DISARM (DISARM Series #1) Page 5

  I covered his mouth with my own when I came, afraid to make too much noise should the neighbors overhear, but what I really wanted to do was shout, to rant and rave that it wasn’t fair. I had finally found the love of my life but now he had to leave. I pressed all of the emotion into a kiss, knowing that Henry shared it with me, felt it with me. We were nothing if not two parts of a greater whole.

  Later, we unzipped the roof canopy and looked up at the stars as we lay wrapped up in each other. The evening air was cool but Henry was warm and chased away the chills brought on by the fear.

  “Are you scared?” I asked, playing with his dog tags, trying not to think of what they represent.

  “No. This is what I’ve been training for,” he said. “A lot of people will be relying on me to keep them safe.”

  Then whose job was it to keep Henry safe?

  “I’m sure you’ll be fine,” I said, pushing the thought away. Maybe it’ll come true if I said it enough.

  “Els,” he began tentatively. “What do you want this, us, to be?”

  I twisted my head to look up at him. “What do you want?”

  “I want you to be mine only,” he said and added with a grin, “and wearing that Lara Croft costume at all times, but for my eyes only.”

  “Greedy.”

  He fixed that intense blue gaze on me. “I’ve waited a hell of a long time for you. I’m not about to share with anyone else.”

  “I want you all to myself too,” I said. “And if anyone tries to steal you from me, I will shank a bitch.”

  I felt the vibrations through his chest as he chuckled. “So it’s settled. You’re my girlfriend.”

  “It’s settled,” I said with a happy little nod. “What would you have done if I’d said I wanted to see other people?”

  He shrugged, his confidence so disarming. “Never even occurred to me.”

  Henry gently shook me awake from a nightmare, pulling me away from the gunshots and blood. “You were having a bad dream again,” he said, rubbing my arm.

  “I wasn’t screaming, was I?”

  “No. You were breathing weird, almost like you were sobbing.”

  It was early yet and I was still sleepy, but I fought to keep my eyes open if only to keep the gory images away. I couldn’t even think about who would comfort me from the bad dreams once Henry left. I guess it would have to be me for a while.

  He reached for the watch he’d hung on the tent rod. “Go back to sleep. It’s only five.”

  “Henry,” I whispered, pressing a hand to his chest. “Make love to me.”

  His heart began to race under my palm and I knew what he was thinking, what we were both refusing to acknowledge: that this was the final time we would be making love before he boarded that plane.

  His voice broke when he said, “I love you, Elsie.” He kissed me as he lifted my leg. I gasped when he pushed his way in, my raw nerves singing as he filled me up once more. We made love on our sides, he grasping my hip for leverage as he drove into me. His movements were less gentle, more urgent, and I matched him, trying to prolong the end that would inevitably come. But all too soon, I came shuddering around him, which triggered his own release. He clutched at my hip, gripping me to him as he gasped against my ear.

  “I love you so much,” I choked out, hugging him so tight I could barely breathe. “Come back to me.”

  ~

  All too soon, the time came to say goodbye. We stood in the parking lot on base, a motley crew of airmen and their family. Henry held my hand as we stood on the outer edges of the crowd, watching people say their goodbyes even before the bus arrived to take them to the hangar.

  I was keeping my cool relatively well under the circumstances. Every time a sob bubbled up from my chest, I held my breath and counted to five. It was working until I saw a family—mother, father, and their daughter of about four. The woman was the one in uniform and her eyes were already red with tears. She took a deep breath, bent down to her daughter’s eye level and told her to be strong for daddy. That she loved her and would miss her. The child nodded bravely even as her lips trembled. When the woman tried to stand, her daughter grabbed her sleeve. “Mom, don’t go,” she said in her tiny voice and broke her mother’s tear ducts wide open.

  I completely lost it.

  I turned away from Henry so that he wouldn’t have to see my face crumpling, but he knew; he squeezed my hand and pulled me into his side, holding my head against his chest as he protected me one last time. I sobbed into him, trying to breathe in his scent through the thick material of his ABUs. Finally, when the signal to load the bus came, I took a deep breath and gathered myself.

  Henry lifted my chin and kissed me tenderly. “I’ll be back soon, don’t worry,” he said with a cocky grin that didn’t quite meet his eyes. “Six months will fly by.”

  “I’ll be waiting.” I watched him pick up his bags and walk off, craning my neck when he was swallowed into the crowd, trying to catch one last glimpse of the man who had captured my heart and was now taking it to Afghanistan. I didn’t see him again until after the bus began to pull away and I saw him waving through the dark window a moment before the bus turned the corner.

  And then Henry was gone.

  THE STORY WILL CONTINUE IN BESIEGE

  NOW AVAILABLE

  Here’s a short excerpt from BESIEGE, second in the DISARM series:

  BESIEGE

  Henry was gone. Just like that, the bus turned the corner and he was gone from my sight.

  Not going to lie, that was one of the hardest things I’ve endured.

  I drove his Mustang home from base with tears streaming down my face. I didn’t care. I’d just said goodbye to my best friend, my roommate, and the love of my life. If that doesn’t make me deserving of a moment of blubbering weakness then I don’t know what does.

  Even the cop who pulled me over for speeding on I-45 took one look at my face and knew. “Coming from base?” he asked.

  I nodded, wiping at my face, not wanting him to think that I was turning on the waterworks to get out of a ticket. “Yeah.”

  “Deployment?”

  I nodded again. Great, I was going to get my very first speeding ticket, my first ticket period.

  “My step-son left today as well,” the cop said.

  “Sucks, doesn’t it?” I asked, sniffling.

  He laughed. “Not for me.” He looked at my license and Henry’s insurance card and handed them back. “I’ll let you go with just a warning.”

  Really? “Really?”

  “Deployments are tough,” he said. “Just keep it under sixty-five, alright?”

  I gave him a smile, the bright spot in my otherwise bleary day. “Thank you, Officer. I will.”

  I dreaded walking into our apartment, and for good reason it seemed, because as soon as I walked inside, the loneliness almost suffocated me, as if Henry’s absence sucked out all the oxygen in the building.

  “I can do this,” I told the place and tried to go about my day like normal. Immediately, I wished I hadn’t taken the entire day off from work. The whole day and the whole weekend stretched out in front of me, with wallowing and crying the only things on the agenda. Intent on avoiding that spiral, I changed into my running gear and went to Earlywine Park, hoping the running endorphins would do something to ease my mood.

  One hour later, the endorphins were nowhere to be seen or felt. I had successfully exhausted my body so that I could barely stand straight as I took a shower, but that only added to the general feeling of sadness that I wore like a second skin. That night, I crawled into Henry’s bed, wondering who would hold me when I awoke from the nightmares. I slept there, hugging his pillow to my chest, inhaling his scent. With my eyes closed, I could almost convince myself that he was sleeping beside me.

  The next six months were going to be hell.

  ~

  BESIEGE is now available!

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Military life is not easy. When marrying a service m
ember, you never really know what you’re signing up for: deployments, PCSs, TDYs, and every other acronym under the sun. You are often separated from your loved one and you have to learn how to deal, how to become both the mother and father of your family. This story is personal for me because it draws from my own experience of being a military wife, and I am both afraid and excited to share it with the world.

  I must first thank my husband, who swept me off my feet in Oklahoma. We’ve braved many storms together—while some I’ve had to brave alone—but we are stronger than ever. Thank you for your support and for answering my endless questions about the military.

  To my beta readers: Beth, Lara, Alicia, Kerry, and Shannon. Thank you for helping me out once again! Thank you for your willingness to help. I cannot express how much your friendship means to me.

  To my editor at Clean Leaf Editing: thank you for whipping my writing into shape once again.

  A big shout-out to Tamara, aka D, aka Toni, for inspiring me to finally write something steamy.

  And finally, to the readers who take a chance reading indie-published work: thank you for giving stories like mine a chance. I hope you enjoy DISARM.

  Visit June Gray’s Blog for more information on upcoming projects, news, and short stories.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  DEDICATION

  1 ASSESSING THE SITUATION

  2 LOCK AND LOAD

  3 CLASSIFIED INFORMATION

  4 DETONATION

  5 UNDER RUBBLE

  6 OVER AND OUT

  Excerpt from BESIEG

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS