Encounter with a Commanding Officer

‘Part of what Rosie and Wilf did was have Family Night. Movie nights, where all the foster kids would join them in the den, watch a film together and eat burgers and popcorn; games nights where we’d gather around the kitchen and play board games; baking nights, which was actually where I first learned to cook something other than baked beans. When I first arrived I refused to join them; I’d spent every night on the streets and I thought I was cool.’

‘I bet they soon disabused you of that notion.’ Fliss smiled softly.

Warmth and light flowed over him and Ash suddenly found himself laughing fondly.

/> ‘You got that right. Movie nights quickly became my favourite and Rosie and I used to love to sit together on the couch and eat popcorn. I even kept going around when I’d left foster care.’

‘I remember you saying. I thought that was a lovely thing to do.’

‘One night we were watching a film and just when some character was being buried the popcorn went off in the kitchen. Immediately she joked that when she was cremated, she wanted to have popcorn kernels in with her so that she could go out with a bang. For some reason we couldn’t stop laughing and somehow it became a running joke, so when I saw that popcorn seller tonight it felt like it...meant something.’

‘You’re not really going to put the kernels in the coffin?’ Her face looked so concerned, so caring that he thought his heart was in a vice.

So much for keeping control of his emotions. For never letting anyone get too close to hurt him. He’d let Fliss in and when he hadn’t been looking she’d begun to tear down his defences.

‘Of course I’m not going to put them in the coffin.’ He shook his head gently at her. ‘But having them with me, it makes me feel like I haven’t forgotten how close we were.’

‘I get it, Ash. I do.’

Her quiet assurance somehow soothed his soul.

‘But if you change your mind,’ she offered. ‘If you need anything. Anything, Ash.’

‘I won’t,’ he told her quietly.

And then he took her again, both knowing it was for the last time. They stared at each other as he slid inside her. Until they were both driving it onwards, urgently, greedily, until she arched her whole body and called out as she tumbled into the abyss. And he cried her name and followed her.

Finally, he held her, dropping soft kisses on her body as her breathing eventually slowed and deepened and slumber overtook her. By the time he slipped silently from the bed, got dressed and left the room, Ash knew he had never found it harder to do the right thing.

* * *

The morning sun was streaming through the window by the time Fliss awoke again. Exquisitely sore, deliciously sated and inexplicably sad.

She rolled over, away from the empty space in the bed, and the dent on the pillow where Ash’s head had rested only a few hours earlier. Picking up her phone, she checked the time.

Oh-eight-hundred hours. Ash’s plane would be in the air and almost halfway home already.

The thought didn’t help her churning stomach.

Last night had been everything she’d expected it would be and more. She’d been fooling herself if she thought she could manage a one-night stand with anyone, but certainly not with a man like Ash. He had made her feel alive in a way she’d never dreamed possible. Her entire body ached, from her breasts which he’d grazed with his stubble, to her neck which he’d grazed with his teeth, and between her legs which had experienced such delicious torture.

But the part which ached the most was deep inside her heart and she feared it would never heal. Her only consolation was that at least she’d got out now, before she’d fallen for Ash Stirling, head over heels.

Impulsively, she picked up her mobile and dialled the only person she could.

‘Elle?’ Sinking on the bed with relief at the sound of her friend’s voice, she wondered how best to phrase her request, given that Elle only had two weeks of R&R with her fiancé before returning to Razorwire.

‘I’m so sorry, but I could really use a chat right now...’

She tailed off, shutting down the part of her brain that was screaming, I think I may have actually fallen for Ash.

‘Any chance I could call in to yours for an hour once I get back to the UK?’

‘You could—’ she heard Elle’s hesitant voice crackle over the phone ‘—but I’m not there.’

A frown deepened on Fliss’s face as she listened to her friend talk. Her explanation was so flimsy it could barely support its own weight. And the monotone voice was so different from Elle’s habitually jovial tone as they agreed a time and place.

So just what the heck was Elle doing on her own in an airport hotel room about an hour out of the RAF base on the outskirts of Oxford, when she should have been a hundred miles away enjoying her last two days of R&R with her fiancé, Stevie?