“Can’t I take a shower first?” she asked.
“I think it’s completely unnecessary. I plan to get you good and sweaty all over again. Besides, I love the way you smell right now, Christy.”
“Yes,” she said as she sighed into one of his long kisses. “When you come home, from the gym, I feel the same way,” she whispered as she smoothed over the seam between his lips with her fingertips.
“So what’ll it be?” he asked. He pretended she would automatically know what he meant, and loved watching her beautiful brain struggle to come up with an answer.
As she turned her head slowly from side to side and furrowed her brow, she said, “I don’t know what you mean.”
He tasted her lips, and then kissed her slow and went down to tease the place she loved beneath her ear. She arched to him, her thigh seeking the bulge between his legs. He rubbed himself against her knee and upward against her muscled thigh.
Into her ear he whispered, “We do it slow and sensual, make it long and make it last. Or, we do it rough and urgent.”
“Ah,” she said as a knowing smile crossed her face.
“So what’ll it be, girl, or boy?”
“And you can serve me up a male or female child by the way you make love to me?”
Kyle angled his face and winked, then shook his head, “No, we make a boy or a girl.” He kissed her again, this time pressing and searching with his tongue.
His face migrated down her chest until he sucked her nipple through the stretchy fabric of her workout bra, and then nipped her through the cotton. Her reaction was immediate, always what he loved best about her. She threw herself into whatever mood he was in, and he cherished every moan, every sigh, and every gentle thigh on thigh stroke, every time she showed him how much she wanted him. She bit her lower lip, her eyes sparkling.
“So, how do you know that slow and long makes a girl and urgent and rough makes a boy?”
“Because, my love,” he said as he lifted her sports bra and sucked the nipple bared to him until it knotted, “when I’m with you, anything is possible. Anything.”
MOST OF THEIR group ate on the ninth floor deck, where Italian rock videos blared on twenty-foot-high screens. Mark joined them, picking up two glasses of the fresh squeezed orange juice from the machine behind the bar. He finished the two glasses in barely two gulps, and then went in search of the omelet maker inside. It was going to be a very warm day, even though it was still winter, and most the passengers were in tank tops and sleeveless dresses, applying sunscreen to their pale arms and wearing floppy hats. He noted that the Germans liked to carry walking sticks, while the French and Italians preferred zippered fanny packs.
He and the rest of his Teammates who planned to go ashore wore knee-length kakis, flip-flops and white T-shirts. All wore sunglasses, and most of them wore a baseball cap of some kind, none of the caps with any logo identifying them as Navy, or any sort of military. Though they had them, they never wore their dog tags.
He felt eyes on his back and checked over his shoulder to see Roberto deep in a discussion with two older Brazilian passengers seated at a table by the window. Though Roberto seemed fully engaged in the conversation, Mark saw he didn’t miss anything. He watched everyone around him, and when the Brazilian dancer made eye contact, his skin pricked. Perhaps Roberto knew she hadn’t slept in her cabin last night. Mark could smell her on his skin still, had been reluctant to shower off her flowery scent, but hoped no one else could smell it.
He’d known the dance instructor search for them. Eventually, he would find them. It was only a matter of time, and Mark slowly began an assessment of the threat. He decided he might risk stashing a weapon on the lifeboat just in case their spot was discovered and things became violent, especially since he was some distance from his Teammates when he and Sophia were alone on Deck 5. Preparing and arming himself suddenly seemed prudent. He wasn’t going to tell her about it, though.
Libby sat closest to the railing, nursing a glass of ginger ale along with a piece of Cooper’s toasted bagel. Mark thought she looked pale and preoccupied. Cooper hardly left her side, rubbed her back, her neck and shoulders, asking her questions and barely getting her attention.
Mark set his tray of oatmeal, omelet, hash browns, sausage and bitter black coffee down across from Coop and Libby. Immediately, Libby turned and looked out to sea.
“She’s not well?” Mark asked quietly.
Coop studied the side of her face before answering. “We’re not quite sure what is making her so sick, but we think she’s pregnant. Won’t know until we can get to a lab.”
“But I was sick as a dog the last time,” Libby said as she turned to face Coop.
“I remember that,” Mark said gently. He also remembered Cooper being concerned last time that her violent vomiting might harm the baby, a concern that might have been justified.
“You’re going to be fine, babe,” Coop said a little too cheerily. He’d forgotten to tell his face to support his words, and the worry line above the bridge of his nose was deep, pulling in the skin around his eyes, as he squinted.
Mark decided to try to be more helpful. “The ship was really rocking and rolling last night. I think you may just be a little seasick.”
The comment sent Libby dashing for the automatic teak wood doors inside.
Coop gave him a deadpan stare. “Thanks.” He curled up the side of his mouth.
“Maybe if she gets sick she’ll feel better.”
“She’s been throwing up all night and she still doesn’t feel better. She has practically nothing in her stomach.” He held up a half bagel that looked like a mouse had nibbled on the outsides, barely touched. Mark saw the ginger ale was still half full.
Cooper’s phone buzzed. He checked the screen. “She’s gone to the cabin. I gotta go.”
Mark moved over to a long table where Fredo and Mia sat across from Armando and Gina. Armando was studying Fredo, a wide smile plastered across his handsome, tanned face that Mark recognized as a taunt. Fredo had been avoiding eye contact with the Puerto Rican SEAL, and looked pitifully grateful when Mark joined them to take some of Armando’s focus off him.
“Hey, Marky,” Fredo said eagerly, punching his left bicep. “Where’d you sneak off to last night?”
“I was on patrol.”
“I feel you,” Fredo said. Mia wrapped her arms around his bicep, squeezed herself to him and leaned her head full of curls against his shoulder. Fredo avoided looking at Armando, and wiggled his unibrow at Mark instead.
“Fredo here’s been on a mission of his own,” Armando said.
“Stop it Armando,” Gina chided, playfully smacking his arm. “You’re terrible.”
“No,” Armando said as he nodded and stared at his coffee cup and empty plate. “Terrible would have been what I’d be if anyone but Fredo was cozy with my sister.”
Mia straightened. “There you go again,” Mia huffed. “Why do I always feel like you’re my father? You don’t approve, just say something.”
“Like it would do any good,” Armando returned quickly, but he was still beaming, showing he didn’t really object to any of it.
Gina sighed and shook her head, crossing her arms. “I can only imagine what it was like in your household growing up,” she said.
“Damned straight. He practically taste-tested my food, too.”
“Well, Mama did hire that voodoo cook, you remember that? When she took on that extra job that one summer?” Armando said, pointing his forefinger at her.
“Oh, please, how could I ever forget? The one who liked meat practically raw?”
“I’m sure glad Libby isn’t listening to this conversation,” Mark interjected.
On that they all agreed.
Mia slipped her hand into Fredo’s lap and squeezed him in front of everyone. “Ready, hon?”
Fredo looked up, as if he was asking for help from Mama Guzman’s God, and then stood.
“It could be worse, my man,” Armando sai
d, grinning up at him.
The two of them finally smiled cordially. “Wasn’t complaining, just that—”
“He likes me to surprise him, but pretends he doesn’t.” Mia winked at Gina. “But he does…trust me, he really does.”
Mark watched the little SEAL and his bombshell walk away, their arms wrapped around each other. He was happy for Fredo, who was finally getting to exercise his protective nature. Mark knew he’d lay his life down in a heartbeat for Mia, and would have done so even before she returned his feelings.
He longed for the day he could openly show his affection to Sophia, bring her to breakfasts and dinners with his Teammates. He didn’t like that she spent so much time in a windowless cabin on zero deck, or sliding down the hallway anywhere near the Moroccan dance troupe, or around Roberto with his frustrated, third-grade libido.
Chapter 20
‡
TWO OF AZZIZ’S friends went with Maksym to the holding cell to let the Moroccan dancer loose. The Ukrainian officer didn’t mistake the hatred that flared in the dancer’s eyes. He decided to do a little diversion as he unlocked the cell.
“Are you even a dancer?” he asked.
He heard some Arabic dialect he couldn’t understand. Someone was translating for someone else.
“We all dance in our village. We have for centuries,” Azziz returned in Russian, with icy coolness.
“But you’ve been carrying a rifle more than your one-stringed, sorry-looking guitar,” he said in English. Maksym’s surprise that the dancer knew Russian stuck in his throat like a fishhook.
“It could do serious damage if I fucked you in the ass with it,” Azziz said in Russian again. The two cohorts rattled off something between them and laughed.
“Seriously,” Maksym said, sticking stubbornly to English. “You juveniles are going to ruin the whole mission if you don’t get your souls right with God.”
The Moroccans jabbered among themselves again. Maksym knew he should have learned Berber, but had wondered at the time if he’d ever need it again. He was hoping for an island in the Caribbean or someplace else warm where he and Helena could retire and explore their passions without interruption.
He’d be as far away from the Middle East or Russia as humanly possible, basking on a sandy beach as white and flawless as the insides of her thighs. He’d be some place that was a tax haven, with more money than he could spend in his lifetime, buying fish and coconuts and occasional beers down by the wharf.
He heard Allah’s name. English was such a much better language to swear in, he thought. He regretted the Moroccans could understand it. It robbed him of the satisfaction of spewing his venom in a way that kept the meaning private, but still making the public display. Nothing better than telling your enemy you despise him while robbing him of the translation. Made it extra sweet. The world was getting to be a smaller place. Harder and harder to do now.
Patience, Maksym, Helena had said many times. He was looking forward to not having to be patient, cordial, nice, or in charge of anything but the way she moaned and pleasured him. How often he could fuck, where he could fuck and with whom, and how often he could just get drunk and lie on the beach. He wondered why, in the bowels of the ship with three smelly Moroccans, he was suddenly filled with lust for the busty and vibrant Helena.
THE SEALS DARTED wary looks at the three dancers as they sauntered down the crew hallway. Maksym rounded the corner toward them, but he was watching the dancers over his shoulder like he was bracing for an explosion. Mark noted how troubled the junior officer looked, in his dark and brooding way. The North Africans were speaking in clipped shouts to each other, flailing their arms about, far from settled. In front of one of the doors, the tall one, the one Mark saw as the leader of the group, stood and spat at the floor in front of the closed door to a cabin. The man arched his chest like a bow as if challenging the metal and plastic door itself.
Mark saw Maksym react quickly, shake his head and rub his chin, absorbed in some dark thought. When Maksym glanced up and their gazes connected, he saw the officer’s dark eyes widen and challenge him. Mark looked away, not because he was afraid, but because he didn’t want Maksym to know he was on to the guy. Something had set off alarm bells in Mark’s gut, and he needed space to consider what it actually was. It all stemmed from what he’d seen. He’d learned to trust his instincts, know when something just wasn’t right.
He wondered why Kyle had given permission for Christy and the other SEAL wives and girlfriends to stray further than Mark thought safe. Surely his LPO could pick up on some of the dangers lurking all around them. Maybe he’d had a private talk with Moshe and had some inside knowledge that left him feeling unconcerned. It would be like Kyle to check things out, do the advance survey of the situation.
Mark pretended not to notice Maksym hadn’t stopped drilling a stare into him. “Kyle, shouldn’t we wait for the ladies?” he finally asked, hoping to get the attention off him. It was his way of telling Kyle he was worried.
“We’re hiring our own bus. I want to make sure his creds check out before I’m letting any of the girls get on it,” Kyle answered. “And Moshe said he’d accompany them.”
“Thought he wasn’t on this tour,” Fredo barked.
“He wasn’t. He’s agreed to accompany us,” Kyle replied.
“So we got the fuckin’ bus all to ourselves, then?” Coop asked.
“Roger that. You do your sweeps, Coop and Fredo,” Kyle added as he nodded to his two trusty gadget guys.
The shiny silver and red bus was in much better condition than the buses the rest of the passengers were herded onto. The driver was an acquaintance of Moshe’s, who came bouncing off the ship with all the ladies in tow, looking like he was thoroughly enjoying himself.
Mark leaned into Kyle and Cooper. “Somethin’s wrong with that picture, gents.”
Kyle pushed his baseball cap back off his forehead and repositioned his sunglasses. “Way too much fun for him,” he said and grinned.
Coop was frowning.
“She not there?” Kyle had turned to Coop, his voice barely a whisper.
Coop shook his head. He faced his LPO, holding his arms out to the side. “Don’t know why she didn’t text, but guys, I gotta stay back.”
“Sure, you go, Coop. Take care of your woman.”
Cooper jogged past the ladies surrounding a delighted Moshe, tipping his cap to them. He ran up the gangway, but was stopped and asked to go back down and up the other side. Mark was grateful he’d been stopped. He would have run into the Moroccan dancers, who burst from the bowels of the lower deck. Each sported matching new-looking black backpacks and sunglasses. Their small, skinny frames made them look like high school kids on a field trip.
Coop disappeared, ducking inside the ship just as the dancers made it out into the morning sun from the other gangplank. They gingerly swerved around the Israeli and his harem, one of them looking over his shoulder at the girls. The other two squinted at the group of SEALs gathered next to the shiny red bus. Mark could tell Azziz had no intention of getting anywhere near the Team guys, or any of the other passengers. They quietly vanished into the crowd of taxis and small delivery trucks littering the pier.
Kyle wrapped his big arm around Christy, hauled her into him to give her a penetrating kiss, and then practically carried her up the bus stairs. Devon pulled Nick up the steps right behind Christy. The two had been pretty inseparable, since they both worked in real estate and had similar all-out shopping habits. Jones and Jasmine stood close. Mia and Fredo were walking with their arms around each other’s waists.
“Boss, where’s Armando?” Mark asked after he stepped up into the darkened bus.
Kyle gave his movie star smile, complete with the white teeth and dazzling blue eyes. He winked at his wife. “Mark, I didn’t think I’d have to spell it out for you. You see, when a man and a woman—”
“Shut the fuck up.” Mark was getting irritated. The whole world was in love and could show it. He
re he was, in some form of love or lust, and he had to keep it a secret for the good of all.
All is a fuckin’ killjoy. It felt like politics, just like the directives handed down telling them when they could or could not engage, and which sometimes cost good men and women their lives. Because of a decision made by someone who would never see a war zone and didn’t know what it felt like to put his or her life on the line.
But that had always been the way of it for the warriors of the world. Most days he accepted that. He didn’t like what was happening today, though, with innocents being exposed to crossfire.
Even if the crossfire was imaginary.
Chapter 21
‡
TENERIFE WAS QUAINT. The weather was perfect, with a wide, cloudless sky and views out to sea from the narrow switchback roads to the top of the volcano’s caldera. The air was slightly breezy but temperate, and Mark could see why European settlers had stayed up in the hills, away from the hot, crowded beaches below.
Cobblestoned streets adorned by upper-story windows with flower-laden balconies curled along rows of buildings built hundreds of years ago by Portuguese merchants. Birds chirped in the blooming bougainvillea vines that covered several cathedrals and storefronts. Sailboats looked like toys on the blue water sprinkled with whitecaps.
Mark felt time stood still here. He could easily come back to this place, spend a month in one of those upper rooms with the flowers on the balcony, watch the boats, eat and sleep and make love to Sophia all day long. Scanning the groups of tourists disembarking from busses, he was glad to know some people still got to live that way.
Maybe someday. Maybe when my work is done, when I am no longer on the front lines, maybe there’ll be something like this in my future.
He’d been pushing so hard for so many years, he wasn’t entirely sure it was possible. Just look at this cruise, for instance. He was more tense right now than he was sometimes in the killing fields overseas. Of course, the women weren’t there, like they were here. He was aware that violence in a place where you least expect it is even more shocking. It bothered him that he was expecting it and didn’t think anyone else on the Team was.
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