I Own the Dawn: The Night Stalkers (16 page)

She slid around to straddle his lap and slowly worked her hips against him. His body hadn’t recovered enough yet, but it was thinking about it. His hands definitely had, digging deep into shoulder muscles.

“She sees you.” She arched back against the pleasure of his fingers. “She may have done a tour in ’Nam and run a big, fancy corporation. But she sees you. That is one very smart woman who loves you more than she knows how to say.”

She nibbled on his shoulder for the taste of it. The Professor was fresh and warm, and the heat of the run and the sex and the sun made him taste very male. Far more than she’d expect from a long, lean rich boy.

“Funny, she said somewhat the same thing about you.”

“What?” Kee could feel herself going all lazy and liquid as she worked her chest slowly back and forth across his magnificent torso.

“She said you wear your heart on your sleeve. That’s a direct quote. And you do. I knew that was true the moment I saw you, but I lacked the proper words. Why can I see it on you and not on my own mother?”

He slowly tipped her onto her back, nuzzling down between her breasts. But rather than attacking them, he laid his ear on her heart.

“That’s a great sound.”

“What?”

“The beating of that heart you wear on your sleeve.”

Kee had no response. Her own heart, the one thing she kept so carefully guarded she sometimes wondered if it still existed. In the dark of the night, she was often left to wonder if it too had died with Anna.

And Archie claimed he could see it like a goddamn shoulder patch.

She’d have to be more careful about that, too.

She didn’t want it. Didn’t want her heart out in the world. She lifted his head and rolled enough that one of her breasts brushed over his lips.

Kee led him until she knew he’d forgotten about her heart and only thought of her body.

If only she could do the same for herself.

Kee’d set off at a good clip, but Archie wasn’t there. She slowed to little better than a jog trot as they worked their way back over the hills and fields toward the ocean.

The Professor wasn’t hurting. Without a pack, this was an easy run for a SOAR pilot, especially for a Black Adder. Major Henderson’s company, Kee was pleased to be discovering, always worked harder, flew longer, and posted seriously high successful completion ratios in a regiment that valued that above all else.

So, if he wasn’t tapped… He had his thinking face on. His body ran along, but he wasn’t paying it much attention.

“Okay, before you joined the Army is an out-of-bounds topic. Understood. So, how did you end up in SOAR?”

“How did you?”

“I asked first.”

“I’m a girl, I can change the subject anytime I want.”

“I’m your superior officer and that’s purest drivel.”

Kee reached for the waistband of his shorts. If there’d been a ditch, he’d have veered into it trying to get away from her.

“Cheater.”

“Cheapskate.”

“Cheapskate?”

“Sure.” Kee kept the pace and let Archie catch back up to her. “I give you gooood sex, Masser Stevenson, and you won’t even let me change the subject in exchange.”

“I don’t keep a score sheet.”

“I do.”

Archie ran in silence.

Kee could feel that silence. Feel it clamp down between them.

“Sorry. Things like that keep coming out shitty around you. I really don’t mean it that way.”

Archie ran a little farther, though it felt as if the pressure had eased off.

“It sounds that way. It really does, Kee. It stings like hell when you do that.”

“Sorry.”

The silence continued. They plodded along in one of the slowest half kilometers she’d probably ever turned. Up to her to break it. She was about to open her mouth when he forgave her enough to do it himself.

“So what do you want to know?” Archie’d even given her the lead. Damn him for being decent.

“Why SOAR?” Kee considered phrasing it nicely, but it just wasn’t in her. She couldn’t resist the dig at the Professor’s perfect manners. Digging at all that wealth. All those options he’d been raised to take for granted.

“Why didn’t you marry Muffy or Pinkie and pop out a couple of perfect Harvard girls? Why fly a DAP Hawk alongside Major Emily Beale?”

“I ended up at West Point. I wanted my mom to notice me, but I didn’t want to follow right in her footsteps either. I was a total loss at the Point. Sure, I had brains enough to nail the classroom. Additionally, building wooden boats is hard work, so I was strong. Getting into Army shape only took time and focus.”

His words came slower as they trotted up a long slope. This time, the sheep that had spun aside barely broke from their grazing to inspect the passersby. Certified inside those furry heads as “not wolf,” they were soon ignored.

“But I never fit in. I tried to be smarter, which was easy, but that only increased the heat from my classmates. I tried being stronger, but my physique doesn’t go that way.” He waved at his long, lean frame. “I’m not built the way you are.”

Kee put on her best streetwalker tone and grabbed her breasts. “Hey, no one’s built the way I am.”

That earned a grin, but not much of one.

“Emily Beale was a year ahead. She was already a legend by the time I came along. Every woman’s athletic record, and several of the men’s, were hers. She outran, out-studied, out-survived everyone. Junior year she finished her senior coursework. Senior year she spent one on one with some of the best instructors the Point could offer. Tactics, strategy, leadership. Everyone knew she was someone special.”

The Professor inspected the sky in a long silence broken only by the rhythm of their feet slapping the road. A lone hawk pinwheeled overhead.

“Actually, those classes were two on one. She picked me out of the crowd in my second month, first year. With her watching over me, I’d have graduated anywhere other than the Point in three years. My junior year I did my junior coursework and joined in her tutoring sessions at the same time. Double duty. After that, senior year was a cakewalk.

“Special Forces, Airborne, Rangers, Fort Rucker flight school. She paved every inch of the way, I followed right behind.”

“But how did she break the barrier at SOAR?” Kee’d never unraveled that one. “The first woman. Special Forces isn’t big on that.”

When they reached the stone wall they’d first vaulted, Archie stopped and sat down on it.

Kee sat a few feet from him and took a hit off her water bottle.

“My mother told you she took over her father’s company.”

“Sure. Blair something.”

“Blair Research. A government think tank. Very small. Very elite. Most of her staff is made up of retired generals, Secretaries of State and Defense, even a former President. When BR speaks, everyone right up to the President listens very carefully. On Emily’s side, her dad is the Director of the FBI.”

“Whoa!” Kee couldn’t think of anything more intelligent to say. She’d stumbled into an enclave of overachievers even more driven than herself. Of course, they’d started with a damn sight more potential than she had.

“Between them they pointed out the loss to SOAR if they didn’t take Emily Beale on board. When she went, she insisted on me as her copilot.”

“Did you two ever—” Kee clamped down on her tongue and felt dirty. “Sorry. I’m so sorry, Archie. I’m just a heartless bitch inside. None of my business.”

She folded her hands over her knees and stared down at them. How could that come out of her mouth? She just called him the Major’s boy toy. She’d as much as stated that he didn’t have the skills on his own, negating his years of experience and training. SOAR wasn’t a free ride for anyone.

“Sorry.” A nightmare. She kept stumbling into a nightmare around Archie.

She’d just crossed way past any line. She rose and turned away without looking up. There’d be no forgiving that. Now she’d need to find a reassignment.

His hand caught her by the upper arm.

She braced for the blow. Eyes closed. Head turned. Just as she’d seen the whores take it when their pimp taught them a lesson.

It didn’t come.

And didn’t come.

She finally opened her eyes and glanced at him sidelong.

He sat and watched her. No anger. No sign of any emotion. He just watched.

“Kee.” He nodded to the wall. “Sit down.”

She did as he ordered.

“Now—you’re going to tell me who hurt you so badly.”

Kee couldn’t find the engine start on her brain.

Archie sat calm as could be and waited on the stone wall. The light breeze left her with a chill despite the warm smell of grass in the summer sun.

“I’d take someone down who said I got on that Hawk because I slept with you. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, getting on that bird. How can you not hate me?”

Archie smiled a little. Not humor, more as if he were considering whether or not he held an emotion inside that he didn’t know about.

“Keeping up with Emily Beale is the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and I’ve been doing it for ten years now. But I did it, Kee. Whether you believe it or not, I know it. I know to the core that I’m the one who did it. Sure, Emily picked me out of the crowd and drove my ass into the ground. But I’m the one who stood out from the crowd, and at West Point that is a seriously high-class crowd.

“And I kept up. Did better at a few things. Not many, but a few. She can outfly anyone, even Henderson. But I can outgun her, especially in high-speed situations. I have a better strategic feel for what the enemy is doing before they do it. She is the master of the tactical situation, how to take out the key pin. I know what to do to keep the enemy from placing that pin in the first place.”

Kee kept her mouth shut.

“So, Kee, what I want to know is why you of all people would say what you just did? You fought just as hard to get where you are, or you wouldn’t be here. Maybe harder, considering your background. Henderson picked you out of the crowd. Convinced Emily you were good enough, and trust me, being her husband probably made that task harder rather than easier. Emily doesn’t believe in favoritism.”

“Considering my background?” Kee didn’t know if she should strike out, run away, or weep.

He nodded. He didn’t apologize. He didn’t redefine. He was asking on the level. Speaking plain truth.

Kee didn’t know if that was something she was ready to do with this man. Not with any man, or woman, but Archie had a hold on her that she didn’t like. And she’d slapped at him, hard. That required repayment. She didn’t like being in debt to anyone.

A wave of panic washed over her, and she tried to let it flow by as she’d been trained. But it didn’t. It left her stranded high and dry.

One thing was clear, she owed him truth. Plain truth.

***

“The first DAP Hawk I ever saw was on night patrol.” Kee knew it was a cheat, but she’d answer the easier question first. “We were in it and it was ugly. Trying to get Americans to safety in the midst of that Nigerian coup a couple years back.”

She picked at some of the moss on the stone wall. It didn’t let go, clinging tight to the ancient weathered rock.

Archie sat in silence, nursing his water bottle, the perfect audience.

“We were pinned down outside some U.S. contractor’s office building, grand term for two stories of aging mud and mortar. My squad, what was left of them, was the only thing keeping several dozen civilian Americans alive and breathing.

“Out of nowhere, a DAP Hawk appeared like it had been teleported. Inside of twenty seconds, the gun emplacements that had pinned us for twelve hours were gone. Four Little Birds appeared from the four points of the compass. A full SEAL team fast-roped down, hit the ground, cleared, and secured the entire block. One minute later, probably to the second, six Pave Hawks were on the street and all the civilians were being loaded. I’d never seen coordination like that.”

She closed her eyes and pictured it. “All hell is breaking loose and this SEAL commander strolls over to our hidey-hole, as if it were a sunny day here in Italy and not 2 a.m. in Hell. He leans into our dug-in position calm as could be with a full-blown firefight raging at either end of the street and says, ‘Y’all want a ride?’”

Kee opened her eyes and looked at Archie. “I’m alive today because of those guys. We were down and on the way out. Most of our squad was hit.” She pulled aside one tail of his shirt and pointed to the front-and-back scar below her rib cage where a round had passed through, missing vital organs by millimeters and miracles.

Archie traced a finger across it gently, as if he could wipe the past from her side.

“That’s when I set my sights higher than becoming a regular Army sergeant before I went KIA. Until then, killed in action was about as high as I was gonna go. That’s the day I became a SOAR sergeant. Just took my career three years of brutal work to catch up with me.”

Archie nodded. Nodded as he accepted her story. Nodded as he slid his hand until his palm covered the front bullet scar and his fingertips the rear one. Exactly the position she’d been held in by the SEAL medic aboard that Pave Hawk to keep her from bleeding out before they made it back to base.

“I lay in that hospital for two weeks. On my first day out, I applied for the Green Berets. Inside of six months I was the first woman through Green Platoon after Ms. Legend Beale. Haven’t looked back since.”

He pulled her forward by that hand wrapped around her scar as if holding her life in her body.

When their lips met, the heat didn’t flash like powder. Every other time they kissed, it slammed into her like an ignition circuit on a Hellfire missile.

This time Archie’s kiss ran gently over her lips. Instead of pure heat, she felt texture, shape, care. In contact only at their lips and his hand on her waist, a circuit was completed. A circuit that opened a honey-slow flow of warmth.

He pulled away. Just a breath apart. Her heart pounded so fast, she couldn’t have shot a target three meters away, never mind 375.

She’d never wanted anything in her life as much as she wanted Archie to kiss her like that again. He slid his other hand along her cheek and into her hair. Unable to raise her own hands from where they rested on his knees, she leaned in for more of that kiss.

A high-pitched, double trill sounded so loudly, they banged foreheads hard.

Even as they scrabbled in their fanny packs, Kee knew two things for certain.

First, their pagers had just announced the end to their vacation.

Second, she’d never forget exactly where they’d left off because she wanted to start up in exactly that same spot.