By Break of Day (The Night Stalkers)

by M. L. Buchman

  Then he lay back on the bunk, protection on, and she was sliding down over him. Never once did she open her eyes. Never once did she break the feeling of floating, not as he entered her, not as he filled her, not as he sent them both flying ever so high in the impossible sky.

  * * *

  That’s a new one on you, Justin.

  He really should leave Kara’s bed. The potential for embarrassing her or, worse, causing her difficulties, should get him moving along.

  But when they finished making love—for there was no doubt this hadn’t been mere sex; he knew what that felt like as well as the next guy—she had slowly tipped forward until she lay on his chest. Her now very-well-mussed hair tucked up under his chin.

  Somewhere along the way, their fingers had interlocked. And even as consciousness slipped away from Kara and eased her grasp, he could only marvel at their interlaced fingers: her fine Italian dark ones, his big, soap-white clumsy ones. They were fine on a horse or the controls of a Chinook, but they weren’t meant for a woman like Kara Moretti. Though she hadn’t complained.

  There was so very little to complain about at the moment. Her hair smelled of her. Not shampoo, nothing else but her. Her sweet weight was fully upon him. He wished he could reach for a blanket to pull over her, but that was trapped beneath them.

  She was warm and soft against him, was perhaps the most beautiful woman he’d ever lain with, and the sex had been truly off the charts. He wished he could fly half as well as Kara Moretti made love.

  He sighed, feeling her resting weight against his diaphragm.

  Definition of heaven, found.

  * * *

  Kara woke hours later, curled against Justin who had remained flat on his back. She now lay head on his shoulder and one leg hooked over his hips.

  She considered doing some happy girly thing, tracing the fine contours of his chest or maybe trying to tease his body to life so that he could wake once more inside her.

  Some evil part of her brain took over. She wrapped her hand around him, marveling once more that all that had fit inside her…and felt so incredibly good. Then she put her lips close to his ear so that it would sound far louder than it was—the compartment walls were made of steel, but they were far from soundproof.

  “Alert! Alert! Alert! Fire in the hole!”

  Kara wasn’t quite ready for the scale of Justin’s reaction.

  He jerked awake and grabbed for controls that weren’t there, planting an elbow hard in her stomach in the process, which caused her to unintentionally clench her fist around him.

  Justin offered a sharp squeak in response before she managed to ease her handhold. He looked around wild-eyed and leaped on top of her.

  At first she thought that had to be a record recovery time from dead asleep to wake-up sex.

  But when he didn’t move for a long moment, she realized that he was covering her to protect her from an explosion.

  “Easy, babe.” She brushed her free hand down his back. Unlike his chest, the skin on his back was rough, scarred. Her other hand was still trapped between them and holding on to him. “Easy. Bad joke. Kara made a bad joke.”

  He propped himself up and looked around for a moment before looking back down at her. His eyes slowly came back into focus.

  Justin blinked a few times as comprehension finally sank in.

  Instead of showing the fury she deserved, he cleared his throat a few times, then managed to speak.

  “Is there a reason that your hand is where it is during an attack drill?”

  “Not really. It wasn’t a real attack drill.”

  “And yet your hand…” He didn’t ease back. She was pinned to the bed.

  “…is where it is,” she admitted.

  He eased off her, sat up, and scrubbed at his face.

  She removed her hand, wanting to curl up and die for how wrong her joke had gone. A sophomoric tease; a stupid one for a trained soldier.

  Justin trapped her hand in his and held on to it before she could curl it against her own chest.

  “Need a moment, sweetheart. Just give me a moment.”

  She was always doing shit like that. Something would be good, so good, and then she’d find a way to fuck it up. She managed to free an edge of the blanket and pull it over her against the sudden chill.

  Justin just sat there, feet on the floor, back to her, but unaccountably holding on to her hand despite what she’d done.

  His back, barely visible in the shadows of the small light that had been on all night, wasn’t smooth and impossibly perfect like his chest. It was rippled with scar tissue.

  Justin had struck her as a wholesome, healthy cowboy who she liked against her better judgment. But now, here was another side to him.

  Her one hand was clamped in his, as if he was anchoring himself. There was a sad joke, anchoring to her as if she was so well planted on the ground.

  But at his continued silence, she released the corner of the blanket from her other hand and reached out to trace the scars.

  * * *

  A cool fingertip brushed down between Justin’s shoulder blades. Traced a line that he knew all too well, one that had burned with heat and pain.

  Kara Moretti’s bed.

  He was sitting on the edge of Kara Moretti’s bed.

  Not strapped into the seat of a burning Chinook as it shredded from the inside out.

  “Humanitarian relief mission,” he managed to get out. Closing his eyes didn’t help; it only made him see the moment more clearly.

  “Shhh. It’s okay. You don’t need to…” Kara’s voice was gentle, soothing, and unsure.

  “No, it’s something I’ve had to face. To learn to live with.” Though he couldn’t turn to face her just yet. Instead he held on to her hand to keep himself firmly anchored in the present.

  “The team was keeping the people back as well as they could, but they were so desperate for the food and clean water that they were pushing aboard.” He opened his eyes, but it was little better. There on the wall above her small desk were a dozen photos. Family. They looked like family. Kara right in the middle of them with that radiant smile of hers.

  He turned to look at her, as much to see her as to stop her hand from tracing over his scars.

  “Some crazy jihadist, guaranteed of his place in heaven, food for his family, or who knows, got by security. All we really know is he wore a suicide vest and wanted to blow up an American helicopter. In the confined space, it didn’t take much explosive and he wore plenty. My crew and a dozen of the desperate people who had forced their way into the main cabin never even had time to scream. My copilot wasn’t as lucky as I was.”

  He took a deep breath and forced himself to focus on Kara’s eyes, on the sympathy there. Sympathy but no real understanding. She might be a soldier, but she didn’t fly into battle. He caught himself before he described Rom’s last moments. That would be cruel for no point.

  “I managed to roll out the door with whole chunks of my seat embedded in my back. Only my armored vest kept the chunks from continuing right out my front. Combat search-and-rescue reached me before I bled out. Spent over a month in the hospital and six months on light duty.”

  “You came back.”

  He nodded. He’d owed them. His crew had risked and lost their lives; he couldn’t abandon them, even if they were gone. He couldn’t turn his back on…their service. He’d done a lot of thinking from that hospital bed, had been on the verge of calling it his last tour. Instead he decided to do everything he could against the people who had sent the crazed bomber. He knew who did that the very best, and he started aiming for SOAR from the hospital bed.

  No one had understood, not even his sister flying Air Force, but it hadn’t been a choice. Not even a duty to his past. It was need that drove him into the future—a desperate need to protect—because some cra
zy could just as casually walk into a horse show where his family rode. That wasn’t going to happen if there was any way he could stop it.

  He stood, releasing Kara’s hand with a brief squeeze.

  “Don’t leave. Not like this.”

  Justin didn’t answer. Instead, he pulled on his clothes and boots, and picked up his hat before looking back down at her.

  A corner of the blanket covered her hips and one breast, but the other, her arms, and one long leg of the creamiest golden skin were exposed in the soft light.

  “You don’t want me here right now, Kara. You really don’t. Believe me when I tell you that I’m not fit company for woman or horse right now.”

  She started to protest, so he leaned down to kiss her as softly as he could.

  Almost. Almost her kiss, her incredible body, and her sympathy pulled him back down to lie with her.

  Then he stood, pulled on his hat, and offered her a nod.

  “Ma’am.” Did his best to smile with it, but knew it was lame.

  He tried to say her name, but it wouldn’t come out.

  “It will be okay,” he finally managed. “I just need some time.”

  He slipped out of her cabin with no one the wiser. It was the middle of the day shift, so the Peleliu’s corridors were deserted.

  Once he was well clear of her section of the ship, he stopped and leaned against the wall. He locked one hand around a handy pipe to keep himself upright.

  Leaving had been the right choice, the only choice.

  Kara had welcomed him to her bed.

  She wouldn’t have if he had stayed. He’d have taken her, hard, in a desperate effort to purge the images inside his head. He’d made that mistake once and scared the crap out of the poor woman he’d been with. You didn’t take this kind of shit to a woman’s bed.

  It didn’t matter if she offered; it was something he would never do again. Ever.

  Lying helpless on the ground beside the tortured wreckage of the Chinook, listening to Rom’s screams as he burned alive. A crew chief’s helmet on the ground close beside him. Blown right through the Chinook’s hull by the force of the blast. The scorching so bad, he couldn’t even tell whose it was. Despite the head still strapped in but connected to…nothing.

  Chapter 11

  “Well, don’t you look like shit.”

  Kara was nursing her coffee and ignoring the Belgian blueberry waffles on her plate.

  Now she could ignore Trisha instead.

  Good. It took more effort and attention to ignore a person than an inanimate meal. Maybe that would keep her distracted.

  “I see that your boyfriend left.”

  Left? Kara jolted up, ignoring the hot coffee that sloshed onto her hand other than to curse the sudden external pain added to the internal and scanned the room. No white cowboy hat! How could—

  “Hold on, Kara. I wasn’t talking about Captain Roberts. I was talking about the nameless dude you, Michael, and the cowboy have been locked up with for the last four days.”

  There, just coming down the chow line. White hat. Tall Texan beneath it. She settled back, aware of Trisha holding one of her wrists and wiping down Kara’s hand with a napkin dipped in a glass of ice water. It felt good on the coffee burn; thankfully the liquid had cooled some while she was ignoring her breakfast. She took a piece of ice out of her own glass and took over the job.

  “Looks like you’ve had a busy couple days, in more ways than one.”

  “I don’t think I can talk about that mission.” Now that she’d said that, Kara was pretty sure it was true. She did her best to not make it obvious that she was watching Justin.

  He, in turn, touched the brim of his hat to her, then moved to sit with Michael Gibson and the other Delta operators.

  “Well, isn’t that interesting. Mission, huh?” Trisha drowned her waffle in butter and syrup. She started to douse Kara’s.

  Kara managed to stop Trisha before the deluge hit. She tried scraping off some of the butter, but it had disappeared down into the holes of the waffle and melted.

  “No. You’re not going to get by me that easily.” For lack of anything better to do with her hands, Kara tossed the piece of half-melted ice into her mouth and gave it a good crunch.

  Trisha shivered at the sound.

  Ha!

  Kara crunched it again. Her middle brother, Joe, couldn’t stand it either when she chewed on ice; made for a great weapon when he got out of hand.

  “Cut that out!”

  Kara did, only because she’d finished that bit of ice. “Can’t take the pressure, huh? So much for the kick-ass soldier I always thought you were.”

  Trisha gave her the finger and backed it up with a grin.

  Kara cut into her waffle. Pretty good, even if it had enough butter to season an entire loaf of garlic bread.

  “Well, since I can’t see Michael getting into a four-way, and with the conspicuous absence of the Chinook and DAP Hawk last night… Holy shit!”

  Kara concentrated on her waffle.

  “Spook city!” Trisha whispered it just below the general ambience of the room.

  “What’s spook city?” Lola came up and set her tray to one side of Trisha. Claudia sat on the other side, just as Connie sat beside Kara.

  Kara now faced all three female pilots with only the mechanic on her side of the table.

  “She got one.” Trisha pointed her fork at Kara’s chest.

  They all turned to look at her in unison.

  “What, Justin?” The instant Kara said it, she knew it was a mistake. She was sitting with four women who had all married military men.

  “I knew it!” Trisha thumped the fist hard enough on the table to make dishes rattle. “High five, girl!”

  Kara didn’t feel much like high-fiving her or anyone else at the moment. She just wanted to crawl into a hole. Justin had not only sat in Delta country, but he’d sat with his back to her.

  Connie leaned in. “Ninety-eight percent now. I warned you.”

  * * *

  “Where’s—”

  Michael held up a hand cutting him off and then signaled for Justin to look around.

  Across from him at their corner table were Michael Gibson and his right hand, Lieutenant Bill Bruce, Trisha’s husband. The next table over had a trio of guys that Justin had long since identified as also Delta. Their corner of the officer’s mess was a quiet haven in a world of turmoil—the main reason he’d come to sit with them.

  Farther out from their oasis of silence, Rangers, Navy, and SOAR laughed, rubbed shoulders, and ate.

  In their own island sat Kara with the other women of SOAR. Justin was glad for her. She’d need friends after how he’d treated her this morning. There were things that needed fixing. Needed saying. But he wasn’t up to that yet, despite hours of walking the flight deck since he’d left her cabin.

  He could still taste her on his lips, smell her on his hands. Her final sweet kiss had been as potent as how she’d bucked and moaned when he drove into her.

  He turned back to Michael.

  “You do not mention him or his department until you’re sure who’s listening. Bill has met him before.”

  Bill Bruce nodded, but didn’t speak before returning his attention to his tall stack of pancakes and sausage. Justin had gone for the same thing and started in on his own.

  “Because?” Justin prompted before biting down on a sausage.

  “The Activity keeps a very low profile.”

  “Major Wi—That guy wasn’t really good at doing that.”

  Michael nodded. “Willard turns into a jerk around women. But he is very good at getting his team in and out of places. He’s gone to meet up with them.”

  Justin considered. Without Major Wilson’s finding the 5D and the team aboard the Peleliu in the Eastern Mediterranean�
�then pushing hard for three straight nights and much of the days—those guys would be either captured or dead. Instead, they were out with their intel and headed back to wherever The Activity came from.

  “As to men who turn into jerks around women…” Michael trailed off.

  His tone had Bill’s head coming up, glancing at Michael, then shifting his focus to Justin. The briefest look over Justin’s shoulder toward Kara, then he returned his attention to Justin—except his look had gone dark and dangerous. This was a guy you never wanted to meet in a dark alley—not even if he was on your side. If he was there, it meant that things were going to be very bad very soon.

  But Justin hadn’t been a jerk.

  Or if he had, it was in favor of not being unintentionally cruel to a woman he’d come to like far more than was decent for a fellow soldier.

  Now Michael turned his attention slowly down to the meal that he’d ignored from the moment of Justin’s arrival.

  Bill’s attention remained focused on Justin.

  Two of the most effective and lethal soldiers there were had just threatened him aboard a United States warship. He wanted to laugh them off, but he was having some trouble holding on to his fork.

  * * *

  Kara’s stomach was having some trouble holding on to the few bites she’d managed of her breakfast.

  Her efforts to keep her mouth shut hadn’t worked. Connie was absolutely right about Trisha’s tenacity. When she looked at the other women, she saw some sympathy…enough that it was clear that each had fallen afoul of Trisha’s ways at one time or another. But she could see a desire for more information.

  “No.” Kara aimed her fork at Trisha. “No bloody way, lady. That’s all you’re getting out of me.”

  A glint heated up in Trisha’s eye and Kara girded herself for battle—one she had no enthusiasm for at the moment, as she’d just seen the cowboy’s surreptitious inspection of the room. His gaze had barely hesitated at their table.

  Then Trisha flinched as if she’d been kicked under the table, fairly hard. She scowled around the group, and all of the others went to some trouble to look innocent.