If I Don't Ask, page 28
oh!” as I climaxed. Sabine stayed with me, her tongue lightly
dancing over my clitoris, as arousal rolled through my body,
leaving me squirming and unable to do anything except enjoy
the intense, overwhelming pleasure.
When I had some of my faculties back, I ran my hand
through her hair, trying to articulate how I felt, other than
completely and utterly satisfied. I managed a weak, “I feel so
greedy.”
Sabine propped herself up on an elbow, the other hand
playing over my thigh. She smiled that devastating smile, and
this time it had a touch of coyness. “Don’t worry, Rebecca. I
promise, you’re going to make it up to me.” Sabine shifted
from between my legs, moving up the bed until she lay on her
back. After tugging me close for a long, heated kiss, she gently
pushed me down, spreading her legs in anticipation. “Starting
right now.”
Her desperation was clear from the tight quiver of her
muscles, the restless movement of her legs, and her tight grip
on my arm. I indulged myself a little, feasting briefly on her
nipples as she murmured, “Yes, just like that…yes…”
I licked a path from between her breasts right down to her
pubic hair. Her glistening arousal was evidence enough that
she’d enjoyed herself as much as I had. I softly dragged a
finger through her labia. “You are so, so wet.” I’d already
tasted her, held her right on the brink, and now I was going to
feel her glorious climax in my mouth.
Sabine arched an eyebrow. “Can you blame me? It’s
because of you. You’re so—ahhh, fuck.”
My tongue on her clitoris cut her off, and her thighs
clenched around my shoulders as I lightly circled and sucked.
Sabine exhaled a shaky laugh which turned to a strangled
gurgle when I tongued her entrance. She fell back on the bed,
bending her knees to bring her feet flat on the bed, giving me
unrestrained access to what I wanted. With every stroke of my
tongue, her breathing hitched higher until she was almost
gasping. “I don’t even…just…that, please keep doing that.
Right there.”
I gripped her hips harder, holding her in place as I enjoyed
myself in her arousal. She was so responsive to every touch
that I lost myself completely in her, and as she quivered
underneath me, I had no thoughts except how utterly perfect
this was, this one moment in time. And if we never had this
again, then at least I would always have this memory of her
completely unrestrained in her passion.
Sabine’s feet moved restlessly up and down my sides and I
felt the tightening in her thighs as they clamped around my
shoulders. She raised herself up slightly and cupped my face,
pulling me up ever so slightly so we made eye contact as I
licked and sucked her toward her climax. Sabine swallowed
hard. “Rebecca…” That one word, my name, was a reverent
whisper. Her entire body went taut and that intense eye contact
never wavered, staying with me as she rode out her orgasm.
Watching her climax sent a ripple of reciprocal pleasure
through me, and I barely held back my moan as I kept my
mouth against her clitoris.
Eventually, her body went slack and she fell back to the
bed, gulping down air. “Oh my god,” Sabine murmured, her
fingers slipping over my sweat-slicked shoulder as she tried to
pull me closer. “Come up here.” When I moved up beside her,
she pulled me against her side, keeping her arm around my
waist. “I feel like I should say something really profound, but I
can’t even think after that. That was…it was…incredible?”
“It was,” I agreed, kissing her shoulder. It was an entirely
inadequate description, but my capacity for allocating words to
something so precious had departed me as well.
She rolled over so we were face-to-face and framed my
face with her hands. “Thank you. For coming around. For
trusting me.” Sabine kissed me so tenderly that I almost felt I
might cry. She gathered me close, stroking tenderly up and
down my back as we lay silently together.
After a few minutes, she laughed, the sound coming from
nowhere and incongruous with our postcoital bliss bubble. I
raised myself up to look at her, both curious and amused.
“What?”
Sabine’s mouth twitched. “It’s stupid, obviously. I was just
thinking if I’d known you had this secret stash of amazing sex
in your room…” Then she parroted my words back at me,
barely keeping herself restrained enough to get them out. “I
may have sought you out earlier if I thought that was the
case.”
I laughed with her. “Maybe you should have.”
“Mmm,” she agreed. “I think it would have made things a
lot easier. And a lot harder.” She settled back on the bed, mirth
apparently spent for now, and resumed her light caress up and
down my back.
I relaxed against her, enjoying the simple pleasure of her
nearness and the residual warmth from our intimacy. I drifted
on the edge of sleep, and yet… Although I felt more settled,
more satisfied than I had in years, a small discomfort wormed
under my skin.
Even as I’d told myself that I was coming to see her simply
to clear the air between us, I’d known I wanted something
more. I’d come here hoping desperately for things to be
different. I’d come to her house not as her boss, but as a
woman who wanted something so desperately she was willing
to risk both our careers for it. And now I knew I’d risk it again
and again. This tiny taste of her, of what might be, hadn’t sated
my appetite at all.
It had made me ravenous.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I woke to muted light peeking through Sabine’s curtains,
finding myself snuggled behind her with my arm around her
waist and my face pressed to her shoulder. The smell of her,
the sensation of her warm naked body against mine and the
memory of last night launched a fresh surge of desire through
me, though now it was softer, less desperate. I delicately
stroked her outer thigh, up her hip, along her ribs to her breasts
before my fingers trailed down her belly.
She stirred, and I continued downward, purring a little as
she spread her legs for me. “I got tired of waiting for you to
wake up,” I whispered before running my tongue along the
edge of her ear.
“I can think of worse ways to be woken up,” Sabine
murmured. She rolled over to face me, her arm coming around
my waist to pull me closer.
Unlike last night’s raw desperation, this foreplay was
gentler, sweeter. But no less sensual. I didn’t think I could
come again so soon, but when Sabine wriggled down the bed
and underneath me, settling between my thighs, my arousal
peaked again. She pulled me down onto her face, then strong,
knowing fingers slipped into me as she slid her tongue through
my blossoming arousal. It didn’t take long until the first
insistent threads of my orgasm began to wind through my
body. She held onto my thighs as I climaxed, and I couldn’t
help but think of how knowing she was, how intuitive and
giving a lover. It almost made me laugh, as if Sabine Fleischer
would be anything but a perfectionist in bed too.
As my legs stopped trembling after my climax, I carefully
climbed off her face and down her body, nestling between her
thighs to take her in my mouth again until she cried out a
hoarse, guttural sound as she came. I kissed the silky skin
inside her thighs and propped myself up to look at her. Sexy.
Sensual. And so damned gorgeous my heart felt like it was
fluttering out of my chest. Sabine stretched, exhaling a
kittenish squeak before she raised her head a little to look
down her body at me. Her mouth quirked. “Do I still taste of
desire?”
I laughed, thinking of my ridiculous attempt at seduction
the evening before. Though given where I was currently,
perhaps it wasn’t so ridiculous… “Yes. And what about me?
What do I taste of?”
She moved back to sit up against the bedhead, clearly
taking time to consider it. She licked her lips. “I’m not sure
yet,” she finally said. “Something illicit maybe?”
We held eye contact and I raised a querying eyebrow. That
wasn’t the answer I’d expected, but I knew why she’d said it.
“You’ve never done anything you shouldn’t have?” I sat up
and swung my legs over hers, reaching for the duvet to hold
back the morning chill.
“Of course not!” she exclaimed, feigning horror. She
offered me a quick wink that made me laugh. Sabine shifted to
face me. “So, Colonel. You’ve wanted me ever since the first
time we operated together?” The coy question was an obvious
subject change and I decided to play along.
“More or less…Captain. Do you remember? You repaired
that tricky liver laceration. Then you made a stupid pun about
how he was going to live-r.” It still made me laugh when I
thought about it, years later.
“I remember…” she deadpanned.
I laughed again, both at her expression of mortification—
which told me she wished she could forget it anew—and the
fresh thought of her joke. “Then you flushed and gave me that
helpless look, like you couldn’t believe what had just come out
of your mouth.”
She shook her head as if she still couldn’t believe it, but
thankfully was laughing with me. “You’ve always made me
nervously verbose. At first I thought it was just a case of hero
worship, then I realized it was actually the huge crush I have
on you.”
I smiled at that, recalling how that had been my exact
thought, that she’d just had a boss crush on me. Thankfully it
was so much more than that. I moved my hand under the sheet
and gripped her calf, lightly raking my nails over her bare
skin. “What about you?” I was about to expand my question—
as in, when did she first recognize her attraction to me—but
Sabine had picked up the words my post-orgasmic brain
hadn’t been able to formulate.
“Probably…” She dragged the word out. “Our first flag
football game. You were so different, as if you had a whole
new personality. Lighter somehow. It was intriguing.”
Intriguing. I knew exactly what she meant, having felt that
exact same thing when I’d first seen her. This attraction
between us has always been there, tucked away out of sight
where we both tried to keep it from harming us. I still found it
hard to reconcile how something that felt so good could be so
dangerous. The thought made me shiver, and I pulled the duvet
up around my shoulders.
As if sensing what I was thinking, Sabine said slowly, “You
know…this has changed everything.”
“I’m well aware of it, Sabine,” I said carefully. I was all too
aware of it. It was never far from my thoughts. Everything I’d
done to this point had consequences weighed against it. I’d
thought and rethought and agonized, and in the end, had
simply decided to put myself first for once and manage what
happened, if it happened. She and I were two consenting
adults forced into a situation under which many people would
have broken. Telling myself that eased perhaps one percent of
my guilt.
Sabine gently twirled some of my hair between her fingers
before she let it fall back against my neck. “What are we going
to do? This isn’t sustainable. Not back there.” Her sigh was
quiet, but unmistakable.
“I know.” I looked away from her and tried to unclench my
jaw.
She scoffed, “So it’s longing looks across the OR? Hand
brushes in the hallway? Maybe we can sneak a shower
together and hope nobody catches us. Otherwise, it’s waiting
until we can try and get on leave together. Or better yet, we
can wait four years until I’ve finished my service obligation
and hope they don’t care that a lieutenant colonel is fucking a
reservist. Though by then you’d probably have made colonel,
which is even better.” Her voice rose in pitch and indignation
with every point.
“I’m not sure. I don’t have an answer,” I said quietly. I
wanted an answer, I wanted to give all the answers as to how
we could sustain what we had. But I had none. Goddammit.
What was I supposed to do and say? That I’d had years of
emotional buildup between us, weeks of the emotional strain
of thinking my best friend was dying, and I desperately needed
to feel something good, a connection with someone, and I just
gave in to my desire?
She was clearly trying very hard to be objective, to not fall
apart. Her tone suggested she was about fifty percent
successful. “I can’t risk it, Rebecca. Not even for you. I’m
contracted to the Army. If they find us together then I’ll be
discharged and I’ll have to repay my HPSP debt. I’ll have to
repay it with a job I won’t be able to get because they’ll
probably court-martial me and then it’ll be a dismissal.”
Dismissal—the commissioned officer’s version of a
dishonorable discharge. It was highly unlikely. “I think you’re
being a little dramatic. They’re not going to court-martial you,
Sabine.”
“Really?” Her voice pitched up in disbelief. “Aren’t we
supposed to guard and suppress all dissolute and immoral
practices, Rebecca, not indulge in them? And while we’re
talking about rules, I’m pretty sure what we’re doing is also
conduct unbecoming an officer.”
I pushed aside all the unhelpful emotions and focused on
her, forcing myself to at least appear relaxed. Getting upset
wasn’t going to help anything. But watching her rising panic
was increasing mine. Despite all my weak rationalizations,
what we’d done was wrong, and there was absolutely no way I
could spin that to make it seem less so. But I would do it all
over again in a heartbeat. I felt vaguely sick, and more
uncertain than I’d felt before I’d had sex with her. “Calm
down, Sabine. You’ve gone straight to worst-case scenario
before anything’s even happened.” I inhaled deeply, hoping it
might calm me. It didn’t. “Look, I care about you a great deal.
I just don’t have a solution. Not right now.”
She snorted dismissively, as if it were up to me alone to
figure out how we could make this work without either of us
suffering. That sound snapped the last of my fraying temper.
“It’s my ass too! You don’t think I know this isn’t allowed, and
it could get me severely reprimanded? You don’t think I’m
not…” I clutched at fistfuls of air, as if I could grab the correct
answer from out of the ether, “… disgusted with myself for
being so weak?” I rolled over, slid out of bed and stalked to
the bathroom.
As I sat on the toilet, I buried my face in my hands. Oh,
Rebecca, Rebecca. What the fuck have you done? From the
bedroom came Sabine’s, “Rebecca?” After a minute, I heard a
tentative, “Bec?” Then a quieter, “I’m sorry.”
I hadn’t expected her to apologize so quickly, and it pulled
my anger away. After I flushed and washed my hands, I
studied myself in her bathroom mirror. My reflection was the
same as always, if not a little disheveled, but I knew I was now
a completely different person. I’d done something I’d never
thought I would do, even as I was fantasizing about doing
exactly this.
A decision you can live with…
I’d made my decision, and now I was going to live with it.
Reconciling that fact felt surprisingly easy and I felt more of
my tension ease. Perhaps I’d always been reconciling it, deep
down, knowing this was where I was heading. I opened the
bathroom door to find Sabine right outside. I smiled in an
attempt to soften my earlier annoyance. “My aunt called me
Bec.” Whenever I was feeling melancholy, she used to say it in
a silly clown voice to cheer me up. It was special, because it
was the only time she ever did it.
She smiled apologetically. “Sorry. It just slipped out.”
“Don’t be. I’ve always liked it.” Her smile was contagious
and I returned it. “Is there enough food in this house for both
of us to have breakfast, or do we have to go out?”
