Chapter Three
It took thirteen days for her to write back.
Granted, considering the fact that he was halfway around the word in the middle of a war zone and the mail was running through miles and miles of military red tape, thirteen days wasn’t a hell of a lot of time, but it was far more than Roux was willing to sacrifice waiting for Abby to reply.
So, when the soldier approached through the midday dust, pink envelope in his filthy hand, Roux didn’t have much patience.
“Mail, Sarge,” the kid said, waving Roux’s salvation in the air as though it meant nothing.
Roux snatched it away with a growl and turned on his heel, every muscle in his body aching to run—straight to his bunk where he could spend some time with her. With his Abby. But he held it together. He was a fucking commanding officer. He led men into battle, and now he was turning into a teenage boy, desperate for a girl’s attention. But damn it, he was desperate. He wanted her. However he could get her.
There was no one in the operations tent, thank God. Roux sat at his desk, willing himself to go slow as he slid a finger beneath the flap of the pink envelope. As he peeled it open, it occurred to him that she’d licked it closed. He closed his eyes at the thought—Jesus, he knew nothing about this woman, and the mere thought of her tongue had him hard as a rock.
He had to pull it together.
Except then the letter was in his hands, and he was keenly aware of the fact that she was the last person to touch it. That over thousands of miles, this piece of paper was theirs alone. Something only they had touched.
A secret.
Dear Roux,
What did your grandmother call you when you weren’t in trouble? Theo? Teddy? I don’t imagine you’re a Teddy, but I could be wrong. I like Roux, honestly, especially now that you tell me no one there calls you that. It makes me feel like we have a secret.
As for secrets—I told you, I don’t really have any great ones. Truth be told, I don’t have many not-so-great ones. I’m afraid I’m relentlessly uninteresting. Here’s one: I hung up on my sister to read your letter. It’s been a long time since I’ve had something so exciting arrive in the mail. Or any other way, honestly. So, yeah. She’s probably furious.
He was jealous of her sister—that wasn’t fair, he knew, but he didn’t care. He wanted her attention. All of it. Her sister could wait.
Here’s another secret: it was worth it.
He rubbed one hand over his combat beard, triumph rushing through him, fast and furious. His sweet girl was flirting with him, right there in pretty, bold words on pretty, pink paper. “Damn right it was worth it, béb,” he whispered. “I’ll make it worth it every time.”
You asked me about Darcy and Bennet and so I’ll tell you about them. They’re both rescues—Darcy is a chocolate lab found on the side of the road when he was a puppy. I adopted him a year later. For some reason no one wanted him—no one could see what an awesome, loyal, wonderful boy he was. But he’s the best…sweet and funny and totally devoted. He’s actually sleeping next to me while I write to you.
First the sister, and now Roux was jealous of the damn dog. He wanted to be totally devoted to Abby. He wanted to be sleeping next to her.
He wanted her to rescue him.
As for Bennet, she’s my good luck charm. Someone dropped her at my office the morning after Halloween last year. She’d been badly burned by some asshole (sorry for the language, but it’s apt) who thought it would be funny to torture a black cat for kicks. I wasn’t about to let her go after that, so she came to live with Darcy and me. It took her a while to get used to us—especially Darcy—but now she loves us. Possibly under duress. Right now, she’s sitting on a bookshelf, waiting for me to go to bed so she can steal the covers.
And like that, Abby was in bed. But not with the cat and the dog for company. Not with covers for warmth. With him. He’d be all the warmth she needed. His cock was instantly hard and aching, straining for her. For years, jerking off had been a perfunctory process—basic biology. He was a man, and he had needs. But there, behind that desk in the fucking desert, he didn’t just have needs. He had a need. Singular. For Abby.
Without thinking, he reached down to adjust himself, to relieve some of the pressure. That was all he intended to do.
And then he was looking at that pretty paper, and that pretty handwriting and thinking about all the ways he wanted to keep her company in that bed she’d written about, and his fly was open and he was running his hand along his shaft and thinking of her. Always her. Even here, where he had no business thinking about her. Where he had no business imagining her soft mouth or her soft tits or what it would feel like to sink into her soft pussy.
He groaned as he imagined her. It didn’t matter that he didn’t know what she looked like. She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever encountered. He lifted the letter to his nose, inhaling, certain that he could smell her there, tempting and fresh, like a secret.
He wasn’t going to last.
He pumped his cock once, twice, and on the third time he came, her name a whisper on his lips as his release flooded over his hand, marking his fingers even as he wished he was marking her.
Fuck.
What was she doing to him? He was in uniform, in public, jerking off in the middle of the day. Because of this woman who had instantly consumed him.
He hadn’t even finished her letter before doing it.
He cleaned himself up quickly. Later he would try to convince himself that it was because he’d been worried someone might come in and see. Or because it was about the worst possible thing he could have done while in uniform, on duty. But none of that was true.
He’d done it quickly because he’d wanted to get back to her letter.
To her.
His Abby, sweet as fresh cream.
He wanted to drink her up.
It’s funny—if you’d asked me a month ago, I would have said it would feel strange writing to someone halfway around the world who I’d never met…but it doesn’t. It feels pretty wonderful to tell you about me and to learn about you—however little. Is that strange, considering we’ve only exchanged two letters? I have so many questions:
Tell me what makes coffee “the way it’s meant to be”? And what makes “real bayou gumbo”? And tell me other things, too—I know you have a grandmother, but what about the rest of your family? How’d you join the military? What do you do out there wherever you are when you aren’t working? Batman or Superman? Dogs or cats? (That last one is a trick question, obviously.)
I’m going to try to be as breezy as you were when you told me you were in the Special Forces, and tell you, simply, that you have to take care of yourself. I’ve seen the movies and read the books about Green Berets, and I need you to be careful. We’re something to each other now, remember? Maybe you need a good luck charm.
Is this the part where I call you cher?
Until soon.
Always,
Abby
P.S. I told you a secret. Your turn.
He reached for a piece of paper instantly. Willing to forgo everything until he’d replied to her. Without thinking, he wrote the first thing that came. The truth.
I can’t remember the last time I dreamed—sleep here is too hard to come by. Too short. Too uncomfortable. But last night, I dreamed of you. Don’t ask me how that’s even possible—I don’t know what you look like, how you sound, how you feel—but there you were. Fucking perfect, like a spring day. I couldn’t see you. Or hear you. But I felt you, Abby. In my arms. Against my skin. More.
Roux paused, thinking about how fast she’d run if he told her the rest of it—that he’d woken from the dream, the feel of her silken skin somehow still on his fingers, hard as steel, hot as hell, mid-orgasm, ropes of come lashing his bare stomach, with nothing but the thought of her in his head.
“Fuck,” he whispered to the empty tent. What was she doing to him? What was he doing to himself? He didn’t even know what she looked like. How could he want her so much? How could he be so desperate for her?
He set his hand down on the paper, the size of it nearly taking up the whole page, and with a single, smooth motion, crumpled the whole thing in his grasp. Threw it aside.
Started again. Pretending that he wasn’t hot and hard with need, and desperate to return to his dreams. To return to her.