Page 46 of The Last Kiss

Sitting up, he pulled his shirt off and was working on the buttons on his trousers when he realised Ash hadn’t moved. He was staring at the ceiling, one hand gripping the waistband of his trousers.

“Ash?” Harry said in concern. “What’s wrong?”

He was silent, lips moving like he was working on words but hadn’t found them yet. With a horrible feeling that he knew what was coming, Harry held his tongue and waited, only putting his hand over Ash’s clenched fist. At last, in a reluctant whisper, Ash said, “I don’t want you to see it.”

Harry’s heart cramped like he’d been kicked, a raw emotion filling his throat. Instinctively he tried to deflect the conversation, offering a teasing laugh. “I’m hoping to do more than see it, mate.”

Ash turned his head, eyes impossibly wide. “I mean — ”

“I know.” Harry tightened his hold on Ash’s hand, his laughter fading. There was no avoiding it. “I know what you mean.”

“It’s ugly.” Ash stared back at the ceiling, blinking rapidly. “I can’t stand to look at it myself, and I’m sure you’ll think — ”

“No.”

Ash looked at him, surprised perhaps by the bark in his voice.

Harry was surprised too. But it had to be said, the truth burned too fierce not to be spoken. “I’ll tell you what’s ugly,” Harry said, more roughly than he’d have liked. “Seeing you with your foot blown half off, your uniform gone black with blood. Your face the colour of…of the dead. That — ” His voice caught, but he made himself carry on. “That was ugly.”

Under his hand, Ash went still but he didn’t speak. And Harry was only half there anyway, the rest of him going back to memories he’d made a point of avoiding. But he’d do anything for Ash. Even this. “Watching them carry you away at the dressing station, that was — ” He could see it so clearly in his mind’s eye: the stench of the place, the cries of the wounded, the silence of the dead. “That was worse. Your arm, it — It flopped over the edge of the stretcher like a corpse, just hanging there. And I wanted to run after them and lift it up and tell them to take better care of you. I wanted to tell them that you were… were precious to me. But I couldn’t. Icouldn’t. All I could do was watch them take you away, and I thought you were already gone, Ash. I thought you’d bought it. I thought I’d never see you again and I — I wanted to die.”

“Harry…” Ash clutched Harry’s hand, strong fingers gripping his.

“That first night, I was going to stand on the sodding fire step, light a fag, and let the Bosh do the rest.” He choked, throat too tight to swallow. “So don’t you tell me anything about you is ugly, because you’rehere.” A sob escaped, hard and painful in his chest and throat. “You’re here and that’s the fucking miracle I prayed for. And I don’t care about your leg, or any other bloody thing, Ash, because I love you.” He shocked himself into silence, saying those words out loud, and sucked in a shaking breath. Swiping at his eyes with his free hand he ploughed on, “I love you, Ashleigh Dalton, every single beautiful, damaged, precious bloody piece of you.”

“Harry… Oh my dear Harry, come here.” And then Ash was kneeling up, his strong arms around Harry’s shoulders, sweeping him into a fierce embrace. “I’m a selfish bastard. I hardly eventhoughthow it was for you. At the time, I didn’t know you felt like this or — ”

“Well I did,” Harry said fiercely. “Ido.” It was an awkward embrace, Ash half kneeling on the bed in front of Harry. But it meant Harry could touch his injured leg, feel the firm muscle of his thigh and, past his knee, the hard straps that held the prosthetic in place. “I love you, Ash, and if you think I give a damn what your leg looks like then you don’t know anything.”

Ash released him enough that he could look him in the eye. “I love you, too,” he said. “You know that, of course. You know I love you.”

“I do,” Harry said with an unsteady smile, struggling free of his bleak memories. “I do now.”

Leaning in, Ash found his mouth with a soft, ardent kiss that tasted of smoke and salt tears, and slowly they sank back onto the bed together. They kissed on, hands finding ways beneath clothes, a gradual disrobing as the heat rose between them and burned away the sadness. The past could not hold out against the urgent, pressing need of the present.

Harry touched his lips to the hollow of Ash’s throat. “I love the way you smell,” he murmured, tongue flickering against Ash’s collarbone as if he could taste the fragrance on his skin.

Ash gave a breathy laugh and wound his fingers tighter into Harry’s hair. “Sandlewood soap,” he said, and groaned as Harry pressed another kiss to the bolt of his jaw. “My mother’s.”

They both laughed and, laughing, Harry rolled Ash onto his back, looking down at his flushed face and kiss-swollen lips as he deliberately ground their hips together. Even through layers of clothing, the feel of Ash’s hard prick against his own made him groan, and when Ash started to move his hips in slow, sinuous rolls, rocking them together, Harry thought he might explode there and then.

“Bloody hell,” he said softly. “I want to feel you. All over.”

“Yes. God yes. I want to feel you, too, I just — ” Ash swallowed. “I just hate — ”

Harry kissed the words from his lips, then pulled back and said, “How about we pull the sheet up over it?”

Ash said nothing, looking uncertain.

“Come on, I won’t look. Get yourself undressed, take off your leg — can’t be comfy — and pull the sheet up over it.” He put a hand on Ash’s chest, feeling the racing beat of his heart beneath his palm. “I swear it won’t bother me, Ash, but you have to feel comfortable too, eh?”

He nodded, pushing himself up on his elbows. “Yes. Yes, alright.”

Harry smiled and kissed him, sliding a hand to the tempting bulge in his trousers. “Don’t take all day about it, either,” he said, giving his prick a gentle squeeze. “I have plans for this.”

“Fuck,” Ash said, eyes fluttering shut. Somehow, in his refined accent, the obscenity sounded deliciously erotic.

Harry busied himself with stripping out of his trousers and underwear, listening to the sounds behind him. The thud of Ash’s prosthetic hitting the floor, the rustle of fabric and the creak of the bed. It broke his heart that Ash thought the way he did about his injury, but he reckoned he’d be able to change his mind. He’d give him something else to think about at any rate.

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