Midnight Shadows

by Lisa Marie Rice

  Kowalski watched him go. Yannis had perfect gait. Good for him. Kowalski knew how many excruciating hours of physical rehab that perfect gait had taken. He’d sweated every single second of Allegra’s rehab and had to hand it to anyone who went through it and came out sane the other end. Him? He’d been lucky. He’d only taken a couple of bullets—one of them had been for Allegra—that went in one side and out the other and hadn’t messed up too much stuff along the way. Plus the fucker who’d messed his face up with the knife. But nothing requiring rehab. It would have driven him crazy.

  Allegra tugged on his arm and he turned to her with a smile. “Yeah honey?”

  “After the beach, I have a surprise for you.” She had a secretive smile.

  Kowalski barely refrained from patting his pocket. In it was a case with a diamond-cut emerald on a gold chain. “Well that’s handy. Because I have a surprise for you, too. You want to show me yours?”

  “Now?” Allegra looked around. Kowalski looked down into her beautiful heart-shaped face and was struck, for the millionth time, by how incredibly lucky he was. She shook her head. Her smile was blinding. “After the swim. It’ll take a while.”

  Kowalski froze. Oh God, no. She wasn’t talking about sex was she? He couldn’t possibly do that. No. No way.

  * * * *

  Allegra saw her husband freeze like a deer in the headlights and managed not to sigh. She also managed to pretend she had no idea what he was thinking and that everything was absolutely normal.

  The fact that he froze was proof enough that Douglas was deeply troubled. Nothing on this earth made him freeze.

  She’d heard countless stories from the men in his company, who’d served with him in the battlefield. The stories were different and yet somehow always the same. They were in Afghanistan/Iran/Iraq/Colombia/Indonesia. It was always either The Fucking Sandbox or The Fucking Jungle. And they were always in a desperate situation until the Senior rode to the rescue and everything got solved, usually with some blood being spilled, usually not theirs. Everyone who knew him as other than a rough-looking but canny businessman, everyone who knew him from before, in his military incarnation, worshipped the ground he walked on.

  Everyone always, always mentioned how tough he was. How cool under fire.

  And yet here he was, frozen at the thought of sex with her.

  God.

  After the operation, he treated her as if she were made of spun glass, feather-light, capable of shattering at the sound of a too-loud voice. Yes, the surgery had been risky, she’d known that going in. Yes, it had taken a lot out of her. It took her a full month to be able to stand upright. But she’d been a good girl, done all her exercises without complaint. Well…maybe a little bit of whining, but Douglas took it in his stride like a champ.

  She wouldn’t shatter if they made love. Yet she had no way of showing him that unless they actually did make love. You couldn’t prove a negative.

  But she was a trouper. Instead of rolling her eyes at him she just smiled, put her arm in his and guided them to the elevator that would take them to Hagios Nikolaus’s amazing beach.

  The elevator was posh—polished bronze and teak. The beach was posh—with wooden walkways flanked by potted palm trees, white canvas and wood cabanas along the back.

  Douglas disappeared into a cabana and emerged a minute later in swim trunks. There weren’t many people on the elegant and comfortable teak lounge beds with white linen canopies, but when Douglas walked down to the beach Allegra could see women’s heads popping up like prairie dogs in the Midwest, as if a silent whistle had been blown.

  Allegra didn’t blame them, not one bit. None of the women were looking at Douglas’s face, they were too busy ogling his body. He was amazing. Huge, with shoulders out to here, completely ripped, all long lean but big muscle. There wasn’t a Greek statue back in the National Gallery of Athens that could hold a candle to him.

  And the way he moved—with athletic grace, each muscle moving exactly as it was designed to do. Just his stride, fully clothed, was enough to make heads turn—as long as no one looked at his face. Nearly naked he could bring traffic to a standstill.

  Sorry, ladies. That’s my man, she thought smugly. You can look but not touch.

  Allegra put down her beach bag, laid out beach towels on two lounge beds and walked hand in hand with Douglas into the water.

  The beach faced southwest and the late afternoon sun turned everything on the beach golden and the water an incredible shade of turquoise. The bottom was sandy and touchable for several hundred yards. The water was warmer than the air and Allegra felt its effects immediately, enveloped by gentle heat. Every single therapist had stressed the benefits of swimming and Douglas had spent a lot of time in the past four months with her in pools, giving her lessons.

  Not many people got taught to swim by a Navy SEAL.

  “Ahhh.” Allegra fell back slowly, lifting her legs, and closed her eyes, trusting in the water, trusting in Douglas, who wouldn’t leave her side. She wasn’t any great shakes as a swimmer but she had floating down pat.

  “Feels good, doesn’t it?” Douglas’s rumble of a voice carried under water. She sighed and nodded her head, reaching out with her hand. He took it and everything bad in the world disappeared.

  The blindness, the surgery, her physical weakness…all gone. She rocked gently in a golden world under a golden sun and music played in her head.

  All the music that had fled her life returned now, Dagda was back in her head, the music coming in great arpeggios, the music that had always been the center of her life until Douglas. He’d entered her life and then the music fled but she had always clung to the hope that she could someday, somehow have both.

  Douglas mourned the loss of her music as much as she did. These past three days had opened her heart to the most dangerous emotion there was—hope. Hope that the music would come back.

  Allegra opened her eyes unexpectedly and caught Douglas unawares. Caught the tenderness of his look and the worry between his brows.

  Their eyes met. “Hey there,” she whispered.

  He instantly smoothed his face out, to the extent that his scars let him. “Hey there yourself.”

  She let her legs drift slowly to the white sand beneath the rocking turquoise water and walked up to him. “I saw all the ladies ogling you on the beach.”

  He snorted. “Yeah, right.”

  It was a running joke that, for her, had a vein of seriousness running through it. “I did. Including the lady with enough diamonds to sink the Titanic. She sat up and pulled down her sunglasses for a better look. Her necklace nearly blinded me.” The lady in question was dark-haired and very voluptuous. And drowning in bling. Her jewelry covered more of her than her bikinis did.

  “She must have had something in her eye.”

  “Oh, of course she did. You.”

  By this time she was plastered against him, arms around his neck, and oh yes. There he was, fully erect. As he was most nights in bed with her. All dressed up with nowhere to go.

  He was shaking his head, hard mouth slightly uptilted, eyes half closed against the huge golden sun.

  For just a second Allegra was overwhelmed that this man who looked like Neptune without the pitchfork, so huge and strong and capable in every way, was hers. And he was. Every single line of that big body told her that he was completely hers and would remain so to her dying day. When they’d taken their vows, she knew he meant every single word of the ageless ceremonial phrases.

  For richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do us part.

  So easy to say, so hard to do.

  Lucky, lucky her.

  She’d grown up in the fickle world of music where every single straight male, from the stage hands to the lead singer, thought they were God’s gift to women. Feckless boys, all of them, most of them thin and narrow-shouldered, so hopeless in the real, physical world that unless it involved music, they were like helpless babes. And every single one thought he
was a sex god. Except now that she was actually married to a real sex god, she was able to laugh at the memory of the ones who had caught her eye.

  “Come here, sailor.” Allegra tightened her hands around his neck, savoring the feel of the steely muscles there.

  “Giving orders, are we now?” Douglas responded in a pure Irish accent. You’d think he’d been born in county Connemara.

  “Sure and I have a perfect right to, don’t I? Seein’ as how you had me waitin’ for so long, eh?” she answered in kind.

  Douglas laughed and she laughed with him. She loved it when he laughed. It was always as if laughter took him by surprise, as if laughter were this new, unfamiliar territory he had just ventured into.

  “Kiss me,” she whispered and he bent to her and, oh man. That familiar magic. His arms tightened around her back, bringing her close to him, to that acre of strong, hairy male chest, a wall of muscle. When she felt him against her she simply lit up.

  How she remembered what it was like being in Douglas’s arms when she’d been blind. How she’d had no choice but to concentrate on what was beneath her fingertips, against her lips, inside her body. It had been one of the only advantages to being blind—this ability to concentrate entirely on what her body was telling her.

  Like now, when her body was signaling such pleasure. When Douglas held her, the world simply went away. He cupped her head and curled a big arm around her back and she found herself almost melting against him, feeling all that power and heat somehow sinking into her too, so that she felt as powerful as he was.

  The power flowed between them, back and forth. Often Allegra would simply give herself up to him, follow his lead, go where he wanted to. But just as often, Douglas would read her, read her body and reactions and know what she wanted before she knew it herself. Then he would give it to her.

  She closed her eyes as she kissed him, the insides of her lids golden with the light and with the honeyed pleasure. Against her stomach his penis was huge and hard. She knew it would be almost peeping out from the waistband of his swimming trunks. Her hand trailed from his back around across his washboard stomach, fitting her hand beneath the trunks and holding him.

  How she loved touching him there. It felt like touching a nuclear reactor, a source of almost supernatural power. Every time she touched him, his penis would swell, move with her hand, as if they were conducting a dance. She made a fist around him and pumped down to the broad base and back up.

  Douglas hissed as if he were in pain, but it wasn’t pain. She knew that.

  There was something different now, some urgency that pleased her down to her toes. Douglas wasn’t showing that iron-clad will he usually did.

  This far and no further because, well, she was recovering wasn’t she? That had been their sex life these past four months.

  No, this time the kiss wasn’t timed, wasn’t calculated in its steps. This time the kiss was open, in every way. She lifted herself up more, helped by the buoyancy of the water, so she could be completely face to face with him, something that could never happen outside bed. He helped her, boosting her with an arm across her bottom. She slanted to get a better taste of him and a sudden cold wind, from way out to sea, lashed her wet back.

  She couldn’t control the shiver and Douglas lifted his head immediately. “Let’s get you back to the room. It’s getting chilly.”

  Oh no! Allegra didn’t want to open her eyes and see that face. Frowning, puckered with worry over her. All sensuality gone, as if she’d turned into that maiden aunt again.

  When she finally did open her eyes again, though, she didn’t see the ‘poor Allegra’ face, not at all. She saw heat and sex as he looked at her, and she realized he was seeing her, the woman, not the invalid. His woman. A woman he desired, only right now he wanted her to be more comfortable than this.

  But the sex hadn’t gone, it had merely been set aside.

  And she was chilly. He was right. They should be heading up to their room. Where, if she read his expression correctly, things might actually happen tonight.

  So she smiled at him and took his hand and headed to shore. Thinking that maybe, just maybe, she might get lucky tonight.

  Chapter Three

  Kowalski held his wife’s hand as they waded through the transparent water up to the beach.

  He thought sad bad thoughts to bring his boner down. He thought of all the brave young SEALs who’d lost their lives during the fifteen years he’d been Senior. He thought of the Indonesian village they’d infiltrated in ’08 only to find the intel had been off a day. The entire village had been executed the day before by Jema’ah Islamiyah fucks. He visualized that silent walk through the village, seeing men, women and children in the big hole that had been dig in the ground, each one with a gunshot wound at the back of the neck. Some of the children had been so small the gunshot severed the head.

  It worked. By the time he and Allegra hit shore, his dick was right where in belonged in public—hanging between his legs. As they trod the board walkway he noticed a big-breasted woman rise up on her elbow and study him. Allegra was right—she carried enough bling to sink a ship. He didn’t get the feeling that it was her hormones out of control, though. It felt more like a cold assessment of a side of beef.

  Well, fuck her.

  He didn’t care about her, he didn’t care about any woman except Allegra.

  “Here, honey,” he said, putting a dry towel around his wife’s shoulders. His hands lingered, as if his hands were magnets and she was the North Pole. It was almost impossible to lift them. He stared down at the nape of her neck, at the tender soft skin there. She loved it when he kissed her neck and he knew exactly which parts needed kissing and which parts needed biting. Nothing rough, just a little nip, guaranteed to make her break out in goosebumps.

  She shivered again. But where before seeing her shiver or be uncomfortable in any way, or—God!—in pain was enough to switch his dick off completely, now he recognized a truth that had been staring him in the face for the past month.

  Allegra was better. Much better. She wasn’t 100%, she’d had major brain surgery, but she was fine. As she’d told him over and over again these past weeks, but he simply wouldn’t listen to her. He’d been worried sick about her and that had wiped out the thinking part of his brain. Not that that part had ever been too big to begin with, he thought wryly.

  They stopped at the elevator and turned around to look at the spectacular view, pristine white sandy beach, intense turquoise water, the two arms of land embracing the beach intensely green and perfumed. Allegra shaded her eyes, then accepted her sunglasses from him with a quick smile.

  “It’s so beautiful here,” she sighed.

  “Yeah.” He pressed the elevator button. “Yannis tell you that everyone on this island is convinced it’s Atlantis?”

  She took in the long, crescent-shaped beach, supposedly half of the caldera of the volcano that destroyed the legendary island. It was exactly as if someone had taken a compass and traced half a perfect circle. Behind the beach, the land rose dramatically with the blinding white buildings of the village of Hagios Nikolaus spilling down over the hillside from the summit. Every inch of the land was covered with greenery and the terraced hills were famous for providing perfect grapes and perfect vegetables.

  “Yes, he did. It’s not hard to believe when you see this beach. And he says that underwater explorers keep finding artifacts from the Minoan culture and a mysterious pre-Minoan culture.” She smiled. “Must be nice to think of your home as once being Atlantis.”

  The elevator came with a muted, melodic ping. Trust Yannis to find an elevator bell that sounded as if it were made exclusively for the ears of rich people.

  Up on the bluff the air had turned slightly chilly. Kowalski hurried Allegra along with a hand to her back. He’d just realized that she wasn’t sick any more, but he definitely didn’t want her to catch the flu.

  Because maybe, just maybe, tonight…his dick stirred and he put the kibosh
on his thoughts. He was still in his swim trunks and walking around with a semi hard-on was not cool.

  There was a distant whooping sound and Kowalski frowned, searching the sky. There it was. An Augusta AW119 Ke Koala, one of the most expensive helicopters in the world. Inside, it was appointed like an S-class Mercedes Benz. It could reach a flying speed of 170 mph and had a range of 620 miles, so if it had refueled once it could have come from anywhere in Europe, the Middle East and most of the Far East.

  In a few minutes it was hovering, nose down, over Yannis’s hotel’s helipad. The wind ruffled the leaves of the plants in Yannis’s extensive, pretty gardens but before any damage could be done the pilot landed and killed the rotors. Kowalski should have ushered Allegra back to their suite fast, but he was curious to see who the bigwig was.

  The rotors were still slowly spinning when the door opened, retracted back against the frame and steps automatically descended. Three security guys descended lightly, moving like athletes. They were big guys and had on expensive suits tailored to hide the weapons in their shoulder holsters. Kowalski had a professional curiosity as to what weapons they carried but they were hidden under summer-weight virgin wool. They fanned out covering 280°, facing out. Then an elderly gentleman with a tired, drawn, refined face stood for a second in the helo’s doorway.

  Good God. Kowalski stared.

  Allegra stirred at his side. She touched his arm. “Who is it, Douglas, do you know him?”

  He broke his stare and hurried her to their rooms. “Yeah, I know who he is. Lorenz Esterhaze. One of the richest men in the world. Escaped from Soviet-run Hungary when he was a boy. Made a fortune so big no one can count it. He once made a billion dollars in one day. The guy can make or break entire markets.”

  Allegra raised her eyebrows. Yannis hadn’t known who the bigwig was, or he’d have told Kowalski, as a courtesy. Whatever pow-wow was going down, it was going to be at the top levels of global finance. The global economy could be repaired or broken in the next couple of days.