Wings of Gold Series

by Tappan, Tracy

  The kiss deepened, becoming wet and slippery, a little wild. Could he taste how she felt…like desire edged with desperation? Like a part of her wanted to cry, the other part of her bay at the moon? She locked her arms around his neck.

  He embraced her tightly, pressing his body—quite a lot of muscles—against her as he sucked on her tongue.

  She moaned into his mouth, an indication—heretofore unknown to her—that he should clutch her butt and give it a good squeeze.

  Her pants came undone.

  She stopped kissing him on a swift exhale. How did he manage these things so effortlessly? Did he work part time as a secret agent when he wasn’t lion taming?

  He pushed her pants and undies down, and…Okay. So. We’re doing this now. Seeing as she was naked from the waist down and all.

  He released her to tug a wallet out of his back pants pocket and extract a condom.

  She stared fixedly at the square foil. Condoms were for having sex. They were going to have sex. Sex was going to happen. Here tonight, by this pool with—

  “Do you want to take your shoes off?” he asked in a roughened voice. He ripped open the package.

  She blinked down at her pants sagged around her knees. Right. A girl can’t exactly spread her legs like this, can she? She went into a crouch, studiously ignoring the sight of his jutting member on the trip down. If he did, in fact, have a mole on his unit, then oh, well. She wasn’t going to find out. As she untied first one of her boots, then the next, only her peripheral vision registered him taking care of safety matters by unrolling the condom over IT.

  Bootless now, she straightened and kicked her pants aside.

  He waited while she transferred moisture from her mouth down to her crotch, then he grabbed her by the waist and hiked her up.

  She helped by giving a little jump and flinging her legs around him.

  With a grunt, he seated her directly down onto his member—first shot, perfect bull’s eye, bingo!

  Her mouth opened on a gasp. He was definitely more than six inches. And—yow!—as he started to thrust inside her, she gritted her teeth. Felt like twice that.

  She grasped his shoulders and clamped her jaw harder. She wasn’t incredibly prepared. The condom had some lubrication on it, but still… “Could you, uh, not go quite so deep?”

  He kept pumping, but eased up, receiving credit for not being a selfish jerk.

  She gazed out across the pool. The stars visible over the cement wall bounced in front of her vision. She blew out her cheeks. What was taking so long? She felt a shudder run through him, and the noises he was making started to sound strained. He was on the verge of coming, so…

  Oh, God. He was delaying for her.

  He earned more credit, but, unfortunately, his efforts were wasted. She wasn’t going to climax. Not crammed against a wall at the back of a bar in Dubai. Not with a man who didn’t inspire a single feeling in her. She nearly sighed. She should’ve known better. A woman couldn’t change her spots just because she willed it for a night. Time to chalk this one up and head back to her hotel for a hot bath. Although apparently she’d have to dust off her acting skills first.

  “Yesyesyesyes,” she panted into her date’s ear. “Oh!” She squeezed her vaginal muscles rhythmically around his member, gasped out another couple of Ohs for good measure, and was rewarded with a mistake-ending orgasm from him.

  He jammed himself deep inside her on a last thrust and grated a sound of pleasure behind his teeth.

  She hung in his arms, fighting the urge to squirm while she waited for him to pull out and set her down. A breeze drifted by, cooling the sweat on her skin and rippling the pool water. Well, done is done. She clearly didn’t excel at one-night stands, but she did have considerable skills at forgetting unpleasant­ness…smooth­ing things over, taking care of matters so everything and everyone remained unruffled. And she’d promised herself, no regrets, right?

  There was one saving grace. He wasn’t in the military, not with a beard. She had that much, at least.

  * * *

  Earlier…

  Hands tucked into his pockets, Kyle strolled into the Jebel Ali Beach Hotel, and, after glancing around a bit, chose the Captain’s Bar. It was the least ritzy of the places he saw, located outside on a patio right on the water. It had a roof made out of thatching, like a Tiki hut, and the tables and chairs were built of whiskey-colored wood with off-white upholstery on the chairs. During the day the view of the Persian Gulf and the Jebel Ali Port must be spectacular. Now at night there was nothing much to enjoy except the occasional faint breeze bringing in the scent of the sea.

  Only a quarter of the ten well-spaced tables were full, and Kyle easily found an empty one in a corner.

  By himself.

  He exhaled as he sat. It’s lonely at the top was something he totally understood now he was the OIC, or Officer in Charge, of his own helicopter detachment. Boundaries of leadership could too easily get crossed if he went out drinking and partying with the men he led, especially since he was the same rank as both his maintenance and operations officers. He needed to be careful about maintaining his position—super-careful, if he wanted to prove himself in a job that had dropped into his lap by luck.

  Mostly OIC positions went to lieutenant commanders or, if it did go to a lieutenant, a Super JO1 like his aviator buddy, Eric “LZ” O’Dwyer. But the LCDR slated for this deployment had broken his wrist a week prior to setting sail, and when no one else had been available to step up, Kyle had been able to grab this career-enhancing opportunity.

  But that left him with a short list of men he could hang out with on port calls—mainly, other leaders. On a ship, that meant the department heads, but so far Kyle wasn’t jumping for joy over the higher ranking SWOs2 he’d met. The Navigation Officer had six kids and they were his sole topic of conversation, the CHENG3 was always pissing and moaning about all the time he spent in the boiler room, and the Supply Officer was a teetotaler. There was the chaplain—hahahaha!—and the XO, but he was a dick. Kyle had already had a run-in with him over an AT4 of Kyle’s who hadn’t roused himself from the rack for a General Quarters call.

  The poor AT had been up till all hours the night before, working a radar gripe to get a bird up, but the XO still wanted to send the AT to XOI.5 Kyle had wrangled a deal to restrict his AT to the ship for the next port call as punishment instead, but the effort Kyle expended to solve something so stupid left a bad taste in his mouth over the XO.

  So, here he sat, alone, nothing better to do than wander around his own head. Never a good thing for him. Exhaling again, he glanced around for a waitress—he needed a drink—when out on the water a ship’s running lights grabbed his attention. A vessel was driving by: a massive vessel. He saw the number 70 lit up on the ship, and his stomach balled.

  It was the aircraft carrier, USS Carl Vinson—the very carrier he’d visited a week ago to get handed a rosy-assed fuck-over.

  Speaking of bad tastes… That meeting left him feeling like an entire colony of mice had taken a shit in his mouth. Distracted, Kyle snatched a packet of fake sugar out of the small table caddy—it was a pink packet, like Sweet’N Low, but had foreign writing on it—and ripped it open. The hell if he was going to sit here and brood about how the next few weeks were going to be completely crappy. The hell if he was going to sit here alone.

  Narrowing his eyes, Kyle tossed aside the Sweet’N Low and searched the bar again, this time looking for a target of sexual opportunity.

  Tonight had just become about getting laid.

  Chapter Two

  One week ago. The Persian Gulf, thirty-five miles from US Aircraft Carrier, USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70)

  Jaw squared, Kyle stared out across the blue landscape of sea as the steady chop-chop of the helicopter’s rotors battered his nerves. Usually the best sound in the world, this afternoon the noise of the spinning blades signified forward movement toward something bad, so it was as annoying as fingernails hard-scraping his balls. He didn�
��t know exactly what the bad was, just that nothing good ever came from a measly lieutenant being summoned to stand tall in front of the one-star admiral in command of Carrier Strike Group One. And not any old one-star. As a cherry on top of this double scoop of fuck-over, the admiral was Robert Kelleman.

  Sienna’s father.

  There weren’t many men who made Kyle want to stink his pants, but Admiral Robert Kelleman was one of them.

  “Sir,” his copilot’s voice crackled into Kyle’s earpiece. “We’re approaching the Vinson’s air space.”

  “Roger that.” Kyle clicked the trigger on the stick in his right hand to change over to outer cockpit communications. Any time a pilot flew near a US aircraft carrier, he gave plenty of warning of his presence or soon found a couple of fighter jets flying up his pooper, and later, if he made it on deck, the Air Boss6 climbing down his throat with a pair of boots on. “Red Crown,” Kyle said to combat control of the Aegis Cruiser in charge of protecting the twenty-mile radius of airspace around the carrier. “This is Lone Wolf six-five on your one-zero-zero, thirty-five miles at five hundred feet, squawking two-five-one-four, inbound for a thirteen-hundred overhead.”

  “Roger that,” combat returned. “Proceed to starboard D. There’s one in the pattern.”

  Kyle confirmed, then briefly closed his eyes. Only thirty-five miles left to figure out what the hell he could’ve done in such a short amount of time to dick up his career. The Wolf Pack7—Kyle’s helicopter squadron based out of San Diego when not deployed—had only been on station in the Gulf a little over two weeks, with the CO based on the carrier and four of the squadron’s other helos posted on smaller ships in the strike group. Was Kyle about to get canned from his OIC job, then sent off to clean yardarms for what little would then remain of his naval career?

  The muscles in Kyle’s jaw began to burn under the pressure he was exerting on his teeth. Double shit.

  When they flew within ten miles of the Vinson, Kyle switched radio frequencies to contact air traffic control on the carrier. “Tower, Lone Wolf six-five, entering starboard delta.”

  “Negative,” the tower crackled back. “Cleared to land directly on spot three.”

  Kyle’s copilot, Lieutenant JG Steve “Jobs” Whitmore, turned to gawk at him.

  Kyle’s face heated. This was Jobs’ first long cruise, but as inexperienced as the young pilot was, even he knew that a helicopter—which sat just below belly button lint in importance to a carrier when jet flight operations were underway—was almost never cleared directly to land. Rather it was sent to fly in an endless, boring circular pattern, known as starboard D, off the right side of the ship until the Air Boss deigned to allow the bird to land.

  Not Lieutenant Kyle Hammond. No, siree. Apparently whatever wrench Admiral Kelleman had up his ass in need of immediate thumping on Kyle’s head was awful enough to earn the Wolf Pack helicopter immediate clearance.

  What did you do? silently rang off Jobs.

  “Roger that,” Kyle gritted to the tower. “Crossing the wake,” he added as he banked the helo across the ship’s wash. “Cleared to land, spot three.” He clicked back to inner cockpit comm. “Take it from here,” he told Jobs. To give the new pilot experience, not because Kyle’s fingers were experiencing a weird pins and needles thing. “You’ve got the controls.”

  “I’ve got the controls,” Jobs said.

  “Roger that, you’ve got the controls.” On the third round of confirmation, Kyle lifted his palms in the air to verify he was “hands off.”

  Jobs pushed the helo’s nose forward, gaining speed to catch up to the carrier, then leveled off as he drew adjacent to spot three. He flew form on their landing zone, fifty feet from the deck, as they waited for the LSE8 to signal them on board.

  “I’ve got the LSE in sight,” Kyle said, passing on the man’s gestures to Jobs.

  Jobs slid the helicopter over, hovered above spot three, then set down like he was placing a baby chick on a bed of feathers.

  Whitmore, nicknamed Steve “Jobs” because he was a brainiac and technical wizard, was all about precision flying. Kyle had never seen a new pilot fly with such textbook accuracy, but Jobs, with a face like the Beav’s and likewise the kind of innocent attitude straight off a 1950s sitcom, ran a little low on street smarts. Kyle was going to use this cruise to take the kid under his wing, show the eager Padawan the real world of aviation.

  Kyle yanked the helo door open, unstrapped, and leapt to the tarmac. Across the runway a spotty array of aircraft was parked around the “island”—the part of a carrier that stuck up from the starboard side of the flight deck—with Skittles9 climbing all over them, fueling and pre-flighting. An F/A-18 Super Hornet sat in ready five, preparing to launch, heat waves emanating from its jet engines.

  Kyle’s maintenance officer, Lieutenant Pete “Bingo” Robbins, jumped out of the back of the helo. Pete had flown below fuel minimums on two missions in his career to date, which was how he’d earned his call sign, Bingo.10 Operational necessity had warranted the break in safety protocol on both occasions, but Kyle was still going to keep an eye on Robbins.

  Bingo took Kyle’s place in the right seat, and the helo lifted off. Jobs and Bingo would fly over to starboard D now and hang out there until Kyle was done. Kyle didn’t know how long his meeting with Admiral Kelleman would last, but to shut down a helicopter on the busy flight deck of an aircraft carrier would only get the helo’s rotor blades folded back and the bird shoved away into a dusty, out-of-the-way corner. And Kyle had no doubt he’d want to get off the Vinson fast after his meeting with Kelleman. Something about needing to lick his wounds after having his nuts filleted and barbecued.

  Kyle received clearance to cross the flight deck, and hoofed it over to the island, ducking through the personnel hatch.

  His Wolf Pack CO was waiting for him. “What the hell did you do, Mikey?”

  A sting of blood hit Kyle’s cheeks. “Skipper.” He saluted his commanding officer in greeting, then tugged off his helmet. “I have no idea, sir. I was hoping you could tell me.”

  His CO mulled that over for a moment, his lips twisted, then just chopped a hand down the passageway. “Let’s go.”

  Let’s go—as in, you and me, together. Kyle had the weird urge to hug his boss. Whatever deep kimchi Kyle was in, his skipper wasn’t going to make him face it alone.

  Kyle followed his CO down the passageway, angling his shoulders sideways to let sailors pass, all of them moving with speed and purpose. The passageways of the Vinson were like a New York City street.

  Home to over six thousand men, the average United States Aircraft Carrier was the size of a small city, and boasted many perks that a small boy11 didn’t. There was a large geedunk12 on board, a barber—not just some solider who cut hair as collateral duty—a well-stocked medical clinic, a dentist, and more. The extra space and the city feel should’ve given Kyle a sense of extra elbow room, but it always had the opposite effect. Carriers made him feel claustrophobic.

  He and his skipper reached the admiral’s stateroom, knocked, and were ordered to enter. Kyle’s boots sank into plush carpeting as he maneuvered through a luxurious sitting area populated with leather couches and deep-cushioned chairs. Aiming for a large mahogany desk where the admiral was seated, he—

  “I need one-on-one time with the lieutenant.” Admiral Kelleman said, leveling a look at the Wolf Pack CO. “You’re dismissed, Commander.”

  Aw, hell. ’Bye, Dad…

  As the door shut, Kyle came to back-breaking attention in front of the admiral’s desk, latching his focus onto the collection of see how great I am plaques on the wall behind the admiral, instead of the man himself, who was one hundred percent cold metal: iron jaw, steel eyes, gunmetal hair, hard body. Fuckfuckfuck… Sweat was running down Kyle’s butt crack, of all places, and his armpits were having a pool party.

  “Stand at ease, lieutenant.”

  Kyle spread his legs into a wider stance and tucked his hands into the small
of his back.

  Kelleman sat back in his chair, although the pose was anything but relaxed. “I assume you’re aware of the current hostage situation?”

  Kyle blinked once. That’d come out of the ass-end of space. “Yes, sir.”

  Two days ago the extremist militant group, Jaish-e-Mohammed, or JEM, had kidnapped four American engineers, three men and one woman, who’d been making repairs in northern Pakistan on the Mangla Dam—a structure originally built by a consortium of eight US construction firms. JEM was demanding that four prisoners—known terrorists—be released from Guantanamo in exchange for the hostages.

  “This is the Bergdahl situation all over again.” Kelleman’s voice was frost on ice.

  “Yes, sir,” Kyle said.

  Relatively recently an American soldier by the name of Bowe Bergdahl, who’d been held captive in Afghanistan, was swapped for five senior Taliban prisoners from Guantanamo Bay.

  Kelleman’s upper lip curled into a sneer. “Give in to one militant group, and the next assumes it’s a free-for-all. This is why we never negotiate with terrorists.”

  And to add to the stink, many believed that the American adage Leave No Man Behind shouldn’t have applied to Bergdahl, who’d been charged with desertion of his post in eastern Afghanistan and accused of being a traitor.

  “But the Obama administration botched it and did submit to the Taliban’s demands, so now the White House will be damned if they’ll give in to JEM. A rescue operation is in the works, classified top priority—OPERATION PRIDE, if the name tells you anything. The Navy has an entire SEAL platoon ready to deploy.”