No answer. But his hands came up to clutch his head.
“Jackson!”
Finally, the tension in his body drained away and he rolled toward me.
“Loren? What’s wrong?”
“Um, nothing.”
“Why are you out of the sleeping bag?” He stuck one hand out toward me. “Get back in. It’s cold.” As he reached his hand out, he seemed to notice that his arm was shaking and he pulled it back. “Did I scare you?” he asked. And his voice had changed to a much quieter tone.
“No,” I said. “I thought you might be having a bad dream, so I moved over.”
He sat up, all at once. “Did I hit you?”
“No. You barely moved. You were shaking though, back and forth. I thought it was an earthquake.”
He put both hands up to his eyes and rubbed over his face. “Christ. I’m sorry.”
“No big deal.”
He huffed, making an odd half-laugh sound. “Right.” He turned back to face the other side of the tent. “I’m awake now,” he said. “You can lie back down.”
I had a feeling that he wouldn’t even try to go back to sleep. I crawled in next to him and wrapped one arm around his chest. I wanted to ask a million questions, but I could tell they wouldn’t be welcome right now.
I hoped my arm around him could provide at least a little solace for the rest of the night.
Chapter Thirteen
Jackson
Once again, I’d jerked awake, sweating from a nightmare. Only this time I’d woken up Loren too. I was grateful I hadn’t thrashed around and hit her, or tried to pin her down. It appeared that she’d listened to me when I told her to back away and not touch me, thank God.
I lay there, wide awake, and completely mortified. I’d warned her not to touch me, but I hadn't really expected to wake her up because I was shaking.
I had been fucking trembling in my sleep, shaking the tent enough to wake her up. It was fucking humiliating.
Nightmares were normal for soldiers. They were normal for anyone. But I hadn’t wanted her to see that. I was supposed to be protecting her. She was the younger woman, the innocent virgin who I wanted to look out for.
I liked her so much that I was voluntarily going to a wedding, and I was going to pretend to be her boyfriend. If someone had told me a month ago that I’d agree to take a woman to a wedding, and tell her family I was her boyfriend, I’d have laughed my ass off.
“Jackson?”
I had to remind myself not to snap at her. It wasn’t her fault that I was a wreck. And she shouldn’t have to put up with this. We were fucking, yes, but she wasn’t my girlfriend. This was a fake relationship, not a real one, and I didn’t need to forget that. “Yeah?”
“You’re vibrating,” she said.
I started to push myself up. “I can get up.”
“No. Don’t go.”
“I’m keeping you up,” I said.
“Hey. I don’t want to bring up painful memories. But I was close to my cousin. The one that was killed in Iraq? He didn’t like to talk about it too often, but sometimes he would tell me stuff.”
There was no way I could speak right then.
Her small hand moved to my shoulder. “I’m not asking you to say anything. And I can’t say I understand, even from listening to him. His experience would have been different than yours. He was an Army Doctor, not a Ranger.”
“Pretty impressive skill set though,” I managed to choke out. “Field medicine is brutal.”
“Yeah. He hated that he couldn’t save everyone. He’d say, ‘I can’t stand it when I lose someone that I could have saved, if only we’d been at a hospital.’”
“I understand that.” I could relate. I hadn’t been able to save my own sister.
“No one can save everyone. I used to remind him of that.”
“You miss him.”
“Yeah. All the time. I’m an only child, so he was the closest person I had to a sibling. We’d go weeks without talking, but he’d text when he could, and we did a video chat every few months.”
“That sucks. That you lost him.”
“Yes it does.” She pressed her face against my back. “I wish he was still here. I wish he had chosen to be a family practice doctor in Georgia. But he didn’t.”
“He must have loved what he did. Or he believed in it.” I could relate to that sentiment. I didn’t always agree with the purpose of our missions. I didn’t always like the assignments I had to do. But overall, I believed the Rangers were helping, in some small way, to make the world a better place. I’d had plenty of missions where I got the reward of saving someone’s life directly -- like the most recent mission in Romania.
“Exactly,” she said. “He wouldn’t have changed it. He was where he needed to be. He was where he wanted to be.”
“I get that,” I said. And I did. Even if I had nightmares every night for the rest of my life, I wouldn’t give up my duty as a Ranger.
What Loren was doing -- talking about her cousin, and not forcing me to talk, was really kind of her. Usually I would have found a way to be alone, but being around her was comforting.
“I figured you would. I can tell how much you care. About everything. And I want to say thank you again for saving me, and even humoring me on this trip. This wedding had me more anxious than I realized, and knowing you’re there is going to make it so much easier.”
My entire body relaxed. I was glad she told me about her cousin, but I needed a break from talking about my job. “I can’t promise any sophisticated mingling during the reception.”
She moved her hand from my shoulder to my stomach. “I know you don’t believe me, but I promise you, they’ll be so glad I’ve brought home an accomplished Army Ranger. It’ll blow their minds.”
“I can get behind a little family goading,” he said.
She laughed, and the movement pressed her breasts against my back. My cock got rock hard in an instant. I grabbed her hand from where it was resting against my abs and pushed it lower, so she could feel my throbbing erection.
The feel of her tiny hand on my engorged cock sent fireworks off in my body.
She went with it, rubbing her hand up and down over it, and then curling her fingers over my cock on the outside of my shorts. I rolled my hips forward, seeking more friction. She moved her hand to the waistband of my shorts, and pushed her hand inside.
As soon as her hand made contact with my cock, I grabbed her arm. Nice as it was, I didn’t want a handjob from Loren. I wanted to fuck her sweet pussy. I rolled over, surging forward and pressed my mouth to hers. I got her body under mine, hitching one of her legs up and wrapping it around my waist.
My hand went straight to her shorts, where I dipped it inside her panties. Holy shit, she was already wet. I pressed one finger straight into her pussy. “You’re ready for me.”
“All the time,” she said.
Fuck. She was going to kill me.
“Are you still sore?” I asked.
“No. I’ve been waiting for this,” she said.
I added a second finger. “Your tight virgin pussy is the hottest thing I’ve ever felt.”