Chapter Two
The Fire
She decided slowly.
By the third night the fever had broken. She sat closer to the fire and asked about the old deployments, the long operations, the men he had served with.
He did not start with medals. He started with the men who had come before him.
“My people been in uniform since there was a uniform to put on,” he said, whiskey low in the glass.
“Not officers, mostly. The ones who keep the machine running and don’t get their names on buildings.
Father. His father. An uncle who didn’t come back from a jungle nobody wanted to talk about at Sunday table.
I didn’t join to be special. I joined because it was the family trade and I was good at being still. ”
Senior Master Sergeant was the rank that fit him. High enough that young ones shut up when he walked in. Not so high that he lived in meetings. He had been the man between the plan and the dirt.
“I did deployments. Long operations. Desert. Mountains that weren’t these. Cities that smelled like fuel and open sewage. You live in other people’s weather until you forget what your own porch sounds like.”
He had learned to disappear because disappearing kept people alive. He had learned to filter every sentence because a loose mouth got people buried. The tinnitus started on a stretch of road that still lived behind his eyes. After that, cicadas in his head at night.
“I was good at two things. Keeping my people supplied and getting them out when the plan went to shit. I was not good at going home between. You come back and the grocery store feels louder than incoming.”
That was why the cabin existed. A perimeter he could finish.
Matt, Shuck, and Harold were the ones left when operations ended. He had radioed them because he still believed you do not leave your people behind, and you do not hold ground forever with one set of eyes.
“I retired because the machine was done with my knees and I was done pretending the next long operation would be the last. I came up here because I can hear a branch break and know if it’s a deer or a man.”
He glanced at her. “You asked if I’m any better than them. I buried men who weren’t. I never took a woman off a trail to sell her. I never left my own in the dirt because it was convenient. That’s the inventory.”
Lucy listened and felt the east-country fiancé—the wealthy older man her family had promised her to—shrink beside this. That man had wanted a wife as proof. This one wanted a perimeter and a truth he could stand.
She also felt herself tighten when he said claim without saying it. She had resented older men. She had a crush on a boy her age. Then this sixty-year-old Senior Master Sergeant had carried her on his back, and the old fence in her head started to rot.
“That’s enough war for a fire,” Jake said. “Some of it don’t leave my mouth. Not because I think you’re weak. Because some things, once you hand them to somebody, they have to carry them too.”
“You don’t scare easy,” he added after a while.
“I scare. I just don’t want to look away.”
She reached for him first. He pinned her wrists to the wall—not cruel, only stronger. She had always prided herself on being hard to pin down. With Jake there was no contest. She felt herself soak through.
“Tell me if you want me to stop. Otherwise I take what I want and I give you what you need.”
“Don’t stop.”
He stripped her. Bound her wrists when she asked. Her large breasts fell heavy. Her nipples were already tight. He settled between her long legs like a man who intended to ruin her for anyone softer.
Jake was an eater. Every flick of his tongue, every scrape of teeth, every wet kiss against her clit made her jerk, and he filed it.
He sucked her open, licked into her, groaned against her like her taste was a problem he meant to solve.
Her hips cracked. Her stomach rolled. She came on his mouth the first time with a broken sound, thighs clamped around his head, and he did not stop.
He held her down and ate her through the second one until she was shaking and dripping down his beard.
Only then did he rise, wipe his mouth with the back of his hand, and push into her slow and deep. She was so wet it was filthy. He filled her in one thick slide and held there, letting her feel it.
“Take it,” he muttered.
She did. When she begged he gave her more—hard, wet slaps of skin, a light hand at her throat, his other hand working her clit until she came a third time clenched around him. He finished inside her with a growl that was not entirely human, pulsing hot, and held her through it.
Afterward he cleaned her. Always.
“You good?”
“Yes.” She pressed her face to his beard and smelled herself on him. “You make me want to give it up. That’s new. And the way you use your mouth… Oh my God! I never want you to stop!”
“Only if you mean it. I like taking my time when a woman lets me.”