmitri stared at the tangle of blankets and limbs and tried to figure out a way of extricating himself without waking up Troy. He looked like he was sleeping so peacefully. Dmitri remembered Troy tossing and turning a lot during the night, though that could have been a dream.

  He started to slide out sideways when Troy’s hand on his leg stopped him. “I’ll get her, don’t worry about it. Go back to sleep.” Troy sounded alert and awake; something Dmitri resented at this hour of the morning. If you could call it morning when the sun wasn’t quite up yet.

  Dmitri struggled out of the blankets. “No. She’s my stupid dog. I’ll go get her. Probably herding the chipmunks.”

  “No, really. I’m awake and won’t be able to go back to sleep.” Troy sat up, sliding out from under the blankets with a grace Dmitri could only envy.

  Dmitri admired the way Troy’s back muscles moved under his skin and the strength in his thighs as he kneeled in the truck bed to put on his sweatshirt. “If you’re sure,” he murmured, mind still half lost in the dreams of the night.

  “I’m sure. Go to sleep.”

  “Hmm, okay. Just a few more minutes,” Dmitri said, slipping back under blankets warm from their shared body heat and smelling pleasantly of Troy.

  The next thing he knew, the tailgate dropped down with a bang. “Go get him,” he heard Troy say, and Moby leaped into the truck. She buried her cold, wet nose under the blankets at Dmitri’s neck.

  “Gross. Get off,” Dmitri whined even as he ran his hand through the ruff of fur at her neck. “Crazy dog,” he said, shaking her head with both hands, the way she loved. “I’m up, I’m up.” He sat up, matching actions to words. Moby laid down next to him, tongue hanging out in a doggie smile.

  Troy crawled into the truck, handing Dmitri a cup of coffee.

  Dmitri took it gratefully. “Oh, God. Thank you.” He took a sip of the hot sweet liquid. “What time is it?”

  “Time to get cracking if we don’t want to sweat to death hiking.�
��

  “Hiking?” Dmitri could hear the smallest bit of a whine in his voice. He cleared his throat. “I mean, hiking! Awesome. Where to?”

  Troy laughed. “More like a stroll. And to this cute little lake me and Moby found.”

  “You already hiked there and back?” That didn’t bode well. The closest Dmitri had been to hiking lately was when he had to park in the lot furthest from his lab at the University.

  “There’s bacon if you get up,” Troy said in a sing-song voice.

  “Bacon?” He’d slept through Troy getting dressed and cooking breakfast.

  “Um-hum.”

  “I can’t say no to that.” He took another sip and handed the coffee cup back to Troy. “Put that somewhere it won’t get knocked over, and I’ll throw my jeans on.”

  Ten minutes later, Dmitri was following Troy down a tree-lined path as he chowed down on the bacon sandwich Troy had made for him. Not only had Troy cooked, but he’d also cleaned up and put everything away. Dmitri felt a little bit useless and a little bit spoiled. It worried him how good that second part felt. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had made breakfast for him without being paid for it.

  “This is nice,” Dmitri said. “The sandwich and the hiking. Thanks.”

  “I’m glad you like it. I like it a lot better without a fifty-pound pack and body armor, too.” Troy said, waiting near a waist-high boulder in the middle of the trail.

  “I bet.”

  “This one time we were up in the mountains, not hiking, driving, near the border of Pakistan, it started to rain. Really pour, just coming down. We’re on this track that could barely be called a road, and it’s dark as night now. Then, bam, the road just washes away, and our rig just goes right over the edge.”

  “Holy crap,” Dmitri said, scanning the blue sky for any signs of impending rainstorms.

  “It wasn’t too bad, just ‘bout four feet down. But the truck’s on its side, and we’re going nowhere fast.

  “So the six of us are just standing there looking at this. We managed to tip it back upright, but now it’s stuck in the mud four feet down from what’s left of the road, and I use the term loosely. And the rain is still coming down.”

  Troy jumped lightly across the trickle of a stream crossing the path, Moby splashing happily through it after him. The taller mountains in the distance looked like watercolor paintings in blue and gray against the sky. Dmitri tried to imagine what it would be like moving through these trails armored and on the lookout for snipers. He shivered at the thought of hostile eyes watching him from unseen heights.

  “The rain is still coming down buckets,” Troy continued. “And we know we’re just totally fucked. We radio back, but the nearest guys are about two hours away, and we’re supposed to be in this village for some recon in an hour. So, we do what we can. Grab everything we can carry and start walking. ‘Bout a half a mile down the road we meet this farmer and his sons, kids like ten and eleven, coming up the road in a donkey cart. They start yelling their heads off, and in a second they got five weapons pointed at them. The old man’s yelling, the kids are screaming. The rain is making it impossible to see what’s going on.”

  “You pulled a weapon on an old man and some kids?” The day was quickly heating up, even at their altitude, but Dmitri felt a chill roll over him.

  “Yeah. Well, it’s not like we had a clear view. You try guessing if someone’s friendly at a hundred paces in the pouring rain. It’s not like the bad guys wear signs. Plus, it wouldn’t be the first kid we met who tried to kill us with some old Russian AK-47 piece of crap. They’re more likely to blow their own fool heads off than hit us but it doesn’t mean that they didn’t get a lucky shot every now and then. Anyway, luckily, we had our ‘terp with us, and he’s yelling back at them, telling them don’t shoot, we’re friends, and all that shit. So the guy sends his kids back to the village, and they came back with a bunch of friends and a couple of donkeys and dragged the vehicle out of the mud.”

  “Wow. That was lucky for you.” Dmitri said to Troy’s back. Troy sauntered down the rocky trail like it was the track at a gym. Dmitri kept looking at the ground, not trusting himself to not put his foot down on a huge rock or some loose gravel and break something.

  “Yeah. They led us up the road into what passed for a village with them - a couple of mud huts, some goats, and chickens. They had no idea who we were or why we were there. They thought we were Russians.”

  “Did you tell them?”

  Troy shook his head. “What would be the point? How do you explain the ‘war on terror’ to people who had never been twenty miles from this nowhere mountain pass? Shit, half the time, I couldn’t tell you what the fuck we were doing there.” His voice had lost its easy rhythm, and his shoulders slumped.

  “So then what happened?” Dmitri asked, trying to get back to the amusing story.

  “The old guy brought out his whole family, started introducing us. Offered us food. We had to stay. We’d already missed our mark anyway. And I ended up having one of the best lunches I had in that country. The women kept bringing us this amazing lamb and rice and endless amounts of tea. Then the rain cleared up, handshakes all around, and we went on our way.” He pointed at the distant mountain peaks and the rocky, high prairie around them. “This reminds me of it a little. But those mountains are higher, wilder.”

  “That sounds amazing, and what an experience. Not a lot of people get to have that. Having an authentic Afghan meal with some random farmers in the middle of the mountains.”

  Troy answered with a grunt and then sped up, pulling further away from Dmitri.

  Dmitri didn’t know what he said wrong, but the mood had definitely changed. He could read the tension in Troy’s back. He quickened his pace until he was almost jogging in an effort to keep up. The path dropped down into a small grove of pine trees. Dmitri swallowed his pride and called out. “Hey, hold up a second. I can’t hike that fast, and I don’t want to lose you.” He wasn’t sure if Troy heard, but when he turned the corner, Troy stood there taking a sip out of his water bottle. Moby, that traitor, leaned against his legs.

  “Sorry. I’m slow. I haven’t hiked in a while.”

  Troy handed him the water bottle, then stared at him. Dmitri could tell he was deliberating, fighting with himself whether to say something or not. He rubbed his mouth with his hand, and looked way up towards the mountain peaks, then back to Dmitri.

  “Me and my buddies came back that way, a couple of days later, after our job was done.” He shook his head. “The guy’s farm had been shot to shit. Just torn all up. Anything that could be burned was.” He trailed off into silence.

  Dmitri knew he shouldn’t say anything, knew he should just shut the hell up, but the question pushed its way out despite his better judgment. “And the guy? And his family?” He worried that he already knew the answer.

  Troy looked at the ground. “The older of the boys, we didn’t see. We didn’t find him. The younger boys and the women? Well, we found them, the bodies. What was done to them…” He shook his head, pulling his baseball cap off and running a hand through his hair. “That’s not an experience many people ever get to have either.” He walked away quickly.

  This time Dmitri let him get as far ahead as he needed to. There was only one path after all, and he figured Troy wouldn’t let him get lost in the woods.

  chapter sixteen

  The lake was definitely cute. By the time Dmitri caught up to Troy, he was sitting on a fallen tree trunk, throwing a stick into the water for Moby to catch.

  Moby ran up to Dmitri, shaking out her wet fur and dropping the stick on the ground. Dmitri wiped the icy lake water off his face and then threw the stick as far into the lake as he could. He walked up to Troy while Moby plunged into the water, sending up great splashes as she went.

  “Hey,” he said, coming up next to Troy.

  “Hey,” Troy replied. He turned to face Dmitri, squinting up at him. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to bring that up
.”

  “No, I’m sorry.”

  Troy held his arms open, reaching for Dmitri, and pulling him against his side when he moved into the circle of his arm. “You didn’t do anything. I shouldn’t bring that shit up. You shouldn’t have to deal with that.”

  Dmitri pulled Troy’s baseball cap off and ran his fingers through the short, spiky black hair. “No, you should. If you lived through it, the least I can do is listen. I don’t even know where to begin to know what to say, though.”

  Troy leaned his head against Dmitri’s hip and exhaled. “Just keep doing that. Feels great. You don’t have to say anything.” He turned his face in, kissing Dmitri quickly. “You want to go for a swim?”

  Dmitri looked around. They were the only ones there. “Are you going to take off your clothes?”

  “Most of them.”

  “Then hell yes.”

  “Excellent.”

  “Strip,” Dmitri ordered.

  “Bossy,” Troy said, smiling as he stood. “I like it.”

  Troy’s smile made Dmitri contemplate several different options they could explore once they were naked. Only the sound of other people coming down the path stopped him. He stripped quickly, running after Troy into the lake. As he did, he hoped the water was cold enough to take his mind off Troy’s tattooed arms.

  It was.

  Leaving the campsite, they had a half of a garbage bag full of trash that wasn’t theirs that Troy had picked up as they’d hiked. He’d also left some firewood piled next to the fire ring. In one day, he’d helped a couple set up their hammock, jump-started a mini-van at one of the trailhead parking lots, and wrapped up a little kid’s sprained ankle.

  “You’re just so damn nice and helpful,” Dmitri said as they left the injured kid with a warning not to jump off such a high rock next time.