Duty and Desire: Military Erotic Romance Read online

  He had. He’d asked her out to a movie and dinner at Denny’s, nobody’s idea of original or romantic, but he only had a few more days’ leave and she’d said yes.

  And now he watched the way she flung her hands about when she talked, the way her face and her body got into the conversation. She was the most alive person he’d ever met.

  “It’s bear in Spanish.” He smiled down at his hands, embarrassed. “I was the biggest of the cousins. My uncle Jorge started calling me Oso when I got to be fourteen and taller than him.”

  She burst out laughing, then covered her mouth, her eyes wide, when the laugh echoed around the restaurant. He leaned his chin onto one hand and watched her, entranced.

  She had long, dark brown hair that swung at her waist and smooth mocha skin that smelled like warm vanilla—the scent reached across the table and teased him every so often. She was built on the plump side. Her breasts strained against her bra, her ass was round and sweet, her waist curved in. He couldn’t stop looking into her eyes because of the way they lit up when she looked at him. It made his insides warm.

  Two tables away a baby started crying, and his heart leapt up into his throat, every muscle in his body tensing up.

  The smell of darkness, dirt, smoke, charred wood and metal and flesh, the crack of rifles, the stench of diesel exhaust, the nasty metallic aftertaste that blood left in the air.

  People wailing. A baby screaming, hurt...

  Gentle fingers rested on his arm, and he jerked back into the here and now.

  She stroked the skin of his forearm, her face calm and soft, giving him an anchor though she couldn’t know that. “You been through some shit, haven’t you? I wish I could understand,” she said.

  He swallowed, blinking to clear his eyes, trying to focus on her. “Arly, there’s nobody I hate that much, I’d want them to understand what I been through,” and then after a moment, “I’m okay, really.”

  The waitress came to take their order.

  He holds her, still cradled in his arms, teases her, brushing her lips with his, flicking his tongue across them. Abruptly he pulls back, turns his head to kiss between her thighs.

  She moans again, moving in his arms, and he kisses higher, licking slowly up the inside of her soft round thighs, until he gets to the edge of her miniskirt. He licks the skin where her thighs meet, nuzzling and pushing at her denim skirt with his nose, until his tongue finds the soft ivory satin of her panties. He inhales the scent of baby powder, clean soap, perfume and the sweetness of her pussy. His heart pounds and the blood rushes in his ears.

  “Mmm,” he growls, low and gravelly, flicks his tongue across her panties, teasing, trying to push between her pussy lips through the satin.

  “Son of a bitch,” she swears, her voice hoarse, her head falling back.

  Oso got a Coke for himself, Arly asked for an iced tea, and they ordered their food and an appetizer sampler platter to share.

  “You lived here all your life?” he asked after the appetizer plate came. He winced after he said it. It sounded lame.

  “Yup. Central Valley, California, baby. Fresno born and bred. How about you?” She picked up a piece of fried mozzarella and dipped it in the bowl of ranch dressing.

  He watched the way her long, ruby red nails sparkled in the light. She held her food delicately in her fingertips, turning her head a bit. He watched the way the light shone in her hair, watched how several dark strands fell down her shoulder to lie against the swell of her breast, where her blouse gapped a bit. Her soft red lips closed around the cheese, curved into a smile as she ate.

  His throat went dry. “Yup, me too,” he answered, and then, “Sorry, I suck at talking to people. I can never think of what to say.”

  She looked up at him, her eyes warm. “I never know when to shut up. I envy you....”

  Another pause.

  She said in a rush, “I don’t fit too well, most places. I’m too loud, too enthusiastic about everything. I’m too plump to be graceful, too short.” She concentrated on picking a chicken strip and wouldn’t look at him. “Honestly, I’m too much of everything for most guys.... I was kinda surprised when you called.”

  “You probably won’t remember,” he said, “but we met, sort of, before I joined the army. My cousins invited me to a football game. You came with your sister, or something.”

  “I do remember,” she gave him a shy smile. “She was my friend, not my sister. I don’t have family.” She bit into her chicken strip, ate it, wouldn’t look at him. “I remember you,” she said again. She looked up at him, quick and embarrassed, and looked away quickly.

  The waitress came with their dinner.

  He nips at her pussy gently, catches the satin of her panties in his teeth and tugs on them, pulling them aside. He pushes his tongue hard into her, stroking back and forth over her clit and through the soft folds, which isn’t easy because her legs are held together by his right arm. He licks again and again, making noises in his throat, raising his right arm, which brings her hips closer to his face. He drives his tongue in and out of her, pressing hard in long strokes. She writhes in his arms, moaning loudly, and he thinks, of course she’s going to be a screamer.

  The thought of her screaming for him makes his heart pound all over again.

  He stops to look up at her. Her eyes are huge in her face, her lips parted. She’s panting, he can see how bad she wants him, and he groans as he kisses her hard.

  “Make love to me, Oso,” she whispers, and he carries her to the bed.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he answers.

  “I never feel safe,” Arly said about halfway through her chicken Caesar salad.

  “Why not?” Oso asked.

  “I have to do everything for myself. I have to go grocery shopping alone and I have to carry all the bags in alone. Every time something breaks, I have to fix it myself. I’ve been by myself for a really long time.”

  “I can see how that would be lonely,” he said, “but why not safe?”

  She searched his face. “When you’re out, you know, patrolling or whatever, do you have to watch everything, all the time, by yourself, or do you have other guys to depend on?”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah,” she said, around bites of romaine. “I can’t ever just let go. I can’t just let someone else handle things.” She looked out the window at the headlights, all the late traffic going back and forth. “Sorry. I shouldn’t complain. The world is what it is, right? I know things must have been a million times worse for you.”

  He frowned. “I think that’s a reasonable thing to be bugged about. I would be. And bad is bad. You can’t measure my real world against yours.”

  “Oh,” was all she said, but her shoulders relaxed, and she turned away from the window to look at him again.

  “Jesus, I can’t believe how strong you are,” she whispers, running her hand up and down his bicep because he’s been holding her in his arms all this time.

  He gives her a wicked smile, kisses the side of her neck. He’s aware every second of how fragile she is, of what he could do to her if he’s not careful. He’s killed a man with nothing but his hands, and the part of himself he’s worried about, the part that may never come out of the desert, that part tries to push into his moment with Arly.

  The dirt and the heat and the smoke, the feel of the man’s neck bones crunching under his big hands, the weird gurgling sounds and the way the light went out in the man’s face....

  Oso presses his face into the side of her neck; her skin is clean and sweet, and he inhales her perfume like medicine.

  She says something gentle he can’t quite hear and holds his face in her hands, pressing little kisses against his forehead and his cheek.

  He lays her down onto the bed and stands over her, while she pushes herself back on her elbows and smiles up at him, her eyes half-lidded, her hair falling around her shoulders, her lips gently parted.

  She looks vulnerable in that moment, her face and her feelings completel
y open.

  There was a moment when they both went quiet. Voices rose and fell around them, along with the clatter of dishes and the smell of food floating in the air.

  Marketplace. Babble of voices. Smell of food. A moment’s silence, odd and jarring, then the world turned into light and heat and sound, a shock wave of concussion that blew through him and past him....

  He looked toward Arly, as if she were a lifeline, and refused to see anything but her face.

  “If I asked you what it was like,” she was saying, softly, “would you tell me?”

  “No.”

  Her face closed up.

  “It’s not that I don’t want you to know. It’s....” He struggled with the words, said finally, “some asshole blew up a market, and a lot of the pieces went through me. I was lying in dirt that got turned into mud by my own blood, with my body tore up like a piece of meat, and I was one of the lucky ones ’cause I lived.

  “Arly,” he leaned toward her, “you’re perfect, you’re like a work of art.”

  He meant every word. He reached out for her hand, turned it palm down and spread her fingers under the table lamp. “I was watching your hands—they’re beautiful under the light. Your body, your smile, your laugh.... You’re like a jewel, baby.”

  He looked up into her eyes and was surprised to see them sparkle, amazed that he could have such an effect on her. A tear welled up in her eye, spilled onto her cheek.

  He swallowed.

  “All the horrible shit that’s inside me, that I brought back...I don’t want that gettin’ on to you.” He let go of her hand, leaned back, looked out the window.

  He kneels on the bed beside her and begins to unbutton her blouse reverently, like she’s a gift he’s unwrapping. When he gets to her panties, he spreads his hand across her mons as she lies back. His rough fingers catch on the soft satin. He leans to kiss her.

  She lifts her hips and he pulls her panties off. He trails kisses down her belly, kissing the place where her pussy lips come together, breathing deep because she smells so good.

  She props herself up on her elbows as he stands and looks down at her.

  “God damn, baby,” he whispers, and all the breath leaves his body, “you are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen....”

  “I’m too fat,” she says, joking, but he can hear a lifetime of apologies in her voice.

  “Arly, love...” he says slowly, “not every guy likes skinny girls.” He leans over the bed, catches one of her nipples in his fingers, teases it until it tightens hard.

  She closes her eyes and moans.

  “My turn now, Oso love,” she whispers, sitting back up. “I want to see you....”

  He’s not a bodybuilder, he likes his steak and eggs and he won’t apologize for that, but he has muscle, he’s a big man. Now he strips off his clothes and he tries to stomp down on the things he’s afraid of. What if he isn’t what she likes? What if she’s turned off by the scars?

  They start on his left shoulder and spatter across his ribs down to his right hip. They’re dark and ugly. He’s lucky to be alive, with scars like that, and he wants to tell her that, wants, in a weird way, to be able to be proud of them. But what if she’s so turned off she gets up and leaves?

  She draws in a breath, sharp and shocked, and he stiffens, hiding his hurt. But then she looks up into his face with soft, sad eyes, whispers, “Oh, baby....” She moves to kneel at the edge of the bed, her hands reaching around his ribs, pulling his body toward her as she softly kisses each scar, from his hipbone up to his shoulder. She is pulling him down onto the bed, murmuring gentle, comforting words into his skin, stroking him all over with her pretty hands, spreading love like a poultice across his hurts.

  “The VA was an awful place. It was...” He struggled for an analogy that would do it justice.

  The waitress came to refill their coffee cups.

  “You know,” he said finally, “you know when you go to a big mall on a day right before Christmas?”

  She nodded. “Oh yeah. Hell yeah.”

  “And you’re going through the parking lot, only you can’t go more than two feet before some asshole is getting in your way, or crossing the street right in front of your car or stealing the only parking space you found in a half hour of looking?”

  “Yup,” she said again.

  “Okay, and then you actually find a parking space and you get inside the mall and every store is packed with bat-shit-crazy people. They’re cutting each other off and grabbing things out of each other’s hands and pushing and shoving? You’re standing there watching this with your ears ringing from the noise, knowing you’re not gonna find anything on your list, and if you do find anything, they’re not gonna have it in the size you want, and if they do somehow have it in the size you want, there’s no fucking way you’re going to get a salesperson to actually ring it up before Christmas is over?”

  “This is a seriously fucked-up analogy,” she opined.

  “Yup,” he said. “Welcome to the glory of bureaucracy that is the Veterans Administration.”

  “So,” she said, “the VA is a seriously fucked-up analogy for the real world?”

  He had to stop and think about that. “God, I hope not, but from what I’ve seen of the world, it might be. Afghanistan, anyway. Iraq, maybe. But definitely Afghanistan.”

  “Honey,” she said, suddenly quiet and serious, “I don’t know what any of those places are like, but I don’t want to believe they’re the real world. I really don’t.”

  “Arly, baby,” he said quietly, “sometimes my world is Fresno-shaped, but most of the time now it’s Afghanistan-shaped. I don’t know why I gotta be over there, fighting people who have nothing to do with me, but maybe it’s so your world gets to stay Fresno-shaped. Or, anyway, that’s what I been told.” He leaned his elbows on the table, reached out to tuck a strand of her hair behind her ear. “That would make it okay, I think.”

  The way she looked back at him, that made him feel twenty feet tall.

  He pulls her up to kiss her, his rough, broad hands burying themselves in the heavy silk of her hair. The way she moans into his mouth and leans her body into his chest makes him flush hot. He catches her wrists and pushes her down toward his cock, his heart pounding, hoping she’s okay with it, thinking she is....

  She spreads her hands across his thighs and teases him with her lips and her tongue. She’s growling now, deep in her throat, and she looks up at him, her eyes half-lidded again.

  She twists her head back and forth, working her tongue around and over the head of his cock. Her eyes fall closed, her fingertips hold him gently, and he reaches over and turns on the bedside lamp so the light sparkles on her ruby red nails.

  He can only stand it for a moment or two more before he has to pull her up or orgasm right then and there. He wants to be inside her now, wants her so bad he can hardly think for the blood pounding through his brain.

  She takes his hands and lies back on the bed, her face wreathed in secret smiles, pulling him down on top of her. She strokes down his ribs as he positions himself. She closes her eyes and her head falls back. She hisses as slowly, slowly, he pushes into the soft warmth she offers him, going as deep as he can.

  The feeling is so intense he groans and has to pause, his forehead falling to hers. Her hands rise to his face and her lips press against his cheeks. She strokes his hair as she whispers soft, sweet things he only barely hears.

  He begins to move in her and they both cry out every time he pushes deep. His whole body tightens.

  Her fingers stroking his face, his shoulders, his chest. She whispers love at him: “You’re home, baby, come on home....”

  Home, he thinks as he makes love to her, as he bends his head to suck on her huge, plump nipples, his cock stroking in and out of her glorious body.

  Home.

  The waitress came back and asked them if they wanted dessert. Arly looked through the menu.

  Oso watched her ooh and aah, and was charmed.


  She held out her arm to him. “Check, will you? I’m not sure what I feel like.”

  Bemused, it took him a moment to guess her meaning. Check what I feel like.... What I FEEL like? Oh.

  He squeezed up and down her arm a few times, his big hand wrapping easily around her forearm. “Hmm. Not sure what you feel like. Soft and sweet?” he said finally.

  She burst out laughing. “Wow, you’re no help.”

  “Allow me,” he said in his best gentleman voice.

  The waitress stared down at them. He wondered how often she had to stand there and watch idiots fall in love. Probably too often, from the look on her face.

  “Triple banana split,” he told her, “extra fudge and strawberry sauce, and leave the can of whipped cream.”

  The woman smiled tiredly. “I’ll bring you each a bib.”

  “And extra cherries,” he called after her.

  She really did bring two bibs and they really did wear them.

  They ate the ice cream, fighting with their spoons like swords over the last bit of banana and chocolate. The entire restaurant stared when Arly shot her arms up in the air, crowing with delight as she captured and downed it before he could wrestle it away from her.

  Oso high-fived her. “You play to win.”

  “No quarter asked or given.” She smiled smugly. Then she said, “You thought I was kidding when I said I was too much of everything. Most guys freak when I don’t let them win.”

  There was something sad about that image, Arly being loud and strong and, well...just being Arly, and then he imagined her wilting under some insecure asshole’s disapproval.

  It made his fists itch.