Free Another Man's Baby by Dyanne Davis

giving her orgasm control. With her last shudder Eric, too, allowed his orgasm free rein, but not before he pulled out.
     

 
    Chapter Five
     
    Three test strips laid out in a row mocked her. Of course Gabi wasn’t pregnant, and she was aware of that but still she was trying to get there. A little more help from her husband in that department would make getting pregnant a lot easier. She was trying to be patient; their loving had improved but it remained unpredictable at best.
    The nerve of him pulling out. Did he really think she was too stupid to notice?
    Gabi remained determined to keep her promise to her husband. She allowed her unasked questions to remain just that, unasked. If what Eric needed was for her to help him forget, then she would give that to him.
    She tossed the negative test strips into the trash, trying to thank God for allowing her husband to come home alive. She’d heard the news reports, same as Eric. He had said nothing about it and neither had she, but the knowledge that every day his friends and fellow soldiers were dying was still driving a wedge between them. With every news report, every killing, they took two steps back, all their progress gone. It was maddening to continually have to start over.
    She understood that her words gave him little comfort and she regretted having asked him to get over it. She was aware that he couldn’t. At the same time she knew if he didn’t at least try she didn’t know what would happen to them. He had another year in the marines and she was praying for the months to fly by. She wished he had a regular job that he could quit, just walk out on.
    Enough of being patriotic. Gabrielle wanted her husband back. Selfish or not, those were her feelings. She suspected it was the feelings of a lot of people but everyone was too afraid to say anything. She’d never tell him how she truly felt. But the one thing she refused to do was censure her thoughts.
    Gabi had been too caught up in her thoughts to notice that Eric was in the room. He was staring at her, a worried look on his face.
    “What’s that you’re doing,” he asked.
    Her eyes slid to the wastebasket and she hesitated. “Nothing,” she said finally, knowing he would come over and peer inside.
    “I was just checking,” she sighed. “Don’t worry, I’m not pregnant.”
    “Aren’t you still taking the pills?”
    For a moment she started to tell him the truth, that no, she wasn’t taking them, and no, she had no plans on taking them.
    Gabi thought of the long dry month and dread filled her. She didn’t want her husband to stop making love to her; she didn’t think she could handle it. Then she thought of his pulling out of her each and every time and felt justified. If he thought he could control their having a baby, then what was wrong with her doing the same?
    “I’m still taking them,” she lied.
    “Let me see them.”
    “Excuse me?”
    “Let me see the pills, I want to see them.”
    “Go to hell, Eric,” Gabi snapped, racing for her purse and walking from the room. Who did he think he was? she wondered. No way was he going to intimidate her into being frisked or searched by him. She was not the enemy insurgent, she was his wife.
     
    ***
     
    The moment she arrived at work Gabi made her way to the medication sample room. She threw her things carelessly on the countertop and rummaged in the cabinets she’d recently filled. Finding what she needed, she took three of the sample packs of pills that she doled out to the patients.
    That was one side benefit from working in the office; they were able to have many of their scripts comped. She opened one of the pill containers and popped out half of the pills, throwing them in the sink and flushing them with water. When she was done, she looked up into Tracie’s face. A flush of shame stole over Gabi and she cringed.
    Her actions were obvious, the look on Tracie’s face told her that. Gabi couldn’t force words of explanation past the lie