Last Spark Flying

“We don’t have much time, Cathy,” Link whispered.

“I know.  But we want each other.  It could be the last –” She couldn’t finish.

Distress and tenderness warred with each other on Link Marshall’s face.  He was weathered and exhausted and the war had etched deep creases and shadows into his cheeks and forehead and chin.  The collar of his Army jacket was turned up to keep out some of that chilly Normandy wind.

Cathy kept her eyes fixed firmly on her husband’s face.  They were standing at the back of a supply truck.  Around them, Red Cross workers rushed to unload the wounded brought in by trucks.  There was artillery fire in the distance.  Men shouted orders, engines rumbled, and tents were flapping in the wind.  The world seemed like a dark, chaotic stage play, and Cathy and Link were starring.

It was November 1944.  Link Marshall was an Army captain and had taken part in the D-Day invasion a few months earlier.  After some brutal combat across France, his army infantry company was assigned to protect a medical unit while they set up camp.  That’s when he encountered his wife.  It was a shock and a delight to both.  He didn’t know that Cathy had joined the Red Cross.  His last few letters hadn’t gotten to her, nor had hers reached him.

For the first minutes of their reunion, they could only hold each other and kiss madly.  Of course, Link got a bit of a reprimand from other officers, but they understood once he explained.  Things were moving pretty fast in the camp; the Germans were close and the Red Cross had come in to help move the hospital unit west.  Cathy would head out with them early the next morning, and Link and his men would join their regiment, back where the fighting was.

Link kept glancing around, subconsciously trained to keep on the alert no matter where he was or what he was doing.  Yet his eyes were pulled back to Cathy, gazing up at him so longingly.  His ungloved hands rested around her waist.

“Cathy…” his voice cracked.

She heard everything he seemed unable to speak.  The words screamed from his tortured eyes.  He had seen such horror, things that were haunting him this second, and he would be back in the middle of it shortly.  He felt he was becoming part of the bloodiness.  He might hurt her.  Still, his stubborn male body demanded sexual relief in spite of the surroundings.  He wanted her.  He needed her after these unending months.

“When we got married,” Cathy began in a very unsteady voice, “we made some vows.  We said we would love in good times and bad times, in sickness and health, until death parted us.  Link, this is a very bad time, but I still love you.  I always will.”

“Your love for me and my love for you is never a question in my mind,” he averred.  “I love you so much and it’s because I love you so much I don’t want…”

“You don’t want what?”

“To just…use you.”

A look of deep compassion softened her puckered brow and wet her eyes.  “I know it will never be that.  I was made for you, for this time, as you were made for me.”

He gazed at her for a long second, then masterfully grabbed her neck with both hands and pulled her to him.  “Oh, God, I need you so bad, Cathy!” he said hoarsely.  Then he kissed her.  She responded.  Their mouths melted together, desperate to be satisfied.

When they allowed themselves a brief pause, Link said, his lips close to hers, “You are a marvelous woman, Cathy.  I can’t thank God enough for you.”

She didn’t say anything, only gave him another soul-baring look.  Their lips connected again hungrily.

Link’s hands strayed down her arms to her waist and hips, but unfortunately, he couldn’t feel much under Cathy’s clothes.  She was in Medical Corps khakis and a heavy overcoat.  But she was trembling, feeling his need for her in the groping of his muscular hands, and agitatedly she pulled at her coat buttons.  In this setting she couldn’t undress, and the weather didn’t allow for that either, but she opened her blouse up so he could reach in and clasp his hands over her warm, firm breasts.  At first touch, she gasped.  His fingers were cold.  But then she smiled weakly at him, encouraging him to go on.

He seemed to slow down and his face blanked out as if in disbelief.  This intimacy with a woman…it didn’t jell with the carnage he’d been living through.  The sounds of gunfire and mortars faded from his hearing as Cathy’s body immersed his senses.

Her gloved fingers wandered into his coat, then under his shirt.  A passing jeep, carrying several departing officers, made them glance around.  In spite of the cold autumn dusk, they were still visible to others.  They met each other’s eyes again.  There wasn’t a lot of time.

Quickly, though fumblingly, Link pulled his hands out of her clothes and unbuckled his belt.  Cathy finished unbuttoning the last buttons of her coat.  Link had his shaft freed from his trousers and in a second he picked her up and plunked her on the edge of the truck’s bed.  She had pulled her trousers and panties down just enough to give him access.  Pressing himself close to her, both out of desire and the need to shield her from prying eyes, he positioned his rod at her damp love-hole and shoved into her.

She gasped and gripped his shoulders.  “Yes, Link, darling, yes!” she cried in his ear.

He pounded as though he must bore through her and she welcomed it.  This was for him.  She gloried in the ability to do this for a man like Link.  So often he had sacrificed for her.  Back home in the happier days before the war, she had experienced some rough things, including a miscarriage that rendered her barren.  Link had stood by her so lovingly.  Even now he was satisfying her; his meat rubbed hard against her sopping petals as he went in and out and it stimulated her deliciously.  For a few minutes, husband and wife forgot the war and lost themselves in the pleasure of togetherness.

It was fast, maybe two minutes.  Then Link caught his breath and his fingers and abdomen clenched tight.  Cathy knew he was erupting inside of her.  It took a masterful effort on his part to keep his groans bottled up lest anyone overhear him.  But the look on his hard-muscled face was plain enough.  It set her off and she felt her belly convulse in her own small climax.

“Thank you, baby,” he whispered once the tenseness of his orgasm had eased off.  “I love you.  I always will.”

“I love you, Link.  Just…come back to me.  I need you.”

“I will.  I couldn’t take any of this if I didn’t know you were waiting for me.”

Discreetly they fixed their clothes, thankful for the distractions around them.  Link grasped Cathy in one more embrace and their lips met.  The kiss was more tender than before, yet alive with the invisible fire binding them.  Then the two parted, not knowing when this war would allow them to see each other again.