Happy Homecomings

"Sit up against the headboard like I did," she said.

When Ray had himself in place, he was a little surprised when Amber joined him on the bed. She lay sideways across the mattress, below his feet, propped up on her right elbow.

She saw the look on his face and said, "I want to see up close. Plus, I just came, so I should be able to resist and just enjoy the show."

She'd left her bottle of lube on top of the nightstand, so he decided to go for a wet versus a dry stroke.

As his breathing sped up in time with the shining head disappearing in and out of his fist, Amber cocked her left knee into a triangle and gently played with herself. "God, you were right, baby," she purred. "This is fucking hot."

"Where do you want it?" he forced out of his tight throat.

"All over yourself," she said right away. "All over your belly."

He stared at his wife's beautiful tits and her fingers toying with her dark thatch as his fist flew over the sensitive bulb until he exploded, with the first spurt hitting his left collar bone.

Amber was on him in a flash, sucking up the blob. Then her lips followed the warm, white trail down his chest and across his belly until she finished with his raspberry-flavored cock in her mouth, where she sucked out the last husband-juice he had to offer.

Chapter 33

Monday started another full work week for each of them. While the students and many of the teachers might be gone, Amber had a tall pile of end of year reports to write, from teacher evaluations to budget analyses. Ray, meanwhile, was continuing to focus on post-deployment physical and mental checkups. And of course, he himself had to get checked out by the brigade's psychologist. Command wanted everyone evaluated before the 4^th of July, which was two weeks away.

One of Ray's redeployment meetings on Tuesday was with Corporal Clement Evans.

Captain Sempels already had a good feeling about how the young man was decompressing and processing everything he'd been through in the sandbox. Still, he started off their session on a sincerely professional level to be sure he wasn't overlooking anything because of his unique relationship with this particular soldier. Evans understood these ground rules and went along with them.

"How did you feel about everyone talking about us at the barbecue?" Ray asked.

"You mean like they were discussing a movie and we were just the actors who had played certain characters in the film?" said Clem.

Ray chuckled. "Exactly. That's exactly how it felt. I'm going to steal that description if you don't mind."

Now Clem laughed. "Go ahead. I stole it from Hue Lan. She says she's going through the same thing at her post, with everyone wanting her to 'tell the story'. Only it's tougher for her."

"Because?" Ray prompted.

"Because she's alone, no one else from her company was there with us. When we talked about it at the barbecue I could look around and see you and Captain Morrow, Franklin Johnson and Sergeant Joya. It reminded me that it was real and that you all knew how I was feeling, and that makes it easier to think and talk about. For Hue, it's just me on Facetime and a girlfriend she has over there who had a rough tour in Afghanistan."

"How's she doing with it all? Is she seeing anybody, like you and I are doing?"

"She is," the young guy said with some hesitation. "But to be honest, it doesn't sound as good as what we've got going on over here." Then Clem set his jaw and nodded. "But she's tough and smart and we talk a lot, so I think she's doing okay."

"When she comes over here, if she wants, I or Captain Morrow can talk with her."

Now Clem's face came full circle back to his wide, open-hearted grin. "She's not coming over here for some kind of gloomy closure," he said. "Please excuse my language as I quote what she said after I told her you and Mrs. Sempels were coming to Croatia. I can't wait to see that hunk pounding that hot wife of his. That's when I'll know that all is right with the world and Iraq be damned.

Ray had to put his hand over his mouth to keep from laughing out loud. Then his eyes squinted at the young soldier.

"No," Corporal Evans said ahead of the question. "She still doesn't know who you are, but I did have to describe you guys when I told her the story."

Ray nodded, as if satisfied with the answer, but inside he was reminding himself just how incredibly, stupidly crazy it was to be talking to this kid like this. Let alone to be planning on actually joining him and his highly-sexed girlfriend on a nude beach. He really needed to call a halt to the whole thing.

Chapter 34

Slim Evans had brought a backpack with him and now he picked it up and took out a sheet of paper that he handed over to Doc Sempels. "Here's our itinerary. We got a real good deal on the flight on EuroWings and the airport in Split is close enough to the resort that a cab won't cost much. Especially if we...Split it?" he added as a bad pun.

Call it off, Ray. Don't be stupid, call it off, echoed through the captain's head. What came out of his mouth was, "Yeah, why not? By that time, it'll just be us and a bunch of strangers, right? But we probably shouldn't hang out at the German airport together before we board.

"Hey," he said in a more serious tone. "I hope we're not insulting you with all this sneaking around and being all clandestine." He held up the printed flight itinerary.

Clem smiled. "No, of course not, we get it. I have to admit, I probably sounded a little bit testy when I told Hue that we weren't to have any e-mail or chat or social media connections with you guys. But then she told me it only made sense; you guys have a lot to lose. She also thinks the whole 'picking up complete strangers at the resort' vibe makes for a pretty good fantasy. So, yeah, we're all copasetic with the secret agent stuff."

Ray mentally shook his head. The sweet Savannah boy had certainly had his view of the world shaken up by Amber and Ray that day in the men's room, but it was a whole different world that Miss Hue Lan Pham was introducing him to.

"Speaking of Hue," Ray began. "There's another thing we need to talk about that you guys might not like to hear. Not saying we think there are any...expectations, but we just want to have it out there in the open while everybody's thinking straight."

Clem just cocked his head to the side with a hint of a smile.

"Remember how you told me about Hue being the 'one last fling' for her friends who were getting married? And asked me to share the story with Amber?" he added as if he needed to remind Evans about him giving his permission for Ray to talk about him outside the clinic.

Clem's smile grew. That was still one of his favorite stories from Hue Lan and he'd fantasized more than once about her recruiting a girl for them to share on their own wedding night. While he still struggled with the idea of sharing her with another guy, her sharing him with another girl set just fine in young Clem Evans's mind.

"She's a wild girl," acknowledged the 20-year-old stud who'd probably squeezed four years of new experiences into the last one.

"Well, the things we've talked about doing, you know, watching and being watched, are as wild as we want it to go. If it even goes that far."

Clem's smile faded. "Are you saying you're not sure if you're really going?"

"No, I'm not saying that. Although I think we all know I should be saying that." He shrugged and went on. "No, we're going. And I've no doubt we'll all see each other 'clothing optional'.

"But we're not committing to anything sexual until we're actually there. We want to see how we feel, how we all feel, when it's time to take the final step. Again, don't get me wrong, Amber and I are definitely up for it. But we want to leave that exit door open for anybody without them feeling bad about using it."

"Okay, I can see that," agreed Clem.

"And like I said, while fully expecting we'll be sharing some very intimate moments, the exhibitionism and voyeurism is our limit. There won't be any last flings or new flings or shared flings."

Damn, thought Clem, Hue's gonna be really disappointed to hear that. She'd been pretty darn clear that she was wide open to swapping partners with the hot strangers, which is what the captain and his wife still were to her. That was actually the impetus for his earlier thought about having to share both ways if he was going to get to have Hue with another woman. When she'd said she'd love to watch him fuck the luscious hotwife, he'd been all onboard with the idea. But when Hue added that she'd be watching them with the mystery stud's cock inside of her, the idea had lost some of its shine for Clem. But then the Captain's wife had kissed him at the barbecue, and he'd decided he could live with a full swap to get more of that.

"Um, okay," was as good as he could do in articulating his flash of thought.

"Listen, Clem." Ray waited until the kid was looking in his eyes. "This is important. We've never done anything like this before. Now, Hue is a little hottie and I know Amber thinks you've grown into quite the stud over the past year, so there's going to be plenty of sexual attraction all around, and that's all right. Some day we might even follow up on that kind of attraction, but it's a hell of a lot more serious of a thing than what we did last year and what we plan to do next month. So, for this first time we want to experience and judge the one thing without the weight of the other thing. Does that make sense?"

Clem's smile came back. "Look, but don't touch," he said in his easy-going drawl.

Ray smiled back. "Yep. Guess that about sums it up."

Chapter 35

"How did he take it?" Amber asked Ray over dinner that night.

"You know, in the end I think he's actually glad the 'look, but don't touch' rule is in effect. It's obvious that Hue's been giving our boy a whirlwind introduction to the wider world of sex, including virtually since they re-deployed, and he's enjoying the hell out of it like any 20-year-old guy would. But actually watching your woman with another man is still an idea, let alone a reality, that I sense he isn't sure he can handle."

"Well, then it's good he can just blame it on us," said Amber. "Look, don't touch. We can use that as our mantra to keep us from getting caught up and straying off the path."

"LDT," nodded Ray.

Amber smiled. "LDT."

Of course, LDT didn't apply between themselves, so they did plenty of both looking and touching all that week and especially over the weekend. They also went ahead and booked their travel and hotel reservations, although their itinerary was quite different than Clem's.

The main difference was, while Clement and Hue Lan had booked five days and four nights at the beach resort, Ray and Amber would only be staying three days. Then they'd hop on a ferry across the Adriatic to Ancona, Italy. From there they were going to rent a car and drive the coast road up to Venice, where they'd spend three more days.

Ray had his final formal post-deployment session with Clem the following week and was glad to be able to sign off on the young man's evaluation with a clear conscience; young Evans really was doing fine. He wasn't downplaying the intensity of what had happened to them in Iraq, but he had a good perspective on things. Ray thought that, if anything, he'd actually gotten more out of talking the ambush over with Clem than the corporal had. Ah, the immortality of youth.

Clem also reported that Hue had accepted the look, but don't touch condition. At least, she'd promised not to initiate any improper touching. But Clem warned that they shouldn't be surprised if she tried her best to entice them into dropping their own rule. Then the young man countered that by saying that he was still on the same page as the Sempelses and would try to keep things to an X-level versus Triple-X.

As Ray back-briefed Amber on that part of the session later that evening, he also told her about another interesting twist that Hue had added to the whole affair.

"She's told Clem to not tell her who we are. She wants to try and figure it out for herself while she's here for the awards ceremony. And failing that, she's happy for it to be a complete surprise when they meet us in Split."

While doing their travel planning, the older couple had decided to add an extra layer of both security and fun to their trip. Instead of flying down with Hue and Clem, Amber and Ray were going to fly to Zagreb the day before and spend a day and night in the Croatian capital before taking a commuter flight down to the beach city.

"You really think he hasn't already told her who we are?" asked Amber.

"Yeah, I believe him," said Ray. "I mean, of course she's not clueless. She knows we're 'older', although I don't know what that really means to them. And of course, that we're a married couple. She also knows that the husband is the soldier who deployed with them, while the wife is a civilian. But of course, that would probably account for 80 percent or more of the married soldiers in the regiment. And I think he's led her to believe I'm in one of the combat units instead of support."

"So, we're supposed to act all cool when she shows up?"

"That's the beauty of it," laughed Ray. "Act cool? Heck no. I mean, c'mon, she saved Joya's life, and mine. How would you treat her even if Croatia wasn't on the table?"

Amber beamed. "Like the bad ass superhero she is."

Chapter 36

Since the 4^th of July fell on a Tuesday that year, the regiment was celebrating the weekend before, on the 1^st and 2^nd. It was a full traveling carnival set up, so Amber and Ray spent Saturday afternoon wandering among the games and rides that had been set up in a training area.

At one point, Ray was trying to win a stuffed animal for Amber at the air rifle booth. He'd managed to score a key-chain troll (worth about a tenth of what he'd paid to win it), but the bigger prizes were eluding him.

"Crooked gun barrels," he grumbled under his breath when he missed another bullseye.

"Maybe that scar by your eye is throwin' off your aim," came a smooth southern drawl from behind the couple.

"Clem!" cheered Amber, throwing her arms around the young man's neck and planting a big kiss on his cheek.

"Howdy, Mrs. Sempels," he smiled. "Cap'n." They weren't in uniform, so there was no saluting, but you're never really off duty in the Army. At least not at your home garrison, surrounded by hundreds of other soldiers.

Amber lowered her voice. "If you call me Mrs. Sempels on the beach, you'd better believe I'll act like Mrs. Sempels. And I don't mean the MILF of your dirty young mind. I mean the crotchety old school marm who wears ankle-length, full-sleeved dresses even on the sand."

"I understand Ma'am," he answered, also in a near whisper. "And over there I promise to be just as informal and even downright rude as you'd like me to be."

"Hmm," she considered. "Rude. I don't know if I like that. Can we compromise on naughty?" They all laughed.

"I expect you wanted Doc to win you something a little nicer than that," Clem said at normal volume, while giving an unimpressed squint at the small toy in her hand.

"Oh, but it's so adorable," she cooed, holding the tiny troll to her cheek. Then she gave a dubious look herself, first to the toy and then to her husband. "Yes," she said flatly.

"May I?" Clem asked Ray, gesturing to the air rifle tethered to the counter.

"Be my guest, it's all rigged," said the older man as he stepped back from the counter.

The carnival attendant was a stringy-haired German in his late teens, who clearly spoke good enough English to know he'd been insulted. "Not rigged," he said sourly. But then he put the last two-Euro coin Ray had handed over back down on the counter with a disdainful look.

"No, no," interjected Clem. "We'll need that for my shooting. What does it take to win that one?" he said, pointing to a two-foot-high stuffed unicorn.

The attendant explained the point accumulation scheme that really was a bit of a scam, but Clem just calmly turned to Ray and said, "Looks like we'll need two more of those coins to get something decent for Mrs. Sempels."

Ray was about to ask why he had to pay, but he was already down on style points for pissing off the German kid. "Just two more?" he smirked as he stuck a hand in his pocket and came up with four more Euros.

Clem just waited quietly while the attendant slipped in a new 5-shot magazine and handed him the air rifle. Then in smooth, steady movements, the corporal banged all five shots off of various tin targets. Another reload and another five hits, including two moving targets that earned more points. Clem finally missed on the second shot of the third magazine, but he made up the lost points by hitting two spinning targets and one sliding along a wire.

The German attendant actually looked quite happy to hand over a premium prize to the young soldier. Then to the older guy he said, "Not rigged," in a tone that clearly implied, "You just suck."

Clem turned and handed the large toy to Amber. "Ma'am," he smiled.

She took it and squeezed it against her chest. "Thank you, Clement." Then, with a little side-eye for her husband, she said, "It's wonderful, I can't wait to cuddle with it tonight."

Then her eyes widened a moment before narrowing and looking directly into the young man's eyes. "A unicorn?"

"If you don't mind me being a little naughty already," he said softly, "It's a word I just re-learned with a whole different meaning from Hue Lan and when I saw it, of course I thought of you."

Amber squeezed the toy against her sexy chest again and gave him a cute little nose scrunch.

Clem felt his peter twitch and figured he'd better take off before things got awkward. "Well, I guess I'd better go find Franklin and the guys," he said. "You enjoy the rest of your day and we'll be seein' you soon."

As the sharpshooter turned away, Amber registered that the shooting gallery had been tucked into an alcove in the woods that was a bit off the main walking routes. There were very few people in that part of the carnival just then.

"Hey, Clem?"

The tall youngster stopped and turned back, already smiling. It was a smile that only grew bigger when the beautiful woman grabbed the bottom of the peasant blouse she wore hanging outside her linen shorts and pulled it up and over her pink brassiere, giving him a clear view of the generous cleavage that had been covered by the buttoned-up top.

"Thanks for the unicorn," she said, before dropping the blouse back into place.

Chapter 37

As the sun began to fall, Amber and Ray met up with some other medical company families to watch the fireworks display. Clara and Jim Morrow arrived late with their twins and set up their blanket on the grass just before the first rocket went up. After that, it was all oohs and aahs until the grand finale.

"So...that was quite the show," said Ray as he drew slow circles around his wife's nipples with his finger as they lay in bed later that night.

"Wasn't it? How much do you think the garrison paid for that? Oh, who cares? I think it's great how a German company did such a good job creating that big Stars & Stripes at the end."

Ray chuckled softly. "I was actually talking about the earlier fireworks show. At the shooting gallery."

"Oh, that was incredible, wasn't it? Did you know Clem could shoot like that?" She looked over to where the large stuffed unicorn sat perched on her makeup chair, looking back at them. "Are you sure I can't have it on the bed? He's so cute and he looks so lonely over there."