She straddled him, sliding him inside her, leaning forward to kiss him and she heard him say her name again, urgently, and then she couldn’t think anymore as she moved against him, gasping as a kind of pleasure she’d never known slid through her entire body.

* * *

Afterward, Dan lay on his back, head on the pillow, and Jess lay across the bed, head resting against his chest. He lit two cigarettes, passing one to her. She exhaled blue smoke into the room, which caught the light from the street.

“Doesn’t it seem like nighttime is too bright in the city now?” she asked. “I’ve become so used to blackout curtains and no street lighting, to the dark of being out in the field, that this feels like some kind of strange eternal day.”

“It’s the first time I’ve been here since the blackout was lifted,” Dan said. “And last night I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t work out why at first. I thought it might be the noise.”

“It’s hardly quiet out in the field.”

“I know. It was the light. And you’re right; it feels like everything outside is on fire. Or else as if…”

“We really are in hell.” She breathed in smoke again, blew out, watching the thin stream sparkle in a way it wouldn’t in her quarters in Germany.

“I think we discovered that a long time ago,” Dan whispered.

Neither spoke for a long moment. Jess rolled onto her side, so she could look up at him. “Talking like this isn’t making the pictures stop.”

“It’s not.” He reached down and took the butt of her cigarette from her, stubbed it out in the ashtray on the bedside table, then stroked a finger lightly through her hair. “I know everyone ribs you about your short hair and your predilection for trousers but I have to say that, even though I’ve always thought you were beautiful, I wasn’t expecting to find such an incredible body hiding beneath the uniform.” His finger trailed down to the top of her breast.

“Yours isn’t so bad either,” she smiled. “And you don’t need to flatter me. I know half the men have pages from Vogue of me in my modeling days. I’m sure you’ve seen more of my body before today than you’re admitting.”

“I never look at that stuff, Jess. From that day in the foxhole in Italy, you became one of us. So, like I said, it’s impossible not to see you as beautiful but I saw it in the same way that you know Jennings has freckles. A fact, not a feeling. And I let the men keep their posters because it gives them hope. But you’re one of my men. Were one of my men,” he corrected himself with a grin. “Now I don’t know what the hell you are.”

She laughed. “I don’t know either.” She propped her elbow on his chest, rested her head in her hand. “Do you think that we’ll ever, once we’re back in America after this is all over, be able to forget? Not forget this,” she added, touching his cheek, “but everything else?”