Duty(2)
“I want you too,” she whispers. Her eyes are full of vulnerability.
This is forbidden. We’re not supposed to be doing this. We're not supposed to be seeing each other, we're not supposed to be having sex, and we sure as f*ck aren't supposed to be feeling for each other the way we do right now.
But as I gaze into her eyes and see nothing but desire back, I’ve already made up my mind.
Her needs are not only mine to fulfill. They’re my duty.
Chapter 1
Aaron
I'm sweating, even though it's cool and clear outside the classroom. Stress can do that to you, and for me, physics is stress-inducing to the extreme. I just can't quite wrap my head around some of the equations, and I'm the type of guy who needs to understand why before I can really get a good grasp on how to do something.
It's got nothing to do with the weather. Summer this year was hot as f*ck, and most of us sweated our asses off out at Camp Buckner, but fall has finally started to come to the Hudson River valley. Thank God. Another long ride in the blistering afternoon sun wasn’t something I was looking forward to. Maybe that's why I spent most of my training time working on swimming the first half of the semester. Now though, the fall has finally come, and I can get some damn work in on the weak points of my game.
Up front, Major Thompson, our Physics instructor, is tapping at the board, trying to get us to understand the slope problem that he's got up there. Of course, to try and make it seem 'interesting', the vehicle isn't just any car, but it’s a Stryker armored vehicle. Leave it to the United States Military Academy. They'll jam something military-based into every little nook and cranny they can.
One thing I've learned so far from my semester of physics . . . when it comes time to pick my mandatory engineering track, I sure as hell am not choosing something physics-based. I don't care how cool the catapults and little robots the mech engineers make are, or how impressive the juice guys are, getting to play around with real electrical generators. I'm staying as far away from this shit as I can.
Thankfully, before the Major can ask any of us twenty-four slightly stupefied and totally wasted-out cadets what the answers are to the problem he's jamming on the board, class time is up. “Okay, everyone, if you want more explanation, check on page eighty-seven of your textbooks. Remember, you have a test on this next week, and I guarantee you, there will be something like this problem on the quiz. Section leader.”
Classes at West Point are run military-fashion, which means at the beginning of each class, everyone stands at attention and the so-called 'section leader' reports to the instructor the status of everyone. All I can say is, thank God I'm not in the Old Corps. They had to march together from class to class sometimes.
Fuck that.
Leaving the classroom, I hurry out of Bartlett Hall, ignoring the few folks who give me a wave. If I'm going to catch the best of the weather, I've got to rush, although I've been rushing for a year and a half now. Firmly into the thick of my yuk year, the year most regular people at regular colleges call sophomore year, I'm just used to hauling ass from place to place.
The main problem is that my barracks is far from where I need to go next. I hurry up to the third floor, where I find my roomie, Matt Cho, already changing for intramurals. He's got on the ugly yellow pants that DPE issues for those crazy enough to play intramural football along with his pads and helmet, which are sitting at the foot of his bed. “Yo, Cho.”
“How was Phys-yuks?” he asks, fiddling with the retention strap on his glasses. It slips off the right bow again, and he slams his hand down on his desk in frustration. “Fucking hate these things. Strap keeps getting f*cked up.”
“Why not just buy a decent strap instead of f*cking with that 550 cord that you keep insisting on using? Or better yet, you're playing football. Just go hit the motherf*cker not wearing a black jersey,” I say, yanking my tie loose. Gotta hand it to West Point. The rest of the Army might be catching on to the fact that people have modernized and that the military is now a ninety-nine-percent field uniform service, but West Point keeps its traditions. Whether it's the twenty-seven pound, all-wool long overcoat we wear for the Army-Navy game, the parade uniforms that date back to the 1800s, or the 'as for class' uniform that I'm pulling off now with its black nylon shirt, black tie for fall and winter, polyester blend gray pants that come straight from the seventies, and black dress shoes, we keep our damn traditions.
Unfortunately for me, I keep another one of my personal traditions as I yank my tie off. My name tag, the same black plastic that officers use, catches on my tie and rips away from the metal pin backing, flying across my desk to bounce off my bookshelf. “Goddammit! That's four times this semester!”
“At least there are only two months of classes left this semester,” Cho notes, chuckling. “You spend more money on supergluing those damn name tags of yours together than you would if you just took the extra two seconds to take your tie off right.”
Cho and I have been roomies before, back when we were plebes. We tolerate each other, so at least I don't have it as bad as the girls on the floor below. The Corps of Cadets always tries to room people together in the same year group, and a few of the women in my company just hate each other. Seriously, I've thought of going downstairs a few times and telling them to shut the f*ck up. Sarah and Jordan go at it like an old married couple, and the only thing stopping me is that Sarah's my squad leader, a year ahead of me in rank. I don’t need her on my dick. But you try concentrating when shit's being thrown at the walls downstairs.