His Road Home (9 page)

She could share the fear that she hadn’t even recognized until after Rey’s friends had driven away. “I don’t know if I’m strong enough for Rey. Long term.”

“You are.” That sounded as confident as the other woman’s apple chopping.

“How do you know?” The question echoed in the kitchen like a plea.

“Set your alarm every morning, dontcha? Keep getting up. That’s the first step to strength.”

“Mar-lys! Come see this!” her husband yelled from another room.

“Hold on.” She wiped her hands on a striped towel. “What is that man fooling with?”

Following their hostess through the front hall to an office, she heard muffled laughter.

“Grandma!” Three blond children crowded and waved from a computer screen. Rey sat to the side of the desk, grinning, and Glen had a flush over his bald head as he gestured his wife to sit next to him. “Surprise!” the kids cheered.

“This young man fixed the video box with the computer thingie, don’t ya know.” His eyes glistened as he looked at Rey. “We can see our family today.”

* * *

Despite the lack of other cars, she drove slowly because she didn’t want to overshoot the headlights. And it was a form of control, at least over her exterior, that she didn’t feel over her emotions. “How could I not know?”

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. They were the nicest people ever, and I didn’t know that they’d lost their son until... I feel like such a...” She’d whined to Marlys without understanding the other woman’s heartbreak until Rey had pulled her into the living room to see the boxed flag.

“It’s life.”

She didn’t say more while she parked directly in front of their room. Three lonely cars meant they could’ve had separate rooms, but after four nights, she’d forgotten to ask.

As if he’d also counted the customers, he reached for her hand. His fingers were longer and thicker and far stronger than hers, his skin a shade darker despite months inside Walter Reed. When her hand curled in his palm, he cupped it as gently as she would hold a shorebird’s egg. “Happy one room.”

“Me, too,” she agreed.

“Tonight?” He brought their joined hands to his lips, and she automatically unfurled her fingers to stroke his cheek where he’d shaved before dinner.

Don’t dither
. Undoubtedly Marlys assumed two people their age were having sex, and she’d aimed her advice at marriage plans, but there was truth in her words. “Yes.”

The car was simultaneously steamy and freezing, and a warm room waited. The key was an old metal type hooked onto a steel slug and ball with the motel’s mailing address, and it took too long to operate. Finally he opened the door and motioned her to squeeze under his arm. She couldn’t make it without brushing his chest, which his lowered eyelids indicated he noticed.

The door clicked behind her and the chain snicked home, but she was uncertain whether to sit or stand, or even where to be, so she didn’t venture far into the room. Nothing in the utilitarian furnishings had changed from earlier when they’d dressed to go to the Andersons’ house, and yet the room felt as different as she did. The memorable items were the two double beds, not because of their patterned spreads or white pillowcases, but because of their side-by-side presence.

Rey solved her dilemma the way women fantasized a man would. From behind, he lifted her hair out of her coat collar and let it sift through his hands while he whispered her name. His lips brushed her temple and she tilted her head to let him kiss farther as he said, “Coat off.” It slid down her arms until the sleeves hung from her fingertips and she shrugged it to the floor.

With his hands holding her hips against his, he rotated their bodies until they both faced the mirrored vanity. The dim light from a single bedside lamp showed contrasts, but not details, of his white shirt and her silver sweater. They looked like an art photo.

“See.” He finger-brushed her hair to one shoulder. While she watched, he lowered his lips to her ear. His eyes never left her reflection. “Us.”

She was covered turtleneck to toes, but he found places to touch. The edge of her ear. The small bones of her wrist. The feather of tiny hair at her temple. He moved so slowly, always watching her eyes, that her knees wobbled with the tension and she couldn’t support herself without his body. She felt the bulge rub against her lower back, she wanted to press on him and squirm closer, but his touch was so precise it constrained her to stillness. She’d never known a man to be so focused on each moment with her, but nothing distracted him. This must be how he conducted missions.

Her head fell to his shoulder while they both watched him inch her sweater upward. His hands almost covered the pale band of skin revealed to the mirror.

“Smooth.” His voice was as rich and low as chocolate.

Now her chest rose and fell in the mirror and she looked like a runner needing air, but the elastic of her bra compressed her ribs and she couldn’t breathe. Again his hands moved as if he knew each thought when she had it, bra hooks released and the tight band was replaced by heat from his palms as the bottom hem of her turtleneck lifted higher.

She watched his hands trail across her stomach, the arch of her back stretching her to a tight instrument for him to play. Her skin was paler even than Seattle sunlight, and his hands looked dark and masterly as they spanned her abdomen, then traced her waistband. His little finger circled her navel.

No sudden moves from him, as if he feared spooking her, but she tilted deeper onto his shoulder and nothing could make her close her eyes, not while she had the sight of him manipulating the button and zipper on her pants.

“You like. Watching.”

He had that right. She liked to observe, whether marine life or her computer or people, but this was the first time the innocent habit made her burn. She wanted to do more than watch. She wanted to jump, to dive into him and roll with him and grapple and fuck, yes, fuck. But all he did was s-l-o-w-l-y loosen her pants enough for his hand to slide across her panties. Cotton, plain black, but eroticized by the image of his fingers covering the fabric.

He was making her wait. After all these months, the nights with their phones, the times their hands or arms had brushed on this trip, he was still making her wait.

In the waiting she noticed her breathing. And his. They had reached tandem, both of their chests rising at the same moment, both letting out their breath when the other did, as if they had already become one.

“Off.” The command freed her.

She shimmied out of her slacks and kicked them far. He caught her frenzy and yanked her sweater until she twisted to remove her elbow from the sleeve. Not a graceful movie star helix-shaped strip-tease, but a rush with their eyes locked in the mirror, disconnected for the instant the knit pulled over her face, and then reconnected. His need fed hers, and her need soared to see the flushed cheeks and the shake in the hands that roamed her body. In the mirror the only dark spots left were her dangling bra and twisted panties, and her hair against his white shirt. Their silhouettes were tighter to each other, hers engulfed by his shoulders and arms as he curved around her and lifted his hands to cover her breasts.

Each sense doubled the other, racing from eye and skin to nerves and brain and multiplying until she couldn’t stand. But he could. He walked her close enough to the vanity that she braced her hands on its top. The bra disappeared, he whisked the panties to her knees and she kicked them away too. Then she was bare.

“Look,” he said.

The mirror was touching distance, like having two more people in the room. Her nipples were brown and pointed at their reflections. She watched his fingers pinch and roll them in a rhythm that tugged to her hips, felt each pluck as a need to undulate, to writhe and reach for more. Yes, she was naked, yes, he was man-handling her and driving her wild and yes, now his hand was between her legs. His fingers found her center, making her spine arch and her pelvis thrust at the same time, but no, it wasn’t enough.

He panted faster, and he bucked against her ass but he was still clothed. The rhythm of his hips and his fingers wasn’t completing her, wasn’t taking her there, the place she knew was there, so close.

If he wasn’t going to give it to her, she had to take it. She twisted to be face to face and gripped his zipper. His startled eyes were too near to focus while she assaulted his mouth. They moved together until the dresser edge dug into her butt, then he lifted her as she spread her legs and his fly. Their hands were on each other’s bodies. Everywhere was wet and wanting.

“Wait.” He fumbled for a moment with something square.

“Give it.” She sounded like him.

His shaft was thick and long. She wanted to run her hand over it, memorize the smooth skin as her thumb brushed the hair at its base, but she didn’t want to wait a second longer to be completed. The package ripped, and with the sheath they were more than ready.

He yanked her hips to the dresser’s edge. Then his tip pushed while he held her open and the first entry was as sweet as reaching the end of a race. He pushed deep and glided out until they crashed together again and again, faster each time. Now their bodies rocked so hard she bounced on the dresser, but their movements worked like one. His grunts and her moans were so loud she couldn’t separate them, but she didn’t need to categorize who shouted, who flew, who rose, who fragmented, because they both did, together.

“Oh, my.” The mirror was sticky against her shoulder blades, and she wouldn’t look at where she connected to Rey, but his pants scratched her inner thighs. She opened and closed her mouth, chest heaving, but with no idea what to say or do. She was naked, he was dressed, and they’d screwed themselves speechless on a wood veneer built-in.

His eyes gleamed wickedly close, but he didn’t disconnect.

“That was—” She noticed another way he wasn’t like other men. He had growled and stiffened and she’d swear he’d come in the condom, but he filled her enough that if she wanted to, there was still something to slide on. “Wow.”

“Yah, y’betcha.”

The imitation Dakota accent made her snort at the same time his easy fluidity startled her. “Holding out on me?”

“Must be endorphins.” His pause was shorter than usual. “Hot-wired neural pathways.”

She counted on her fingers. “Twelve syllables. And how the heck did you know that?”

“Had an A in Human Biology.” He let go of her hip, but only to move his hand to her breasts.

“Whaaaat?” Her question sounded too high and wispy to deserve an answer as she thrust her chest up and encouraged him to play with her nipples.

“I’m a high speed medic.” He complied with her unspoken orders by wetting his fingers in his mouth and then, after she lowered her chin to watch, he tweaked her nipple to a glistening point. “Know plenty about bodies.”

She arched into his fingers. “I refuse to believe my tax dollars trained you in this.”

“Better believe it, babe.”

“You sound—” She broke off because he’d started gliding again. Indeed, he was still hard. “Ohh.”

“Good?”

“Oh, yes,” she panted as he pressed deeper. “Let’s move to the bed.”

He stopped and bent his head sheepishly. “Think I’m stuck.”

“You can’t be serious?” Her stomach muscles jerked with a laugh that squeezed his cock, although to be fair her butt also felt welded to the fake wood top.

“Not there.” He proved it by popping out, with the condom covered by his hand. “Knee.”

“Oh.” She stopped laughing. “What should I do?”

“Ahh?” He scanned the room, hand still holding the prophylactic in place.

“Garbage can, right.” She wiggled and the suction sound as she unpeeled made both of them burst out laughing again. “Don’t drop it!”

* * *

It took three tries to convince his knee microprocessor that he wasn’t in danger of losing his balance and it ought to loosen itself and play, but Grace helped him totter to the bed, where he collapsed onto his back. The mattress was the best this week, the blankets the softest, and damn if he didn’t feel great.

“Now what?” She’d tied a bath towel like a sarong, but it was nicely narrow.

He raised his right leg, looked her in the eyes and said, “Would you help?” Despite five days together twenty-four seven, they’d vigilantly respected each other’s privacy. It was past time she saw his stumps. “Please.”

“Okay.” When the towel started to become intriguing, she tightened the knot over her breasts. “What should I do?”

He scrunched his pants leg high enough to show the green button on the side of his below-the-knee prosthetic’s socket. “Push that and twist.” The precision mechanics popped, and only the silicone liner remained.

“One down.” She moistened her lips as if talking to herself again.

“Now the hard one.” He lifted his hips from the bed and wiggled his pants below the bionic knee of his left leg so she could reach the release pin, and in seconds the whole mess, including his pants, came off in her arms.

“Next?”

“Peel the banana.”

Her mouth made a circle and her eyes darted immediately to where he’d intended.

“The liners.” He circled his right leg in the air. If the Marquis wore a towel and looked like Grace, therapy would have been more popular.

“I thought you meant—”

“I know.”

She looked exasperated while her first fingers slipped under the silicone liner’s grippy lip like it was a tight sock. “Do they hurt?”

“Off and on. Not now.”

She finished rolling down the second liner while he reclined on his elbows, legs stuck across the sheets. Only his boxers remained and they’d be off as soon as conversation ended. The reddened knobs at the end of his legs felt tenderized by the force he’d exerted at the dresser. He should get a purple marker and draw hearts on stumpy and lumpy. They deserved recognition.

That lip chew meant she’d gone away to think. Since the happy man was covered, and there were no marine life forms in the vicinity, he asked, “They bother you?”

“No. Although sometimes what they stand for does.” She looked into his eyes. “You were hurt. And the Andersons lost their son.” She walked to the table to extinguish the bedside light, effectively hiding her face. “It challenges me to pay attention, to think about politics, duty, America. A lot to consider.”