FOR BETTER OR WORSE
Kristina Wright
It wasn’t exactly the honeymoon cruise I had hoped for. For one thing, La Maddalena (known as La Madd to sailors everywhere) wasn’t much of a honeymoon destination by myself. It was a lovely little village, and even the base wasn’t as bad as some I’d seen in Europe, but my heart wasn’t in exploring the piazzas or basking in the sun on a rocky beach. My heart was on a Navy destroyer making boxes in the ocean somewhere offshore.
Joe was deployed. I was deployed. We are the modern navy couple. The catch was we were on different ships in the same battle group. We were hitting all the same ports—Palma, Marseilles, Cartegena, now La Madd and next Naples. We could walk the same streets, hit the same tourist spots, drink in the same bars and we would never cross paths. It would have been funny if it wasn’t so frustrating.
Three months. We’d hit the halfway mark and it was all downhill from here. That thought should have comforted me. But hot tears pricked my eyes as I maneuvered the yellow scooter I’d rented through the streets crowded with European tourists, American sailors and locals. I missed Joe. And I was lonely. Fucking lonely.
I brought the scooter to a jolting halt near a corner café, recognizing the name Joe had told me about. That was one of the benefits—hell, the only benefit—of him always being a couple of days ahead of me. He could tell me which spots to hit if I bothered to get off the ship. The tiny café with dingy orange shutters didn’t look like much, but I was starving. I rubbed at my watery eyes as I parked the scooter and went inside.
The place smelled of spices and earth and wine and that smell unique to an island that was part ocean, part sunshine, part history. It smelled like heaven. I made eye contact with the pretty young waitress as I took a seat and she nodded in acknowledgment. A boisterous voice from the doorway made me smile.
“Damn, girl, you took off on me!” Marjorie complained as she tucked her six-foot frame into the chair next to me. “I thought you’d gotten abducted by one of those swarthy Italian fellas.”
Marjorie pronounced Italian as “Eye-talian,” and that made me laugh. Petty Officer Second Class Marjorie Janks was a machinist’s mate, my liberty buddy and my best friend since boot camp. She was a wide-hipped girl from Millersville, Iowa, with a big mouth and a bigger heart, and she could wield a mechanic’s wrench like nobody’s business.
“Wouldn’t that be a swarthy Sardinian?”
“I don’t know. I had watch and missed the geography lesson,” Marjorie said. “Eye-talian, Sardinian, Corsican, they’re all swarthy!”
I laughed. “Well, I know you’d have my back no matter what.”
I wasn’t interested in swarthy Italians or swarthy Sardinians or swarthy anything. The sad truth was I wished I were back on the ship, doing my job. Staying busy. Everybody wanted to go on liberty—buy some trinkets and postcards for the family back home, dip their toes in the ocean instead of only seeing it from a steel deck, drink the night away before falling into a bed with a mattress that was more than a quarter inch thick. Not me. I just wanted this deployment over. But I’d promised Joe I would at least get off the ship this port visit.
“Go do something,” he’d urged me in his email last night. “Go explore. La Madd is kind of pretty. It’ll be fun.”
His destroyer had pulled in a week ago—and pulled out three days before the carrier, my ship, pulled in. It had been like that for three months—us shadowing each other across the Med, so close but not close enough. With only emails and the occasional phone call to sustain us, it seemed like Joe was always just out of sight. He might as well have been at home back in Norfolk, in the apartment we had shared for our brief, whirlwind engagement.
The navy was a calling for both of us and we both planned to reenlist. We had wanted to get married before the deployment with the hopes that when Joe came up for orders he’d be able to convince his detailer to keep him in Norfolk. But there had been no time for a honeymoon. Just a couple nights at a bed-and-breakfast in Williamsburg and then it was time to muster for deployment.
“Aw, Em, you’re killing me with those sad little faces of yours,” Marjorie said.
I tried to smile, knowing I looked as morose as I felt. If not for Marjorie, I would have lost it a lot more often in the past three months than I was willing to admit. “We need to find you a swarthy Italian girl, Marj.”
Marjorie’s laugh was as big and full of life as she was. “Hell, you know I’m playing the field. I’ll settle down with Ms. Right when I get out of the navy. Not interested in long-distance anything, and this”—she gestured at me—“this mopey lovesickness has totally turned me off to finding love in the navy.”
“You can’t help when or how you fall in love. I should know.”
The dark-haired waitress brought a bottle of wine with our lunch and I savored the rich red. The pasta was simple but fresh and tossed with olive oil, mussels, crushed tomato and basil. Perfect. Almost.
“If you don’t snap out of it, I’m going to tell Joe,” Marjorie warned.
That got a laugh. It was an ongoing joke between us since the deployment had begun. Marjorie was my keeper and would report to Joe if I didn’t at least pretend I was doing okay. “I wonder how he is?”
“That man of yours is missing you just as much as you’re missing him.” Marjorie waved her fork in the air. “And soon you’ll be fuckin’ like bunnies and you will have forgotten all about this deployment.”
“I hope you’re right.” I tucked my hair behind my ears. I had been letting it grow out because Joe liked it long, but I was tired of having to pin it up for work. “This sucks. No offense.”
“No offense taken.”
A burst of laughter outside the open window startled me out of my gloomy thoughts. “That sounded just like Joe.”
Marjorie shook her head. “Poor lovesick girl. Next you’ll be seeing apparitions of him.”
“No, seriously. That sounded just like him.”
“Swarthy Eye-talian alert,” Marjorie muttered.
I thought she was referring to the laugh we heard, but then I saw the barrel-chested older man approaching our table.
“Excuse me? I am Roberto, I own Il Giallo del Sole,” he said in accented English.
I smiled. “You have a lovely café.”
He returned the smile with a flash of white teeth and nodded. “Thank you, miss. I have something for you.”
I stared at the small manila envelope he handed me. “What’s this?”
He spread his arms in an expansive shrug. “A man came in. Said to give it to you. Excuse me.”
Before I could ask what man, Roberto left to greet a large group of what sounded like German tourists. I turned the envelope over in my hands, recognizing the handwriting immediately.
“Joe!”
“Well, open it, will you,” Marjorie said. “The suspense is killing me.”
I ran my finger along the sealed edge of the envelope and dumped the contents on the table. A postcard of one of the old hotels that dotted La Madd and a printout of a one-night reservation for a room at Il Sicirao.
“Ooh, a mystery!”
Ignoring Marjorie, I read the note in Joe’s messy handwriting: Thought you could use a night away from the ship. I wanted to stay here with you. Tonight is for you to enjoy. Three more months, sweetheart.
The tears were flowing then. I couldn’t stop them. Marjorie snatched the postcard from me and read Joe’s note.
“Aw, that’s a sweet boy you have, Emily.” She patted my hand awkwardly. “Come on. Let’s hit the beach and I’ll drop you at the hotel before I head back to the ship.”
“I can’t take this,” I sniffled.
“Hang in there.” Marjorie gave me a stern look. “You’ll see him soon!”
I wanted to say it felt like forever, but I didn’t. I let Marjorie coax me out into the sunshine for a drive to the beach. Killing time. I was just killing time.
“Three months, Joe,” I whispered, leaving the
café behind.
The beach was gorgeous, the rocky coastline dotted with terracotta roofs and the ocean a beautiful shade of blue. I took Marjorie’s advice as best I could and stopped thinking about the long weeks stretched out in front of me. I basked in the sun and the smell of the ocean, somehow different here on La Maddalena than it was from the ship.
By the time we were asking directions to the hotel from one of the fishermen hauling his catch from the pier, I was starting to feel more like myself. I tried to convince Marjorie to stay with me since we had to have a liberty buddy, but she emphatically shook her head.
“You need a night alone and there’s an equally decrepit hotel down the street. I can crash there. Kinda glad your man did this for you because I’m sick to death of the ship’s berthing,” she said. “I’ll see you in the morning.” With that, she motored off on her scooter and left me in front of Il Sicirao.
I couldn’t say I was disappointed. While I hadn’t been in a hurry to hit any of the ports on this deployment and preferred the familiarity and routine of the ship to make the days go by, I was kind of excited to contemplate a night in a hotel room by myself.
Il Sicirao was four stories and didn’t have an elevator, so I wasn’t expecting much from the accommodations. It didn’t matter. I hadn’t been truly alone in three months and it wouldn’t take a lot to make me happy—a bed, a bath, some peace and quiet. I checked in at the front desk and the gray-haired woman handed me an old-fashioned room key along with a brown paper bag.
“Your husband, he thought you might need some things.”
I blinked quickly to keep from crying again. “Thank you, thank you,” I said, though I was really talking to Joe.
My room was on the top floor and was more than I could’ve hoped for. Small by American standards, it was still lovely. The bed was enormous and covered in soft linens and pillows and the bathroom was modernized, the claw-foot bathtub quaint and inviting. French doors looked out over the rust-colored rooftops of La Madd, and though I was a mile or so inland, I could still smell the ocean. It was perfect. Almost.
I distracted myself by looking through the bag Joe had prepared for me. All the necessities were there. Toothbrush, toothpaste, hairbrush, my favorite moisturizer and lip balm and…a pair of panties. Leave it to Joe to know I’d want fresh underwear in the morning.
It wasn’t even dark yet, but the lure of that big European bed was more than I could resist. I kicked off my sneakers and stretched out, figuring I would sleep for a couple of hours and then get some dinner. I’d barely had time to contemplate why the pillows smelled like Joe’s aftershave before sleep claimed me and I was dreaming about him.
“Hey baby,” Joe said in my dream. “I’ve missed you.”
I sighed and turned my head, nuzzling his shoulder. It felt so real. The sounds of voices and laughter in the street below. The smell of Joe’s aftershave mingling with the scent of the ocean and freshly laundered sheets. The feel of his calloused fingers caressing my shoulder. So…real. Too real. One minute I was asleep, the next my eyes were wide open and I was staring up at Joe in the lamplight.
“Sleepyhead,” he said affectionately, tucking my hair behind my ear as I sat up.
“What? Joe! Oh my god.” I was laughing and crying at the same time, making a full-on spectacle of myself. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
Joe laughed. “Because I wanted to surprise you.”
I couldn’t catch my breath or stop staring at him. He looked so good. His blond hair was freshly cut and his year-round tan was set off by the white polo shirt and khakis that he wore. I realized I was running my hands up and down his muscular forearms, but I couldn’t stop. I needed to touch him. Needed to be close to him. Closer than this.
“How?” I asked breathlessly, pulling him closer and burying my face in his neck.
“I told them I wanted to reenlist on deployment and that I wanted my wife to be there for it and this is what Chief came up with. The helo picked me up when they brought mail over. We get tonight and the reenlistment ceremony is in the morning.” Joe pressed a kiss to the top of my head. “Then I’m hitching a ride on your boat for a couple of days and the helo will take me back.”
One night. No way in hell we were going to do anything on the ship, so we had one night.
“It’s only one night,” he said, as if reading my mind, “but it’s better than nothing.”
“One night in six months.” I hooked a leg over his thigh, his erection a noticeable presence. “I guess we’d better make it count.”
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. His mouth covered mine and absorbed my moan. I felt like every nerve ending in my body was tingling with the familiarity of his touch after having gone so long without it. He ran his hand down my arm to the curve of my hip and back up to my breast, cupping it gently and thumbing my nipple until it peaked under his touch. I whimpered, touching him, pulling him closer, pulling at his shirt, struggling to get his belt unfastened.
He pulled away, holding me at arm’s length, staring into my eyes while both of us panted. “We have all night,” he said. “But I don’t think I can wait to be inside you.”
I reached for him, resuming my work on his belt. “So hurry up and help me get your pants off!”
He laughed, that familiar happy-go-lucky laugh that had been one of the many reasons I’d fallen in love with him. Everything would be all right with Joe. Everything.
He let me work his belt free while he got my pants unfastened. “It would be easier if we each got our own clothes off.”
“But not as much fun,” I said with a wicked grin as I got his khakis open and reached inside to palm his erection over his underwear.
He groaned. “Damn, baby. I’ve jerked off twice a day every day for a week just so I could make this last, but I don’t think it was enough. Three months is too long to go without you.”
I thrilled to hear how excited he was for me. I tumbled him back on the bed, straddling his waist and rubbing against him like a cat in heat. “We have all night, remember? We can go again and again and again, all night long.”
He anchored his hands on my hips and thrust up against me. “I like the sound of that, though I’m not sure I can keep up with you.”
“You can try.”
He bolted upright, arm around my waist, and flipped me over on my back so that I was pinned beneath his weight. “I intend to,” he said.
They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, but they don’t tell you what it does to the rest of your body. My skin felt feverish and hypersensitive under his gentle touch. He pushed my shirt up and reached under me to release the clasp on my plain white bra.
“I would’ve worn sexier underwear if I’d known I was going to see you,” I said by way of an apology.
“Honey, you could be wearing a burlap sack and I’d think you were the sexiest woman in the world.” To prove the truth of his words, he lowered his mouth to my breast, tonguing each nipple until they were hard, sensitive peaks aching for rougher treatment.
I gasped, pressing my thighs together and writhing on the bed. I could feel the moisture gathering between my thighs, soaking through my panties and pants. Joe stripped off the remainder of my clothes, inhaling deeply as he knelt between my legs.
“Oh god, how I’ve missed your smell,” he said. “I don’t even have to touch you—I can see how wet you are.”
I squirmed under his steady gaze, aroused and embarrassed and so in love I thought my heart would burst out of my chest. “I need you,” I whispered. “Now.”
He moved as if to go down on me and I shook my head. “No. Later. Right now, I just want to feel you inside me. Please, Joe. I’ve missed you.”
“Whatever you want, baby,” he said, stripping his shirt over his head. “Tonight is for you.”
That’s what his note had said, only I hadn’t had any idea what he meant. I waited impatiently for him to finish undressing, to fling his clothes away so that it was just him and me naked in t
his big bed. I took a deep breath, not realizing I’d been holding it until air filled my lungs. At that moment, Joe plunged into me in one long stroke, his cock filling the deep ache inside me.
I cried out—I hadn’t intended to, I just couldn’t help myself. The sudden sensation of fullness was almost too much to bear. Almost. I wrapped my arms and legs around him, clinging to him, pulling him deeper into me. I whimpered and gasped against the hard muscle of his shoulder, nipping at the corded tendons in his neck and being rewarded with another long, driving stroke.
“God, baby, I don’t think I’ll last very long,” he said through gritted teeth. “You feel so damn good.”
I laughed. “Really? Are you going to come already?”
“I might,” he said, the words sounding like a growl in his throat.
I tightened my pussy around his erection and rotated my hips, drunk with feminine power. “Not before I do,” I said. “Tonight is for me, remember?”
“Then you’d better hurry, sweetheart.”
He didn’t have to tell me twice. Despite my teasing, I was no more in control of my body’s response than Joe was, and I hadn’t been masturbating like a fiend in preparation for this night.
My gyrations served to press my swollen clit against his pubic bone and every twist of my hips was bringing me closer to the edge. I tensed against him, my legs wrapped high around his broad back, my hips angled up so that every shallow thrust bumped my G-spot. I knew his short, quick thrusts were to help him last, but they were having the opposite effect on me. I let him do the work, my mouth pressed to his neck to stifle another scream as my orgasm washed over me in a steady wave of sensation. My arousal soaked the sheets beneath me and I clung to him, urging him on, making my orgasm last and last.
Duty and Desire: Military Erotic Romance Page 19
