Hard Corps (3 page)

Jacob made no reaction; it was as if the Neanderthal didn’t exist. ‘Get up, Remy,’ he said softly.

I stood shakily, wishing I could disappear. Dazed, I saw that quite a little crowd had gathered around us. They all seemed to be staring at my body as if I were a slice of beef that they needed for their sandwich. Jacob was the only one sitting. He was looking at me, his face impassive. Then he stood slowly, and held his hand out to me.

‘Come on, Remy. Let’s get out of this dump.’ Not sure what else to do, and hoping desperately to escape the leering eyes around me, I took the offered hand. He led me from the pub, still seemingly oblivious of the Neanderthal, who was glaring at us both with pure hatred. Enemy number two. What next?

W
e walked back in the direction of the senior quarters. He hadn’t even asked me if I wanted to go with him. I followed numbly, still dazed from the incident at the pub. I don’t know why I let it get to me so much. During the two weeks I had been at the Academy, and the six weeks in boot camp the summer before, I had been treated worse and spoken to in even cruder language. It went with the territory of being a toad. It was expected and accepted as part of one’s initiation into the Academy and the service. I knew that going in and, until now, it hadn’t really fazed me. I knew it wasn’t personal.

Maybe that was it. This had felt personal. Perhaps because Jacob was there, and he had sort of invited me on a date. So for a moment, I hadn’t been Harris, freshman toad, I had been Remy, just Remy. I had let down my guard. I made a mental note not to let it happen again. Not even with Jacob. He was my superior and I wouldn’t forget it again.

Because he was a senior, Jacob had his own room. It was military perfect. Everything was ship shape, as they say, with nothing out of place. Though a small room by civilian standards, it seemed spacious to me. I sighed a little as I thought of two more years sharing everything, including the shower, with nine other women. Juniors were allowed two to a room. But that was the drill and you weren’t allowed to live off campus at all.

Jacob gestured to a chair and I sat, still feeling shaken by the incident in the pub.

‘Listen,’ he said, getting two Cokes from the little refrigerator in the corner of the room. ‘Don’t let Decker bother you. He’s an asshole. He is ranked at the bottom of the class. He was too stupid to make it into Officer Training and is going to land some bureaucratic nobody desk job somewhere in the bowels of the military establishment. This is his last chance to lord it over someone. And he always picks the easy target. So a freshman girl is perfect fodder for his sadistic, creepy little games. Just ignore him.’

‘Well, I can’t ignore him. Asshole or not, he is my superior officer, just like you are. This isn’t just any college, you know. This is the Army, for all intents and purposes, and I am lowest ranked private scum there is.’

‘Fuck that, Remy. This place isn’t the army. This is some trumped-up bunch of kids playing at soldiers. Most of the guys here are insufferable frat-boy types or nerds who generally have little or no understanding of the real army or the essence of leadership, setting an example.

‘Sure, you can learn a lot here. It’s a good school academically and we have some great teachers. And I’m even willing to admit that you can learn a little about discipline and honour from the warmongering bullshit exercises they put you through during your tenure. But this isn’t “real life”. It’s school. Just get through it, and don’t get brainwashed by all the military trappings. It’s bullshit. There is a lot more this place has to offer, anyway.’

I just stared at him. Jacob had reduced everything I thought I admired in my parents and my country to bullshit in just a few sentences. I was too stunned to even be insulted. Jacob sat quietly, gazing back at me. He had a smile on his lips but his eyes seemed flecked with intensity, as if he had much more to say. His skin looked to be naturally fair, but was tanned by the sun. His nose was just slightly asymmetrical, as if it had been broken once.

He moved from the chair to the end of his bed, so that his knees were almost touching mine. ‘Let’s not talk about it anymore. I know you’re “regular army”. You have that expression, that “don’t fuck with me” face that so many of these eager-beaver cadets come in with. I’m willing to forgive you that.’

I bristled at this remark, at once pleased to be ‘regular army’ but also insulted because of his obvious distaste for that particular distinction. Basically, I was confused, which was something new for me at the time. I started to protest, not even sure which part I was protesting, when he leaned forward and stopped my argument with an exquisite attack by his lips to my surprised mouth.

Oh, that kiss. His lips crushed mine. His tongue raped my mouth. It wasn’t exploratory, tentative, groping, the way it was with boys I had kissed until that point. It was a claiming, a victory, an establishment of ownership. I didn’t know it at the time; I wouldn’t have described it that way then. But that is what it was. As he kissed me, he pulled me forward on to him. I felt his hard-muscled chest against my breasts. My nipples stiffened against him and I felt pleasure coursing through me, heating my blood.

The kiss continued, but now his hands were on me as well. I felt those large, strong hands moving down my sides and up again, leaving an electric path of sensation and desire. I moaned into his mouth, feeling a familiar ache in my loins that no man had yet satisfied. His hands responded, moving down to my belly, and further down.

I tried to pull away — things were moving too fast for me — but Jacob wouldn’t let me go. His kiss kept me mute as his hands roamed and explored my body. I felt his fingers slipping under my cotton shorts. I was struggling in earnest now; I was afraid.

Jacob at last seemed to notice my protestations. He stopped and pulled away from me. I lay on the bed, panting and still, trying to process what was happening to me. While my mind was trying to analyse and assess the situation, my body already knew just what it wanted. It wanted Jacob. I could feel the familiar tug at my sex as my clit throbbed.

Still, a part of me didn’t trust Jacob. Not yet anyway. We had only known each other a few hours! The struggle must have registered on my face, because Jacob leaned over me and whispered in a hoarse voice, ‘Come on, Remy. You want this as bad as I do. Don’t go all coy on me. What’s wrong?’

‘I don’t know. I’m scared. I’ve never, that is, I…’ I trailed away, terribly embarrassed to admit that I was a virgin. I turned my head from him, wishing I were older, braver, surer. It wasn’t that I was a prude, or had any moral quandary about ‘losing my virginity’. In fact, that very term seems absurd to me. It would be no loss to me: I regarded my virginity as a liability. But it was humiliating to admit to this older guy, who was obviously experienced, that I didn’t know what the hell I was doing.

He seemed to understand, though. Gently, he said, as he stroked my hair, ‘Remy, I want you. I want to claim you.’

Claim me. That’s what he said. I found it rather romantic, in a Gothic sort of way. At the time, of course, I had no idea that that was exactly what he intended to do. I nodded up to him, no longer caring that I had known him only for an afternoon. The time seemed right and I felt a strange attraction to him that I had never felt toward another person before. It was almost as if we had known one another at another time, as if we were old lovers finding each other again. I let him pull my shorts down and lift my T-shirt. I didn’t protest as he unclasped my bra and pulled down my panties.

His weight was on me, pinning me down, as his knee edged my thighs apart, roughly. A renewed moment of panic gripped me as I realised just how completely at his mercy I was at that moment. I was naked, with his full weight on me, his strong knee pressing my legs apart, opening me to his invasion. I started to whimper, to struggle, despite my rising desire. One hand came firmly across my mouth, while the other hand cupped my pussy. My breathing was harsh and fast, my breasts rising with fear and desire. As his fingers entered my tight, slick opening, I felt the panic begin to ebb away. Desire overtook the fear as he inserted first one, and then two, fingers inside of me. As he pulled them out, they grazed against my already hard clit, and I moaned with pleasure, my legs falling open. For a minute or so his fingers pulled and rubbed my clit, sliding down to enter my sopping, wet pussy, and sliding back up to tease my throbbing button. A little sigh escaped me as he withdrew and left me open, naked and exposed before him.

He stood up before lifting his shirt over his head and tossing it aside. He pushed his slacks down, and kicked out of them. I watched in wanton fascination as he peeled his underwear down, causing his fully erect cock to bob there just a few feet from my face.

It wasn’t the first cock I had seen. The other times had been in the back of my high school boyfriend’s car, late at night after one too many beers. We would jerk each other off with our fingers, and once or twice I tried to suck his cock, but could never quite manage to take the whole thing in.

But this was different. I was with a man at last. Not a boy. And neither of us was drunk. I knew Jacob expected more than a hand job. His penis was long and thick. It had one long throbbing vein from base to tip. The head was rosy and a drop of precum glistened from the tip. He was so erect that his cock was perpendicular to his hard stomach.

I licked my lips as I stared at his gorgeous body. Grinning at me, Jacob lay across my naked body and pulled my underwear all the way down till it caught at my ankles. His fingers found my clit again as his mouth covered mine.

I was ready. I was aching for what he offered. I barely cried out as his hard, rigid cock pressed its way into my tight opening. I wanted it. I was ready to receive him. I couldn’t believe how good it felt; it filled me up completely. I barely noticed the little rip of pain at the entrance as he began to fuck me, hard and sure. It felt so good, so good that I cried out like a petulant little girl when he suddenly withdrew, moaning.

He came in hot little streams of pearly, grey come, aiming his cock to shoot over my belly, my pussy, my breasts. I felt shocked, stunned. He had withdrawn the pleasure and then come all over me like I was some kind of whore. I felt my face flush with anger and shame. But at the same time something in me, something perverse perhaps, made me even wetter. I was on fire for this man who had just used my body for his own pleasure, disregarding my own needs.

Spent at last, he scooped me into his arms, ignoring the sticky mess that pressed between our sweating bodies. Then he held me, kissing my neck and throat as I lay still, legs clasped together, feeling fully now the pain of the intrusion coupled with my still-intense arousal.

He lay still, his eyes closed, one hand idly massaging my impossibly erect nipple. I didn’t dare say a word. I was way out of my league. But in only a few minutes, Jacob was erect and ready again.

‘This time,’ he said, kissing my breasts, lingering to pull and suck each nipple until I moaned in pleasure, ‘this time is for you.’

*   *   *

Inspection was at 1700 hours. I met the other girls an hour and a half beforehand so we could get the barracks ready. We scrubbed down the place, changed the sheets, and organised our footlockers and closets for a military inspection. I realised as I crouched next to the toilets, scrubbing the tiles with a rag, that I was still sore. Along with my stiff muscles from the week that had just passed, I could feel a dull ache in my pussy that wasn’t entirely unpleasant.

Thoughts of Jacob, naked and strong, making love to me in his room just an hour before, streamed through my mind like a silent movie. I was startled by the sound of Amelia’s voice right next to me.

‘You look like the cat that just ate the canary,’ she said, grinning at me, her head cocked to one side in an unspoken question.

Amelia had a lovely face, with skin like porcelain and large, innocent blue eyes. She had light-brown hair, cut with bangs that gave her a little-girl quality. With a dumpy body and short legs, however, Amelia was our ‘fat girl’. I wasn’t sure how she had gotten through the rigorous physical exam that all cadets are required to pass to enter the programme. Of course, when I say fat, it is a relative term. She wasn’t obese, just maybe twenty or twenty-five pounds over the ideal weight for her height, which was about five-four. But presumably she was able to surmount her weight problem, because she had made it through Hell Week with the rest of us. I was glad, actually, to see that she was still here. There had been snickering that Hell Week would be the end of Amelia. I was glad she’d proved them wrong.

When I didn’t offer an explanation, she asked, ‘What happened to you? You are positively beaming! There’s talk that you were seen with an upperclassman. Might that have something to do with it?’

Talk that I had been seen? Didn’t people have better things to do with their time, I wondered?

But to Amelia I simply said, ‘Oh, I guess I’m just glad that Hell Week is over. Today was so relaxing, riding my bike, enjoying the sunshine — ’

‘And getting reamed by a senior at the pub for not obeying protocol.’ Jean’s voiced poured over me like acid. She was standing just behind Amelia with a mop and bucket in her hand. I stared up at her in horror as she continued.

‘That’s right,’ she said loudly, in a voice designed to carry through the barracks. ‘She sucked her way into the good graces of some horny senior, and got him to buy her a burger. But she thought she was above standing when another senior came to the table. She forgot she was at the Academy; she thought she was back in high school on a date with the football captain.’

I stood then, easily five inches taller than Jean, who was dark and compact, but deceptively strong. She leaned forward, staring up at me, daring me with her expression to throw the first punch. I controlled my fury and embarrassment. I refused to give her the satisfaction.