Page 3 of Under His Command
My lower lip quivers on its own, and I catch his gaze narrowing down on it, as if his self-control is hanging by a thread. Still, he doesn’t pull it between his teeth, and disappointment courses through me again when he presses his warm lips to my forehead instead.
The kiss is gentle but taut at the same time, as if he’s inhaling me—all of me. As if he knows this is the last time he’ll see me, but he accepts his fate like any broken soldier would.
“Take care of yourself, Dove Finnegan,” he says, slowly drifting away from me.
His body leaves mine, my hair falls back on my shoulders, and I have no choice but to watch him walk back to a black SUV parked a few houses down the street. I wrap my arms around myself, the grief he temporarily took away from me now hitting me like a tsunami wave.
I look back at the glass of water sitting on the porch and then I break, letting it all come out of me until my throat feels raw and my bones ache from the weight of my brother’s death.
TWO
Three years later
The sound of billiard balls hitting the table’s corners mixed with the stench of cheap beer fill the air. My best friend, Sterling, is here. Her boyfriend too, and the date they insisted I said yes to so I could stop feeling like I’m third-wheeling all the time.
I can feel Jared’s hand resting on my naked knee, caressing it in circles with his thumb while he talks about entanglement, and quantum mechanics, and everything I don’t give a crap about.
This isn’t even why I didn’t want to go out with him. Because on the rare occasions when he’s not monopolizing the conversation with his physics-related topics, he’s actually an okay guy. He’s tall, and flirty, and has that air about him that says, “I’m the bad guy your mom doesn’t want you around.”
Strange combination, I know.
And maybe I would’ve been interested in him, with my daddy issues and all, if there wasn’t another man already haunting my dreams every night.
A man I’ve never had, nor that I’ll ever have. A man that sparked something in me that day, when he pulled my hair, tasted my tears, and called me his good girl.
I tried forgetting about him—because there was no point in hanging onto a fantasy. There still isn’t. But every time his name pops up in the news or on the TV, my pussy clenches and I get that vibrant flush in my cheeks Sterling always teases me about.
I couldn’t push this man out of my memory ever since that day. As I grieved the death of my brother, the thought of Rowan King seemed to tamp down my suffering. The more I thought about him, the more I remembered—Cole had actually told me about his two best friends in the army.
He told me about Rowan and the other man in their small group, but he never called them by name. That summer, before he died, we were supposed to meet. Cole promised he was going to take me with them on a trip to the beach. It would’ve been my first unsupervised vacation. A sad smile stretches across my lips as I remember how excited I was at the thought of hanging out with them.
“Oh my God!” Sterling suddenly shrieks. “Look, Dove, it’s your sexy-ass commander on TV! Hey, Bree,” she shouts over to the girl at the bar, “turn that shit up, will you? God, he really is hot.” She wiggles her eyebrows at me.
I can only giggle in response to show her it’s nothing but a stupid crush, but I know the truth. I can feel the need slowly building up in my core, tingling at the entrance of my pussy. Expecting him. Opening up for him. It’s dangerous and wrong, but I can’t help it. I can’t help but want him with every fiber of my being.
“You can’t be saying other guys are hot. You’re taken!” Sterling’s boyfriend, Lucian, protests.
“He’s not just a guy, Luce dear. He’s Commander of the Army. And he’s most definitely a man, not a guy.”
Lucian scoffs, and pushes her head down toward his crotch making some joke about how he’s all man. We all know what he’s referring to, and Jared laughs beside me, reminding me that he’s here. But all my attention is now on Rowan—who’s looking more handsome than ever here on the wall of this filthy bar in the university campus.
“…the attack on the small southwestern town in the Sylvestrian Ridge killed more than one hundred and twenty people tonight. I have Commander Rowan King joining me live tonight. Commander, this was a difficult operation for you and your team, no doubt. Did you see this attack coming?”
I lean back in my chair, catching a better glimpse of that velvet-black hair and those calculated eyes, but it’s his voice that has me in shambles.
Good girl.
You’re grieving. It isn’t right.
Take care of yourself, Dove Finnegan.
“Yes,” Rowan answers, his tone low and grave, and completely sure of himself. “Our intelligence did see this coming, since the CCSI has already attacked the northwestern villages. We were able to keep the situation under control and push back the coalition. But unfortunately, lives were still lost tonight.”
The news station host, Van Reynolds, starts grilling him for details. I hate the guy. He built his entire career on eliciting dramatic reactions out of the most influential people in the country.
And now that the chain of command has been unified from multiple Combatant Commanders to just one… Rowan has been in the spotlight for quite some time. Judging by the way he’s shooting arrows through his eyes at Van, I’d say he isn’t a big fan of all this unwanted attention.
And, I mean, I know his methods for pushing back this war are rather… unconventional. Rumor has it the cyber-attack on the CCSI, our current enemy, was his doing. That the two preemptive strikes were nothing but an ego-boosting measure for Rowan. And I’ve even heard proxy forces were used six months ago for targeted assassinations.
