Choices Ch. 01

"No!" She rotated her hips back a little. "Just watch."

As I watched, she ran her fingertips down and back up her slit and around her clit. Back down again and then in and out several times.

I felt the vibrations of her moans on my cock. They added to the total sensations of the experience.

I watched her fingers stroke, glide, and pump all over her pussy. I smelled her hot, spicy musk as her undulating hips wafted the odor towards my nose. I heard her moans, groans, gasps, and slurps as she pleasured herself and me. I felt the velvet softness of her mouth and the gentle but firm caress of her hand.

Her hips increased their rocking as her fingers became more insistent and probing in their assault on her pussy. Her mouth attacked my cock more wetly and more completely.

"I'm going to cum," I warned her.

Her sounds changed as I started to spurt in her mouth. She jammed her fingers inside as far as she could and snapped her thighs together trapping the hand between them.

I felt cool air on the head of my cock. Looking down I saw her mouth open, my cock still dribbling a little into it and cum running out of the corner of her mouth. I turned around and kissed her hard. We shared the remainder of my cum between us.

Civilians call it 3AM but in the military anytime between midnight and sunrise is O-Dark-Thirty. Kathy drove the car while Bobby drowsed in his seat. In the parking lot beside the runway on post, I hugged Kathy and Bobby. I swung my pack onto my shoulder and walked off to the rally point. I waved one last time just before boarding the bus to take me to the transport plane waiting on the tarmac. As I swung out of the bus beside the plane, one of my men called out, "Hey Capt. Williams, are you well-rested enough to lead us in battle?"

"Zulewski, any man that's well-rested this morning is a fool and he wasted the last good night he's gonna get for six months." The whole company laughed at Zulewski. As the transport lifted off the runway, I remembered my hot, beautiful Kathy and nodded off to sleep.

We had already agreed to send Bobby to Kathy's mom, Linda, if we both shipped out. Now, after I left, this was a real possibility. Her mom started driving down every other week for a day or two so Bobby would learn to be with her and Linda would be familiar with Bobby's quirks and routine. Faith helped Linda on her first trips and they hit it off so well that a lunch out with Faith was a regular highlight of Linda's visits whether during the week or on the weekend.

My company's race to Baghdad was not the stuff of war movies. We had many actions along the way. We never saw regular Iraqi troops. The Air Force flyboys and the Army attack helicopters were breaking those formations. In the end, they just dissolved and the soldiers walked home.

Instead, we had almost hourly encounters with Saddam's Fedayeen. These mostly untrained civilians insisted on charging directly at us across open spaces, firing their weapons wildly. Despite orders and warning shots to stop, they would keep charging and firing. Finally we would shoot them and they would die. It wasn't fun and exciting. It was depressing and left a hollow feeling inside.

The Third Infantry Division returned to the US in June and I got a month off to reacquaint myself with Kathy and Bobby. The first week, the three of us went to Mobile, laid on the beach and became a family again. The next two weeks, we traveled the Southeast, visiting family and friends. We had almost decided that Kathy would resign her commission and stay home.

When we returned from leave, the US Army had decided for us. Kathy's hospital unit was alerted for movement to Iraq. No transfers out, enlistment expirations or resignations would be accepted. They would leave around Thanksgiving.

"You didn't want to leave us either," she reminded me. "But, like you said, the Big Green Machine trained us for this and we owe it to the ones who've already served. My surgical team's been together over twelve months, eighteen by the time we ship out. Just think what we'll be able to do to help the wounded."

Kathy shipped out the day after Thanksgiving. Kathy hugged Bobby and me just before boarding the bus to the transport waiting on the runway. Linda started coming back down periodically, perhaps once a month. It gave her something to do, she got to visit with Faith and she really liked her only grandson. Often she'd come on the weekend and Dan, Kathy's father, would come also. When he did, we usually hit a golf course on Saturday morning. I was lucky in my choice of in-laws.

In April, the Army Board for Promotion to Major convened at the Pentagon. My year group wouldn't be fully eligible until the next board so I didn't pay much attention. I was assigned to the Infantry Officer Basic School and had my hands full administering all the forms for the hundreds of new officers we processed through each year.

The first Monday in June my commanding officer called me into his office. "Congratulations! Let me buy you a cup of coffee."

"Well thanks, but what's the occasion?"

"You're on the promotion list!" He tossed me a copy of Army Times.

Being promoted 'below the zone,' as it's known, is a big deal. Getting promoted ahead of most of the others in your year group confers an advantage in an organization where your position in the pecking order can change drastically because of a few days difference in date of rank. It also meant that the promotion Board had looked at your ratings and accomplishments relative to your peers and decided that you were in the top five percent. I couldn't wait to tell Kathy.

She called the next night. She was as excited as I about my making the list. We also talked about her upcoming two-week leave at the beginning of July and where we might go. It was the last time I talked to her. The chaplain showed up two days later.

The chaplain and the Family Assistance Officer could not give me many details about Kathy's death. It had been a random occurrence. She was returning from the mess hall after breakfast. Three mortar rounds had exploded catching her in the open. She was dead when the first soldier got to her. Quick and painless like we all want to die. But much too young for her and much too soon for her family.

Afterwards, I remembered almost nothing from the first two weeks after the chaplain's visit. The funeral in Monteagle brought my family and Kathy's family together along with hundreds of friends and neighbors from the little community and the nurses whom I had met in San Antonio and classmates from UT -- Chattanooga.

Linda drove back to Columbus with me. Dan would drive down on the weekend to bring Linda back.

Linda helped me sort through Kathy's things. Linda took some keepsakes for herself and Kathy's younger sister. A piece of jewelry that was a family heirloom she left with me. "Put it away for Bobby to give to his wife."

I visited the Judge Advocate General's office. They explained how to register Kathy's will and apply for her military insurance benefits. I learned that I was suddenly very rich, over $500,000.

Dan arrived on Friday night. Saturday morning we loaded his pickup and took all the boxes to the Salvation Army. On the way back, he began to talk.

"Jack, I don't want to pry but Linda said Kathy had a lot of insurance?"

"Yeah, with her military insurance I've got over half a mil."

"Do you have any idea what you're going to do with it?"

"Put it in stocks, I guess. I need to set up something for Bobby's college fund."

"I hope you don't mind, but I spoke to friend of mine at Sewanee. He teaches Finance, but he helps people with financial planning on the side. He's willing to advise you for free."

"I'd appreciate that. Maybe I can schedule a long weekend in July and come up."

Sunday night after Linda and Dan left and Bobby had gone to sleep, I looked around the house. By the time I got to Kathy's empty closet I couldn't hold back. I dropped to our bed and cried myself to sleep.

It's good that I didn't have a very demanding job. The next four months were a haze. I'd get Bobby breakfast every day and either take him to his 4-morning-a-week pre-school or hand him over to Faith. At night, Faith would have supper ready when I came in. Bobby's bath and story time followed. Maybe some mindless sitcom or equally mindless adventure novel would complete my day.

The only breaks were Linda and Dan's visits. I had asked Linda to continue to visit Bobby until I decided anything different about my deployment contingency. She and Dan visited about every three weeks for a weekend. Dan and I continued our golf outings and Linda continued to visit with Faith.

The standard advice to young men is to look at the prospective mother-in-law. Supposedly in twenty-five years time your wife will look like that. When I first met Linda, I considered myself lucky to be marrying into such a beautiful family. Now I didn't pay as much attention to Linda's physical appearance as her mannerisms. I often thought She does that just like Kathy did. Except it was the other way around: Kathy had picked up the habits and gestures from Linda. Whichever way I looked at it, it was sweet pain to remember Kathy.

Sometimes I would take Bobby up to Monteagle. The professor to whom Dan introduced me helped get my finances organized and put me on a steady road to investing and tracking my investments. Dan showed me some good golf courses in Tennessee, too.