NOAH
The fog rolls in thick this morning, and I’m sitting on my bunk, whistling to myself.
“Man, that’s obscene,” Hayes says, hauling his boots on beside me. “You’re about to get tortured in sub-arctic conditions, and you’re doing show tunes.”
“Great dreams,” I say.
“I don’t want details,” Hayes answers dramatically.
“I didn’t offer any.”
He squints at me like I’ve grown a second head, then gives up and laces his boots faster, muttering something about morning people being a public health issue. I don’t argue. I’m too busy floating.
You’re fucking mine, Reyes. If anyone else touches you like this, I’ll shoot them myself.
He claimed me out loud, and I’ve been repeating it in my head since last night.
I haven’t gotten tired of hearing the replay, and I don’t think I ever will.
Because it wasn’t just a hint. It wasn’t an innuendo or something hidden behind a support beam.
Real words, his voice breaking a bit on my name.
I’ve got butterflies. Actual stupid, teenager butterflies, and I hate how much I love it.
At formation, I work overtime not to smile at him.
It’s a losing battle. Gabriel stands in front of the line with his hands clasped behind his back, running his eyes down the row, and when he gets to me, his jaw goes tight, like he’s fighting the exact same fight I am.
I bite the inside of my cheek and stare at a point just past his shoulder, and it barely works.
“Warm-up,” he says. “Then calisthenics.”
I’ve barely started warming up when he stops in front of me.
“Reyes. Your laces are untied.”
I look down. My laces are double-knotted, just like they were at 0600 when I tied them, just like every morning since basic. I look back up at him, and there’s nothing in those gray eyes but what he’d want the whole squad to see. Regulation everything.
“Drop and give me fifty,” he says after a beat.
That’s when I remember his words from last night when I pushed him. You little shit. You’ll pay for this.
I almost laugh but catch myself just in time.
“Yes, sir,” I say, and drop.
Fifty push-ups in the gravel is not nothing, and by the time I get to thirty, my arms are shaking and my breath is coming out in little puffs, but I’m smirking into the ground the entire time.
Bring it on, Colonel.
If this is the price, I’d gladly pay it twice.
When I jump back up, Gabriel’s already turned away, like he didn’t just invent a lace violation out of thin air so he can touch me the only way he can in daylight.
The whole day, I can’t stop watching him.
I know I shouldn’t. I know the smart play is that I change nothing about how I act.
That’s the play that keeps Okafor’s eyes off me and Hayes’s mouth shut, and I do try.
I keep my hands steady during weapons maintenance.
I laugh at Walker’s jokes at the right volume, no more, no less.
I eat my chow at a normal pace and don’t stare across the mess hut like a man possessed.
And then Gabriel walks past with a clipboard, and my eyes go to him like a compass finding north, every single time, and I can’t make them stop.
I catch Okafor noticing. Twice. The first time, he’s leaning against the ops hut doorframe with his arms crossed, and his gaze drifts from me to Gabriel’s retreating back and lingers there a beat too long before it swings back to me.
The second time is at afternoon tasking.
I look up from the map table, and he’s already watching me, those dark eyes doing that unreadable thing, like he’s filing something away for later.
It should scare me straight, but it doesn’t. I survived worse things than a suspicious sergeant. Okafor’s long looks don’t measure up against what I survived in that cellar.
By the time the light disappears over the ridge, all I can think about is 2200, and the empty meters between my bunk and his door.
Lights out comes late. Petrillo and Spencer are the last ones talking, something about the new stove pipe seals, and then, finally, even that goes quiet, and the hut fills with the sound of five men breathing.
I give it twenty minutes. Should be long enough for sleep to take hold, but not long enough for my nerves to fail me.
The cold outside bites through my shirt the second I clear the door, and I move fast and low along the backs of the huts. Gabriel’s hut is dark except for a thin gray line of light under the door. I knock softly, twice, just like last night.
The door opens before I lower my hand. Fast. Like he’s been standing on the other side of it, waiting, maybe counting minutes just like I have.
I don’t give either of us time to think about that. The second the door is shut behind me, I’ve got a fistful of his shirt and my mouth on his. He tastes like coffee, and I murmur against his lips before I can stop myself.
“Thought about this all fucking day.”
Gabriel groans, but then his hands come up to my shoulders and push, putting a few inches of air between us.
“You can’t look at me like that,” he says. “Not in front of everyone.”
I bite my lower lip. “Like what?”
Gabriel exhales slowly before answering. “Like you know what my dick tastes like.”
Slowly, my lips stretch into a grin. “I don’t, in fact, know what your dick tastes like, sir.” I look at the front of his slacks, deliberate, pointedly. “Just what you taste like when you come. There’s a difference.”
“Reyes—”
“But I do know,” I go on, walking him back a step, “exactly the kind of punishment that fits a soldier who keeps disobeying orders.”
His jaw works. His eyes have gone dark, the gray almost completely swallowed up by black.
“You want to hear it, sir?” I push, holding his gaze.
“Say it,” he growls. There’s no fight in the word, just desire pretending to be an order.
“You choke me with that hard cock of yours,” I say. “Until I learn my lesson.”
He makes a sound like I’ve hit him, and I take advantage of it, shoving him back the rest of the way until his shoulders meet the door with a soft thud.
I kiss him again, harder this time, and he kisses me back like he’s trying to prove something to himself, one hand fisting in my shirt, the other sliding up into my hair and gripping, not gentle at all.
Then I break it off and sink to my knees.
The floor is hard and cold through my pants, and I don’t care at all. I look up at him from down here, and hold those storm-gray eyes, because I want him to watch this. I want him to see exactly who’s doing this to him and that there’s no taking it back.
My hands find his belt, and he doesn’t stop me. His chest rises and falls too fast above me, and when I get his slacks open and drag them down over his hips, his cock springs free already hard, flushed dark at the tip and leaking. A broken sound leaves him.
I interpret it as begging, so I wrap my hand around the base and look back up.
“Yes, sir,” I murmur, and lean in.
The first taste of him makes me moan. He’s salty and warm, and I take my time working my mouth down his length slowly, listening to the way his breath stutters above me. His hand tightens in my hair, not guiding me yet, just holding like he needs an anchor.
“Noah.” It comes out wrecked. “Fuck, your mouth…”
I hum around him in answer, and his hips jerk forward before he can stop them, feeding himself deeper, and I let him.
I take him further, relax my throat, breathe through my nose, and hold his gaze the entire time so he knows exactly whose choice this is.
My eyes water. I don’t care. I want him to lose the last of that iron control, want to be the reason it finally goes.
“Christ,” he breathes, and his other hand cups the back of my skull, fingers spreading through my hair. “You’re going to kill me.”
I pull back just far enough to speak, my lips brushing the head of his cock, my voice rough. “Then choke me with it, sir. You know you want to.”
He finally commits. His grip tightens, both hands now, and his hips start to move, shallow at first, testing, watching my face for a flinch that won’t come.
I relax my jaw, let him set the pace, and the sound he makes when he finally lets himself thrust deeper is the best thing I’ve heard on this entire base.
“Fuck, yes,” he grits out, hips rolling forward, feeding me inch by inch. “Take it. Take all of it.”
I do. I take everything he gives me, throat working around him, hands braced on his thighs to keep my balance as he starts to really move, forgetting himself, forgetting rank and regulation, until there’s nothing left but his ragged breathing and the slick sound of his cock sliding into my mouth.
“Noah.” My name again, rough, barely a whisper. “I’m not going to last.”
I dig my fingers into his hips as an answer, urging him on, and he groans low in his throat and comes apart right there against his door, hips stuttering, cock twitching on my tongue as he spills down my throat in hot, heavy pulses.
I swallow every drop, don’t let a bit of him go to waste, and hold him there until the last tremor works its way out of his thighs.
When I finally pull back, his knees look unsteady. He’s braced against the door like it’s the only thing holding him up.
I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and look up at him, grinning.
“Still think you’re not gay, sir?”
He drags in a breath but doesn’t answer me. Instead, he looks at the front of my pants where my crotch is tented.
He nods at it. “What about you?”
I feel my grin get wider. I stand up and start unbuckling my belt. “Want to give me a helping hand, sir?”
Gabriel blinks at me, then his eyes go dark again, and he nods.
“Great,” I say cheerfully. I don’t want to scare him off. A man deep in the closet will find a huge difference in receiving and giving. “Give me your hand, sir.”
I take it as soon as he moves and wrap his fingers over my cock. The first contact makes me hiss. “Fuck,” I breathe. “You have no idea how many times I pretended it was your hand on my dick when I jerked off.”
“Reyes,” he murmurs, and I can’t tell if he’s scandalized or flattered. Either way, I wrap my fingers around his and jerk off into his palm.
His hand isn’t soft—he may be a colonel, but he’s no pencil pusher. He handles a gun almost as often as I do. It’s strong and callused and bigger than mine.
Colonel Gabriel Wolfe is jerking me off and staring at it like it’s the first time he’s seen color TV.
I keep his hand wrapped around me, guiding it, showing him the rhythm my own hand knows by heart.
His fingers catch on, learn fast, tighten just right at the head the way I like, and I let my eyes fall shut for a second before forcing them back open, because I don’t want to miss a single second of his face.
“Yeah,” I breathe. “Just like that, sir. Fuck, your hand feels so much better than mine.”
Gabriel’s breathing has gone rough again, like watching me, jerking me off, is doing things to him even though he already came tonight. His thumb swipes over the head on the upstroke, catching the bead of precum there, and I hiss through my teeth.
“That’s it,” I say, my voice wavering. “God, I thought about this. Your hand on me. Every time I—every damn time.”
He doesn’t say anything, but his grip tightens, and his eyes stay locked on where his fingers wrap around my cock like he’s committing it to memory. I feel the heat building fast, faster than it should, but finally having his hand on my dick will do that.
“Gonna come, sir,” I warn, breath hitching. “Gonna come in your hand.”
I don’t give him a chance to respond. I close the last few inches between us and kiss him, swallowing down whatever sound wants to come out of me, and he groans against my mouth, surprised for half a second before he leans into it, kissing me back like he’s starving.
My hips jerk. My knees nearly give. I shake against him, spilling hot over both our hands, moaning his name into his mouth so nobody outside these plywood walls hears it but him.
“Gabriel,” I gasp, the name muffled between our lips, and he swallows that too, groaning quietly like it does something to him to hear it.
I ride it out against him, hips stuttering, until there’s nothing left but my ragged breath and his hand still wrapped around me, slick and spent.
I kiss him one more time, slower, softer, before I pull back enough to lift our hands between us. I bring his knuckles to my mouth first, licking a stripe up the side, watching his eyes go molten all over again.
He groans like watching me clean us both off like this is the filthiest thing he’s ever witnessed.
“Round two?” I ask, grinning and feeling optimistic, even though my knees are still unsteady.
Gabriel shakes his head, though I can see he doesn’t want to. “You should go back.”
“Killjoy,” I mutter, but start tucking myself back into my pants anyway.
“Okafor does random counts,” he adds. Practical. The Colonel once more. “If he finds your bunk empty—”
“He won’t,” I reply, though we both know I can’t make that promise.
I straighten my shirt, run a hand through my hair like that’ll actually fix the mess, and head for the door. My fingers are on the handle when his voice stops me cold.
“Reyes.”
I turn. His slacks are still undone, his hair standing up where my hands were a moment ago, and his mouth is still swollen from mine. But there’s something sharp in his gaze again. Colonel-sharp.
“Who said you could use my first name, Specialist?” he asks coldly.
I blink. My pulse kicks up, and not from fear.
“Sorry, sir.”
“Expect a punishment for that tomorrow.”
A slow grin spreads across my face, and I salute him with the same hand I just used to guide his over my cock.
“Yes, sir,” I say, and let myself out into the cold, already counting the hours down to 0700 when I see him again.