Flash of Fire

by M. L. Buchman

  “I was a very willing sixteen, as was she—though she was far more experienced than I was. It was on one of Dad’s multiday, campout-in-the-wilderness raft trips. Trust me, if she hadn’t lived in Kansas, or maybe it was Oklahoma, I would have gone back for a lot more lessons and ended up more sure of her name. How about you?”

  “Davis–Monthan.”

  “Davis…wait a minute. Isn’t that the name of an Air Force base? The one where they store all of the old planes?”

  “Smart boy.”

  “You lost your virginity to an Air Force base?”

  “Might as well have.” She sounded chagrined and started into paddling along the lakeshore again. But she wasn’t racing away from him, rather just continuing her practice.

  He rowed after her. “Care to explain that one?”

  “Not particularly.”

  “Hey, no fair. I told you about Debbie.”

  “Or was it Debra? And are you sure about the Monroe part of it?”

  Well, he had been a moment ago. Of course now he was distracted, as he had been a hundred times over the last half hour, by watching Robin paddle. Those strong soldier and waitress muscles flexed and rolled beneath the creamy skin of her bare back. Her short hair left her shoulders wholly exposed, as well as that wonderful transition to her neckline.

  When she stopped, he was paying attention to the wrong things and rammed right into her, again almost tipping them both into the water.

  She waited for him to recover and pull up alongside her. Soon they were floating with a hand each lightly resting on the curled edge of the other’s cockpit.

  “You’re getting pink,” he commented.

  “I’m not embarrassed. I just don’t think I should be feeding your prurient fantasies.”

  “No.” He pointed a finger at her breasts and then at the setting sun. “You may soon be Robin Redbreast though. And I’m a guy, of course I have prurient fantasies whether or not you feed them, which trust me, you do. Floating here next to you, they’ve gone right off the charts and I can’t wait to get you back to shore to try out some more of them.”

  “Let’s go.”

  He didn’t let go his hold on her kayak.

  She sighed and relaxed. “Okay. Okay. You know that Davis–Monthan is where they store the old planes until they need them again because they don’t rot in the high desert. B-52s, Chinook helicopters, A-10 Warthog gunships, all of them. They call it the Boneyard.”

  “Right, though I’ve never been there.”

  “Then you wouldn’t know that it’s about five hundred yards from Phoebe’s Tucson Truck Stop. Phoebe is my grandmother and she founded the place. That’s where I grew up. Our house was halfway between the air base and truck stop, same side of the I-10 Interstate.”

  Mickey used his free hand to slowly turn them, so that her chest moved out of the sun—her back wasn’t pinking yet. But her skin was so fair, he needed to get her in a shirt soon, as much as he hated the idea.

  “I was fifteen. There was this drop-dead gorgeous guy. He was eighteen, fresh out of high school, and working a civilian job at Davis. It was like he knew everything about everything.”

  “He should be shot for touching a girl who was—” Mickey could feel the heat rising.

  “I’m the one who tripped him.”

  “Still.” He tried not to fume. At least he and Debbie had been the same age. Or Debra.

  “It was over a decade ago, Hamilton. Thanks for your ire, but he’s a nice guy, married now with two kids that he supports pretty well. Get over it.”

  He knew if he kept fuming, he wasn’t going to get the rest of her story. Still, as a tour guide and later a ski instructor, he’d had plenty of opportunities with very cute young girls. And, goddamn it, he hadn’t touched a one of them despite the blatant offers.

  “You’re still jealous, aren’t you?”

  “Maybe.”

  She leaned over to kiss his shoulder. “You really are sweet, especially when you think you’re being all gruff.”

  Being called sweet while you’re wishing to rearrange someone’s face didn’t sit very well.

  “Were you one of those hot fifteen-year-olds?” he teased her, trying to find a lighter mood.

  “I sizzled. Just like now.”

  “No argument from this boy.”

  “Anyhow, there’s this thing called Celebrity Row at the Boneyard. One of every type of aircraft in storage is lined up there. I decided I wanted to have sex in every single make and model. Most of those are all sealed and locked, but in the vastness of the Boneyard, you can always find a model that’s accessible. There are over four thousand aircraft parked there all in various states of storage or being scraped for parts.”

  It was a good quest. If you were going to go after something outrageous, you should really go for it. “How many different aircraft are parked on Celebrity Row?”

  “Sixty-one at the time.”

  “What?” His shout echoed across the lake and sent several ducks aloft from where they’d been nosing in the grasses along the water’s edge. “You had sex with this guy sixty-one times?”

  “Jealous?” She practically crowed it out.

  “No.” Desperately. The thought of someone, anyone, ever having Robin at all other than himself was an uncomfortable thought no matter how ridiculous. “Envious.”

  Her laugh totally pegged him as deep green with jealousy.

  “We only made it through four aircraft. The B-52 was first, because of course it had to be. But the plane was the only good part of it. It hurt like hell and I bled like a stuck pig. Scared the hell out of both of us.”

  “Grim” was all Mickey could think to say.

  “We tried a helicopter next, a Huey as a matter of fact, the old UH-1 Iroquois Huey, the great-granddaddy of yours.”

  “I’ll take that as a good sign.”

  “You’d think, but it wasn’t. It didn’t hurt that time, but it wasn’t all that much fun. By the time we tried the big B-1B bomber, I was beginning to wonder if something was wrong with me. After the monstrous C-5A Galaxy, I decided that it wasn’t me, it was him. I was seventeen by the time I tried again; turns out I was right. He still ranks as the single most boring time I’ve ever had.”

  “Most boring four times.” Mickey was—

  “Yep. That making you feel better?”

  “Way.”

  “Let’s get ashore and I’ll make you feel much better in another way.”

  “No argument from me.”

  They were soon sprawled out in between the two sleeping bags. She was on top and doing something magic with her hips that she hadn’t demonstrated before and was absolutely making his eyes cross.

  “And, Mickey?” she gasped out.

  “Yes?” he managed. He knew her well enough now to feel when she was rising, climbing ever so close to that breaking crest. He wasn’t that far away himself, and speech was becoming a major challenge.

  “Every…one of…my best times?”

  “Uh-huh.” He was concentrating on just how far into her he could reach. He shifted his hips side to side to make sure there wasn’t a wasted millimeter.

  “Every one of them…has been with you.”

  Her rocketing over the top cascaded through her and sent him off as well.

  But Mickey was a mental step back from his thrashing body, a single step that was a whole world away.

  No one had ever told him that he was their best time. It made him feel…

  Strong.

  Powerful.

  Incredibly male.

  And it awoke a tenderness that couldn’t wait to fold her into its arms as soon as the aftershocks released their control of her body. In moments, she would lay once more upon his chest, where it felt most perfect.

  Chapter 10

  “Dog meat, H
amilton!” Robin screamed from where she had managed to back paddle and save herself—an eddy current at the side of the raging river. In a pool perhaps twice the length of her tiny little kayak, it slowly whirled her in a clockwise circle every ten seconds.

  Large rock.

  Cliff face.

  A little bit of grass.

  More cliff face.

  A roaring menace of Class III rapids pounding over rocks.

  More roaring menace, ultimately launching itself off a ten-foot-high waterfall into more psychotic roil of Class III madness.

  Large rock.

  Cliff face.

  A little bit of grass.

  She let the kaleidoscopic whorl continue until she was starting to feel a little nauseous. With an ill-timed flick of the paddle, she almost launched herself out into the maelstrom rather than moving to the side of the current as she’d intended.

  Robin managed to recover before she shot out of her safe haven. Her next attempt to move to the edge of the whorl so that she could grab on to the cliff wall threatened to launch her once again into the death-and-destruction zone.

  So she sat in her toy-sized boat twirling in slow circles, contemplating the various forms of murder she would be perpetrating on one Mickey “Blue Eyes” Hamilton, if by some miracle—like maybe a Star Trek transporter beam—she was rescued.

  Getting a helicopter in here safely would be a hell of a trick and getting back out even harder.

  No way to climb the cliff even if she abandoned her kayak. Hell, a gecko with its sticky little feet probably couldn’t scale this sucker.

  A sharp bleat, only a little louder than the thunderous river, had her looking upward. A baby mountain sheep, still more fuzz than fur, was looking down at her from an impossible perch several stories above her. Then it laughed at her again and scampered away up the cliff.

  Fine!

  There was still no way to climb up the sheer—

  Just to drive their casual arrogance home, a mother sheep with huge, curling horns went scampering up after her kid.

  Double fine!

  She glared back down at the eddy, where she was tucked into the only refuge from the mini Niagara Falls and—not being some crazy breed of mountain sheep—would be stuck here until the end of her days.

  On the next spin around, she eyed the tiny clump of grass. Which was just that, tiny. Only if she wanted to live the rest of her life in fetal position would she fit there. But better that than the Rapids of Doom. She was designing her tiny grass hut, built season by season from carefully nurtured grass fronds, when another slow spin revealed Mickey coming toward her.

  He’d been leading the way all day. Had graduated her from flat water to Class I, which basically meant the water was moving on its own rather than standing still.

  After lunch, and some more splendidly mind-numbing sex, he’d introduced her to Class II. A little rough water, a rock to dodge, a couple of one-foot drops, just enough that she could feel herself go partially weightless.

  Ah, but she had been young and naive then. After the first section of Class II, she’d foolishly decided that she could get to enjoy this sport.

  Worse, she’d told that to Mickey.

  They’d come out of something Mickey had called the “high side of Class II” in good shape and back into a lazy curve in the river that she now understood was a low Class I.

  River savvy.

  Nothing the girl couldn’t do.

  Fly to fire.

  Screw a man until they both went blind.

  Take a Class II rapid in stride on only her second day ever on a river.

  …yeah right. Not anymore.

  Now, she was going to kill Mickey for suckering her into this. Nothing had prepared her for what had awaited them around that last lazy bend.

  Mickey had given her one of those all-knowing smiles of his as they approached it.

  “What?”

  “Listen.”

  She’d listened. And heard what sounded like ocean waves, which made no sense. The nearest ocean was hundreds of miles away, safely on the other side of the largest mountain on the whole continent.

  Then it had sounded more like a train.

  A freight train.

  One in a big goddamn hurry.

  Then, like a flight of helicopters hovering low around the corner, the pounding fusillade of sound echoing off the canyon walls. The air, which had been lazily pine scented, was now thickening with tiny water drops like when you were working close to a spraying fire hose.

  They’d come out of the bend. The valley had been moseying along beside them in pleasant pull outs with charming stands of trees and brush. The occasional moose—damn, but they were huge—had watched them go by as the cute giants chewed on a handy berry bush. Around that fateful River Bend of Last Resort, the valley walls had shot upward until it looked like that scene with the statues carved out of thousand-foot-high cliffs in one of the Lord of the Ring movies.

  As she watched the standing waves in a stupefied way for the length of three heartbeats, she was swept into the rapid. It became a blur of disconnected near disasters.

  Rock! Turn hard to the right.

  Another! Turn the other way and paddle for all she was worth…which only made her go faster!

  Hole behind a rock. Mickey had told her holes were bad, very bad. Back paddle until her arms were screaming and then shoot around the lip of it.

  Backward through the next rapid!

  Dig in a blade and spin like a top.

  Almost going over.

  Saving herself with a quick stab of the paddle and a lucky ricochet off a submerged boulder.

  Off a two-foot jump, a jarring bounce off a rock, and a face full of ice water.

  She didn’t remember quite how she’d finally reached the last-ditch sanctuary of the little eddy current that was destined to be her new home for all eternity, but she did.

  Another gentle whirl around. Big rock. Cliff face. Future grass hut. Cliff face. Big rock. Mad rapids that she’d survived and would never ever go near again.

  Mickey paddling toward her…going against the rapids that were waiting to kill her.

  He progressed toward her, conquering the river’s racing current inch by inch. His double-ended paddle whirled like a windmill in a hurricane. She twisted her head around to keep him in view for as much of her slow twirl as possible.

  His arm and chest muscles were finally explained. He looked like a goddamn god driving toward her against nature’s best efforts to drag him away. Well, at least the last thing she was ever going to see in this life was an example of quite how exceptional a human male could be, because…Damn, girl!

  With a last wild effort, his kayak launched into her eddy current and stopped close beside hers.

  “Hey, Robin Pink Breast. What are you doing here?” he asked, all cheery as if this was somehow fun.

  He was barely out of breath.

  She hit him.

  * * *

  Mickey saw the paddle blade coming at his shoulder but couldn’t dodge it in time. The blow knocked him sideways, and he was over into the icy water before he could get his paddle lined up.

  He went with the roll, slashed his paddle hard, and used his momentum and a judicious dig with his blade to pop back up. He shook his head to clear the water from his ears and hair. Chill water slipped down his back and found its way inside the spray skirt. An involuntary shiver ran up his spine.

  Robin was gaping at him. “How did you do that?”

  “What? The Eskimo roll?” he had to shout for her to hear him over the roar of the rapids.

  “Yes, the Eskimo roll,” she mimicked his voice with a heavy layer of anger. “Something that looks useful as hell and you don’t bother to teach to me before trying to feed me to a river that’s even now gnashing its teeth at
me. It wants to eat me for lunch. And not in a good way.”

  “No, I’m the only one who gets to do that.” Not even a tiny bit of softening at the recent memory of how much fun he’d had down between her lovely legs during lunch. He also recalled how incredibly she had returned the favor.

  “Well…” His guess had been right. Robin, when angry, was indeed formidable. When she hadn’t come up to the chute behind him, he’d been terrified at what he might find. At first he’d searched for a flipped boat and a battered body going by.

  The image of her trapped in a hole, submerged hard against a rock, had sent him racing back upstream. His relief at spotting her slowly whirling around in an eddy current like some prima ballerina had made him laugh with relief and swallow a fair amount of river water from a sudden blast of spray.

  At least it wasn’t fear. Anger on the river was much easier to deal with than cowering fear.

  “The reason I didn’t teach you the roll is that it takes hours of practice, even in a swimming pool. Doing that to you on a freezing lake would not have been a kindness. And then using it in a rapids is a whole other technique entirely. That’s why I showed you how to get out of the boat if you got flipped. You do remember that, don’t you?”

  Without hesitation, she tapped the pull loop on the front of the spray skirt that wrapped around her body just below her breasts and was hooked over the edge of the cockpit cowling. “Pull and swim out of the kayak. Try to keep ahold of the paddle,” she recited dutifully.

  “Good girl.”

  “Stop being condescending, Hamilton, or I’ll go for the throat next time I whack you.”

  “Safety, Robin. It’s—”

  “Safety?” she exploded at him as they whirled around opposite sides of the eddy current. “Safety?” It was nearly a scream. “You launch me into Class Eighty-Three rapids with no training and you’re talking about safety?”

  He considered his response for a moment, then answered in his best schoolroom voice. “As I explained before, there are only five classes of rapids, Robin.”

  He barely managed to duck in time, so that her paddle blade bounced off his helmet rather than chopping off his head. Her wild flail almost flipped her over. He saved her a dunking with a strong paddle stroke in her direction and a quick grab.