Night Is Mine

by M. L. Buchman

  For a moment he froze. His hands at a stop. Why weren’t they on her? Ravaging her?

  Mark stood there, the front tab of her flight suit still in his hands, pulled down past her waist. He wasn’t looking at her face; he wasn’t stripping her naked.

  He was staring like a man struck dumb at the line of bare flesh that ran from her dog tags all the way down, revealed by the rolled back flaps of her flight suit.

  “You weren’t kidding.” He turned his face up toward the heavens. “She wasn’t kidding. Thank you, God.”

  Then he looked into her eyes, and she watched his turn suddenly black and feral. With a growl driven up from somewhere past speech, he dragged the suit off her shoulders and down to her ankles in a single pull. Almost before her next breath, she stood barefoot and buck naked on the smooth concrete.

  He dug out some protection, tore the packet open with his teeth, and groaned like a man dying as she rolled it over him. He lifted her with those strong hands wrapped around her bare buttocks and drove into her, slamming her once more against the helicopter.

  She wrapped her legs around him as he pinned her against the smooth curve of Plexiglas. One arm around his neck, and the other hand wrapped around the protruding muzzle of the .50 cal machine gun, their cries rose in unison to shatter against the hangar ceiling.

  ***

  Mark lay against her. The only thing keeping them from sliding to the concrete was Beale’s hand wrapped around the barrel of the .50 cal. He closed his eyes against the first wave of vertigo he’d ever felt. The relief too great, too immense. It filled him like a breath of cool air at high altitude when a hot summer day shimmered far below.

  He raised his head to look at her; she kissed him, long, slow, and deep. A real tonsil-grabber of a kiss. She kissed with her eyes open. Those impossible eyes that could see straight to his soul inspected him. What did they see? He didn’t even know himself.

  She slid one foot down until it touched the concrete though he remained buried deep within her.

  “Tonight,” her voice little more than whisper. Rather than looking at her own watch, she took his wrist and turned it to look at his. “We have one night. Three hours. Mark, show me what we can do in three hours.”

  It ripped his soul open. He knew she was right. One night was all they’d find.

  “What if…”

  She stopped his mouth with her fingertips, then she replaced them with her lips.

  The heat didn’t build again with a roar and a slap. No rocket flare. No explosion echoing to his toes. Her lips rode over his, tasting like sunrise. Sunrise and sea salt.

  He wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her hair. He breathed her in until he’d filled his lungs with her. Until he’d never smell anything so sweet again.

  She laid her head on his shoulder and they stood there. Still her back against the pilot’s door. Unmoving except for a gentle rocking like the tops of trees on a windless day. Moving to some rhythm all their own. He had never held a woman who felt so right, so true.

  He scooped her off her feet, carrying her the few short steps to the Black Hawk’s cargo door. The engine cooling with quiet pings of a job well done.

  A stack of blankets had been stowed at the rear for Search and Rescue survivors. Now he spread them upon the hard deck. Layer upon layer until they made a bed worthy of his lady.

  He scooped her back into his arms as if she weighed nothing and set her upon the jury-rigged bed as if it were a mahogany four-poster.

  Emily laid back and let her eyes drift shut.

  “No.” He leaned down to kiss her on each eye. “I need you to look at me. Look at me with those beautiful eyes of yours, Ms. Emily Beale.”

  She opened them, and he couldn’t say what he saw, but it cast a mist over his mind, wrapping them in the safety of the night.

  He studied her face with his lips, her neck with the back of his hand, her collarbone and that beautiful neckline with the tip of his nose.

  She wore nothing but her dog tags, which was sexier than any cotton, silk, or lace he might have encountered. Lying partly on her and partly beside, he placed his ear upon her heart. He’d know that splendid double-skip beat from a thousand others now that he’d heard it.

  He traced his fingertips over her breast, down her body, around her splendid curves, each such a perfect fit in his hand. Her long fingers slid into his hair and then held him close to her. So close, so tightly, that he could never live, never exist anywhere other than against her heart.

  The fire of the hospital bed, the electric voltage of her apartment floor, the rocket flare of moments ago, all washed away behind their slow exploration.

  He discovered her shivers when he ran his teeth over her insole, her quiet groans when he dug strong fingers into strong shoulders. She discovered how to kiss his one ticklish spot in a way that warmed rather than irritated. How to make him laugh when her smile bloomed mid-kiss.

  When he discovered the tattoo across her lower back while massaging her shoulders, he couldn’t help but take the time to trace every line with a gentle finger. Just the size of his palm, it was about the cutest thing he’d ever seen. The Night Stalker winged horse, with laser-vision eyes, but rather than being mounted by sword-wielding Death, a black serpent rode its back with eyes to match his steed. Beneath, in midnight blue, just four letters curved along the line of her hips: “N.S.D.Q.” It was beautiful work.

  They spent as much time holding each other as they did in any sexual act. She laid against him, on him, under him, and their bodies were in perfect harmony as long as they were wrapped tightly together.

  When at long last he entered her, she cried out. Cried out and he swallowed the cry. He took her pleasure inside him and did his best to give it back. Again the tears rolled down her cheeks, and not all of them were hers.

  He hadn’t cried since before he could remember. He’d always been his dad’s “little trooper.” Now there was too much inside him. Too much pleasure, too much fire, too much heat, too much Emily Beale.

  She swallowed his moans as he had her cries, and when they rose and rose like a rotor gaining speed for takeoff, when she wrapped her legs tight around him and he drove home, his breath wracked out of him in gasps. So sharp and full and complete that he half feared he’d never be able to move again.

  And he half feared he would.

  Chapter 54

  There were no words between them. Not that they were awkward as they dressed, pulling on flight suits, tucking pant legs into boots, holstering weapons.

  Emily thought it was just the opposite. They dressed exactly as they flew, exactly as they’d made love, in absolute and perfect harmony. Never had such peace washed over her as when Mark brushed at her hair with his fingers and as she strapped his watch about his wrist.

  If she’d felt mellow after waking in the hospital, after he had taken such exquisite care of her body, she’d need a new word to define her feelings now. Languid. Sanguine. Glorious!

  She started laughing. A giggle at first, but it built and built until it rolled about the hangar and pulled Mark into its arms and hers.

  They began to dance. Some jaunty mash-up of waltz and two-step. They were stumbling, half falling, laughing in each other’s arms when one of them kicked a clipboard. It skittered loudly across the floor and snapped them back to reality.

  In minutes, they’d folded the blankets, stowed their gear in their bags, and left the base.

  Emily dropped Mark at the curb of the first of his backward stops. It was a SOAR apartment that he’d signed out, where he kept his uniform and flight gear. He’d change to civilian and then head to a hotel room under the name Marky Herman, from which the uncouth high-roller would emerge.

  The cab took her back toward the White House, but she had the driver stop and leave her at the Lincoln Memorial. It was still half an hour to sunrise, and she wanted to spend it with her old friend.

  Other than a strolling security guard, there was just the two of them, Emi
ly and her marble pal.

  She wanted to… She didn’t know what and almost laughed aloud, but in the silence of the pre-dawn light it felt presumptuous to laugh here.

  Wandering over to the north wall, she read aloud the end of his second Inaugural speech. “To do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

  She had always flown by this standard and the one on the south wall spoken a century and a half ago at Gettysburg: “That government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the Earth.”

  She stared at the words, fighting the burning in her eyes. Fighting to keep focus on what she must do. She could never be near Mark again. Once this mission was accomplished, she’d have to be reassigned. Leave her crew? Leave her family? For the Black Adders were more than companions; they were family. She would take a round for any of them. And any of them would do the same for her. To leave that…

  Reassigned or resign?

  If she resigned, she and Mark could be together. It made her throat close to even think the word. If she resigned her commission to be with him, she’d never be able to forgive him, no matter how she wished to. That was not an answer either. Considering the reality proved too painful and she turned.

  Turned and ran from the one place that had always given her hope.

  Chapter 55

  The waiting game of cat and mouse continued. The blacksuits circled about her. FBI Director’s daughter or not, friend of the sparring gym or not, if Emily was the cause of the unrest in the White House, they’d land on her hard.

  Frank did his best to hold onto friendly, but inside of two days, all signs of trust had faded away, first into caution and finally distinct mistrust.

  Then he began to stalk her. She’d become more rather than less dangerous in his mind. A street fighter had different ethics. The primary code was survival above all else. It had served her well in SOAR. Survival of the team, of her squad, of her cadre had been her guiding light. Right now she and her one-man cadre were the only ones on the inside of that team. Even her father had to be outside the veil now. None of it sat well with the blacksuit’s team-player attitude. She considered a hop out to Anacostia, but too many memories lurked there in the sun and shadows. Mark became a caged animal. He didn’t try to touch her when they were in private. Even holding hands in public was agony. Walking side by side they fell into an easy, comfortable, impossible rhythm and then stumbled out of it, almost tripping with the wrongness of it.

  Two more long days passed while the First Lady luxuriated in the hot tubs of Aspen. Two days of knowing the wheels were coming off the horse and being unable to take any action. She’d botched the whole operation from top to bottom.

  She hovered around the kitchen like a mad ghost, Banquo gone even madder than Lady Macbeth.

  With Mark here, the kitchen felt even more compressed, ready to explode at the slightest spark. He wasn’t even pretending to flirt with her anymore.

  And she missed it. She couldn’t stand to think about how much.

  They’d had a silent lunch of the worst chicken-salad sandwiches ever made by woman. She’d cleaned the kitchen, and still no sign of Katherine who was supposed to be back already.

  Emily circled out. Cleanup wasn’t her job, but she headed out into the third floor of the residence. Checking gave her something to do. Some space away from Mark.

  The First Lady’s favorite lounge for entertaining was empty and immaculate. Not a stray plate or lipstick-fringed glass to be seen.

  Her bedroom was dark and empty. Her private office was quiet, the door ajar, the afternoon sunlight streaming in.

  Emily stuck her head in.

  Naked.

  Sprawled in the center of the large oriental.

  Awash in a pool of slanting sunlight. Katherine’s white skin and red hair a startling contrast to the tight green stitching of the massive rug.

  First Lady Katherine Matthews arched in the throes of passion.

  And beneath her, equally lost to the world, Chief of Staff Ray Stevens. Best friend to the President. The lightbulb in her head went off. There was the accomplice. Knowing that, the motive should become clear.

  Emily backed away as quietly as she could. At the last instant, she couldn’t be sure, but she thought Katherine turned to look at her with a gaze that was anything but glassy eyed.

  Chapter 56

  Emily didn’t remember returning to the kitchen. Didn’t remember trying to drag Mark out of the kitchen, out of the building, away from the city.

  She did remember him digging in his heels before they’d gone even five feet across the parquet floor. Emily struggled. Pulled. Jerked.

  Until finally he pinned her to the silvered face of the fridge with an arm across her shoulders, almost pressing against her throat.

  “What’s up, Emily? Spit it out.”

  She shook her head. Not here. Not…

  She pushed at him, and he moved back a single step.

  Hand signs. ASL, American Sign Language, was common among SOAR and Special Forces.

  Lady, a gesture like tracing the line of a bonnet, and Chief… She couldn’t remember how to sign “staff” and had to laboriously spell it out. Then she made the sign pretty universally recognizable, even without ASL training, for “sex.” Two vees like peace signs slapping together palm to palm. Finally, for lack of any better symbol, she pointed emphatically toward the First Lady’s office.

  I thought you said she was hot for the Vice President?

  She flirts with VP all the time. All the time! Circled the letter t for “time” before her open palm like a hand on a clock face, twice for emphasis.

  And he flirts back?

  WAY! Each letter punched into the air as a shout. She thought about it for a moment. But feels just playful. Was Vice President Thomas just a cover?

  Mark paced off. Thinking.

  Right, Army. In a jam, use your brain.

  Mark paced back and forth on one side of the island, she on the other.

  Twice he stopped, started to sign, and then lowered his hand, shaking his head.

  Katherine Matthews was having an affair with the Chief of Staff. Flirting with the Vice President, though Emily had seen no signs of more.

  And… Peter wasn’t just too busy to have dinners with his wife. He and his wife were wholly estranged. Stupid! Stupid! Stupid! That was obvious, once she thought about it.

  She tapped Mark’s shoulder. Once you started signing, you sort of forgot you could talk.

  P and FL, President and First Lady, then she shook her head emphatically.

  She didn’t need any sign language for Mark’s mouthed, “Duh!”

  Heat flooded her face. Okay, she should have picked that up sooner. A lot sooner, back to the moment she arrived barely two weeks ago.

  But if that was the case, that meant that Peter was perhaps being more than just polite when he said how much he missed her. How much… Don’t go there, Army. Don’t go there!

  Stay focused. Katherine, VP Thomas, and Chief of Staff Stevens.

  Katherine did nothing by accident, but what was she doing?

  And how did the attempts, or as her father insisted and she now believed, apparent attempts, on the First Lady’s life fit into the puzzle?

  Mark grabbed Emily and slammed her back against the fridge. In a second his mouth was on hers, one hand grabbing her behind, another under her shirt and clamped on her breast.

  He swallowed any protest she made deep in her throat. Even to her ears, it sounded more like a moan.

  It burned. It sizzled. It scorched out her brain and left a puddle of need in its place. She clamped both her hands hard into those firm buttocks of his and held on.

  Blind! Deaf! Dumb! All she could do was feel as Mark overwhelmed her senses. He didn’t attack her with lust; he attacked her with need. Not of man for woman, but of him for her. She’d howl like an alpha she-wolf if she wasn’t so lost in her own pounding blood.
/>   She inhaled, consumed, feasted.

  And Mark matched her, taking as good as he gave. He held her so tightly she couldn’t breathe, but that was okay. She didn’t want to.

  Then he pinched her breast hard. Hard enough for her to yelp if his mouth hadn’t been clamped on hers.

  That was nasty!

  She prepared to retaliate when she heard it.

  The kitchen door opened.

  She concentrated on the kiss a moment longer. Leaned in, taking one last deep taste of her tongue against his. Her bones were wilting, but the memory of that pinch kept her from getting lost again.

  She managed to open one eye and spotted Katherine at the door. She winked at Katherine. The First Lady winked back and then withdrew.

  They held the clench a while longer, just in case. Then she tried to pull back.

  Mark didn’t appear interested in that. His fingers hooked deep in her bra, driving her crazy, making her half hope he’d just rip the barrier away and ravage her. The initial, brutal force of his kiss eased back to a tease that curled her toes. His body pressed hers against the fridge with need. Very evident need.

  She managed to get her mouth free, and he moved down to nuzzle her neck. For a moment, she allowed herself to wallow in the sensation. She had no choice. The heat poured into her body like flaming jet fuel.

  No one ever had made her feel this way. And his hands, those wonderful hands, shifted from grope to fondle to caress. She laid her head back against the refrigerator as he studied her collarbone with the tip of his tongue, her waist with his fingertips.

  Of its own accord, one of her legs wrapped around his hip and pulled him tight against her. Their mutual moan echoed down inside her. She wanted him. Now. Against the wall, on the maple and cherry block, on the floor—

  Then she pictured Katherine and Ray Stevens naked on the floor, and that was a splash of ice water.

  Mark sensed the shift and had the decency to back away. At least in mood, if not in distance.

  He rested his forehead against hers.