Texas Nights - Book 13 of the Damned of the 2/19th

Before It's Too Late

Room 275
15th FSB Barracks
Fort Hood, Texas
CONUS
28 Jan, 1992
1930 Hours

Specialist Carter from Alpha and Sergeant Wellman from Charlie were on CQ when I pulled open the door and led Chuck down the hallway. Both men glanced at us, then looked away, Carter going back to his book and Wellman turning in his chair so he could look through the door of the Day Room and watch TV.

I ignored the fact that Westlin stood in the doorway to the laundry room, watching me with filmed over eyes and blood running down her chin.

...go haunt someone else...

She laughed, a gurgling sound, as we passed the hallway's T intersection and headed toward my room. I unlocked the door, pulled Chuck inside, and shut it, locking the door.

"Want me to spend the night?" He asked me. I kissed him for an answer, then pulled him over to the bed. We sat down on it and spent a little time kissing before I flopped back and pulled him so his head was laying on my chest.

"This is nice," Chuck said.

"Dinner was good," I added, kind of lamely. I felt a little awkward and ungainly and I didn't know why. We'd had dinner at the Rod & Gun and then hit the range to run a hundred or so rounds through my weapons. But every time we were together I felt at least a tiny bit awkward.

"You're still hungry," Chuck teased, sliding his hand up my arm and over so he was cupping one of my breasts.

He was right. Heat blossomed in my stomach and my crotch started to tingle.

"Maybe," I teased. "We gotta be extra careful, my womb's thickening up," I told him. My way of telling him my ovulation cycle was hitting. "But yeah, I'm still hungry."

He got the hint, wiggling until he was facing me and kissing me.

"I should be good for two," He said.

He was.

Afterwards I sat on the edge of the bed, listening to him sleep. He was snoring softly, exhausted by the day he'd spent working on his tank, then dinner and entertainment with me. Oh, and the sex, of course.

My tits and crotch were still sticky, and I was still covered with a light sheen of sweat. More from the heat wafting in from the central air vent than the sex, but still all sweaty. It felt nice, and I had started to understand what the other women I'd known enjoyed about being awake after sex. I'd always thought it was kind of gross to not run right in and shower afterwards, but the past months with Chuck in my life had shown me I kind of liked being, as Stokes used to put, a dirty girl.

I got up and slowly started going through my katas, one after another. Letting my mind go blank as I worked, until I was breathing hard and dripping with sweat.

The fridge squeaked when I opened it to grab a Pepsi. I was thirsty, dry mouth filling my mouth with cotton, and I drank the first one down without stopping before grabbing another one. I closed the fridge, went over to the desk, and sat down, lighting a cigarette and staring at Chuck in the darkness.

I liked looking at him.

I was suddenly glad I had never been sexually active before I joined the Army. It would have been easy to lose myself in it. My belly felt warm, and, well, thick, after sex even now. A kind of lingering hunger that brought out a twinge of disappointment that I had used a condom. I could see myself with three or four little children, keeping house while my husband worked at the mill or the wrecking yard.

I would have missed everything.

But would it have been so bad? To miss out on the fire, the blood, the death? Would it have been a terrible loss if I'd gotten pregnant and dropped out of high school, married my high school sweet heart...