Page 36 of Taken By the Soldier
“That’s it, princess. Take my cock. Take all of it. Your pussy belongs to me.”
Her moans increase and she explodes around me once more, her walls tightening as she quakes beneath me on the bed, a second orgasm stealing through her.
My vision blurs as my own climax approaches. Fuck, it’s intense. I release her hair to grasp her hips and pump the final strokes of my desire, spilling my hot seed into her wet warmth. Marking her as mine.
Chapter21
JUDITH
A few weeks later,on the morning that construction on the new school building is scheduled to start, I awake early to the sound of a voice. Before I open my eyes, I realize it’s Luka and he must be talking in his sleep. His tone is faint and threaded with anxiety.
I blink a couple of times and force myself to sit up. I rub the sleep from my eyes and peer around the room and glance out the window. The sun is rising over the lake, casting a majestic orange glow across the sparkling water. But I don’t spend long admiring the view. Luka’s panicked voice grows louder, and I can finally understand the words escaping his mouth.
“My wife, my wife, my wife.” He sounds so anguished that it breaks my heart. What the hell is he dreaming about?
I stare down at him, trying to decide whether I should wake him up. I’ve never witnessed him talk in his sleep before, but I’m also usually a very sound sleeper. It takes a lot to wake me up.
“Oh God, please no. Not my wife. Not my daughter.Please no. Please don’t take them away. Isabell.Isabell. Harlow, oh my sweet Harlow.” His face twists with grief and he thrashes around on the pillow.
My breath catches in my throat and tears spring to my eyes. I peer down at him in horror as guilt flows through me. If he’s dreaming about losing a wife and a daughter, that means he must’ve been married before the war. Not only that, but he’d had a daughter.
A wife and a daughter who likely perished when the bombs were dropped on the Zasforr Islands.
My guilt deepens. We’ve been married for two months now, and I still haven’t asked him about his life on the Islands. I’ve never asked him if he was married before or if he’d had children. And now I feel like the biggest fucking ass on the planet.
This whole time, he’s been suffering.
He’s been grieving, just as deeply as I have, if not more so. Not that it’s a competition, but fuck. If I’d known…
Well, if I’d known, maybe I could’ve comforted him. As his wife, isn’t that one of my jobs? He’s always looking out for me. More than once, he’s told me how sorry he is about what happened to my parents and sister and friends. I feel selfish that I’ve never asked about his personal losses.
Should I wake him up? Would he be receptive to any comfort I offered him, or would he push me away?
At first, I’d hesitated to ask about his past because I didn’t want to get to know him. After all, I’d planned to run away, and it didn’t make sense to spend any time getting to know one another if I was going to leave him one day.
I run a hand through my hair and sigh. He probably thinks I’m a self-absorbed jerk. I need to make this right. And I want very much to comfort him right now.
“Hey, Luka,” I whisper, placing a hand on his arm. I give him a slight shake. “You’re dreaming. It’s just a dream. Please wake up.”
His eyes shoot open, and he reaches for me in a flash, yanking me against his chest almost violently. His hands tangle in my hair and he shudders. “Isabell,” he murmurs. “Oh, thank God. I thought you were dead, and Harlow too. I thought…” His voice trails off and he grows very still.
My heart breaks all over again because I know his awareness has just returned. He’s remembering that his wife and daughter are gone. Isabell and Harlow. In sleep, he’d uttered their names with such emotion that I have no doubt he loved them with his whole heart. He must miss them terribly.
Slowly, he withdraws from me and sits up in bed. His expression is stunned, his eyes bloodshot and wide with grief. I sit up beside him and reach for his hand, lacing my fingers through his.
“Luka, I’m so sorry about your wife and daughter. Truly, I am. And I’m sorry I didn’t know. I’m sorry I never asked you about your life before the war. I’m just… just so very sorry.”
He’s silent for a long while, but eventually he looks at me. He swallows hard, and when he speaks, his voice is scratchy. “The bombs,” he says. “It was the bombs. God help him if I ever get my hands on your president, because I’ll tear that fucker limb from limb for ordering those bombs to strike the Islands. So many lives gone.”
I scoot closer to him and wrap my arms around him. He slumps against me and runs a hand up and down my back. My throat burns, and a few tears escape my eyes.
No further words pass between us, but we hold onto one another for what feels like hours. Though he returns my embrace, his body becomes more rigid as time passes.
I don’t want to force him to talk about his wife and daughter right now. And the truth is, I’m afraid to ask about Isabell. He’d loved her, that much is evident, and though she’s gone and she’s never coming back, I can’t help but feel threatened by her presence.
I’m a random American woman Luka pulled from the rubble of a collapsed building. A random woman he plucked out of a fallen city. Yes, he married me and claimed me as his wife, and a certain tenderness has blossomed between us in recent weeks, but I can’t compete with the memory of the woman he’d loved. I can’t compete with the memory of the wife he lost, the mother of his child.
His wrist comm beeps a few times and he grabs it off the nightstand. He frowns at the message before disentangling himself from me and crawling out of bed. He straps on the wrist comm and hurries to get dressed.
