Eventually, Ash said, “Alright” and Harry turned around.
He lay on his back, propped up on his elbows, the knee of his good leg bent up and the other leg lost beneath the white sheets. In the rich afternoon sunshine filtering through the curtains his bare skin was all ivory and shadow. Strong shoulders over a trim, sparely muscled chest. Ribs a little too prominent, his belly flat with a scattering of dark hair which arrowed down to a sizable, half-hard prick and long, lean thighs. Harry’s mouth went dry at the sight of him. “Blimey, Ashleigh Dalton, you’re a sight and a half, you are.”
Ash was drinking his fill, too, and Harry glowed with pleasure to see him bite his lip hungrily as Harry approached the bed.
“Stunning,” Ash breathed. “A Barberini Faun.”
“You what?” Harry climbed back onto the bed, pausing at the last moment. “A fawn?”
“A statue. Roman. You look — ” Ash sank back onto the pillows. “It doesn’t matter. God, Harry, just touch me before I go mad.”
“I hardly know where to start.”
“Everywhere,” Ash said, opening his arms. “Everywhere, Harry.”
They came together reverently, and Harry almost wept at the feel of all that warm bare skin against his own. He’d never felt anything like it, not in his whole life. Chest to chest, prick to prick, kissing and rubbing together, touching intimately. Harry slid an arm under Ash’s back, a hand into his hair, tipping his head back so he could kiss him deeply, their tongues tangling as Ash threw one leg around Harry’s hips, urging him closer as they rocked together, pricks sparring in the hot, slick space between them. So good. So bloody good.
Timeless minutes passed as Harry lost himself in the feel of Ash’s body, in the taste of his skin, and the overflowing of his own heart. No words between them, just breaths, no thoughts to trouble them, just touch and taste and feel. Only delight, only joy. Only love.
Harry shifted them until the angle was better, his prick sliding over Ash’s again and again, his hands sinking into the warm flesh of his arse. Ash kissed his jaw, then his shoulder — sharp, bity kisses that made Harry groan with pleasurable pain. Bloody hell, he’d never felt so aroused. His blood was red fire, blinding behind his eyes.
Ash breathed in short sharp breaths. “Yes,” he gasped. “Oh yes, oh God.”
And suddenly everything was tensing up, from thighs to balls to belly. Too soon, but unstoppable. “Ash I’m — ”
“Oh, Christyes!” Ash arched back as he climaxed, fingers biting into Harry’s shoulders, the cords in his neck straining.
And it was enough to trigger Harry’s own release, sweeping through him like rolling thunder. “Ash,” he gasped, burying his face against his shoulder. “Oh God,Ashleigh.”
A heavy flood of emotion followed, rising like a river after a storm to sweep everything before it. All Harry could do was hold on, sweaty and breathless, helplessly in love. He kissed Ash’s shoulder, the side of his neck, his jaw, his lips. Everywhere he could reach. “I’m yours,” he breathed into the silent space between them. “I’m yours, Ash, heart and bloody soul.”
“And I’m yours,” Ash whispered back, watching him with those dark soulful eyes. “Always, Harry. I’ll love you forever. Whatever happens.”
Harry drew him closer, pressing a kiss to his sweat-damp hair, a spike of unease snagging his heart like barbed wire. Because Harry knew there was no forever. Not for them. Such things were impossible.
There was only today, there was only tonight. And he’d do well not to forget it.
CHAPTERSIXTEEN
Ash slept deeper than he had in months. Years, possibly. When he finally surfaced it was to fading daylight and a chill on his back. But still he didn’t want to move.
They’d curled together in sleep, his cheek against Harry’s shoulder and Harry’s arms holding him close, one large hand settled on his shoulder and the other stroking over his hip to his thigh and back in slow, careful caresses. Their legs were entwined, and — He froze. That was his left leg Harry was touching, his left leg that he’d curled over Harry’s while he slept.
He felt a sinking disgust in the pit of his stomach, allowed the feeling for a moment, then opened his eyes to look. Harry’s hand moved over his hip, stroking down his thigh, and beyond his knee the raw truncated end of his leg nestled between Harry’s shins. His stomach clenched, but he made himself look — made himself remember Harry’s heartrending account of his grief when he’d thought Ash had died. Christ, what if Harry had really done it? What if he’d stood on the firestep and let a German sniper end it for him? What if Ash had receivedthatletter in the Calais Field Hospital: Private Harry West, killed in action. Even the thought of it stopped his heart. Surely the reality would have finished him off. And if it hadn’t, what an empty, colourless life he’d be living now. Half a life with half his soul missing, and the better half of his soul too.
So he owed it to Harry to look down at the stump of his leg, to not flinch away, to allow Harry to see all of him. “Major Edwards said they did a good job at the Field Hospital. I was lucky.”
Harry’s hand paused on his thigh. “Does it still hurt?”
“No, not all the time. The prosthetic… It chafes the wound sometimes and putting too much pressure on it hurts. Olive said that will get better though, over time.”
Harry moved his hand further down his leg, to his knee. “I can see where the straps rub,” he said. “Looks a bit sore.”
“You know what’s strange?” Ash uncurled his leg from around Harry’s and straightened it out on the bed. “My foot hurts, sometimes. The missing one.”
Harry shifted so he could look him in the eye. “It never does.”
“It’s true,” Ash said. “It’s the way the nerve endings were severed, apparently. Some men have it much worse than me, though. Constant pain, poor buggers. And no pills can touch it because the limb isn’t there anymore. They call it phantom pain — like a ghost.”