Blue Knight

by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  “Calli, I warn you….” His fury was rising. She could see his hand was shaking as he gripped the window frame. She wasn’t afraid. He had never in his life hit her and he wouldn’t now.

  “You’re behaving like Josh’s vote of no-confidence is the only one you’ve had lately!” She laughed shortly and even to her it sounded strident and strained. “The whole fucking world thinks we’re in a tailspin and never going to pull out of it! Jesus, Nick, wake up and smell the coffee! I couldn’t get better than less than even odds on us from a wet-behind-the-ears bookie on his first day on the job!”

  “You think it’s overwhelming odds that have me at this window?” he shot back.

  “You turned tail and ran from that verandah the moment Josh admitted he didn’t want to see us fail,” Calli snapped.

  “You’re calling me a coward,” Nick breathed. His eyes seemed black in the low light. Black like the leopard he was named for. He was still and completely motionless, just like the leopard would be the second before it leaped on its prey.

  She held up a hand, cold sense slapping her. “No. Never, Nick. I would never call you a coward. Not in a million years.” Images flitted through her mind. Nick at the controls of a helicopter, while bullets streaked past the canopy like lines of white fire. Nick with an arm around her, a gun in the other hand, with three dead bodies lying in the hot sand at his feet, which he’d just taken out with cold, calculating shots inside five seconds. Nick facing down generals, insurrectos, more….

  Courage was not a quality Nick lacked.

  Calli lifted up her other hand so that both were palm-out, facing him. Peace. “You bolted, Nick. Now you’re hiding.”

  He stared at her and she watched his anger drain. Bull’s-eye, she thought. Nick was at least fair enough to acknowledge when someone spoke the truth, even if he didn’t like the taste of it.

  He turned back to look out the windows. Finally, he lifted his fist and pummeled it lightly against the frame.

  “Our last tie to the United States is departing,” he said softly. “Now we’re truly on our own. We don’t even have Mexico. It’s just us in this big house and a few hundred people camped on five hundred acres on a beach property north of Acapulco. That’s all that is left of the old Vistaria.”

  “Rank sentimentality,” Calli snapped.

  “Truth,” Nick said.

  “Bullshit,” Calli shot back.

  “Facts,” Nick said. His tone was very, very tired.

  “God, I am so sick of Vistarians and their…their chest beating,” she declared. She held out her hand. “Give me your switchblade,” she demanded.

  “What?” He turned, startled, to look at her.

  “You heard. Give it to me. I’m not going to draw your blood, Nick, so relax. I’ll leave all the melodramatic gestures for you guys.” She kept her hand out. “Gimme.”

  Nick dug in his pocket for the switchblade he always carried with him and dropped it onto her palm. The scratched, worn instrument was hot from his body heat. The outer casing was red tortoiseshell. The knife was an antique from an Irish relative who had spilled the blood of others with it. She curled her fingers around it and strode over to the huge old-fashioned walnut wardrobe where they kept most of their casual clothes. “Know how many people it took to defeat Japan in World War II?”

  “You’re about to tell me,” he said from behind her. The tiredness had gone from his voice.

  “One hundred and seventy-five people.” She threw open the door and reached inside.

  “Everyone who worked on the Hiroshima bomb?” Nick guessed.

  “And delivered it,” she confirmed.

  “I don’t have thermonuclear devices stashed in that wardrobe,” Nick said

  “You’re missing the point.” She pulled out one of Nick’s designer tee shirts, the ones he wore most days around the house when he didn’t have a formal appointment as the President pro tem of Vistaria. With a flip of the wrist, she reversed the switchblade, stabbed it through the tee shirt and ripped it down to the seams and out.

  Nick sucked in a sharp breath. “Calli!”

  She held up the knife. “Come near me and I will draw blood.”

  He rocked back on his heels, because he had taken a step forward. “You’re going to explain yourself, of course.” His tone was very calm, but when she glanced up from reaching for a pair of his jeans, she could see the pulse in his temple. His temper was back up.

  “No,” she said airily. She used the knife to rip the crotch out of the jeans and shred them into two pieces. She tossed them onto the floor. “How many generals and colonels do you figure Serrano has in his inner circle? How many do you figure he truly trusts?”

  She reached into the wardrobe and pulled out another tee shirt and tore it in half and let it flutter onto the ruined jeans. She heard Nick’s breath blow out hard.

  “How many?” she repeated and sawed another pair of jeans in half and let them fall.

  It took him another breath before he could answer. “Duardo said he thought less than a dozen. Perhaps only as few as six.”

  “Six trusted lieutenants running the whole insurrecto operation,” she said as she swiftly destroyed three more tee shirts and a casual shirt and dropped them on the growing pile. “Or, let’s be generous and say ten.”

  Nick was staring at her hands, watching her maul his jeans and shirts, all the casual clothes in the closet, one garment at a time, as if he could not tear his gaze away. “Ten,” he repeated, his voice distant. A vein was throbbing in both temples and the base of his throat.

  “The insurrectos don’t have diplomatic status, the Americans and Mexico haven’t acknowledged them either. They look like they have the whole island, but if you actually did a head count of people who really support the insurrectos and who were genuine Loyalists when push came to shove, I think you’d be surprised by just how much support you really have on Vistaria, despite who is sitting in the palace right now.”

  Nick blinked as she ran the blade down the back of a sleeveless and collarless silk shirt he often wore around the house and dropped the two halves onto either side of the pile. He cleared his throat.

  Calli reached into the wardrobe and came up empty. She folded up the knife and hefted it in her hand, studying Nick. “Japan was defeated by one hundred and seventy-five people…and a leader. Someone who made decisions and made the call. Someone who knew that a war can be won by a small handful of people who don’t quit. Serrano knows that. Mexico knows that. The United States knows that. You need to brand it on your soul and live it, too, or Serrano really will win this war and Josh will be right.”

  Nick lifted his hand toward the pile of clothes. “You cut up my clothes.”

  “Just the non-leader garbage. You need to stop mooching around this house like el leopardo, hugging the shadows. If you really are President pro tem, then you need to lead, Nicholás Escobedo, and stop fucking around.”

  He came for her then, but she had been expecting it and sidestepped his charge.

  But he had been expecting her sidestep, too. Nick knew her far too well. He knew how she worked.

  He was a strategist.

  He changed directions at the last second and she smacked up against his chest. The impact almost winded her because she hadn’t been expecting it. Fright tore through her. Nick’s expression was implacable. His fury radiated over her like a hot shower, making her shiver. His arms trapped her against his chest and he lifted her off her feet. He was carrying her. Her fright lifted higher.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded, trying to struggle but with her feet off the ground and her hands trapped between her chest and Nick’s, she could barely breathe, let alone do anything that resembled fighting him off.

  His eyes were glittering with an emotion she was unable to name and that added to her uncertainty. Had she provoked him too much? Pushed him too far?

  He kicked the bedroom door and it thudded shut with an impact t
hat made the walls shudder. Then he dumped her back on her feet.

  But her respite was short-lived. He snatched the knife from her fingers, then gathered her hair at the nape of her neck, holding her head captive in one hand. He pulled her head back so that he was looking down into her eyes and flicked the knife open over her face. “Payback.” His voice was the controlled, soft whisper of el leopardo.

  She shuddered.

  He sliced her blouse open from neck to hem and shoulder to shoulder, then pulled it from her body. The bra he dispensed with quick flicks of the blade. Then he picked up the remains of her shirt and ripped it into strips that he tied around her wrists, binding them together.

  Standing behind her, he stretched her arms over her head and around his neck. Calli was tall, but her bound wrists stretched her and pushed her breasts out, making them jut. She suppressed a moan that pushed at her lips. She was unbelievably aroused despite Nick’s temper. Or perhaps because of it.

  His hands grabbed at her breasts, squeezing and pinching her nipples. This time she couldn’t stop the moan that escaped her. Her breath shuddered in and out and her pussy clamped and squeezed. She was soaked beneath the short skirt she was wearing. Her panties were sopping and her juices were starting to run down her thighs. She wanted Nick inside her in the worst way. She wanted him to take her as roughly as he was handling her breasts. He was plucking at them, rubbing the nipples, drawing them out, chafing them, and making them hot and hard.

  Calli trembled and writhed against him. With her hands tied, she could not reciprocate. She couldn’t touch him in any way. She could only accept and could only wait for his hands to go where she wanted them.

  “Just a man, hmmm?” he breathed in her ear.

  “I’m just a woman,” she said and cried out as he tugged at her nipples. “God, Nick, please!”

  “Please what?”

  “Fuck me!”

  “No.” His voice was a caress against her temple.

  She whimpered. She had never heard herself make that noise before and it astonished her to hear it come from her lips.

  He slipped her arms from around his neck and turned her around to face the foot of the big mahogany bed. The bed was as old as the house, which made it over a hundred years old. It gleamed in the evening light.

  Nick retied her hands so they gripped the big post at the end, with little play in the ties. Then he grabbed her hips and forced her to bring her feet out. It made her bend over and with his hands on her hips, she bent from the hips.

  She felt the cold steel of the knife touch her back just above the skirt and caught her breath. The skirt parted easily under the blade, for Nick kept it sharp. The cotton drifted down to the wooden floor beneath her.

  Calli’s breath hitched when Nick touched her bare hips. Cold steel pressed against her ass just above the lace of her thong.

  “Spread your legs,” he said.

  She spread her feet, knowing he would see that she had soaked through her panties.

  His fingers slid into her cleft, following the line of lace of her thong, testing the dampness. Her hips lifted involuntarily in a hard arch at the touch of his hand. She longed for a deeper, harder invasion.

  Rougher.

  Her breath came more quickly. She wasn’t even sure how to ask for what she wanted. This was beyond anything Nick had ever done to her. All she knew was that she could so easily come if Nick would only take her with the same anger and force as he had handled her just a moment before.

  The knife slit the lace of her thong in two little swipes. The wet lace dropped to the floor on top of her skirt, the purple fabric darkened with her moisture.

  Nick’s fingers were still exploring her cleft. Separating her ass cheeks. Her cream was everywhere, coating everything, making her slippery and sensitive. One finger slid against her anus and she bucked hard. The moan slipped out without thought.

  “You like that, mi amor.”

  “Sí.” Her voice was husky, deep with arousal.

  His fingers pushed deeper into her cleft, into her pussy. She realized he was collecting moisture. Lubricant. Dark excitement flared in her. A wicked thrill. His fingers moved back to her tiny hole and played. Teased. He pushed and probed just enough to make her push back, wordlessly begging for more.

  He slipped a finger inside her. Calli clutched at the bedpost, her heart racing and her breathing working overtime as the sensations threatened to overwhelm her. “More!” she pleaded and her voice came out as a croak.

  “Ah. I cannot….”

  She heard the rustle of cloth. A zipper.

  Nick’s cock slammed into her with no preliminaries. He gave her no chance to accommodate his size, adjust to him, or stretch around him. He buried himself to the hilt, one hand on her shoulder to make sure he could grind himself into her to the fullest.

  Calli cried out at the fierce taking, reveling in it. It was exactly what she wanted. Her pussy clamped around him, quivering and crawling with pleasure. Her body began to tremble.

  Then Nick reinserted his finger into her ass and Calli exploded with pleasure. She clutched at the bedpost as her body seemed to fall apart with a whole new realm of sensuality.

  “Harder!” she cried out. “More, Nick. Harder. Faster. Oh god, more, Nick, more!”

  He was riding her with the hard roughness she wanted, ramming into her, using her. Her body was responding in a new and vibrant way and she could feel the approaching climax building from deep inside her.

  Then he reached under her and gently squeezed her clitoris as he drew it through his fingers.

  She screamed, throwing her head back as she climaxed. She could feel her anus and her pussy clench around Nick as he thrust into her, until her contractions forced him to come as well. He shot hot streams of cum into her pussy, giving a gasping cry of his own.

  Calli was trembling, her oxygen depleted. She felt Nick tug at the bindings around her wrist, but barely noticed. Then he picked her up. She was laid gently on the bed.

  Nick’s body curled around hers and his lips touched her temple. Her cheeks. Finally, her lips. He curled his arm around her waist and she was tucked in tight against his heat and strength.

  “You are right, of course, la dama fuerte,” he murmured in her ear. “You are always right, most especially when I am…what did you say? Being a little boy?”

  “Chucking a little boy tantrum,” she said and tried to hold back a huge yawn. She rolled her head so she could look him in the eye. All his anger was gone. He was calm.

  “Your English isn’t that bad,” she said.

  “My pride is,” he replied. Then he smiled. “But on one thing you are quite wrong, Callida Escobedo.”

  “Oh?”

  He pointed to the pile of destroyed clothing. “It’s not just Vistarian men who are prone to melodramatic gestures.”

  Chapter Eight

  Daniel slipped away from her bed in the early hours of the morning, giving Olivia barely enough time to wash and dress for breakfast and go over the room to ensure there was no evidence she had entertained a man.

  The sex-stained sheets she could do nothing about, so she simply arranged the bedclothes higher over the top of them and hoped the maid would not notice when she made the bed.

  She stepped out of the room feeling that she had covered her tracks as best she could and relaxed. Breakfast was a return to routine. The spiced coffee and the strained silence would be almost welcome. It was a predictable event among so many swift changes and fearful uncertainties surrounding them right now. She almost smiled at the armed guards dotting the corridors on her way to the elevator. It seemed close to normal once more.

  When Olivia stepped between the arches into the dining room, her heart fell.

  Serrano was standing to one side of the room, Ibarra next to him. Standing between them, looking rumpled and defeated, was Ernesto.

  The Spaniard wore the same clothes he had been wearing last night, but they w
ere crumpled and disheveled now, as if he had been wearing them for more than twenty-four hours. The tall, olive-skinned man had dark circles around his eyes. They looked like bruises, except they followed the lines and creases of his face, fanning out from his sharp hooked nose.

  Sleep deprivation, Olivia mentally catalogued.

  Ernesto was shaking as he stood between the two military men. He could barely stand on his own two feet. His hands were twitching as they hung at his sides. He blinked constantly as he watched everyone enter the dining room and pick up their trays.

  Olivia forced herself to keep moving forward, making it look as natural as possible. Her heart, though, was racing a mile a minute and her chest was squeezing hard, making her feel sick. She could taste something coppery in her mouth. Adrenaline. She was close to flat-out panic, she realized. She hadn’t counted on Ernesto being here. Or Serrano. This wasn’t part of the plan. It was too soon. Too quick.

  Too quick? Too soon?

  She picked up a tray from the end of the line and saw that her hand was shaking. She concentrated on making it not shake as she held the tray. She worked on keeping her face completely without expression as she tried to puzzle out why she would have such an odd reaction. Why too soon?

  It gave her mind a distraction to focus on, rather than looking over her shoulder and watching Serrano and Ibarra. It allowed her to appear disinterested.

  Why too quick? Surely, the end of Ernesto’s questioning session could not come to soon at all for the poor man, so why would she have any reluctance for it to end, period?

  She poured herself a cup of the spiced coffee and noticed that her hand had stopped shaking. Good for her. She even managed to nod at the waiter behind the urn and smile a silent good morning at him.

  Then she heard the gasps behind her. The combined indrawn breaths.

  She whirled.

  Time slowed down as the adrenaline already surging through her system kicked her reactions into high gear and instinct took over.

  She got a quick, heart-beat-long snapshot view of the entire dining room from where she was standing at the buffet line, which was spread across the west end of the room, in front of the rear arches.