“You going to drive me home, or am I going to have to hoof it?” We’d been beating around that bush, and I figured I should just come out and ask.

“I actually live near here.” She gestured to the west of us but I didn’t care where she lived, only that I was hearing her right. “Would you like some coffee?”

Coffee. Shit yeah, I did. “Ordinarily I don’t go home for coffee after a night at the bar but yeah, with you, I’d like that.”

“I’ve never had anyone home for coffee except, well, Will.”

Will, her dead husband and fallen soldier. I pushed that image out of my mind. She was here with me and I still remembered the feeling of her shuddering in my arms. This time I wanted the trembling to happen when I was inside of her. I wanted to feel the shake of her body when I licked her pussy and the clench of her tight channel when I thrust into her. No one else would be there but her and me. “Lead the way,” I said. “I’m thirsty.”

She flushed slightly, waved to her friends and boldly took my hand, leading me down the dark alley with piss poor lighting behind the bar. I took a mental note to mention to Adam tomorrow that his old man needed better, safer lighting for the staff. Sam hit her key fob and the lights to an expensive European SUV blinked on and off.

"Nice wheels,” I said. "You take this off-roading?” This vehicle was more my style than Bo’s tiny sports car would ever be.

“Never," she said. "It was my mom's. I got it when I graduated from high school. It's actually pretty old."

"Still nice."

We chitchatted about cars and she knew surprisingly quite a bit about her own vehicle.

“I can even change my own tires,” she said proudly after I’d teased her about knowing how much horsepower her Rover had.

“That’s impossible,” I mocked. “No girl knows how to do that.”

“Whatever,” she flicked her palm toward me. “My dad taught me because…” She trailed off.

“Because?”

“I’ve been alone for a long time.”

The specter of why she’d been alone formed between us but if she was going to ignore it, then I was too, because I wanted this girl. We’d started something in that hallway and I was too stubborn to give up on whatever she had in mind for me. Plus, I had stuff to show her too. I’d made her those promises and I always, always delivered on my promises.

The trip to Sam’s place took only a few minutes. She wasn’t kidding when she said she lived close. It was one of those old brick factory buildings revitalized into lofts. The lighting here was shit too. I shook my head. Placing my hand at the small of her back, I watched the shadows so she didn’t have to. She might be able to change her tire and recite the horsepower on her Rover, but she didn’t watch out for herself like she should.

“Have you lived here long?” I asked as I followed her up the stairs to the second floor of the building.

“Three years,” she replied. “It’s small but mine.”

I may have preferred taller girls, but there was no denying the shapeliness of Sam’s ass as it moved underneath the cotton of her shorts. I remembered what it felt like in my palm—firm but pliable. I clenched my fingers unconsciously at the memory. I couldn’t wait to take a bite out of it. The upside down heart shape was practically taunting me.

Surreptitiously, I reached inside my own shorts and made a small adjustment so my burgeoning wood wouldn’t scare her or cause me unnecessary pain.

“Here we are,” she murmured, throwing open the door to her apartment. I took a quick look around. There was a lamp lit on the far side of the room and a kitchen to my immediate left. I noted the table and the sofa as the only real furniture in the room. Her bedroom was either somewhere else or she slept on the sofa. “Do you, um, want coffee? I mean a real cup?”

I suppressed a smile at her artlessness. This girl was the farthest thing from a cheating, dishonest base wife. The same protective instincts I’d experienced before when she seemed under verbal assault by the blonde came roaring back. Reaching out, I tucked a few of the loose strands of honey blonde hair behind her ear. “No, what’s right in front of me is more than enough.” I rubbed the pad of my thumb across her lush lower lip.

She closed her eyes and raised her face to mine, and I took the invitation that she offered. Lifting her against me so I wouldn’t have to stoop down, I molded her body against mine. My first kisses were light, to make sure she had time to change her mind, but when she licked her little tongue along my lips, my fire was lit. I’d had aged whisky with my dad that didn’t taste as rich or as heady as she did. When her mouth closed over my tongue and sucked, my eyes rolled back into my head. There were other hot, wet areas of her body, and I ached to put my fingers there, and then my tongue, and then finally my rock hard dick.

“Ahhh,” I moaned against her lips. She released my tongue but fixed her mouth against mine again. The flicks of her tongue against mine had me wondering what that fluttering motion would feel like against my cock. All the blood pooled in my waist as I envisioned her on her knees between my thighs, repeating those same butterfly touches and the same hard suck.

This time when I pulled up her shirt, I grabbed both the T-shirt and her tank underneath. She moaned when my hand made contact with her breast. It wasn’t very big, but the nipple felt like the size of an eraser and saliva pooled in my mouth as I imagined sucking it into my mouth. I shoved up the material and pulled down on her bra in quick jerky movements until I had her plump little breast in my hand. Kneading it, I heard her moan and felt her clutch at my head. I got the hint. Pulling away from her mouth, I lifted her higher with one hand until I could place my mouth around her breast. Through her shorts, I swear I felt the wetness of her arousal. I sucked and she moaned harder, her legs nearly squeezing the breath out of me.

The sofa, I thought, I need to get to the sofa. I stumbled forward, my mouth still latched onto her breast, rolling her stiff nub around my tongue and enjoying the trembling that my ministrations were causing. Holding her, I used the mental map I’d created when I first walked in. The sofa was at ten o’clock. I headed to my left and then cursed when I tripped on something.

“Hold on, baby,” I said, letting her breast fall out of my mouth. “Shit, what was that?” I looked down and saw a pair of worn out combat boots and the shadow of her dead husband rose up and killed my arousal. My hand slid out from underneath her ass, and I slowly released her down to the ground. She looked up at me in confusion, clutching me, and I felt the bite of her wedding ring. This wasn’t going to work.

“I’m sorry.” I looked around the room and catalogued more than just the furniture now. There was an assault pack in the corner and on the wall hung a weird flag with just stripes and a blank space where the blue field of stars should appear. The combat boots I’d tripped over looked obscene. The whole place felt like there was someone other than Sam living here.

“What’s wrong?” She looked and sounded upset, the kind of upset you got when you were turned on and then didn’t get to come. It was a bad kind of upset, the worst kind.

I ran my hand over my short hair and searched for the right words to explain it all to her. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t find the words for something even I didn’t understand. I wasn’t always a jealous guy, but I was feeling pretty jealous now—which was sick in its own way because who’s jealous of a dead guy? If I told this girl that I felt like her husband was still here then she’d think I was loony.

At my hesitation, Sam slumped back away from me, wiping the back of her hand across her mouth. She released a thready breath and I cursed myself silently for doing this to her. A part of me wanted to just place her on the sofa and say to hell with it but I wasn’t even sure I’d be able to get it up right now.

“I’m sorry,” I repeated lamely. “I’ll just call a taxi.”

“No.” She turned to me. “No. I’ll drive you home.” Her head tilted up in a recognizable expression of pride. Okay then. I’d shit on this whole experience for her and if she wanted to drive me back to Adam’s place then I’d suck it up and let her do it.


Samantha

"WHAT BRANCH WAS YOUR HUSBAND in? Adam didn't say." Gray asked, trying to start up a conversation, I guess. I was feeling embarrassed and bit petulant but a twenty-minute ride from downtown to The Woodlands in uncomfortable silence wasn’t a great idea either.

There was no reason not to talk about Will. After all, I was going home alone tonight like I had so many nights before. "Army."

"Soldier, huh? Where did he serve?"

"Afghanistan. Right at the end. You?"

"Same. What was his platoon? Maybe I knew him."

I told him but he just shrugged.

"Yeah, I didn't serve with a lot of airborne. I was a boots-on-the-ground kind of guy. Not that I don't enjoy jumping out of a plane."

"I've never seen the appeal," I admitted. Will loved it but Will was always the adventurous half of our pairing. He said I kept him grounded and I’d always been kind of proud of my plodding, somewhat boring ways. What a silly thing to be proud of. "Will wanted to be a pararescueman—a PJ. He said that there was nothing greater than falling out of the sky."

“PJs are awesome. Did he ever take you jumping?"

The unease I felt talking about Will had faded. It was kind of interesting talking to someone about the military who knew about it, knew the sorts of things Will was seeking when he was enlisted.

"No. We'd talked about it but then, you know...” I shook my head. Dragging up Will’s death was just not a place I wanted to go. “How long are you here for?”

He didn’t answer right away, maybe contemplating how messed up I was with my condo full of Will’s old things, the ring still on my finger, and me pawing at his clothes. I wanted to tell him that I wasn’t screwed up at all but that he’d surprised me. Or my feelings surprised me.

“Forty-five days,” he finally said, giving me no insight into what he was thinking.

“Forty-five days?” I gaped at him. “So many weeks off! The only time I got to see Will for any extended period of time was between Basic and jump school. Even before he went to paratrooper training in Alaska I didn't get to see him that long.”

Gray shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “I haven’t signed my re-enlistment papers. My contract is up in six months.”

The military had you sign contracts. I knew the first contract was usually for four years of active duty and then Will had said that they tried to lure you into signing new contracts with promises of a better job or more money or both. Gray looked to be in his mid-twenties, although he could be younger. Deployment in a war zone aged you, Will had told me. Young recruits would go over and return months later looking like they were ten years older “How long have you been in?”

“Eight years.”

“And you’re thinking of separating?”

I felt, rather than saw, him nod. He was reluctant to share his dilemma and why not? I was a stranger so I just drove on until we reached Adam’s house. I stopped the Land Rover at the top of the hill but Gray made no move to get out.

“I can’t decide. I think they gave me a meritorious promotion to staff sergeant because they want me to stay in. I don’t deserve it.” He was frustrated, not quite pulling all of his thoughts together coherently. “There’s a lot more responsibility now. I’ve got to pay attention to the regs better. My dad, he says there are better things out there for me…” He trailed off, his indecision making him more attractive to me than all his alpha male posturing could have.

“When Will died, I dropped out of college, and I’ve never gone back. The last two years…I spent the time bartending, just marking each day as it went by.” I watched him as he stared out the window, the air conditioning in the Rover making the only noise for a while.

“I took a community college course last fall when I got back from Afghanistan,” he said finally, still looking out the window. He’d cupped the back of his head with one hand, rubbing the back of his neck to ease whatever tension had built up. “Other guys who’d gotten out said that community college was better because the students were older, but there’s still such a big difference between me and the others. When I was running raids, they were watching epic battles between wizards and monsters. I felt disconnected. When I finished that course I didn’t go back. I’m not sure college is for me. Both my dad and my grandfather were career Marines. I joined right out of high school. Every time I encounter civilians, it's like we speak a different language. I get tired of explaining to everyone that not every military guy is a soldier," Gray grumbled.