Embarrassment over his earlier jerk-off session pushed out of his mind now, John found himself grinning and then outright laughing as he read Summer’s messages. Mermaid sex. Damn, even the woman’s emails read sexy. It was no wonder he was dreaming of her. He couldn’t help himself.
He found he thought of her often, particularly in his bunk at night when he should be catching up on much-needed sleep. Instead, he lay there and imagined what she looked like. How her voice sounded. What her hair smelled like.
Even just thinking about her had his dick getting hard, right there in the middle of the damn MWR. Maybe he should search the bookshelves and see if he could find that copy of her book. He decided to concentrate on writing back to her and hoped his dick—which obviously had a mind of its own, a mind it couldn’t keep off Summer either—would go down again.
Dear Summer,
Your life is far from boring. Believe me. I have read your blog, and from your emails I can tell you have quite a full life. A life you can be proud of.
Although I can’t say the space pirate vampire book would be something I would read myself, there is nothing wrong with being an expert in mermaid sex. Hehe. I can tell you from a man’s opinion that the mermaid sex sounds very intriguing. In any case, I am sure you will judge the books fairly and with an expert eye, even if sci-fi is not your thing. I have great faith in you.
My life here is the same old stuff, but given where I am, that is a good thing. I would rather not have the baddies learning any new tricks on my watch.
I can tell you I will
not
be giving Jazzy a kiss for you, but I will tell him you said hello. He has been bored and sneaking out of bed a lot lately, so I think he is feeling himself again.
I will give Morales and Gonzo your regards.
Have a great rest of your day,
John
He couldn’t believe that what had begun as a serious correspondence between them had degenerated to discussions of sex, even if it was fictional sci-fi sex, and that he enjoyed it so much. He should probably feel guilty about that, but he didn’t. Instead, John just really liked chatting with Summer. A lot.
John sent the email and did a quick calculation. It was still early afternoon in New York. Whenever he emailed Summer at this time of day, she usually emailed immediately back. Glancing around the MWR, John saw that word had gotten out and there was now a soldier on each computer and one waiting.
Damn.
John had let himself loosen up and even get a little bit flirty with her, as rusty as he was at this stuff. Now he felt nervous anticipating her response. What would Summer think? What would she reply? And what the hell was he getting himself into?
After logging off, he rose and relinquished his machine to the next man waiting. He wandered over to the coffee machine. If he hung around and killed a bit of time, maybe he could get online again and read Summer’s response before going to bed.
Cup of crappy coffee in hand—it just wasn’t in his nature to ask Summer to send more—John headed for the lone bookshelf that comprised the MWR library. The next best thing to reading Summer’s emails before going back to bed would be reading her sex book in bed. Mmm. Damn. Just the thought gave him another instant hard-on.
He began to read the titles on the shelves in earnest now. Suddenly he wanted that book and he wanted it here and now. Miraculously, it was there. Summer’s book was right on the shelf in front of him.
Looking around like a thief in the night to make sure no one was watching him, he grabbed the paperback. He shoved it beneath one arm and brought it directly to his room where it would stay. He was not a selfish man, but he wasn’t sharing this now that he had found it.
Chapter Ten
John lay in his bunk, the light bulb in the room’s single lamp angled to hit the pages of the battered paperback novel he already planned to keep hidden beneath his pillow during the day and secretly devour each night. No way was he putting his closest connection to Summer back on the shelf for someone else to pick up.
He’d already sat up for hours to read it. It was slow going since he’d gone over the good parts two times. Jazzy had been right. The book was way better than porn to fuel the imagination, but it was the woman herself that had John insane.
John found himself picturing Summer looking like the heroine in her novel—a petite, curvy brunette with brilliant green eyes and a sharp wit. He knew the sharp wit was there in Summer just from reading her emails. Now, he had become obsessed with discovering if she looked like the heroine also. A double-edged sword, that. What if when he finally did see her, he found her unattractive? What then? Was it better to continue to fantasize in the dark, literally under the covers of his rack, or learn the truth sooner rather than later?
He wanted more than just his imagination. But how the hell did he get a photo of her? Should he ask? John remembered Morales saying his girl had sent him pictures of herself in a bikini. Hmm. Had he asked her to send those or did she send them on her own? And what did the fact that Summer posted no photo anywhere on her website mean?
What if she was hideous?
No, that wasn’t possible. He somehow knew she would be exactly as he imagined her, and he found that image extremely attractive.
Then there was another thing that bothered him. Through their emails he had gotten to know her, the real woman, not just Summer the public persona. He wanted to know her real name.
His eyes opened wide as an idea came to him. Summer had sent Jazzy a get-well gift. She’d had it shipped directly from the store. Shouldn’t there be a packing slip in it with her real name on it? With Jazzy being laid up, John had offered to take the cardboard shipping box and throw it out for him. It was probably still right where he’d left it, leaning next to the garbage bin in the MWR. John scrambled to pull his uniform pants over the boxer briefs he wore.
Ignoring the glances of those inside, he skidded into the room and headed directly for the trash, and there it was, the box he’d hoped to find. He didn’t take the time to look for the paperwork then. He just grabbed the box and ran for the privacy of his own room.
There, behind the closed door, John pushed open the sides of the box. He saw a white form below the clear plastic which had wrapped the DVDs of Jazzy’s favorite television series. With hands that shook, John opened the paper, and there in the top left corner was the name Maureen Mullen.
He smiled.
Maureen
. That sounded more like the person he had gotten to know. Somehow this amazing female managed to be both the warm, kind-hearted Maureen as well as the sexy and sultry Summer.
John had to reconcile himself that those two personas were actually contained within one incredible woman, an opinion he’d formed without ever meeting or even seeing a picture of her.
This online romance stuff was tough.
Romance
? Shit. Had he really just thought that word? And was that what this thing with Summer—Maureen—had become? A romance?
All of John’s obsessive thinking did nothing but raise more questions and supply no answers. One thing was clear—both Summer and Maureen occupied his thoughts more often than was healthy. Day and night, during missions, at chow, during his workouts at the camp gym, in bed…
He rose from the mattress and headed again for the place where he spent increasing amounts of time, the MWR.
At this ungodly late hour there was no line. John picked one of the two available machines and logged in.
Smiling, he found an email waiting for him from Maureen—he was beginning to think of her as that already. It wasn’t much, just a hello and wishing him a good day, but simply finding it made him feel as good as if he had just won a million bucks.
He would have to watch it or the guys would know something was up. John realized he was smiling way more than usual, and Jazzy for one would definitely notice. They were a close group of men, but when it came to his love life, John was a very private person.
His love life…damn. He hadn’t had one of those in a long time. To his amazement, he wasn’t that upset he was thinking about having one now. But did she feel the same? He had to find out somehow.
Hitting
Reply
, he decided enough was enough. He wanted some answers before he got any more involved with this woman. Maybe his determination was caused by sleep deprivation. Or perhaps what had happened to Jazzy reinforced what John already knew—every moment could be his last.
John took a deep breath and plunged in headfirst.
Dear Summer,
I have a confession to make. I have read your book and I enjoyed it immensely. I think about your heroine—so smart and sexy—and wonder if you modeled her after yourself.
Since we have been corresponding, I think about you too and wonder. Things like, what do you look like, what does your voice sound like?
While I am confessing, I will also tell you that I looked at the packing slip in the box you sent Jazzy and found the name Maureen. Does anyone call you by your real name? If so, would you mind if I did?
Anyway, it is very late here. I look forward to talking with you tomorrow.
Yours,
John
He hit the
Send
button and sat back from the shock that he had basically just confessed to this woman who should be a veritable stranger but wasn’t, that he was attracted to her.
John hadn’t exactly come out and said it, but with his track record of running and hiding from relationships, it might as well have been a love letter.
Chapter Eleven
The soft chime heralded a new email as a pop-up balloon that read,
You have a new email from SSgt John Blake
appeared on screen.
Maureen scurried to open it. Her heart skipped a beat, and she felt a smile cross her face just anticipating reading his words. Then three words popped into her head that stopped Maureen dead in her tracks and wiped the smile from her face.
I love him.
She sat in shock and stared at the screen of her computer as the ramifications of the unbidden thought sunk in. They had only been corresponding for a few weeks. They had been innocently flirting—all right, maybe not so innocently—for far less time than that. How could she feel this way? She’d never even met the man.
Was it possible she could be falling for him? People fell in love online all the time on dating websites. Only they hadn’t met on a dating website where you knew the person you were corresponding with was at least interested in a relationship. And when on those sites, the people usually met in person at some point. He’d never discussed when or if he was coming to the States, or even about them meeting.
Maybe she was just romanticizing the entire situation. The whole scenario was worthy of a romance novel. Deployed soldier in danger of being killed or wounded. The woman who writes to him to relieve his loneliness.
That had to be it. It was just the war. Emotions ran high during times of war. Just like how men and women who barely knew each other during World War II would write letters to one another and fall in love and get married, sometimes not in that order.
Maureen realized she was shaking as she began to read John’s email. Either he was interested in her or she didn’t know anything at all about men. Although with her record of comically bad dates, the second was a definite possibility.
He’d written that he wondered what she looked like. He’d asked if he could call her by her real name. If John was thinking about her, he couldn’t be married. Right? God, she hoped she was right. Falling in love with a married soldier would be bad. Really, really bad.
She chose, for the moment anyway, to assume he was single and proceed accordingly. She’d work on Jazzy for an answer to her question next.
Weeks ago, Peter had emailed her some pictures of the two of them together. They were taken on the first of their bad double dates so she was dressed up and had makeup on. Her hair even looked good in them.
Peter had joked they needed photos to commemorate their great social experiment, that one day Summer Winters might come out of the romance-writer closet and want the pictures to publish in her memoirs. Her memoirs were far down the road—she wasn’t even thirty years old yet—but she was happy to have the pictures now.
John had figured out her real name. Tiffany had noticed the similarity of Maureen’s dating experiment and the one on Summer’s blog. Others eventually might too. Her days of secrecy might be numbered, but as long as she was still living the secret life of an erotic author, Maureen couldn’t post a photo on her website. She could definitely send John a photo and let him use her real name in their emails though.
Something about him calling her Maureen made the whole thing seem more real.
After glancing over the wall of her cubicle to make sure nosy Tiffany or their boss, Pam, wasn’t nearby, Maureen opened the pictures Peter had sent. She carefully inspected each of the photos. She finally selected one that not only didn’t embarrass her like most pictures of herself did, but made her boobs look really good. Peter was right—the wrap dress showed them off nicely. If they looked good enough for a gay man to notice, a deployed soldier cut off from female companionship for months at a time should really be impressed.