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Icy rain had fallen the night before and the Uber driver was cautious on the roads. Too cautious for my liking. I held Connor’s hand tight and it was all I could do to keep from pressing it between my legs as I kissed his mouth. Ravenous for all of the words he’d written to me over the last ten weeks, wanting to lick, taste, and consume them into the marrow of my bones.
“Where’s Ruby?” Connor said hoarsely, once we were inside my apartment.
“Out,” I said, leaning back on the slammed-shut door and pulling him against me. “Indefinitely.”
“God, baby, I’ve never seen you like this.”
“Need you so bad,” I said, tugging at his shirt, then tearing at it.
Connor’s mouth crushed mine. I surrendered to his urgency, letting him tear off my dress. Shocking myself by pushing him to his knees and pulling his head between my legs, needing his mouth there. Letting out a Ruby-esque moan as he brought me to a quick, skillful orgasm.
Connor rose shakily to his feet. He picked me up and carried me down the hall. “Yours?” he said at Ruby’s bedroom.
“Next one.”
He lay me down on my bed and we went at each other, crazed. No words but yes, and fuck and so good. My hands seized and grabbed at him, now all hard, defined muscle and brutal, blind need.
Finally, his body locked up tight and then imploded, and he buried his face in my neck. He panted, heaving gasps that slowly morphed into laughter as he rolled away, forearm across his face.
“Welcome home, soldier,” I said, curling into his side.
“Holy shit, that felt good.”
“I missed you.”
“I missed you, too. I missed this. Ten weeks is a long time.”
“Was it hell?”
“Nah.” Connor chuckled. “Well, that damn four-thirty reveille every day was hell. Talk about torture.”
I smiled faintly. Words from one of his letters—that I had memorized—came back to me.
There is nothing of you here…and that is harder to endure than any physical pain.
I let them go. He’d had to endure physical and mental exertion I couldn’t fathom. Not every part of his ordeal had to do with me, and yet the longing for him to express himself as he had in those letters was there, on the surface of my heart.
“I hate that you have to leave again,” I said.
“Me too. But in a weird way, I’m looking forward to it. To doing something meaningful, I mean.”
“You are. You will.”
I felt him nod. “For the first time, my parents are treating me with respect. My father…the way he looks at me. It’s different now. He hugged me. And it’s partially thanks to you. A lot thanks to you.”
“No, it’s all you,” I said. “You did this.”
“I’ve never been with a girl like you.” He cupped my cheek with his hand. “I’ve never felt this way about a girl either. I never thought something …real could be mine.”
I pressed my lips, then my cheek into his palm. “God, I love hearing this with your own voice.”
I swallowed hard and drew in a slow breath, gathering courage, feeling as if I were there again, at the edge of a cliff, ready to jump even if it meant being dashed on the rocks below. The unknown of that jump scared me, not merely for the fear Connor might betray me, but because he was going to war. The rocks under that cliff were a thousand times more jagged and tearing; a million times more unforgiving. And yet…
“Connor?”
“Yeah, babe.”
I jumped.
