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Mission Commander Sam Carter ran down her DeOrbit checklist with her pilot, Colonel Cameron Mitchell. The NASA space shuttle Intrepid was returning to Earth after a year locked in stable orbit around the planet.
Payload Specialist Rodney McKay and Mission Specialist John Sheppard’s banter was a familiar buzzing in her headset. Sheppard knew better but McKay egged him on, and Sam wasn’t willing to make an issue of it. Anytime Sheppard was offering a distraction was time Sam wasn’t spending fending off McKay’s insults and blonde jokes.
“Anybody have plans for the first night back? I think I’ll eat a cheeseburger that’s not served in a tube, and take a three-week nap.”
“After the debrief, McKay, you can do whatever you want. I’ll even take you out for the beers I owe you.”
“Not that trash you drink. I get to pick the bar and order the first round. You’re buying.”
Sheppard rolled his eyes, tacitly agreeing to the plan without complaint. Sam exchanged conspiratorial looks with Cam. They’d been watching these two circle the wagons for months. They bickered and bantered their way through flight training, and then became thick as thieves at launch. Sam and Cam had a standing bet on when whatever they had going on would turn into less talking and more…well, things besides talking.
Commander John Crichton, payload commander and fellow theoretical astrophysicist, didn’t think they’d make it out of the Kennedy Space Center before causing a scene. Considering how much time he’d spent keeping his erstwhile scientists in line, Sam suspected he knew something they didn’t.
It’s been a long twelve months.
Sam and Cam were set to begin the Landing checklist when everything went to hell.
The control board lit up from bezel to bezel.
“We have complete engine burnout.”
“No way, preflight checks showed 100% power.” Cam checked the engine readouts. “Okay, what the hell?”
“Master caution lights up,” Crichton announced. The annunciator rattled off a series of dire warnings.
Sam swore. “Computer failure.” She’d warned the shuttle engineers at NASA the auxiliary power unit wouldn’t suffice in the event of an engine power disruption and she’d been overruled.
“What’s going on?” Sheppard.
“Everything. I don’t have time to fix it. We’re T-minus 90 seconds to planned reentry.”
“This is supposed to be your speciality, blondie.” Sam knew the Intrepid to her circuit boards. This shouldn’t have happened.
“I can’t create time, McKay. Not in 90 seconds.”
“79 seconds.”
“Very helpful, thanks. Three seconds to thermosphere.” Sam ran diagnostics and rapidly reconfigured her shuttle for a hard landing. The engines were dead.
“Can we re-establish planetary orbit,” asked McKay. He floated behind her, still in the grip of 0 G.
“Negative,” Cam responded. “We have inadequate thrust and lift to maintain our current altitude. We’re approaching bingo fuel.” His and Sam's hands flew over the control panel in an ingrained choreography. Had they elected to return a day sooner…
Earth was rapidly approaching, the surface growing larger and largely recognizable in the shuttle’s forward windows.
“What about the autopilot?”
The autopilot chose that pivotal moment to switch off. Sudden turbulence tossed the crew across the command module, slamming anyone not strapped down into control panels, showering them all in sparks. Specialist Zelenka was knocked unconscious.
Sam read her scrolling heads-up display in mounting dread. The control panel was RED.
“Prepare for evacuation. Evacuation Plan Delta is in effect. Go.”
McKay’s voice rose two octaves as he fled. Sheppard pushed Zelenka toward the exit. Sam jerked her head for her support officers to follow. This was a nightmare scenario.
Sam established an downlink with Kennedy Space Center.
“Mission Control, this is Intrepid. Mayday, mayday. We are declaring an emergency. Intrepid is in freefall. I say again, we are in freefall. Over.”
“Intrepid, this is Mission Control. What is the nature of the emergency? Over.”
“Intrepid. We have total engine failure. Autopilot is down. Thrusters are bust. We are bingo fuel. Crew is initiating Evacuation Plan Delta. Estimate splashdown in the Atlantic. Request emergency services. Over.”
“This is Control. We read you five by. We have you on radar. Emergency services will meet you where you land. Godspeed, Intrepid. Over and out.”
Sam knew anywhere they found Intrepid would be too late.
“Commander Carter!” Sam whipped around to the last crew members awaiting her call.
“Crichton, Mitchell, prepare to bug out now. That’s an order!”
Crichton hesitated a second, then retreated when flames began licking at the windows of the shuttle. This was going to be close.
Cameron clung to a bulkhead. “Come on, Sam. Leave the damn bird.”
Intrepid's Thermal Protection System was Tango Uniform. Hydraulics had given up the ghost. Sam was the only thing that stood between her crew and the unforgiving surface of the planet. The only thing left to do was glide.
“No can do. Get your ass in a survival suit and out the escape hatch.”
“I’m not leaving you!”
Sam used one hand to reattach her shoulder harness, keeping the other on the controls. Captains went down with their ships. That was the rule.
“Don’t make me eject you, Mitchell. The crew is going to need you.”
Cam stared at Sam. She stared back. Cameron Mitchell was the brother Sam had never had, as much her twin as Mark wasn’t. They’d been through everything together. The Academy. The Gulf War. 9/11. The Astronaut Program and two tours on the International Space Station. It made sense he’d be at her side now. But he couldn’t stay.
He snapped off a regulation salute. “I’ll see you on the ground.”
She saluted back. They both knew he’d never see her again.
He vanished from sight with the rest of the crew, gearing up to leap from the shuttle in a last ditch effort to survive. Sam blinked away the tears obscuring her vision. She’d need to see if she was going to fly straight. Give them a fighting chance. You can do it, Sammy. For a moment, that inner voice sounded exactly like her late father. I guess I’ll see you soon, Dad.
Sam grappled with the stick, doing her best to hold the Intrepid steady as they approached reentry. It was going to be an uncontrolled descent through the atmosphere at terminal velocity.
They were going to burn.
Sam blinked and she was being roused from a dead sleep by a worried-looking flight attendant. Her plane had landed in Minnesota. She wished for a second she’d accepted General Hammond’s offer of a military hop from Merritt Island where she’d been holed up for the past three months.
She blinked again and she was being handed the keys to a rental car she didn’t remember signing for.
She exited Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and drove where the car’s built-in navigation system told her. The city became suburbs became rural and then gave way to unspoiled wilderness the likes of which Sam had never seen.
The interstate exited onto feeder roads with a few meticulously maintained signs before turning into a neat but less obviously maintained private road, bracketed by dense foliage. The crooked road wound between hulking trees and was just wide enough to admit a single heavy duty vehicle driving one way.
The uneven gravel jarred Sam’s sore body. She clutched the steering wheel in white knuckles, staring straight ahead, determined to see conifer trees instead of the Thermal Protection System flaking off Intrepid tile by tile to disintegrate into embers as the orbiter sank from thermosphere to mesosphere like a stone.
Sam blinked and she was staring at a tall, stocky man, standing at her driver side window. His deep-set brown eyes were shielded by a persistent squint. She got the feeling he’d been talking to her for a while. She didn’t remember anything he’d said.
He waved a clipboard that read O’Neill Rentals & Security Services. He must be the owner she’d emailed in a panic when Janet asked if she needed to talk to someone. General Hammond had recommended his cabin for a hideaway. ‘He’ll give you what you need to heal,’ the older man had said. If Jack O’Neill could raise the dead, Uncle George might be right.
A log cabin abutted a lake behind him. It looked nice enough.
“This is where I stay. I'll show you to your cabin. You can follow me in your car.” At her bewildered look, he explained, “I've had a few female lodgers out here alone. Just leading them around makes them feel more secure. It doesn't cost me anything, and it makes them more likely to be return customers.”
“Okay.” Sam hadn't stopped to consider whether Jack might be a threat. He had easily 150 pounds on her and five inches in height. And fifteen years older if he’s a day. His unkempt hair was gray verging on white. She could survive him.
The drive was about 20 minutes out from Jack's cabin on another, better-maintained private road with interstate access. Sam made a note of the directions, signposts, and trail markers for when she needed to make the trek alone.
They approached the cabin from the west. It faced a small lake of similar size to Jack's. Leafy conifer trees crowded the bounds of the lake and the clearing where the cabin lay. Animal sounds filled Sam's ears when she stepped out of her rental. It was tranquil without being deathly silent, bearing no resemblance to the soundless vacuum of space haunting her sleep. Or her eardrums popping from a sudden increase in barometric pressure.
Jack gave her the ten-cent tour of her new living accommodations. The cabin was spacious without being palatial. Two bedrooms, one and a half baths, a sizable kitchen, and a generous living area with a pot-bellied wood burning stove to keep the place warm. The doors and windows were outfitted with high quality locks and the grounds were equipped with a state of the art security system that he took a moment to key her into. A bank of security monitors were neatly disguised behind a set of pocket doors masquerading as a coat closet.
“Lots of security,” she observed.
“Sometimes I get VIPs out here. Standard measures won't ensure their safety or privacy so I've taken additional steps to keep them coming back.”
“What makes you think I'll need all this?”
“You've done a 360-degree visual assessment of every new environment you've entered since you drove up to my cabin. Hypervigilance is a symptom of post-traumatic stress. I know something about that. You can rest easy; security is what I'm here for.”
Sam dropped her arms from their crossed position.
“I'm fine.” She had been fine in the medical bay under Janet’s clinical supervision. She had been fine when grilled for hours by NASA’s internal investigation board. She had been fine until she was presented with a row of gilt-framed official photos standing as a memorial to her crew, knowing they were unlikely to ever recover the bodies. After that, she hadn’t been fine at all.
Jack shoved his hand into his pocket. “Okay.”
She stared at him a moment, waiting to see if he had anything else in his arsenal. Nothing presented itself.
“Thanks.” She collapsed into the nearest chair. “What should I call you? Mr. O'Neill?”
“Just Jack’s fine. I'm just on the other side of the lake and half a mile due north. Feel free to stop by. I left my contact info next to the phone. Let me know if you need anything. Doesn't matter what time.”
He left her, and Sam wished immediately he hadn’t.
Sam’s crew might have survived if Intrepid had. She had hacked the internal investigation board’s private server. Their gifts were investigation, not INFOSEC.
Based on satellite telemetry available from the time of the Intrepid Crash Incident, the cause of death of evacuating members of Intrepid Orbital Mission 1 is a combination of blunt trauma injury from shuttle debris and catastrophic burns incompatible with life.
The shuttle had disintegrated midair. Only the control module where Sam had been located remained intact. It crashed into the Atlantic 400 miles off the coast of Florida.
Sam was Intrepid’s sole survivor.
Not trusting her sense of direction, Sam followed the dirt road to reach Jack's cabin. Her body ached with exhaustion. She blamed the bruising force of splashdown. She blamed Janet for cracking her ribs to resuscitate her when she should have let her sink.
Sam traipsed around the back to find Jack’s outdoor space as cluttered as his porch. An old bicycle leaned against the wall. Canoes painted different colors were stored out of the way. There was even a hockey net set up on a trampled patch of grass.
"Hi."
"Hey."
Jack lifted a cleaving axe and brought it down on a block of wood in a single, powerful blow.
"Should you be chopping the wood?"
Jack quirked his graying eyebrows.
Open mouth, insert foot.
Jack wedged the nose of his axe into the stump and wiped sweat from his weathered face with the back of a gloved hand. A collection of firewood knee-high surrounded him.
“Don't let the love handles fool you, I've been chopping my own wood for 15 years.”
He sidled to a deckchair to sit. Sam helped herself to the vacant chair opposite him. There were two glasses and a pitcher of ice water and lemon slices on the table between them. He gestured for her to have her pick. She wasn’t thirsty.
Jack was older than the majority of active duty officers Sam knew. He was heavier-set, too. Yet there was something she couldn't quite put her finger on that said Jack wasn't remotely ready to settle into his twilight years.
“What’d you do before you rented out cabins?”
“Air Force.” That explained how her Uncle George had known him.
“Non-com?”
“Started out enlisted, then went through OTS. Made rank quick after that.”
“Why'd you quit?”
“Why are you quitting? Tell me your story and maybe I'll tell you mine.”
“I–” They died and I didn't. Why? It was supposed to be me.
He handed her a topped-off glass. “Drink. You fish?”
"Not since I was a kid." Sam liked the outdoors, but she always felt there was something else she should be doing. Something she should be creating instead of traipsing through the woods. “What'd you do in the Air Force?”
“I was a fighter pilot first before being tapped for Special Forces. That's where I spent the bulk of my career.”
He gulped his water. Precipitation from the glass dripped down his chin to traverse prominent tendons of his neck, wetting the collar of his t-shirt dark gray. Now that she was paying attention, she couldn’t help noticing him. She read a life of bearing heavy burdens in the breadth of his shoulders, in the pronounced definition of his forearms and biceps when he stretched. She knew somehow his broad hands and tapered fingers would sit just right on the swells of her hips.
"You could snap my neck, couldn't you?"
He licked icy water from his lips and smiled in her direction. There was something dangerous in his smile.
Holy Hannah.
“Maybe I could, but that wouldn't be very neighborly of me, would it?” He rapped his knuckles on his chair armrest. “Take a load off. I've got more chopping to do.”
Sam followed his loping stride with her eyes. She'd misread him. Jack wasn’t just tall, he was strong. The weight she took for a youthful athlete gone to seed was a different kind of strength. Where once Jack must have been wiry and quick, he was built like a tank. A six-foot, two-inch tank with all the capacity for violence of a 20-plus-year veteran of Special Forces and a chest-height center of gravity to match.
Again and again, Jack swung his axe, splitting logs of wood in twain and lodging the head of his axe into the stump below. He wasn’t even panting.
“Nice swing.” Her breathlessness embarrassed her.
He wiped a tattered bandanna across his sweaty brow. “You’re welcome.”
He gave her that slow, dangerous smile again.
Sam blushed.
Sam shattered on a Tuesday. It was the dead of night, and she dreamed of her brother floating in the Atlantic beside her.
His blue eyes pierced her heart. He inhaled the deep dark water. He waved and drowned.
She lunged for him and only found the ground. He’d vanished from sight.
“Cam! Cam.” She cried out for her brother until her breath gave out. “Please, don't leave me again.”
Sam lost track of how long she lay sprawled on the woven floor rug, waiting for the debris that crushed her crew to obliterate her. Eventually Jack appeared.
Keys jangling, he got down on his creaking knees to brace Sam. He lifted her onto her haunches. “Honey, I need you to give me the contact info for your next of kin.”
She turned into Jack's solid chest, blotting out the memory of one of her crewmates colliding with a detached solar panel.
“It's just a nightmare.”
Did Cam stay? Did he stay? I gave him an order. Her memory was disjointed. He saluted and he was gone.
“No, Sam, I'm pretty sure that was a flashback, and I bet it isn't the first one you've had since you got here. Who am I calling for you?”
“I don't have anyone. How did you know I was in trouble?”
“Internal motion sensors. You haven't moved in six hours. Who did you list on the paperwork?”
“My brother in San Diego, but we don't talk. My brother died. I saw him die.”
“I know, baby.” He rubbed her back. ”We're gonna talk about you violating the spirit of the rental contract tomorrow, but right now let's get you off the ground. I bet it's not doing those injuries of yours any good.” Sam convulsed as if struck.
“How'd you know?”
“Career military, retired. I know an injured soldier when I see one. Up and at 'em, Colonel." He bodily relocated her from the area rug in the middle of the floor to the worn couch. She got a thick quilt over her shoulders for her trouble. “Where's your team? Who's gonna come looking for you if you don’t show up in a week?”
“No team, no crew. I was the only survivor. Don't you watch the news?” Sam was a celebrity. She was infamous.
“I try not to. Everything's gone to hell.” He looked sad. She worried hell had come for him, too.
“Tell me about it.”
“Doubt I have to. Stay there, I'm making herbal tea.”
Sam shuffled to the kitchen behind him, not quite ready to lose sight of the only other living person for miles.
“I had you down as a coffee guy.”
“It's about what you need, and the last thing you need is caffeine.”
“You offer nurse maid services too?”
“When required.”
The cabin fell quiet as he rifled through the kitchen cabinets to get all he needed to brew two cups of tea. He knew where everything was.
He poured two steaming mugs and brought them to the rough-hewn table where Sam sat. She hated to admit it but she felt better not long after the mildly sweetened brew hit her stomach. Chamomile tea was as soothing as her mother used to tell her. She'd been too stubborn to try her mother’s remedy for anxiety and sleeplessness when she was a teenager.
Jack sipped from his mug, eyeing her over the rim. "Better?
"Better." She hid from the fritzing shadows clinging to the edge of her vision. Stared into his eyes instead. “Why did you retire?”
“My wife died."
Sam put down her drink. "Was she on active duty?"
“She was a civilian. My son accidentally shot her with my personal weapon when he was nine. He never quite understood it wasn't a toy.”
Sam didn’t have the first clue what to say. “I'm so sorry.”
He stirred his tea.
“Lock your weapon up. I don’t want to find you with it in your mouth, I've seen enough of that out here.”
“I'm not suicidal.” Sam didn’t think she deserved to live; that wasn’t the same as wanting to die.
“That's what plenty of ex-officers say before they drop a well-dressed corpse and a Dear John letter for their folks. I'm not in the mood to clean yours up before I ship you home.”
Sam sat back, disparate pieces of information coalescing in her mind.
“Now I get why Uncle George suggested I come out here. You counsel vets.”
“Part-time. Gotta do something during the hockey off-season.” He looked surprised at her surprise. “I coach the local high-school varsity hockey team. I like to stay busy. Can't live like a reclusive mountain man all the time. I need people. People need people.”
Sam chewed her lip. Jack couldn’t have always been this put-together. “You tried to eat your gun too?”
He gestured in vague recognition of her hitting the nail on the head.
“Sure did. I'm not special, Sam. I just outlived wanting to die. I figure if I'm gonna live with what happened, I might as well do something useful with my time.”
“Live a life worth living?”
“Yeah, I guess.” He dipped his head to catch her eye. “Now it's your turn. What do you want to do first?”
Eventually, Jack talked Sam into fishing at his cabin. She let him stand behind her, his solid body enveloping hers to teach her how to cast a line.
“Are there fish in this lake?”
He laughed into her ear, sending nascent desire pooling in her stomach. She leaned into his chest. His nose, his lips nudged the hinge of her jaw.
“It’s not about fish, Sam. It’s about fishing.”
She looked back at him. “There are no fish in this lake.”
“Let’s leave some mystery for next time.”
She propped her fishing rod against the camp chair at the end of the dock. “I don’t want to fish.” She turned to face him. They were chest to chest. “I want you.”
His eyes were on her mouth. “Is that right?”
“That’s right.” She pushed him toward dry land. He traipsed backward like he had eyes in behind his head.
She shoved him into his favorite deckchair and sank into his lap.
“Samantha,” he purred her name. He swept his hands up her sides, raising goosebumps on her skin.
Sam kissed him, slipped her tongue in his mouth to taste him.
He groaned and grabbed her six to drive her closer, anchoring her body to his. Anchoring her to solid ground.
She was thrilled at his responsiveness. She felt powerful. Alive.
“Sam.” He chanted her name. Kissed his hunger into her skin. He tugged her lower lip into his mouth, using his teeth to tease the swollen flesh.
“Jesus, Jack.” She rocked against his thigh, aching for relief. “Don't stop.”
He disengaged his mouth from hers. He was glassy-eyed with arousal. Sam felt the same.
“You feel too damn good. Give a guy a chance at keeping his dignity here.”
“Why have dignity when you can have me?”
He growled, “You have no business being this tempting.” He swatted her backside through her jeans. Those hands… “Fuck.”
“What's wrong?” She ghosted her lips over his. He shifted restlessly beneath her. “Don't you want me?”
He swallowed, unfastened his greedy hands from her thighs. “Not like this.”
“Oh.” This was so far past embarrassing.
"Don't get me wrong. You are beyond hot. Under other circumstances, I'd be all for this.”
Sam’s thoughts turned to static.
“But not now?”
His eyes were soft. She didn’t want him to be soft.
“I like you, Sam. That means I can't be what gets you through this.”
She rubbed his chest through his shirt. “You look at me like you wouldn't say no.”
“I'm decent, not dead. A woman who looks like you coming on to me is a hell of a fantasy, but that's what it's got to stay.” He gathered her hands into her lap. “Boundaries are easy to cross when you don't feel like yourself. In fact, they're probably the first thing to give after impulse control. Would the person you usually are go after me?”
“She wouldn't disappear from her duty station with minimal notice and vanish into the backwoods with a hot fisherman, no.”
He traced his thumb over hers so gently Sam’s eyes watered. She never felt like herself anymore.
"You're operating on emergency power, Colonel. You're doing whatever it takes to stay alive, and you don't know why. You need help.”
“Then help me.”
“You need professional help, and I'd bet my bottom dollar there's somebody at Cape Canaveral waiting to get you that help. Take the offer. Talk to someone. Get on with your life. You won't feel this bad forever.”
“But what if I do?”
“All the more reason to talk to someone qualified to help you cope. Don't suffer for nothing. That helps no one.”
“You're determined to be the bigger person?”
His smile was self-deprecating.
“The word I think you're looking for is ‘dumbass.' But I'm a dumbass who cares about you. I'll pick that over a fling anytime.”
Sam avoided Jack for three days.
She didn’t fish. She didn’t appear at his cabin to flirt. She didn’t call home.
On the fourth day, she did. And on the fifth.
She had a standing video appointment with a trauma-informed psychologist, courtesy of NASA.
She spent a week mortified she’d tried using Jack to chase the pain away. (He’d almost succeeded.)
After a week and a half, she felt ready to face him. He hadn’t done anything to warrant the silent treatment, after all. And she liked him. God, she liked him.
Sam shoved her hands in her back pockets. “You headed anywhere special?"
Jack stepped off his porch, spinning his keys around his finger. He wore his trusty olive ball cap and a brown jacket with a high-vis vest thrown on top.
"Were you waiting for me?"
“No.” Sam would rather pretend her faux pas hadn't happened. The best way to do that was by ignoring the appreciation in his eyes when he looked her up and down.
“Uh huh.” He let her get away with the out and out Iie. “There were some kids hiking in these parts over the weekend and now they're missing. The local sheriff and I go back a ways so he calls me to help out with tracking on cases like this.”
Sam’s ardor cooled.
“I hope the kids are okay.”
“They usually are. They go off-trail and get turned around. Eventually, they sit and wait to be found by search parties. We haven't had any unhappy endings to a disappearance in the last ten years or so."
"Sounds like your doing."
He tapped the bill of his cap and winked. “I do what I can.” Her stomach flipped. “Wanna come with?”
Sam wavered. “I've never tracked so much as a squirrel.”
“Good thing we're not looking for squirrels, we're looking for a group of kids. Loud, messy litterbugs; can't miss 'em. A lot of them are less afraid of women than men. It'd be useful to have a nurturing presence on the team.”
“Isn't that a little sexist?”
He raised his hands. “Take it up with the scared kids. I'm just the search party.”
“I'll come with you. Maybe you can teach me something.”
After three hours in the woods, bickering if they weren’t flirting and trading glances that lingered longer than either would admit, Sam and Jack spotted their quarry. Jack had been right. The missing campers were messy and loud and young. Sam couldn’t imagine her parents letting her roam free in the woods at eight or nine years old, but they seemed right at home.The kids were dirty and scratched up, but ultimately unharmed. One of the older boys, named Malcolm, thought Jack hung the moon, and regaled them with a detailed report of all he’d done to keep everyone safe and fed until help arrived. His elation had multiplied when Jack talked to his parents about how proud he was of his survival skills.
“I thought Malcolm was going to float away,” Sam teased Jack as they drove back through the dense woods to return to his cabin.
“He’s a good kid. Reminds me of Charlie.”
“How’s he?” Jack could talk for hours and never mention anything about himself. Sam wanted to know all there was to know about him.
“He’s a math teacher. He was gonna join the Air Force, but he can’t stand guns.” She covered his hand with hers.
“I loved my math teachers.”
“How’d I know you’d say that?”
“Lucky guess?”
“Sure, Mission Commander.”
“You looked me up?”
“I looked you up.” He turned his hand palm-up to entwine their fingers. “I’m sorry, Sam.”
She reached for her five senses to ground herself in the moment. Sight, smell, sound, taste, and touch. She squeezed his hand tight.
“The results of the investigation are just preliminary, but they say it wasn’t my fault. Faulty programming met substandard materials that made for a weaker shuttlecraft. Intrepid should have held together.” If they had just adopted Sam’s recommendations, she would have. "Coupled harmonics tore her apart."
“Sounds like all-around rotten luck.”
“Yeah, it was.” She counted her breaths. Tasted ocean water in her mouth. Held on to Jack for all he was worth. He let her. “They didn't say anything about me being with you.” The children had been too happy to be home and their parents had been relieved if conspicuous.
“I told them you were keeping a low profile. They don't ask questions when I say that. Besides, you helped find their kids. I figure they owe you one.”
“I thought Minnesota would be a lot less exciting.”
"Life is what you make of it, wherever you make it."
They came to a fork in the road. One led to Jack’s cabin and the other to Sam’s.
“What’s it gonna be, Colonel?”
“Come back with me? I don't want to be alone right now.”
“We don't have to do anything,” he reminded her.
She ran her thumb along his bottom lip. “I want to.”
Jack spread her naked across her bed. He pinned her body down. The rest of her he let fly.
She didn't remember what she said, only how he felt pressing her legs apart with his own, making a place for himself between her thighs. He was everything she craved. The turbulence of reentry crossed with the terror of liftoff. Jack O'Neill, her simple wonder.
He explored her with his lips, spread her open with his fingertips. The rasp of his stubble countered slow, patient laps of her sex. When she glanced between her legs she found him heavy-lidded and content.
He swirled his tongue in tight circles around her clit. He worked two slim, long fingers into her; then three. She clutched at his fingers, moaning deep in her chest at how satisfying the drag of his knuckles felt against her slick, swollen flesh.
"Like that," she panted. Ordered. Don’t stop. Never stop.
He rubbed the pads of his fingers against that sweet spot inside her, coaxing her closer and closer to the edge.
He deserved a medal for his single-minded devotion to making her come. All she had was his name, moaned and then sobbed at a fever pitch.
He lightened his touch to a tease.
She tilted her hips. Needing more. Needing him. “Please, Jack.”
"Anything you want, baby."
Sam rejected most pet names; this one melted her. She was vulnerable and exposed, his if he wanted. Oh. He wanted.
He crawled up her body, dropping open-mouthed kisses along the crease inside her thigh, up her belly, between her breasts.
He pressed his forehead to hers, sank into her slow and deep until he filled her. Her nerves were alight, like fireworks set off behind her eyelids. The drag of his chest hair against her nipples tugged an inhuman sound from her vocal cords.
She'd let herself want him when she'd felt like dying, yet here she was alive. In his hands and alive. Under his hungry mouth and living. Clinging to his broad back, heels braced against his urgent rocking hips, biting back a cry. When had she last felt like flesh and blood? Like nerves and skin drawn taut and heavy breasts? An aching clit, a wet wanton sex. He made her feel like this. Lustily earthbound.
He swallowed every word, every plea that spilled out of her. She wanted more of him. He gave her more. Her every desire he answered, her every need he supplied.
“Come on, baby. Come on.”
He hiked her leg around his waist, drove her into the mattress just to hear her sob. Kissed her neck to make her gasp. Ground his pelvis into her clit to make her defame a god she had no use for. All it took was a hint of teeth scraping her nipple to make her come.
There was nothing inside her head. No fear. No hell. Just him. Sure as gravity. Holding her body down.
He was the stars and the space between them. The rings around Saturn, the eye of Jupiter. The eye-catching red rocks of Mars. She longed to map his body as she'd mapped the Crab Nebula and every astral phenomenon visible from home. She thought he might be home.
Silver floaters danced across her vision while she fought to catch her breath.
He explored her collarbone with his lips. He was soft against her thigh. They’d kicked the bedsheets to the floor. They were unsalvageable tonight.
“What do you need, Sam?”
She raked her nails over his scalp and brought his head to her chest.
He’d been so strong for her. How long had he been strong?
“You've given me everything, Jack. What do you need?”
His gaze swept over her face, open, so open now that there was nothing hidden between them.
“For you to be okay.”
She believed him.
They laid on a picnic blanket beneath a black walnut tree.
This part of Minnesota was so far from the city, nothing but stars populated the sky as far as the eye could see. They took turns picking out constellations. She was positive Peter Cottontail wasn’t a legitimate constellation; it still made her laugh to hear him say it.
He kissed her, his agile fingers entwined in the fine hairs at the base of her skull. His hands were her lifeblood, his touch like hearth fire. The half-life of her wanting him was the rest of her days.
"You need to go back, Sam. You belong out there." He gestured toward the midnight blue sky. "Don't let fear keep you down here."
"What if it's not fear?" She traced the tendons of his neck. The bruise blooming under his ear. She’d done that. The faint scratches under his shirt that scored his chest. She’d done that. She’d do it again.
“Then it'll be here when you get home.” He kissed her again, rucked up her denim shirt to stroke bare skin. “Except maybe we'll only need the one cabin next time.”
She rolled him onto his back and covered his body with hers. She’d give him something to remember her by.
Colonel Samantha Carter would fly again someday, on Earth as among the stars. Both were home.