Riley Brennan did not join the Army to collect strays. She joined because she was tired of being the girl who opened the bar and called that a personality.
Fort Jackson piles her in with three of them anyway.
Cole Maddox is twenty, built like a barn, and apologizes to doors. Eli Park is nineteen, precise, and treats desire like homework. Dean Walsh is twenty-two, all mouth and no witnesses. They save her a seat. They split cookies four ways. They look at her like they have never been allowed to want anything.
Riley is twenty-four. She knows what to do with good boys who are starving.
On a picnic table at the edge of a smoke pit, she makes a deal. After graduation. Off-post. A real bed. All three of them. Not as a prize the Army issued. As friends she refuses to leave scared of their own hands.
Cole first. Because he is the most miserable. Because if she does not take him first, he will spend the rest of the cycle thinking he imagined her.
What follows is tender, filthy, and tightly held: a stairwell that does not count, a locked hotel room that does, and a unit that has to stay boring in public if they want to keep each other.
Barracks Bunny: First is a contemporary erotic short story about found family, first times, and a woman who keeps her promises with her whole body.
