Front Lines (Front Lines #1)(66)

Rio does not overlook the use of the word beautiful. She files it away for later enjoyment.

“Strand, even if I wanted out, that’s not the way it works.” She waves her hands down her front to indicate her uniform. “I’m in the army. I would go to prison if I tried to leave. You must know that.”

He starts to argue, realizes she’s right, and settles for a lame, “I just don’t want you to be hurt.”

“I don’t want you to be hurt either.”

He shakes his head ruefully. “This stupid war. FUBAR.”

On that they agree. Rio moves the conversation to safer topics, but as they talk of home and mutual acquaintances they are moving, by incremental shifts of weight, ever closer. Neither acknowledges it when their knees come to touch, but they chat on, though with voices newly weighed down by feelings that rise from within. Surprising feelings, to Rio, unsettling feelings. She wants to touch his face. She wants to push her fingers through his hair and . . .

It’s the suddenness of desire that unnerves her. She’s thought about him often during the long weeks of training. Being around loud, unruly men has not soured her on men, at least not on this one. But every part of her relationship with Strand has been like this: sudden. And now she wants him to stop talking and saying stupid things and kiss her.

She wants him to kiss her, and now as he goes on and on, she’s thinking more and more about just doing it herself. She could, couldn’t she? No. No, no, that isn’t done. Girls do not make the first move.

But why? Surely he wants to kiss her and is just being a gentleman. Surely he’ll enjoy it. After all, he must be . . . rambunctious . . . too.

Her fingers twitch, her hands move, but she stops herself. He’ll be shocked. He’ll think all this army stuff has changed her.

Maybe it has.

“Do you think your friends will be back soon?” she asks, interrupting him in midsentence.

“What? Oh, um . . . I suppose so.”

“Mmm. It’s nice having a little privacy, even if it won’t last long.” This is not subtle. It takes him a while to figure it out, and when he does she sees that slight shock, that slight note of disapproval on his face. But she doesn’t care.

“Are you . . . Do you . . . ?” Strand asks.

At that she loses patience, leans into him, tilts her head, and leaves him with no practical choice but to kiss her. She doesn’t make the first contact, so she has deniability; she hasn’t quite become a hussy, but she has at last made her desires clear.

It is a very nice kiss. It lasts several seconds, and then Strand pulls back. But Rio is not done. She does not pull away. She remains so close that he cannot possibly mistake her intentions. This time when their lips meet it is with open mouths, and her hand does push through his hair. He knocks the service cap from her head and she puts her other hand behind his neck and he covers her cheek with his hand. He slides over to sit beside her, never breaking contact, eyes closed. His tongue is in her mouth and a sound like an animal growl somehow comes from her, a sound she has never even imagined making before, and an answering sound in a deeper register comes from him, and now hands are going to places only Rio has ever touched and—

“Knock, knock.” It’s Lefty’s voice. To drive home the point he raps his knuckles on the side of the boat. “Permission to come aboard.”

“Oh sure, of course, um—” Strand says.

“Yes, we aren’t . . . yes,” Rio manages.

Lefty’s face appears above the gunwale. “I see you’re discussing war strategy,” he says flatly.

“I have to . . . um, better get to chow,” Rio says, unconsciously pushing her hair back in place and fumbling around for her cap. “They, you know . . . check on us.”

“Ri-i-ight,” Lefty says.

“Okay, so. It was good catching up, Strand.”

“Yes, it was,” he says stiffly.

They shake hands, a move so patently false that Lefty guffaws loudly.

Rio climbs out, helped down by Strand’s two other friends, armed now with a small canned ham they must have “liberated” from the mess kitchen.

Rio heads toward her berth, ignoring the usual male catcalls, ignoring even the outstretched hands, the kissy-faces, and all the rest. She finds Jenou in her bunk.

Jenou takes one look at her and says, “You’ve got a little slobber on your cheek.”

Rio climbs up and slides into Jenou’s bunk beside her. There’s very little room as they lie on their sides, face to face, like the old days.

“We kissed,” Rio confides.

“No kidding.”

“I’ve never done it that way before.”

This brightens Jenou’s eyes. She’s like a hungry cat being presented with a dish of milk. “You mean . . . tongue?”

“Eww! Do you have to be so disgusting?” Then, in a whisper, “Yes!”

“Did you like it?”

Rio hesitates. She’s not uncertain as to whether she liked it; she’s searching for the right way to put it. “Better than ice cream.”

“Better than—”

“Better than chocolate.”

“Wow.”

“You know how you told me that girls can have those feelings too?”

“Those feelings?” Jenou repeats, being deliberately obtuse to provoke her friend. “Which feelings are you talking about exactly?”