Epilogue – Noah
The briefing hut smells like burned coffee and wet wool, and every chair is full for the first time in a while. Command sent the photo through secure channels an hour ago, and Gabriel’s got it clipped to the map board now, blown up enough that nobody has to squint.
Ryan Callahan, split lip, one eye swollen at the edge, holding a newspaper against his chest like he’s posing for a mugshot. But his jaw is set, and his good eye is looking dead into the camera like he’s daring whoever’s on the other side of the lens to try something.
“Command confirmed the paper’s dated yesterday,” Gabriel says. “Which means he was alive as of twenty-four hours ago, and whoever’s holding him wanted us to know it.”
“Proof of life,” Okafor says beside him. Not a question.
“Proof of life,” Gabriel agrees. “We don’t know where he’s being held. We don’t know why they’re keeping him instead of—” He stops himself, doesn’t finish the sentence, and I notice Wilder’s hands clench into fists. “For now, he’s a POW. Command’s treating it that way. We treat it that way too.”
I glance sideways at the room. Sykes sits with his bad leg propped on a crate, jaw tight. Spencer’s beside him, quiet as always, both of them healed enough to sit through a briefing and not much else.
Gabriel moves on to tomorrow’s patrol order, voice flat and even, our team rotating with Maddox’s, Wilder and Liu splitting time between both until Sykes and Spencer are cleared. Standard stuff. I only half listen, watching Gabriel’s face. He looks steady.
I know better.
“Dismissed,” he says finally, and the room breaks into motion, chairs scraping, voices picking back up with chatter.
“Reyes. Stay.”
Hayes gives me a sideways look on his way out, gone before anyone can catch it.
Two weeks now, and the man hasn’t said a word to anyone.
Not Delgado, not Walker, not even under his breath during PT when he’d usually narrate his own suffering to whoever’s closest. I don’t know how he’s managing to keep his mouth shut, but I owe him for it.
Okafor’s the last one out, and the look he gives us on his way past the door isn’t suspicion anymore. More like resignation, like a man who stopped fighting a current a while back and decided to just let it carry him.
The door swings shut. Gabriel crosses the hut in three strides, checks the window, checks the door again, then his hands are in my hair, and his mouth is on mine before I can say a single word.
I melt into it immediately, fisting his shirt, and he groans against my lips like he’s been waiting all day for this, which I can relate to.
We’re both hard within a minute, grinding against each other with nowhere near enough patience, his hips rolling into mine, my hands sliding down to grip his ass and pull him closer.
“Christ,” he breathes against my jaw. “I don’t know how I’m supposed to run a task force when I’m hard half the time I’m standing near you.”
“Occupational hazard, sir,” I murmur, working my mouth down his neck.
“Even today. Even with that photo on the board.” He pulls back enough to look at me, something helpless in his expression. “Callahan’s out there, and I can’t stop wanting you. What does that make me?”
“Human,” I say. “Come on, Gabriel. You’re allowed to feel more than one thing at once.”
He doesn’t look convinced, but he also doesn’t stop grinding against me, so I take that as agreement enough.
“Good thing you’ve got a specialist under your command,” I add, smirking, “who you can order to his knees whenever the mood strikes.”
He narrows his eyes and goes still.
Then, before I can process what’s happening, Gabriel Wolfe drops to his knees in front of me.
I blink down at him. “Sir. What are you doing?”
He looks up, and there’s nothing commanding about his expression right now. Just a man kneeling on a plywood floor, gray eyes uncertain in a way I’ve never seen on him, not even the first time he let me fuck him.
“Teach me,” he says.
“Teach you what?”
“How to—” He clenches his jaw. “How to suck cock, Noah. I want to know what it’s like. What you feel like.”
Heat floods through me so fast I nearly sway. I definitely forget how words work.
“You don’t have to,” I manage. “I’m happy just—”
“I want to.” His hands are already at my belt, undoing it with more confidence than his voice carries. “Show me.”
I laugh, half disbelief and half pure delight, and slot my fingers through his hair. “Okay. Okay, sir. Look at me.”
He does. I get myself free, and his eyes drop to my cock like he’s memorizing it.
“Start slow,” I tell him, my voice already rougher than I want it to be. “Lips first. Cover your teeth.”
He wraps his lips around the head, careful, tentative, and the sensation of Colonel Gabriel Wolfe’s mouth on me nearly buckles my knees on the spot.
“Fuck—yeah, just like that.” My hand tightens in his hair. “Now take a little more. Use your tongue on the underside.”
He follows every instruction like it’s an order he intends to execute flawlessly, which, given who he is, tracks completely.
His tongue drags along the underside of my cock, clumsy at first, then finding a rhythm, and the sight of him on his knees for me, working me with that same focus he brings to everything, is going to live in my head forever.
“Touch yourself,” I breathe. “Want to watch you get yourself off while you do this.”
He doesn’t hesitate. His good hand drops to his own slacks, freeing himself, and starts stroking in time with the bob of his head, and the sound he makes around my cock when he does it goes straight through me.
“God, Gabriel.” My hips twitch forward, and he takes it, adjusting, taking me deeper without me having to ask. “You’re a natural. Fuck, I knew you would be.”
He hums around me, and the vibration nearly finishes me off right there.
“I’m close,” I warn him, giving him the chance to pull back, the way I always would. “Fuck… Gabriel, I’m gonna—”
He doesn’t pull back.
He swallows me down instead, taking me deeper, and the second I start coming, he moans, low and broken around my cock, and I feel him shudder as his own release hits, his hand working him through it, both of us falling apart within seconds of each other.
I brace a hand against the map table to keep from going down, my whole body shaking, and Gabriel stays there on his knees until the last of it works through me, swallowing like he’s determined not to waste a drop.
When he finally sits back on his heels, his mouth is slick, his cheeks are flushed, and he’s looking up at me like he just discovered something he’s spent his whole life pretending didn’t exist.
The sight of his cum on his hand and cock is more than I can resist. I join him on the floor and make sure to clean every last drop. Then I help him up, my legs none too steady themselves, and he kisses me again, slower this time, unhurried, the kiss tasting like both of us mixed together.
“Well?” I ask against his lips, grinning. “Verdict, sir?”
He pulls back just far enough to look at me.
“You were right,” he says quietly. “We do taste best combined.”