Hard Corps Read online

  ‘So, Harris. We did it. We’re full-fledged toadies now.’ He grinned happily and I grinned back at him. A lot of the freshmen boys had taken their cue from the upperclassmen, and treated us girls as if we were intruders who didn’t belong. At least Brady treated me as an equal.

  ‘Yep. Now we get the honour of being treated like shit for the rest of the year by a bunch of asshole upperclassmen. But at least we get to sleep all day tomorrow.’

  ‘Yeah, well, not me. I’ve got more important things to do.’ Without further explanation, he said ‘good night’ and headed toward his dorm. I did the same, wondering what could be so important for a toad to do during his one Sunday off since we’d arrived.

  Despite my best intentions, I couldn’t sleep the day away. I did sleep in until 10.00, rising slowly, feeling the ache in every muscle from the gruelling week that had passed. I stood in the shower until there was no more hot water; that took about seven minutes. Towelling off, I thought about how to spend my first free day. It was a perfect, breezy day, slightly overcast: just right for a bike ride. And I figured that would stretch my sore muscles, too. We had been given the whole day off, and that was not likely to happen again for a long time. We were even permitted to wear ‘civvies’ for the day, and go about on our own, rather than marching in tight, little groups of two or four, as we did on our way to classes and drills. So, donning my favourite faded T-shirt and bike shorts, I headed for the bike racks.

  I decided on a ride through the park near the school. There was a long, winding bicycle path through the tall pine trees. Even though it was September, autumn had yet to arrive in Georgia that day. I rode slowly, watching the path, not thinking about much of anything. After about 45 minutes, I stopped to rest near a little stream. I sat against a tall pine and leaned back, closing my eyes.

  ‘A cyclist. That explains those long, perfect legs.’

  My eyes flew open. There he was, right in front of me. Mr Cool, also dressed in civvies: a white, button-down shirt and black slacks. He still looked rather formal, but it was certainly better than olive drab. I noticed he was holding a bottle of Coke, which made me realise I was thirsty.

  ‘Oh! Excuse me. I didn’t realise there was anyone here.’ I started to get up; toads aren’t supposed to sit in the presence of upperclassmen without express permission.

  ‘Oh, please. Sit down. It’s Sunday and we’re not even on the campus. Take it easy.’ As he spoke, he eased himself down next to me. I wrapped my arms around my knees, waiting to see what came next.

  ‘So, how’s it going?’ he asked, his voice low and pleasing. ‘You survived Hell Week, I see. No permanent scars?’

  Mr Cool looked at me then, his eyes raking my body, making me feel very self-conscious. I huddled to myself even more as I mumbled something about still being intact. I blushed then, as his grin made me conscious of the double meaning of my remark.

  What was going on here? I’m usually very self-assured around guys, even older ones, mainly because I don’t give a damn. My tastes at the time, at least in theory, ran to older men, men who had been around a bit, who had experienced something of life. I looked for someone who could take control, someone who wasn’t too easy to wrap around your finger. Even upperclassmen like Mr Cool usually left me indifferent.

  But there was something about this guy. It wasn’t just that he was very handsome, with dark, wavy hair and blue, almost violet eyes. There was something about his expression, his bearing, that I couldn’t quite pinpoint. Something intriguing; something dangerous.

  ‘What’s your name, toad?’ His tone was suddenly formal, demanding. I sat up straighter, reminded again of his status.

  ‘Harris, sir. Remy Harris.’

  ‘Remy, huh? Unusual name.’ He relaxed back into informality, stretching his long, lean form out on the grass.

  ‘My mother is a Francophile. She loves everything French. It’s a French name.’

  ‘I know. It’s derived from the town of Reims. I’ve been there. My dad was stationed in France when I was in high school.’ No one had ever heard of the name before, much less known its derivation. I was suitably impressed, but said nothing. He smiled again and held out the bottle.

  ‘Like a swig?’ he offered.

  I started to say no but, for some reason, held out my hand and took it. As I drank the cold soda, I was reminded that I hadn’t eaten since the midnight rations of the night before.

  ‘Hey. Don’t drink it all.’

  I stopped at once, looking over to see if he was angry, but he was still grinning. Mr Cool looked at his watch and said, ‘It’s about lunch time. Wanna come with me to the pub for a bite to eat?’ The pub was for seniors only, unless by invitation. It was a place for them to meet for lunch or dinner, or just to hang out.

  I was surprised at his invitation. I didn’t dare refuse. Not that I wanted to. ‘Well, thanks! That would be great, I guess. Maybe I should know your name first?’

  He stood, his smile like a sunburst across his features, and said, ‘Jacob. Jacob Stewart, at your service.’ He held out his hand to help me up but, of course, I didn’t take it. Jacob had ridden his bike too, which I now saw leaning against a nearby tree. He retrieved it and together we rode back to the campus.

  Over a lunch of cheeseburgers and onion rings, I finally asked the question that had popped into my head the minute he had introduced himself. ‘So, are you related to “old cannonball Stewart” himself?’

  He laughed, throwing back his head as he did so as if the question were hilarious to him. ‘I admit it, though I had nothing to do with it. He was my great-great uncle. Real whacko, so the family lore has it. Stone-cold crazy. But I hope to follow in his hallowed footsteps, or at least make it through graduation at this damn place. Then my army stint, and I am a free man.’

  ‘Sounds like you aren’t really into this, then. Did your family force you along the military path?’

  ‘You could put it like that. Let’s just say that I chose the lesser of two evils. Or so I thought at the time.’ He grinned at me, but said nothing else. Of course, I was dying to ask more, but I didn’t dare. As friendly as he was, he was still a senior and, as such, my superior officer.

  ‘Well, well, well.’ Another upperclassman sauntered over to our table. He was a short, heavy-set guy, with dark, curly hair and a jutting browline that was positively Neanderthal in proportion. There was a sneer on his face and I was at once on my guard. ‘What have we here, Stewart? Slumming for toadies again?’ I looked down, controlling my impulse to slap him.

  He focused directly on me then. ‘Stand up, toad! You are before two senior upperclassmen! Where are your manners, cadet?’

  I jumped up, my hand automatically finding my forehead for a quick salute, my eyes straight ahead. I was cursing myself for having dropped my guard around Jacob. He had seemed so friendly and relaxed that I had forgotten my position as a toad in senior territory.

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ I mumbled. I stood a good two inches taller than the Neanderthal as he edged in close to me. He pressed in so that my breasts were touching his chest. I resisted my urge to pull back.

  ‘No. I won’t excuse you. Hit the floor and give me thirty, bitch toad.’

  I thought of appealing to Jacob, but I didn’t dare look at him. There was nothing he could do anyway: to question the orders of another senior would be decidedly bad form. I hit the floor. Technically I could report the Neanderthal for using foul language, but I wasn’t about to make trouble. As I rose from the floor, palms flat and body straight, I felt his shoe against my ass. He pushed down and I lowered myself to the floor. Each time I rose to complete a push-up, his foot was there to press me back. I was flushed with exertion and fury by the time I completed the thirty.

  When I stood up, breathing hard, the Neanderthal laughed cruelly. ‘Not bad, bitch toad. Not bad for a stupid bitch.’ He turned to Jacob. ‘At least you picked one that can pass muster this time, Stewart.’ His eyes were small and close together. He reminded me of a police ar
tist’s recreation of a criminal. He was bad news.

  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?

  Chapter Two

  Jacob

  We 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 e
ntered 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.