Duty, Honor, Country

"Please tell me," she said again cutting him off.

"Tell you?" he said, a very confused look on his face.

"Yes. Please say to me the things you told the doctor you could never say to me," she said sweetly.

"Why? So you can laugh at me or tell me how delusional I am?" he said too ashamed to look at her.

"No. So I can tell you I feel the same way," she told him as seriously as she'd ever said anything.

"I...I don't understand," he told her.

"I've been so sad recently because of the way you've been acting around me. I was sure it was because you were tired of waiting on me hand and foot. I was going to offer moving in with my parents and then you got sick so I decided to wait."

"Tired of you? Oh, my goodness. Sarah. No. Never. I'll never get tired of taking care of you. I...I was just so...sad."

"Why were you sad, Richard?" she asked now sure of the reason why.

"Did you really hear everything I said?" he asked again.

"Every word," she told him again.

"So...so you know why I was sad. That I knew I could never tell you how I really feel."

"How do you really feel, Richard?" she asked as she stared into his eyes.

"It's not easy for me to say," he told her.

"Because of Rick, right?" she said understandingly.

"Yes. Exactly. It feels like a betrayal. A betrayal of the worst kind," he said as his eyes welled up with tears. "I...I loved my son more than anyone else on earth."

"I know. So did I," she said tenderly. "But neither of us has done anything wrong. Neither of us set out to...to fall in love. But we did. How is any of that our fault?"

"It...it isn't our fault," he said. "It just feels so..."

"Wrong? she asked. "I agree. I've struggled with these feelings for some time now myself."

"Pardon me? You've had these same feelings? For how long?" he asked unable to believe what he was hearing.

"Uh-huh. Maybe even longer than you. I felt horrible. I felt guilty. I felt so...ashamed. But I don't anymore," she told him waiting for him to look at her again.

"And you shouldn't either, Richard," she told him. "You knew Rick much longer and much better than me, but I knew him well enough to know he'd want me...and you...to be happy."

"That's true," Richard said. "The last thing he'd want is for you to pine away for him the rest of your life. He'd want you to be to find someone else."

"I have," she told him, her eyes wide open. "I have found him, and I am very much in love with him."

"I've never been at a loss for words before, Sarah, but I find myself not knowing what to say."

"Then say you love me," she said. Her eyes were pleading with him to say it and he knew she needed to hear it as badly as he needed to say it.

"I...I do love you. I love you so much, Sarah. I...I just need some time to give myself permission to actually...love you. Does that make any sense?" he asked.

"Yes. It makes perfect sense. And you can take as long as you need to, Richard," she said sweetly. "Oh, and it wasn't a dream."

"What wasn't?" he asked thoroughly confused.

"I did kiss you," she told him with a smile. "I thought you were sleeping, and I...I just kissed you."

"I might have been contagious," he said so seriously it made her smile.

"It was close-mouthed," she told him, "and just a peck. But I wouldn't mind a real kiss if that's not asking for too much too soon."

"We can't risk infection, but I would love to hold you for a while," he told her.

As she lay there in his arms she said quietly, "I can't wait until you can, you know, really love me."

He felt things 'working' again then smiled before saying, "It may be sooner than I thought."

He looked down, and when he did, Sarah laughed a kind of giggle-like laugh.

"Oh, okay. Well, that's very good news," she said. "But right now, if I don't go pee..."

She kissed him on the cheek then got up and headed for the latrine.

She was back in bed laying next to him when the doctor made his morning rounds.

"What have we got here?" he asked as he saw Sarah curled up next to him.

"The truth will out," Richard said cheerfully.

The doctor raised his eyebrows indicating he wasn't going to say a word until he knew for sure so Richard said, "I told her. Or more accurately, she overheard us and forced me to talk."

"Oh, now wait just a second here. As I remember it, no one forced you to do anything...General," she said happily.

"Okay, maybe that's true," he said with a smile. "However it worked out, she didn't reject me so..."

"So...can he go home today?" Sarah asked the doctor as she sat up then stood next to the bed.

"Well, everything looks good so I don't see why not. We'll keep you on the antibiotics for the full ten days then I'll see you back the following day after that. But for now I think we can safely release you."

That night Richard said, "I think I'm strong enough to go take a shower so if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go wash the hospital smell off of me."

Sarah hadn't had a chance to shower, either, and decided to find out if Richard might possibly be ready to...actually love her...this soon.

She waited until she heard the water running, then undressed in his bedroom and took a look at herself in the mirror.

"If he can love me looking like this, then he really does love me," she told herself as she looked at her sizable 'bump' growing on her body then at her own stringy, matted hair.

She shower stall was all steamy as she walked up and opened it.

She laughed when he flinched then said, "Is it too early for some company?"

It was steamy, but not too steamy to see the nearly immediate reaction.

"Um...I would say it appears not to be too early," he said as they both watched him grow.

She closed the door then put her arms around him as the warm water beat down on them.

"Mmmm. I think you need a hand with something," she told him as she reached for his now fully-hard cock.

As they petted and kissed (avoiding anything open-mouthed or deep, just in case), Sarah whispered, "The OB-GYN specifically mentioned that having sex...lots of sex...was okay."

"Oh, right. Yes, she did, didn't she?" Richard said as though he'd forgotten.

"Are you strong enough to lift me up yet?" she asked with a bright, happy smile.

He put his arms around her and easily raised her up high, and just to show her he felt okay, he raised her up until her head touched the ceiling.

Sarah laughed loudly then said, "Okay, okay! I get it."

She looked into his eyes and said, "Now lower me down onto that big shaft of yours so I can really get it."

Seconds later he was deep inside her as Sarah clung to his neck while the water continued raining down on them. Sarah moaned softly as she rode him hard grinding against him while he loved her.

She felt herself getting close and cried out, "Oh...ssshit! Yessss!! Oh...God. Fffuck me!!" just before he came inside her as she came, too. Her tiny body shook and shuddered as he splashed one hot stream inside her after another.

She refused to let go of him after he came and held him even tighter as still filled her.

"I love you so much," she said barely holding back the tears.

"I love you, too," he told her tightening his embrace.

At almost 53 years of age he was more than a little surprised when his body told him (and her) he was ready again in less than two minutes.

"Mmmm. You feel so good," she told him as his softness turned hard.

That night she slept with him for the first time, and the following morning, she woke him up with the most amazing blow job he'd ever had.

"So that wasn't a dream, either, was it?" he said after she happily swallowed him.

"No. It wasn't," she said in her happy, perky voice. "And you better get used to that, soldier because that's how we'll be doing reveille around here."

Richard raised an eyebrow then said, "Yes, ma'am!"

Sarah laughed then crawled on top of him and told him again how much she loved him and how happy she was and when he said it back she squealed with delight.

Sarah was 28 weeks pregnant when the divorce became final. She'd reluctantly removed Rick's ring several weeks earlier because her fingers were now too swollen to wear it. She kissed it softly and gently put it away in a special place knowing she would never forget the first man she'd ever loved.

Richard noticed but never mentioned it although, along with the divorce, it gave him the permission he needed to buy a ring for the woman he loved.

He took her to dinner and even brought a soft cushion for to sit on.

"Sarah? Honey? I know how incredibly surreal all of this seems because of the way this happened, but regardless of how it happened, it did happen. And each day I'm more and more in love with you."

She began to cry again when he got down on one knee and showed her the huge solitaire diamond ring as he asked her to marry him.

"I hope you bought it too big because of my fat little fingers," she said as she tried not to cry.

"Of course. And we'll get it resized whenever you need to have that done. For now, I'm just so happy to know you're going to be my wife," he told her before standing up and kissing her before sitting back down.

"Honey? Do you believe in heaven?" she asked him.

"No, not really. Why?" he asked back.

"I don't know. I don't, either, I suppose, but there's something comforting about thinking Rick is looking down and hoping we're both happy."

"I guess that's something we can't know in this life, but if it comforts you, I'm glad. All I want is for you to be happy and for your...for our babies to be healthy."

"Do you want them to know the truth someday?" Sarah asked gingerly.

"I'm not sure. I guess that'll depend on whether we find telling them could somehow do more good than harm. At this point, I'm leaning toward not saying anything. What are you thinking?"

"I agree. I would never lie to them, but I see no reason to make an issue out of it. You'll be their father and the man who loves them, so no, I don't think we need to say anything."

Sarah was nearly nine months pregnant with Rick's children when she married his father; a man she dearly loved and who loved her more than life itself. A man who spent every day of his life caring for her and their two children, Richard, III, and Rachel, who were born healthy, and who came home to live with two loving parents never suspecting the truth.

While Richard Callaghan could have paid for the hospital bills himself, having Tricare to cover the cost was an added blessing. It also meant that Sarah, and their two children, would have healthcare until they graduated from college, something the happy couple was already saving for.

Sarah Callaghan would always love the handsome young lieutenant who'd asked her to marry him, but fate had somehow determined she would also love and marry another man of the same high moral character. A man who, like his late son, valued those sacred words—duty, honor, country.