Target of the Heart

by M. L. Buchman

  “Don’t look at me,” he held up his hands in surrender.

  She rested her forehead on her knees and began cursing.

  # # #

  Pete recognized most of the French swear words. Though what tabarnak (like a church’s tabernacle?) had to do with her present mood, he didn’t know. Then Danielle went sideways into Italian followed by something that might have been Spanish mixed with…he didn’t know what, but she sounded pretty frustrated.

  He reached out to brush a comforting hand down her calf, but felt a sharp twinge in his solar plexus and backed off. Damn but she had a good punch.

  Her cursing eased off but she still didn’t raise her head.

  Stupid? This was eight kinds of stupid. He knew so much about Danielle and not just the way she flew and the way she served her country, both of which were so incredible that those alone blinded him.

  The one taste he’d had of her back after that first flight had built a whole idiotic world of fantasies about the woman—a set of fantasies that she had totally shattered in the hangar at the NTTR by proving how lame his imagination was when compared to reality.

  During their last month of flying together, training together, eating together—and not sleeping together—he’d also come to learn about the gentle, thoughtful woman who had crawled up out of a hell he couldn’t imagine. A father long gone. A woman who couldn’t be bothered to put down the bottle for the sake of her kid. Growing up in a desperate poverty he couldn’t imagine, to somehow turn into—

  He didn’t know what.

  No woman had ever so occupied his thoughts, not even Lucy—and he’d married her.

  Married her, but never said the L-word except for during “…love, honor, and obey.” He’d thought that “honor” was the key word of that ceremony. Which he’d done. She hadn’t cared a moment about breaking all three. There was his Hell Hound Cerberus. Betrayal, thy name is…

  Not Danielle.

  Her curses had softened and ultimately lapsed into silence. She sat on the sand with arms wrapped across shins, forehead on pulled-up knees. He reached out to brush a hand over her head; barely a twinge this time.

  “Don’t!” she said before he completed the gesture, even though she didn’t raise her head.

  “What the hell, Delacroix?” at a complete loss he finally dug up a fistful of sand and began pouring it back and forth between his palms.

  “How about a sentence longer than four words? And see if you can do it without insulting me in the process.”

  What in the world was he supposed to do with that? The silence stretched long enough for him to become aware of the black-tailed seagulls. He’d never gotten used to their calls, Colorado didn’t have a whole lot of gulls. Here they were revered, the messengers from the goddess of the fishery. They circled and called lazily overhead as if he wasn’t sitting here on the cool sand sinking ever deeper into trouble he didn’t understand.

  “Try,” Danielle prompted him, “explaining why you’re with me if you think it’s a stupid risk.”

  A what? “It’s not a stupid risk.”

  “Five words. Wow, Napier, really stretching yourself.”

  “What’s nuts, Danielle Delacroix, is how much I want you.”

  “You’re still talking sex.”

  “No!” Now he was the one shouting. At his soft, “Goddamn it,” she finally looked back up at him. He wished she wasn’t wearing sunglasses. Her eyes were so expressive and…

  “Then what is stupid, Major, if not risking both our careers for sex?”

  Speak. In longer sentences? Fine.

  “If it was just sex, Danielle, I’d never take the risk. Hell, I can get sex anywhere. Japanese woman can be splendidly compliant and willing if they’re in the right mood to—” She didn’t need to remove her sunglasses for him to see he was screwing up.

  Oh.

  “If that’s what you thought I was saying, I can see why you got pissed.”

  Try again.

  “See, I’ve built all of these defenses against women.”

  “A lot of them?” Was that the hint of a smile?

  “Tons. My whole life I’ve looked for women who could easily come second to my career.”

  “And what did you find?”

  “I found crap!” Which now that he’d said it he knew to be true, perhaps one of the greatest truths he’d ever spoken. “I might as well have spent my time masturbating for all the involvement I felt with most of these women. They were fun, but—” But he needed to leave that subject immediately. “And then you stand there, a drop-dead gorgeous pilot who can quote Greek tragedies, Batman comics, and flies better than any Chinook pilot I’ve ever served with.”

  She was still now. When he needed to read her the most, he couldn’t get a clue.

  “I want you, Danielle Spiderwoman Delacroix. Like I’ve never wanted a woman before. To make love to, sure; something you’re crazy good at. To fly with, absolutely; something you’re even better at than making love, if that’s even possible. But there’s more there. I don’t have the words for it, but when you’re not beside me, even for a couple hours, it’s like my world stops making sense somehow and I…” his words ran out long before he reached the point he didn’t even know how to find, never mind express.

  Danielle rolled forward onto her knees until she knelt before him. Leaning in, her face so close that he couldn’t look at her sunglass’ reflections of both of his own eyes at once, she hesitated one moment.

  “I think you said it just fine, Pete.” Then she kissed him.

  It might be a risk, but he really hadn’t liked how it felt when she’d walked away from him, so he wrapped his arms around her and leaned back until she had no choice but to sprawl forward on top of him. He kept her in the kiss as she lay there and hoped to god he would find some way not to screw this up.

  Chapter 12

  Danielle contemplated Pete’s back while he sprawled facedown on the mattress beside her. The mattress was thin and lying on a polished wooden floor, but surprisingly comfortable. Even in his sleep, Pete’s muscles were clearly defined across his back. His strength inherent in who he was.

  He’d taken them to a little Japanese inn with rooms perched out on the edge of a cliff over the sea. It was all very native and she didn’t understand a single word or tradition. She’d flown hundreds of sorties during her deployments in war-torn southwest Asia, but East Asia might as well be Neptune for what she knew about it. Well, not a whole other planet, so maybe Pluto.

  First off he had led her to an onsen, a hot-spring fed common bathing room.

  “Don’t worry, men and women are separated,” Pete had whispered into her ear before disappearing through another door without any further instructions.

  Maybe it was some cheap payback for refusing to actually have sex on the roadside beach while her underwear was full of sand, or perhaps he thought jumping into the unknown was fun.

  Which it was, usually.

  At the moment she was still too busy trying to deal with Pete’s wandering attempt to pin down his feelings. He not only wanted her, he missed her when they weren’t together. No one had ever really missed Danielle Delacroix before—at least not that managed to say it. Or show it. Not anyone…until Pete.

  In the onsen, Danielle had tried to watch the other women out of the corner of her eye and still had to be prompted in friendly tones that she didn’t understand a word of.

  Strip off everything and place it in an open cubby hole.

  No lockers, no keys to carry with.

  She was embarrassed at how much sand had still remained in her clothes, but it was such a relief to no longer have it sandpapering her skin that she got over that quickly. The motor pool car would not be recovering so easily.

  Removing her dog tags brought her to a stop. It was stupid, but standing among a half dozen strangers who
were all Japanese, six or more inches shorter than she was, and uncaring of their nakedness, it was the tags that were the hardest article of clothing to remove. The hardest to trust that they’d still be tucked away in the cubby when she came back.

  A woman—perhaps five feet tall, before she’d been bent nearly double with age and osteoporosis and old enough to be her great-grand-mère—finally commanded her to remove them with an upward flick of her hands. Then she’d placed them atop Danielle’s clothes and gave her a sharp shove toward the next door. The old woman was surprisingly strong.

  Following her guidance, Danielle dipped a wooden bucket into a large pool of scalding water, and moved to sit on an ankle-high stool facing the matron. A pair of brusque and muscular women dressed in white that might have been nurses uniforms moved up behind each of them and began slathering them with a soft-bristle soapy brush.

  The old woman chatted away with the other women there. Danielle was clearly the subject, but being taken under the woman’s wing—the oldest one in the group by far—apparently opened a path for her easy acceptance.

  The elder made a face at Danielle, first wide-eyed and open-mouthed, and then suddenly closed up like someone had pinched her face. Danielle was still trying to figure it out when the bath attendant dumped the bucket of scalding water over her head. Mouth open, Danielle was spluttering and coughing out bath water which all of the women seemed to find completely hilarious.

  Another bucket followed the first but she managed to not drink any of it this time. Once the suds were all washed down the central floor drain, they moved to the steaming pool. Those already in the water, made room along the underwater bench that circled the perimeter.

  The water was so hot that it took her several tries to immerse herself though she noticed the other women slipped easily into the water—not a one of them had a single word of language in common with her. Pete had dragged her far enough away from Kaneda and the other large military installations that such conveniences were gone, so she did the only thing she could do and let herself float in the water.

  The stress of her fight…her misunderstanding with Pete drained out of her. And of the month’s training. And of her doubts of herself as a woman.

  It was funny how Pete, by being so alarmingly male, made her feel so female. It wasn’t something she cultivated in herself. Out-perform the men was more her personal motto. Be so competent that they can’t ignore you and so pure military that you become a brother-in-arms despite the lack of a penis. Pete made her feel both competent and feminine.

  At a tap on her shoulder, she opened her eyes.

  The old woman was sitting on the edge of the pool with only her feet in the water. She waved Danielle up.

  She needed the woman’s steadying hand once she managed to make it up onto the edge, her head swimming lightly with the overheating. The conversations were quieter now, easier. She was no longer aware of her own nakedness as being out of the ordinary. A perfect lassitude lay over her like a warm blanket.

  And somehow, that immensely foreign object known as Major Pete Napier had also become familiar. More than familiar. Welcome? Cherished.

  Though he would still be required to learn French if he wanted to keep her amour.

  # # #

  Pete lay there and let his sleepy mind follow the light tracery of Danielle’s fingers over his back and shoulders.

  After the onsen they’d eaten udon noodles with thin slivers of pork at a foot-high table while wearing thin wrap-around robes. She had taken to chopsticks quickly, at least quickly enough that she wouldn’t starve, and he was able to spend much of the meal admiring how the robe’s silk hid then revealed shapes without clinging.

  Then she’d laid down beside him and, even as he brushed his hand over her lovely form, fallen asleep to the sound of the sea rushing over the rocks below. He liked this little ryokan; the inn was tucked away where only locals found it. Their room was perched on a cliff edge above the Sea of Japan, and the privacy felt as if it went on forever. The smells of the salt sea on the warm breeze wandered through the room.

  He’d felt like a voyeur watching her sleep. It was their first time in a proper bed together, even if it was the Japanese version of one; a futon on a polished wood floor. Even asleep, there was a vibrancy to her that drew him in. Made him want to…serve and protect?

  To lose his brain, more like. But he’d watched her sleep until he’d joined her in dreams.

  Now the day had passed and the room was rich with the amber light of sunset against his closed eyelids as her hand slid once more down his spine.

  “Danielle?”

  “Hmm?” her hum was as soft as the evening breeze.

  “Don’t ever stop doing that.”

  “Roll over and I’ll do far more than that.”

  Well, that was an invitation that he wasn’t going to turn down. He soon lay on his back and, as promised, her fingers continued their light investigation of his torso.

  “One, two,” her hand traced over one of his arms. “Three,” along his ribs.

  “Four,” her hand slid over his thigh and he finally knew what she was counting—bullet holes.

  “Any more?”

  “Right foot. Thought I told you about when my little brother tried to amputate my foot with a shotgun. No? Thankfully, I’d only loaded it with rocksalt until he learned some basic skills. The rest were, uh, in places I probably shouldn’t be mentioning.”

  She leaned in and teased the first bullet wound with a soft scrape of teeth.

  “Nope,” he refused her.

  Danielle continued teasing him, pressing herself against him.

  He managed to resist until she slid a hand down past his waist and cupped him ever so gently. He knew it would just stereotype him as male, but there was a feeling of safety and security when she did that. It was perhaps the most erotic thing a woman had ever done to him. It was so complete a sensation that he could form no thought beyond pleasure.

  “One,” she whispered against the skin of his arm.

  “And two,” putty in her hands and he didn’t care. “Both in Syria. A couple years apart, before and after the start of the Arab Spring.” Her security clearance was high enough anyway.

  Without releasing her hand from around him, instead starting a gentle massage that made him so hard each pulse of blood almost hurt as it throbbed, she moved her mouth to his ribs.

  “Shit! That tickles!”

  “The Rapier is ticklish?”

  “I’d prefer it if you didn’t sound so delighted by the discovery,” he tried to squirm aside without breaking her hold on him because damn that felt good.

  “Third?” she attacked him again. He tried to find ticklish spots on her, but couldn’t seem to land one quickly enough.

  “Myanmar,” he finally confessed on a gasp. “A week in the hospital and ten more to recover.”

  “Fourth?” her voice turned into a purr as she nuzzled the inside of his thigh.

  “Goddamn dustbowl,” nobody got through two years in Iraq clean. The fact that he’d been flying deep into Iran when he was shot and his crew chief killed was just a technicality.

  And then it was his turn to inspect her body. Her skin was like liquid gold, a smoothly perfect covering that he’d never had a chance to properly appreciate.

  He leaned in to taste the inside of her thigh as she continued to do the same for him.

  They shifted closer and closer until they were pleasuring each other and rising together. They crested on the same wave, holding on as the last of the light bled from the windows and the last of the shudders bled from their bodies.

  Still they held each other.

  It was the most natural of motions when they shifted so that she lay her cheek on his shoulder. And still her gentle fingers held him.

  The way the woman made love, there was no questioning where
he was meant to be. Now or ever.

  Her Monsieur Cupid had shot him straight through the heart.

  # # #

  Having slept through much of the day, they spent the night making love and talking about their pasts, the parts you didn’t discuss with anyone less than a lover.

  Danielle knew precisely what made Pete moan like a man dying, but hadn’t known that about the unavailable woman he had loved in high school. Or the cheerleader who had taken his virginity in the back of his dad’s pickup. “Starting raining on us halfway through but there was no way I was stopping that close to gold. Not a whole lot of cuddling afterwards. I made sure our rematch was in a nice, dry hayloft.”

  His sympathy at her being alone in the world was sincere. And his anger surprising. The story of her abandoning father and alcoholic mother were so ingrained in her psyche that there was little emotion attached anymore. When she laid out the true depths of the situation, Pete had fumed on her behalf as if that would somehow change the past.

  And it did, in a way. It showed her what support was like, real support. When someone was so far in your corner that they would fight the battle for you if they could.

  For that gift, she had loved him tender.

  And shortly before dawn, when they wandered into battle stories of his divorce and the destruction of so many youthful dreams, they had loved hard until it was purged from his soul. They welcomed the daybreak laughing together over the joy of being alive even as the orgasms shattered them.

  By the time they were headed back to base, Danielle knew a truth.

  She didn’t love Pete Napier.

  Love was far too simple a word for the depth and breadth of so much feeling. She could spend a lifetime getting to know the man and never have enough.

  Though as she relaxed in the car seat and watched the sunrise gild the odd forests and diagrammatically perfect farmland of Japan, she was fairly sure her body had all it could stand at the moment.

  But even that thought evoked warm feelings that rippled gently over nerves she’d thought spent. She slid a hand over and tucked her fingertips beneath Pete’s thigh as he drove, the connection between them not needing any words as they floated along by the sea.