by Joey W. Hill
His hands clasped her upper arms. He brought her to her feet, tilted her chin to look at him, his expression full of emotion.
“Tell me just once,” he said. “And after that, not heaven or hell or even you will take me from your side. Not ever.” His voice was harsh with tears he wouldn’t, couldn’t apparently shed. She began to cry again for them both, reaching up to touch his face.
“I love you, Tyler. I love you.”
* * * * *
He took a few minutes to clean up in the bathroom. When he came back to her, she was waiting for him on the bed, her blue eyes like soft jewels in the semi-darkness of a room where the curtains were drawn, her hair floating around her body. He made love to her then, tenderly, the both of them nested in her quilts. His body stretched out on hers, moving slow, easy strokes into her heat and wetness. Her body clasped his with arms and legs and she buried her face into his shoulder as they finished together, shuddering.
Tyler suspected it might be the first time in her life that she was unconcerned about anything outside her bedroom door. He could feel her worry, though. Knew she was afraid her darkness made her incapable of living up to the expectations of the words she’d spoken to him. So with every touch, every softly murmured word of love and admiration, he let her know she was already everything he wanted, everything he needed. He put away his own dark fears where they could not touch this moment. And when she slept, at last he felt her relax into a world where there might finally be no dreams at all.
He watched her doze and held her close, his breath on her temple. Inhaled that familiar scent of tea tree oil, lavender and woman until he too succumbed to slumber, his feet over and under hers beneath the covers, an intimacy he’d not allowed himself with any woman since his wife. The simple joy of it after the past hour of intensity made him reflect that Marguerite was right. She wasn’t the only one who’d kept herself closed off.
But now it didn’t matter if she ripped his chest from his heart every day. If she was the eagle come to disembowel Prometheus and he was chained to that rock, he’d raise his face in welcome the moment he felt the breeze off her moonlight-colored feathers touch his brow.
Chapter Eleven
Perhaps because of jet lag he fell asleep more deeply than he would normally. When he opened one eye, he found it was nearly eleven. While Marguerite was no longer beside him, her scent was on the pillow and a tray with a small carafe and coffee cup was on the nightstand. A spray of daisies and wildflowers tied in one of her ribbons rested beneath the tented note.
I’ll be back this afternoon. Had a class at eleven. If you can’t stay, I’ll be at your house tonight as planned.
She’d drawn… He drew back, squinting. Not for the first time, he acknowledged that eventually he was going to have to give in and admit that standard middle-aged farsightedness was about to overcome forty-plus years of twenty-twenty vision. XXs and OOs. OOs with smiley faces in them. He smiled, picked it up. She was never going to stop surprising him. Of course, she might have dictated the note to Chloe and the hostess had added the little flourish. Since he was lying in the bed with one length of leg from sole to buttock stretched bare over the cover, he hoped it was Marguerite who’d left the note, regardless of who had written it.
He took a quick shower, enjoying the intimacy of being surrounded by her razor, shampoos and soaps, though possessing the usual manly distaste of the floral aromas on his own skin. Pulling on his jeans and T-shirt, he courteously decided to wait on a shave so he didn’t wear out her blade with his rough jaw. Those were things he didn’t know about her. If she’d be annoyed by a man borrowing her razor. If she preferred her shower in the morning or evening. He looked forward to finding out.
It was an astounding nine in the morning. He found himself grateful that he could follow the corridor at the base of the staircase past the café’s restrooms and take a detour into the kitchen that didn’t take him across the public floor. A quick glimpse showed him at least ten of the fifteen tables were occupied with morning tea drinkers.
“There you are.” Chloe beamed as he came in. “Was the coffee to your liking?” At his alarmed look, she added hastily, “Marguerite took it up.” His instant relief produced a snort of laughter. “Though from your expression, I’m sure I missed a morning perk by not offering to do it myself.”
“You are incorrigible,” he said reprovingly. Her grin broadened.
“Hey, you got to enjoy it while you’re young enough to do more than just look.”
“That’s what worries me. Particularly when I’m unconscious from jet lag.”
She giggled, gestured. “We’ve got scones and a really excellent coffee cake. In the boss’s absence, I won’t even charge you.”
Tyler sat down on a stool in a corner of the kitchen and willingly filched a piece of the cake, gesturing with the full mug of coffee he’d brought down. “Marguerite said she had a class. What class is she attending?” There were so many things he didn’t know about her. He did make a mental note to pay Chloe for the cake. He didn’t want to give Marguerite an excuse to throw him out on her next mood swing. He suppressed a smile at the image. He wouldn’t put it past her to do it.
“Oh, she’s an instructor.”
“So the note was true. I figured she was just avoiding me.”
Chloe chuckled, putting down a sampler next to the coffee mug, thinking no woman in her right mind would leave her bed with something that looked like Tyler in it. “Try this. It’s a new green tea. No, if M wanted you out, I suspect she’d just kick you out.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
And wouldn’t she like to be the fly on the wall for that one, Chloe mused. She had a tremendous amount of faith in her employer, but she thought this one might be more than a handful when crossed. She liked him, though. Not only liked the way he looked at M, but how he looked after her. And how M acted around him. So she figured she’d take the risk of getting fired, play dumb if M asked her why she spilled the scoop over something very few other than her staff knew about her Thursdays.
“Today’s her jump day.”
“Excuse me?”
“M’s a serious skydiver. Has a standing appointment on Thursday of every other week.”
Tyler put down the sampler, having stopped it two inches from his lips. “She jumps out of airplanes.”
“Yes. Hey.” Chloe was concerned at the look in his eye as he rose, tossed some bills on the table. “I told you that you don’t have to pay for that. Seriously. And she’s really good. There’s nothing to worry about. In fact, she does it every other Thursday because they use her video stream to help teach the classes they hold that day.”
“Where?”
When she hesitated, Tyler’s expression changed and her mouth opened before she could stop herself, a reflex of self-preservation. “Oconee Airfield.”
As he nodded and left, she shook her head. “M’s going to kill me. Kill me, then fire me.”
* * * * *
She was already in the air. The staff at the front desk encouraged him to go sit in on the advanced class that would be watching her video stream live.
Tyler took a seat, nodding to the class instructor who looked as if he had served in the military. His class of six or seven students ranged in age from twenty to forty. They were mostly men, adrenaline-seekers he guessed. Only one woman, a thirty-something who looked like she was doing it to break her out of the mediocrity track. In the back near Tyler two men sat in flight suits with the airfield’s logo, indicating they were also instructors assisting in some manner with the class.
“Marguerite is truly one of our exceptional jumpers,” the instructor was saying. “She’ll be demonstrating the Atmonauti method we’ve been going over today. In a few minutes, you’ll watch her exit.”
Tyler’s gaze turned to the wide-screen television behind them. At that moment, the screen flickered and they had a picture of the inside of the plane, the camera holder obviously moving to the open doorway.
The camera til
ted and Tyler blinked, his stomach dropping at the free-fall effect of seeing the ground thousands of feet below and the tips of the cameraman’s shoes as he stepped on the small platform just outside the door.
“Now the difference with Atmonauti is you’re flying at about a thirty degree angle to the horizon and you can vary that about fifteen degrees in either direction. You’re looking for a certain zone and wanting to hold it. You control the speed with your legs, move them wider to slow down, arrow them together to go faster. You can fly more efficiently and do more things because you’re working with the airflow.” The instructor went to the chalkboard where he’d diagrammed stick figures, angles and figures on velocity and ground covered. “She’ll be going a hundred miles an hour in the right heading. You can go slower with this method, prolong your dive. She’ll go about 1.5 miles out and then use her chute to bring her back to the DZ, the Drop Zone.” He glanced toward Tyler, acknowledging his presence and apparently taking him for a potential new diver auditing the class.
When hell freezes over, Tyler thought with grim humor. On several missions he’d been forced to jump out of plane, in such less than ideal circumstances that it had been added to the list of things he would never do if he had any kind of choice. Jump out of an airplane, cut off his genitals with a rusty knife…
Marguerite was at the opening in a white diving suit that covered her from head to toe, her body clearly defined, smooth and sleek as a seal. Her goggles were down, but he’d know those soft lips anywhere, the way she tilted her head, apparently listening to something the cameraman was saying to her. She nodded, reached out, clasped his hand. Drew back, adjusted her goggles and then leaped.
Tyler’s chair scraped as he stood up, unable to stop himself. Fortunately, the instructor and class were too riveted on the screen to notice his involuntary response.
“She chose a forward exit. Notice how quickly she orients herself, finds that angle we talked about. You can do a head down or a backward jump as well. In fact, she’s likely to roll in a few moments…there she goes…now she’s on her back, which is an outstanding view. Just blue sky, folks, nothing up there but you and God. The beauty of the Atmonauti jump is, because you’re at that angle, you find silence. No noise, no air rush, no disruption…”
“Well, except for John and his camera,” an instructor near Tyler quipped.
“God, she commands the air,” one of the students said, awe in his voice.
“You don’t command the air,” the teacher reproved. “You learn to work with it, respect it. She does, on all levels. She’s part of it.”
Tyler noted the man did not take his gaze from the screen as he added, “Marguerite is poetry up there. She’s the best of Walt Whitman with some of the darkness of Edgar Allan Poe thrown in.”
“Yep.” The staffer who’d made the original quip gave the class a wink. “For a lot of guys, it’s a beautiful girl carrying a six-pack of Budweiser, but to Kyle here, it’s a woman who looks like that and is a hell of a diver. What more could he want?”
How about jaw replacement surgery if he doesn’t stop salivating over her? Tyler quelled the territorial surge. She WAS beautiful. Even the woman in the audience was riveted, as if they were all watching an angel, something not quite one of them and capable of marvelous feats.
“All right, she and John will break now and she’ll pull her chute and come back in.” The instructor turned back to his class. “Let’s go over the head down jump…”
Tyler watched the full jump, his eyes trained on the television even as John got farther from Marguerite and his camera at times was swinging to capture the scenery, above and below. But eventually the camera would swing back to her and it was for that Tyler waited, leaning forward in his chair to watch the now small figure. The chute pull, her body drifting up with it gracefully, then her arms moving as she used the cords to take her in the direction she wanted to go.
Did she go there for the stillness? For the weightless feeling? For the memory of her last moments with David, spinning through the air, knowing that it was when they hit the ground that everything would change?
When the class was complete and the students were headed out to practice landing techniques, he stepped outside, standing in the shade of the hangar, simply waiting for her. He wasn’t sure how he felt. He’d come, driven by anxiety, but now he just needed to see her, touch her, reassure himself that the endearment he used for her was not in fact what she aspired to be, to fly away from him, from all of them.
The Jeep that pulled into the parking lot was driven by a kid who he assumed was John. An eighteen-year-old geek type with a surfer’s physique who looked at her as if she was everything he could ever want in life. There was an older man in the second seat who called out as she left the Jeep, “Be sure and put something on that scrape.”
Tyler’s eyes coursed over her, saw the rip in the knee of her suit, the stain of blood. It was superficial, something probably caused by a stumble on landing, but it still made him take a deep steadying breath before he stepped forward.
She’d already seen him, even as she lifted her hand in acknowledgement of her companion’s comment. Carrying her gear in her arms, she came toward him, her expression unreadable. Not welcoming or unwelcoming, just neutral.
“You know, certain royal personages used to cut the tongues out of their servants’ heads to ensure their secrets weren’t revealed,” she said when she was within earshot.
“As devoted to you as she is, I’m not sure Chloe would stand still while you got the butcher knife,” he commented. “Unless you presented papers proving you were related to Prince William and could arrange a date with him.”
She stopped a few feet away, studying him. He raised a brow. “What?”
“I’m wondering if I need to run. You have that look like you did the other night.”
“I was angry at first,” he admitted. “I thought this was more of the same. Your constant flirtation with death. But—”
“It was.” She stated it quietly, met his startled gaze. “At first.” She glanced around. “Let me put my gear down and maybe we can walk down to the duck pond, there at the end of the runway.”
She dropped her equipment in her car, shoving it into the second seat to repack later, and pushed back the hood of the jumpsuit. Her hair was wound in a crown of braids tightly pinned against her skull. When she released the pins and let the braids drop, she tied them together with one of the braids, making the tail look like a flogger of multiple blonde strands. After a hesitation, she reached out. Bemused, he took her hand. She started down the runway linked to him in that fashion.
“I like holding hands,” she said, with a shy nod that he found charming.
“I like holding yours.” He cocked his head. “You’re different every day, you know that? I can’t keep up with you. A week ago, I’d have had to take you through an interrogation to understand something like this. And now you’re initiating the conversation, taking me somewhere we won’t be interrupted.”
“Or I could be taking you somewhere to take advantage of you,” she pointed out. “The duck pond is rather private. Though if we have a plane come in to land, or the students go up, they’d get an eyeful.”
“Or you could be taking me there to drown me. I never know.”
“Well, you said like you liked my unpredictability.” She sobered. “You want me to explain this to you. I promised, last night…” She swallowed, met his gaze with an obvious effort. “To be open to you as Master. And as a lover. And I understand that answering your questions is part of that. It’s not easy for me. I’m just trying to do it right.”
“You’re doing fine.” He found it difficult to speak, too overcome by the urge to simply kiss her.
The duck pond was inhabited by cattails, lily pads with white blooms and a wooden bench. A group of ducks that were gathered companionably on the banks waddled away at sauntering speed, proving their wary acceptance of human companionship, though quacking their mild displeasure
at being disturbed. When she sat down on the bench, he took a seat next to her, stretching out his arm behind. He felt her tension rise, so before she could start speaking he put two fingers under her chin and turned her face to him. Parting her lips with his, he tasted her, then groaned as she opened for him further, taking him in. Her arms came up around his neck, pressing her body against him in the formfitting suit, letting him feel her pleasure at seeing him, being with him. When he eased back, he didn’t know whose heart was beating faster.
“Thank you,” she said softly. “That made it easier.”
“Any sacrifice to help.” He tugged on her tail of braids, but she didn’t smile.
“When I first started jumping, it was to make me feel like I was back with David, in those last moments. You know how my brother died.”
Tyler nodded, ran a hand up her arm. “I won’t press, but one day, any day you’re ready, angel, I’d like to know more about him. I know he was important to you.”
She wasn’t ready to tell him. Marguerite couldn’t tell him that before she’d shared her bed, which meant before she’d met him, she’d had to tie her arm loosely to the bedpost. That way when she tried to sleepwalk, to fly, she’d wake half slumped on the floor, her arm pulled taut. During those quietly despondent hours of the night, she’d sit crumpled on the floor and blearily look up into the night sky, at the stars or various phases of the moon. She’d think how their light was like the promise of a heaven she could never reach, because for some inexplicable reason she wouldn’t free herself to go there. To go to David.
She closed her eyes. “Not today. Today’s too good.” She opened them, looked at him. “But something changed, as of this week. For the first time, it was about joy. True freedom. The first freedom I think I’ve ever felt. And I shouldn’t be telling you these things, because you’re arrogant enough as it is…”
“Tell me anyway.”
She reached out, trailed her fingers along his forearm, let her hand be captured and held on his thigh. “I felt like there’d be someone to care, to catch me if I fell.”