The Soldier From The Mirror Part 3. free porn video

The Soldier in the Mirror Part 3 By Tanya H. 11. Kissing Box. (Did nobody see that coming?) When I got back to work after The Woman Course the transfer request I'd asked for has come through - amazing how smartly the Army moves when mental health kicks in. I'm given a couple of weeks notice of a posting to an attack helicopter regiment. My skiing course has come in too, I'll be off to Bavaria once the snows are ready. All in all, things are looking up. It's a tradition in the Army that on leaving a unit you must have a leaving do. This means getting pissed. Mine is no exception and finishes with me heaving miserably over a toilet while Box, loyal to the end, holds back my hair. "I once had an act of penetrative romance with a girl while she was puking up," he mentions conversationally while I'm busy. "Ever wonder why you're single," I mumble, accept a slurp of water, then retch again. "Fucking intense vaginal spasms as she was chucking," he says, patting my bum affectionately. At some point during the evening Box and I take ourselves off for a walk, as a break from whatever booming bar we've all found ourselves in. In a serene riverside park we amble in the cool, wonderful dark and it seems perfectly natural to hold his hand. He's finally given up on trying to persuade me to stay and it's been a long time since I've felt so easy in another's company. Can Box and I push on from being best friends? Something in the way he's glancing my way suggests he's thinking about it too. The balls of my feet burn and I'm beginning to regret my choice of sandals. While they go perfectly with my dress I'm close to the point where the girl about town has to sacrifice her poise and carry her heels. Beyond their height, all the shots I've had are making the stilettos a little difficult to steer. You'll be reassured to know that with the diligent practice I've put in I'm usually gliding like a ballerina in high heels. The final assessment had been a meal out with Hazel and Joseph where I had been passed on grass, gravel, steps and uneven wooden floors. When I suggest a short sit down at a bench overlooking the cheerful noise the river's making, Box slips an arm around my shoulders and we sit there a few minutes leaning into each other in companionable silence. At some unknown, subliminal signal I find myself looking down at him as he looks up and everything falls right for him to brush some hair aside and kiss me Closing my eyes I drift into the kiss and feel his breathing deepen with mine. "You kiss pretty good for a Jock," I whisper when we stop to breathe a minute or so later. He strokes my cheek and I've never known his fingers so gentle, it bodes well for where this encounter is going. My nipples like it too and rise up, proud and erect and outlined through my dress. I'd often dreamed of what it wold be like for my first proper kiss with a man, sorry Al Deere, and it feels very smooth - natural. "And you, my ginger friend, are surprisingly good for a Scouser." "You sweet talking bastard," I murmur, boldly running my fingers along his inner thigh. We kiss again, more urgently and all the different things the kiss makes me feel are interpreted by my body as lovely . The warm, liquid sensations as it sets about making itself ready for him are delicious. His hand on my hip makes a few exploratory circles up my waist, then over my ribs and then, oh so casually, brushes the undercurve of my right breast. When I don't try to stop him, because the shivery sensation spreading over my skin is so good I never want it to stop, his hand goes for the full cupping and I sigh to have him holding me so intimately. Despite all this immediate pleasure, an image of past intimacy comes from nowhere with such sudden, high definition clarity it's like I've been transported back to that Salisbury flat. A shabby room, musty and untidy, but the girl who lives there is clean, beautifully dressed and lithe. She's invited Box and me in after chatting us up during a weekend off from our phase 2 training. Box and I are contentedly filling her at different ends and from the noises she's making around me she's having a good time too. Right up to the moment Box and I make the mistake that must regularly kill off threesomes - we make eye contact. At that very moment he must be close to cumming, for his face is twisted like a partially melted wellington boot and, despite the intensity of the moment, I laugh out loud. A look of concern adds to the comedy of his face, then he's laughing too. Our girl doesn't appreciate that. She spits me out with a string of, "What the fucks," and, "What the fuck are you laughing ats," which just make it worse. When Box falls out of her and looses his orgasm over her bum, well that makes us hysterical. The whole thing finishes up with us running, laughing so our ribs hurt, and clutching our clothes while she rages from the top of her stairs, naked and brandishing the wicked stiletto heeled shoe she's just whacked Box with. He bleeds from a punctured shoulder and that's hilarious too. "What's so funny," he say, still holding my breast, looking a little aggrieved at the way my shoulders shake as I giggle. Honestly, I can't help it. All I can see in my mind's eye is Box rising above me, about to be the first man ever to ejaculate inside me, with that comedy, twisted welly expression on his sturdy face. "Remember that lass, in Salisbury - who hit you with her shoe?" "Still got the scar," he mutters. "Fucking psycho." We study each other a few moments, close enough to kiss - to feel his breath, but neither of us move. Even his cupping hand is still and warm around my breast. "This is a really stupid idea, Toots," he says softly and starts pulling away. Quicker than him, I trap his hand and kiss the tip of his nose. It all feels so warm and natural, but he's right. We're too close for sex. It will push us apart. "You'd only have laughed at my cock anyway," he says walking back to the bar and the others. We're arm in arm and our hips bump contentedly together. Like a gentleman, he carries my sandals. Then he stops and gives me a look of pure incomprehension. "What the fuck were you doing in that room, laughing at me while I fucked that mental bitch?" I can hardly remind that I was helping him spit-roast the lass, can I? "Probably curious to see the amazing Box McHenry in action. How the hell am I supposed to remember? I was pissed too." "Cal?" I say, when we're closing on the bar and our moment's about to pass. "Fuck me! This should be good; Elizabeth using my actual name. Do go ahead, caller." His actual name is Callum, but that's not important. I halt him in the last of the darkness before we return to the street lights; the noise from the bar and the rowdies outside is already intruding. "Now I've tasted your tongue and you've groped my favourite boob." "Caress, Elizabeth, that was a caress." I like the way he says my name, it sounds exotic in his Scottish burr. I look at him, he looks at me and I need to tell him that in all the time since I'd seen that mirror I'd been thinking of him as my boyfriend. And now, after our lovely riverside fumble, he isn't the one. And this is why, the biggie. I take deep breath. "Callum McHenry, I love you." That makes him stare. "Well," he says. Then he says it again. Followed by, "Too much for sex." "Weird isn't it?" "How about a blow job?" He raises his eyebrows so I know he doesn't mean it. "You can have a pair of my knickers for a wank." "Worn?" "Clean." "Best offer I've had all day," he grins and off we go, back to the rest of the team for more shots, more dancing and ultimately a long session hurling down the loo. Later, when I'm all puked out, Cal helps me clean up, gives me an arm for support as I flail out of dress, tights, knickers and bra. He finds my pyjamas and even gets me into them before tucking me into bed. His last act before switching off the light is to bend and kiss my forehead. "Why are you not spewing up?" I mumble moodily. "As a Highlander I am genetically immune to hangovers," he says and turns off the light. Before the door clicks shut, he puts his head around it. "Love you too, Elizabeth." 12. New Regiment. My service so far has been with lighter, older, recce helicopters, but now I'm onto Apache. It's an ugly, heavy, armoured beast of a thing and I can't help falling in love a little. There are no extras, no frills, just brutality. I get a kick from working with it. It might be a new regiment, a new aircraft, but here are still plenty of folk here I know, our Corps isn't that big, and of course everybody knows me as Lizzie Aynho. Sometimes, very infrequently, I get a sudden twitch of dislocation between now and before. Once, applying mascara - the sudden shock that I should be putting on make-up in public almost had me sticking the mascara wand in my eye. Another time, needing a pee I absently amble into the lad's toilets, surprising one of the pilots at the urinals. His contentment instantly warps into fear and dislocation. "Bloody hell, sorry, Toots!" he blurts, hunching over the urinal like I'm about to jeer at his cock. I'm already turning about and making a tactical withdrawal, apologising over my shoulder. We have a laugh about it in the crew room later on. "You breezed in so confidently I assumed I was in the wrong bogs!" he explains. "You were hosing down one of the urinals!" He shrugs. "Thought it was a sink?" "Jesus! How many sinks in girls' bogs do you piss in? Dirty bastard!" My genderdislocation blunder transformed into a victory. Good work. Anyway, I'm getting properly settled and established in this squadron. After that moment in the Costa's I don't feel a flashback creeping up on me and while the Land Rover nightmares still come to disturb my sleep they gave me better intervals - maybe once a week or ten days. That's good isn't it? One lunchtime in the cookhouse I'm just turning away from the hotplate with another heap of nourishing, Catering Corps goodness when I'm confronted by a short, wide figure with an expectant grin across his blocky face. "Move over, bellend," dies on my lips. It's Box. Large as life and twice as Scotch. "Sorry, that should have been, McBellend," I say, offhand, though I'm grinning - big time. "Alright, Ginger One?" he asks casually. "Don't get too close to them heat lamps over the hotplate or you'll crisp up." I look around for the rest of the team, assuming they're slumming it in a line regiment for a night or two, but amongst the mass of identically camouflaged soldiers milling around the cookhouse I can't spot any of them. "You want to be careful hanging around with proper soldiers, you'll come out in a rash." By this time I've found a nearby, vacant table where I can plonk down my tray and give the Scotch twat the hug he deserves. We girls can show emotions like that, none of your male emotional repression here. "Steady on!" he protests, weakly. His cheeks are beautifully red when I put him down. "What are you doing here?" We're sharing my chips and fish fingers, eating them with our fingers like we're on some seaside promenade. "Posted," he said smugly, licking mayo from his fingers. "Posted?" "Yeah, posted.." "What do you mean, posted?" "Well, fucktard. That's what happens in this Army when you get moved from one unit to another." "You had another year on the display team." "So did you." "Yeah, but I was mental." "Course you are, you're female!" He makes boobs shapes before his chest and then makes a screw-loose gesture with one finger by his head. "You're posted here?" "HQ Squadron. MT, with the fucking REMFs. No sweat, It's good to get back into a proper regiment." "Did you get caught with your dick in something unsuitable?" He selects one of my chips, scoops up a generous dollop of mayo and offers it to me with a flourish. "Don't take this the wrong way, Elizabeth," he says as I bite off the end, "but I was worried about you, didn't like to think of you alone. So I asked for a move and stamped my feet until they gave me one." If he'd started, ?don't take this the wrong way, Toots,? I'd have said something like, "Alone! Bellend. Look at all these wankers." But he didn't, he called me Elizabeth and that created truth between us. Even here, amongst a regiment's worth of squaddies clattering their cutlery and telling tall stories to each other. I touch the back of his hand. "You soft twat." "I know. My only weakness." "Good to see you, Callum." And it is. Life goes on as it did before, but I'm laughing more. 13. Meeting Zanna Again. The next stage in my sexual development comes about following a game of basketball during a traditional Wednesday sports afternoon. When in garrison the whole Army stops for sports on Wednesday afternoons, usually football, but a squadron based outside Cambridge used to go punting and pub-crawling until their Sergeant Major found out. Stinking and glowing, I'm intent on a long, hot shower in the barracks when I'm waylaid by a lanky Captain I've not seen before, though her Medical Corps cap badge gives her away as the RMO - our Doctor. "Corporal Aynho?" she says, with a jolly, plummy voice and pushes some stray hair behind her ear. She's bright and bouncy - a wonderfully educated puppy. "That's me, Doc." "I was passing, the basketball court, just now, saw you playing - you're really good. Listen, how good are you at netball?" She's pale like me, but blonde not ginger. Her over-baggy combat jacket hangs vertical down her front and were it not for this apparent lack of breasts she would remind me of my long-lost Miss Cooper. Based on this, and a little instinct, I decide to like her. "Never played, Doc." "Never played?" Her tone and expression were the same a mere mortal might have used had I claimed never to have drunk tea, or eaten chips. "None of the schools I went to were any good." "You mustn't let that hold you back," she says earnestly. With her accent and mannerisms animating that sentence, a working class hero from the care system, like me, might have got all righteous and indignant with the condescending bitch. But with her intense enthusiasm for the prospect of me bettering myself through netball l take it in the spirit intended. And I like her. "Listen," she says, touching my forearm lightly, "I've got a team of sappers coming up on Friday and I'm a player short and I wondered, would you give us a dig out and play, pleeeese?" Of course I said yes - taking up any sport in the Army means time away from the day job and netball's fun. My basketball skills transfer across nicely, our regiment's netball team know how to have a laugh and I love the neat netball dresses; very feminine. My long legs and eye for the ball get me a place on the team after we beat the sappers, then a signal regiment. After that I'm instructed to parade at our depot to try out for the Corps" team. Selection's a two day event, very jolly, but other candidates who have been netballing since they were tiny mean I'm only picked for the reserves. However, the whole experience is made worth it when I wander into the NAAFI club that evening to be met with a scream of, "Toots!" before I get to the bar. There's Zanna, stood on a chair and waving to me. You'll remember her from all my flashbacks? Bleeding to death in Iraq? Now the NAAFI bar's heaving, must have been a few courses running, and there are loads of people I'm keen to catch up with, but Zanna stands out. She's light on her feet in motorcycle boots over tight jeans and sporting a Help for Heroes rugby top, her frizzy hair stands wild and dark around her face, which shines with delight. She points a bottle of Becks beer my way and hollers across the noise, "That chick saved my life and I am going to buy her a drink!" "And I am going to let you," I grin back. More hugs, she's shorter than me - busty and supple, gracefully sitting herself cross-legged onto a bench seat. I'm given space among the lads around her table - four of them, a couple of them I know from Germany. Unbelievably enough Zanna's well into flying training; having done her basic rotary-wing stuff with the RAF she's back with the Corps to learn combat flying. Only in the British Army can you get helicopter pilots and netball players mixed up in a junior ranks bar! But Zanna doesn't want to talk about flying (most unusual for any kind of pilot). After the small talk and catching up she's got Iraq to get off her chest. When the bar gets over rowdy we take our reminiscences under the stars and then into the posh room she's been given for the duration of the flying course - much better than the transit accommodation us netball mortals get. At one point I'm sat beside her on her bed, with my skirt hitched up and tights pulled down so she can check out my thigh. Then she wriggles down her jeans to totally our-scar me with the mess around her legs. Aside from getting aches when it's very cold, she has no lasting effects. "Those bloody tourniquets of yours were the worst bit, fucking awful! By the time they'd flown me to Shaibah I was begging, pleading for them to take them off. They had to hold me down "cos I was trying to rip them off myself," she says, with a self-conscious laugh. "Oops," I shrug. Sight of her blood jetting into the greedy sand is never far from my mind's eye. "Silly mare," she gives me a playful push. "I'd be fucking toast without you." We cry a bit, wrapped up in each other. Tears fall for Jonno and Macca and maybe for Zanna and Toots, because of our dark places. The release is beautiful, uplifting; maybe because Zanna sobbing in my arms is tangible proof that I'd done what I was supposed to do. Macca and Jonna weren't my fault, shit happens and there's fuck-all you can do about it. In the end we must crack on. I wipe away her tears, she brushes a teardrop from the line of my jaw. It might have been one of hers, we'd been so tight. Then, very slowly - as though she's giving me every opportunity to pull away - she leans closer and closer. I shiver from the touch of her breath on my cheek right before she kisses away another tear from my scar. My breath goes in a sigh. Her lips are so soft, my heart runs a little faster and lovely little goosebumps lift all over my body. "Zanna?" I whisper, not really knowing what else to say. Who knew? "You don't have to do anything you're not comfortable with," she breathes, so close her lips brush my cheek again. How did her room get so hot so suddenly? I turn, offer my lips; it seems the right thing to do and she warmly accepts the offer. Zanna kisses beautifully; slower and surer than Box's puppy-enthusiasm she plays my mouth and lips and tongue with a subtlety and finesse that touches off electricity all through me. By now I have become adept at enjoying the sensual intensity to be found in my changed shape. I know what it is to cry out with ecstasy I can't contain, but with Zanna it's wow plus plus plus! Her hands are never still as her kisses make me murmur with delight, but whenever I try to touch her she pushes me away firmly, admonishes me to lay back and enjoy myself. That seems a little unfair, but I get the message, powerfully delivered, recalling that both Liz and Miss Cooper had taught me to let the lady have what the lady wants. To feel soft, firm, knowing hands explore your legs, to have them run confidently under my skirt makes my nipples so stiff they ache to be touched. She unzips my skirt, pulls it clear and throws it aside, pushes up my T and smoothes it away. Kisses like butterflies fire my skin, but she never comes close to touching me where I need her to ease that wet heat or the insistent ache in my breasts. Even when she unclips my bra, lets my breasts spill free and skims away my tights and panties she won't give me what I'm squirming for. Even when I spread my legs to show her what she's doing to me, she licks her lips and wolf smiles before teasing me some more. And then, as she finally lets her mouth and fingertips find my taut breast curves, as they dance closer and closer to my engorged nipples I cry out, reaching behind me to grasp her bedhead, biting my lips, spreading my legs as wide as I can as though her room's air can cool my needs. At last, I know what Miss Cooper was feeling when she made me pay so much attention to her wonderful breasts and I cum, there on Zanna's bed, under Zanna's fingers and tongue and lips without her having been anywhere near my dripping pussy. There isn't a bit of my body she doesn't kiss and the attentive way she explores my toes and the backs of my knees is excruciatingly beautiful. When I'm almost pleading she lets her fingers up my inner thighs where they should burn from my heat, she teases my damp curls with the tip of her tongue. I try and angle my hips, to push myself onto her, but she's too clever for me. By the time she's finished with me, after I've screamed with the insistent pulse of her tongue inside me, when I've squeezed my pussy tight around her fingers, I'm practically fainting, melting boneless into her mattress. She stretches herself atop me, tickles my cheeks with her hair and kisses me softly. Warming me down. I find some energy to kiss her back, mostly because she's such a lovely kisser, but partly because the wild, erotic taste on her lips makes my hips rock. "You'll have to give me a moment to recover," I murmur, between kisses. "And I'll try to return the favour." "Only do what your comfortable with," she says again, with such a look I know she means it. "You've made my night already. I'll be soaring like an eagle when I fly tomorrow." "I'm very comfortable, thank you." To emphasise the point run my hands down her spine and find the lovely, resilient curves of her wide bum. My height against her compact build mean I can reach right down between her parted legs to tease the edges of her own slippery heat. A tingle runs through me; I have made her like that, with my body. When it's her turn to be laid on her back, radiating like she's just done a ten miler, skin glowing and covers thrown to the floor; when I'm satisfied none of the lessons Liz and Liselotte and Miss Cooper taught me have been forgotten, I look up from her, along the line of her body, over the top of her heaving belly and ask, innocently, if that was comfortable enough. "Fuck, that -" she starts to say. I never hear what she actually says next, because in my head she groans, "Fuck, that hurts." Now she wets my fingers with blood. I taste it. Iron blood stink fills my nose. Hot gore splashes my skin, stings my eyes, soaks my trousers. I stare at the bright scarlet jetting from her ragged thigh and throw myself back so forcefully I thump into the chair beside her desk. Something on the desk topples and crashes. Cloaked by hair, thighs pulled close to my chest I peep over my knees and watch Zanna roll from the bed, arms across her breasts staring like I've shit on the carpet. "Jesus! Toots? What...?" "Sorry." I shake my head, can't meet her eyes. I can still taste blood, but the gore's trapped inside my head. "So sorry." I'm hot and trembling at the same time. Zanna uncoils from the bed and drapes the duvet around me, holds my hand while I rock. "What is it?" I wave towards the corrugated parts of her thigh. "What? Oh. Shit! Again?" She sighs, fuelling my misery. "Come to bed, you silly mare. Come on. Come and have a cuddle, jeez, Toots. You need to get this out of your head." I shiver some more, in her bed, in her arms and she strokes my cheek. "What was the trigger?" she murmurs. "If you can figure that out..." "What you said." I can't close my eyes, for what's behind them. "When?" "Last thing you said to me, back then, when I'd done the first tourniquet, before you passed out. ?Fuck, that hurts.? I heard you say it again just now and, can't believe it, that threw me back." "Shit, sorry. Oh, bollocks. I was saying how amazingly good you were." I've nothing to say to that. "I mean, it was amazing, really something." Her fingers circle my cheek some more, she traces my eyebrows" curves, the length of my nose; so soothing I don't want her to stop. "We should do it again," she suggests. "Only I won't swear next time." "It was fab, brilliant. The best," I whisper to her neck. Her hair is so soft, like a comfort blanket to smooth and sooth. Silence wraps us, we could have been on a desert island, not a barrack block in a busy military airfield. Her breathing, light and wispy, makes me think she's fallen asleep until she murmurs again. "You must have done that before, with other girls?" Disappointment clouds her voice, even before I reply. "I kind of keep it to myself." "I had no idea. I hoped I was your first." She gets a squeeze. Could I be a lesbian? Imagine me and Zanna, lovers, companions, girlfriend and girlfriend. An involuntary shiver goes through me, centres between my legs and in my nipples; the sex would be amazing. But... Zanna's lovely, a great laugh, but much of what we share scares me. Am I tasting her or blood? I need to get my head straightened out before I can be her girlfriend, and (more than any of that) I want a man. I don't feel like a lesbian, even skin to skin with her, with our sweat drying together, her musk lingering on my tongue. Happily bisexual, that's me, but I fancy a boyfriend. 14. Combat Stress. No more delays, fobbing-off or excuses. That episode with Zanna adds clarity and clears misguided pride from the decision making process. I end up seeing a counsellor called Katherine at her idyllic, rural bungalow a few miles from camp. In her garden she has a nice little summer house containing a pair of comfortable, but straight backed chairs one of which has a little table beside it. On the table is a box of tissues and a tall glass of water. I sit by the table and despite my best intentions I need tissues and water for my first session. Katherine's spindly and silvered, with kind, soft eyes and poised hands, Her voice is calm and gentling - surely nobody can really be that pleasant, so empathetic, that trustworthy! I go in as prickly and defensive as a body could be, making myself sit tall and composed, legs precisely crossed and fingers interlaced in my lap. I wear my favourite little skirt, like a comfort blanket, and refuse to look anywhere other than Katherine's eyes. I keep still without fidgeting or picking at imaginary hangnails or bits of skin, I answer clear and concise; a proper held-together madame. The first tears come after forty minutes. By the time my hour has flown I'm hiding behind my knees. But I don't tell her about the mirror. I can't let on that I used to live in a man's body. She gets everything else; about Miss Cooper and the care homes, Liz and Liselotte (role models, lovers; women I wanted to be), Zanna and Macca and Jonno, Box and our kiss, all the fights I'd ever had, all the punches I'd let fly, the kicks I'd hammered into people who may not have deserved them. I told her every detail about the Land Rover and how the memory of Zanna's slippery, torn open thigh haunts me. I tell her about flashbacks and the tastes that prequel them, but I can't talk about being a man. Even somebody as warm and incisive and soothing and lovely as Katherine couldn't have wrapped their head around that. At the end of it I'm as drained as if I'd done a ten miler with full kit and rifle. "Are you going to tell me what's wrong with me now?" I ask, at the end, sniffling into a damp tissue. "You're holding something back from me, Lizzie." My chin rests atop my knees, who cares that she can see up my skirt? "What's wrong with me?" "There's nothing wrong with you, Lizzie." I tap my head, a little violently. "No?" "You've been through it, since you were little. What you're experiencing is perfectly natural. I would suspect you have PTSD." Snort! "PTSD's for heroes." "You were blown up. Saw your friends die. PTSD's for people who go through stuff, for people who are there when stuff happens. It doesn't have to be one great chunk of Stuff either, Lizzie. It can be incremental; drip drip drip - pop!" "I want to stop going pop." "And you will. You're a very focussed young person. Tough. I'll help you find the way, but you've already started along it." I am going to focus myself on the now. Ground myself in me. I am going to Yoga, to Katherine. I'm going to learn to dance, to improve my skiing. I'm going to be a Sergeant a Staff Sergeant - I can go to Sandhurst and be an officer. I'm Elizabeth Aynho and I'm going to get past this. 15. What the Magic Mirror didn't Recalibrate. Corporal Tayzi Matthews is our squadron medic; six feet tall with skin the colour of midnight and eyes to simply gaze into. She's my neighbour in the barrack block and we often enjoy breakfast together. Captain Hobart, the doctor, would crawl through sick and broken glass to get her into the netball team, but Tayzi's roots are in the West Indies and cricket's her thing. One morning over beans on toast, coffee and bacon so crisp it is almost a sculpture (the chef does it like that for me), she tells me that there's been a mistake and I'm overdue my smear test. "You tell me this at breakfast?" Tayzi looks surprised. "You don't want to talk about your cervix at breakfast!" Like I was weird or something. She jabs a fork at my crispy bacon. "You end with a pussy like that, you don't take care of it." "How overdue?" "How old are you?" "Twenty Four." "Twenty four years. Can you come in on Wednesday? 1030?" Seems like Hazel's mirror didn't get everything nailed. I didn't enjoy it. 16. The Loneliness of the Perfectly Biologically Female, Transgendered Woman. Hazel doesn't seem to mind me calling her, Mum. You wouldn't believe how good it feels to have a Mum after all this time. I phone her every week or so, messaging and emails fill the spaces between calls. Having met both Jasmine and Debbie they don't seem to mind me muscling in and adopting their family. At least once a month, depending on duties, I have a couple of days with them. I still enjoy crewing the bar or serving meals. When Hazel's usual lady took a couple of weeks to visit family in Poland I covered the desk for the first week and got the next week in the hotel as a guest, though I pulled a few pints even then. It's a great way of passing an evening, all the while nurturing the faint hope of having Mr Perfect roll in and sweep me off my feet. Beyond that, I owe Hazel, and her magic mirror, big time. She says her payback is my happiness - that's Hazel for you. My first girl Christmas was in Scotland with Box. Much laughter was had. Box's sister introduced me to windsurfing - bloody freezing, but great fun - in an effort to keep Box's little brother away from me. I have met and, at his insistence, vetted Box's new girlfriend - Chelsea of the big hair, sculptured cheeks and impressive boobs; both of mine wouldn't make one of hers. Chelsea's a nurse and suspicious of her lover's female best friend. Can't blame her really. I do my best to reassure her Box is my unofficial brother and I'm his surrogate sister, but it's hard work. In summary, I am not short of places to go or people to see, even without a conventional family of my own. Other times I just take myself off in Lipstick Golf and find somewhere I haven't been before. I spent a very happy week in Arnhem tracing the battles and memorials to Operation Market Garden - I might be all girl now, but I'm still interested in what I was interested in. But there's nobody, except Hazel, who I can talk to about becoming woman. Nobody I can share notes with, boast of triumphs or firsts to. The magical part of becoming a girl is a lonely place. 17. BMW Bloke. The idea of taking a man is an itch I need to scratch. Finding one I fancy who isn't a squaddie is the issue - as much as I get lots of tempting offers after Box and Zanna I'm determined to stick to the old rule of not shitting where you eat. So I join a running club, in a town a few miles from the barracks and after a few weeks find myself on a date with another member. He's a bit of a petrol-head, with a low-slung, gleaming BMW, who takes a liking to my Golf. Good looking, in a dark way, I imagine he will compliment my milky-whiteness; he likes to make me laugh, teaches me a few things about sprinting (I'm a middle-distance girl) and sports an athletic body I'm sure will feel good under my hands. Date night comes and by the time I'm at the main gate waiting to be picked up, I'm looking good. It's a cool, crisp, spring evening with the stars appearing as night falls and a pleasant breeze swirling the hem of another new dress. Based on my positive experience in netball dresses, I have gone for something similar, though a little longer, as I fancy this style suits my lean figure. I'm tall in those black heels I had bought on my first day at Hazel's which are themselves contrasting with natural shaded, wonderfully sheer and prettily lace- topped holdup stockings. If sparkles, connections, love at first sight, etc fire between us then I am comfortable being a modern girl and jumping him tonight. To that end I have a condom or two in my handbag - not having yet asked Captain Hobart about less intrusive methods of contraception. To assist in the seduction my make up makes me sultry around the eyes and gleams subtly on my lips; ready, if the stars are right, for another long kiss. My favourite social worker, Miss Cooper, once told me you could judge a person by their treatment of waitresses and cleaners. I never forgot that. By her standards, BMW Bloke is an arrogant twat. All smiles and charm for Lizzie Aynho, but brusque, superior arrogance with the restaurant staff. It's an Italian place, I'd been to before - though I don't let on. He assumes we soldiers don't get much in the way of culture. "Shall I order for you, love?" he asks, after sending back the first bottle of wine - corked or some bollocks. Love! He isn't good at reading me! Actually, he isn't interested in reading me - just in looking at the pictures! Meanwhile, I rapidly realise I have no idea how to behave on a date with a stranger of a man. I haven't the first clue on how to behave, what expectations are, what I should say or do. I can be Toots all day and all night with my regimental mates, but I've no experience being a woman in this situation. Hazel's course didn't cover this. The first moment comes when the waiter, very handsome, tries to seat me. Who does that any more! However, Handsome Waiter is spot on, he knows immediately he's got it wrong, backs off with a smile and raised hands. He gets the best number one dazzling smile by way of thanks. I'm a girl who can pass a combat fitness test, shoot my rifle through all the disciplines of the Annual Personnel Weapons Test; I'm qualified on the General Purpose Machine Gun, I refuel and rearm helicopters, deal with underslung loads and I change wheels on 4 ton trucks - I don't need some (handsome) lad pushing in my chair in for me at a nice restaurant. Waiter gets that - BMW Bloke doesn't even notice "I fancy a calzone," I say, because I don't want him choosing my food like I can't read! Is he worried I'm going to order chicken nuggets from the kids" menu? "The squid is bellissima," he says, full of wisdom, like I hadn't spoken. Perhaps I didn't. "Just a calzone. Thanks." That wins me a right funny look. Just a calzone? it said. I have brought you to a posh Italian restaurant and I am going to impress you with how cosmopolitan I am, but all you want is a pizza folded in half? Maybe some chicken nuggets would really piss him off? Down, girl. At that moment I know I'm never going to play some kind of demure princess. I may be wearing make-up and constraining my capabilities with stiletto heels and gorgeously impractical clothing, but even so - the woman he's on a date with is Toots Aynho! Not some fantasy fuck. It's also clear that I might as well have worn fire-resistant tights over combat rated underpants. Still he persists. Almost as though I'm still not there. Like I've sent just my body while I watch TV in the NAAFI. He lectures earnestly, tells me funny stories, worth a superficial laugh, and lectures me on his life, his work, his family. Even when he smirks, in a self- depreciating way, and says something along the lines of, "That's enough about me, darling, tell me about the beautiful you," he listens for seconds before interrupting with an anecdote of his own to illustrate the point I'm been making. And so on... After a while I decide that my life of rifles and helicopters, where women are not for show, does not interface with BMW Bloke's narrow world. What I do for a living is more exciting and more worthwhile than his insurance sales, so he doesn't want to think about it. And I wonder, how long am I supposed to put up with this? The Army does teach you getting along with idiots, so I sit there and get along. I smile when I'm supposed to smile, nod at appropriate times and idly fantasise of the short, blunt words Box would use to describe this knobber. He insists in paying. I let him - the least the dull twat could do for wasting my evening. When he goes out to the car park I lie about needing to pee and nip back to tip the waiter. Then I sit with knees primly together as he drives away from town, trying to impress with his driving, but his lines through all the bends are shit - I could have driven an Army Land Rover smoother. Then, as he heaves the BMW through a series of bends, like a bulldozer and not a German engineered driving machine, he brakes abruptly and bumps along what might have been a lovers" lane. I've been expecting this and considering my options; Fight - he's bigger in size and mass, but won't be aware of my brawling history. The care system and nighttime adventures with Box have taught me how to fight dirty. Eyes, throat and balls. Game on. Flight - I'll have to loose the heels and do my best in bare feet. He's a sprinter, quicker than me, and I have nowhere to go. Submit - really! Having ridden in his car, eaten with him, laughed dutifully at some of his jokes, he assumes I'll start dripping to feel his hand on my thigh. "I wanted to see the moonlight in your hair, babe," he murmurs. "I thought you needed a piss," I say, carefully removing his hand - wondering how I'm going to let him down gently, or even if should bother. "You know what I need, babe," he whispers seductively, returning to my thigh. Almost speechless I watch his fingertips edge under my dress. "You do too, I know you do." And the worst of it was that I almost let him, and here is why. I had been him (not as cheesy, obviously) but I had been that boy with a semi-on tenting his trousers and some girl cornered while I persuade her to help me out with my one need. I almost roll over and let him pull down my panties because I knew how frustrating it could be being that boy. You're worth more than that, Elizabeth, I say to myself. I don't want his saliva cooling on my nipples - don't even want him to even see them. Why should I try and fold myself onto the back seat of his precious car, or bend forward over the bonnet while he grunts inside me? My first time stands more precious than a fumble for him Instead I lift his hand and lay it on his own thigh. "Not tonight. Wrong time of the month." Like being up on blocks, which I'm not, will deter him! His arm snakes around my shoulders and he leans in for the kiss, wrapping me his aftershave. My right hand is lifted and moved, firmly, towards his knob. "Come on, baby-doll," he whispers persuasively. "You have such a sexy mouth." Well, we all admire a trier don't we? "No," I said, cooly and firmly - snatching my hand back before I got to touch my second erection. "I don't want you to fuck me, I'm not going to give you a blow job." That jolts him, like he's been slapped. Incomprehension clouds his face, his eyes narrow. With a sulky pout he pulls his arms away and folds them into his lap. "No?" he says. Sulk drips from every letter. "No! You could have said earlier then. I bought you dinner!" I could laugh, should laugh - but I remain conciliatory. "I'm not a prostitute." Still calm - watching his hands, his knuckles shine white, because the hands are always the dangerous bit; not his eyes or his mouth or anything else - always the hands. Colour heats his cheeks. "I didn't mean that, you know I didn't, but girls like..." "Girls like me?" I finish for him. "Scousers or squaddies? Or both? Easy fuck am I?" "Stop putting words in my mouth!" "I think you'd better take me home now," I suggest and he does. Happily it isn't that far away. He drops me at the main gate, without us exchanging another word, then squeals away leaving lines of expensive tyre tread along the road. "Good night, Toots?" the gate guard enquires as I click past twirling my handbag. "You're all dirty bastards, Mac," I say with a laugh. "All of you." BMW bloke is right about one thing though - the moonlight shines bewitching and beautiful. As a creature of magic myself I head back to the block, swap heels for hiking boots and treat myself to a long, contended walk right around the whole airfield perimeter. 18. Insights from a Police Interview Room. In many cultures a woman's virginity is a prized and valued thing. In some places, after a wedding night, a bloodied sheet will be displayed outside a new wife's bedroom so the world can be assured she'd been pure before her husband clambered all over her. Be assured, this is not done out of respect for the woman. My virginity is all about me. My magically installed hymen was torn by a vibrator during my last night of Hazel's Woman Course. It stung a little, and I bled a smear, but the feelings when that slim, trembling finger was encouraged inside to do its thing! Well worth it. When I finally find a man who ticks enough boxes, I hope I don't sound too fussy, I want my first time with a real life erection inside to be as perfect as possible. I want to look back on my first time with a happy smile, fondness, maybe a tingle to echo how lovely it was. I want it to be on my terms, my time, my choice. I'm here at a police station helping the cops with their enquiries after some fucker decided I was nothing more than a cunt to bludgeon spunk into. "Nice arse?" he'd leered after he'd barged me to the ground. I was winded, stunned, elbow screaming, bum sore and head spinning where I'd hit the path - a tarmac ribbon along the bed of a long-closed railway line I like to run along. Already on my back, my legs were conveniently sprawled for him. A metre or so away his bike was tumbled on the floor, back wheel still spinning. He'd come up behind me, used his momentum to bowl me over. In case I thought it had been a mistake his face was concealed with a ski mask and his cock jutted from his trousers; twitching and wet and meant for me. "Fancy a game of rape?" he said nastily. "You can fuck off." "That's the spirit," he laughed, but not nicely, and jumped for me. Tayzi keeps me company in the interview room. After limping back to the guardroom Mike Joules, the Guard Commander, phoned the police and duty officer and anybody else he could think of. I messaged Tayzi, Box being away on a course, and she'd insisted on coming down the police station with me. At 2130 a cop comes to take my statement. They must have been busy. I ache and I'm chilly too, still in the running leggings and top I'd been wearing when that bastard ambushed me. Bored of the whole thing I long for a hot shower. "You haven't washed your hands have you?" the copper asks. She's about 45, lined and weary looking under all the kit they make them carry. The yellow handle of a Taser peeps out from a holster on her chest rig. I could have done good work with that earlier. I show her two bloodied hands. My knuckles, on both side, are raw and swollen. A nail has torn on my right hand. I don't wear my nails long, professional needs trumping feminine fancies, but I do keep them neat, so that's another thing to piss me off. Cop frowns. My injuries are not defensive. "Good," she nods. "We'll need to try and get some forensics from you." "Got you some," I say. I would have smiled, but my lips and cheek are swollen too. Not defensive injuries, he'd got one hit in. From the pocket of my running jacket I produce a compelling piece of evidence. Against the stained table it looks very ivory, though streaked with dark red. A little tissue hangs pink from its root. "That's his?" the cop asks, surprised. "It's a canine," Tayzi adds helpfully. He'd spat it out as he made to leave, quite a bit of blood too. "I hit him." Punched fuck out of him really. First time I'd really gone for it for ages and ages; since before Liz's nightie - back when I'd been an aggressive, ginger bastard. If he'd attacked me right after he'd bowled me to the ground it might have gone better for him, but he gave me that moment. Maybe he enjoyed seeing me sprawled there, my body outlined by the running skins, almost ready for him to take. Too late loser. A sweeping kick took out his legs from under him, I rolled clear before he crashed down where I'd been sprawled a moment before. As he rolled onto his back I was on him, straddling him, knees pressed into his upper arms. Right, left, right, left. Everything went into those punches. His cheek cracked under the first one, nose under the second and I howled, grunted like a tennis diva launching a blistering service with the next two blows. Anger, rage, hurt, fear, disgust, guilt - all the bad shit - sang in my muscles and arteries. He wasn't just some bastard then; he was every bastard: he'd put the shit into my Mum's arm that left her dead and me in care, he'd been all the shit social workers and indifferent adults, he'd planted that bomb by the road, he'd made sure I'd been born a twisted mess of man and woman. Another punch and something cracked in my knuckle - brief stab of pain - soon forgotten. I laughed, a cruel, croaking sound, to see fear whine in his eyes. Another punch; his head whiplashed across, blood sprayed from his pulped nose. How dare he try to fuck me up even more? I finished with a slap, a proper ringing slap, to his face. Even with one eye already closing, he was big enough to heave me aside and for the second time I was in the weeds, nettle stings prickled my arms, but I still got to my feet first. A penalty kick to his hip knocked him over again. "Come on then!" I'd shrieked, hardly recognising my voice. Fists clenched, light on my feet, crouched like a boxer, I watched him roll onto his knees then shamble to his feet. Blood streamed from his nose, he spat blood and his tooth. "Come on you fucker!" I roared - possessed, humming, thrumming, singing with the power streaming into me. "Where's your fucking rape game now?" He tried to get on his bike, but I pushed him off, kicked him again, landed a blow to the back of his head as he cowered. He abandoned the bike, picked himself up and broke into a shambling run, only looking over his shoulder once, as I screamed at him for a coward, a bully and then I laughed and laughed and laughed. Not nicely. My emotions had crashed by the time I'd got back to the barracks. I sobbed a bit then The cop looks at my knuckles. "How many times did you hit him?" "No more than was absolutely necessary." I know my law of armed conflict. "I didn't want to feel him on top of me again." I held her eyes. "His cock was out. I believed he was trying to rape me." "Good girl," the cop nods and that simple praise, the approving look she bathes me in a moment later gives me a warm feeling through all the aches and ghosts of what might have been. "He's in custody, we locked him up just now, why we couldn't come and speak to you earlier." "Where was he?" "A and E. He looks a right mess." Another grin. "Road kill." Tayzi laughed. "That's my Toots!" "Can I see?" She shakes her head, but reluctantly. Like I said, it's my virginity and when it goes it will go with style and fireworks and a big sigh of contentment. 19. Cheese and Onion Crisps. Dating is not working for me. Not including Zanna and BMW Bloke, I have been on three civilian dates and have not exchanged anything more than a peck on the cheek with any of them. In no particular order; one was married, one's assumption that as a soldier my politics would be as rabidly right wing as his was frankly offensive and the third was beautiful and dim. He was the one I allowed to kiss my cheek as we said farewell for the last time. Plenty of lads in the regiment, and a couple of lasses too, asked me out, but I didn't want a soldier. I didn't want the smell of combat suits in my nose when I undress him, or the tang of aviation fuel; I didn't want our small talk filled with regiments and rifles and orbats and worktickets and green stuff. Either I am too picky, or men can sense some innate craziness that comes with my red hair. It seems I will die a virgin. On a professional side I carry out my duties with sufficient diligence, enthusiasm and good humour, despite a torrential two week exercise in Otterburn, Ouston and Charterhall, that I am promoted to Corporal and posted to the Regimental Ops Room. There I look after flight planning and needy aircrew. Unkind rumours imply that I've fucked my way into the job as the lead pilot has a thing for redheads, but the army's full of crap rumours and I'm Toots enough to laugh it off. After only a week enjoying my second stripe and excess of power - cue manic laughter - I'm walking into RHQ, Regimental Headquarters, when some distraction has me stumbling over a step and almost colliding with the imposing monolith that is the RSM - Regimental Sergeant Major. The RSM is not a person to blunder into, for he's the regimental enforcer. He carries gleaming pacestick, wears a yardbrush moustache and boasts a chest big enough to weep on all day without ever extracting a twitch of sympathy from. He fixes me in his cold, dead glare. His moustache barely conceals a superior sneer. "Alright, penis?" he growls a moment later, after checking my clumsiness has not marked the mirrored perfection of his boots. RSM McQueen believes wholeheartedly in equal rights - the right of every soldier under him to be spoken to equally dismissively whatever their gender, background or sexual orientation. "Yes thank you, sir. Sorry about that." Next complication is the Adjutant poking his head out from an office a little further along the corridor. "Alright, Corporal Aynho?" he says cheerfully. "Enjoying the new job?" "Yes, thanks, sir." "Got a minute, RSM?" says the Adjutant. "Think I've just solved that little problem we were discussing earlier, sir," the RSM says blandly, without unpinning me from his gaze. This is not looking good. I need an exit strategy; somebody needs to set off the fire alarm. "Which one was that?" the Adjutant asks cheerfully, to let me know he's managing lots of problems. "Corporal Aynho has just volunteered to take over from Corporal Vardy while he goes on honeymoon." Now I'm in the shit. Paul Vardy is the CO's driver, the soldier who spends his working life ferrying around our colonel. It's the kind of shit job I have never ever fancied and usually one that goes to a brown-noser from Box's MT Troop. "That right, Corporal A?" says the Adjutant with a grin. The RSM's eyes fill with challenge and dark promise. "As long as the ops room can manage without me, sir," is all the protest I dare. "Oh, we'll sort that. Good girl, it'll be good experience I'm sure. The CO has a thing for redheads. Ha ha. I'll sort out the paperwork with your boss and you can sort out the handover with Corporal Vardy yourself." "Brilliant, sir. Thanks, can't wait." "Good girl," he repeats and vanishes back into his office. In my best aggrieved tone I dare to mildly bollock the RSM, "It's not like I actually stepped on your boots, sir!" His bristling moustache twitches above what might have been the briefest, coldest of smiles. "Best you fuck off then," he advises. And I do. For those of you not aware of how the army works, the CO is the regiment's commanding officer and in our case Lieutenant Colonel Edward D'Arcy. Don't be fooled by the name, he's actually a good lad - posh as you like, but down to earth and enjoying a good manner with the soldiers. Not many public schoolboys can carry that off. It's not a bad job, really. The hours can be erratic, but he isn't bad company and not too needy. Best of all, a trip to a Brigade conference in Colchester gives me the chance to meet my future husband. It's an unusual trip in that some boneheaded military etiquette thing has the CO attending in barrack dress rather than our normal camouflaged kit. For the lads this is a combination of khaki trousers, khaki shirt, khaki tie, green woolly jumper and polished shoes. As he's in barrack dress, so am I and my version is very much like his with trousers substituted for a properly plain, khaki skirt. Regulations accessorise this garment with sheer, natural tights, beetle-crusher shoes and a piss-poor handbag. The other downside is that I can't wear my anklet with a uniform skirt - the RSM would be chuffed to bits if I did! As you may have gathered, I am a soldier who enjoys wearing a skirt and never get tired of the swish and swirl around my legs, but even I don't much like my uniform skirt. While relatively well fitting around the waist and hips, and long enough to just cover my knees, it's a clumsy A-line creation with box pleats front and rear so it won't impede leg movement doing drill. Yes, even in this century the Army insists that we women wear skirts for best rig parades: even when marching with rifles and bayonets. As I'm waiting by the staff car's open passenger door that memorable morning, ready to drive the CO to Colchester from his married quarter, he comes out with his wife, Rebekah - willowey, blonde, effortlessly graceful and drawling. She takes one look at me and says, "Oh, darling! Why oh why in this century has Lizzie got to wear an awful uniform like that? She's a soldier not her Grannie!" I'd already decided that while Mrs D'Arcy was firmly wedded to the CO, she was not married to the army. "Tradition," says the CO, with a quick grin for her and an eyebrow raise for me. Which is very true. Any female veteran of World War Two's army would have been familiar with the lines of my skirt. "If you don't mind me saying so, you carry it off very well, Corporal A," he says when safely in the car. Which I take as a compliment and thank him appropriately. I suppose a few generations ago he'd have been putting his hand up my skirt and I should have had to thank him for that as well. Had he tried that route to professional suicide this morning he'd have found that under her horrible skirt, Corporal A has treated herself to lace-topped hold-ups instead of tights - bright red panties too. To be going about my normal business with the lace tops brushing together every step makes a very pleasant distraction. I might be in between dates, but I know how to add some private sparkle to my grim outfit. On the way back from the conference, the CO directs me off the bypass and into town. Further directions take us onto the industrial estate and then to the premises of a large, agricultural engineering business. Beyond lines of brand-new tractors and all manner of complex farming implements rises a workshop where the CO's lawnmower is under repair. While he goes to negotiate it's return, I extract the packet of crisps I saved from lunch and have a little wander. Machinery fascinates me; had I shown more interest at school I might have been fixing Army equipment instead of breaking it. An especially big, blue tractor catches my eye, mainly because of the especially big bloke examining it. Especially Big Bloke is very easy on the eyes. I think two of me could get close together and shelter behind his back. In my passion-killer shoes he's probably a good 2 feet taller and his hands are impressive. Tumbled, dark hair frames a good face with strong lines and faraway blue eyes while a smile seems to hang ready on the corners of his lips. Without properly thinking through what I'm doing, I walk over, wishing for an eye-catching frock and heels instead of my awful outfit. Silently I offer him crisps, feeling like a child looking up at her dad. Those blue eyes look from mine to my crisps and back again. I'm pleased they don't follow the usual bloke path my chest, which doesn't look its best in a woolly jumper. The slight smile goes up a notch, then he reaches inside and with impressive delicacy for such a big lad, extracts a crisp, nods his thanks and chews it thoughtfully. Before I take another I try my most disarming smile and best, improvised, chat-up line. "You realise that where I come from that means we're engaged." Giant considers this a moment while he crunches my gift. He takes a breath. "Interesting," he says, deliberate and deep, every syllable teased out. "We might have to set up a meeting, or two, to work out the details." I offer another crisp - the power of cheese and onion flavour to change a life. He takes one, we munch together. "Very sensible," I agree. He nods slowly, brushes hair from his forehead. We finish the crisps between us. "Thursday suit you?" he wonders. It's Tuesday. I math the numbers, working around what the CO might be expecting from his driver on Thursday night. I have a date! We shake on it, his hand completely swamps mine, but he's very gentle - like he's conscious of his size and moderating his strength. Wow. "Mark," he says. "Mark Henderson." "Lizzie Aynho." "Lizzie?" he says, experimentally. "Short for Elizabeth I assume?" "Indeed it is." He nods. "Good name. I think somebody's waiting for you." The CO waits patiently by the staff car, maybe an amused air around him as I exchange phone numbers with the big lad and say my adieus. "Hearts and minds, Corporal A?" the CO asks. "I'd consider it a personal favour if you didn't make any plans for Thursday night, boss. None involving me at any rate." He considers this a moment. "I was only in there ten minutes, Corporal A. Have you met him before." "Speed, aggression and surprise, boss." "Good work. How do you fancy the night off on Thursday?" 20. Mark the Giant. Mark the Giant is sweet, careful and considerate, and so beautifully ordinary I feel like the Artful Dodger beside him. He picks me up from the camp's main gate after I have endured criticism from Callie Underwood, the fashion police's representative. She's normally to be found in Regimental HQ, sorting out our pay, but it's her turn on gate guard tonight. "They want tits and legs, Toots. You'll never get a jump like that." In my ongoing voyage into womanhood I have discovered the underrated joy of long swirly skirts. This one's raspberry pink, full and heavy, with an embroidered hem that almost brushes the tops of my wonderfully high, black ankle boots. Between boots and skirt you might snatch a glimpse of black, fishnet tights. The whole look is a bit experimental; still not sure about fishnets or whether a ginger lass can carry off raspberry pink - but it's such a gorgeous colour I couldn't leave it in the shop. My white t-shirt top, under a flowing black cardigan, is conventional enough, but I'll have to make sure I avoid spaghetti bolognese to reduce the risk of undignified stains. My hair falls loose around my face, swirling in company with my lovely skirt in the evening breeze. During the working day everything about my appearance is wrapped up, tied down and practical and to escape in the evenings as a wild creature of grace and colour is a delight. Even standing still I'm surrounded by movement. "If a jump was all I wanted, Callie..." I jerk a thumb back towards the camp and its NAAFI. "I'm after a little conversation." "Christ, you sound so old," she says, but grins. "Kids!" Mark the Giant drives an old Range Rover. He looks nervous to be so close to the barracks. I feel nervous at the notion of my skirt against the vehicle's upholstery, which I imagine to be woven with dog hairs, straw and mud. Instead I'm pleased to discover that beyond the exterior rust and dents, the cabin is worn, but clean. I breath in a vague air of pine trees and petrol. "Wasn't sure you'd be there," he says, driving away smoothly. "Why wouldn't I have been?" He makes a gesture between us. "A meeting of worlds, Elizabeth." I love the way his calm, precise diction makes a poem of my name. "Never dated a soldier?" "Have you ever been out with a farmer?" I almost laugh as we drew up at same Italian BMW Bloke had taken me to; surely this won't be a replay of that memorable evening! The car's classier, for a start. And Mark the Giant drives it better; it might have been an ancient truck with sloppy suspension and almost as many rattles as one of our Land Rovers, but he coaxes it along affectionately; like going for a walk with an old friend. "Hungry?" he asks. "Ravenous." He sits for a moment, big hands on the steering wheel, like he was about to say something. Instead, he smiles and lets himself out. By the time I have taken a moment enjoying the wind caressing my legs with my skirt, I realise Mark the Giant hasn't moved from his side of the Range Rover. I turn, wondering why, scoop hair from my eyes and find him watching me. "You are simply lovely," he says. The way he talks! "Thank you." Still not used to stuff like that, but I haven't any sharp retort. You see, the gleam in his eyes as he looks at me makes me go all trembly - like all the good, tough stuff that makes me, me has run away giggling, leaving behind a blushing girl on a big date. If he had tried a load of ?moonlight in hair,? or ?losing myself in your eyes,? or ?heaven is most certainly missing an angel,? bollocks I might have laughed, because from this galoot it would have been rehearsed, unnatural. Instead, he stands there like an oak and tells me I'm simply lovely and that's him telling me what he thinks. Soppy girl. I offer him my arm, but the moment is spoilt by the emergence of a couple, our sort of age, who have emerged to cough smoke at the stars and bicker about something. Her language would make any of my squaddies nod with approval and she doesn't care who hears. She tosses her hair back, with the kind of ease I wish I could master, and turns her back. "Not easy to get a table here at short notice," says Mark, without stepping from the shelter of his Range Rover. His eyes find mine again. "Not really my sort of place." The couple by the door break into a squall of harpy laughter about something. He answers my question before I have chance to speak it. "Trying to impress you." I put my head to one side, turn slightly so the wind will blow hair away from my face. It flattens my skirt onto my legs. "Will you be able to get a table at your kind of place?" "I can always get a table there." I'm most relieved when "his kind of place" turns out to be the Royal Oak at a crossroads a few miles from town. As I step across the car park with Mark, I feel a little like I'm coming home to Liz's; even when the regulars greet him warmly and look at me like I'm a green- skinned Martian. "They'll soon get used to you," he promises, with an eye on the long term perhaps, and passes me a menu. They don't do calzone here, so I go for a steak and ale pie with mash and peas. He must think it's a good shout for he orders the same. Don't ask me what we talked about in any detail, I think we compared notes of whether farming or the Army was shitter. A lot of laughter surrounded our table. He was openly interested in what I do, impressed even - without me filling my half of the conversation by bigging-up or glorifying my job. When, reluctantly, I mention my Iraq tours, in response to a gentle question, I wriggle my reduced complement of fingers and feel his eyes on my cheek, but neither of us look away. "Bad shit?" he asks. "Pretty bad. He reflects for a moment, then touches my hand briefly. "I'd like it if one day you were able to talk to me about it." This one's a keeper! A movie is a our second date. As he'd bought my pie and mash the week before I insist on buying his ticket and he lets me. The film is forgettable; some mish-mash of styles with not-quite-right actors and an off the boil director trying to copy something of last year that was better crafted. However, it will always have a soft spot in my heart for being the movie where I was content to sit beside him and be happy. Our third date is in a tractor in the middle of a field he's ploughing. Finding myself at a loose end one Friday, when the CO unexpectedly flies to Spain for the weekend with Rebekah and their daughters, I drive myself to the farm and introduce myself to his Mum. She's a petite, red-faced whirlwind in tweed and wellingtons who seems to do everything with a Labrador and a tattered, calico moggy at her heels. "Heard a lot about you," she says, in a clipped, very brisk voice once the introductions are done. The guarded way she looks me up and down labels me a most unsuitable girlfriend; though I'm wearing a cosy jumper, respectable floral skirt and sensible tights. My hair remains in the bun I'd made for work this morning before being given the day off. "He's ploughing," she says before I can answer, "in the Bottom Twenty Acre." Like I'd know where that is. "You're a soldier?" she asks, eyebrows raised as though she couldn't believe such a fanciful idea. "Don't I look like one?" My accent sounds wrong in this genteel, Aga dominated farmhouse kitchen. She purses her lips. "I'm being rude. A mother's prerogative, perhaps, with her son's girlfriend. Are you his girlfriend?" "I think he'd be best to answer that one, Mrs Henderson." A nod, a pause for thought in which her eyes fix on me - weighing and measuring me perhaps. Her answer is encouraging. "I'll show you where he's ploughing. Have you any boots?" The wellies in Lipstickmobile's boot swing the encounter in my favour. I'm directed along a sploshy farm track bound by hawthorn hedges. After a copse at the bottom of the track I'd have to run right along the treeline and I should find him. She raises her eyebrows. "Okay?" "Like going on a recce patrol." If Mark is surprised to see me, he hides it behind a big, warming smile. I heave myself up the mountainous vehicle, without flashing my panties, and settle into a little jockey seat to one side of the cab and explain how I'd found him. "That must mean she likes you," he thinks, but I'm not so sure. I can't see how she'd approve of a ginger squaddie from Liverpool, but that detail is totally eclipsed by the simple pleasure of being next to him - even in a rattling tractor ponging of earth and diesel. "Ever driven a tractor before?" he asks and grins when I tell him, yes - I have driven tractors before, to drag helicopters in and out of aircraft hangers. On my third date with Mark he shows me how to plough a field and at the end of that, when my slightly wonky furrows are laid out alongside his very neat ones, I kiss him and he kisses me back. I'm singing all the way back to the barracks. 21. Fireworks. My barrack room reflects me - a comfortable mixture of soldier and woman. Amongst all the camouflaged combat kit to keep me alive and the least uncomfortable in the government's next war zone, is my make-up, flowing clothes and jewellery. After a day wrestling green, Army shit and the incisive semi-insanity of our branch of the military many of the girls spend time comparing notes on make-up and fashion; sometimes we do each other's nails and hair. It's never what you would really call girly, unless you're Box or the RSM, but a pleasant change from work. Or I'll just haul on some leggings, a loose pullover and some flip-flops to shuffle over the NAAFI for pool and a couple of bottles with Box. My choice now - happy days. However, this particular Saturday I prepare as carefully as if I were going out on exercise for a couple of weeks. Tonight I am having dinner at Mark's cottage on the edge of the big farm he runs with his parents. Tonight, after he cooks up something to impress with me, I'm having a sleepover there. To celebrate this occasion I took Friday afternoon off, went into town and treated myself to some grooming. One day my bikini line may well forgive me. I haven't gone for the full depilation, as I like my auburn curls and prefer to look like a woman rather than a girl, or porn star. However, a pretty beautician called Thalia, recommended by Box's girlfriend, has trimmed those curls in length and area leaving me a tidy lady garden. After deciding I do like raspberry pink, I have endured a boring manicure then a ticklish pedicure. It's a pleasant surprise to see the startling colour on my fingertips, sadly they will have to revert to natural by Monday morning or I'll have the RSM on my case again. The spoken arrangement about the sleepover is that I will be stretched out in the spare room, but we both know it won't come to that. The kissing we shared on Tuesday, enjoyed during a long walk after a pint in the Royal Oak, clearly signposts where the planned evening is heading. I'm looking forward to feeling the sun come up through his bedroom window with him snoring next to me. To that end I have been to see Captain Hobart and forsaken periods for oral contraceptives - to be honest, I should have done it months ago, once the excitement of being a real life, menstruating woman had passed. Amongst the uniform and army stuff around my room it seems wonderfully contradictory to be slipping my body into beautiful lace lingerie. Superficially lingerie is to tantalise a man, but it's exciting for me too. I feel warm and sensual to have all my intimate, tingly bits highlighted by translucent black lace. As well as the delicate panties and gorgeous bra, for the first time ever I have a suspender belt to wrap around my waist. I've never worn true stockings and the simple act of extending my legs, one after the other, and pointing my toes to draw the silky, smooth black nylon over them brings a tingle to my skin and smiles to my gleaming lips. It reminds me, contentedly, of my first ever sheer nylons, back in Hazel's room. My big-night outfit is a plain, understated semi-sheer black top, with 3/4 sleeves and a daring neckline, over a plum coloured skater skirt to conceal my suspenders" outline. My hair is brushed to a shine and left down; the Big Lad having expressed a preference for the windswept, Demelza look that drives me crazy, but we aim to please. With a shawl warming my shoulders, I'm off amongst the clip clip clip of new, black, excitingly heeled Mary-Janes, to the Lipstickmobile awaiting another trip to the farm. Mark looks nervous, though it isn't like I haven't been to his cottage before. I know my way around his kitchen, living room, bathroom and loo. I've been shown the master bedroom, sounds grand doesn't it, but the cottage only has two. Tomorrow I intend to wake up in there smelling gloriously of him. I have a vague morning plan where I will rise early, wrap one of his shirts around me - like girlfriends do in romcoms - and brew coffee. This plan is likely doomed to failure, as it's difficult to wake up before a farmer, but let's not let reality spoil a pleasant fantasy. Even in heels I have to stretch to kiss him, though he does me the courtesy of coming down to meet me. I think he has an informal peck in mind, but I'm warm for a proper kiss and it only takes a few heartbeats before he relaxes and I taste his tongue. Holding him so close, pressing my body along him makes me glow - he's so powerful, resilient, gorgeous and mine! After another few heartbeats one of his hands moves confidently, with a warming familiarity, down from my waist to cup my bum. Fingertips circle, occasionally venturing closer to the warmest part down the middle, until they freeze on the slender ribbon connecting my suspender belt to stocking top. "Miss Aynho?" he says appreciatively, after disengaging from my lips. Both hands are now intent on exploring the suspenders" lines through my skirt. "I couldn't find any really thick, itchy, woolly tights," I murmur, kissing his neck in between the words, "so I had to make do." "Your determination is very much appreciated," he says. The level of physical appreciation is clear, we're so close I can feel it pressing most intimately against my tummy. Mark tries to pull away, like I might run screaming for the hills from his erection's touch. Instead I pulled him closer, kissing him deeper and resisting a sudden, flippant, urge to kick one of my feet back into the traditional pose of the woman well kissed. But you know me by now, I hope, and the urge to get to grips with one of these fellas has been pressing for some time. All the heat, electricity, wet, tingling, trembling and everything running up and down my body closes off the rational parts of my brain and I make a little space between us - just enough to admit a slim hand. Sighing with pleasure, I'm loving the hard length of him under my fingers. Admittedly there are his trousers between my skin and his, but when I start working at his zip does he pulls away to fix me with wide eyes, heaving chest and flushed cheeks. Putting my head on one side, conscious that my nipples are most prominent through my top, I continue unfastening his zip. "What's your problem?" I ask innocently. "Dinner! Down, girl!? By now the zip is down and with my best enigmatic smile I edge my fingers inside, touch my finger tips to something very hot and hard. I can't help my smile growing into a grin. "It's got a pulse," I say, delighted. I'm touching a cock! A lovely, hard, man's cock! "Dinner!" he repeats, firmly. My hand is extracted, flies re-fastened, but I'm not done yet. I lift his hand and kiss it softly, then hold it to my breast, leaning into the contact so my nipple pushes hard against him. "This isn't over," I whisper, sighing in turn when he squeezes gently, moves his fingertips ever so slightly against me. "I should hope not." Back in the kitchen he plonks me on a tall stool by his breakfast bar and instructs me to keep out of his way. As a tall, self-reliant girl it's fun to be lifted and plonked by the Big Lad. Of course I have other ways of distracting him from cooking without actually, physically getting in his way. Waiting until he looks, his hands full of some kind of kitchen stuff, I slowly cross my right leg over the left. My skirt's light hem falls away beautifully to bare black shaded knees and an interesting view of my lower thighs. "You won't win," he says haughtily, but I'm not done. Next time he looks, which is after a very short space of time, I'm teasing that hem higher and higher along my thigh, to the dark line of my stocking top. I hold his full attention now, though he shakes his head and grins. Taking a sip of my wine I edge the hem higher and arrange it artfully so he can enjoy the lovely curves where my stocking rises to meet the suspender and then my pale skin above it. "You win," he admits, coming over to kiss me again and to trace the lines of that stocking top with such delicacy shivers run through me. He returns to stirring, or some other cookery stuff - it smells great, some kind of Indian concoction. Considering the elapsed time since lunch, normally I'd be hanging over the cooker with him, demanding to know when it will be ready. Instead I'm watching him; the way he moves! For all his size there's a grace, a control in everything he does and I'm imagining how he'll be moving like that inside me soon. So I sit and watch, sipping my wine with my skirt still shamelessly arranged and I love the way he keeps turning for a peep. Having grown to be properly self-conscious about my hemlines, always tweaking, arranging, checking, I feel liberated, wild even, to be sitting here with so much on view. Just for him. With his back to me I lift a hand to my breast and cup it, the way he has just held me. I'm no stranger to making love with myself, but I need his hands on me now. What would he say or think were he to turn and see me caressing my breasts? He'd be turned on, I know it (from previous life), but when he does turn I let my hand fall to my lap. "You're beautiful," he says. "Are you talking to me or my thigh?" Which feels silky and gorgeous through the stocking, by the way. I love the contrast between the black nylon and my pink nails. He's already disclosed, shyly, that he has a thing about a lady's leg, well turned out in good hosiery and I'm excited to oblige him. "All of you." More stirring, chopping, cooking. A pulse beats between my legs; with them crossed I'm preoccupied with an urge to slide my fingers into my panties to explore and address the hot, swollen arousal in them. Surely I'm going to be leaving a stain on the back of my skirt! At least the stool has a varnished, wipe clean surface! What would he think if he turned and saw me spreading my legs, pulling aside my panties and introducing the neck of this wine bottle into my pussy? My mouth opens with the imagined bliss of cool glass parting me where I am the hottest and his eyes widening in surprise. Could I do that sort of thing for him, for me - for both of us? "What are you smiling at?" he wonders. "This wine is spot on." During the meal, if I hadn't been wearing Mary-Jane shoes with fiddly straps I might have slipped them off and run one of my feet between his legs, pushing his thighs insistently apart with my toes to make him hard again. If he likes nylons and legs maybe he'll have a thing for feet too - lots of men do. Finding out will be fun, I want to know all the things that make him hard and I want to do them for him. His curry is brilliant, definitely a keeper if he can cook like this when I can barely manage to heat through my combat rations, but I don't do it full justice - neither of us do. We eat quickly, breathlessly without much conversation or pause. To be honest, this is how I eat most of the time - basic training does that to you, when you get fifteen minutes for your food and the queue in the cookhouse is ten minutes long. Those pressures aren't driving us here though. "Leave the dishes," he says when I make towards the taps. Coming from behind, his hands grip my waist, encourage me back against him. Scooping my hair aside he kisses my cheek, my neck. God he's hard again, already - it lines up along my bum beautifully and I roll it over him. Arms encircle me, fingers brush the undercurve of my breasts and I moan softly. Above the sink I'm facing is the kitchen window, overlooking the farmyard, barns and the corner of his parent's house. I feel suddenly exposed to be there, in his arms, enjoying the feel of his erection through our clothes. He might out-mass me, but I break from his embrace and lead him by the tie to the sitting room. Though the fire he'd laid had gone out, the room is cosy and sheltered with thick curtains and soft lights. He laughs when I push him back onto the sofa, runs his hands confidently up my legs as I stoop slightly to loosen his tie and pull it free. To have those hands rise along my thighs and under my skirt is wonderful - tonight there are no out of bounds areas, I'm all his. Dropping his tie, I start on his shirt buttons - the first man's shirt I have undone since I was made woman - concentrating and baring his chest button by button, trying to ignore the delight of his hands under my skirt. I part my legs slightly, balanced carelessly on my heels, loving his fingers through my stockings then gasping at his touch on my bare thighs. I almost want to grab his hand and hold it to my pussy, instead I open my legs and drop onto his knee so I am facing him, not caring that my skirt rides up - I want him to see my body. Pushing his shirt open, run my hands over his skin, feel his soft hair, the taught curves of his chest. God, his nipples are hard and look so gorgeous as I tease them with the tips of my nails. Bend to kiss his mouth, letting my hair fall around us, as I feel him tug my top free of my skirt. Lift my arms, still tasting his lips and tongue, the top makes a last caress over my skin before it's gone. I'm burning up, melting between my legs. Reach behind, find my bra clasp and have it undone in a moment. It goes slack around me and I break the kiss, lean back. Mark's eyes fix on mine, I'm heaving air in and out - even Zanna didn't make me feel like this - as I let the bra straps slide down my arms. "You can look now," I murmur and he smiles, picking up my bra from his lap and dropping it to the carpet. His hands rest still on my waist and I watch him watching me. My nipples are stiff, aureoles darkened and crinkled, breasts firm. His hands move higher and I moan, closing my eyes in anticipation to feel him touch my bare breasts, then his thumbs brush my nipples before he lifts and squeezes my breasts, toys with my swollen nipples. He shifts, leans to me as I throw my head back, let hair flow and moan as his kisses cover first one breast then the other. Though I've been working with, living alongside men for ages I only have the erection I grew up with to compare to Mark's. When I get his trousers off, when I first see his cock swollen and twitching with the beat of his heart, when I finally get to stroke it, to wrap my fingers around it I imagine its thicker and longer than my old one. Still in skirt, stockings and heels I straddle his lap again, take his erection in my hands and start stroking hungrily. The capacity for conscious thought is taken from me as Mark finally stops teasing my inner thighs and brushing my pussy through my panties. Pulling them aside gently, he makes his fingertips slick and glistening with my juices, parts my engorged lips and eases a finger into me. I have to hold his shoulder fast in my free hand or I may topple backwards. Best to support myself with Mark's shoulder rather than what I'm enjoying so much in my other hand. Feels weird to have a cock in my hand again, weird but good - natural. And the sensation to be handling somebody else's as his finger moves steadily in and out of me! It's good, wonderful, but as exciting as it is to look down and see that thick finger disappearing slowly inside me, my pussy wants more and after a few minutes I give in. The look on his face when I pull his hand away and lift that lovely, glistening finger to my lips and slowly lick it clean! The glow in his cheeks and sparkle in his eyes as he watches me. I lift myself, move forward slightly and align his wet cock under my lips. A crisis of confidence almost stops me there; all I've known up to now has been fingers, my slender vibrator and that horrible speculum. Will he fit? Commendably interpreting my hesitation for second thoughts, Mark smiles forgivingly. "It's okay," he says. "You don't have to. I love you." Barely a centimetre separates us. Take a deep breath. Lower slowly. A curl of mine brushes him, a little lower and now I can feel his tip against my lips. We're both so wet it parts them easily. Thighs starting to ache a little now. His eyes half closed. I bite my lip. Goodbye virginity. There, that's the place. Gasp as his head enters me. I can move my hand out of the way, look down and see us connected. Wow, feels amazing. Let off the pressure on my thighs, take him a little deeper. Still good, almost frictionless. He's perfectly still, holds my hands, gives me an encouraging grin. Little more. Still wow. He's in me! Look at him slowly disappearing between my lips, in he goes - almost frictionless I'm so slippery and filling with him and then I'm down, resting on his legs. All of him, I've taken every bit and it feels amazing and I'm a little bit proud of myself and so happy! "I love you too." I'm beaming with joy, sitting on my boyfriend's knee with his cock right where I want it - my first time! Later, when I collapse forward onto him, when there isn't enough oxygen in the world to fill my heaving lungs, when the whole Arctic Sea couldn't cool my skin, I nip his shoulder between my teeth and squeeze his wonderful cock with my dripping pussy and whisper, my best temptress voice, "That was amazing, let's do it again." And we do. Like rabbits. 22. My Second Tattoo. When I passed out from Phase 1 training, wholly absorbed into learning Army life and captivated by the exhilaration of joining the Corps, I followed a well trodden path to a tattoo parlour in Andover. The haughty eagle inked into my right deltoid happily survived the mirror magic, without becoming a dove or something. I may be the first tattoo'd woman Mark has kissed. While other lads and lasses I served with went for tattoos more and more I never found anything that caught my imagination the way that eagle did. Besides that, as I became increasingly self-aware the more feminine designs attracting me weren't very Ady, so there were no more tatts until I was properly stepping out with Mark. Stepping out is a phrase his mum uses and I love it - so American mid- west, so archaic, so sweet. I say it a lot. "Shall we step out this weekend, big lad?" I might say over the phone, or to mates at work, "Can't play tomorrow, me and the big lad are stepping out." Anyway, one gorgeous spring afternoon, not too long after that sleepless sleepover, Mark and I step out for a picnic. With his family owning a fair bit of land, finding a spot for a solitary picnic is bounded only by where we can get his Range Rover. With the off-road skills I bring from the Army I can coerce his truck into all kinds of secluded spots. One of our favourites is a grassy bank, almost an island in a stream's loop, where blackthorn and young oak keep us from bother. There I learn the joy of grass under my back, loving the sunshine on my bare skin and clouds ambling by while Mark moves beautifully inside me. To see a beautiful butterfly contentedly sunning itself on your bare nipple after a session of amazing, outdoor lovemaking is getting properly close to nature. Mark still has the picture. On this particular spring afternoon, having just delivered my first ever act of oral love to a man, I'm laid back admiring the clouds and butterflies and savouring the taste as the ache in my jaw subsides. To give a blow job is something I've been curious about for for some time. Having explained to Mark that I'd never made love with a man before - almost instant hard-on for him when I disclosed my lesbian relationships - I think Mark was surprised when I started, but soon settled back and let me get on. The intimacy and sheer eroticism of the act, in my opinion, is wonderful - not to mention the undercurrent of naughtiness that makes me especially wet, but to give one is surprisingly hard work. It takes a bit of effort to make it really special. As all my experience has been on the receiving end I carefully reverse engineered what I've enjoyed so much and replicated it for Mark. To say thank you for the blow job, which I shyly admitted was my first, Mark makes me a daisy chain - told you he was a keeper. Unfortunately the limited supply of daisies won't make a necklace to fit over my head and hair, pinned up in a messy bun. In the spirit of the moment I hitch up my sun dress and gently ease the daisy chain up my right leg transforming it into a very pretty garter. Now I have a daisy chain tattoo'd around my thigh and loved Mark's surprise when he first saw it. I love to feel him softly kiss each of the daisies in turn, then trace his tongue tip along its stalk to the next bloom. I'm shivering just thinking about it. 23. Proposal. We're in his bed. He's naked, I'm only wearing one black stocking on the thigh laid across his body and his wet cock in trapped between us. Sex in bed is special, but I confess I really enjoy improvising and may have a tingly thing about the possibility of being caught in the act. Certainly letting him take me while I was face down on his Mum's dining room table was bold, but it wasn't like she was having her breakfast or anything; she was upstairs in the shower - it was quite safe, I could hear the water running. We have made love in lots of different places - giggling away while making the Range Rover rock was fun, and made the old truck even more special; sex in a tractor (while spraying a field) was a challenge and teasing Mark by enthusiastically sucking his cock while he was trying to explain some shite to the Department of the Environment made me laugh so much it was hard to concentrate properly. (He was on the phone, not actually in a meeting with them.) This time though our sex has been slower, under the covers and breathtakingly intense. Now he's staring at the ceiling while I tease his chest hair and I can almost feel the hard road his thoughts are taking. My squadron's off to Afghanistan in a few months. Between now and then there won't be much time, here with him in this cottage I've come to think of as home, with all our pre-deployment training to complete. It's exciting and frightening at the same time. "You could leave," he says softly, after an age where the softness of his breathing makes me wonder if he's asleep. He strokes my hair after the words, smooth and tender. "I said it, probably needed saying, but I won't ask it, or expect it, Elizabeth." My wonderful man knows me too well. It's a fantastic opportunity for me. The squadron is short-handed again and, after the glowing report I got from my senior command course, I'll be going on operations as an Acting Sergeant - running a landing site team responsible for the refuelling and rearming or our helicopters. But the thought of being away from my Big Lad is a cruel one. "Six months," I whisper. "Will you wait for me?" Seems like a weird one - traditionally it's a man going to war and his woman waiting nervously at home, dreading one of those visits, but these are modern times; modern wars. I'm modern enough that I'm nobody's woman. "I love you. Much much more than six months worth. I could go for years. Promise it won't be that long." So I kiss him. My heart is thump thump thumping, too fast for a woman enjoying a post-orgasm glow. I want to see his eyes when I speak next, but he's fixed on the mysteries of the ceiling and what my war will mean for us. "Mark?" "I love you ever such a lot, Lizzie. Loads. Tons. Acres and acres of love - all for you." "I love you too." How could I not? Laid here in his bed, the most sensitive and intimate parts of my body pressed to him and his warm and sleepy beneath my thigh. But expressing my love is not what I want to say, not directly anyway. "Mark?" "You already asked that," he says, and twists to kiss my nose tip. "I would love to be your wife." Not what I'd planned to say. I'd rehearsed it in the car on the way over and been eloquent, whimsical, decisive - not what came out, but that was what I said and it was enough to still his breath. "Mark?" "I have never dared to imagine that," he murmurs and his arms tighten around me. "I'd be so happy if you would marry me." "I never imagined this would last," he said. "You don't think I'm happy with you?" I feel him shake his head. "Not that you were unhappy, but that you'd... just fly away. That you loved the Army more. That the Army would take you and I'd never see you again." Does he know me! "All that's true. I'm a soldier, a good one. But... This feels right, feels good - better than good. I don't want it to fly away." "Can you be both?" he asks and twists so he's on his back and I'm straddling him, knees by his sides, my hot lady garden laid long his soft cock. "Can you be a soldier and a wife?" A soldier and a wife? What a combination and the thought of it, the way those two words slip together and entwine in my mind take me back to the time when I was a soldier who could only dream of being a woman. Now I'm living that dream in more perfect detail than I could ever have imagined. I rock my pelvis, ever so slightly, so my heating lips move most fondly along the stiffening bit of him. "That's for us to decide," I whisper, stooping so my hair makes a curtain around us and I can kiss his mouth. My nipples circle his and he stiffens some more beneath me, almost inside me. "I love it when you drive my tractor," he says, between kisses. "Is that a euphemism?" One more rock of my hips and I'll have him where I need him. "I love to see you walking my dog, being in my house, to watch you showering, putting up your hair, polishing your boots, just walking along, driving your car, putting on your lipstick..." He draws breath. "I love your accent, the way you lift your eyebrows, your grin. I can't stop thinking about you, dreaming of you, wishing that when you aren't with me that you were." Which may have been the most beautiful thing anybody has ever said to me, the words lift hairs across my skin and contribute to the very intimate effect I'm enjoying. Another few artful wriggles finish with me being wonderfully full and the time for words passes. When speaking is possible a little white later he strokes my tummy and says, yes. His Mum doesn't seem so pleased, but I think she's been imagining somebody less Army, less Scouse for the latest chapter of the family saga. From her narrowed eyes and sceptical set to her lips I read, "Golddigger'. I swear she checks the family silverware and candlesticks every time I visit. As usual, I smile sweetly and give her no ammunition to use against me - I must have been the most perfectly polite, unassuming and helpful Unsuitable Girlfriend Mark has ever brought home. Hopefully she will warm to me eventually. "Have you set a date?" she asks, looking pointedly at my belly, as though her ultrasound eyes can see the foetus she presumes is lodged there. "I'm going to Afghanistan in three months, Mrs Henderson," I say with a smile - partly to reassure her that I can't be blackmailing her lad into marriage and to give her the faint hope that I might not be come back. She surprises us both by bursting into tears and running from the room. Mark raises his eyebrows. "She's not very good at showing her emotions," he says starting after her. "But she really does like you." 24. Departure. There seems to be a problem with the RAF transport we're supposed to be flying out on. Some of the lads in my section are starting to get fidgety, over-excited and the Squadron Sergeant Major is looking my way; I may have punch one or two of them. Only joking, we don't use physical violence to discipline soldiers in the modern army, but I could make them do press-ups in the aisle. They're pumped up, war- virgins all of them. Those of us who have sat in jets like this waiting for our trip to overseas and then come back again have had that excitement leached from us. I remember the feeling though, from the first time I went to Iraq, and it's a childlike, heady mix of fear and excitement they've earned through all the sweat and sleepless times during pre-deployment training. The Sergeant Major gets a little smile. He nods. Acting Sergeant Ayno is on his fatherly radar and I'm not messing up this deployment. I really fancy getting my mess gown when I make substansive Sergeant. Politicians fucked up Iraq. Whatever your opinion of the whole debacle, I'm proud of my service and when I sat on a plane waiting to fly out there the first time I decided that giving my life to bring down a proper bastard like Saddam Hussain was worth it. Second time around wasn't so clear cut, as I said. Now, for a different conflict I asked myself the same question - is my life worth the war? I'm a different person now - I'm happier, I'm a woman, I have a fianc?, I have a career. Is all of that worth the chance of dying in Afghanistan? Yes. You read accounts of earlier wars, when soldiers expressed their lack of passion for killing the enemy, of acts of fellowship and kindness between soldiers from different sides of the battlefield. There will be none of that for me if I am captured in Afghan, for I represent everything they hate about our culture. At the same time I stand for something to my long-repressed sisters over there. I'm not propaganda, not a character from a story or a film - I'm Toots Ayno; soldier, woman, leader; I'm independent, uncovered, unbowed; neither owned or controlled. Every moment I've lived since looking in that mirror I have been free to be me and if my life, my efforts, help those Afghan women towards being the women they want to be then it's worth it. Six months in the desert. Six months without a skirt or stockings, high heels or make up. Easy. I did twenty-odd years without them. Six months without Mark - awful. I couldn't turn around and look at him as he dropped me at the barracks gate only yesterday. Couldn't even wave. I could only walk stiff and square away from him, for if I'd only glimpsed him I'd have broken down. Imagine this scene though; picture me and Mark when we first set eyes on each other in six months time. See the joy on our faces, the adrenaline rush as we run into each other's arms, when he lifts and swings me round and around. That's worth fighting for.