“I’m a complete wreck as a woman. There is no way you can want me, Mark. I’m going to have Peter declare me a national disaster area.”
But she’d turned back into exactly the woman he’d always thought she was. Beautiful and decent and with a heart that loved so hard.
He slid a hand around her waist and pulled her across the tile until he could tuck her under his arm. Until she leaned her head on his shoulder. He leaned his cheek on the top of her head and just let her breathing ease as he rubbed his hand up and down her back.
She wasn’t a wreck; she was a miracle.
And the President was an idiot for ever letting her slip through his fingers.
***
“What is it about you, Henderson?” Emily turned her face into his shoulder, her hair moving slickly across his cheek.
“Herman, you mean. Marky Herman, surfer and paramilitary extraordinaire. Henderson must be some other guy. Should I be jealous?” With his arm around her, he could feel her breathe deeply, as if she were inhaling him until he existed only inside her body. Herman—and Henderson too, for that matter—wanted to lay her on the bed and spend a day or two making love to her.
“Yes, some other guy…” Her voice a warm soft echo against his neck. “Ravished me. When I was completely helpless.”
“Yes, that sounds like the cad.” She had known it was him. Everything back in alignment. Well, almost. Except for Army Regulation 600-20. He tried to make light of it, but it had been so wrong. He still couldn’t make sense of how something that was so wrong could feel so right.
She breathed in again, deeply, her nose against his neck so that he could feel the cool air slipping over his skin toward her inhale.
“You were angry.”
When he’d made love to her? Ecstatic, perhaps thrilled. But not angry.
“When you thought I slept with you while sleeping with a married man.”
“Furious!” He could still feel the grit of it making his back teeth clench. All the anger snapped back into him, even though he now knew it wasn’t true.
She sat up, pulling away from him. His side where she’d been curled so warm suddenly felt chilled despite the warmth of the day.
Those eyes inspected him. Looked at him until he wanted to look away to preserve his soul. They saw through him, inside him. No secrets were safe from those eyes.
“You gave me…” She trailed off, tipped her head to one side, and then the other, inspecting his face from several angles.
The rough edge of his tongue on two continents, Asia and North America. He’d given up trying to read her and wondered what part of himself he should protect if she decided to attack. That face he thought he knew so well had run through a hundred emotions in the last hour, had shown him a dozen new sides of the woman. The most amazing woman he’d ever met.
But, he clenched his fists in resolve, she’d had a hard day, mainly due to him, there was no way on this green Earth that he’d take advantage of her emotions again.
“A gift,” she whispered.
A gift? He’d never given her a single rose.
She placed her hands on his shoulders, rested them there warm and gentle for a long moment. Then pushed him away. Well, there was his answer. She wanted nothing to do with him.
He closed his eyes against the pain. He’d never have her in his arms again.
***
Mark half expected another blow as she pushed him back, away from the bed, pushing him prone onto the floor. Lord knew he deserved the rejection. He’d insulted her in every way possible, worst of all questioning her integrity.
But no blow landed. Moments before his back hit the floor, she slid those fine, cool hands under his T-shirt. In one clean sweep she had it clear of his torso and over his shoulders. His bare back hit the cool tile and a cold shiver shook him.
She jerked the shirt off over his head none too nicely, nearly took his ears with it.
And there she sat, like a majestic elfin queen all long and elegant in blue silk, staring at his chest. She ran her hands along his sides, up and over his ribs, those blue eyes following the hands. Right, she’d been blind last time. Now she studied him like a terrain map before an op.
She did want him. He closed his eyes. Emily Beale wanted him. Had known it was him. Hadn’t thought it was just sex. The possibilities swirled in his mind, a clutter of thoughts and fantasies he couldn’t process fast enough. The fantasy born the moment she’d walked off that civilian airliner two months ago.
Her hands continued their slow tracery, slid over his ticklish spot without attacking but with a small circling to acknowledge the moment. Continued until his mind quieted and all he knew in the whole world was where her palms ran over his skin.
She lifted a hand. But when he opened his eyes, she covered them with her hand. Then she folded his T-shirt and placed it over his eyes. Blinding him.
He reached for her, but she slapped his hands aside. He went to slide a hand up her leg, and his pinkie twisted painfully in her grasp. He backed off. Only had to tell him twice. He wasn’t a complete idiot.
Nothing, and more nothing. The tension built. The silence. Her sweet weight rested across his hips, but she didn’t move.
No sounds. Nothing except his own heartbeat, a racing patter that ebbed and flowed, unsteady. Finally, in between the sound of his own heart, he could hear Beale’s breathing. Calm, steady. Always so calm and steady, except that one night.
He finally became aware of the tiny shift of her weight with each breath. He’d never been so aware of a woman, never wanted one so badly. Like his helicopter, an awareness that extended past any boundary as trivial as skin and nerves. He understood a problem with the Hawk long before any sensor could reflect it. When flying, he knew how the wind would kick before it blew. A perfect mesh of man and machine.
His connection to Beale extended past heat, past arousal. It extended into the quiet, and the dark.
A tiny shift. A moment before…
A feather couldn’t be as soft as what touched his chest. It brushed over him, his skin rippling in its wake. The sensation maddening. What could it possibly…
Hair. Her hair hung loose, and she brushed it back and forth over his chest. In the dark and silence, he could see her in his mind’s eye, could see her brushing her hair back and forth over his chest.
Is this what she had felt? Alone in that bed. And then a touch from the darkness. He had no fear, his sight could be returned by tossing aside a T-shirt. But he could feel the kindness behind Beale’s ever-so-gentle action.
A feathered kiss on the center of his breastbone slammed into him. No one had ever done more than offer him sex. He’d never wanted more than that. Captain Emily Beale was offering him more. A vision of something. Of himself? Is this how she saw him? Kind? Everyone called him a hard ass, his commanders to his face, his crews to his back.
Beale held a different vision.
When she lay down upon his chest, he almost died. She’d shed that silk blouse and sheer cotton bra he’d glimpsed the edge of but twice. Skin to skin. Just curled there. So quiet, for so long, he wondered if she’d gone to sleep.
Safe. Quiet. Safe.
Then she shifted ever so slowly, one way and then the other. Rubbing his chest with hers, at first like a she-serpent sliding slowly over the sand. Her operational tempo increased slowly, building layer upon layer until she writhed against him like a living thing gone mad.
She ground her hips against his erection. Slid her body across his. Nuzzled his neck. Drove her fingers into his hair, scrubbing her fingernails in his scalp until even the sensation of her hips faded beneath the glorious massage.
***
Mark actually whimpered as Emily unzipped his jeans. Moaned like a winter windstorm over the desert when she freed him and slid him between her breasts and nipped him with her teeth.
Emily kept him in suspense, not once or twice, but drove him to the edge a half-dozen times. When she finally drove him over, his entire body
shuddered. Shuddered exactly as hers had done in that hospital bed.
She held him as he released, writhed, moaned, relaxed, sagged, and finally lay still gasping for breath.
Emily lay with her head on his stomach, her eyes closed. She had returned the gift he’d given her. Done her best to return it in kind. Sex for sex.
Now they were even.
Why did that thought make her heart want to break?
Chapter 41
“So, how do you work this thing?”
“This thing” was how the First Lady typically referred to the Bell 430 helicopter. Right now it was perched on the South Lawn and they were alone except for a small flock of blacksuits hovering about. Emily sat in the cockpit rechecking the preflight checklist. Trying not to fumble over the logical steps that weren’t there for this bird. No terrain radar. No infrared targeting systems. No…
No further attacks had been made on the First Lady, and she was eager to fly again despite her own experiences that night. As was Emily. She hadn’t heard from her “boyfriend” yet. She was making him sleep at a hotel, had sent Mark on his way when she’d headed to the kitchen to make dinner last night. They were supposed to get together later this morning, and then Katherine had called for the helicopter.
Emily looked at the First Lady standing beside her open door. A flowery top and tight designer jeans, her red hair caught in a jaunty ponytail and rippling down her back. And a close circle of blacksuits. The Secret Service had doubled the First Lady’s detail until it rivaled the President’s.
Shielding her eyes from the sun, Katherine stuck her head in Emily’s door rather than simply climbing into the back of the helicopter.
“It works by magic.” Emily’s standard reply when someone asked how she pulled off a particular maneuver.
“No, I mean really.”
“Oh.” Not the most professional response to give your boss. “Climb on in the other side and I’ll show you.”
The First Lady circled the nose for the left-hand seat. Emily hopped out and slid the passenger door to the main cabin shut while Katherine climbed in and settled herself. One of the blacksuits latched the copilot’s door once he saw Katherine was securely belted.
“You really want to try this?”
“You make it look so easy.”
“I’ve been doing it since I was sixteen.”
“At sixteen, what was I doing? Hmmm… That would be boys. I was also doing boys. And maybe boys.”
“You make it look so easy.”
The First Lady laughed aloud.
Emily bit the inside of her cheek. “That wasn’t quite how I meant it.”
“No, no.” Katherine shook her head and patted Emily’s knee. “That was perfect.”
“I mean, I watch you with diplomats or staffers, the Vice President, or a new security guy. You make them, I don’t know, comfortable. I was always a loner.”
“Well, then, Miss Emily Beale, who was kind enough to come and be my chef and guardian and save my life last week, we’ll make a trade. You teach me about this, and I’ll teach you about that. Deal?”
The First Lady held out her hand. Emily took it gladly. Her grasp was warm, and while not strong, it was solid. Hard not to like a person who shook hands that way. Daniel’s advice to watch her back rose up once again. And that moment of avarice in the kitchen when she’d considered blackmailing a donor’s wife.
But there was no question about the First Lady having been attacked or her repeated appreciation for Emily saving her. Emily needed some quiet to think about this. But, between Mark’s arrival, and scheming late into the night with her father, and, oh yeah, actually cooking at the White House, she hadn’t had much thinking time.
“Is your arm okay?”
In response the First Lady waved it about.
“Now. Teach me.”
“Okay. Where to start?” She tried to remember back to her first time in a helicopter. A simple machine, a radio transponder and a half-dozen gauges with a shared cyclic. That had boggled her sixteen-year-old mind. And then she’d flown and been hooked for life.
“First rule. All this stuff on the dashboard and on the console between us…” She pointed at the mass of switches running back between their seats. “Just ignore it. I’ll take care of all that stuff. Today, you have only two things to worry about. The joystick between your knees—it’s called a cyclic—and what’s out the window.
“Don’t worry. The cyclic is directly attached to mine.” She wiggled hers, and the one in front of Katherine moved. “So, don’t worry about crashing us. I won’t let you. Just don’t press any of the buttons on the top.”
Radio, autopilot, and other controls peppered the wide knob on top of the joystick. On second thought, Emily slapped a half-dozen switches, turning off most of the functions. She started the turbines and they began their rotation up toward flight speed.
“Okay. Let’s go.” Katherine waved a hand toward the window.
Emily hadn’t noticed that dozens of White House photographers were gathering to watch the show.
“Let’s go soon. I get so tired of it.”
“Really? But you look like you enjoy it.” Katherine acted as if she lived for it. No one was that good an actress.
“Well, it has its moments.” She shrugged negligently with all the confidence of one woman chatting with another where no one else can hear them.
“Then let’s make this one of them,” Emily offered in a bright voice and started throwing the switches to power up the electronics. While the engines wound up to speed, she helped Katherine with the headset. It cut the whine of the turbines to about theater-during-intermission levels.
“Oh, my! These are splendid. The helicopter is always so loud.”
“This is a quiet one. You wouldn’t enjoy riding in my Black Hawk.” She resisted the hitch that tried to enter her voice. That was another thing to discuss with Mark. If she could find out who was after the First Lady and she could get Peter to release her, did she have any chance of getting back to the line? But could she serve on the line beside Mark? There wasn’t anywhere else she’d rather be, but neither did she want to be court-martialed.
“A full helmet will buffer even more than these headsets, but a Hawk’s rotor beat alone can make your body sore after a few hours.”
“Your voice is so clear.”
“Good. That will help you listen carefully. Because I’m not going to touch the controls, and I’ll make sure those cameras can see that I’m not.”
Katherine turned to stare at her with her mouth open for a moment. Then she clamped it shut and grinned wickedly.
“That would be excellent.”
“First trick is slow and steady. Second trick is small movements. Wiggle the joystick a little. Feel how there’s a natural center?”
“Yes.” She moved it without waving it all around like most beginners.
“Good. Small movements. Very good.” Emily checked the fuel flow and engine temperature in the turbines.
“In a moment I’m going to add power. That will lift us up. As I do that, push the joystick straight forward the very smallest amount you can imagine. In fact, don’t even try to move it, just think about pushing it forward. That will be enough.”
She looked over. The First Lady’s shoulders were tense, but her fingers weren’t knuckle white on the controls. Good sign.
“You can rest your left hand on the control alongside your seat. They’ll be able to see that through the window. Don’t actually do anything, I’ll take care of that with the one beside my seat, but you can let your hand ride along.”
“Does it always take two hands?”
“We have an autopilot, but it’s really only smart enough to help you go straight and level. For most flying you need two hands. In combat flying, you need three.”
Katherine laughed. Good.
“Okay. Are you ready?”
Katherine nodded. Breathing a little too fast to speak, but not hyperventilating.
/> Emily made one last check of the controls.
“Okay, here we go. Don’t move it until I tell you.” She set the throttle and pulled up lightly on the collective, increasing the angle of the rotor blades and thereby increasing the lift they supplied. The Bell was so responsive that they were off the skids and hovering without even feeling a change.
“Now. Just think forward. Don’t push, just think it.”
In a single smooth motion they lifted forward and up as Emily pulled on the collective.
“Excellent. Now think right.”
She saw the First Lady’s head move down.
“No. Don’t look at the instruments. I’m watching those. A pilot watches outside the craft far more than inside.”
She let them climb in a long, lazy spiral while she chatted with Air Traffic Control. Always good to let the local ATC know where you were and what you were up to, as if they weren’t following every move and the newly assigned Black Hawk tail wasn’t hovering a quarter mile back.
“Now, without raising your hands—remember it takes two to fly a helicopter—look out the left window and smile.”
The First Lady did and gasped. They were about a hundred feet up, and every camera of the White House Press Corps was aimed in their direction. The reporters were waving and applauding. Emily waved back with her free hand, making it clear exactly who had the controls.
“Well, you did it. You just made the hot spot on the five o’clock news on every network out there.”
“That was splendid!” Her hand wobbled and she gasped when the helicopter leaned abruptly to the left.
Emily took the joystick and waggled it to the right and back to center making the helicopter rock side-to-side.
“That’s how we wave back from up here.”
Katherine pulled her hands into her lap, without first checking that Emily had the controls, but that was a learned skill.
“You did really great.”
“You’re just saying that.” But Katherine was blushing deep red, almost enough to match her hair.
Night Is Mine Page 19
