He sat with the others in a circle around an old scarred table. A couple of the guys were cleaning their guns, he was drawing a line on a map and talking to the boys about the kind of stuff he was smart about.
His eyes strayed to the sat phone on the table. He wouldn't use it to call her but it made him think about her and the soft, throaty sound of her voice when she broke open for him.
One of the guys got up and rummaged through a bag until he unearthed a pack of cigarettes and passed them around the table. Jack took the cigarette but played with it more than he smoked it. It was something to do with his hands and that first drag was all he really needed to calm his nerves. Things that had once been old hat had become that once more.
The youngest guy, the one who'd patched up the others after Morocco, mentioned a wife and it spun Jack into thoughts of Sam and how he thought himself grateful he had her and not a wife. The truth was, he was glad he had her and not the wife he used to have. It made him feel like an asshole because Sara didn't deserve that, but it was true that things were easier with Sam – she understood his duty and its aftermath better than most wives could. Then he wondered what she'd be like if the shoe was on the other foot and she was the one out on these missions. Would she take from him the way he took from her?
One of the guys clapped him on the shoulder and he looked up to realize they were all standing. It was time. They took a beat up pickup from the safe house. It was a sweltering night and Jack felt sweat bead up on his forehead and drip down his neck. His shirt stuck to him uncomfortably. The younger guys looked immune to the heat and Jack remembered those days. He felt old for a minute and then remembered tasting Sam in the parking lot of a bar and he didn't feel so old anymore.
They tore down a dusty road, bumping along so the guys in the back of the truck seemed to bob up and down. He wasn't driving, but he got the other spot in the cab of the truck where the hot, dry air whipped in. He looked in the side mirror and watched the road disappear behind them.
They stopped about two hundred yards from the mission objective and lumped it the rest of the way in. It was same old same old and it felt old even with the new guys on his flanks. They got in quiet and cleared the building one room after another until they found the room where the Goa'uld had set up camp. It took thirty seconds to put down the waste and they never even got to the part where the snakehead's eyes glowed. Jack took him out with two carefully placed shots that severed the snake in two.
It took another two minutes to collect all the tech. One of the guys looked crossways at a hand device but smartly didn't ask a question he knew he wouldn't get an answer to. Jack dropped it into his pack along with a personal shield device and a couple other doodads that looked snaky – he'd let the scientists figure it out later.
They were back in the truck before the engine stopped knocking. They drove back to the safe house and waited for the extract. He was on a plane before it even occurred to him that he was still soaked with sweat.
He didn't get to talk to her until he got back stateside. He took a hot shower then slipped into his bed at zero three hundred and almost didn't call her, didn't want to wake her. Except... he did want to wake her. He wanted the sound of her getting wet to drip over him. To hear her voice when she came so he could picture her looking like she had that night in the parking lot, head thrown back, mouth wide open.
Besides, he'd been keyed up since he'd gotten on the plane to come home, knowing she was just a phone call away had been enough to turn him from tired to throbbing.
She answered the phone sounding sleepy. He coaxed her into wakefulness with promises to make it worth her while. He was feeling generous. He helped her out of her tank top and panties one word at a time. He wanted her naked. He wanted her in his bed, under him and he told her all about it. How she'd be naked against his cool sheets, legs splayed wide open while she waited for him to look his fill.
He would start touching her, feet first, working his way up her long, pale legs. He'd find the places that made her spread her legs wider in want. He speculated about her ankles and the backs of her knees. She whimpered in his ear, her breaths turned to pants and he knew he had her.
He'd move on to her thighs, drawing patterns on the smooth skin leading closer and closer to where she wanted him, where she was warm, wet and fragrant. He knew her smell now, her taste, he could conjure it up. She made a throaty sound and he knew she'd just touched herself and he scolded her. Hands off. Not yet. Not until it was time. To keep her legs spread and wait. She cursed him and he chuckled low.
He'd move to her lips next, would coax her tongue into his mouth. He'd fuck her mouth with his tongue until she begged him to touch her, then he'd move on to her neck, to the places that made her shudder. She be dripping onto his sheets with wanting. She moaned long and low.
Next, he'd tongue her nipples into painful points. He told her to touch herself there as he told her how he'd bite, just past carefully until she writhed beneath him.
In his bed, alone but for the thoughts of her and the sound of her sharp tongue in his ear, he pushed his boxers off and reached for his straining erection. He wasn't going to beat her to finish line, not on this night, not when he was feeling generous. But he had to take the edge off, so he squeezed himself roughly and told her how he'd move his mouth down her body until his nose was buried in the slick cleft he'd claimed for his own.
He'd lick her from stem to stern, teasing her aching clit with gentle licks that weren't enough to get her anywhere, let alone close to coming. He would toy with her because he liked making her wetter and wetter, liked feeling her juices against his chin.
He told her how to touch herself so her movement matched his imagined actions. He talked her through moving her fingers from her clit to her entrance and then denied her the opportunity to fill herself and she played along, allowing him control where he didn't have any and it made him harder to feel the trust she put in him.
Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead and it took him back to a dusty road and a pickup truck. He tugged at himself, barely allowing full tendrils of pleasure to lick up his spine.
When he told her to slide two fingers inside herself, she made a sound reminiscent of pain and he knew he'd had her on the edge for too long. It humbled him, only a little under the circumstances, that she'd follow him even where her body wasn't sure it wanted to go. He broke then, took a moment's pity on her, and allowed her to lead her own pleasure to the precipice.
She came on a cry that made his balls clench in answer. He didn't give her time to come back down or time to decide she was going to return the favor, he just worked his hand over himself until he was spilling down his fingers to the sound of her pants and mewls of after-pleasure coming across the phone line.
When they were both breathing normally again, he fought the urge to disclose to her just what exactly he did on these missions that drove him to use her. But she was sounding sleepy and satiated and saved them both from the ramifications of his confession.
Before he hung up, and after he said soft things to her – something they didn't ever do – she reminded him what was waiting for him when he came home for good. He felt the tightness of arousal begin again at the idea of sliding, finally, into her warm and willing body.
He knew she'd be worth the wait.