Chapter 13 #2
Something in his face tightened, something in me loosened.
He flipped us like a clean command—me on my back now, knees open, heels hooked behind his thighs.
The tent shrank around his size, the world narrowed to stroke and breath.
He braced over me and drove in with that same focused violence that made my brain go white.
“ka-MEE,” he said again, like the answer to a question he’d been asking all day, and fucked me like he was praying and staking a claim at the same time—deep, deliberate, no wasted motion. I met him with everything left, hips up, mouth open.
“Harder,” I begged, ridiculous, greedy.
“Yeah,” he said, and broke whatever was left.
I felt him go an instant before it hit—a stutter, a bit lip, a filthy vow in a voice that made promises feel like facts.
He shoved deep and came with a rough sound like a man dragging himself out of the ocean, heat flooding me in pulses I rode out with nails in his back and heels digging.
He kept himself buried until the last tremor, until we were both shaking.
We lay there panting, canvas damp and loud over our heads, ocean steady outside, his weight on me heavy in the best way. The duffel made a ridiculous pillow. Sweat cooled. A breeze found the zipper and worried it.
“You’re heavy,” I said into his shoulder.
“You’re small,” he said into my hair, amused and wrecked.
I laughed, unguarded. He rolled to the side, kept me close, slid a hand down my back like he was checking I hadn’t slipped out of my own skin. His thumb drew idle circles high on my ass. My body hummed in a low, satisfied note.
“Tell me you’re not Navy,” I said into the dark because even with his come slick inside me, I was still me.
“Marine,” he said, easy. Then, quieter, “And right now I’m just a man who brought you a tent on the beach.”
That tugged a smile out of me. “And gear,” I said. “Marcus’s idea of foreplay.”
“Something like that.” A beat. “The rest really is for your team.”
“I’ll allow it,” I said, letting fairness sit warm between us.
Wind fussed at the fly. My phone buzzed in my shorts—Becca: Resp 22. Lactate steady. Kogia quiet. All’s well.
The relief was a long thread unwinding. I showed him the screen. He nodded like the numbers were music.
“Earlier,” he said, voice a shade different now that we were soft and sated, “Marcus told me I’m supposed to be your liaison.”
My body went still under his hand. “Of course, he did.”
“I didn’t ask for it,” he said. “But I’m not your enemy.”
“I don’t need a handler,” I said, reflexive edge.
“I’m not a handler.” His mouth touched my shoulder, a punctuation mark. “I’m a rope you can pull. Or a knife. Or a brick through the right window.”
As annoying as it was, that made me feel safer. “I’m trying not to hate uniforms on principle,” I said. “My father told me to slow down. I slowed down today.”
“I heard about your dad’s yard.” He propped himself on an elbow. I could feel his gaze even if I couldn’t see it. “That tag in your pen.”
“You have ears everywhere,” I said, not accusing.
“Only where it matters.” His thumb found my jaw, traced it like he was memorizing topography. “Let me help you find what’s actually wrong. If it’s a uniform, fine. If it’s something else, we break that, too.”
“You sound very sure.”
“I’m sure about the part where I’m useful.” A faint smile. “Less sure about the part where I leave you alone.”
Heat lit behind my breastbone. “You don’t have to be sure,” I said. “You just have to breathe.”
“Yes, Dr. Allard,” he murmured, kissing the corner of my mouth. “You sound very official when you make that a rule.”
My body answered with a lazy throb that promised trouble in ten minutes, if I let it.
We dozed in fits—the kind where your muscles uncurl one at a time and the tide outside keeps time for you.
When I slid off him, the loss made me hiss.
He swore under his breath and kissed the curve of my hip like apology.
The tent felt smaller after. I pulled my tank over sticky skin, shimmied into shorts, shoved bare feet into my boots without socks because the night didn’t require manners.
He found jeans, shirt, his dog tags ghosting a soft clink I hadn’t noticed before.
At the flap he paused, caught my chin in two fingers, and tilted my face up. The kiss he gave me wasn’t like the ones inside—it was slower, almost chaste, a thing you could carry into fluorescent light and not want to wash off.
“Give me your phone,” he said.
I hesitated, then handed it over. He keyed a number, called his own, saved mine. When he passed it back, he didn’t make it sticky with words. Just: “Now you can.”
The weight of the phone in my palm shifted by a gram I felt everywhere. “And your last name?” I asked lightly, one brow up. “Or should I call you ‘the hot Marine with the tent’ in my head?”
His grin flashed, wicked and fond. “You can call me Jacob,” he said, voice a low tease. “For now.”
“Infuriating,” I muttered, zipping the flap.
“You like me that way,” he said, shouldering the duffel.
He wasn’t wrong.