Page 62 of My Forbidden Commander

Then his hand closes around the front of my shirt and pulls me in.

He shuts the door behind us with his boot, and his mouth finds mine before I can say a single word. He kisses me like it’s last night, like he wasn’t sure that I’m still alive and now he knows I am, and I kiss him back just as hard, my hand finding his jaw, careful of his shoulder.

After long moments of sharing breath, he finally stops, forehead pressed to mine.

“Needed that,” he murmurs.

“Yeah,” I breathe. “Me too.”

“I don’t know if I can sleep,” he confesses in a whisper.

“Then let me help.” I nudge him toward the bunk. “Lie down. I’ll give you a massage. Might loosen you up enough to rest.”

He’s too tired to argue, and I watch him strip down to his boxers, moving carefully. Then he climbs onto the narrow mattress and settles face down with a groan of exhaustion.

I climb up and straddle the back of his thighs, careful of my weight, and press my palms flat against the muscle bunched tight along his spine. This man doesn’t let me take care of him like this often, so I’m going to take full advantage of his exhaustion and get my fill.

31

GABRIEL

Noah’s hands find the knot riding along my left shoulder blade, and I groan into the pillow before I can stop myself.

“There it is,” he murmurs, working his thumbs into the muscle. “You’ve been carrying half a mountain up here, sir.”

I don’t answer. I don’t trust my voice right now, not with the way my body’s finally letting go after two days of holding itself together through pure stubbornness. His palms drag down my spine, slow, deliberate, and something in my chest that’s been clenched since Callahan’s voice crackled through that radio starts to loosen for the first time.

He shifts his weight, working lower, and the friction of him settling against the back of my thighs sends a current straight through me that has nothing to do with sore muscles.

I go still.

“Sir?” His hands pause.

“Keep going,” I say, my voice rougher than I intend.

He does, but I’ve lost the thread of relaxation somewhere between his palms on my shoulders and the weight of him straddling me, and now my body’s doing exactly what it’s been doing for six weeks straight—wanting Specialist Noah Reyes. Any way I can get him.

I’m hard. Full and aching against the mattress within a minute, and it’s trapped beneath me, and every push of his hands down my back rocks my hips into the bedding, and it’s the worst kind of relief because it isn’t enough.

I shift. Try to adjust without making it obvious. It doesn’t work. My hips roll again, chasing friction I have no business chasing while a subordinate massages the tension out of my shoulders. A low chuckle rumbles out of him.

“Sir.” Noah’s hands still completely. “Are you—” Another huff of laughter, delighted, wicked. “Oh my God, you’re humping the mattress.”

“I am doing no such thing,” I grind out into the pillow.

“Sure you’re not.” His weight shifts off my thighs, and for one disorienting second I think he’s leaving, but then his hand smooths down my lower back, warm and sure. “Turn over. Let me massage something else for you instead.”

“Noah—”

“Clearly the back rub isn’t doing the trick,” he says, and I can hear the grin without needing to see it. “But I bet I know something that’ll knock you right out.”

I turn onto my back, but it’s not a massage I’m after anymore. He’s kneeling beside me now, brown eyes dark in the lantern light, taking in exactly what state I’m in, and the sight of him looking at me like that only makes it worse.

I breathe out through my nose, long and slow, and close my eyes.

“I want you to fuck me,” I whisper, and the room goes so quiet I hear the generator outside like it’s inside my skull.

Noah doesn’t move.