Page 14 of My Forbidden Commander

Not at the ridge. Not at the range. In my office, in the ops hut, the map table between us, and Reyes standing in front of my desk with that slouch and that mouth already loaded.

You wanted a reaction, I tell him. How’s this one?

In the fantasy he doesn’t argue; he holds my eyes, chin level, pulse beating quick in his throat, and then he goes down. Slow. Deliberate. Knees on the plywood floor of my office, looking up at me through that mess of brown hair, and even kneeling he makes it look like defiance, like he’s daring me to stop him.

My fist tightens. My hips come up off the bunk to meet my hand as I fuck it with rough strokes.

His mouth. God, his mouth, the full lower lip I have been not-looking-at since the briefing hut, wrapped around me, and in my head he’s not gentle about it and neither am I. My hand is in his hair. His hands are braced on my thighs, gripping. That smart, ruinous mouth is finally put to work with no room left in it for talking back. Except he’d find room, wouldn’t he? Yeah, he would. He’d pull off just long enough to say it, wrecked and hoarse, yes, sir, and go back down, and the sound I make into my own forearm at that thought isn’t one I’ve made in a decade.

I’m sweating. The rain drums harder and I stroke faster and the fantasy jumps ahead like a film with frames cut out. I’m hauling him up off his knees, turning him, folding him down over my desk with the patrol orders scattering, one hand flat between his shoulder blades. He’d push back against me. Of course he would. He pushes against everything. And I’d hold him there, hold him still, make him wait for it the way he’s made me wait through three nights of this, and when I finally pushed into him he’d say my name instead of my rank and the foundations I poured would come down and I would not care.

Noah.

I’ve never let myself think it. His first name. It goes through me like a round.

“Fuck—”

I get my forearm across my mouth again just in time. The groan comes up from somewhere below my ribs, muffled against my own skin, and I spill over my fist in pulses that make my vision white out. That make everything white out—rank, rules, the war, all of it gone for four or five seconds of pure bliss.

Then the room comes back.

Generator. Rain. My own heartbeat, slamming. The mess cooling on my hand and stomach, undeniable as evidence.

I lie there and stare at the ceiling, waiting for the guilt to roll in like it did in those hotel rooms. The cold shower. The oath. The never-again.

It comes, but it’s… smaller than I remember. Or I’m bigger, or the want is, because underneath the shame there’s something worse, something like relief. Like I’ve been carrying a ruck for forty-five years and just now set it down for thirty seconds, and my shoulders remember the weight.

And fuck. The relief is more dangerous than what I just did.

I sit up, clean myself off with the shirt I’ll wash myself before laundry detail can see it, and put my feet on the cold plywood.

Nothing was solved tonight. The fuel didn’t burn off. I lit it, and it liked the heat, and tomorrow at 0700 that boy will fall in for PT with his hair a mess and his collar crooked and say yes, sir with the hook in it, and I will have to stand there and count reps knowing exactly what his name sounds like in my head when I come.

He’s not dumb. He can read people, situations, I saw it happen with my own eyes. And I’m going to be standing just four feet away.

I scrub both hands down my face, stubble rasping, and the clock ticks over to 2341. A hundred meters across the mud, in a lousy bunk surrounded by his teammates, Specialist Noah Reyes is asleep and has no idea that in my head he just assumed a position no superior officer has ever put him in.

Or he isn’t asleep. Maybe he’s finding ways to relieve the pressure too.

Christ. That thought should not do what it does to me.

I lie back down, close my eyes, and start planning tomorrow’s random patrol window, because it’s the only ground I’ve got left that I still know how to hold.

8

NOAH

It’s 0620, and the fog hasn’t burned off yet, which means this morning’s PT happens inside a cloud.

Wolfe stands at the center of the gravel pad in a gray shirt and black shorts while the six of us spread out into a loose circle around him, and I make the executive decision not to look directly at him. Yesterday I got two seconds of eye contact in the ops hut and rode the high for six hours. I have to ration this stuff.

“Warm-up,” he says. “Then calisthenics. Then we run the wire.”

Hayes groans quietly. “The whole wire?”

“The whole wire, Corporal,” Wolfe confirms.

“Outstanding,” Hayes mutters. “Love the wire. Married to the wire.”