Chapter 3: The Reckoning
The shattered porcelain from the kitchen floor crunched under Landon’s boots as he carried her, a stark, granular sound against the quiet hum of the apartment. Her legs were locked around his waist, her mouth still tasting of him and pork and chive. He didn’t turn on the bedroom light. The vast, city-lit darkness of her penthouse bedroom swallowed them whole, the floor-to-ceiling windows a cascade of cold, distant stars.
He laid her on the bed, the duvet cool and silken against her bare back. For a moment, he just stood over her, a broad silhouette against the glowing skyline, breathing hard. The hunger in his eyes was visible even in the low light, a raw, stark need that mirrored the pounding in her own veins.
“Tell me to stop,” he said, his voice a grated, low thing. It wasn’t a plea. It was a challenge.
She reached for him, hooking her fingers in the belt loops of his jeans, and pulled him down. “Don’t you fucking dare.”
That was all he needed.
His hands, those capable pilot’s hands, moved with a military efficiency that turned urgent, feral. He yanked her ruined sweater over her head. The button of her jeans popped, skittering across the floor. He peeled the denim down her legs, his calloused palms scraping her thighs, and tossed them aside. When his mouth found hers again, the kiss was pure possession, all tongue and teeth and swallowed moans.
He broke away, his breathing ragged, and stared down at her naked body, illuminated in shades of blue and gray by the city. “Christ, Melody.” The words were ripped from him, a reverence and a curse all at once.
Then he was on her, his mouth blazing a trail down her throat, over her collarbones, lower. He took one nipple into his mouth, sucking hard, his tongue circling the peaked bud until she cried out, her back arching off the bed. He gave the same fierce attention to the other, his hand kneading the soft weight of her breast, his thumb rolling over the wet, sensitive tip. The sensations were overwhelming, a direct feed to her core, where a deep, aching throb had taken root.
He moved down her body, his stubble rough against the soft skin of her stomach. He hooked his hands under her knees, pushing them apart, opening her to the cool air and his hot gaze. She was completely exposed, utterly vulnerable, and the want that flooded her was so intense it bordered on pain.
“Look at you,” he muttered, more to himself than to her. “So fucking wet for me.”
He didn’t wait. He buried his face between her legs.
The first broad, flat stroke of his tongue made her fists clench in the sheets. He licked her from her entrance to her clit in one slow, deliberate motion, tasting her deeply. A guttural sound, half-sob, half-scream, tore from her throat. He groaned against her, the vibration setting her nerve endings on fire.
Then he focused. His mouth closed over her clit, suckling firmly, his tongue painting tight, rapid circles over the swollen nub. One of his hands slid under her ass, lifting her, angling her for his devouring. The other hand parted her folds, his thumb finding her dripping entrance and pushing inside, just a fraction, while his mouth worked her.
“Oh, God… Landon…” Her words dissolved into incoherent gasps. The dual sensation was too much—the relentless, expert suction on her clit, the rough promise of his thumb at her opening. Her hips bucked against his face, seeking more pressure, more friction, more of him. He held her down, his grip unyielding, and doubled his efforts. His tongue flicked faster, his suction tightened. The coil deep in her belly wound tighter and tighter, a spring loaded to the point of snapping.
“Come on,” he growled against her, his voice muffled and wet. “Come on my face. Let me taste it.”
The filthy command, delivered in that familiar, beloved voice, shattered her. Her orgasm exploded through her, a violent, seismic wave that contracted her entire body. She screamed, the sound raw and ragged, as the pulses rocked through her, milking his thumb, soaking his chin. He rode it out with her, his tongue gentling to soft, lapping strokes, drinking her in until she was trembling and oversensitive, pushing weakly at his head.
He crawled up her body, his face glistening in the low light. He kissed her, letting her taste herself on his lips, salty and musky and intimately hers. She could feel the hard length of him straining against his jeans, pressed against her thigh.
“Need you,” she panted, her hands fumbling for his belt. “Now.”
He stood up, just for a moment, to shed his clothes. He stepped out of his jeans and boxer briefs, his cock springing free, thick and heavy and erect. The sight of him, fully naked and outlined against the city’s glow, was breathtaking. The defined muscles of his chest and shoulders, the dark trail of hair leading down, the formidable reality of his desire for her. He was every fantasy she’d had for years, made flesh.
He came back to her, kneeling between her legs. He reached for a pillow and shoved it under her hips, lifting her. The head of his cock nudged against her, slick with her own wetness. He looked into her eyes, his own dark with an emotion too complex to name.
“This change everything,” he whispered, a final, desperate anchor to reality.
“I know,” she breathed, and wrapped her legs high around his waist. “Just fuck me.”
He drove into her.
The stretch was exquisite, a burning, perfect fullness that made her gasp. He was big, and she was tight, and for a second he held himself still, buried to the hilt, letting her body adjust, his forehead dropped to hers. She could feel every vein, every pulse of him inside her. Then he began to move.
It was not love-making. It was a collision. He withdrew almost completely and slammed back in, setting a brutal, pounding rhythm from the start. The bed rocked against the wall with each thrust. Her nails dug into the hard muscles of his back, surely drawing blood. He fucked her with a single-minded intensity, each stroke a claim, a punishment, a homecoming.
“Is this what he does?” Landon grunted, his hips pistonning against hers. “Your surgeon? Does he fuck you like this? Does he make you scream?”
“No,” she cried out, the truth ripped from her. “No one… fuck… no one ever.”
He changed the angle, leaning over her, and the next thrust hit a spot so deep and so perfect her vision whited out. A broken scream was torn from her lungs. “There,” he snarled, a vicious satisfaction in his voice. He nailed that spot again, and again, a relentless, precision assault. “That’s mine. You feel that? That’s for me.”
She was unraveling again, a second climax building atop the shockwaves of the first, hotter and deeper. She was so full of him, consumed by the smell of their sweat, the slap of skin, his ragged breath in her ear. “Landon, please… I’m gonna…”
“Do it,” he commanded, his pace becoming frantic, losing its military rhythm, becoming pure, untamed need. “Come on my cock. Now.”
He plunged into her, one final, deep stroke, and held there, grinding against her clit as he spilled inside her with a guttural shout that was half her name, half a wordless roar. The feel of him pulsing, of his release flooding her, triggered her own. She clamped around him, her body seizing in waves of electric pleasure so intense they blurred into pain, her cries muffled against his shoulder.
He collapsed on top of her, his full weight pressing her into the mattress, both of them slick with sweat and shaking. He was still inside her, softening slowly. The only sounds were their harsh, gulping breaths and the distant siren of a city that felt a world away.
Minutes passed. The cool air began to chill their overheated skin. He rolled off her with a slow, careful motion, pulling out. A faint, guilty twinge followed the emptiness. He lay on his back beside her, staring at the dark ceiling.
Her body hummed, utterly spent, every nerve feeling scraped raw and alive. Her mind was a blank, blissful static. Slowly, the world seeped back in. The feel of the rumpled sheets. The smell of sex, thick in the air. The reality of the man beside her.
“I haven’t,” he said into the darkness, his voice hollow and exhausted. “Not since you.”
The words landed in the quiet room with the weight of a confession. Celibacy. He’d whispered it earlier, in the shuddering aftermath in the kitchen. Now, lying bare in her bed, it felt like a verdict.
Her heart, which had been hammering against her ribs, seemed to freeze, then clench into a hard, painful knot. She turned her head to look at him. His profile was sharp against the window light, his eyes fixed on nothing. “Seven years?” she whispered, the math inevitable and devastating.
He gave a single, almost imperceptible nod. “Never felt right. With anyone else.”
A thousand emotions warred inside her—a soaring, primal satisfaction that he was hers, in this way at least; a crushing, guilty grief for the lonely years he’d spent; a fierce, protective anger at the distance his career had demanded. But overriding it all was a deep, shameful horror. While he’d been faithful to a ghost, she had been spreading herself thin on the altar of ambition, letting Julian Thorne claim parts of her in crisp hospital on-call rooms and luxury penthouses.
She reached for him, her fingers finding his on the sheet between them. He laced his with hers, his grip tight.
He laced his with hers, his grip tight. She shifted, curling her body into the hard line of his side, her leg thrown over his, her face buried in the warm hollow of his shoulder. She was a vine clinging to a mountain, all softness seeking his solidity, her skin adhering to his with a thin film of sweat. He felt utterly spent, his muscles liquid, his mind blissfully silent; he was dead, and he was in heaven, and the only thing anchoring him to earth was the weight of her head on his chest.
“All that time,” she whispered into his skin, her breath warm. Her fingers traced idle patterns through the coarse hair on his sternum.
“Yeah.” The word was rough, a confession expelled.
“Must’ve been lonely.” Her voice held no pity, only a stark comprehension.
He turned his head, his lips brushing her forehead. “It was a choice. Not a punishment.” He paused. “Though it felt like one some nights.”
She rose up on one elbow then, her blonde hair a messy curtain around her face. The city light caught the green of her eyes, turning them luminous. A slow, wicked smile played on her lips. “So, all that pent-up frustration… seven years’ worth. And you wasted it all on me in one go?”
He snorted, a real laugh that shook his chest under her. “Hardly a waste.” His hand came up to cup her jaw, his thumb stroking her cheekbone. “And who says we’re done?” He pulled her down for a kiss, slow and deep and languid, all the previous frantic hunger replaced by a exploring tenderness. They kissed like they had all the time in the world, learning the new-old landscape of each other’s mouths, their hands roaming over skin now familiar.
He rolled her onto her back, settling over her, his weight a delicious anchor. He kissed her throat, the sensitive spot behind her ear, while his hand cupped her breast, his thumb lazily circling her nipple until it tightened into a pebbled peak. “Still so fucking perfect,” he murmured against her skin, his voice husky with renewed want.
“You’re insatiable,” she breathed, but she arched into his touch, her body already responding.
“For you?” He lowered his head, taking that taut nipple into his mouth, suckling gently. “Always.”
They made out for what felt like hours, a lazy, naked tangle of limbs and whispered teases. He told her she kissed like she was trying to win a debate, all passion and pointed intent. She retorted that he kissed like he was filing a flight plan, thorough and destined for a specific destination. He demonstrated the destination by sliding his hand between her thighs, finding her wet and ready again. She guided him inside with a sigh that was pure contentment, and they moved together in a slow, rolling rhythm that was less about frenzy and more about rediscovery, each thrust a whispered question answered by the clutch of her body.
Later, sated again and wrapped in each other, they lay facing one another on the rumpled sheets. He traced the line of her eyebrow, then her lips. “I’m gonna miss this,” he said, his voice soft, almost sleepy.
“Mmm, I’ll be here,” she murmured, nuzzling his hand. “My schedule’s a nightmare, but we’ll figure it out. Your place in Tacoma isn’t that far.”
He went very still. The easy affection in his eyes fractured, replaced by a wariness. “Mel…”
“What?” she said, the drowsiness leaving her voice.
He took a breath, the air seeming to solidify between them. “I’m not stationed at McChord anymore. My next rotation… it’s overseas.”
She blinked, the cozy warmth evaporating in an instant. “Where?”
“Iraq.”
The word landed between them like a physical object. She pushed herself up, the sheet pooling around her waist. The distant city lights painted her naked torso in a cold, blue gleam. “Iraq.” She repeated it flatly, the word tasting of dust and sand and an old, familiar betrayal. “You said your combat deployments were over. You told me that. After the last one, you said it was training rotations stateside from now on. You said it even to your parents.”
“That was the projection then,” he said, sitting up too, the muscles in his back tense. “Things change. The needs of the service—”
“The needs of the service,” she cut in, her voice rising, sharp as a scalpel. “That’s your fucking mantra, isn’t it? The noble, infallible service.” She scrambled off the bed, her nakedness suddenly feeling less like intimacy and more like vulnerability. She grabbed her robe from a chair, yanking it on, the silk doing nothing to cover her fury.
“Melody, it’s six months. Maybe nine.”
“Maybe nine!” She whirled on him, her eyes blazing. “You disappear for a year, Landon! A year where I sit here and wonder if a call is coming that you’re…” She couldn’t say it. The old ghost of that fear, so potent during his last deployment, rose up to choke her. “And for what? So you can fly jets or cargo in and out of a desert? You’ve done your time. You’ve given them enough.”
“It’s not just cargo,” he said, his own temper rising as he stood, gloriously, aggravatingly naked and unashamed. “It’s my job. It’s what I do.”
“It’s what you choose!” she shouted. The force of it echoed in the spacious room. She was magnificent in her anger, her hair a wild halo, her robe gaping to reveal the curves he’d just worshipped, her face flushed with passionate, frustrated fury. “You choose it over and over again. You chose it over me seven years ago. And you’re choosing it now, right here in my bedroom, after… after this.” She gestured wildly at the bed, at the evidence of their shattered history and reignited passion.
“It’s not a choice like that!” he fired back, stepping toward her. “It’s a commitment. It’s who I am.”
“Then be who you are somewhere else!” Her voice cracked. She was crying now, hot, angry tears tracking through her fury. “I can’t do this again. I won’t. I spent years putting myself back together after you left. I built a life. A hard, complicated, ambitious life. And I was going to move in with Julian Thorne, for Christ’s sake. I was going to have that empty, prestigious future because it was here, and it was safe, and it was present.”
She took a shuddering breath, wiping her face with a vicious swipe of her hand. “And then you walk back in. And you look at me. And you touch me. And I feel it, Landon. I feel it all, the five-kid daydream, the whole stupid, beautiful fantasy I tried to bury.” She hugged herself, the pose both defensive and defiant. “But I am not twenty-one anymore. I will not be the girl who waits.”
He stood frozen, his face a mask of conflict, the cityscape a indifferent tapestry behind him.
“So here it is,” she said, her voice dropping to a cold, clear register that brooked no argument. “Your final ultimatum. Not from a girlfriend, but from a woman who knows what she will and won’t survive. It’s the Air Force, or it’s me. It’s the desert, or it’s a future. Our future. The one with the five kids and the chaos and the life we used to talk about.”
She took a step closer, her gaze locking onto his, unflinching. “If you get on that plane to Iraq, you make me a promise. You promise to never approach me again. You don’t call. You don’t write. You don’t show up at my hospital or my door. You become a ghost. Because I cannot live with one foot in a dream and the other in your reality. You choose. But if you choose them…” Her voice, though quiet, filled the entire room. “You have to promise to leave me alone forever.”
He didn’t answer.
He just stood there, naked and impossibly still, the city’s cold light etching the definition of his shoulders, the tense line of his jaw. The air between them hummed with the unsaid. The choice wasn’t a choice at all; they both knew the answer already. His silence was the only answer he could give. It was written in the set of his mouth, the sorrow finally eclipsing the anger in his eyes. It was in the very bones of him, the duty woven into his fiber long before she had ever etched her name upon his heart.
A choked sound escaped her, a half-laugh, half-sob of utter defeat. “Yeah,” she whispered, the fight draining from her like blood from a wound. “That’s what I thought.”
He crossed the space in two long strides, his hands coming up to cradle her face. His thumbs brushed away the tears tracing hot paths down her cheeks. “I promise that,” he said, his voice ragged. “To never see you again. To never touch you?” He shook his head slowly. “But I can give you tonight. One last night where it’s just us. No past. No future. Just this.”
He kissed her then, a soft, devastating press of his lips against hers that tasted of salt and finality. She didn’t resist. She opened to him, her arms winding around his neck, pulling him into the kiss as if she could absorb him through her skin. This was the morphine drip before the amputation. A merciful, necessary poison.
Their movements were different now. Slower. Deliberate. He untied the silk belt of her robe, letting it slip from her shoulders to pool on the floor. He didn’t lift her or carry her. He simply guided her backward until her calves hit the edge of the mattress, and she sat, then lay back, watching him as he followed her down.
He kissed her everywhere but her mouth. The hollow of her throat. The soft underside of her breast. The delicate skin of her inner wrist. Each kiss was a memory he was cataloguing, a sensation he was banking against the coming cold. She watched his face, the concentration there, the pain held tightly behind his eyes. She ran her fingers through his hair, clutching at the dark strands.
When his mouth found her between her thighs, it wasn’t with the furious hunger of before. It was solemn, almost reverent. He lapped at her slowly, exploring every fold, committing her taste and her scent to some permanent archive within him. She cried out, but it was a broken sound, her hips lifting not with passion but with a desperate, clinging need. Her orgasm, when it came, was a deep, rolling shudder that left her weeping openly, her body trembling under the relentless, gentle torture of his tongue.
He rose over her, his own face wet. He didn’t ask. He simply guided his cock to her entrance, slick from his mouth and her own tears. He pushed inside with an excruciating slowness that made them both gasp. She wrapped her legs around him, locking her ankles at the small of his back, as if she could physically keep him there.
They didn’t move for a long moment. They just breathed, joined, staring at each other through the gloom. The connection was more than physical; it was a full, terrifying merger of two souls who had never truly been apart. He lowered his forehead to hers, their breath mingling.
“I love you,” he whispered, the words a raw scrape against her soul. “More than my own life. You have to know that.”
“Then choose me,” she begged, her voice a child’s whisper.
He closed his eyes, a single tear escaping to fall onto her cheek, mingling with hers. He began to move.
It was a savage, grieving rhythm. Each thrust was a punctuation mark on a sentence ending too soon. Her nails dug into the hard planes of his back, not in passion, but in a futile attempt to anchor him to her flesh. He fucked her with a deep, grinding intensity, his hips driving into hers with a force that shook the bedframe, a physical manifestation of his impossible choice. She met every stroke, rising to meet him, their bodies slapping together in a wet, messy cadence of farewell.
“You feel so good,” he choked out, his pace faltering, his control shattering. “So fucking perfect. My Melody. Mine.”
“Yours,” she sobbed, the claim a truth and a curse. “Always yours.”
He came with a raw shout, his body bowing over hers, his release pumping into her in hot, helpless pulses. She clenched around him, her own climax a silent, convulsing thing, a wave of pleasure so intertwined with agony she couldn’t tell them apart. He collapsed, his full weight on her, his face buried in the damp hair at her neck. She could feel the wet heat of his tears there.
They lay like that until the shaking stopped, until their sweat grew cold. He withdrew carefully and gathered her against him, spooning her from behind, his arms a vise around her waist. No words were left. The city outside lightened from black to deep slate gray. Dawn was a rumor at the edge of the sky.
She must have slept, because the shift in the bed woke her. The warmth at her back was gone. She heard the soft rustle of fabric—him pulling on his clothes. She kept her eyes shut, her breathing even, feigning sleep. She couldn’t bear the final look, the last goodbye.
The mattress dipped as he sat on the edge. She felt his gaze on her face, a physical weight. Then, the softest brush of his lips against her temple. The whisper was so faint she might have imagined it, but it seared into her memory, a brand.
“I love you more than my life.”
She held herself perfectly still, a statue of a woman asleep. She heard his footsteps recede across the floor, quiet and sure. The click of her bedroom door opening. A pause. Then the soft, definitive snick of the latch engaging as it closed behind him.
The sound was microscopic in the vast quiet of the room. It was the sound of a world ending.
A tremor started deep in her core, a seismic fault line giving way. It travelled up through her stomach, her chest, her throat. It burst from her as a wail, primal and shattered, into the empty pillow. She curled into a tight ball, the sobs racking her body, violent and uncontrollable. She cried for the boy who dreamed of five kids, for the man who chose the sky, for the woman left behind in a bed that smelled of him, for the future that had just walked out the door and clicked quietly shut. She cried until her throat was raw and her eyes burned, alone in the gathering light of a Seattle morning.