Sixteen #2
Back in my room, the air is warm and stale.
Most of the bunks are occupied. So, I slip in quietly and head for my bunk.
My bed is a narrow strip of mattress, and a blanket folded messily from this morning’s rushed departure.
There’s a paperback face-down where I left it, and a mug with a dried coffee ring on the little shelf.
I sit heavily on the mattress and drop my head into my hands.
The second I’m still, everything hits me properly.
I can still feel his hands on me, the heat of his palm through the thin fabric, and the way he pulled me in like he’d made his mind up and fuck the consequences.
Most people, when I push them, either fold or bark. He grabbed me, he kissed me, and he did it knowing exactly who I am.
That’s new, dangerous, and equally fascinating.
I lie back, eventually — because sitting makes me feel like I’m about to jump out of my own skin — pulling the blanket over my chest and staring up at the underside of the bunk above me.
Instead of sleeping, I let my mind run and think about when I first saw him.
I think about the training yard and the mess hall afterwards.
His eyes flicking between Niko and me, wondering where the hell to put his attention.
He’s been circling this for weeks. So have I.
We’ve just been lying to ourselves about what we’ve been doing.
Well, I haven’t, I’ve known what I’m doing since day two. Winding him up, pushing him, seeing what he’ll do if I give him somewhere sharp to put all that restless energy. What I didn’t expect is that I’d like the answer quite this much.
We need to be more careful. This place isn’t kind to men like us. There’s a reason I keep my hands to myself here, keeping my flirting to words, looks and the occasional accidental brush in a doorway. I know what happens if you’re careless. I’ve seen it.
I should never have let him get me outside, alone.
I should never have let him get that close without an exit already mapped out and a fallback plan in place.
But then he looked at me like that. Like he’d finally stopped fighting himself and decided he’d rather jump than stand at the edge one more second.
I press the heels of my hands into my eyes again. No. We’re not doing that, attaching meaning to one kiss, spiralling into thinking about futures, or under any circumstances, letting the words “what is this” form with anything other than mockery.
This is simple. He’s hot, he wants me, we’re in a pressure cooker with no release valve, and the lid finally rattled hard enough to let some steam out. That’s all.
My brain, unhelpfully, replays the confused look on his face when I stepped away. Leaving him standing there, half-hard, was as much a tactic as it was self-preservation.
If this is going to happen — and let’s not pretend it isn’t, because the way he kissed me says there is no turning that tide back now — then it has to be on purpose.
Not half-hidden behind a building, where any idiot could wander past. It has to be somewhere I can control the angles, the risks, and the fallout.
Off-base, ideally. A place where I can take my time with him without checking over my shoulder.
The thought sends a hot dart of anticipation through me.
I want him. Not just the clever, stubborn soldier parts and the challenge. I want his body and to see what happens when all that discipline burns off, and there’s nothing left but raw want. I want to hear what he sounds like when he comes.
I exhale slowly. Okay. Plan, then.
The first step — test if he regrets it in the morning.
If he can’t meet my eyes at breakfast, or if he goes stiff, formal and starts avoiding me, then I know I misjudged, and I’ll have to dial it all the way back.
We can’t have a skittish British lamb bolting at the first sign of his own desire.
I don’t have the patience to coax him out of that kind of self-hate.
But if he looks at me like he did just before he kissed me — like he’s torn between throttling me and dragging me into a dark room — then we proceed. Slowly, carefully, and absolutely not on base.
We can steal time in small ways. Walks that go a few minutes longer than necessary.
Conversations that drift after official business is done.
The odd ‘accidental’ overlap in schedules — we can stretch that.
A weekend pass isn’t impossible. Niko would sign off on my absence for a couple of days if I frame it right. But that’s a problem for later.
One catastrophe at a time.
For now, I just have to make it through tonight without getting up, walking across the base like an idiot, and sneaking into his room. If I did that, this would stop being tactical and would start being... something else. I know better than that. I’ve done it before, and it nearly ended badly.
So I’ll stay in my bunk, stare at the underside of the bed above me, and replay the taste of his mouth in my head.
At some point, finally, my body decides it’s had enough and drags me under. My last half-coherent thought before sleep claws me down isn’t anything remotely wise.
It’s just his name. Caiden.
In the morning, my alarm goes off at 0500 like it has a personal issue with me resting.
The sound drills into my skull until I slap it off, swearing under my breath.
My knees crack when I swing them over the side of the bunk and my lower back aches with the kind of tension that only comes from spending half the night in that place between sleep and thinking about someone you shouldn’t.
I scrub a hand over my face and swing my feet down onto the cold floor, then I dress on autopilot. I check my face in the tiny, warped mirror by my bunk, head out into the corridor, the chill yard, then finally toward the mess.
I step into the hall and let my eyes adjust while scanning the room. I find Niko first, as always. He’s at one of the side tables, gesturing with a fork. Next to him… Caiden.
He’s in his T-shirt again with his jacket slung over the back of the chair. He’s laughing at something my brothers just said, his head tipped back, and his eyes are crinkling. He looks normal. No frosty avoidance, or hollow-eyed misery about having kissed the wrong person behind the equipment shed.
As if he feels my attention, his gaze drops from Niko and flicks toward the entrance, and our eyes meet. His expression does a quick, tiny shift of surprise, then something like relief, then a flare of... Oh, good. There it is, hunger.
It’s small and contained, as if he’s trying to sit on it. But I see it. The slight parting of his lips. The way his cheeks turn a little red, and the micro-tension in his jaw.
I let a slow, small smile curl one corner of my mouth — nothing big enough for anyone else to notice — then I look away deliberately and join the queue for food, ignoring the fact that my heart is suddenly beating somewhere in the region of my throat.
He wants more, great news for me. He can have it, on my terms, obviously.
I grab whatever they’re serving, make my way to the table, and drop down opposite Niko like it’s any other day.
My brother grins, says something about the weather being an asshole, and I answer automatically, trading insults about the snow.
But under the noise, there’s a current. Every time I speak, I can feel Caiden’s attention brush against me. Whenever our knees bump under the table — entirely by accident, of course — I can feel the way his body goes taut for a second.
He’s trying to keep it together, and I’m going to see exactly how long that lasts.
I smirk into my mug. Last night was the first move.
Now the real game starts.