GABRIEL
Four days. Four full days since the latrine, and Reyes hasn’t looked at me twice at formation, hasn’t done a single thing to remind me that his hand was ever on my cock.
He laughs with Walker at chow. He runs the wire without once falling out of step to catch my eye.
He doesn’t ask any questions at tasking, keeping his eyes on the board.
I should be relieved. Instead, I’m pacing the length of my hut in the middle of the night, four steps one way, four steps back.
Maybe it was just a game to him. Maybe he wanted to prove to himself that he could bring a full colonel with two decades of discipline to his knees—not literally, God, not that I haven’t fantasized about that.
But maybe he got what he wanted. The reaction.
The evidence. And now he’s moved on, and I’m the one replaying the encounter in my head, night after night.
I stop pacing and press the heel of my hand against my sternum like that’ll do something for the ache underneath. Forty-five years old, and I’m heartsick over a twenty-three-year-old who probably forgot my first name by breakfast.
The knock comes at 0110 exactly. Two soft raps. I freeze mid-stride, my muscles going rigid. Nobody knocks on my door at this hour with good news. Okafor. It has to be Okafor, a casualty report, patrol gone sideways.
I cross the room and open the door, already bracing for bad news.
It’s Reyes.
He’s in his fatigue pants and a plain shirt, no jacket despite the cold, his hair a mess like he’s been running his hands through it. His eyes hold mine, and my heart does something stupid.
“Specialist.” I keep my voice down. “Why aren’t you in your bunk?”
“Can I come in?” he asks quietly.
I narrow my eyes. “That’s not appropriate.”
“Would you rather I say what I have to say out here?” He tips his head toward the row of huts behind him. One of which belongs to Okafor. “Loud enough for the neighbors?”
I clench my jaw, then glance past him at the dark, checking that we’re alone, and hating myself that he’s right. Even more so that a part of me is happy that he knocked.
I step back and let him in.
Reyes moves past me and takes in my modest quarters—cot, footlocker, a desk with a lantern, my own small bathroom—and I shut the door behind him with a quiet click.
He faces me, arms crossed, chin up. “Why have you been avoiding me?” he demands without preamble.
I look at him for a long moment before I answer, collecting myself.
“Do you realize,” I finally say, “that this is the first conversation we’ve had that isn’t about PT, or patrol, or a range card? Why would you think you’re owed my attention, Specialist?”
Something moves behind his eyes. Maybe hurt, maybe something deeper, darker. He closes the distance between us until we’re chest to chest, sharing the same air. I can feel his heat, just like I did behind that deadfall on the Velin approach, just like I did in the latrine.
“Because I’ve had your dick in my hand,” he hisses, “and you came moaning my name.”
I feel a muscle tick in my cheek. “I’m not gay,” I say with finality. Like that’s the end of the dilemma.
Reyes’s mouth curves, slow and merciless. “Your dick sure thinks you are.”
Heat floods up my neck into my face, and for one second I’m not sure if I’m about to shove him out the door or put my fist through the wall behind his head.
My hands make the decision before my brain catches up.
I grab a fistful of his shirt and pull him in.
Reyes blinks, his expression changing, a flicker of genuine fear darkening his eyes.
Good. Let him be afraid. I’m terrified too.
Then I pull him the rest of the way in and crush my mouth against his.
Reyes moans into my mouth, and it breaks something inside me wide open.
I groan and haul him closer, my hand fisted in the back of his shirt, and our bodies collide with a friction that can’t be legal.
I’m hard, grinding against him without meaning to, my hips finding his like they’ve done this a thousand times in the dark.
He’s solid against me, warm through two layers of cotton, and my cock throbs against the ridge of his like it’s been dying to for weeks.
I’m kissing a man. I’m kissing Reyes.
The realization should stop me. It does the opposite. I noticed that mouth on day one, and some long-buried part of me wanted this since the second he tipped his chin up and said yes sir like a challenge. Now that mouth is under mine, and I can’t get enough of it.
Reyes takes over before I can catch my breath. His hands slide down my back and grab two fistfuls of my ass, dragging me in until there’s no air left between us. He angles his head and kisses down my jaw, open-mouthed, slow, sensual. My skull empties of every thought.
“Noah…”
I don’t even know I’ve said his name until it’s already out.
His hands leave my ass and drop between us, fingers working fast at my belt, then his own, and my brain finally catches up enough to form a sentence.
“What are you doing?”
“I need you, sir.” His voice is raw and wrecked. “I need to feel your cock against mine.”
All I can do is moan.
He gets my belt open and shoves my slacks down over my hips, and I let him, standing there in the low lantern light like every rule I’ve spent two decades enforcing just evaporated.
Then his own pants, shoved down just enough, and he takes both our cocks into one hand, wrapping his fingers around the two of us together.
The sound that leaves me is more animal than human.
We start moving on instinct. I don’t decide to thrust—my hips just do it, chasing the slick drag of his cock against mine inside the cage of his fist, and he matches me, rolling into it with the same hunger, both of us breathing hard in a room that suddenly feels too small and too hot.
I can’t look away from where we’re pressed together. His cock is a few shades darker than mine, thick and flushed, already leaking at the tip, smearing wet heat across my skin with every stroke he gives us, and it’s the single most obscene, beautiful thing I’ve ever watched happen to my own body.
“Fuck,” I breathe, hips jerking forward again, chasing that slick slide. “Fuck, Reyes.”
“Yeah?” he murmurs, looking down at where our cocks bump against each other with savage satisfaction. “You like this, sir? Like frotting with your subordinate?”
His words make my blood run cold, then hot, all the air leaving my brain as the danger, the thrill, the degradation hit me all at once in a powerful cocktail.
“You little shit,” I manage to growl past the haze. “You’ll pay for this.”
Reyes glances up at me, giving me a signature cocky smirk. “I can’t fucking wait, sir.”
I don’t decide to say it. It rips out of me on a thrust, low and rough, my hand coming up to grip his jaw so he has to look at me while I say it.
“You’re fucking mine, Reyes.” My hips slam forward, chasing his fist, chasing him. “Do you hear me? Not Walker’s. Not Hayes’s. Not anyone’s. If anyone else touches you like this, I’ll shoot them myself.”
Reyes laughs, breathless and lust-drunk, his head tipping back.
“Jesus, sir.” He squeezes us together, making my vision go white. “Like I could be with anyone else. I’m too fucking gone for my Colonel.”
The words do something to my chest that would probably make a cardiologist frown in concern.
Reyes’s eyes drop back to where our cocks slide together, slick and shameless in his fist.
“I can’t wait to taste it,” he breathes. “Both of us. Mixed together. Gonna lick every drop off my fingers, sir, just like last time.”
That does it. That single, filthy image makes me explode.
I come with a growl I muffle with clenched teeth, making it as quiet as I can because men are sleeping fifty meters away who cannot hear their colonel come apart moaning a specialist’s name.
My release spills between us, striping his fist, his cock, both of us, and my knees nearly buckle.
“Fuck, yes, sir,” Reyes nearly chokes out, hips jerking hard into his own hand. “Just like that. Come all over my goddamn cock.”
He follows me over a second later, shaking against me, his forehead dropping to my shoulder as his release joins mine, warm and slick.
Neither of us moves for a long moment. We share ragged breaths in the quiet space between us, and my heart beats wildly in my chest.
Reyes eases us down with slow, unhurried strokes that make my spent cock twitch against his palm, and then he lifts his hand between us—filthy, marked with both of us—and brings it to his mouth.
I hiss as my cock gives another pulse.
“You’re going to be the death of me,” I mutter, and I don’t recognize my voice anymore at all.
Reyes grins, his brown eyes bright and alive. “What a fucking way to go though, right, sir?”
Just then, a door slams shut outside in the dark, making both of us turn our heads in that direction.
“You should go,” I murmur, surprised at how much I don’t actually want him to go. We just came, so what is it exactly that I still want from him?
Reyes sighs. “Yeah. To be continued,” he promises with a wink. Then he salutes me with the hand still glistening with cum and spit. My cock kicks against my thigh, so I pull my pants back up, trying to look as dignified as a man who just debased himself with his subordinate can.
I clear my throat. “Good night, Specialist.”
Reyes smirks. “Good night, Colonel.”
Then he’s gone. I lean my forehead against the door and squeeze my eyes shut.
Oh fuck. What did I do?