Target of One's Own

by M. L. Buchman

  “Said I didn’t want an apology fuck.”

  She nodded. Her hair slid across her bare shoulders in a soft cascade as she leaned down to untie her shoes. Once again he was staring down at the dark part in her hair.

  “How about sex?” Her head remained down as she shucked her pants. “Consensual sex, Lieutenant Commander Altman. How about that?”

  “Why?” What the hell was suddenly wrong with him? A cute-as-hell chick was offering her body. His own body was rapidly making its vote loud and clear.

  She stood up and looked at him. Not a scrap of clothing and utterly beautiful. She belonged back in her coffin wearing a flight suit. She didn’t belong…he looked around…out here. Palm and baobab trees offered shade along the beach. The Atlantic Ocean rolled practically to their feet. A pair of fantastic race cars parked beside them—ones she’d proven that she could drive more competently than he could fully comprehend.

  And this slender beauty stood waiting for him. Not fifteen minutes ago she’d been screaming in terror. Had she stuffed that away? Where? When would it lash out again? If she hit him on the same side of the face, it might fall off. Her blow had been fantastic for someone her size—for a person any size.

  She knelt over one of those very nice legs and unstrapped an ankle sheath. Boker Plus Anti-Grav knife with carbon fiber handle and ceramic blade. He supposed he was lucky her legs had been locked around his waist and she hadn’t been able to reach it during her panic.

  Zoe tossed it atop the rest of her clothes and rose back to stand before him, naked and glorious.

  “Where?” He didn’t have a blanket and had learned the hard way that sand wasn’t great for the guy and totally sucked for the woman when you were having sex.

  In answer she leaned back against the driver’s door of the Renault.

  “You sure?”

  She nodded.

  No hesitation.

  No sign of fear.

  Those blue eyes showed nothing but absolute certainty. Was it that she wanted him to purge her past? Or had her panic attack already done that? Or was Zoe DeMille simply that damn fearless? Maybe she’d hypnotized him and this was all an illusion.

  Luke brushed his fingertips over her breastbone, tracing the line between those small, perfect breasts. He could feel her heart beating. It wasn’t racing wildly.

  How was she so strong?

  When Luke knelt before her and kissed her between the breasts, Zoe didn’t know whether she wanted to laugh, cry, or scream again. Except this time the scream would be from contact shock.

  Her father had taught her to love cars. Driving the beach and dunes today—the first time she’d been on sand since the final long-ago Huckfest—had brought all of it back. The bad, the horror, but also the good.

  Luke was definitely from the last of those. She’d hurt him and he’d done nothing in return. He’d listened. He’d understood.

  Who was the last man to understand her? Had there ever been one?

  Christian Vehrs thought she was just some object of lust for him to conquer. Luke moved his hands up her legs, started by rubbing a thumb back and forth where her ankle sheath had been strapped, acknowledging the soldier. Knowing an ankle sheath always left a little irritation, like a wristwatch worn too tightly, he massaged it for a moment. His rough, powerful hands, gracing over her skin like warm water sluicing away the remnants of fear. Of a past she’d make sure never took control of her again.

  She fisted her hands in his hair as he tasted her. Breast, belly, hip—each place purged.

  And behind her was the rock, the bastion of her young life—a fine car. The metal and glass so warm against her skin it was like coming home. The strength engineered into the car and held there, waiting for a driver who understood how to unleash all of that power. How to see beyond the machine and become bonded with it. To let it drive her as much as she drove it.

  She’d loved to drive.

  Somewhere she’d lost that, flown instead. If not for the horrors she’d been confronted with in her father’s garage, might she have entered The Dakar years ago? Or gone Formula 1?

  Luke drove her body the way she drove a car. One moment coaxing her to open to him, to give over control, and the next moment bypassing the obvious to trace the line where butt met thigh.

  When she would have begged him to plow straight ahead, he drew a gentle spiral that circled her breast five times or perhaps a hundred from the outer edges to the aching center. And he almost killed her with pleasure when the final contact was not with his fingers, but with lips, tongue, and teeth. His touch convinced her that she was shaped just as she should be. Not like her commander. Not like the curvaceous women who had always plagued her thoughts, but rather exactly as she should be.

  This time, when he rose to his feet and lifted her, there was no protest in her. She was so ready to fly.

  She hadn’t noticed when he undressed. Didn’t care that he’d been carrying a condom somewhere—didn’t care if it was presumptuous or just practical.

  It didn’t matter. She gave him complete control and let him steer the course. Let him control her body just as she’d controlled the Citroën. When he took her and pressed into her and drove her hard against the Renault’s driver-side door this time, she no longer had the power to protest or accept.

  She was past functioning as anything more than a body for Luke to take and use. She wrapped her arms around his neck, buried her face against his throat, and breathed him in. The tears that mixed with his own salty sweat as his body bucked and rolled against hers were not joy, but neither were they sadness.

  They were just tears of release. A release that rolled through her time and again until nothing else remained.

  Afterward, when she could, she planted a kiss on his collarbone to let him know she was okay—she could do no more. In answer, his arms slid more tightly around her and they remained a long time together leaning against the car as close as two bodies could be.

  13

  “You bastard,” Christian sounded more impressed than angry. “How is it that you get Zoe and I do not?”

  Luke had no idea. It was like a DeMille-sized bomb had been dropped on his position and he still hadn’t recovered. Taking her against the car parked a hundred kilometers from anywhere was a tropical-beach fantasy that still didn’t seem real. Going down on her last night in her bed had simply been downright awesome.

  Christian, who they should have easily beaten back to Dakar, had returned and been put to bed by his wife hours before he and Zoe returned.

  He hadn’t remembered holding her for so long in his lap after they’d made love, but when he’d sat down in the sand and she’d curled up there, it was hard to complain. She made no attempt at explaining or apologizing for her crying. Maybe he should have asked, but she’d stopped soon enough and simply remained in his arms. There were also no words about the sex they’d just had. He liked sex, knew he was good at it—which didn’t begin to describe what had just happened between them. The warm day and the soft woman had made the passage of time meaningless.

  It had gone dark as they’d wound through the streets of Dakar. Leola had greeted their return in a transparently sheer nightgown of purest white that offset her dark skin and hid absolutely none of her exceptional assets. Despite the stunning display, Luke had barely looked at her, which hadn’t pleased their hostess in the slightest.

  Instead he was watching every single motion Zoe made, all the while wondering what it would be like to touch her ass as she climbed the stairs ahead of him—turned out it was exceptional. Or to once more have his hand at the small of her back as she arched against him—even better. Some day he had to see how she would look in a nightgown as sheer as Leola’s, but black to offset her light complexion.

  She teased, but it was always a cheery banter, not games.

  Or maybe it was games with others, but not between them. He didn’t think that games of that kind would be possible between them after her past had unraveled on her in his ar
ms. There had been no grand confessions afterward. He’d no more mentioned Marva’s betrayal than she’d explained her past. But there were no games. No woman had ever given herself to him so completely.

  Zoe in the morning had turned out to be much as he’d guessed—not an ounce of coy in her trim body.

  She’d woken like a soldier, one moment asleep and the next wide awake. From curled up against his shoulder, where she’d spent the night, to lying full on his chest and humming happily in a single move as fast as most women might flutter their eyelashes.

  Thank God he always kept a couple condoms in his med kit, because it wasn’t long before she was arched over him and had finished waking them with awesome morning sex.

  If she’d been any bigger, they’d never have fit in the shower together, but they had. While his body didn’t recover that fast, hers did and he’d made the most of it. Devouring her cries with a kiss as her body jolted against his palm. Even the delicious Marva had never responded the way Zoe DeMille did in his arms. Vibrantly alive and completely frank in her approach to sex. For her, sex wasn’t something that was to be withheld, twisted, manipulated until he went mad. No, with her it was simply about using each other’s bodies in glorious ways.

  Zoe placed a phone call he couldn’t quite hear over the buzzing in his ears as he dressed. Then when she had bent over at the waist until she was head down to run a dryer over her hanging hair, he decided he’d better get out of there. If he looked at that fine ass pointed aloft much longer, he was going to be getting undressed again double-time.

  Christian was there when he made it out of the bedroom and down to the outdoor courtyard breakfast table.

  “You bastard,” Christian repeated. “How do you be the one to get her? You must explain this.”

  Not a chance, even if he had a damned clue.

  Christian looks so comfortable in his personal kingdom. The large home wrapped around him, the collection of very expensive racing toys in the garage, and the elegant garden. Christian sat at the head of the table that could easily seat twenty guests in the garden; Luke sat to his right. Rather than the heat of the morning sun, they were in the dappled shade of thick palm and fruit trees. Blooms the size of his head covered one tree and as many dusky red mangos hung from another.

  Hawks circled high above. A pied crow, darkest black with his proud white necklace and breastplate landed at the far end of the table with a harsh ar-ar-ar-ar. Christian tossed it a chunk that he tore from a baguette and the big bird flitted away with it. A trio of mourning doves were bathing in the small puddles on the concrete around the swimming pool. A flock of small yellow birds flitted onto a blooming hibiscus. Bright yellow. Zoe’s color.

  Luke could still taste the strong red bissap juice that Mama Odette had served with the ceebu jen. And the milder but richer taste of Zoe that lingered on his tongue from their last lingering kiss in the shower.

  He was definitely losing it if a flock of birds had him thinking about Zoe in ways to give him a serious arousal. Time for a subject change.

  “Great pair of cars you’ve built,” Luke offered as a maid brought hot coffee.

  “Ah,” Christian nodded his head. “Yes, you drive very well. So, you win her with my car. I think this is very unfair, but c’est la guerre.”

  “Guerre? What does that mean?” French had never been one of Luke’s languages. He knew C’est la vie, “such is life,” but not—

  “Guerre is ‘war’ in French,” Zoe explained as she breezed out the French doors and up to the table with her blonde hair floating gloriously off her shoulders. Six-foot-tall runway models didn’t look so poised as she did when she sat down at the table across from him. “Are we at war?”

  “A war it seems I have lost,” Christian admitted defeat with a smile and shrug.

  The way that Zoe glanced up at him, Luke definitely felt as if he’d won. It wasn’t as if they were in any kind of relationship. Like all his forays with women, they’d fade away when he was called up on another mission. Except this time he was already on a mission. He’d done it with women soldiers before, but always between assignments, never during one. It was his “way out” of any female trap, “Duty calls. Been great, babe. I’ll call ya.” Without a single chance that he would.

  But Zoe…

  “You know, Christian…” Zoe had that tone again. Luke suspected that Christian was about to have the hammer dropped on his head and that he wouldn’t see it coming.

  “If you were to start The Dakar, even just the first hour of the initial stage, you could capture your ‘Legend’ status for entering your tenth Dakar Rally.”

  “But who would drive for me then? Even I must accept I cannot run the whole of The Dakar this year. I already let my navigator go and join another team because I could not race.”

  Luke felt the blood drain from his head and go straight to his groin. Zoe DeMille was far more than a fantastic driver with a seriously sex-kitten body. He wanted to drag her off into the thick foliage of Christian’s garden to show her just what he thought of her. It wasn’t just a brilliant plan; it was genius. And she’d found a way to sell it that he knew Christian could never resist.

  Zoe rested her chin on her palm and her elbow on the table as she leaned toward Christian. She was wearing a loose top like the one she’d worn on her arrival at the airport. This one was Renault red and from his angle he could see the strap of her bra—lemon-yellow.

  Luke wasn’t sure whether she was trying to slay him or Christian. He definitely no longer begrudged her the weight of her suitcase. He looked forward to taking that scrap of yellow off her at the first opportunity. Or better yet, leave it on—it and nothing else. Then he’d—

  “You, my dear Zoe? You would drive my car for me?” Christian’s voice was caught up in the wonder of it. Luke had to admit it was a hell of an image.

  But… What! It was supposed to be him doing the driving, not—

  “And after you have to drop out to save your back…”

  “Ah, your assistant would be your co-driver. Yes, he is very good, even if not as good as you or me.”

  Luke would show Christian just how goddamn good he was. And Zoe too… Except, as hard as it was to swallow, Zoe was a better driver than he was. Someday he’d get her out on a pair of motorcycles and see how she did. Zoe DeMille in full body leathers? Oh, he definitely had to see that in real life.

  “But how to get my support truck and my car to The Dakar in time? The ship from Europe left weeks ago and is already there.”

  “I hoped you’d be willing. I already called a friend. He has a transport plane that must pick up a delivery in Buenos Aires. We’ll just take your vehicles to the airport with us and I’ll have my friend fly them to Mar del Plata for the start—it’s barely out of his way. You just buy us the plane tickets on the very next flight out.”

  Luke now understood the phone call that Zoe had made. He imagined that a C-130 Hercules cargo jet was already en route and would be gathering up Christian’s vehicles shortly after they themselves were safely gone.

  “Which—”

  “Oh, we must take the Citroën, Christian. She and I match as if it was destiny.”

  The guy never stood a chance.

  While Christian pulled out his phone, Zoe looked over at him. Luke couldn’t help but smile.

  She blushed and looked away. Beyond cute.

  “I wasn’t sure if you’d be angry,” Zoe whispered to him when Christian had gone forward to use the 787’s bathroom and stayed to flirt with the waitress under the guise of having to stretch his legs.

  “About what?” Luke had taken advantage of an overlap of their lap blankets to slide his hand across under the blankets. He ticked his nails lightly along the inner seam of her jeans. It sent a shiver of anticipation along her skin.

  “About me arranging for the C-130 without consulting with you. It just made sense and I was sure Christian would agree.” She did what she could to keep her voice level, but Luke’s lightest touch, eve
n his smile, was doing strange things to her.

  He ran his fingers up along her inner thigh until the heel of his hand rubbed against her. She clamped her legs together, trapping his touch there. She’d done it instinctively to block him, but now that she’d pinned his hand there, she didn’t want him to move it away. Her wanton past was her past. Since reaching the rational age of eighteen, she’d chosen lovers with care and typically enjoyed her time with them. They invariably made love to The Soldier of Style rather than to Zoe DeMille, but she’d learned to live with that.

  She didn’t know how Luke saw her, never mind what he saw in her, but it certainly wasn’t her online self. It made every touch of his have more meaning, be more important than it should be.

  She never, ever cried having sex. And she’d wept on his shoulder, unable to stop for an embarrassingly long time. And still he hadn’t walked away from her in disgust. Instead he’d sat down on the sand and shifted her so that she could stay in his lap, curl up against his SEAL-broad chest, and simply weep.

  Afterward, he’d made a point of dressing her himself, which was good because her body was still warring between numb and tingling with the aftershocks of him wanting her at all and the incredible releases he’d delivered. When the first piece of clothing he’d put on her had been her knife’s ankle sheath, her heart had made a strange flip. She had no idea what it meant, but it was undeniably there. He wanted to protect her. Being a man, it was a gift he would never understand the magnitude of to a woman—ten-fold to one who’d been violated before.

  Once fully clothed, he’d actually lifted her into the Renault before planting a deep kiss and copping a feel that had left her breathless. This time they’d lined up side by side for the start. They’d run the last hundred kilometers in perfect sync, neither pulling ahead for more than a moment even though they were pushing the cars’ limits the whole way.

  Last night he offered equally synchronized sex.