Page 11 of Four Calling Birds

“If you…”

“Don’t speak,” I growled my warning, stopping her mid-speech because I couldn’t fucking handle it.

I could take her. I would take her, as black and blue as she was. Her voice could still do things to me that I thought were long over. It was so low, and sensual. I wanted to make her scream in ecstasy. Maybe I could just taste her. Just one taste. Surely, that wouldn’t throw me back into the misery of three years ago? I could handle just one taste…

Fuck! I adjusted myself in my jeans, squeezing my throbbing cock to get it to calm the fuck down. Because my brain knew better. One taste wouldn’t be enough. One taste, and I’d be begging her to stay again.

And what the fuck was I thinking? I couldn’t screw her. Not in this state. What kind of guy wouldevertake advantage of a woman who was compromised? Vulnerable? Emotionallyandphysically? She was going through hell with an injury like this and I was thinking about getting on top and humping her to the edge of her sanity! What waswrongwith me?

The torture of running a washcloth over that familiar body was going to break me.

She didn’t resist. She barely moved. Maybe it was the pain. Or the sudden heaviness in the air around us.

“Mack… I…”

“For God’s sake, woman.” I clenched my fist, clutching at the washcloth in my hand. “You’re going to fucking break me.”

She clamped her mouth shut, and looked forlornly to the side. When I had managed to wipe away the yellowing iodine from her skin, and had washed her short hair with my shampoo, I picked up a towel and averted my eyes, holding it open in front of me.

“Stand up,” I commanded. My tongue felt heavy in my mouth, like it was anticipating a taste of something familiar and sweet. My cock bobbed in my boxers, trying to join the fucking party, as if it never got the memo that it wasn’t our right to do that anymore.

Except it was, in the strictest, most chauvinistic sense of the word. She was still my wife. Mine… even if it was due to a missed signature, it was still technically true, and my body hummed with the possibility that I could touch that marital bliss once again.

I wrapped the towel around her torso, as I unplugged the drain. She tied it up above her breast, and I had to take a moment - a stolen moment - to watch the rivulets of water trickle down from a lock of hair, down the slope of her neck, to the shoulder where a new scar had emerged. She hadn’t had it when she left me, standing immobile on the driveway as my father, wrongfully, hurled obscenities at her.

I was certain it was new because I had been an attentive husband. I knew every mark and perfect blemish on her body. There was another scar on her bicep, and several on the rounded calf that I could see. I’m sure there were even more on her torso and back that I hadn’t noticed yet.

I wanted to strip her bare, to see those perfect breasts, and every mark on her skin. I wanted to kiss each line and feel her pain like it was my own. I wanted to be one flesh, as we had been long, long ago. Iachedto spread her open, and to plunge myself in her glorious heat, and have her cry my name, and declare me her husband as I made her body sing.

But not tonight. Not when she was injured, and frightened.

If I did things right, then there was a chance those divorce papers would be burned in the fireplace before Chrismtas. I could be patient in my old age. Right?

I lifted her in my arms, and put her to bed, still wrapped in the towel. I got her water, her meds, and pulled the blanket over her shoulders as the drugs helped her drift off to sleep.

“You should get us a duck for Thanksgiving,” she whispered, adjusting into a comfortable position.

“The traditional Thanksgiving sacrifice is a Turkey,” I told her. Rehashing an argument we had had a hundred times over. Every Thanksgiving for almost ten years.

“Turkey tastes awful. Duck is better.” She was drifting. “Will you scratch my back? There’s a spot I can never get. Right by my spine.”

I started to scratch the base of her neck, but she shook her head.

“Lower.”

So, I scratched lower. Unsure if this was another seduction ploy, but knowing that if it was, I’d give in. I was able to walk away once; a second time and I know that I’d cave.

Then she shivered, moaning a throaty little, “right there!”

I was at her bra line, where a clasp would have been. My fingers touched a little bit of scar tissue, about the size of a horse pill. I scratched it and a smile pulled the corners of her mouth as she stretched like a happy kitten. Then she relaxed, her faint snoring telling me that she was in a deep sleep.

I didn’t linger too long. I wanted to. I wanted to sit on the green chesterfield armchair, and just watch her sleep. To think. To worry. But I had to protect my sanity somehow.

Maybe I’d find my brain at the Farmer’s Market, as I searched for a duck and a jar of cranberry sauce.

7. Duck, Duck, Turkey

Lotte

---