First Love in the Mire
By the time Lieutenant Sophia Yu was assigned to the Fifth Battalion, she was already famous. In truth, the battalion had become a core fighting unit largely because the platoon under her command kept turning in conspicuous results—among them, the successful retaking of armory after armory.
Looking back now, it occurred to him that the whole thing might have been a smokescreen, staged in league with the rebels.
Even taken on her own, her ability as a soldier was exceptional. At first Louis had watched Sophia and rated her as nothing more than a decent soldier.
When the men around her went on about her striking looks, or offered vulgar appraisals of the figure hidden under the uniform—the company commander and the staff officers were especially loud about it—he felt only a weary pity, the sense that it must exhaust her. No particular feeling stirred beyond that.
Attraction struck him like lightning, out of nowhere. They were in the middle of an operation to wipe out the rebels. The fight had stayed against them, and Louis judged, objectively, that the best course was to abandon one isolated squad and withdraw. But Sophia disobeyed his order for the first time. She broke through the enemy base and brought the trapped squad back out.
They were a different faction from the rebels she herself belonged to, so it was no different from staking her life to save them. Louis called her strictly to account for defying a superior's order and acting on her own.
"I apologize, Major. But Private First Class Harris has a wife about to give birth. He promised her he would come back to her, no matter what. Even if I were returned to that moment, I would still go in to save the squad. I am not saying I did the right thing. I could have put the entire platoon at risk, so I will accept my punishment."
Beautiful eyes, bright with conviction and sheer stubbornness, met Louis's without flinching. A truly brazen, recklessly brave idiot. And how contradictory it seemed, thinking of it now—a spy selling off every military secret of the Bunker to the rebels, charging into enemy ground to save one private in a squad.
But Louis fell for that hypocrite, that idiot, helplessly. Afterward, through every hour of training in which they learned combat technique by throwing their bodies against each other as if it were nothing, he grew steadily more aware of her. Even when he issued a simple order with nothing particular in it, he caught his own gaze tracing the delicate lines of Lieutenant Yu's face.
Sophia herself never noticed the slightest change in him. The things she did without thinking sent Louis to hell and to heaven at once.
His feelings only deepened as time went on. Her unbending principles, the composure no rumor could shake, her eyes, her way of speaking, her character—all of it took hold of him. It was the first love of a man who had reached thirty without ever once having been in love. For a first love, it was noisy enough to wear him out.
He had never imagined that first love would be driven this deep into such wretched mire.
"Let me see Ella."
The moment Louis stepped into the cell, Sophia demanded it, head high. She had clearly been lying in wait for the chance. He only lifted a brow a fraction and offered no other reply. No one in this battalion knew her younger sister existed, which meant Sophia's sister, Ella, was not here at all. He was a cautious man.
"I'm spreading my legs and being docile. Doesn't that earn me at least this much?"
It struck him every time: Sophia had a remarkable gift for scattering another person's composure.
"Nothing about what you're doing right now deserves to be called docile."
Louis answered while forcing down the boil in his gut.
"Then how long do you intend to keep this up? Until the rebels are all wiped out, and you've made lieutenant colonel, Major?"
Sophia jeered. Louis gazed steadily at the woman who never failed to make him miserable and elated in the same breath. Since the first time their bodies had come together, they had been at it every day. He could no longer tell how many days it had been. His mind was muddled and his sense of reality gone, as if he had sunk into a sweet swamp. A woman's embrace always left him like that.
He had become a fool who could not tell heaven from earth, but the answer to her question was already fixed. Putting down the rebels was not something he himself would do. An end to this, too, had been set somewhere ahead. From the moment he singled Sophia out and shut her away in this private room, Louis had had only one goal. He wanted Lieutenant Sophia Yu to live.
When he first confirmed exactly who she was, the outlook had been bleak. Learning the heart of a woman prepared to die once every operation was finished, he had resented her. He wanted to save her. That single wish was what moved him.
"And stopping at lieutenant colonel will do?"
Louis answered dryly, on purpose. Only as the man closed the distance in a single stride did Sophia's eyes finally waver, just slightly. He liked this moment. He liked the way one layer peeled from the hard, cold shell of her, and the way she came undone beneath his movements and his hands.
"Lately there are times I feel like an animal. Do you feel that way too, Major?"
Not wanting her agitation to show, she let a deliberately mocking remark slip out. Louis only smiled at an angle and did not answer. He simply caught her by the nape and kissed her deeply.
Sophia would never imagine it. For a long time now, she had been the one who shook his reason. He had thought of himself as a beast far earlier than this.
He told himself the coward's lie that he had taken her only to deceive the officers, because he wanted her alive—but that was nothing more than a shabby excuse.
From the moment he laid a hand on her body, Louis had been swept under with no way back.
This destructive affair had an end already fixed. October 15. From the moment he learned that the rebels meant to raid the Fifth Battalion's forward-most base, Louis had planned every operation around it. The mind that ordinarily turned toward victory for the Bunker laid its cards, this time, for a single person—Sophia.
On that day she would escape and see Ella. The fall of the Bunker would come sooner, and the rebels would not all make it back alive either, but Louis had no intention of swimming against that current.
The desperation of a relationship on borrowed time drove him on. He kneaded her breasts—more than a handful, spilling past his palms—and pushed her down onto the bed. Sophia yielded. In a sense, docile had not been a lie.
She smelled of soap. The same scent he had caught the first time they made love. The contempt in her eyes; the resolute refusal that endlessly denied the sensations he gave her; and at last, when she was overcome, the bleak disillusionment. Every response dragged him further down.
And still Louis was aroused.
Under his hands her body flushed pink with heat. It had been no exaggeration when she sneered and reached for the word animal. In front of Sophia, Louis forgot dignity and humanity alike.
They tangled together before they had even finished undressing. He buried his face in her breasts. However much he took of that soft flesh, the hunger remained.
Pressed against her, biting and sucking, he still could not fill it. Before long Sophia was covering her mouth again, swallowing her moans. The sight was pitiful and infuriating at once, and it made it all the more impossible for him to stop.
Let him despise his own cowardice. Let him loathe it. Lieutenant Yu was alive beside him now, and Louis was going to keep her alive. And for this moment, at least, Sophia was in his arms.