Page 34 of A Hero Comes Home

“How much I love you?”

“Hah! That doesn’t prove anything.”

He grinned. “Are you challenging me?”

Was she? “Sure.”

He kissed her then. And caressed her. And murmured wicked words of praise for her body. And thrust and thrust and thrust. Then stopped. And started all over again. Meanwhile, the wind whistled outside now and the house shivered on its foundation, but she barely noticed. By the time he released himself into her with a roar of triumph, his neck arched back over extended tendons, after she’d finally surrender with a cry of “I believe, I believe,” he’d brought her to climax two more times.

It took a while for their heaving breaths to slow down to mere panting. He was flat on his back. She was on her side, her butt and shoulders against the back of the sofa, with her face on his chest, listening to his heartbeat.

“I do love you, Sally,” he said, kissing the top of her head. “The question is, do you love me?”

“You know I do. Why would you even ask?”

“You haven’t said so since I’ve been home. In fact, you’ve been in a bad mood from the get-go.” He chuckled then.

“What’s so funny?”

“God bless PMS,” he said irrelevantly. “I love how horny you get before your period.”

She raised her head and glared at him. He knew how women . . . how she felt when men made remarks about women on PMS. “You are such an ass sometimes,” she said, not entirely upset with him, still basking in the afterglow of good sex.

“Why am I an ass for liking my wife to be horny, whether due to PMS or my remarkable talents?”

She slapped a hand on his fingers, which were toying with her breast again. “I’m not having PMS, and I’m not about to have a period, you idiot. I’m pregnant. Again.”

He grinned. He actually had the nerve to grin. “Really?”

Men! They viewed pregnancy as a reflection of their virility. “Oh, yeah. Three months.” The exact time since his last leave.

He continued to grin.

“You’re happy about this?”

“Yeah. Aren’t you?”

Actually, she was, but that didn’t mean she didn’t have issues related to her having babies and his being gone.

“In fact, I have an idea. We should name this new baby Mark. Then, the ones after that could be Luke and John. We could call them the four little apostles. You know, instead of the Little Rascals . . . And, hey, maybe someday they would all play on the same NFL football team, and commentators would name them the Bible Brothers. Not that I’m religious or anything. Just a thought.”

“Well, think about this, bozo,” she said, giving him a hard shove, which caused him to fall off the couch.

He was laughing so hard, he didn’t even bother to get up.

“Have you lost your mind?” Leaning over the side, she looked down at him. “You want four sons? And what if some of the babies are girls?”

“We could have an equal number of each.”

“Eight kids. What alternate universe are you living in?”

He was probably kidding, but still . . .

Once he wiped the tears of mirth from his eyes with the back of his arm, he sat up and teased, “Still love me, baby?”

“Not so much,” she said, getting up and going off to the bathroom to see if she could get a comb through her tangled hair. But she did. Love him. And that was her downfall, and why she would probably stay in the upcoming years.

The storm lasted for two days.