Rules of Engagement

"I don't have to tell you the kind of shit we'll be in if we don't smoke this asshole out."

Sergeant Burns looked a few soldiers in the eye, hands on hips. She leaned forward slightly, a standard tactic to push her face out into the room and focus everyone's attention.

"None of you came out to the middle of the desert to let a high-value target, a guy who's drawn a bullseye on all your backs, go free. We know where he is, we know what he's packing, we know there's nowhere for him to go. But he's a better shot than any of you, and I don't plan on losing anyone out here, so we can't go in all guns blazing."

Burns walked from one side of the room to the other. Sixteen pairs of eyes followed her.

"Instead, we're setting up a round-the-clock watch. Two soldiers at a time, four hours per shift. You have a shot, you take it."

A couple of the more gung-ho types nodded along. The rest of the company just stared at Burns.

"The first pair is Davies and Jeelani; you'll hike up straight after this meeting and start your shift. It's 1104 right now, ten minutes to prep, 40 minutes to get up to the spot, so you'll start at 1200. Next is Jenkins and Donoghue, leave at 1500, get debriefed by Davies and Jeelani, start at 1600. Next pair leaves at 1900, that is... Howard and Gayle. And so on. Each pair does one shift every two days. The roster will be posted on this board right here. Questions?"

The room remained silent.

"All right, dismissed."

A chorus of scraping chairs followed. Davies, stone-faced, scratched the back of his head. Jeelani tilted his head over the back of his chair and let his neck muscles go slack. They deserved an unstructured moment, free of equipment checks or mission planning. Their next six hours would be mentally and physically demanding.

Jenkins managed to catch Donoghue's eye as she reached the door. She glanced back at him, fixing him with her green eyes, then turned and walked out. Did a grin cross her face?

*

Donoghue appeared at Jenkins' door at 1430, just as he pulled a tee down over his torso. He wore white briefs but no pants.

Donoghue smiled. "I know it's hot, but you're going to need more than that out there," she said.

Jenkins smiled back at her as he pulled on a pair of thick camo pants. "Thanks. I appreciate your advice. Maybe you should stay and help me pack, just in case I miss something really important."

"Stay and help! Got my own packing to do, man!" She laughed.

"Don't know why you're here if you have such a busy schedule," he said to her with raised eyebrows and a look of mock dismissal. He broke easily into a smile; her smirking visage, eyes twinkling, was irresistible. It had been two months of sneaking glances and private thoughts. How in the hell had he managed to get rostered on with her?

She entered the room to walk up and give him a punch on the shoulder. "Asshole," she said. "Seriously, you all good? Ready for this?"

"Yeah, I'm good. We got a lucky break, avoiding the midday heat and the cold of the night."

"True," she replied. "Lucky."

They stood for a moment, a yard or do apart, looking at each other. Jenkins noticed Donoghue's thin, pale pink lips were ever so slightly parted.

"See you out front in 30," she said with a nod, and turned on her heels. He found himself looking closely as she left: the light bounce of her brown hair, the stillness of her shoulders, the gentle sway of her hips, the shifting outline of her buttocks snug in khaki shorts. Jenkins watched those shorts all the way out the door.

*

On the hike up to the watch point, they talked with the easy familiarity of colleagues who've spent more time together than they realise, though a spark of frisson lingered from their shallow flirtation in Jenkins' room. Jenkins mentioned how much the terrain reminded him of home: the rocks and parched, dusty plains of central Arizona. The earth was redder there, though, not like the dull landscape that surrounded them now.

"Well, it's nothing like where I'm from," said Donoghue.

"Yeah? Florida, right?"

"Mmm-hmm. Tampa. Swampy and humid. I miss it every day."

"I'll bet." They walked on a few paces. "We could get some humidifiers or something, set up a special room for you. Could call it a mental health need."

"Haha. That's sweet. Not my greatest need, but I'd take it."

Innuendo? Uncertain, Jenkins let it pass.

"You miss Arizona, Jenkins?"

"Oh, yeah. You know. Who doesn't?" He gestured to the wasteland around them. "Not much to recommend it, though. Shitty people, shittier job prospects. Hence why I've ended up here."

"Oh really? I assumed you were the type to have a girl back home. Maybe a wife, waiting there faithfully."

Jenkins laughed. "No, no. Nobody's waiting on me." He looked down at the ground and, for some reason, decided to confide in Donoghue. "I mean, there was, but..."

"Oh damn." Donoghue smiled. "Actually, I had you pegged as recently dumped, but I didn't want to say that. Sorry."

"Ah, it's okay. I guess it shows."

"Yeah, I can see you sizing the women up but feeling guilty about it at the same time."

Jenkins turned to look at her. "Hey, I would never feel guilty about sizing a woman up."

Donoghue returned his look with a smirk. "And you never should." She held his gaze. "Well?" She gestured up and down her body. "How do I rate?"

Jenkins looked down at her ass - her beautiful, firm ass - then began to draw his eyes up as far as her breasts before averting his gaze. He blushed as he looked away.

"Uh..." Completely blindsided, he tried to bluster his way through it. "You know exactly how you rate."

"I do?" Donoghue raised her eyebrows as she looked back at him. "I don't think so. I'm nothing special, really."

Jenkins let loose a nervous chuckle. "Come on, you must have seen guys staring at you."

"I've seen you staring at me."

"Well, I guess you have your answer," Jenkins managed.

There were still ten minutes' march until they reached the watch point. At least one of those minutes passed in silence until Jenkins summoned the will to break it.

"So, yeah, she'd fallen for one of my best friends during my last tour. They had the decency to sit me down and tell me before they fucked - at least, that's what they said, but I have pretty good intel saying they'd been going at it a while... Anyway, what about you?"

"What about me? What?" Donoghue looked at him with wide eyes.

"Uh, do you have someone back home?"

Her face relaxed, and she laughed. "Oh. Haha. Sorry. I thought you meant am I fucking anyone I shouldn't."

"Oh. Haha! No." Jenkins blushed again.

"Um, nope, not right now. I mean I had a good time with an old friend before I left, but that was only ever a short-time thing."

"Oh yeah?"

"Mmm. We went to school together, slept together a couple of times but wanted to be with other people... It's complicated. We decided to just enjoy each other in that final month before I came out here."

"Hmm."

"You could say I was fucking someone I shouldn't, actually. He's not the most stable guy. But it was goood." She stretched that word wistfully, almost singing it.

Jenkins was starting to get a little turned on. And at this point, he was pretty sure Donoghue was willing to talk about sex with him in more detail. She seemed to want him thinking about sex - and even in this godforsaken place, with a very serious job to do, that's exactly what he was thinking about. So he pressed her further.

"What was so good about it?"

Donoghue looked at him with wide eyes again, her mouth open in shock. "What was so good about it? Excuse me!"

"Ah, sorry." Jenkins winced, thinking he'd overstepped the line.

But Donoghue continued. "That's between me and my perfectly endowed lover. And that stand of trees by the top field at the high school we went to. And the hoodie I used to wear, even in the heat, to stop the bark chafing against my back. And the grass we flattened when he lay over my back and did me from behind." She sighed. "Phew."

Jenkins was temporarily dumbstruck. Okay, every fibre of his being was thinking about sex now.

Her look grew distant. "And I definitely wouldn't tell you about how hard he'd fuck me, and how much it shocked me, and how much I liked it. Or about how wild he'd go when he let me on top so I could beat his chest and pull his hair. His chest hair, I mean. Handfuls of it. It drove him crazy."

"Whoa." Jenkins couldn't believe what he was hearing. "Jesus, Donoghue."

She exhaled loudly, then looked back at him. "Wow. Sorry. I guess that's what I really miss."

"Uh... Yeah. I can imagine. I mean, I can't imagine. I..."

"I'm sorry."

Jenkins laughed. "Sorry? You crazy?"

"What?" She looked genuinely confused, and that gave him confidence.

"Well, let's just say you know how to make a guy pay attention."

Donoghue smiled. "Oh. Yeah. I got a little carried away there. Thanks for, uh, listening."

"It was my pleasure. I'll listen to you any time you want."

"That's nice, but, uh, being listened to isn't my greatest need either."

It was Jenkins' turn to widen his eyes.

Any further discussion would have to wait. They rounded a corner and spotted Davies and Jeelani up ahead. In the distance, a couple of football fields away, a small wood-and-tin shack was nestled into a shadowy hill. That was the target, and Davies and Jeelani were dug firmly behind a makeshift rampart of loosely stacked rocks, their rifles trained on the tiny building.

Donoghue and Jenkins crouched behind a small rise where they wouldn't be seen. Donoghue tapped her rifle into the dirt a couple of times, drawing their attention. After glancing across, Jeelani began to carefully extract himself from his position, shouldering his rifle and gear and running in a crouch to the new team. Donoghue ran in to replace him, and once she was set up in a solid position on her front, Davies and Jenkins swapped in the same way. There were few words of report, other than that they were hot and sweaty and couldn't wait to get back and shower.

Once the first watch team had marched out of sight, Jenkins quickly found himself distracted from the shack by Donoghue's figure stretched out beside him. Her shirt spread out a little loosely at her sides, revealing little of the curvature beneath, but her ass fit snugly inside her pants - a smooth, firm mound in beige, seemingly put there to tempt him.

He couldn't help himself, so he said, "So, what is your greatest need?"

"My greatest need?" Donoghue didn't look up from the target, but he heard her swallow a lump of saliva. "You know what it is."

Guided by lust, he reached a hand out and laid it on her left buttock. She inhaled sharply. "You not getting touched, Donoghue?"

"You're touching me," she replied. "And you shouldn't."

Jenkins let his hand linger for a second, then removed it, knowing he could be in serious trouble.

"Doesn't mean I want you to stop," said Donoghue.

He looked at her face and noticed a thin bead of perspiration at her temple. Then he placed his hand back on her ass, rubbing one cheek then the other, pressing and squeezing all over. She let out a long, frustrated sigh.

While kneading her buttocks with one hand, Jenkins ran the other up her side, feeling her waist and the outer part of her left breast. He reached under her and cupped it fully.

"Oh," she said. "No... ah." He continued to rub her through her clothes and felt a hint of hardened nipple. She squirmed in the dirt, unable to keep still under his touch. "Ah. No, I haven't been getting touched. I need you to touch me more now, quickly."

He placed his fingers on her belt buckle and unfastened it as carefully as he could, not wanting to disturb her setup. Keeping her back ramrod-straight, she lifted her ass into the air slightly, and he pulled her pants down her legs, all the way to her ankles. Small brown freckles dotted her skin, especially on her calves. Her thighs were sinewy and tight. He often found himself perceiving the desert as grey, a trick of a brain worn down by lack of stimulation - but never more than in this moment, with Donoghue's creamy, pinkish-yellow buttocks stark against the dullness of the earth and rocks beneath her.

"Damn," said Jenkins. "I've been wanting to see this."

Jenkins reached a hand between her thighs. Despite the thick temperature of the air, he sensed her heat as he approached her vulva. He rubbed his fingers against her slit; they were instantly covered in sticky, clear fluid. He looked down at her underwear and saw an enormous wet patch on the crotch. No wonder she'd been squirming so much.

His cock was so full and hard, it was about to burst free of his underwear. He felt a stream of precum let loose. The thought of joining his lubricated shaft and her juiced-up vagina - the way they would just slide together comfortably and quickly - made him even harder still. As much as he wanted to pause and examine it, to lick and inhale it, to circle his index and middle fingers around her proud clitoris, he knew all that would have to wait; this moment was for quiet, wanton fucking, a release of their shared sexual tension.

"Do it. Quick," whispered Donoghue. She remained focused along the barrel of her rifle at the building in the distance. And with both hands gripping the gun, she couldn't reach back to touch him. Instead, she communicated with her body. She parted her thighs a little, exposing more of her slit to the warm air. She pushed her ass up a little more. She bent her ankles back and forth to create a little movement up and down her legs, like a shivering invitation. She sighed.

He undid his own belt and pulled his pants and underwear down in one smooth movement, exposing his cock to the air. It bounced up and down a couple of times, its slickness seeming to glow in the harsh desert light.

Everything above her waist remained intently focused on her target. Everything below her waist screamed enter me, enter me, enter me. She poked her ass further into the air and dragged her legs slightly further apart. A droplet of her juices fell onto the parched dust below her crotch.She breathed loudly, lustily.

Jenkins kneeled just behind her and leaned all the way forward, supporting himself with his hands either side of her. His penis lay along the center of her beautiful ass, dark red against her bright skin. He reached down with one hand and took hold of his shaft, then pushed it down until he felt the tip slot into a moist, warm pocket. Then he thrusted smoothly into Donoghue - right in, all the way to the hilt, lubricated by her wetness. She let loose a kind of long, happy groan, beginning quietly and getting louder the further he got.

"Fuck me hard, please," she whispered breathily. "I can't focus. All that talk, you've got me so hot. Fuck me so that I can finally cum and we can get on with our jobs."

Her words sent a surge of pleasure down his body and into his cock, which grew somehow larger still inside her. "Oh, oh," she said. He moved slowly backwards until only the tip was inside, then pushed gently back in. He loved the feeling of such smooth motion; usually, vaginas presented obstacles to negotiate, narrower sections that required persistent mutual effort to eventually pass. But she was wide and wet enough to simply allow him a full and welcome entry.

"You've got to fuck me. I don't care if you cum inside me right away. Just fuck me. I need you to fuck me now," said Donoghue. Her breath was heavy, and her ass swayed back and forth a little, urging him to increase his speed.

"You got it," he replied.

And so he did. He shut off the higher functions of his mind, stopped noticing all the little things that made this particular sex remarkably good, stopped trying to draw it out as long as he could, and went for it. His cock slid back and forth, up and down her channel, and while that felt incredible, it was the bumping of his pubis against her ass - and the juddering sensation this sent down to his cock - that really drove him crazy. He knew it would only take a few strokes for him to blast semen all through her.

Donoghue grunted with each stroke and squeezed him as best she could with her vagina so damp. "Ah, ah, ah," she said. "Yes. Yes."

His orgasm rose and rose, well past the point where he felt he had to cum, to ejaculate, just to relieve the intense tingling in his cock. It was like the hum of a light getting louder and louder. It was like his cum was building up and building up at a gate. It was like everything would shatter.

She came a moment before his own peak, panting and groaning, her anus tighetning, her vagina contracting over and over around him. Her vision of the building in the distance went blurry for a few seconds. A hotness spread outwards from the center of her body, around her crotch and her ass, over her freckled chest.

And that's what did for him, too. The sensation of her orgasming insides squeezing him was too much. One more thrust, one more bang into her buttocks, and he blew his load through her. So much of it, too - he bucked and writhed against her as he emptied himself, one burst, two, three, four, five. Each ejaculation kept her high on her orgasmic plateau and she began to moan through gritted teeth. His legs grew weak, and he had to concentrate to stop himself collapsing over her back.

Jenkins extracted his still-hard penis from her vagina and hurriedly pulled his underwear back up to trap it. Jesus, he thought. What if someone saw us?

A second after his head popped out, a river of cum flowed steadily out of Donoghue and splashed, bright white, on the earth beneath her. Her vulva lips were full and smooth, stuffed full of blood and arousal, glistening in the harsh afternoon sun.

Her vision returned and refocused on the shack in the distance. That window. Movement. What? How long has he been -

And then, without thinking, still descending, she pulled the trigger of her rifle - once, twice, three times, pop pop pop, jolting shockwaves through her body.

Jenkins fell to her side, grabbing his rifle and aiming at the target as he landed, suppressing a grunt as his semi-hard dick was pressed into the dust.

The figure at the window collapsed.

Everything was still.

Everything except Donoghue's rat-a-tat heartbeat, the adrenaline shooting through her veins, coiling her tight.

"Shit, fuck, Jesus," said Jenkins. "Did you get him?"

"I don't know," replied Donoghue. "I don't know, I think so, I don't know." She felt panic rising, so she recalled her training: breathe in through the nose and out through the mouth. Wait five seconds. Breathe again. It never failed to relax her, and it didn't fail now, even with her naked rear still raised slightly above the desert floor; even as Jenkins' semen continued to run out of her slit, through her pubic hair, and onto the ground.

They lay side by side, slowly calming down together. The last latent beads of pleasure faded back into awareness as the adrenaline dissipated.

"Jesus fucking Christ," said Donoghue, still focused on the shack. "See anything?"

Jenkins reached for his binoculars but found his belt just out of reach. Holding his rifle in his left hand, half under his body, he twisted slightly to grasp the leather and shimmy his pants back up to his waist. It was relief to feel another layer of fabric between his chafed penis and the ground.

"The fuck are you doing?"

"Hold on, hold on." Jenkins' fingers clamped around the binoculars and brought them up to his eyes. "A hand," he finally said. "It's slumped against the wall, in the shadows."

Donoghue's radio crackled into life. It was Jeelani. "Team Beta, report."

She reached past her ass, grabbed the radio, and spoke into it. "Target engaged. I think he's dead."

"Okay. Don't move, we're coming back to you. We'll call for a full team. Do not take your eyes off the target."