The Last Hour Read Online Free PDF Page A

in me permanently. Dylan and I had been walking across the green at Columbia, and I knew who the girls were immediately. I had been expecting to meet a reasonably attractive girl—I’d seen Alex’s picture—but I was not expecting the six foot two Amazon goddess who stood next to her.
    Carrie had shoulder length brown hair framing a pert nose, blue-green eyes, and a long frame. She wore a perfectly fitting flowered dress that cut off just above the knees and gave enough of a view of her knockers to make me want to get a much closer look. Black ankle-high leather boots with three inch heels accentuated perfect calves and brought her almost eye to eye with me in height, which is pretty unusual and awesome.  
    I’d only been home from Afghanistan a few days, and seeing women who weren’t in Army uniforms was still overwhelming. But Carrie was so much more than that. She would have caught my eye in any crowd, with the natural grace of her movements, her long willowy body, the arch of her eyebrows and those pale eyes—I was instantly in lust with her.
    Her eyes widened a little as we approached, and she said something to her sister I couldn’t quite hear.
    “Jesus, Dylan. You didn’t tell me Alex’s sister was a freaking model.”
    He smirked. “I think she’s a scientist or something, Weed. Smarter than either one of us.” I’m about a head taller than Dylan ... and pretty much everyone else ... so the guys in the platoon always called me Weed.
    We reached the girls a moment later, and Alex introduced us all. Carrie looked at me with kind of a half-smile on her face, hands at her sides. “So, um ... you were in the Army with Dylan?”
    I wanted her out of that dress right then. I couldn’t keep my eyes off of her. I smiled at her, looked her in the eyes. “Yeah, I had to drop out of college in 09. Ended up enlisting.”
    “Oh? Where did you go?”  
    She turned to walk beside me. About six inches away. “Stony Brook. It’s actually not so far from here, up on Long Island.”  
    “How’d you end up in the Army?”
    “Ehhh ... my parents both worked for the same startup, got laid off at the end of 2008. They finally had to sell the house, and there wasn’t any money for school, but the financial aid people didn’t see it that way. So ... off to the Army I went.”
    “Where are you from?”
    I was starting to feel off balance from the sudden barrage of questions. But I wanted to ask her questions too. Lots of them. This wasn’t love at first sight. This was pure, unadulterated lust. Everything about her, from the way her hair framed her face and the slight gloss on her lips to those legs just made me want to howl.
    “Burbs,” I replied. “Glen Cove. You?”
    “All over, really, but my family lives in San Francisco.”
    Ahh. I remembered Dylan saying she was from a diplomatic family. “Your dad was foreign service, right? Dylan said you and your sisters come from a ... kind of an establishment sort of family.”
    She nodded. “Yeah ... I went to three different high schools.”
    “That must have sucked.”
    She shrugged. “You roll with the punches best you can. It wasn’t so bad. When did you get out of the Army?”
    “Week ago. I was already extended past my original discharge date because we were in Afghanistan. Got back from there two weeks ago and started processing out of the Army as soon as I could.”
    “So what are your plans?”
    We’d reached the curb by then. I looked at her and grinned. “Get drunk.”
    She laughed. “I didn’t mean right this minute.”
    “I did. We are going to a party, right?”
    Carrie shook her head, but I could see she thought I was funny. I needed to keep working that, because I was so getting into those panties. That’s when I noticed we’d left Dylan and Alex behind. I nodded my head in their direction. They were standing about fifty yards behind us, wrapped in each other’s arms. Oblivious of the fact that we’d left them behind.
    “We should