CHAPTER22
- DAX -
I wake up to the sound of my phone. I reach for it, half expecting aGreen Toyotatext. With the rotation shifting tomorrow, it wouldn’t be surprising for them to be checking their systems.
But instead, I see a text from Mason. It’s not like him to text me this early, but he must have forgotten that I can’t silence my phone at night.
“You still stateside?” he asks. I frown, setting my phone back down. I don’t want to reply right now.
Mason’s stationed at the Pentagon. If he’s waking me up to see if I’m still stateside, that tells me I probablywon’tbe stateside much longer.
Dammit.
I usually don’t mind getting back in the game when rotation shifts in that direction. Hell, it’s what I train for. But this time, I feel resentment trickling through my veins.
I glance at the time and then the date on my watch, as though I need to remind myself that it’s the end of August. As if there’s this little part of me that’s hoping I just screwed up my days and I’ve still got a week or two more on my lease—long enough that I might be able to convince her to push back the expire date on us.
I wanted to do more with her this weekend than we’ve been able to.
I wanted to take her out to dinner. To watch a sunset together. I wanted to maybe even see if we could find a place nearby that would take us parasailing, because I love the smile she has in that photo on her wall, and I want to put the same smile on her face again. Most of these weekends we’ve shared, she’s been working, leaving too many things on my to-do list. I want to check some of them off now, while we can.
But every time I’ve brought up the topic of our dwindling time together this weekend, she shuts down the conversation.
I look over at her and watch her eyelids flutter open briefly, then shut again as though she’s rethinking the idea of facing the day. Then they open once more, resolute.
I grimace. “Did my phone wake you?”
“Is that what it was? I wrote it into my dream.”
I smile, because I do the same thing. “What was it in your dream?”
“Smoke alarm. And I couldn’t move. I was trying to move, but couldn’t.”
I cringe. The powerless dream. I hate that one. “I’ve had that kind of dream. It’s the worst. Second only to the one where I’m naked in elementary school.”
She giggles, turning on the lamp on the nightstand. “If you left out the elementary school part of that, I’d be signing up to join you in that dream.”
She slides her naked body on top of me and kisses me.
“Let’s skip the run this morning,” I tell her when our lips part.
“Oh really? Just how do you plan on tempting me to stay in bed?”
“Let me show you.”
She grins slyly. “Oh no. Letmeshowyou.”
She drives this time, reaching over to the nightstand for a condom and sliding it onto me. Her fingers feel so good on me, and when she grips me, the pressure of her palm makes me harden even more under her touch.
Her knees are at either side of me, and when she slides down my shaft, the sight of her on me like this nearly spells my undoing.
God, she looks amazing. I reach up and toy with her small, firm breasts, loving the way her nipples harden to tiny nubs. I love the heat of her, the feel of her, the sight of her as she moves up and down the length of me. Pausing to revel in the pressure I offer her, I feel her grind against me when I’m at my deepest, and it doesn’t take long before I sense the shift in her. We’ve been together just long enough that I can tell when the swell of her orgasm is approaching. I feel it in the way her channel tightens, and I see it in the way her eyes flicker shut.
She presses against me again.
“That’s it, baby.” My words seem to encourage her. I love how her body responds when I talk to her during sex. It’s like she’s enjoying my voice, reminding her just who she’s fucking right now.
But dammit. Nothing about this feels like a fuck.