Page 53 of The Captain
“Look at me,” he said.
I did. He watched me fall apart and didn’t flinch. I came hard, thighs shaking, water pounding my shoulder, one foot skidding on tile until he caught my heel and planted it on his chest.
“Again,” he said, and moved faster. I hit him with the heel of my hand because it was too much. He grinned up into the steam and let me breathe.
He stood in one push, crowding me back to the wall. He lifted my thigh high against his hip and slid into me on a long, perfect stroke that knocked a guttural sound out of me. He was thick and hot and his breath went ragged against my cheek.
“I’ve got you,” he said into my ear. “All the way.”
He fucked me against the tile with a rhythm that made thought a luxury. Short, deep thrusts. Then longer, slower, holding me full until I squirmed and then doing it again. His hand found my throat, light, thumb under my jaw, not choking, only reminding me whose breath this was. Mine. His. Ours. A circuit.
“Say it,” he rasped. “Say my name right.”
“Jacob,” I panted, then shifted, got my mouth around the soft French. “Mon Jacob.”
He swore and drove harder. The water sang on tile. He turned me without breaking, spun me so my palms flattened to the glass. He caught my wrists and pinned them high, his chest to my back, his cock hitting me where I came apart fastest. He bit my shoulder, not sweet. Possessive and protective, the way he’d been at the bar when Karl thought he was a problem I couldn’t handle.
“Mine,” he said into my wet skin.
“Tonight,” I said, meeting him. “Yes.”
He pulled out and turned me again, lifted me like I weighed less than his guilt, and set me on the shower’s built-in bench, water still raining down. He hooked my heel over his shoulder, opened me wide, and shoved back inside. Filthy, perfect angle. I clawed at his shoulders and he took it like he liked the sting. My body clamped around him like it had been built for this exact geometry and forgot any other.
“Come,” he ordered, thumb grinding my clit. “Camille. Now.” He said my name exactly right, and the sound of it in his mouth shoved me straight over the edge.
I broke. The orgasm ripped through me, hot and messy, and I couldn’t hold on to anything but him. He followed, face buried in my neck, voice rough, hips stuttering as he emptied into me. He stayed deep and breathed like a man who had finally decided to live. My legs twitched. My heart found a new rhythm and decided to keep it.
The water ran and neither of us cared that the hot was almost gone. He finally pulled out slow and kissed my mouth like he was putting something back.
We finished the shower like humans, which felt like a victory. He washed my hair with his big, careful hands. I soaped the line of the dog tag chain and watched water bead on his chest hair. He made a small sound when I ran my palm down his stomach. It made me feel powerful and soft at once. Feminine.
We tumbled to the bed damp and clean and arranged ourselves into a knot that made sense: my cheek on his chest, his hand in my hair, our legs a tangle of heat. The fan hummed. The porch swing creaked outside like it had opinions. The room smelled like soap and sex and my lemon cleaner trying to keep up.
He stroked my back slow, down and up, a simple repetitive kindness. It undid the last of my armor.
“I hate that it hurts them,” I said, voice already breaking. “It’s a stupid sentence. It’s true. I hate that it hurts them and I can’t stop it. I hate that I can keep one alive and more wash up because something in the water doesn’t care that I didn’t sleep and I counted breaths and told little kids not to cry.”
He went very still under me, the kind of still a man learns when he knows his weight counts. He didn’t talk. He let the silence get big enough for me to put words into it without feeling like they’d drown.
“I know the game,” I said. Tears slipped into the hollow above his collarbone and I let them. “We don’t get to win. We get to hold the line. We get to saynot todayto the ocean and mean it for as long as our hands don’t slip. I tell rookies that and they nod and they get brave and I get brave with them and then a mother blinks at me from the swash and I hear myself apologizing to a species that owes me nothing and I?—”
I swallowed and it hurt. “I’m so tired of apologizing.”
He exhaled and it felt like a vow. “Then stop apologizing,” he said quietly. “Let me be the one who kicks the door. Let me be the noise so you can be the hands. I’ll stand where you point. I’ll carry what you can’t. I’ll put my body between you and whatever tries to make you smaller.”
I laughed, wet and wrecked. “Says the guy who stepped between me and Karl like I was already yours.”
“I was protecting you,” he said, unapologetic.
“I liked it,” I admitted, heat curling low. “Maybe too much.”
“Good,” he murmured. “I’ll keep doing it. Because you are already mine.”
“I know.” That was the part that made it dangerous. “Tomorrow the Navy brings me paper. After that we make the right people bleed.”
He kissed my hair. “Good. I know a lot about making the right people bleed.”
I turned my face into his chest and let myself cry a little more. Not the hysterical kind. The clean kind. Tears ran into his skin and he didn’t flinch. He just kept stroking my back, slow, steady, like he was matching my breath on purpose.
