I Own the Dawn: The Night Stalkers (15 page)

Dilya had stayed close all afternoon, knowing Kee had been upset. It helped. The little munchkin had cheered her up, given her back some of the feeling she’d had about this day. Archie had stayed close as well, making it clear he cared more about her now than who she’d been then. A limit she’d not be testing any further.

Then Betty and Steve had insisted they climb the cliffs up to the Castello Sonnino for wine tasting, a tour of the castle, and dinner in the sunlit evening.

Dilya had been thrilled at the outing, insisting that she and Kee wear their complementary head scarves. Kee felt very flirty in the flowered sundress that Dilya had picked out for her to wear, a splash of tiny blossoms on a field of blue almost as dark as her scarf and a bright belt. The cut of Kee’s dress was low above and high below, it would have been risqué if it hadn’t been so cute. She didn’t quite anticipate the fashion challenge of climbing into the skiff from the deck of the boat, but she managed and they were all soon headed to the castle.

At the chance to compare the tower to her sand creation long since washed away by the sea, Dilya scampered about the battlements and up the tower at an unimaginable pace. Kee finally let her run loose.

Betty slipped a hand through Kee’s arm as they wandered about the gardens overflowing with color. Narrow paths of crushed stone wound through the plantings with no particular direction in mind. Kee knew roses, which she saw, and daisies, which she didn’t, but for the most part they were a mystery. June flowers rather than September flowers.

The men soon landed on a shaded bench and fell to talking sailboats. She could hear Archie’s interest as his father started describing changes he’d made to a chine that apparently had hardness and a waist that had narrowness rather than slenderness. Their voices faded as she and Betty moved off to inspect budding roses of dark yellow-orange and something shockingly blue alongside.

“Is everything okay?”

“Why shouldn’t it be?” Kee looked over, but Betty kept her attention on the flowers.

Kee bit her lip and ordered herself to stop being a bitch.

“Yes. It’s fine. A beautiful day.”

“You looked… upset. When we returned from our walk.”

Wonderful. Well, there was no way she would be telling that story again, once in a lifetime had proved enough.

“Just some old memories. Hard to shed those sometimes.”

Betty nodded and they headed once again along the winding path. Dilya shot through the gardens, headed for a stone stairway leading up the face of the far wall. The long silences that punctuated their conversation didn’t feel awkward, rather they made comfortable moments to wrap around your thoughts.

“I know what you mean,” Betty offered, “though not exactly what you mean, of course.”

Kee now knew where Archie had learned his quiet and reserve. His patience with the chaos that had punctuated her first weeks on the crew. Now if only she could make any sense of what he saw in her. Clearly attracted, but he kept staring into her eyes and not at her body. Yet another new experience she couldn’t unravel.

“Not because of Archie?” Betty asked.

“No. Your son is…” A wonderful young man? A red-hot-lipped man? She didn’t know yet if he might be a latent sexual genius. What could she say to his mother?

“A good man.” It was the best she could offer, but true. Archibald Stevenson III, a very good man. Raised to the same gentleness that his mother exhibited. An odd mix for a warrior. One of the best chopper pilots and tacticians on the planet, flying left seat on one of SOAR’s DAP Hawks made that a given for sure, but he wasn’t ego-ridden.

“You raised your son well.”

“His father did.”

“No.” Kee stopped and Betty, taking one more step, was forced by their still linked arms to turn and face her. “No, he is his mother’s son in so many ways.”

As if she had conjured him with her words, Archie and his father came striding up the path. They moved at an easy mosey, but they were two very handsome and very purposeful men.

Betty squeezed Kee’s arm and met her gaze for a moment before taking her husband’s offered arm. Clearly they shared the same thought. And maybe they were becoming friends.

Kee slid her hand around Archie’s elbow and appreciated the solid feel of muscle, the solid feel that described the man so well.

***

To Kee, wine came in three flavors: white, red, and bubbly. But all three Stevensons kept going on about the Cinque Terre’s fragility, legs, concentration, and a dozen other meaningless phrases. Kee did find the wine very easy to drink with dinner, but never finished the second glass. They were on vacation, but the habits were ingrained. Archie was equally fastidious, sharing a smile with Kee as his parents became more and more jovial somewhere in the second bottle.

The dinner was a wonder of fresh seafood and local garden produce, everything except a few spices came from within ten miles of the castle, they were proudly informed. Finally they reached the fresh fruit and whipped cream served with yet more wine, needing yet more comments about how the Sciacchetrà matched the fruit. She couldn’t tell the two wines apart, they were both just white to her.

Dilya drank half a glass of well-watered wine with dinner, but still it brought a glow to her cheeks and a droop to her eyes.

She rode quietly on Kee’s, then Archie’s back as they worked their way back down the cliffs to the beach and out to the boat. The Stevensons each toted a couple bottles of wine in neat cloth bags bearing the Sonnino crest, crowned golden lion rampant on a blue field. Make a good patch for a fighting unit.

Dilya was asleep before Kee tucked her in, but still she sat with the girl for a few minutes. She could feel the boat quieting as Betty and Steve drifted to their cabin. The Professor waited. Kee could feel it. Not impatient, but knowing she would come. The girl didn’t even squirm as Kee tucked in the blanket and slipped out.

She hesitated, standing near where the main mast punched down through the cabin ceiling and landed on the cabin floor. She laid her hand on the aluminum shaft, almost as big around as her own waist. Strength. A solid foundation to hold aloft the sixty-foot pole above deck.

Kee shook off the image. This was just sex. With a commanding officer. An action she’d never take, but they were on vacation, the first one of her life. That had to count for something, even if it wasn’t supposed to.

And this was just sex.

***

Archie watched her enter the room. He’d debated a dozen times about lying on top of the covers or beneath, clothed or partially or not, light on or not, would she even come to him or not.

Naked beneath the covers, he couldn’t catch his breath as the dark silhouette stood framed in the cabin door for a long moment before entering. She slipped out of the sundress that had shown her like a fresh rose all through dinner. Without hesitation, she stripped until only the Night Stalker scarf was wrapped over her shoulders. The tails hanging down between her bare breasts.

In moments she wrapped herself around him and his brain blanked.

Her skin was everywhere, in his hands, his mouth, frozen in time on the tip of his tongue until she moaned with a timeless sound from the depths of her soul.

Her mouth ravaged wherever it went. His mouth, his own breast, a pulling and tugging sensation he’d never imagined. Was that what a woman felt?

Down to nibble on the soft skin of his inner thigh as she wrapped a gentle hand around him.

He tried to speak. Tried to give voice to the wonder. But then she’d renew her attack and all he managed to emit was a low groan ripped from his gut.

He finally found enough purchase and sanity to flip her onto her back. The covers were long gone, they were dressed only in moonlight. Her breasts rose magnificent, proud, dusky. He attacked. She kept pulling him in tighter. Past where he’d ever gone. Past any reasonable point of pain. She drove her chest up to his mouth with the same fierce energy she did everything.

When neither of them could stand it a moment longer, she rolled him onto his back. He reached for a condom, which she took from his fumbling fingers. She rolled it over him agonizingly slowly, almost driving him over the edge.

Then she sat up and bumped her head on the low ceiling, the bottom-side of the deck. She placed her hands palm up on the padded surface and shoved herself down on him with such a sudden force he could feel the mattress bowing beneath him. Enveloping him. Transporting him.

He cupped her magnificent breasts, and she leaned into him so that he supported her weight on his greedy palms. They rode each other, slowly, hard and fast, held, frozen to stillness on the edge of release, slowly, so slowly again until in near madness he drove up, she drove down, and they exploded with the heat of rocket fire scorching through his body and his brain.

Hands jammed to the ceiling, she kept him pinned in place as their bodies shuddered. Paused. Shuddered again. Wracking them both as they gasped for breath.

When the sparks faded from his eyes, he looked up to see Kee’s eyes were still closed. He ran his hands from breasts to hips, then back up to her shoulders, and pulled her forward.

Reluctantly she released her clenched arms from where they jammed against the ceiling. She went to roll aside, but he pulled her straight down until she lay upon his chest. Ran his hand over her hair until her head was tucked beneath his chin. Held his heart to hers as he felt her breathing slow.

He tried to speak, tried to find some way to describe something he had never experienced, imagined, or even dreamed existed.

Sensing his intent, Kee slid a hand over his lips to silence them. So, he kissed her fingers rather than give voice to a miracle for which he’d never find the words.

She pulled her hand back as he stroked her hair.

He cradled her as her breathing slowed. Slowed and steadied into a sweet rhythm like a sixteenth-century Marenzio madrigal.

His mother had been wrong, he did far more than care about her.

He held her close as his own breathing aligned with hers and he slept.

***

Kee lay in Archie’s arms, her eyes wide open, staring at the night.

She couldn’t move her body if the entire Taliban pounded on the cabin door. Numb. Sated in a way she’d never experienced. Relaxed beyond reason. Beyond possibility. Beyond everything except, regrettably, rational thought.

The Professor had offered heat for her heat. And passion for her passion. But he’d offered so much more.

She’d tried to push him into causing pain. Pain that would chase away the feelings building from that dark place she never went to. Tried to make him do things that would make her feel he was just using her. That’s where she felt safe, in the ravaging of the beast she always unleashed from men’s bodies. Familiar territory.

But he didn’t. At first, he’d offered gentle. And when she’d refused, demanding more, he hadn’t driven her to pain. He’d ridden her right off the peak of the purest, cleanest pleasure that had ever run through her body. More powerful than a rifle shot, he’d blown right past her inner walls and spread light everywhere he went.

Spread light into corners she’d locked away and never intended to see again. Spread hope that had failed too many times for her to trust.

Nothing but herself. She’d never again trust anyone but herself. Her own skills. Her own abilities. Between one minute and the next, one second and the next, it could all be blown away. If she were dead, she’d be done and wouldn’t care. But while she lived, no one could be allowed that close, for at any instant they too could be swept aside like Anna.

Archie, no, the Professor. More distant. More formal. Safer. Lieutenant Stevenson… too far. That didn’t feel right after the joy they had just shared. The Professor lay still and warm beneath her. His breathing settled. His hands lax, one resting across her back, the other twined in her hair. She reached up to move the hand from her head and discovered Dilya’s braid had survived and now wound between his fingers even as he slept.

He probably lay beneath her, dreaming of how safe he’d made her feel.

She slipped her hand between her cheek and his chest.

He couldn’t be more wrong.

A hand to catch the tears so they wouldn’t fall on his breast and wake him.

So that no one would know about the pain.

So that no one would know about the fear.

The fear of having something so precious to lose.

She woke tangled in the sheets. Archie must have found them sometime in the night. He’d proved happily insatiable and thankfully quiet. Her body felt worn and lose. When he’d woken, she’d focused on the sex, a safe choice. Focused on the sensation, having rebuilt her walls back in place.

Archie claimed only modest experience, but he found several unique and highly entertaining ways to drive her over the top and down into the shuddering rotor wash behind. She’d done her best to return the favor, including raiding the pantry for a monstrous slice of apple tart. She’d ended up with some in her hair and more down her front when she’d attacked him mid-forkful, but having him lave her clean with his tongue had been worth it.

Now the light streamed into the cabin.

It took only moments to discover she was alone on the boat, everyone else gone ashore. She spotted Dilya once again sand-castling, Archie crouched close by, digging out a moat. The elder Stevensons in side-by-side chairs, reading.

Kee took a quick shower and grabbed some breakfast. For lack of a better solution, she tossed sneakers, a towel, sunglasses, and her pager in a waterproof bag along with a bottle of water. She pulled on light shorts and a sports bra. At the last moment, she tossed in Archie’s favorite white dress shirt, then jumped over the side to swim ashore. SOAR fliers were never on leave without their pagers, hard to believe she’d forgotten yesterday, but Archie had his so they’d been covered. Still, it felt better having her own.

She tried doing the sexy goddess rising from the ocean waves thing, but Archie was so intent on his moat that he missed the whole thing. His father didn’t, offering a sheepish smile when his wife elbowed him.

Archie’s morning kiss tasted of sea salt. “Sorry, I meant to watch for you so I could row out, but I, um,” he looked down at the fortified moat he’d constructed, “found myself somewhat sidetracked.”

She patted his cheek to let him know it was okay.

Dilya barely looked up from her detailed reproduction of the castle grounds done in shells and tiny stones. The girl’s visual memory was astonishing. Kee squatted to admire winding paths of packed wet sand. Stones for bushes, shells for hedges, Kee could trace where she and Betty had strolled the gardens.

Along the back wall of the castle a little line of shells created a hidden corner. A corner that, once discovered, she and Archie had taken advantage of. She’d expected a quick kiss and some heavy petting as the perfect appetizer to fire up her appetite. Instead, Archie had opted to slip off her sandals and give her, of all things, a foot massage. She shivered at the mere memory.

Even as she watched, Dilya built a little bench behind the hedgerows with a tiny scrap of driftwood. Then on it she placed two bits of twig, very suggestive of two humans in each other’s arms.

She glanced quickly at the girl, who didn’t look up. But Kee could swear the little twerp was smiling. She knew that any attempt to change Dilya’s masterpiece would not be well received
. Just walk away, Smith
. That was the best advice.

She pulled on sneakers and shades. Tossed her pager and the water bottle in a small fanny pack. Then she kept an eye on Archie as she slowly extracted his dress shirt and pulled it on. That snagged his attention but good. A small wave attacked his moat wall and almost knocked him right over onto the sand castle.

With the sleeves rolled up to her elbows, the shirt hung loose down to mid-thigh. She left the front unbuttoned so that it hid and revealed her running togs with each step she took. Out of the corner of her eye she caught Betty’s smile. Archie had gone past his zombie state and over to the greedy sex-demon she’d met last night. Clearly she’d been right about the look knocking his socks off. Even when he wasn’t wearing any.

“Want some company?” He kept his voice surprisingly even for a man having trouble with the arrangement of his shorts as his body reacted.

“Sure. Dilya. Dilya!” She had to call twice to get the girl’s attention. Kee pointed at the two of them and made running motions, then pointed at Dilya and the elderly Stevensons. Steve had some fat paperback with a sailing ship and a cannon on the front, Betty with her e-reader.

“Dilya stay close Calledbetty.” Nothing had broken the girl of her belief that was Betty Stevenson’s proper name. “Dilya know. No swim if no Kee.” Then she turned back to her shell gardens. Kee, summarily dismissed, stumbled back for a moment, unsure what to do.

Calledbetty insisted she was fine watching the girl.

Kee shook her head at how attached she’d become, and they were off.
Have
to
watch
that
more
carefully, too
. Between Dilyana and the Professor, she was fighting on two fronts now. Though she appeared to have acquired an ally in Calledbetty. Last night, Betty’s tongue loosened by a fair amount of wine, a very pleasant and immensely intelligent woman had once again emerged, one with fascinating insights into almost every topic that came up.

Kee and Archie trotted slowly up the cliff, still warming up. Kee led them around the back of the castle rather than up the main road. The narrow coastal road hugged the cliffs and was filled with suicidal Italian drivers. Behind the Castello, a narrow road she’d scoped out yesterday wound up into the hills. They climbed several hundred meters in the first mile. Surprised farmers and goat herders, not used to a runner in nothing but gym shorts, a sports bra, and shades, Archie’s shirt streaming out behind her, waved belatedly at them as she and Archie charged up the empty one-lane.

When the road ran out, they hopped a crumbling stone fence in unison and kept going. A flock of sheep startled and swirled away like so much dust caught below a chopper’s rotor. Two counter-rotating whorls of stampeding sheep as they blasted through the gap in the middle.

Two fields over, they began climbing again and picked up another road. When it split four ways, Kee chose the least used and leaned into it.

“Where are we going?” Archie huffed out.

“Somewhere I can screw your brains out. If you can keep up with me.”

He laughed, “I can fly pretty damn fast,” and made to push ahead.

“Not as fast as I can shoot.” She pulled even.

In moments they were at a full run over the Italian hills. The road twisted and turned through low trees, and the kilometers rolled away beneath their running shoes. When they hit a high pass with a deep valley ahead, she cut abruptly right. Not many men could keep up with her, but Archie was right in step.

“At least when I shoot…” he puffed in between breaths. “I’m shooting big guns.”

“Just like a guy,” Kee did her best to keep her voice steady against the need for air, “to think that size matters.”

Kee planted both hands atop a fence post and swung her legs over the board fence in a side vault. Archie, who’d been taken by surprise at her move, hurdled it clean with his long legs and they were again running even.

Open field running, tall grass slapping against her bare legs.

“I’m always looking forward. Looking forward to those legs wrapped around me.”

“You also need to see what’s around you, cowboy.” Her minigun was for side and aft work. His weaponry lay mostly in line with the helicopter’s nose. The rest of the field of fire was up to her and John. “Got to focus everywhere.”

“Breasts, too. I can do that.”

No question he could. She veered around a boulder. “My most dazzling weapons.”

“No.” He gasped for air. “That’s your eyes.”

Damn the man, he kept knocking the wind out of her.

A steep slope took any remaining wind she might have used to egg him on. Instead, she kicked into a hard sprint. Finally she gained a lead on him.

She beat Archie to the hill’s crest by half a dozen strides. Already had her water bottle out of her fanny pack when he hit the peak. Chalk one up for the girls’ team. Both gasping for breath, they crossed back and forth across the grassy bluff, walking off what had to be at least eight kilometers and over a thousand meters of climbing up the rolling hills.

From the look, they were on the highest point around. The countryside rolled away in all directions. Trees and vineyards, cattle and sheep. Little towns tucked on the cliffs above cultivated terraces. Darker lines of shrubs and trees marking where streams slid through, headed for the sea. And off in the distance, so bright that it was painful to view, so hazy it looked like a dream, hung the Mediterranean.

All shocking in its normalcy. She’d been forward deployed for just three weeks, and already this world felt foreign. Not foreign in that they ran across Italian soil. But foreign in that the only guns within a dozen klicks or more were used strictly for varmint or deer hunting. It felt wrong. Exposed. Which gave her an idea.

“Hey, Night Stalker!”

“What?”

“One thing you need to know about. I mean running in the daylight and all.”

“Yeah?”

She’d managed to maneuver her back-and-forth stride so that she passed close by him.

“Leaves a Night Stalker all exposed.” She grabbed the waistband of his shorts and jerked them down around his knees. Caught in mid-stride, he almost face-planted at the unexpected constraint.

He struggled and weaved and managed to remain upright. His butt hanging out in the wind.

She peeled off his shirt and her sports bra as one and tossed them at his feet. His effort to catch them proved too much and he went to his knees.

“I didn’t.” He gasped and tried to move his feet back together, reach for his shorts, and not fall over the rest of the way all at the same time. “Bring any—”

Kee reached into her fanny pack and waved a string of condoms in the air. A long string.

The Professor, being a wise man, gave up on the shorts.

Hot, sweaty, gasping, they came together like a pair of steam engines. Unstoppable, hungry, devouring.

In moments they were naked but for their sneakers beneath the midday sun, cushioned by the deep grass and pounding away at each other. Last night had been no illusion. Their bodies responded to each other so hard and strong that by the time they were both done, by the time they’d ridden each other right up into the sky, they collapsed spent in each other’s arms.

“Now we have to. Run back.” Archie’s tone was as dry as her throat. Their breathing still ragged from the workout they’d just had in the high grass.

“Frankly, I highly doubt if I can stand.”

Kee laughed. One of the benefits of sex for her, it acted like a supercharger. The girls’ team chalks up another one. Right now she could run twice as far as they’d come already.

They tried lying together, but the view remained hidden by the hill’s grassy crown, and the grass itself, so soft a moment before, now prickled and poked. They finally ended up sitting on their clothes, leaning back to back and looking out at the world in opposite directions, letting the sun and the wind wash their bodies clean.

“What is it about you, Kee Smith?”

“I’m sexually gifted.”

“No, you’re a damned sexual goddess! But that’s not what I mean.”

She had to admit, the sex was beyond anything she’d ever experienced, but she didn’t have to admit it out loud.

“Can you explain it?”

“I don’t have a clue what you’re on about, Professor.”

He harrumphed, a grunt more felt through her back than heard through her ears.

She lay her head back on his shoulder, and he tipped his cheek atop her head. Comfortable. Too comfortable, but she didn’t want to move.

“Mom said she couldn’t picture such a pretty and pleasant girl flying around killing people.”

“Your mom is a civilian. She could never understand why we do what we do.”

“Actually, she was a chief supply officer in Saigon for two years. Air Force. Two bad years right near the end of the war. That’s how I got started in flying, hoping she’d notice me.”

Kee swallowed hard.

“You’re never quite what I expect, Professor. Not you or your family.”

“What do you mean?”

She gave it a moment for the picture to come clear.

“Nah, you’d just get all mad or offended.”

“I’m not much given to such reactions.”

He wasn’t. Another point in the damn man’s favor. She kept liking him more all the time, and if that kept up, he’d make her plenty angry. She had no problem connecting to that particular emotion. Gotten her in trouble often enough, too.

“Go ahead. Lay it on me.”

“Thought I just did.”

He slid a hand back to find one of hers. She went to move it away but ended up with her fingers wound around his instead. She almost raised her head to see how that had happened, but leaning against the Professor proved too comfortable.

“When I picture your family…” She closed her eyes and it appeared exactly as in the movies. “Big house, security hedge hiding an old stone wall, family all at leisure. Laughing over dinner. Getting wound up over whose wife was getting it on with the country club golf pro. At least a cook and housekeeper, if not more.

“You’ve got money. Real money. Old Boston money. But the picture doesn’t hold together in my head. Your dad’s hands show the calluses from building wooden sailboats. And your mom never speaks, but she doesn’t miss a thing. She loves you so much, it almost hurts to watch.”

“You’re kidding.” His head popped upright and turned a bit as if he could turn to face her, though they still leaned back against back.

Kee released his hand and turned to face him. The breeze suddenly cool across her bare shoulder blades.

“How can you not know that? I would kill for what you have, and you don’t even know it’s there. It’s written in everything she does. Did you know that she’s the one who found me and got me back to the boat?”

“Mom? I wondered why you came back, but I was so thankful, I didn’t want to spoil it by asking.” Archie watched her eyes. Not her bare breasts. Nor the rest of her bare body he’d been so happily plundering moments before. He watched her eyes and listened intently. Concentrating. Intent. Now why was that more arousing than the wrestle they’d just had in the tall grass?