Afraid to Fly (Anchor Point #2)(15)

"You and me both." I leaned in and kissed under his jaw. "I hope you're not done yet."

He laughed. "Done? We're not even naked yet."

"Hmm, you're right. We should do something about that."

"Yes, we should." Still out of breath, he unbuckled my belt. I tugged his shirt free and started to push it up and off, but as I did, my finger snagged briefly on one of the wires he had on that box he always carried.

"Shit." I froze. "Am I- Did I-"

"It's fine. It's fine." He peeled his shirt the rest of the way off, then disconnected the wires from the pads, and put the box and wires in his pocket. "There. Now it's out of the way."

"But is-"

He cut me off with a deep, desperate kiss that could only mean stopping was absolutely out of the question, so I took his word for it and wrapped my arms around him. Jesus-his skin was hot under my hands, and his body heat radiated through my shirt.

I broke the kiss with a breathless "Need to get this off."

Travis didn't miss a beat. Between us, we pulled off my T-shirt, and then we were skin to skin all the way down to my belt and the still-clothed bulge beneath it. We'd get to that. For now, I just fucking loved touching him like this.



       
         
       
        

Abruptly, though, he pulled away and dropped his gaze. "Fuck."

"What? You okay?"

"Yeah, I . . ." He let his head fall back against the wall and swore again. "Listen, before we go too much further . . ."

My heart sped up. I swept my tongue across my lips. "Something wrong?"

"I should . . . now that you know I have that thing on . . ." He exhaled and looked in my eyes. "I'm kind of, uh, limited on what I can do."

"Oh." I froze. I was suddenly afraid to touch him. It was like he might break right there in my arms if I did anything wrong. "How limited?"

"Well, on a bad day, I can't do much of anything." He sighed. "And even on a good day, anal is pretty much a no go. Like . . . giving or receiving." He cringed, as if bracing for my response.

"Oh. Really?"

"Yeah. I mean, I love it. Loved it. But I . . ." His eyes lost focus for a second before meeting mine again. "You know how they say pilots are an inch shorter after an ejection, right?"

I nodded, suppressing a shudder.

"It's no exaggeration. And that kind of compression injury makes sex really . . . Basically it's not something I can do without aggravating my back. Even if I just lie there. I've tried a million different positions, but it's-"

"Okay." I shrugged. "You can still get head, right?"

He nodded. "You know I can. And I can give it too."

I grinned, relieved as hell that I could still touch him, and slid my hands up his chest. "Then we'll be fine." Before he could speak, I kissed him, and I held on to the back of his neck so he knew I wanted him to stay right there. He didn't protest-he wrapped his arms around me again and moaned softly as I slipped my tongue past his lips.

Aroused as I was, my heartbeat was coming down. When he'd said he needed to tell me something, I'd wound myself up, expecting him to drop some huge bomb. What, I couldn't imagine, but as nervous as he'd obviously been, it had seemed like something more earth-shattering. I was curious about when and why he'd had to eject, but that story could wait until he was ready to tell it.

No anal? Dude, keep kissing me like that, and I couldn't care less what we don't do.

In my bedroom, he lay on his back, and I carefully got on top of him. I kept my weight off him as much as I could, and holy shit, I was in heaven. Neither of us was in any hurry now. We were in private. We were in bed. We were naked. His body was hot against mine and his breath was cool on my skin, and we had hours and hours at our disposal to touch and explore each other if we wanted to. Before long, Travis was recovering from getting stroked off, his cock hardening against my thigh. 

In the back of my mind, I was constantly aware of what he'd said about being limited by his pain. With every move I made, I worried I'd hurt him, but if I'd given him so much as a twinge, he hadn't let on. He kissed me as hungrily as he had in his office, and I decided then and there I would never get tired of his hands running all over my body.

"You know what I've been wanting to do all day?" he asked breathlessly.

"Hmm?"

He squeezed my cock and whispered, "I want to suck you off so bad."

There wasn't an inch of skin that didn't suddenly have goose bumps on it. "What a coincidence-because I've been wanting to do the same to you."

"Then what are we waiting for?"

We shifted around so we were lying in opposite directions, and I closed my lips around his dick in the same moment he closed his around mine.

Holding back was one hell of a struggle. I wanted to come in his mouth, but . . . not yet. I loved this way too much. I loved the way he responded to everything I did-when he moaned, the vibration thrummed against my own cock, and when he shivered, his lips and hand tightened.

I lifted myself up on my elbow and used that hand to stroke him, freeing my other to roam all over his thigh, his hip, and his side. I couldn't get enough of touching him, and as if I wasn't already in heaven, he was still working his magic on my cock.

His hips rocked faster. A moment later, I realized mine had started doing the same without any conscious effort on my part. I didn't make any effort to stop them, either. Not when the result was my cock sliding between his lips like that. Jesus. I was fucking his mouth, he was fucking mine, and every time he moaned around my cock or his own cock seemed to get even thicker, I went a little further out of my mind.

Oh God. Oh God, yeah. How do you do that?

A shiver ran down my spine and curled my toes. I didn't bother holding back anymore. He was stroking faster and licking and sucking with the kind of intensity that meant only one thing-I want you to come.

Ask and ye shall receive.

And . . . fuck . . . yes.

My whole body shook with the force of my orgasm, and somehow-God only knew how-I kept pleasuring him, moaning as he pushed his dick deeper into my mouth, and then he was coming too, and his throaty groan made my climax even more intense, even longer, until we both stopped and sank onto the bed.

Holy shit.

As soon as my head had cleared enough that I could get up without passing out, I lifted myself up on rubbery limbs and shifted around again to join him. The second he could reach me, he grabbed the back of my neck and pulled me down to kiss him.

"In case it wasn't clear," I said in between kissing him and catching my breath, "I definitely don't regret coming out at the Navy Ball anymore."

"Good. Because I'm really glad you did."

And he kissed me again.



"Lieutenant Commander Fraser," Major Carter said frostily, "I need to see you in my office. Now."

That tone. She never took that tone with me.

Everyone was looking. No one spoke, and no one moved, but they watched. Under their glares, guilt swelled in my gut. Shame, even though I had no idea why.

Without a word, I got up and followed her, and the scrutiny of my peers made me feel smaller and smaller and guiltier and guiltier.

Major Carter stopped outside her office and waved me in. "I need you to explain a few things to me."

I hesitated, then stepped through the door.

In her office, the recon images weren't in a folder. They weren't even spread out on the desk. They were on the walls. Floor to ceiling. In HD. Every contorted, obliterated, charred body. Every lifeless stare. Every piece of burned flesh. They kept changing too, getting more graphic, more horrifying.



       
         
       
        

I tried to back out of the office, but got tangled up in something. Couldn't get away. Couldn't-

Sheets.

I opened my eyes.

Heart pounding, breath coming in too fast, way too shallow gasps, I kicked off the sweaty sheets and sat up in my bed.

My bed. In my apartment. In Anchor Point.

That office back at Nellis was a distant memory. The meeting with the major. The fallout. The cancerous secret I'd had to carry, that I couldn't even tell my wife or the chaplain or a goddamned therapist, even as my entire life crumbled at my feet.

It was all behind me. Three years and hundreds of miles behind me.

I was okay. As okay as I'd ever be, but that moment in the major's office . . . it was behind me.

Shivering, I grabbed the bottle of water beside my bed and took a swig to wet my parched mouth. I could have some variation of that nightmare every night for the rest of my life-in fact, I probably would-and I'd still wake up sweaty and shaking like it was the first time. Like it was the real thing. I wondered if the nausea would get better over time, or if I'd be seventy and still have to get up and hurl my guts out once or twice a week. Better than every single night, so that was promising.

And I wasn't out of the woods yet tonight. Still queasy, I got out of bed and stretched my arms as I walked back and forth across the floor. My body was still too jittery with too much nervous energy to even think about going back to sleep-walking it off helped sometimes. If I could walk off the jitteriness, that usually took care of the nausea too.