Free Drawing Blood by C.D. Breadner Page B

couldn’t. James kissed like the earth was about to shatter apart and he couldn’t die without tasting every last part of her first. Abigail had read about great romances in books, and being with James made them seem like thin fairy tales.
    She missed the scratch of his beard on her cheek, or her neck when he would kiss her shoulders, her throat. He shaved every day but by mid-afternoon the beard would return, red-brown and two tones lighter than his hair colour. His eyes were always warm, and as she lay naked next to him in bed, not embarrassed in the least, she swore she’d been able to feel his gaze on her skin, warming and yet causing goose flesh to rise wherever his eyes roamed. It made her ache for him without him even touching hand to flesh.
    When he did touch her, it was always soft at first. Then as the kisses would deepen and his passion would rise the touching became grasping, and he would hold her so tight sometimes the next day she’d see marks on her back or hips from where his fingers had bit in. Abigail had never minded. From the first time they’d ever made love she’d never gone to sleep unsatisfied. Wearing the odd bruise from him was a point of pride given the circumstances that had rendered it. The only time she’d been terrified was her first time with him, but she’d been no less eager than he was. The pain worried her, having his weight on her. And what if she didn’t like it? She’d never worried that he’d force her or hurt her intentionally. Abby trusted James with all her body and soul.
    “Don’t go,” he’d begged as they made love the night before she left for France.
    She had closed her eyes, so close to reaching the peak of her pleasure she couldn’t answer.
    “Please just stay ‘ere as long as possible.” His teeth grazed her collarbone as he said it.
    Her orgasm had been exquisite, and it was fading she held his face between her hands. “All right,” she whispered. “I’ll stay with you.”
    He’d kissed her again deeply, rocking his body against hers urgently and frantically. She couldn’t catch her breath, she couldn’t keep up with anything but the rhythm of his hips. His hands held her lower back as he cried out, face against her pillow to swallow the sound. The walls were thin and their neighbours weren’t above asking them to keep it down.
    He was shaking as he raised his weight up to his arms again. “They’ve decided to send me to Africa, Abby.”
    Abigail’s heart had dropped. “Africa? When?”
    He shrugged and dropped to the bed next to her, tucking her against his side under his arm. “I don’t know for sure. In the next month.”
    Abigail listened for his breathing to steady. “Is it dangerous?”
    He squeezed her tight and kissed the top of her head. “No’ at all.” He said it only to make her feel better but it didn’t work.
    “Then I won’t leave until you do.”
    She was crossing the Channel to make sure her mother was going comfortable in her final months. He was heading off to fight in a desert. Their world completely changed in the span of mere seconds.
    James was gone in two weeks, leaving her to settle up their flat alone and then head for France. Before his deployment she’d received a few letters. His last had come a month before her mother died, before the Germans arrived. He wrote it from the troop ship, and it got to her well after it had been penned. She didn’t have the slightest idea where he was. She didn’t even know if he …
    Abigail wouldn’t let herself think that way. He was alive. She refused to be a widow until she had his bones back home to bury.
     

Chapter Eleven
    Elliot
     
    “I’m sorry, Sergeant Murphy. I am so fucking sorry.”
    Elliot cringed as the medic closed another stitch on his left bicep. Either the process of getting stitches hurt or it was Derrick Stroburgh’s constant apologizing getting on his nerves. He was feeling a bit cranky but Derrick’s earnest regret kept him in