DISARM (DISARM Series #1) (7 page)

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 member, 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.