Page 64 of My Forbidden Commander

The slow drag of him inside me is a pleasure I don’t have words for, and when his hips find a rhythm that drags him right against that spot he found with his fingers, I stop being able to keep quiet at all.

“Noah—” My voice cracks on his name.

“Yeah.” He picks up the pace, breath going ragged above me. “Right there. I felt you clench.”

He fucks me harder, the bunk creaking under us loud enough that I should care and don’t, his hips slamming forward now, the drag and slide of him lighting up every nerve I’ve spent two decades pretending I didn’t have. I’m not going to last. I already know it, feel it building low and fast, and I grip his forearm hard enough to bruise.

“I’m close,” I grit out. “Noah, I’m—come with me. Fill me when you come.”

“Fuck, yes, sir.” His rhythm stutters, breaks apart into something desperate. “Gonna fill you up so good⁠—”

He strokes me twice more, and I come apart beneath him, spilling hot over his fist and my own stomach, my whole body clenching around him as the release tears through me. Noah follows a second later with a broken groan he muffles against my good shoulder, hips stuttering as he empties into me, warm and claiming and exactly what I asked for.

We stay tangled together, both of us shaking, his weight a welcome pressure against my chest.

“Still alive?” he mumbles finally, lips against my collarbone.

“Barely,” I manage.

He laughs softly, and I feel it against my skin more than I hear it. For the first time in two days, my body finally, completely, lets go.

“That was…” I whisper, lost for words. Noah lifts his head to search my gaze, like he could find them there. I’ve never seen such softness in them. “Incredible, Noah,” I finish on an exhale.

The corners of his lips twitch up into a smile. “Yeah,” he murmurs, then clears his throat. “For me too. I… I love you, sir. Gabriel.”

I blink hard, something in my eye. I’m not sure Noah Reyes has ever said those words before he said them to me. So I pull him in for a soft kiss, my thumb caressing the sharp line of his cheekbone.

“I love you, Noah,” I whisper against his lips. “Specialist.”

EPILOGUE – NOAH

The briefing hut smells like burned coffee and wet wool, and every chair is full for the first time in a while. Command sent the photo through secure channels an hour ago, and Gabriel’s got it clipped to the map board now, blown up enough that nobody has to squint.

Ryan Callahan, split lip, one eye swollen at the edge, holding a newspaper against his chest like he’s posing for a mugshot. But his jaw is set, and his good eye is looking dead into the camera like he’s daring whoever’s on the other side of the lens to try something.

“Command confirmed the paper’s dated yesterday,” Gabriel says. “Which means he was alive as of twenty-four hours ago, and whoever’s holding him wanted us to know it.”

“Proof of life,” Okafor says beside him. Not a question.

“Proof of life,” Gabriel agrees. “We don’t know where he’s being held. We don’t know why they’re keeping him instead of—” He stops himself, doesn’t finish the sentence, and I notice Wilder’s hands clench into fists. “For now, he’s a POW. Command’s treating it that way. We treat it that way too.”

I glance sideways at the room. Sykes sits with his bad leg propped on a crate, jaw tight. Spencer’s beside him, quiet as always, both of them healed enough to sit through a briefing and not much else.

Gabriel moves on to tomorrow’s patrol order, voice flat and even, our team rotating with Maddox’s, Wilder and Liu splitting time between both until Sykes and Spencer are cleared. Standard stuff. I only half listen, watching Gabriel’s face. He looks steady.

I know better.

“Dismissed,” he says finally, and the room breaks into motion, chairs scraping, voices picking back up with chatter.

“Reyes. Stay.”

Hayes gives me a sideways look on his way out, gone before anyone can catch it. Two weeks now, and the man hasn’t said a word to anyone. Not Delgado, not Walker, not even under his breath during PT when he’d usually narrate his own suffering to whoever’s closest. I don’t know how he’s managing to keep his mouth shut, but I owe him for it.

Okafor’s the last one out, and the look he gives us on his way past the door isn’t suspicion anymore. More like resignation, like a man who stopped fighting a current a while back and decided to just let it carry him.

The door swings shut. Gabriel crosses the hut in three strides, checks the window, checks the door again, then his hands are in my hair, and his mouth is on mine before I can say a single word.

I melt into it immediately, fisting his shirt, and he groans against my lips like he’s been waiting all day for this, which I can relate to. We’re both hard within a minute, grinding against each other with nowhere near enough patience, his hips rolling into mine, my hands sliding down to grip his ass and pull him closer.