Page 8 of Indirect Attack
I didn’t know if it was the finality of the moment, our emotions, or something else, but the pleasure was almost more than I could take. But I didn’t want it to end so soon, and I had to bite my cheek and slow down my strokes to keep from finishing right then and there.
But Jasmine didn’t seem to want to slow down. Her hips rose to meet mine at the top of each plunge, showing a wildness I’d never seen in her before. It was as though she wanted to take every ounce of me in as far as possible, as though that would keep me with her, these short minutes of passion lasting only a moment and forever simultaneously.
When she wrapped her legs around my hips, I plunged deeper than I’d thought possible. Pleasure burst like dots in front of my eyes. Beneath me, Jasmine writhed, her fingers leaving my back to curl in the dark, wild halo of her hair.
It only took a few more pounding strokes before Jasmine’s orgasm burst as a scream from her throat. The sight of her back arched, her fingers grasping and clawing at the quilt, her eyes scrunched tightly shut, was like a match to dynamite. I finished with a blinding explosion of pleasure that wrenched a guttural cry from me.
It took many minutes before either of us could talk again, before we felt we could breathe again. But even when our heartbeats had slowed, neither of us said a word, trying to hold back the tide of time that would take me away.
And that might not ever let me return.
Chapter 4
Jasmine
Three Years Ago
THE WORDS ON THE COMPUTERscreen swam in front of my eyes, and the type in the book lying open off the side wasn’t any better. Pinching the bridge of my nose between two fingers, I scrunched my eyes closed against the throbbing pain at my temple, hoping in vain that the moment’s rest would allow me to keep working. But when I looked up again, it hadn’t helped.
I groaned and buried my head in my arms—I wasn’t sure I would survive to get my master’s degree. The urge was strong to give up for the night and go to sleep or at least take a walk. But my deadline was approaching way too fast, and my advisor had made it clear that I would not be given any more extensions.
The sounds of a video game resonated from the living room of my apartment, the vibrations of the explosions skittering across the soles of my feet. Yells issued through the walls, and I lifted my head just enough to glare at the closed door.
Or through the closed door.
If it weren’t for the constant noise, I would have barely noticed my boyfriend, Greg, in the apartment. But he’d come over here, dragging his videogame console, and he’d been in the living room since. He was playing some war game with hisbuddies, full of explosions and gunfire and shouting, the guys shouting orders to each other. He hadn’t even had the decency to bring his headphones to mute the noise, even though he knew I would be working on my thesis.
He knew because we were in the same archaeology program. I had a massive amount of work on my plate, from my thesis to student teaching to applying for research grants and getting ready for my Ph.D. program. But Greg somehow skated by doing barely anything. And yet, he was still the favorite of the advisors and professors, something else to add to my list of dislikes about him.
I knew you weren’t supposed to have a dislike list about a boyfriend, but I knew our time together was ending. I’d just been too busy to do anything about it. Our relationship hadn’t been serious to begin with—we’d gone out on dates, gone to parties, attended lectures—but it had been more for light fun than anything that would stretch into the future. And both of us knew it.
But Greg was also steady. Maybe a bit boring with a long list of favorites from which he rarely deviated, but I could rely on him to be there. I didn’t have to worry about him coming home and going off again a few days later. I didn’t have to worry about sporadic texts, emails, or interminable waits for a message telling me he was okay.
The closest thing to combat Greg ever got was the one time he’d confronted one of the professors about his research—she’d been correct, and he’d been wrong, by the way—and that stupid videogame.
I shifted my head again so my chin rested on my wrist, my gaze drifting to the framed photos on the corner of my desk: my parents and my grandmother looking tanned and happy on a Mediterranean cruise. The four of us at Disney World when I was ten. The family dog smiling floppily at the camera. Myundergraduate graduation with my friends, complete with mymagna cum laudestole bright around my shoulders along with a picture of me still in my robes hugging Ben, who had worn his dress uniform to the ceremony. We both had enormous smiles on our faces.
All the noise from the violent video game—was that something Ben saw daily? I hadn’t seen him much over the past years, but enough to notice the change in him. It was subtle but there. He’d always been a solemn kid, too lost in his head or his art or his books to notice what was going on, but he’d grown more serious. It had become harder to pull one of his brilliant but rare smiles from him, something I’d always managed to do easily enough. Communication with him was more clipped, and he kept what was going on closer to the vest.
I’d run into his brothers here and there on visits home. They hadn’t shared much, just that he was okay, but I’d seen the looks in their eyes that had told me everything their words hadn’t.
Ben had seen things, things I couldn’t imagine. And it wasn’t just a video game where the characters respawned when you turned the game back on. It was real life and real death, and my sweet, sensitive, artistic Ben had lived through it.
Even now, I wondered why he hadn’t fought harder to attend art school as he’d wanted. I remembered that blow-up between him and his father—he’d spent almost three days over at my house, sleeping in our guestroom. But in the end, the then-soon-to-be major general had won out, and Ben had enlisted almost as soon as we graduated.
Growing up, I had been able to see, or Ben had shown me, what was inside of the tough exterior his father had drilled onto him. I’d seen the art that flowed from his long-fingered hands, the way he’d been able to capture light, movement, and emotion in a way I couldn’t even see with my own eyes. I’d witnessed the sensitivity he tried so hard to hide, the one that had himstopping on the side of the road to help the injured dog, or the large bill it had taken him weeks to earn to help a mother asking for money outside of a grocery store with her child. I hadn’t failed to notice how his eyes had filled and shimmered as he’d left her there, unable to offer more help, until he’d mastered the emotion enough to pretend nothing had happened.
I’d even seen him care for his mother those times when they weren’t sure the then-colonel would make it home. All the boys had cared for her, of course, in their gruff way. But Ben had been the only one who seemed to understand her pain and what she needed from him.
We’d had our first and only argument over his joining the Marines—a shouting match over whether he should go to art school and forget the Marines, along with whatever else his father wanted. Art school would have been a much better fit for that sweet kid, the kid I’d fallen in love with.
The kid I was still in love with.
Ben was the reason Greg and I had always been temporary, never anything more. I’d tried, really tried, to find someone to take Ben’s place, but I’d never succeeded. Deep down, I knew I was still in love with him, and I probably always would be.
Never mind that Ben was never home, or every time I brought the subject of us up, he gently rebuffed me. Never mind how badly I wanted to leave him and the constant tearing of my heart behind. Never mind that I wasn’t sure he would ever come around the way I wanted him to. Never mind we hadn’t actually seen each other in three years, resorting to texts, emails, and the occasional digital face-to-face chat. Never mind that he broke my heart every time he left again, leaving me to pick up the pieces, and never mind that I hated the fact that I couldn’t root him out of my heart.
I knew it was ridiculous to hang on to something that was barely a hope, but my heart hadn’t been able to let go of Ben yet.
