Miranda and Major Hardman

Prelude: The Notification

Miranda blinks at the notification in disbelief.

Richard Hardman sending a friend request?

How many times has she searched for him over the years without finding him? She'd asked her brother several times, but he always told her that BD just didn't do social media.

But here he is, sending her a friend request.

Assuming it really is him. Could it be one of those fake profiles, trying to mine her data?

She imagines something sinister. Maybe the Russians....

His profile shows his photo, sure enough, stiff and upright in his uniform, stern, with the flags behind him. But there are no other photos.

No posts, no favorites.

Work and education: Naval Academy, USMC.

Well, that would be easy to find out. What if that's all a scammer knows?

Places lived: nothing.

Relationships: no relationship info to show.

Details: nothing.

Life events: nothing.

No mutual friends -- not even her brother.

It looks like a fake profile. She looks over it again.

But then she sees he joined today.

Today!

Her heart aches to believe she's the first person he's sent a friend request to.

It's just really hard to believe that.

Unless he joined specifically to talk to her.

But! Wait! Did he have favorite quotes before? He didn't! He just added them! He's online right now....

His favorite quotes show it's really BD:

"Only the dead have seen the end of war -- Santayana."

And:

"The strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must -- Thucydides."

Yup, that's the man -- and she knows now that he's here to find her.

She moves the arrow over the "Accept" button, but hesitates.

If she clicks this, there'll be no going back.

He could break her heart again.

Can she go through that whole thing again? The days without appetite, the nights without sleep?

Steeling herself for whatever might happen, with her heart really giving her no other choice, she clicks it.

-- -- -- -- -- -- / -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Chapter 1: The Bad Guy

She'd had him once, and she'd lost him with three horrible little words.

It was her freshman year at St. John's, his senior year at the Naval Academy. Almost six years ago.

He was a bad guy.

Notoriously bad.

Six kids, four different women. How would a guy his age even do that?

There was talk he would get kicked out of the Naval Academy.

So she had no excuses. Her brother had repeatedly warned her, his friends had warned her, their girlfriends had warned her.

But when a girl hears so many warnings about a guy, she can't help being just a little curious....

And she was a good girl. A shy one. A virgin, even. Not just a technical virgin -- she'd never done more than a little light petting, and only over the clothes. Boys had asked, pushed, begged, but she was just a really, really good girl. The ice queen, they called her. A church girl. The saints and angels were watching, she really believed it, and she was going to be some lucky man's faithful wife.

Yes, she'd been a cheerleader in high school, but cheering was a performance. The whole point of it was that she didn't have to be herself. She could jump up in the air and spread her legs out for the crowd to see because it wasn't really her. It wasn't Miranda Sanchez the good little Catholic girl with straight-As (except in math). It was just a cheerleader doing cheerleader things.

She was a nerd too. She didn't end up at St. John's by accident. She was there to read and discuss Plato, Virgil, St. Thomas, Virginia Woolf, to drink directly from the fonts of ancient wisdom.

It was the next best thing to walking into a library and never leaving.

But that one Saturday afternoon, there he was, the bad guy, sitting on the sofa in her common room, reading a book with his shirt off.

The middle of January and he had his shirt off.

She knew who he was right away because she'd been told he would be the biggest man she'd ever seen, and sure enough, he was. Later she saw the football and basketball rosters, which said he was seven feet tall, three hundred thirty pounds, but she would've believed it if they'd said ten feet, five hundred pounds.

When you see a man like that, even if you're not a girl who's into big strong guys -- which Miranda definitely was -- it just takes your breath away.

When he stood up to greet her, she was about eye-level with his belly-button, with his rock-hard stomach. Not "perfectly chiseled" abs like superheroes have in movies, just solid muscle...

... with a naughty trail of dark hair from his belly button down to... something....

Aiming to look up at him, she raised her eyes.

But she got stuck on the powerful, bulging muscles of his chest, unable to climb over those massive golden mountains, the dark red nipples at their peaks, the wisps of black hair -- more than she would've expected to like until she saw it there tempting her fingers....

She just barely managed to force her eyes further up, past his broad, powerful shoulders, bending her neck nearly all the way back, until she finally saw his face way up there, smiling down on her.

He was beautiful.

A heartbreaking synthesis of manliness and cuteness, with sharp, hard jaws and chin; high cheekbones flecked with rough five o'clock shadow; a high, broad forehead; and a crew cut of thick black hair.

He had a big cheerful smile, confidently happy, but gentle and approachable.

But most of all, his sad, dark, hooded eyes, hiding under his thick eyebrows like a puppy that needed cuddling.

He didn't ogle her, but she felt her beauty in the way his eyes took her in. She somehow felt him notice the prettiness of her face, the sexiness of her body. He seemed to see through her t-shirt and jeans without even trying.

She'd been the homecoming queen, the captain of the cheerleaders, known for being pretty, but the way he looked at her, she felt prettier than she'd ever felt.

He looked at her the way she wanted to be looked at. She felt liked, admired, and safe. She felt herself standing a little straighter. Like the sun itself had shone on her alone for a moment.

He held his hand out, offering to shake hers -- a hand so huge, she thought he might pick her up like a saltshaker. The muscles on that arm seemed at least as big as her body.

"Hi," he said. "You're Miranda, right? Diego's sister?"

His voice, the deepest, richest voice she's ever heard, like a rumbling deep within a volcano (she learned the word "oktavist" because of him) was just too much.

It was the final straw. Maybe she could've resisted his hotness, his amazing bronze body shining in the soft afternoon light, his beautiful face, maybe even the way he looked at her as if he really, really liked her -- but the reverberation of his voice through her soul simply melted her.

She found herself torn. Some part of her mind managed to scream: "Hey, little girl, don't forget he's no good, he's no good, run, little girl, run away now, he's no good, he's dangerous...."

But her heart and body had already fallen in love, and they were the boss at that moment. They told her mind not to worry, she would just play with the bad man a little bit, that's all....

She tried to be cool:

"Yeah."

She'd intended to sound like, "Yeah, that's right, I'm his sister, and it's no big deal at all that I'm alone in a room with a half-naked man who's so fucking hot...," but when she heard her own voice, it was about an octave higher than usual, and filled with sugar.

"That's right," her heart and body congratulated. "Soft and sweet. Maybe we should lick our lips for him too."

The good part of her mind shouted, "What the hell are we doing here? Why aren't we running?"

He shook her hand, warmly and respectfully firm but reassuringly gentle, and she looked at their handshake, her eyes taking in his body again on their way down and yet again on their way back up, trying to persuade herself that he was real. She had trouble believing it.

"Nice to meet you. He's very proud of you. Brags about you all the time. I'm Dick."

"Nice to meet you too," she chirped.

The good part of her mind cleared its throat for attention. "It's not too late for us to leave. You could just turn around and go to church and say 'Hail Marys' until these sinful thoughts disappear."

The bad part hushed it. "Shut up, he's talking. Listen to those pipes!"

"He's in there with Emmy." He pointed to her room, resuming his place on the sofa, filling it with his huge body, his knees spread apart, almost touching both armrests. "I guess they're studying something."

The good part of her mind jumped up and down. "They're not studying! He knows they're not studying! He's talking about

sex!

He's talking to

you

about sex! Run, girl, run! You know who he is! We might already be pregnant from that handshake!"

The bad part giggled. "Sex. Sexy sex-sex-sex. If it's not on his mind already, honey, you'd better put it there!"

"Studying." She'd rolled her eyes sarcastically, and he smirked like they'd shared a secret joke.

"Hell, yeah," the bad part gloated. "That's the way to do it, love!"

The good part just shook its head helplessly, noting that she'd been touching her hair and shoulder with one hand and her hip with the other. "You might as well strip and give him a lap-dance," it mocked, but the bad part of her responded, "Oh, yeah, strip and give him a lap-dance!"

Before the parts of her mind finished wrestling, he looked back at his book, and she instantly missed that attention.

Like the sun had set forever.

She needed to go get it back.

"I told you," the evil part of her mind shouted, "to strip and give him a goddamn lap dance! See what happens when you don't listen to me! Go jump on top of him

NOW!

"

Even the good part of her mind was offended. "What the damn-fuck is that son of a bitch doing? Get his eyes back on

you

, chica!"

"What are you reading?" she asked, surprising herself. She stepped towards him, out of the doorway into the common room, and she felt her body curving itself seductively.

It was not like her to talk to a cute boy like that. She was good. She was shy. She was good, she was -- he looked up at her, and goddamn, he was fucking hot.

"There you go, that's a girl!" the bad part cheered. "Now take your clothes off and sit on him, like we said before."

"Thucydides." He showed her the front cover.

"Rhymes with 'titties'," the naughty part of her mind snickered. "Look at him manspreading. I bet his dick is huge."

Their common room had two sofas facing each other across a coffee table. He was taking up most of one sofa, so she sat on the other, directly in front of him, cross-legged.

She didn't sit like that usually, of course, but she wanted his attention so badly...

"Hell yeah!" the bad part kept on going. "Open those legs up girl! Invite him in!"

The good part was like, "What would your mama say if she saw you right now?"

But the bad one replied, "Darling, mama understands. You're the second of six, and she didn't find any of you in a cabbage patch."

"We'll read it later this semester," she told him, and he nodded. "You like it?"

He looked up long enough to say, "It might be my favorite book."

"Really?"

It was the only way she could think of to keep the conversation going, which was imperative.

The good part warned, "You seem desperate. Calm down, get up, walk away. Let him watch your ass if he wants but get the hell away."

The bad part was just looking at the man's chest and humming.

"What do you think of this?" he asked, and with the voice of a god he read:

... you know as well as we do that right... is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.

He looked at her, sincerely waiting for her opinion. Asking her what she thought.

The good part of her brain was taken by surprise. "Wait," it said, "he wants our opinion?" But the bad part was like, "I like that. I like that a lot. Give him some opinion and then sit on him."

She felt something in her body like the need to go to the bathroom. It was the need to have her legs around him. She felt physically pulled to him.

But she didn't know what to say, so he went on without her:

"That combination of brutality and eloquence," he shook his head in awe and read the passage to her again. She tried to listen to the words, to think about the meaning of the passage, but she couldn't, so she stood, walking around to stand next to him to see the book.

As she moved, he looked at her, seeming to see her beauty again. She felt herself almost unfolding before him, like a flower blossoming.

And the closer she got to him, the better she felt....

He pointed to the passage in question and handed her the book. Sitting down while she stood, he barely had to look up at her.

"Do you think it's right?" he asked. "I mean of course it's true that the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must, but is it right to say something like that?"

"You're asking me?"

"Well, I've heard you're really smart. I'd love to know what you think of it."

She couldn't believe it. A senior, someone her brother's age, and specifically this unfuckingbelievably hot hunk of manhood, sincerely wanted her opinion.

She didn't want to disappoint him. She searched for a clever thing to say, buying time by exaggerating her concentration.

And before she'd realized what she was doing, she'd actually touched his shoulder, as if to hold herself up.

"Oh god," the good part of her mind sighed. "Get your hand off his body and tell him this:"

Unable to move her hand, she bullshat:

"Strength and weakness are not always what they seem. Perhaps saying this actually betrays a little weakness. Like they're trying to intimidate the Melians in order to avoid a fight they don't actually want."

"Oh, hey," he nodded, pointing at her. "That is a really good point. Let me write that down."

He picked up a post-it note and a pencil from the coffee table. They looked so small in his hands. He handled them like tiny toys.

"How did you put that? 'Strength and weakness are not always...'"

He copied it out, stuck the note on that page, and looked at her gratefully. "You should tutor me. How do you know so much about strength and weakness?"

She must've been blushing bright red.

She felt appreciated inside and out.

Who gave a fuck if he was a bad guy?

And anyway, what are bad guys for?

They're for fucking, that's what.

Emma was fucking her brother at that moment, her brother was fuckign Emma, everyone was fucking somebody, why couldn't she fuck someone too?

"I guess being a woman gives you a different perspective on strength and weakness."

"Yeah? How so?"

"Well, you're a big, strong man, and I'm just a skinny little girl, but what if I do something like this?"

And she did the boldest thing she's ever done in her entire life.

Something seemed to have taken possession of her, taken over her body, because she just stepped over his legs -- a huge, long, step -- and sat down on him, straddling him.

He swallowed. She saw his Adam's apple waver.

"I see what you mean," he whispered, looking into her eyes -- so tall, even with her straddling him, he looked down. "You certainly have... power...."

One of his hands rested on the small of her back, pulling her body into his, her breasts into his bare chest, her crotch into his, and the other hand reached through her hair to her neck, pulling her face in for a kiss.

He didn't have to pull; her body submitted eagerly to the suggestions of his touch.

She even put her arms around his head, her fingers in his hair.

He had a magical scent -- leather and tobacco and danger, freshly cut wood and the sweat of hard work. The scent of a man, and a manly one at that.

Helplessly eager, pressing her crotch into his, she longed for their jeans to disappear, to press her most secret softnesses right up against his naked hardness.

She didn't know how to stop it, or what to do next, but the kiss kept going.

Then the bed in Emma's room started bumping against the wall, and they heard Emma gasping and moaning.

BD pulled back, ending the kiss.

"We should probably leave," he whispered. "You don't want to hear that."

"Yeah, no," she said, confused.

She didn't actually mind. She'd heard it before, so often she barely even noticed anymore. Emma could fuck her brother for the rest of time for all Miranda cared.

She just wanted to kiss BD some more.

Then he stood up, putting her down on her feet, and she glanced -- entirely accidentally -- and saw his boner pushing against his jeans.

It was clearly there, easy to see, and it was easy to see why they called him "BD," short for "Big Dick."

What it meant to her was he'd liked her that much. Her heart leaped up out of her body into heaven, returning only just in time to save her from dropping dead right then and there.

She was on fire. She needed --

needed

-- to fuck him. She knew it was wrong and she didn't care.

He headed toward the door, reaching for his shirt on the arm of the sofa, and something in her soul screamed not to let that happen.

She grabbed his wrist to stop him.

"Let's just hide in my room," she whispered, "until they come out."

He looked at her.

It was a curious moment. As if he were verifying her consent.

She couldn't maintain eye contact. She looked away for a moment, and when she looked back up at him, he seemed to know everything he needed to know.

He reached for her, and she leapt up into his arms, and he carried her into her room, her legs wrapped around his waist, one of his hands under her hips, their tongues in each other's mouths.

-- -- -- -- -- -- / -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

No girl ever lost her virginity more sweetly.

He'd sat down on her bed, and she was straddling him again, loving the feeling of his huge hand grasping her ass.

She broke the kiss to tell him something she thought he ought to know.

"It's my first time."

What she intended to communicate was, "I'm not a slut or anything. I usually don't just fuck guys I've only known for about two minutes."

But later, replaying it in her mind, she realized with embarrassment verging on horror that they hadn't even explicitly said they were doing it until then. She might as well have said, "Please fuck me."

Still, she could at least hope he'd noticed what she wanted him to notice.

"Good," he said. "I'll be gentle and you let me know if anything doesn't feel right."

Then he pulled her shirt off, his hands tender and loving but firm with desire, confirmed by his eyes, and her entire body celebrated.

He kissed her body, praised her beauty, unsnapped her bra.

She held it in place with her arms against her body, pausing because Diego and Emma were finishing rather loudly, with melodramatic cries and grunts. They were now separated from them only by a thin wall, and hearing their pleasures only made Miranda hornier.

She and BD smirked at each other as they listened, both of them knowing that they would be doing the same thing soon.

Then, eager for his desire, she let her bra drop, revealing her breasts.

"Oh," he sighed, moving his thumbs to her nipples, his hands reaching around her side, "you have beautiful tits."

Hearing that felt good, but it reminded her:

She could not believe that she had beautiful "tits." She had to be sure he hadn't made some kind of mistake.

"Aren't they too small?"

"No," he answered, looking at her as if she'd asked a surprising question.

"But they're tiny," she protested.

"Yeah," he replied, acknowledging the obvious, "but they're hot. Look at them!"

He leaned back a little, and they looked at her breasts together. He took each of her nipples between two of her fingers, gently rubbing them a while, then pulled her ear to his whisper.