Bring On the Dusk (14 page)

Not in Claudia.

In her it had moved over to powerful. She was perhaps the most powerful woman he'd ever met, maybe even more so than Major Emily Beale, which was a comparison well worth making.

The name “Claudia” didn't quite fit her. At least not in his head, where he had to admit she was becoming immovably stuck. Trisha's “CC” was even worse. “Casperson” didn't do it for him. She wasn't the sort of woman who invited a nickname.

Neither had he. He'd always been Michael. To his parents. To the older kids in school. To his teammates. As a result, nicknames always felt a little phony to him.

Billy, Archie, Trisha…even Kee was a nickname. He'd once overheard Kee whispering to Dilya and learned both of their full names that were never spoken to anyone else. It had the feeling of a deep and significant exchange, and he'd been careful to not appear privy to it. Maybe nicknames did serve a purpose at times, but this one felt off.

The magnificent woman standing beside him deserved more than a nickname. But you didn't want to dress it up either. “CC” was too little but “Claudia Jean” was too much and yet only half enough.

“Claudia.” Simple and completely her. He liked that.

“Yes?”

“Claudia Jean Casperson.”

She didn't respond this time.

“Your name fits you, either way. Simplicity in one, completeness in the other. I like the way it feels like you when I say either one.”

The small black dot had resolved itself into a speeding hovercraft as it approached the ship's lights. The well deck acted like a giant audio collecting horn, gathering every sound that occurred directly behind the ship. It filled the space with the roar of the heavy turbines and big fans of the LCAC even as it slowed for its final approach.

“It sounds wonderful.” Her voice gauged perfectly to be just barely louder than the ambient noise.

“What are you doing to me, Claudia Jean Casperson?” He'd never had a woman so occupy his thoughts. Not even when they were lying with him and he was—

Ordering his brain to shut up didn't help much.

“Hopefully, I'm confusing you as much as you're confusing me. I came here to fly. Not to—”

At least she had the decency to not finish that alliterative sentence. Besides, he'd bet that he couldn't just have sex with Claudia. He suspected that even now, it would have meaning.

Who was he kidding? If? Yeah, right. The thing he wanted most in the world right now was to take Claudia into his arms and see just what they could discover about each other. To sate both of them until they were too exhausted to even breathe.

That was about the stupidest and, he sighed to himself, truest statement on the planet.

* * *

Claudia was glad for the distraction of the incoming hovercraft. It gave her a moment to attempt to get some control over her runaway heart rate. She had just flashed on the image of making love with Michael. Not that she hadn't thought about it. But now, with the dark, forest taste of him on her tongue and the feel of his heart pounding beneath her palm under that splendid muscled chest—now it was much more real.

Making love to Colonel Michael Gibson was no longer a pleasant daydream to pass the time between duties. It had become a need that coursed through her body, making it difficult not to grab him right now—and to hell with the petty officer.

The big hovercraft blotted out the stern entryway. The
Peleliu
was the only ship of the Tarawa class modified to fit the monstrous craft.

They pulled on the hearing muffs that the petty officer offered. The LCAC's turbines were still at high roar to keep the hundred-ton craft floating on its cushion of air. It nudged its way in, like a warhorse threading through the back alley of a medieval village.

The LCAC sidled up to the dry metal beach at their feet and shut down her engines. From cry to roar to whine and finally silence. With a great gasp and sigh, the forward air bag deflated, then the front of the hovercraft opened and lowered its own ramp down onto the sloping ramp of the
Peleliu
beach.

She and Michael moved to the side as the Rangers came off the craft. Once the Rangers were clear, Sly Stowell came up with the other four men of his crew.

He saluted the duty officer as she raised the well-deck rear door to block out the sea, then he came over to greet them. He was almost as big as Bill, towering over both of them.

“Hey, Sly,” Claudia greeted him. “Where are your pirates?”

“Didn't need 'em,” he rumbled in his deep voice, “so we chucked 'em overboard.”

Michael's face showed absolute shock until Sly burst out laughing.

“Damn, Michael, you are such a perfect straight man.” He slapped Michael on the arm in a jovial way. “The Danes took 'em. Shipping them to the Hague for trial as pirates on the high seas. Just a bunch of scared kids really. The main honcho was in the bridge when Claudia took it out.”

“Actually, that was Trisha.”

“Either way, it was still a good piece of work taking down the
Hong
. She's been making all sorts of trouble as far out as the Maldives.” Then Sly sobered for a moment and looked right at her.

“Michael may be the perfect straight man, but he's also the best man I know, Claudia. No matter what he says otherwise.”

She opened her mouth to protest against any impropriety, but he cut her off.

“Even if you weren't standing there holding hands, it would still be just as obvious.” Then he was gone.

They turned to look at each other carefully and then looked down in unison. It had felt so natural, she hadn't even noticed it. He squeezed her fingers briefly and let go.

She knew that Sly was immensely respected aboard ship. He was gregarious but never one to give compliments lightly. He was one of the old Navy dogs, and his approval carried weight with everyone right up to Lieutenant Commander Boyd Ramis. Sly was a sea dog who hadn't gone to seed but had rather become a core of the crew, so deeply embedded that he was a part of the
Peleliu
herself.

Claudia looked right and left. Service crews were descending to refuel and rearm the LCAC.

The
best
man
Sly
knew.
Well, she was ready to find out a whole lot more about that man.

“I need to get you somewhere, Michael. Somewhere alone that we won't be disturbed.”

He waited to see if she had more to say, but she didn't. She had lots of need but no words.

Michael nodded once and turned to lead the way.

Thank God.

A man of action.

“Do you have a problem with heights?”

Claudia looked at Michael like he was nuts, but he wasn't joking. “I fly helicopters for a living. I'm Airborne jump-qualified.”

“That doesn't mean—”

“I don't have a problem with heights. What does that have to do with…?”

Michael tipped his head back and looked aloft.

Claudia had understood when they'd passed by his quarters and he'd ducked in for a moment. Decent of him to deal with protection without making any issue of it or assuming the woman would deal with it. But when he'd led her onto the flight deck of the
Peleliu
, she'd been less sure.

The deck was quiet, with no flight operations in these last few hours of darkness, but there would still be officers in navigation, communications, and the two antiaircraft control towers perched high in the
Peleliu
's superstructure. Besides, even if no one was watching, there wasn't enough room in her helicopter to try making love, no matter how flexible they were. A sports car had more generous spaces.

But Michael wasn't looking at any helicopter, nor anywhere in the communications or control platforms that were the first two stories of the superstructure towering above the ship's deck. He was looking up into the starry night's darkness, high aloft at…

“You're joking.”

He returned his attention to her and brushed his fingertips down from her ear, along her neck and then the line of her collarbone. Exactly as that brush had done the first time, it sent a pulse of energy surging through her so strongly that she couldn't speak.

She looked aloft once more and had to admit it was something no man had ever asked before. Actually, not many had dared even make a lewd suggestion to the Ice Queen. It was one of the main reasons she'd promoted the moniker after she was tagged with it the first time; it kept the usual, expected approaches cordoned off.

Well, Michael was never what she expected. He acted as if the Ice Queen didn't even exist.

He led her to the ocean side of the six-story superstructure, and they climbed the stairs past the first two levels. The gentle sway of the ship on the now-quiet sea could be felt here, but she'd spent too many years aboard ships to be bothered by such mild seas. She'd never climbed the ladder to the upper levels, but she knew the way.

Michael didn't stop at the roof of the navigation bridge or the searchlight platform as she'd expected. She'd been unsure of those because of the possible arrival of personnel.

No. He continued right up to the top of the uptake enclosure. The uptake engine stacks and the thin radio main mast were the only things that continued above the small space. The enclosure itself was a maintenance platform that offered a narrow walkway and a handrail around the ship's towering exhaust stacks. On the forward side of the stacks, only the forward radar platform was higher. To the rear of the ship, the space opened up to an area about five feet square. Astern—the view was magnificent, and very private.

She and Michael leaned on the handrail together as she drank in the view. All ship's lights were below them. The moon had set, and only the stars and the two masthead blinkers were higher than their present aerie. The height and isolation were so liberating. They made her want to shout out, “I'm an eagle!” But she didn't.

“We're fifty feet above the flight deck and a hundred and twenty above the water. That's why I asked about heights. Some people can't take the swaying motion even though they—”

She turned into his arms and kissed him to shut him up. The simple kiss grew and expanded to a level she'd never before experienced. Kissing Michael was better than sex with most men. It kept building. Okay, kissing Michael was better than sex with any man. And he hadn't even moved his hands from stroking her back yet. He just held her as if she were somehow precious and important.

When she couldn't take it anymore, she shifted to lay her cheek against his. She liked that they were nearly the same height so that she could whisper into his ear, “It's magnificent, Michael.”

“It's not the redwoods, but I like it.”

“Then you'll have to show me the trees someday.”

His cloak of stillness, as she'd come to think of it, settled over him. He simply stopped moving, stopped vibrating the air with his energy. It almost felt as if he were going invisible in her arms. She pulled back, not out of his arms in case he could somehow dematerialize, but far enough that she could have seen his face if there had been more than the pale starlight.

“I'm sorry,” she apologized. “That was too forward of me. This whole thing is too forward. I just got caught up in the moment and how good you feel and smell, and now I'm babbling which I never do except to myself and—”

“I'd love to show them to you.” His voice stopped her run-on panic that had built out of nowhere.

“And you show them to…” She had to ask.

“No one.”

Her breath caught in her chest, trapped there trying to choke her. She wasn't ready for this. She wasn't prepared for this to mean something. Yet Michael had obviously just opened the vault closest to his heart.

And he'd opened it for her.

They were already way past this not meaning anything. Had been since—

“I'm thinking too much, Michael. Make me stop.”

“Is that an order, ma'am?” She could hear the soft laugh that lurked so enticingly in his voice but had yet to escape.

“I think it is more me begging you.”

“I thought that was my role. You know, as the scruffy dog named Bailey.”

“Oh God. I'll never live that one down, will I?”

In answer he kissed her again and her mind shut off as her body roared to life. His hands, those rough, callus-worn hands, brushed her skin so gently that she would beg for more if she could speak. She wanted so much. Wanted to, even if just for this one moment, shed the Ice Queen and lose herself.

Michael made that easy. He turned her until she lay back against the warm steel of the uptake stack and all she could see were the stars. She braced her feet wide and let the swaying of the ship take her.

He took full advantage of his position, slowly discovering her reactions to him, which rose from deep inside with an intensity that would have alarmed and surprised her in any more normal setting. But here, so high in the night sky, they weren't their own mundane selves. They were somehow more. Somehow other.

Here she could let herself go. It wasn't something she had much experience with. Even on the rare occasions when the Ice Queen took a lover, she kept a piece of herself closed off, tucked away.

Here, standing so close to the sky, that seemed unimportant, perhaps even impossible.

Dragging off his T-shirt, she discovered that his chest was everything she'd thought it would be since she'd first glimpsed it from the helicopter. As she ran her hands over him, she discovered both the strength and the weaknesses. For though he was magnificently muscled, he also wore several battle scars. The round scars of bullet holes, the long thin slices left by the surgeon's knife, and the inexplicable feeling of safety those gave her. If this man could survive so much, maybe he could somehow protect her as well.

She wasn't sure what she needed protection from, but it didn't change the feeling. Not as he unclothed her with those strong-gentle hands. Not as she lay back naked against the warm steel and reveled in the depth of his investigation of her.

When she could stand it no longer, couldn't tolerate the separateness another moment, Michael somehow knew. At that perfect moment, he sheathed himself and she welcomed him in. Her own soft groan against the base of his neck was the first sound she'd made.

* * *

Claudia's moan of passion echoed deep inside Michael's own chest. His traitorous body had known, had waited his whole life for this ecstatic moment of coupling. Their bodies fit together in perfect alignment like a new barrel on his HK rifle, a combination that could never be broken asunder. One hand cradled and supported her as she wrapped her legs about his hips; the other he kept buried in hair even softer than he'd imagined.

Her body thrummed and pulsed against his. Her hands, those hands that had traced over, found, and accepted each of his many injuries and scars, were now buried in his hair. Women were repulsed by his scars or wanted to know the story behind each one or… Claudia was the first who had simply accepted them as part of him.

Her mouth delivered each fresh moan into his core where their lips shared their emotions.

He was fooling himself. He had to be. Somehow. No woman felt this good. No one had ever responded to him this way.

And he had never responded this way to any woman.

Continuing to stroke deep into her, he found places that he had never felt before. The sensations ripped at him like a storm when you're high in a tree—part of you praying you'll survive and part of you flying high on the unbelievable experience.

Claudia's unquestioning welcome and trust were something he'd rarely experienced outside an action team. And even then he'd never told about the redwoods. That past he'd always kept as a closed door to protect something so precious. And Claudia Jean Casperson had walked through it as if the lock wasn't there and shown her glorious light upon him like sunbeams striking through the thick canopy to illuminate the world.

She rose for him, climbing a long peak that left her only able to clutch him and shudder as it roared through her.

He'd always liked to think that he was a good lover. Women seemed to enjoy his attentions.

Claudia's reactions made him feel masterful. Buried deep inside her, he could feel every pulse that echoed the length of her magnificent form, shaking her to the core.

She crested, bloomed, exploded.

And didn't stop.

She wrapped her legs more tightly about him to draw him even deeper within her. No one had ever opened to him so selflessly, so completely.

It wasn't ownership. It wasn't possession. It was a welcome like coming home, though not to any place he'd ever dreamed of.

Then he took her up again. Drove himself as he never had before to a place he'd never been. Her second flashover took them together until the only thing he could do was hold on to her or he'd be lost himself. She was his safety line, the only thing guiding him back from where he'd just been.

How long he held her there, buried deep within her…how long she simply clung to him seemed to last forever.

And he was the happiest he had ever been.

* * *

They clambered down before first light, before the Milky Way had begun to fade from the night sky. When they reached the main flight deck, Claudia had to sit. There wasn't a chance her knees were solid enough for something as mundane as walking. Not after flying so high among the stars that now swept horizon to horizon.

At the handrail, she slipped her legs through the lowest opening to dangle them over the water still many stories below. Michael could probably recite the feet and inches from memory. She leaned on the safety lines of the handrail and watched the sky as it shifted from star-spangled black to the deepest blue.

Michael settled beside her. They hadn't spoken a word. Not the first time, not the second, nor the third. She would be sore, they both would, but she'd never had such an experience—never mind three of them.

“You are a magnificent lover.” Even as a whisper, she felt she was shouting loudly enough for the whole world to hear.

As voluble as ever, Michael simply brushed a hand down her back along her spine, a simple gesture that left her breathless and told her she'd been answered in kind. There had been no questioning his response to her; she'd woken something in him that was deep and feral. Where their first lovemaking had been exploratory, the second had been almost savage with its shared need, and the third so gentle she'd almost wept with the sheer joy of it. And he hadn't spoken a single word since her fingers had first brushed over his chest, and his over hers.

She'd struck a speechless man speechless. She smiled at her own joke.

“What?” he asked just to prove her wrong.

“For a man who uses so few words, you are one of the most expressive individuals I've ever known.”

“For a—”

“Careful there.” She could feel him about to dig himself a hole. She should have just let him. It would've been fun watching him try to climb out of it.

He harrumphed, then continued anyway. “For a woman I've known barely a week, you are mesmerizing.”

Next time she'd keep her mouth shut and just let him speak. The horizon shifted to pale blue, then pink as the arch of the sky shifted from black to blue. The last stars winked out only moments before the sun crested the horizon.

After checking that the coast was clear and no orderly or petty officer had snuck up on them, she leaned over enough to kiss him on the cheek.

“Thank you for sharing the sky with me.”

* * *

Michael looked back at Claudia as the rising sun changed her hair from blond to gold. He'd been trying to make sense of her and was even more adrift than when he'd been merely confused by her.

She had driven him to a place he'd never thought to approach, hadn't known it even existed. He had never let himself go and simply taken a woman. She'd enticed and teased him with her body and her hands and her throaty moans until he had lost all control and simply taken.

She'd fallen back upon their piled clothes, and he'd gone at her with his mouth, his hands, and after suckling her breasts like a man dying of thirst led to an endless fountain, he'd driven her down into the deck until he'd exploded inside her. She'd dug strong fingers into hard shoulder muscles and clamped her mouth on his as she came again and again until he could taste the changes in her with each release.