A Soldier's Story (5 page)

       They remained locked like that for a while, and then gradually started fucking again. Jay fondled her breasts and sucked on them. The tempo increased.

She reached underneath and cupped his balls in her hand.

"That feels good," he moaned.

       "This will feel even better," she whispered, clasping the base of his cock with one hand while she fondled his balls with the other. It drove him wild. He prided himself that despite this, he never missed a beat in the rhythmic fucking he was doling out to her. But when she stroked his anus and inserted a finger into it as well, it proved too much, he convulsed and went off like a firecracker on the fourth of July.

~ * ~

       A Canadian sunset blazed flame on the horizon as Jay walked through the airport. The Vancouver skyline hovered in the distance. It felt good to be home. Kerry waited for him in the lounge. He'd been dreading this moment for weeks. It wasn't easy to pick up where you left off after a year apart. But this reunion would be even more difficult, due to his involvement with Darren and the encounters with two prostitutes. The fear persisted that his wife would somehow know.

       Her face glowed with pleasure when she saw him. "Oh it's so good to have you back again." She threw herself into his arms, seeming quite oblivious to the curious stares around them, and kissed him passionately.

       "You look different," he said, when he finally managed to disentangle himself. "It's your hair."

       She laughed. "I finally bit the bullet and got it cut. Do you like it?"

       Jay hesitated. "Give me a chance to get used to it, then ask me again," he hedged. Her long fair hair had been one of her best features. Now, it looked ordinary, like everyone else's. Kerry wasn't as pretty or sexy as Nadia or Desdemona, Jay looked at her critically for the first time. But she had a wholesome prettiness about her, which more than compensated. She doesn't hold a candle to Darren though, does she? The irksome little voice suddenly said. Then knowing it had caught him at a vulnerable moment pressed its advantage. You're a stinker Jay, you don't deserve her.

       In the car, he feigned tiredness to avoid talking too much. He just didn't feel up to it. Hadn't yet found the notch in their relationship that he could settle back into and feel comfortable again.

       It felt so odd driving down the once familiar streets, and then onto their own block. In his mind's eye they had always loomed large, illuminated in sunlight. Now in the encroaching darkness everything looked rather ordinary and small.

       "Your family's planning a big get together tomorrow evening," she said, pulling into their driveway. "Even the shed is decorated with yellow ribbons."

       Jay smiled. "Dad always did everything in a big way."

       "Your mother does most of the work, though, baking and cooking up a storm."

       It would be good to see his parents again, and the sundry uncles, aunts and cousins.

       Inside the house, the rooms smelt musty, as if closed up for a long time. Kerry opened the windows. Jay caught her to him. He knew it was expected. She had never been too adventurous sexually though, product of a strict Christian upbringing, he supposed.

       He stripped off her clothes, feigning an urgency he did not feel, and carried her into the bedroom. Very hackneyed, the little voice commented. You're trying too hard. It screams guilt.

       Shut the fuck up, he willed it silently and stripped off his clothes to join Kerry in the bed. He pulled her against him, kissing her hair and caressing her body. Why didn't his cock get hard? He'd have

to make exhaustion the excuse.

       Think of Darren that will turn you on, the little voice suggested, maddeningly. Yet, under the circumstances it wasn't such a lame suggestion. Or even Nadia and Desdemona, it added. Would it never let him be?

       Jay recalled the sizzling encounters in the supply closet and the shower room, and the way he'd fucked the prostitutes on king size beds, in the second rate hotel.

       "Is everything alright, Jay?" Kerry peered at him, quizzically.

       He started, guiltily. "Oh sure…I'm just beat. It was a long flight and I didn't get much sleep the night before either."

       "Better rest then," she said.

       Your sins will find you out. The little voice was determined to have the last word. Never had it sounded so self-righteous.

       During the night he woke to find moonlight shimmering on the carpet. Kerry had her back to him. He snuggled into her. She felt good against him, warm and suddenly, familiar. Gone were the demons of the night before. Guilt, he supposed over his infidelities, especially with Darren, and genuine exhaustion after all he'd been through.

       He hiked up her nightdress and slipped his hard cock between her thighs, nuzzled it against her pussy. She moaned a little and moved closer against him. He kissed her neck and caressed her breasts and belly, circling her clit with his finger.

       "Oh yes…" she murmured, and started to lubricate.

       He eased his cock inside, and taking his time, fucked her smoothly and rhythmically until her pussy twitched spasmodically. "That's a good girl," he murmured, patting her bottom. "Now it's daddy's turn." And with a few quick thrusts he blasted cum deep inside her.

       He turned her over, kissed her deeply on the mouth and mounted her. "It's good to be home again," he whispered, putting his cock inside her.

       "I love you Jay," she murmured. "I've missed you so much."

       "I love you too," he said. And he did, always had. She was like family. In fact, he'd spent a lot more time with Kerry than any of his blood relations. He kissed her neck and shoulders and breasts. Then he slipped his hands under her bottom to raise it up, and fucked her hard. His balls banged against her pussy, like battering rams at an unwieldy gate. The bed creaked out its protest.

       "It's just like old times," she said, and met his thrusts, with an usual degree of enthusiasm. Everybody had their moments, he supposed. But heck, he sure wasn't complaining.

~ * ~

       Strands of tinsel sparkled around the tree and on the mantelpiece between the cards. Kerry arranged a vase of holly and set it by the window. "What do you think?" she asked.

       "Very festive." Jay smiled. December…he'd been home for months. Where had the time gone? He threw another log on the fire.

       "Are you sure you won't change your mind and come to the party?" She kissed him lightly on the lips as she passed his chair.

       "No, really, it's not my scene." He recalled other years when he'd gone to the Christmas do at the library where Kerry worked, and been bored beyond words.

       "Fair enough," she said. That's one of the things he liked about her. She never sought to change him, or bend him to her will.

       "Besides, I have a stack of paper work to do." That was the downside about being back on the base. So much red tape and forms in quadruplicate had swamped his office he'd ended up bringing a stack home.

       "Remember string the lights up outside, if you have a chance."

       "Will do."

       After Kerry left, he made a pot of coffee and settled down at the kitchen table to work his way through the invoices, purchase orders, and other dreary documents. His mind wandered back to Afghanistan. He must have been crazy, he decided, to act the way he did. Of course, war did that to soldiers. But to put in jeopardy the good life he had here with Kerry, had been insane.

       Inevitably, when his thoughts drifted back to the desert, they centred around Darren. It had been madness. A fever of the blood born out of fear, desperation and the magnetic pull of the forbidden and taboo, blessed oblivion of the senses for at least a little while. He wondered where Darren was now. At Camp Borden, in Ontario, he supposed, in officer's training.

       Jay lit a cigarette. Recalled the erotic sessions with the hookers in Cyprus. It was as if it had all happened to someone else, in a different world…a different lifetime. It had been difficult settling in to the routine of home life at first, of course. But gradually, his nerves had healed and he'd begun to feel like his old self again…well almost. You could never completely erase the effects of past actions.

       He got up and went down to the basement and rummaged through the boxes until he found the Christmas lights. Put on a coat–– the nights were getting damned frosty––and fetched the ladder from the shed.

       He had contemplated leaving the military, and returning to work at the family business. They'd just opened another nursery, recently, and could use the help. Still, the army had become a home of sorts, a rudder in the storm, so he stayed on.

       After he finished putting up the lights, he had a shower. He had been concerned when he first came home that he would continue to lust after hookers and other men, but not necessarily in that order. He smiled. Fortunately, it hadn't happened, and he felt quite satisfied with the sex life he had with Kerry.

       He soaped his head vigorously, and then rinsed it off. He could say quite honestly that Darren was the only male he had ever found sexually attractive. Thank heavens for that, he thought, ruefully, because boy, could it ever complicate matters.

       When he switched off the shower he could hear Christmas music coming from the house next door. He got into his pyjamas and sat by the fire. The darkness lay behind him in Afghanistan and Cyprus. Life was good.

       He must have drowsed off, for the next thing he knew Kerry was shaking his arm. "Jay, wake up." She looked anxious.

       "What is it?" he asked, groggily.

       "You know the patrol that went missing in Afghanistan."

       As if he could ever forget it. Its very mention snapped him fully awake.

       "It was all over the eleven o'clock news."

       "What?" He stood up. "That was all over months ago. How did the media find out about it?"

       Kerry shrugged. "Somebody must have talked." She took off her coat and hung it in the hall closet. "Prepare yourself for the worst. It's a feeding frenzy."

       As if on cue, the phone started to ring.

       The media.

       "How did you find the trapped men? Who told you where to look? What kind of condition were they in?" Etcetera, etcetera…

       "No comment. No comment. No comment."

       He punched in Beaumont's number and left a message on his answering machine. "How do you want me to handle this?"

       Less than an hour later, Beaumont returned the call. "They've been snooping around here too, like a bunch of starving vultures." He sounded enraged. "I sent them packing, of course."

       "I didn't talk to them either," Jay said. "But our silence might make them think there's something sinister to hide. Instead of just plain silliness on the part of Lieutenant Portman." He shuddered to think what their spin––on the basis of no hard evidence––would be.

       But Beaumont remained adamant. "Don't talk to them, Jay. This is army business. It's all over and done with. It has fuck-all to do with anybody else. They'll soon get fed up and go in search of other victims…the bastards."

       It sounded too much like wishful thinking to Jay, and it turned out he was right. Frustrated by their refusal to talk to them, the media declared it a cover-up, sparking intensive public interest.

       Prompted by orders from above, Beaumont released a terse statement: Several months ago, due to a breakdown in communications equipment, a patrol went missing while on a routine surveillance. An immediate search and rescue effort was implemented and the missing vehicle and its crew found unharmed.

       Jay heard it on the car stereo while driving to the base. He shook his head. If anything this would make the situation worse. It screamed cover-up. The press would take it as an insult, just a typical bureaucratic attempt to whitewash events.

       He lit a cigarette, and tossed the spent match out the window. Why couldn't they just tell the truth? It wouldn't exactly make the army look good, of course, one of their officers flying off the radar like Portman had done, in a mad quest to find Bin Laden. But still, it was probably a lot less damaging in the long run, than the wild speculations and conclusions the press would dream up––unless, of course, there was more to it than that? Had he suspected as much himself, but just didn't want to look any closer? Of course you did! The little voice that had been silent for months suddenly piped up. Something just didn't add up. But you were so besotted with Darren at the time that you couldn't see straight. It shrilled with laughter. Any brains you had were in your cock.

"I need to see you, sir."

       Private Brian Forbes! Jay recognised the voice as soon as he picked up the phone. It transported him away from his office and the Fraser River beyond his window, to the desert plains of Afghanistan.

       "How are you, Private?" He remembered the last time he'd seen him, still pretty banged up from his ordeal in the Hirabad Caves. "Are you fully recovered?"

       "I'm fine, sir, thank you."

       But he didn't seem fine, Jay decided. He sounded tense and worried. Not his usual cheerful self, at all.

       "It's just that…" Forbes hesitated. "Things are starting to get really crazy now and the pressure is killing."

       "I'm assuming this has to do with the recent media interest in the missing patrol?"

       "Yes, it does."

       "So there was more to it, I take it, than what we were originally led to believe?"

       Forbes laughed, bitterly. "You got that one right, sir."

       "Okay, I can see you anytime."