Camouflaged (Hiding From Love #0.5) (8 page)

I
staggered in and kicked a chunk of rock, sending it across the cave where it missed Alexis’s head by inches. “Fucking goddamn hell!” I shouted as I collapsed back against the rock wall, clutching my shoulder.

Alexis was motionless for a minute, her hand over her mouth in shock. “Oh my God, are you shot?” she asked, her voice trembling.

“It’s nothing,” I snarled. “But they disabled the truck. We’ll never get out of here now.”

“But, someone will come for us, right?” she asked in a tiny voice nothing like her own.

I gritted my teeth against the waves of pain that were rioting up and down my arm. “Yeah. I mean, that’s what’s supposed to happen anyway.”

“So it will. It will happen, and we have to stay safe until they can get here.” She walked to me, looking like someone talking to a wild animal they were trying to calm. “Can I see where you got hurt? We’ve got that first aid kit. Maybe I can do something to make it better?”

I felt a wave of exhaustion pour over me. Two days with not enough food and not enough water were starting to wear. I slid down the wall and drew my knees up to my chest. “Sure,” I muttered, closing my eyes as I leaned my head back against the wall again. “Whatever makes you happy.”

A few moments later, I felt Alexis’s hand smoothing through my hair. “All right, soldier boy,” she said quietly. “Let’s get this stuff off of you and see how bad it is.”

I laughed dryly. “See? I knew you’d use any excuse to get me undressed.”

She smiled and rolled her eyes at the same time. “Oh yeah, you caught me. Lean forward.”

She pulled the fabric over my shoulders gently as I winced. Then she took the uniform blouse off while I sat there, unable to do much but follow her instructions.

“Well, at least it’s not gushing all over.” She looked skeptically at my shoulder and the blood that had soaked the sleeve of my t-shirt.

“It grazed me. If it had lodged, I wouldn’t be able to move my arm at all.”

“We need to get that t-shirt off. Can you lift your arm?”

I started to raise my arm and winced at the pain. “I’d rather not,” I told her.

“That’s okay. I got it.”

She pulled out a pair of scissors from the first aid kit and very carefully cut up the sleeve and across the shoulder seam of the t-shirt. Then she clipped all the way down the side under my injured arm. When she was done, she crawled to my other side and pulled the whole t-shirt off.

When she came back around to the injury, I heard the hiss of her inhale as she looked at it. “Is it bad?” I asked, not because I really cared right then, but because I felt like I ought to.

“I doubt as far as gunshots go it’s too bad, but it looks like it hurts like hell.” She took antiseptic and gauze out of the kit and began soaking the cloth. “It’s like it made a tunnel down your shoulder and partway along your arm. It’s maybe six inches long? But even though it doesn’t look like it’s deep, I imagine infection is a risk. I need to clean it, Gabe, and that’s going to hurt like crazy.”

I nodded and clenched my jaw. “Just do it,” I responded. I closed my eyes, counted my breaths, and waited.

When the burn came, it was what I’d imagined being set on fire would feel like. It was so intense I saw sparks in front of my eyes and the muscles throughout my body clenched up involuntarily.

“Fucking hell!” I gasped as I struggled to stay still.

“I’m so sorry,” she told me over and over as she dabbed at the wound as quickly as she could.

“Are you done? Please tell me you’re fucking done,” I choked out.

She pressed down once more. “Yes, all done.”

I struggled to regulate my breath, and she sat quietly next to me for a moment, softly running her fingers up and down my arm. Soon, the burning and throbbing receded to a tolerable level and I became aware of her touch. It felt so good that the contrast with the pain was about to send my nervous system into overload.

“I want to get a bandage on it too, Gabe.”

“Okay. It can’t possibly hurt as bad as that did, so let’s get it over with.”

She took antibiotic cream and very gently smoothed it over the wound. After she got a bandage wrapped around my shoulder, under my armpit, and partway down my arm, she tied it off and her nursing duties were done. She packed away the first aid kit and sat next to me against the wall.

“I’m sorry I got the truck wasted, Alexis,” I said without looking at her. “I guess I hadn’t thought it all through as well as I should have. I really wanted to get you out of here.” I turned my head and found her looking at me with the sweetest expression I’d ever seen on a woman. It nearly stopped my breath.

She shifted toward me more and laid her hand along my cheek. “It’s not your fault. You’ve taken such good care of me. No one could have done a better job, really.”

I sighed. “I’m glad you think so. That helps. Well, it doesn’t help the shoulder, but it helps my ego a little.”

“Just a little?” She held her fingers out with a small space in between them.

“Maybe a bit more than that.” I laughed.

“So, do you want to go over to the blankets where it’s marginally more comfortable?”

I raised an eyebrow at her. “Are you offering to take me to bed?”

“You’re feeling better, I see.”

“Mmm.” I ran my good hand down her bare arm. “Possibly.”

“I can’t believe you. You were howling in pain just a few minutes ago.”

“I’m tough, babe. One hundred percent US Army. You can’t keep me down for long.”

She stood and gently pulled on my good arm to help me stand. “Well, your obnoxiousness certainly doesn’t stay away long.”

I grinned at her. “There is a bed involved . . . and you. Surely you didn’t expect me to pass that up on account of a little scratch?”

I followed her over to our pallet. I carried my rifle and pistol with me, clutching them against my bare chest and setting them down next to “my side” of the bed. Jesus, one night of cuddling and I had a “side.” What the hell?

She turned around and reached for my hand, helping me sit down. “Lie down,” she directed, her voice even more husky than usual. I did, and she lay next to me, pulling the blanket over both of us. I shifted onto my good side, facing her, so that my injured arm was on top with no pressure on it. She rolled onto her side too and we lay there looking at each other.

“I’m going to be fine, you know,” I told her.

“I know.”

“And you’re finally safe from me because it hurts too damn much to move the injured arm and the other one’s pinned under me, so I can’t even touch you.”

“What if I don’t want to be safe from you?” she asked.

“Mmm. Don’t toy with me. My poor, exhausted body can’t take it.”

“When you were out there and I heard those shots start up . . . well, you could have been killed and all I could think was,
Now I’ll never know
.”

“Never know what?” I asked, my voice gruff and very soft.

“What it could be like between us. I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow or next week, but I know that we’re . . . I don’t know. Special somehow. I don’t want to ignore that. There’s no time to ignore that.”

My breath caught and I inhaled the musty, cold air all around me. I felt the heat coming off of her and the hard ground underneath me, and I ached. My arm ached, my head ached, my dick ached, and my heart ached. But in spite of all that, I felt like I was on top of the world. I realized at that moment that I would get shot all over again if it meant she’d tell me she felt this thing between us. It was worth it. All of it.

“Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“Yeah, soldier boy, I think I am. You up for it?” she answered as she leaned up on one elbow and peered down at me through the gloom.

“Oh, I’m always up for you.”

She chuckled as she came closer to my face, her long hair falling down around us. “You are so bad, Gabe Thompson.”

“And that’s the attraction,” I whispered, and then her lips were there, brushing against mine, searching me, burning me, but not quite incinerating the niggling doubt in the back of my head.

“Hey.” I stopped her mid-kiss. “Are you sure? I mean, will you tell him? Or is this one of those ‘what happens in a cave in Afghanistan stays in a cave in Afghanistan’ things?”

I could feel her smile against my lips. “I’ll tell him. No matter what else happens, I’ll tell him. He deserves to know. But I don’t want to talk about him. He’s not you. We were never this, Gabe.”

Yeah, there was no way they were ever this. I rolled onto my back and brought my good arm up to touch her face, her hair, her neck. My tongue entered her sweet lips and she moaned as she rested her arms on my chest and began smoothing her hands over my skin.

I lifted my head, trying to get closer to her, trying to press against her harder any way I could. “This isn’t going to work,” I gasped at her.

She lifted away from me. “Why? Am I hurting you?”

“Hell no! And if you were, it’d be the best damn pain I’ve ever felt.” I ran my hand down her back and gently squeezed her ass. “I gotta be on top though.”

“Oh. My. God. You’re kidding, right?”

“Uh, no.”

“Is this another one of those things you’ve never done? Be on the bottom?”

“No, I’ve been on the bottom plenty, but that’s for when I’m drunk or really relaxed, not about to crawl out of my skin because I’m so fucking turned on.”

I put my hand on the back of her neck and pulled her down hard. I crushed her lips to mine. After a moment, I pulled back slightly, thinking I might suffocate if I couldn’t catch my breath soon. “I need to be on top, Alexis.”

She laughed softly and then crawled off of me and gently pulled me over as she lay down on her back. I sat up on my knees, straddling her hips, and slowly ran my hand up under her t-shirt until I reached the swell of her ample breasts.

She lay very still, breathing quickly in the dark. I ran my thumb across her nipple and she whispered, “God, soldier boy, how do you do this to me?”

“I haven’t even started yet, babe. Just trust me and hang on for the ride.”

I smoothed my hand over her soft skin and marveled at how her stomach fluttered under my touch. Then I pushed her bra up and leaned down to take one of her juicy, plump nipples into my mouth. She arched into me and moaned loudly.

I left her breast to come up and kiss her face, her jaw, her throat. “It’s like popping a sweet cherry in my mouth,” I rasped at her before I headed back to that beautiful breast.

I loved women—their skin; their hair; their long, smooth legs; their round hips and asses. But I had to admit that I’d always been a breast man, and Alexis had, without a doubt, the finest pair I’d ever had the privilege of exploring. I licked all around her nipple first on one side and then the other, enjoying the sensation of their texture on my tongue.

“Gabe,” she gasped as I kept massaging and moved my mouth farther down her stomach.

“Mmmm,” I answered as best I could.

“I’m not going to last much longer. Oh! Jesus, that feels sooo good.”

I sat up. “I’m disabled here. Get your clothes off, will you?”

“Yeah.” She immediately went to work, causing me to chuckle.

“Shut up and get your damn pants off,” she grumbled.

“Man, I always knew you’d be a bossy one.”

I stood and struggled one handed with the buttons on my MultiCams, finally wrestling them down only to realize I still had my boots on.

“Fuck,” I muttered.

“What?” she answered as I heard the sound of silk sliding over skin.

“Um, boots,” I managed to grind out, imagining those panties falling down her legs to the ground.

Her hand ran down my torso and I groaned. Next her tongue licked all the way down to the waistband of my boxers. Then I felt her tugging at the laces of one of my boots. I pulled my foot free and she licked all around my belly button. It took everything I had to hold still.

After I pulled my other foot out of its boot, I felt her tug on my boxers, and before I knew, it my dick was in her mouth and white noise was roaring through my head. She grasped the base and licked up one side before slowly, tortuously sliding it into her mouth. I felt her tongue circle around the tip as her cheeks pressed in while she sucked on me. My hand shot down to dig into her hair as I fought the instinct to grind against her.

“Alexis,” I gritted out.

She popped me out of her mouth but continued stroking up and down with her hand and licking from base to tip.

“God, ah, sweetheart, you’ve got to stop.” I could barely breathe, and I felt the telltale tingle in my spine warning me that things were going to explode any moment.

She gave one last stroke before she stood up, making sure to slide her entire body along my length as she came up. It was quite possibly the hottest thing I’d ever experienced. When she was standing again, with not an inch between us, I palmed the back of her head and crushed her lips to mine.

“I want you so fucking bad,” I chanted as I pressed hot, wet kisses to her cheeks and neck and shoulders. “So fucking bad. Never wanted anything this bad. Never.”

She was panting and moaning, and she went back to the hand job while she also reached around and grabbed my ass, pressing me to her hard. I kept kissing any patch of her skin I could get my mouth on and then lowered my hand from her head to the space between her legs. I took one finger and gently stroked along her hot, wet slit. She cried out, and I plunged my finger in, curving it to hit that perfect spot as I pressed in.

She threw her head back as her core clenched around my finger in wave after beautiful wave. “Ah, ah, ah, Gabe. Oh my God,” she panted.

As her tremors subsided and I felt her relax into me, I pulled my finger out and brought it to my mouth, loving the way she tasted, the way she smelled, the warmth that was always her. She leaned her head against my chest, still breathing hard.

“Come here,” I whispered. “I’m nowhere near done with you yet.”

I pulled her over to our favorite rock, covered it with one of the blankets, and sat down. She stood in front of me, her head tilted down toward my face.

“You won’t be on top,” she teased.

“Yeah, but I’ll be in control,” I quipped back at her, grinning even though I knew she couldn’t see my expression in the gloom.

“You’re impossible!”

“And I’m hard as this rock I’m sitting on. Get over here, will you?”

She paused for a minute. “Um, protection?”

Suddenly, everything south of the border went cold, which was not a good thing. “Shit,” I said, hearing the hollowness in my own voice.

“Guess you didn’t have that in the supply truck?”

I put my hand on her hip and rubbed little circles with my thumb. “They give us plenty of them. I usually keep one with me, not that there’s all sorts of opportunities. But this trip it was you. I’d promised you I’d behave. I was really committed to keeping my word.”