before
Things continued like this for a long time—three and a half years, to be precise. Three and a half years of furtive fucking on the periphery of war, of stolen kisses, of long nights tracing our breath as we stared up at the cold stars. He liked the company when he couldn’t sleep—which was always—and I liked falling asleep next to him, safe in his presence.
He never grew less bruising or rough, I never stopped fighting it, and even though we hid it, not a day went by without something from each other. Maybe a hurried kiss in the long pantry by the canteen, the one that locked from the inside, or maybe he’d call me in for a meeting in his office and then wrestle me into sucking him off after he closed the door. And some days, it was as simple as teaching him to dance. The waltz, the foxtrot, even swing-dancing for no other reason that it was fun and swing music made him smile.
It was the purest heaven in the midst of the worst hell, and I loved every minute of it, even though it was all underpinned by a lie—my lie—and I knew one day it would burn down around me.
I had two reminders of the impermanence of our relationship, and the first came early on—very early, in fact, within the first year of my return after being shot.
I woke up barely able to walk that morning; the night before, Ash had tied me to a chair and rubbed me with his hand until I writhed in delight, pulling his hand away just before I started to come. And instead of spurting all over my stomach, cum leaked out of my tip like tears and the orgasm fell flat, a punctured balloon, a stalled motor. But I stayed hard and hornier than ever. And he started rubbing me again, once again pulling away just as my balls drew up, and I had the same kind of ruined orgasm.
Twice more he did this, and when he was done, he sat back on his shoeless heels and observed his handiwork. I was straining against my ties, my cock so hard that the skin shone like bruised silk, like the skin itself was about to split apart. I was covered in sweat and my own semen, every muscle bulging and flexing and every vein standing out in sharp relief. And best of all, my thoughts were quiet. My mind was open, my heart was still and brimming full of him.
His gaze traced over the rigid ache of my erection and he nodded to himself. “I’m going to fuck your mouth now,” he said, “and if it’s good enough, then I’ll let you come for real.” A small smile. “On my skin. Would you like that?”
I nodded so enthusiastically that his smile grew bigger, his boot-on-my-wrist smile that was all sharp corners and white teeth. He untied me and yanked me by the neck down to my knees, his other hand fumbling with his belt. His cock was hard and heavy enough to push its way out of his fly after he unzipped it, and the single glimpse of ridged shaft was all the warning I got before it was down my throat. I could taste the salty slick of his precum, so much of it all over him, and I groaned to myself. He’d been hard all this time, his ignored erection weeping softly in his pants.
He cradled my face with his hands, not as a tender gesture—he was good about hiding his tenderness from me in those early days, still trying to respect my wishes—but to hold my face still so he could fuck my mouth the way he wanted. I flattened my tongue and let him, wishing I could reach down and ease the ache in my cock while he did it, but not wanting to jeopardize the chance to come on him. He’d use any excuse to deny me; it was one of his very favorite things to do, and more effective than any pain or coercion he could devise. So I kept my hands on the front of his thighs as he flexed in and out of my mouth, instead enjoying the feel of those hard muscles under my hands, the taste of his clean skin on my tongue.
When he came, he moved his hands around the back of my head and pushed in so deep that tears streamed from my eyes and my throat convulsed in reflex. He held me there as he grunted and pulsed, and then abruptly released me, pulling out and wiping at a corner of my mouth with his thumb.
“You did a good job, Embry,” he praised. “Swallowing all my cum like that. Are you ready to come now?”
“Yes,” I said hoarsely.
He did something unexpected then, and pulled his already-loosened pants all the way off, along with his socks and shirt. Seeing my expression, he chided me. “You’re not going to fuck me, if that’s what you’re wondering.”
I was, in fact, wondering that. I’d never been with a man longer than a day where these things weren’t clearly intuited or discussed, and frankly, I always discussed with them that there were no assigned roles. The fact that Ash topped me every single time was something I noticed and thought about often.
Except…it also wasn’t. When I noticed and thought about it, I was far away from him, removed from the leather and smoke smell of his skin and the skillful pull of his fingers. But when I was with him, ideas like top and bottom ceased to have any meaning, or at least, ceased to have the meanings they used to have for me. Rather, top meant the way Ash bit my shoulder when he came in my ass, the way he cleaned me up afterwards, looked over the bruises and scratches on my body like a host looking over a living room after a party. And bottom meant the way he made my cock throb with his cruel words and teasing tongue, the way the world sang its otherwise hidden song when he’d hurt me or humiliated me or conquered me.
Things were the way they should be, and yet I had to admit, the idea of fucking Ash was beyond arousing. It was consuming.
As if he knew my thoughts, he smiled and shook his head, grabbing a blanket and stretching himself out on the floor on top of it with his hands laced behind his head. “I promise you, Lieutenant Embry Moore, I’ll let you fuck me someday.”
“When?” I asked, my eyes raking along the thick, hard lines of his naked body. Even sated and asleep his cock was heavy and impressive, curved along his thigh.
“When you’ve earned it.”
“Am I close to earning it?”
He smiled. “Not even.”
Well, shit.
But what he gave me was almost as good. He beckoned me down and for the first time, I laid my body on top of his, stomach to stomach and chest to chest. Even underneath me, he felt in charge, biceps and abdominal muscles moving as he helped me lay the way he wanted—with my freshly lubed cock between his thighs.
“I haven’t done this since I was in high school,” I breathed, my hips moving hesitantly. My cock slid between his muscular thighs, the squeeze tight and slick and warm.
“Do you feel like you’re in high school right now?” Ash asked from underneath me, entertained. I looked down at him—the muscles, the warm skin, the bossy hands that rearranged me how he wanted, and I had to admit that this was much, much better than any of the fumbling dorm-room escapades I had as a teenager.
“No. I feel like I’m with a man.”
“Good,” Ash said, his hands running along my back. “Because you are one.”
The Greeks fucked each other’s thighs to get around the thorny issue of passivity—two men of equal birth could couple without troubling the gender roles of the era. But even with my body thrusting and sweating on top, there could be no doubt who was in charge. It was Ash. Digging his fingers into my hips, ordering me to go faster or slower, sending up the occasional cool remark—is that as hard as you can go, really? Look how desperate you are to come, I can see it in your face.
When the orgasm came, the breath was driven from my body as if I’d been struck; my poor, tortured cock turned each pulse into a barbarity, a crime of pain. The abused flesh seized, the deep parts of my groin seized as well, and then Ash murmured, “On my stomach, Embry.”
I pulled from between his thighs just in time to fist myself and ejaculate onto the ridged lines of his abdomen, unable to breathe because it was too fucking much, the pleasure, I hurt with it and ached with it and would perish with it. But even as I perished, I made myself watch the thin white line of my seed arc over his muscled belly. After all those orgasms, I hardly had anything left to give, but still, watching that small spatter mark his skin was unbearably arousing. I could pretend, for just a moment, that he belonged to me as much as I belonged to him.
Ash had crossed his arms behind his head then, stretching out like a lion. “Clean it off me now,” he said, imperiously and a little dismissively. “With your tongue. Go ahead.”
And then he threaded his fingers through my hair and forced me when I hadn’t moved fast enough for his pleasure.
That had been the night before. Depraved and taxing, and I was walking gingerly, the ache from my marathon orgasm session spiking up through me without warning whenever I moved.
I was walking into the showers, grateful to see they were mostly empty, and also grateful that our new base had proper shower stalls instead of curtains. But then I heard a noise—the kind of noise that even stalls can’t keep private—and my heart missed a beat.
It was Ash. And that kind of noise—
But no, it was only his feet visible under the stall door. I let out a breath I’d been unconsciously holding and shook my head at myself. Did I really think Ash had been playing around with another soldier?
There was another noise. It wasn’t a groan, not as loud as that. More like a breathless grunt, a sharp exhale. And then a sound that every man knew well—a hand moving fast on a cock. Ash was jacking off.
I retreated to my room and decided to shower another time. Part of me was amused but I had to admit, a stupid part of me was a little wounded. Was last night not enough for him? Or did he think me too worn out to help him relieve tension if he needed it? Or—and it sounded madly paranoid to even think it, the worst kind of jealous thinking—was there actually someone else he wanted? A desire that his honor or orderly brain demanded he satisfy apart from me?
So I watched him, as any jealous lover would. Watched him with the other soldiers, watched his habits. We were afield so often that any deviation from routine was hard to pin down, but I began to notice small things. Checking his email more often than necessary on the rugged field laptop. A folded sheaf of papers he kept in his breast pocket. Slipping away at night, when everyone else was asleep. Except for me.
Only once did I see those folded papers out; we were in his room before dinner, door open, playing the part of casual friends. He went to the shared bathroom to brush his teeth and I saw the sheaf sticking out from under his pillow. It was underhanded and invasive and wrong, but since when had that ever stopped me? I lifted the pillow ever so slightly, listening for his footsteps in the hall, and gently unfolded one page. It was a printed email from half a year ago. Dear Ash, it said at the top.
My heart sank. Ash. The name he only gave to those close to him.
Dear Ash, it’s been six months since we met—
Footsteps in the hallway. With the ease born of too much practice, I replaced the object of my snooping and effortlessly assumed the position of a bored, innocent friend when he returned. We went to dinner, and I managed to talk and laugh and mime along, but the whole time, those words kept running through my mind. It’s been six months since we met…six months since we met…since we met. Did love letters sound like that? Ash and I had written to each other, but those letters were less about love than need and anticipation.
We’d never defined exactly what it was we were doing, other than sneaking around and fucking constantly. That conversation had been forestalled by my lie about what I wanted for my future. And if we hadn’t defined our relationship, did that mean that we weren’t necessarily exclusive?
Since the ambush at Caledonia, Ash had been a darling for the press, and because I was the object of his heroism and conveniently also good-looking and wealthy, I became a bit of a darling too. And consequently, I now had an international reputation as a playboy, although that was a bit unfair, as I hadn’t actually slept with anyone else since that first time with Ash. It was crazy what the press could invent from a handful of parties and a few off-color jokes. I’d never minded people thinking of me that way—it was true before Ash, certainly—but I did mind if Ash thought I was sleeping around.
I especially minded it if there was someone else in the picture.
I thought hard about how to bring it up, a way to casually introduce the subject, but even in my head, the words always came out wrong. Suspicious and ugly—and what claim did I have on Ash anyway? I’d been the one to tell him we didn’t have a future, as far as he knew I was the callous, noncommittal one. How could I interrogate him about some emails and jacking off in the shower?
It turned out I didn’t have to. One day not long after, there was an issue with a patrol scheduled to go out within the week, and I went to Ash’s office late that night to get it sorted. I found him on this laptop, typing out brisk responses to his emails.
“Yes, Lieutenant?” he asked, only taking his eyes off the screen to reference a marked up map of the valley.
“Dag is telling me that they never got the medical supplies they’re supposed to carry down the val—”
Ash’s laptop chimed, an email notification, and he clicked the mouse a couple of times, eyes sliding back and forth across the screen, stopping abruptly when they found what they were looking for. His face changed—focused to stunned to studiously blank—in the space of a second.
And I knew.
I just knew.
“Is there someone else?” I demanded. “Are you with—I mean—just. Is there another person?”
He lifted that studiously blank face to mine, closing the laptop with an efficient push of his hands. “No,” he said.
I paused, wondering if I got it all wrong, but then he continued. “Not in the way you think, at least.”
“You don’t know in what way I think,” I replied.
Ash gave me a sad sort of smile. “You think I’m fucking someone else or planning to. At the very least, you think we’re exchanging letters. But none of those things are true.”
Not good enough. “Is it someone you’d like to fuck? And they’re writing you emails? And you like getting those emails?”
He sighed. “The answer to all three of those questions is yes. But we aren’t ever going to fuck and I’m not ever going to write her back.”
Her. It was a her. For some reason that rankled all the more.
“Why aren’t you?” I asked.
Ash leaned back in his chair. “It would be wrong.”
“Because of me?”
“Not entirely.”
That answer stung, I had to admit. “Then why?”
He regarded me carefully. “Because she’s sixteen.”
I had no response to this. I opened my mouth, closed it, opened it again, and still—nothing. Except one thing. “You’re twenty-six.”
“I’m flattered you remember.”
“That’s a decade older than her.”
“Well spotted,” said Ash.
“That’s actually illegal. And morally dubious.”
Ash spread his hands wide, palms up. “I fucked you while you were bleeding from two different bullet holes, Embry. I’m not a moral man.”
I stared at him, shaking my head. “You’re the most moral man I know. Which is why it doesn’t make sense.”
“No,” he said, looking down at his hands. “It doesn’t make sense. But nevertheless…”
My jealousy, my irritation that he could be fooling around with a teenager for God’s sake, fed my curiosity. I had to know. “How? When?”
“Last summer, in London. Before Caledonia. Merlin had taken me to a cocktail party.” He smiled to himself, lost in memory. “She was on her knees when I walked in, trying to clean shards of glass from the floor where her cousin had thrown it in a tantrum. Her hair was like—” he searched for the right words “—water, if water were gold and white.”
I could almost see it then, the scene. This young woman kneeling in a pool of broken glass, Ash in his uniform, an English moon silvering the wet sky outside.
“She noticed I couldn’t sleep—I think she notices a lot of things, actually—and I helped her clean up the glass. And then…” his thumb came up to touch his lower lip.
“You kissed her.”
“It was her first kiss,” he said. “I don’t know that I’ve been anyone’s first kiss before. But kissing her was like—” he looked me straight in the eye “—it was like kissing you. Different in most ways, but the same in the most important way: how it feels right to me.”
I wasn’t expecting that. I swallow, my eyelids burning for some reason I can’t identify.
“But I left without doing anything more than kiss her. She’s been writing me emails ever since, although tonight is the first one I’ve had in six months.” A labored smile. “I suppose her infatuation is burning itself out.”
“But yours isn’t.”
“But mine isn’t,” confirmed Ash.
I felt so helplessly frustrated. So jealous. “Why not? Why can’t you just be happy with—” I froze, but it was too late. Ash knew what I was going to say.
“With you?” he asked softly, and I couldn’t tell if his voice was soft with malice or with love. They often ran parallel tracks with Ash.
He stood up and came around his desk, checking that the office door was locked, and then he was squatting in front of me, searching my face. “I am happy with just you, little prince. You have to understand, when I met her, I hadn’t seen you in over three years and for all I knew I’d never see you again. And I met someone who made me feel—just for an hour—the way you always make me feel. I treasure that hour because it’s only the second time in my life I’ve felt it, and I don’t know that men like me are allowed much more than that.”
“Ash…”
“It might be premature to call that feeling love, but I can’t help the way I’m wired, Embry.” He took a breath, standing up and then looking down at me. “I know you don’t want promises from me, but I’m going to give you one anyway. So long as I’m fucking you, you’ll be the only one I’m fucking.”
His blunt promise of monogamy made my cheeks flush with flattered satisfaction, which cooled somewhat when he followed up with, “But there’s always going to be a tiny corner of my heart for this, Embry. A memory of an hour in London. If you and I were—” he closed his eyes as his breathing hitched and a muscle jumped in his cheek. I watched him regain control of himself “—if things were different between us, then I’d give it all to you, that London hour and all. But since you were honest from the beginning about what you would and wouldn’t give me, then I’ll be honest and tell you that I want to hold onto this for myself.”
I could object, I knew I could. I could tell Ash that I didn’t care what I’d been honest about, I wanted him to burn those emails, I wanted his heart and thoughts only on me. And he would’ve listened. But I was acutely aware of how unjust it was to ask him to surrender a single memory when I refused to surrender any part of my life—or so my lie had led him to believe.
“Okay,” I said.
“Do you want to know her name?” he asked.
“No.”
“Fine.”
“Fine.”
His hands went to his belt and slowly began to work it open. “Show me how fine it is then,” he said, and I did.
Two and a half years passed after I discovered Ash’s obsession with the girl with the water-hair, and things began to slip out of our control. Ash—once so good at keeping our arrangement a clean mix of soldierly fraternity and covert fucking—began to slip. He stroked my hair as I fell asleep. He saved the Skittles from his MREs for me. He talked about bringing me home to Kansas City to meet his mother and sister.
We both began—in the most tentative, almost accidental way—to talk about the future. Places we would go, the kind of apartments we liked or didn’t like, whether we wanted kids someday. It was all framed innocently enough—do you want kids—yes and yes—could you ever see yourself living out in the country—him yes and me no—where will you go after all this is over—neither of us knew.
We skated around the real questions inside our spoken questions, but only just. His thoughtful attentions and orgasmic abuses were too much to withstand; what person could resist having Captain Maxen Ashley Colchester in love with them? Really? Who could have done it?
And late at night, after I’d been bruised and bitten and ridden, we’d talk about the war. Sometimes it was in my room at the base, sometimes it was in a scanty freezing outpost or out on patrol when the other soldiers were asleep, but it was always at night, always in the dark, with our faces tilted up to the ceiling or the sky. We talked about the things we’d do better or differently, the things we’d do the same if we were Congress or the President or NATO or the U.N.
I don’t know why I goaded him so much about going into politics then. Partly it was because I always knew I was going to be a politician and misery loves company—much in the same way married couples try to goad unmarried couples into getting wed. But partly it was because it just seemed like such a waste for someone as fundamentally moral and intelligent and charming not to go into politics. It was obvious he was born for it, molded and shaped for it, and the thought of Ash sitting in an insurance office or teaching high school government made me want to smash my head against a wall.
“Maybe I’ll just be career Army,” he’d say often enough when I brought up what we’d do after the war.
“You won’t,” I would promise him. “You love fixing things too much.”
He would scoff, and then I’d roll myself on top of him and murmur, “You fixed me.” And then the conversation would stop while I let him fix me over and over and over again.
And, in a strange way, I’d also grown comfortable with the corner of his heart that harbored the memory of someone who wasn’t me. His fierce attachment to this emails never waned, and there were countless times I’d see him coming out of the shower with color in his cheeks and hooded eyes. I realized that it was his way of keeping things separate—how he lived with himself—as if by taking care of his lust alone, he wasn’t betraying me by it. And once, just once, when we had a week’s leave and were drunk in Berlin, I leaned over to him in the hotel bar and whispered, “I want to pretend I’m her.”
His eyes had flashed then, and he’d searched my face for several long seconds. But we were both drunk and stupid and full of the unspoken feelings between us, and he’d brought me upstairs. The memory of the things he did to me that night still makes me ache.
There was also something attractive in having something to be jealous over, something to hurt for, that wasn’t my lie or our hidden relationship. How much easier it was to lie in my bed and pang over some teenager on the other side of the continent than it was to think about how I was putting Ash’s career and mine in danger, how I was denying Ash and me what we both really wanted.
Because even as we began to grow complacent about our boundaries in private, in public we were both model closeted men. We were careful about our assignations, how we interacted in front of the other soldiers. I made a point to go on plenty of fake dates, brought women to all the events I went to at home, partied with clouds of eager, young co-eds whenever I had the chance. Everything was fine on the surface. More than fine, it was good. As good as they get with an unwinnable war and bad food, at least.
All until the day Ash came into my room and said, “I’ve been selected for a promotion.”
I had been kicked back on my bed, reading Brideshead Revisited for the trillionth time since Ash had compared me to Sebastian Flyte all those years ago, and didn’t understand the importance of his words at first.
And then I did.
“To the rank of Major, if you were interested,” Ash clarified in a cool voice as I sat up.
“You’d have to go to Command School,” I said, thinking. Panicking. “How long?”
“Ten months.” His expression changed, softened a little. “It’s back home in Kansas. Fort Leavenworth.”
But my home is wherever you are, I wanted to say. But I didn’t. Because I could hear Merlin’s voice as clearly as I could hear my own. The voice telling me to sacrifice. All of the hiding for all this time—it had been for this.
“I’m happy for you,” I forced out. “Congratulations. You’ll make an excellent major.”
He sighed and sat on the edge of my bed. “I think I’m going to decline it. I want to stay here. Fight here. It would be irresponsible to leave.”
“Ash, you can’t be serious. Think of how much good you can do at the major level.”
He looked at me, and somehow I knew what he was going to say next. “Embry…”
“Don’t.” The word came out choked. “I mean it. Don’t.”
He did anyway. “It’s been almost three years. I’ve loved you for seven. If we retire from the Army after the war, there’s nothing stopping us from being together.”
I looked down at the old paperback in my hands, dog-eared and wavy-paged. Ash always teased me for reading in the shower, but I’d discovered it in a second-hand bookshop in Portland, and I maintained it had been this way when I found it. Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews stared out from the cover with their fresh faces and dapper clothes, Anthony Andrews holding tight to Sebastian’s trademark teddy bear.
Ash put his hand over the cover. “You’re not going to die drunk and alone, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“I was thinking that even Evelyn Waugh knew the best things don’t last. Nothing gold can stay and all that.”
“Wrong book, little prince.”
I pulled the book out from under Ash’s hand and tossed it on the end table. I couldn’t talk about this with him. I couldn’t look him in the face and lie, not tonight. If he pressed me, I was going to cave and tell him everything, that I wanted him for the rest of my life, I wanted the white picket fence, I’d even move to the country for him. “I should get some sleep,” I said, flicking off the cheap bedside lamp.
Ash stood. “This conversation isn’t done,” he told me, and left.
I went to sleep almost hoping it wasn’t.
A few days passed. There was a lull in activity that matched the weather—not really sunny and not really stormy, not really cold and not really hot—a cool gray womb devoid of anything interesting or noteworthy. For some it was a welcome break. For others, after the intense highs of incessant combat, it was unbearable boredom.
So when Ash asked me out to walk along the valley, I assumed he was bored and desperate to be outdoors and not bent over maps and emails in his office.
We went, taking our weapons with us as a precaution. The fog had already lifted for the day, beaten down by the waves of summer rain that drifted down from the heavy clouds overhead. The occasional shaft of sunshine pierced those clouds, sending shots of gold across the deeply green valley, making the clouds seem darker in comparison. Despite everything, my heart hummed at the sight, a combination of the Olympics and the stark beauty of the Scottish Highlands.
“It always seems different up here,” I said, staring out over the valley. “Not like there’s no war, but that war is such a small part of the world. Such a small part of living. Like there’s going to be a time later in my life where I’m just happy.”
I didn’t notice what he was doing until I stopped talking to glance over at him—a smile on my face acknowledging how absurdly I was talking—and then I stopped.
I could feel the smile slide off my face, feel my heart rise right into my throat.
Ash knelt beside me, facing me, a small black box in his hand.
No, I thought wildly, desperately.
“No,” I said, just as wildly, just as desperately.
“Embry, I’ve been in love with you for seven years. I’m never going to stop being in love with you.”
Don’t make me do this, I wanted to beg. Don’t make me have to say no.
“No,” I said.
“I’m a better man with you and because of you. I want to be the only one who gets to squeeze and bruise you. I want to be the only one to hear you sigh in your sleep. I want mine to be the face you see when you wake up.”
Tears burned, something balled in my throat and made it impossible to swallow or speak, but I still croaked out a weak, “No.”
“Stop saying no and listen to me,” he said with a smile. “Who cares about our careers? We’ll find new ones. If we have to live in Canada to adopt children, then we’ll move to Canada. I’ll do anything to be with you, give up anything.”
I hated him in that moment. Hated him for being so beautiful and pretty, so noble looking in that ancient valley. Hated how selfless he was, how much he loved me, how little he cared about his own future. It made it so much harder to say no. Because my very blood sang at the idea of saying yes.
“Ash, you can’t give up these things. Your career. You just can’t.”
He looked up at me. He was a painting on his knee like that, a storybook prince, aside from the assault rifle slung over his shoulder. “How many times have I risked my life to save yours? How many times have I proven that I would sacrifice anything for you? Sacrifice everything? What’s a job when I have you? What’s a place to live? If I have you, I have everything I need.”
That one word. Sacrifice. It stuck in my head, spinning madly around like a record, his voice, Merlin’s voice, my voice. Sacrifice, sacrifice, sacrifice.
I could say yes. I could let him put a ring on my finger and then we could fuck up here with the valley below us and the clouds above. We could finish this war and then find a place where it was legal to marry and do it. Build a life for ourselves, a gorgeous, wicked life of green eyes and whispered curses into the dark night air.
I could say yes.
I wanted to say yes.
I wanted to tell Ash that loving him was like a scar, like a disease, it would always be there, I’d never be cured of it, and I didn’t want to be. I wanted to tell him that I’d never met someone as courageous or as smart or as compassionate or as deliciously, dangerously red-blooded as him, and that I never would and that I never wanted to try.
I wanted to tell him I’d be his. I’d belong to him. His possession, for as long as he’d have me.
Sacrifice.
I didn’t tell him any of those things, though.
Instead, I told him one word.
“No.”
