Kee needed to say a thousand things. But couldn’t think of one of them. Her body still ached from her weeping. She had never wept with that soul-wrenching pain too big to let out. Not at Anna’s death. Not ever that she could recall. And she couldn’t stop herself around Archie. Somehow he created a safe place for her where that stupid heart out on her sleeve kept showing itself.
How was she supposed to think when a man kissed her like this? And for the first time, a man kissed her knowing her past and who she was. That was something new.
Archie kissed her with the perfect attention he brought to everything he did. His hand on her hip, his lips brushing hers ever so gently.
It made her feel…
She smiled against his lips, laughed, though her throat was still rough and it sounded more of a choked gasp.
“What?” Archie pulled back a whisper’s length to ask, their lips still brushing.
“There was a moment. A moment I especially wanted to remember. So that I would know where to start. Or to start over. To pick up where we left off.”
He nuzzled her neck and breathed in deep and long before exhaling on a sigh. “What moment? What happened?”
“Our pagers went off.” Her voice sounded soft and slow, so languid she barely recognized it as her own. She rolled her head back to give him better access to the line of kisses he was placing along her collarbone.
He paused, then offered a low chuckle that erased the last of the chill that had wrapped around her this whole last week. Returning his lips to hers, he whispered a question.
“Kee?” A question that asked nothing and everything. “Yes!” There was no other answer she could give, wanted to give. The lightness that wrapped around her filled her with a need. Not for sex. A need for a man. For one man. For this man.
No point in protesting, it would be a lie. No point in saying she didn’t want and desire, her body was alive with need for his.
She reached back to tug off her shirt and bra with a single move.
Archie stopped her motion with a gentle touch. “No, let me.”
But he didn’t strip her. He didn’t grab or peel or pinch. Instead he traced her curves with infinite patience. Studied her in the dark like a critical terrain. The lightest trace of a single fingertip along her jawline, down her throat, and across her collarbone sent shivers that reached down her spine. He expanded his research, not attacking her breast but nuzzling the soft side through her shirt.
Kee floated, let all of her nerves calm and focus on the sensations Archie’s actions evoked. For the first time in her life, she did nothing. Nothing but lace her fingers deep in his soft hair. Nothing but turn to allow his investigation to travel farther down a particularly good path.
When at long last he removed her clothes, he did so one piece at a time. He traced how each fold shifted across her skin. She lay stretched on her clothes when he took her in his mouth. Slowly, ever so slowly with the patience of a master strategist she was really and truly learning to appreciate, he lifted her pulse rate a beat at a time. Drove her upward on such a smooth-flowing curve that when she broke the surface, all she could feel was surprise and pleasure.
He didn’t stop there. He took her higher than she’d ever been, until she floated disembodied in the night, arching against him, release flowing into release.
When at long last he entered her, he filled her so completely, so perfectly that she wept once more. The tears that slid from her eyes didn’t burn. Didn’t sear.
They healed. They mended and bound the pieces of her heart back together.
And when Archie kissed the tears away, drank in the ocean salt of her happiness, all she could do was float.
Archie drove her on and up until it scorched her body clean. Only then did he let himself go. She’d never felt so alive as the moment he settled onto her, her hands tangled in the luscious hair.
“I love you so much, Kee.”
“Keiko.” From Archie she wanted to hear it. “Keiko.”
Men always said they loved you after sex, easy to ignore that. But the sound of her real name in his breathless whisper against her ear.
That was something special, something important. And something she’d not easily forget.
Nor his hand which had never stopped holding her side as he’d reveled in her body.
That still held her life as if it were a precious thing.
35
“Good morning.”
“Oh, shit!” Kee looked up at Major Emily Beale. The blue eyes hidden by mirrored shades despite the pre-dawn darkness.
She tried to sit up. Tried hard. But Archie lay tangled all about her, more or less on her.
Kee thumped his shoulder hard enough to bruise.
He woke up and shook his head, then he offered her that sleepy smile that started first in his eyes.
“You were wonder—” He cut off and furrowed his brow at her, finally noticing her frantic expression, or at least her tension.
He looked over his shoulder.
Then Kee felt his entire body flinch against hers as if he’d been stung by a giant bee.
“Oh, shit!” He leapt to his feet, taking the blanket with him.
Kee could feel the cold night air slipping over her skin and knew she still lay naked, cushioned only by their clothes. At the last second she hooked the blanket and pulled it against her.
Archie stumbled free of it before finding his feet. He stood stark naked in front of the major except for one sock.
He tried to salute. Thought better of it. Briefly shot for parade rest before moving his hands forward to cover himself. When his knees finally gave out and he sat abruptly on the next row of seating, he covered his knees not his crotch.
Kee thought about laughing, but instead watched the major for her reaction. Fraternization could get them both discharged. He was an officer and she an enlisted, he could get court-martialed.
Major Beale stood at ease, turned three-quarters away from them as she scanned the field. The vague silhouettes of the tents, Hawks, and Chinooks barely visible as shadowed outlines.
“Quiet morning.” She began descending the tiers of seating back toward the field fading into the blue-black of early morning.
As soon as she was out of sight, they scrambled into their clothes without a word. Kee folded the blanket to the smallest bundle she could and tucked it under her arm.
She ran her fingers through her hair, trying to comb it into place.
When she turned to descend, Archie stopped her with a hand on her arm.
He slid a hand up her back and into her hair before kissing her, slowly and thoroughly, damning the growing light.
“Keiko.” Again that perfect whisper that slid and wrapped around her spine.
“Archibald.”
He cocked his head for a moment, then shook it. “No, that does not work, does it? To you, I am always Archie. Or maybe Professor.”
“Whatever you say, Magic Man.”
“Ouch!” He laughed, slapped her butt, and they headed for the field.
“Thanks for getting the blanket.” Kee did her best to keep it tucked casually out of sight in case they met someone. “I didn’t notice you leave last night to go get it.”
“I didn’t. You were lying on my clothes anyway. It isn’t my habit to prance naked before my fellow officers, despite present evidence to the contrary. I thought you’d brought it with you.”
Kee missed the step off the last riser and would have fallen onto the track if Archie hadn’t steadied her.
“The major?” She mouthed the question silently. Archie shook his head.
One of the Ranger sentries?
Kee surprised herself to feel the heat rising to her face. She thought she was long past being embarrassed by sex.
36
“Who’s been messing with my Hawk?” John stormed into the chow tent looking big and very bad. He waved a logbook over his head. “When I find the mother, I’m gonna crush his head between these two hands.”
He held them out like weapons. They were each the size of Kee’s head.
He slammed the Hawk’s maintenance logbook down on the table.
“This you, Smith?” He didn’t open the pages. She held up both hands in innocence.
John glared at Archie, then headed over to confront Major Henderson’s mechanic. Dusty James was freshly returned from surfing off Australia with the ocean-bleached hair to prove it.
Kee glanced around and spotted Connie Davis, calm as could be, working her way down the chow line, getting her breakfast.
“John!” Kee called him back.
He ground around in place like an Abrams tank until he faced her, barrel aimed and ready to fire, his eyes burning like a laser-bright guidance system.
“Is anything actually done wrong?”
“How the hell would I know?” He tossed the book back down in front of her and flipped it open. He jabbed a finger down at the pages. “There’s three dozen entries, half of them overlapping in fifty different ways. Fuel flow systems, nozzle and air flow adjustments, alterations to the IRSS exhaust cowling that I’ve never seen before. Is our heat signature masked better, or will the next SAM missile within a hundred miles ram itself up our tailpipe because it can? How the hell would I know?” He snapped the book shut. “Tell me who to kill, Smith. Who?”
“That would be me.” Connie Davis stepped over from the line still carrying her tray. Connie was taller than Kee by several inches, but the top of her head still barely reached John’s chin. She probably weighed less than one of his legs. “Every single change was made according to factory specifications.”
She turned her back on John and set her tray at the table where she’d been eating alone all week. Kee had finally started feeling bad about that, but she’d been eating at odd hours to avoid Archie until now. John stared down at the book in his hand and then at the woman’s back as she unfolded her napkin and set out her silverware.
Kee had to give Connie points, it took guts to turn your back on Big John, especially when he was in one of his rare big-bad moods.
He turned to Kee, seething with frustration. She could hear his teeth grinding as he struggled to make sense of what had happened.
Connie unloaded her tray and set it aside, cut a chunk of sausage, and paused. Without turning, she spoke, “I must say, especially for a forward theater of operations, you have maintained the Black Hawk exceptionally well.” She ate her sausage as neatly as could be, clearly done with the conversation.
John dropped onto the bench near Kee, almost flipping her into the air. He waved the book at her weakly, his expression so woeful that she had to laugh and reach out to pat his shoulder.
“I watched her John. She did it clean. Shit, she did things that you and I have never seen.” And next time Kee was damn well going to learn.
Before John could recover, Archie appeared with Dilya dancing by his side. All the life that had been squeezed out of her these last days by Kee’s disagreement with Archie now flooded out of her in a single dam-bursting tidal wave. She danced up to John and patted a quick, two-handed drumroll on his knee. He managed a weak laugh and ruffled her hair.
She jumped into Kee’s arms and rubbed her nose on Kee’s. It tickled. Kee rubbed Dilya’s back. “The Kee and String Man like blan-ket?”
Kee stole a glance at Archie. He positively blanched, first going sheet-white, then beet red. So red, John cast him a strange look.
Kee laughed and nodded her nose against the girl’s. Then she leaned in until her mouth was at Dilyana’s ear and whispered.
“Keiko says thank you to Dilyana.” Then she pulled back and checked the girl’s eyes.
A sharp nod and Kee knew that the girl understood her tryst with Archie and the story of the blanket were as private as their private names. Kee gave her a squeeze and then lifted her up and plopped her on her feet.
“Breakfast!”
Dilya was off like a shot.
She offered Archie her blandest smile.
He shook himself, like a wet dog, and followed in the girl’s tracks.
John was watching her closely.
“So, John, did you get a lady out dancing with you?” Kee deflected his question, hopefully before it could finish forming in his mind.
He slowly relaxed into a smile, leaned an elbow on the table. “Oh yeah. A couple of ’em actually. But that Jennifer, wow! Came close to putting my back out trying to keep up with that lady. Two parts serpent the way she could twist around you like—”
“Whoa, Big John! Too many details.”
He grinned and then looked at her. “Any details you wanna be sharing?”
“Not a one I can think of.”
With a loud laugh, he slapped her hard enough on the back that she lost half her air, then he headed off for the chow line.
Connie Davis stood looking at her. Had moved up so quietly, Kee hadn’t noticed her.
“I don’t need to be defended. I can take care of myself.”
Kee opened her mouth, then closed it, not knowing what to say. The woman was gone before Kee found an answer.
A woman strong enough to stand up to John in a rage certainly didn’t need defending. But why didn’t Connie want a helping hand?
37
“What did you do to my bird, John?” Major Beale’s voice came clear over the intercom. They weren’t ten minutes into the night’s mission.
Kee knew they were probably safe from any hostiles here, but sharpened her attention outside in case they had to put down. Clear field, a couple of goats, they should be okay.
“Wasn’t me. What’s wrong?” He sounded panicked. Kee was a good mechanic, but she wasn’t a chief. John was chief of the bird and he worried about it a lot. Which was a good thing considering the abuse the major heaped on the poor thing.
“Nothing. She’s found more guts than I thought she had. Maybe she needed a vacation, too. At least she didn’t have to eat so much fish. Mark had me eating trout three meals a day. I didn’t know the man was a maniac fisherman when I married him. We’ll have to live in the desert if I want to see him after we retire.”
Kee looked over at John. His face was positively grim. Connie had better be careful if she didn’t want her neck wrung.
“When did you get back, Archie?”
The major must have enjoyed her vacation more than she was letting on to be so chatty. The 101st had released the Apache helicopters and they were watching those gunships’ backsides, so there wasn’t anything else going on at the moment. But usually they flew silent.
“Four days ago. Maybe five.”
“What? Why?”
“Two days out. Three on the boat. Then we were called back for a single mission. No point going anywhere after that.”
And no point revisiting the hell that she and Archie had turned those everlasting days into.
“What was the mission? Why weren’t we called?” Major Emily Beale did not sound happy.
“You were too far out of position, I suppose.”
“And?”
Archie continued as if he didn’t hear the venom seething over the headset.
“Clay and I flew. Kee and Connie were at the guns.”
“What?” Big John burst out so loud it hurt Kee’s ears, and not only through the headphones inside her helmet.
He shouted louder than the rotor’s roar.
“My gun. What did she do to it?” He faced Kee. “What?”
Kee swallowed hard. “She, uh, did tear them down. Did something to the trigger assembly. Mine, too. Feels smoother when I—”
With a foul curse he turned back to his Minigun and started checking it inch by inch in the faint glow of his night vision.
“It works fine, John. We took it for a run after she did it. It works fine.”
He cursed and kept checking the weapon. Then he froze.
“Wait a sec, Smith. She flew?”
“Specialist Connie Davis. Knew what she was doin’. Kinda pissed me off.”
<
br /> “Major, what’s up with that?” Big John managed to sound respectful, barely.
“She’s here a couple months ahead of schedule. Third woman into SOAR. Mark told me she was coming, none of us knew when.”
“She messed with my bird. She messed with my gun.” Major Beale actually glanced back at Kee between the seats and offered her a smile. She mouthed, Men. Kee returned the smile. Not only did she respect the major, she was starting to like Emily Beale. The woman did retain a sense of humor underneath all that hard-ass officer she wore like armor plating. And she’d been suprisingly decent about finding her and Archie all tangled up together.
“So, Archie,” the major’s voice sounded so dry that Kee had to mute her microphone to not laugh at John. “What was the mission?”
“Solo. Long flight, too. I was glad for Clay’s extra hand. We delivered a colonel in a beat-up Toyota pickup on the north slope of the Hindu Kush.”
“The north slope. Solo.” All of the humor had been stripped from the major’s voice. “You flew nine hours over bad terrain, solo?”
“Eleven hours. Three midair refuels. Two in and one back out. We supposedly had a deep backup that wasn’t directly privy to the mission, but I watched. We were definitely solo.”
Kee swallowed hard. Helicopters didn’t do that. She’d felt much better thinking someone had their backside on the mission. Now she felt cold for the dangerous chance they’d taken.
“He routed us over valleys I had never seen before,” Archie continued. “I do not think anyone ever has. We were way off the edge of the map. Not a single shot fired. We were low and fast, valley-and-pass the whole way.”
“Pickup truck?” Big John didn’t sound happy.
“Underslung.” Kee decided she’d take a piece of the heat. “Connie checked the load points three times after I did them.”
John groaned in pain for his helicopter and leaned down to pat his hand on the deck in apology.
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