Make Mine a Marine

by Julie Miller

  Hawk followed the sweet little sway of her tush all the way back into camp, torturing himself with thoughts that were sure to shock Sarah. Talk about puzzles. No one, not once since he'd lost his father early in the war dubbed Desert Storm and his great-uncle Otis had stepped in to teach him how to be a man and how to use and respect his special gifts, had ever been curious enough to figure him out. No one except Otis and his mother, Lily, had ever cared enough to try.

  But the schoolmarm wanted to. He didn't mistake her curiosity for caring. He'd known a couple of women in his time who were intrigued enough to peel away a few layers of the mystique he'd carefully built around himself for protection and survival. But once they got to the weird stuff, they fled, repulsed by the unnatural powers of the man beneath the facade.

  The difference this time was that he felt equally intrigued. What made the men of Marysville ignorant of Sarah McCormick's quiet beauty and amazing courage? What made her cling to him like a bee on a flower, then force him into battle mode to defend himself against that wicked, preachy mouth of hers?

  The prim and proper schoolmarm was a puzzle he wanted to solve. But he couldn't allow himself that pleasure. He was here on a mission, determined to keep history from repeating itself.

  Forgetting that might turn Sarah into another victim of Tenebrosa's evil history.

  And he had yet to forgive himself for the last victim he'd lost here.

  "Hey, Miss Mack! Come take a look at this!"

  Sarah glanced up from the marker she'd been reading and hiked up the next twenty steps to the opening in the black basalt pyramid where Lyndsay and Andrea stood. Her stiff muscles relished the exertion after a second nearly full day of riding in the back of the truck to Las Lagumas.

  Upon their arrival, a lesson in the gentle digging procedures they'd use to help uncover more of the ongoing excavation had whet her appetite to unearth the archaeological treasures buried inside and around the tomb. But she tempered her own eagerness to embark on this adventure in order to set an example for the girls. If they had to wait until first light to begin the hands-on part of this cultural geography lesson, then so could she. In the meantime, they could review what they had learned about the site thus far.

  Andrea held out her worn, dog-eared handbook and pointed to a picture. The primitive sunburst nestled in the cupped palms of two open hands was the same as the picture carved above the doorway where they stood. "This must be where the queen is buried. That's her symbol," said Andrea, her quiet features wreathed with excitement. "According to my book, all the jewelry and treasures Meczaquatl gave her are engraved with it."

  At his uncle's urging, Raul Salazar had escorted Sarah, Hawk and the girls up to the ruins to get their first glimpse before nightfall while his crew stayed behind to set up camp.

  Raul was a delightful young man of eighteen or so, patiently content to answer any and all of the girls' questions. His sparkling brown eyes and lilting voice had already captured Lyndsay's interest, and he lapped up their attention, adding his own amiable flirtations to his lecture about the hazards and highlights of working on an archaeological dig.

  He had already shown them the ground-level entrance to the tomb. Tomorrow they'd explore the catacombs there, including Meczaquatl's sealed burial chamber and the many hidden passageways and niches where his treasure had been stored for centuries.

  "It is too dark to go in now," said Raul, his accented tenor voice full of a young man's bravado. "Even in the morning we will need torches to explore."

  "Why isn't the queen buried with her husband?" asked Denise.

  "Their marriage wasn't sanctioned by his people. Prini, as she was called, was not a native Aztec. Although she was the daughter of a village chieftain, she was originally taken as a slave," explained Raul. "She willingly sacrificed herself upon her husband's death to be buried with him, but his people refused to give her that honor. They buried her in the same tomb among the gifts he ordered for her, but they would not lay her by his side."

  "Yuck." Lynnette's assessment of the story reflected her modern tastes. "I wouldn't die just to be buried with my guy. That's worse than Romeo and Juliet."

  "I think it's tragic." Lyndsay's dreamy voice matched the sadness in her bright green eyes. "Did they really love each other?"

  "I suppose," answered Raul. "That is why Meczaquatl cursed his people. Soon after his death, they were decimated by a smallpox virus."

  Sarah enjoyed the story of romantic tragedy, but as an adult, she felt obligated to add an element of fact to their discussion. "European explorers brought the new illness to the island."

  "Perhaps. But for generations since their demise, it has been acceptable to the citizens of Tenebrosa to raid Prini's chamber and sell those artifacts to help our economy. No one has yet violated Meczaquatl's chamber in such a way. The artifacts uncovered in his antechamber are kept in El Espanto as national treasures."

  Talk about a double standard. Out loud, Sarah made note of the lengthening shadows. "Luis said we had only about an hour. It’s been longer than that now. We'd better get back to camp so we can eat dinner and get a good night's sleep. Tomorrow we become archaeologists."

  "Yes!" A chorus of enthusiastic cheers followed Sarah down the steep stone steps. She noticed that the attraction between Lyndsay and Raul seemed to be mutual. Of all the girls, he took her by the hand and guided her down the treacherous descent.

  Sarah smiled to herself, recapturing some of the eagerness that had led her to apply for this trip in the first place. She was finally seeing something of the world. And, for a few short days, she would actually be a part of living history.

  At the base of the pyramid she stepped to one side and mentally tallied off the girls as she had done countless times that day. Martín de Vega had flirted with them at lunch, but he had yet to make any alarming overt gestures. Just the same, even with Hawk looking over her shoulder, she planned to follow Luis's advice and keep the girls together and away from the potential threat.

  Her class of bright young women paraded past: Denise leading the way, Lyndsay hand in hand with Raul, Colleen and Andrea discussing the merits of burying treasured keepsakes with departed loved ones, and Lynnette, looking this way and that, taking stock of every single detail to record in her journal.

  But where was Hawk?

  Sarah had gradually gotten used to his unnerving company hovering in the background, much like the omnipresent heat she couldn't avoid. She had logically decided to make him her friend, since she'd had no luck in making him stay at home. After the way she'd thrown herself all over him the night before because of that stupid spider and her own timorous fears, and after the way he'd held her so tenderly—so politely, when he could have easily told her to get over herself—it became imperative that she reach some kind of truce with him, or the rest of the week would be hell, as he had once promised.

  The poor man. She was a mercy date waiting to happen. He'd only been trying to protect her from her own carelessness, and she had turned to him as if he were some kind of knight in shining armor—molding herself to him like a wanton, thinking with her heart and hormones instead of really thinking. She'd had a lot of years to polish her self-sufficiency, and she prided herself on staying cool in a crisis and not giving in to her fears.

  But last night she'd forgotten all that and hatched a one-sided fantasy with Hawk. Not since her parents' deaths had anyone else offered to be strong for her. And he hadn't even offered—she’d forced him to be her rescuer. God, how she must have embarrassed him. Like a gentleman, he had tried to comfort her, and she had thanked him by putting him in the awkward position of having to turn down her unwanted, unskilled advances.

  But those humiliating circumstances wouldn't happen again. They couldn't happen again if she turned her dark knight into a buddy like the other men in her life. And the first thing she would do for any friend would be to ensure his safety. If he hadn't gone up the pyramid with them, then he must have gone inside the entrance down below.
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  Pulling a pocket flashlight from her shorts, she entered the squared-off archway and walked down the long hallway leading to the center of the tomb.

  "Hawk? You in here?" Turning on her light, she rounded the corner to the antechamber that led to Meczaquatl's tomb. The eight-foot-square room featured walls built of sandstone blocks, and was painted with frescoes detailing the king's achievements in life.

  But the bronze and umber drawings, highlighted with bits of paint containing actual gold dust, didn't catch her attention. The man at the center of the empty chamber drew her entire focus.

  Standing still as the corpse sealed inside, with his feet braced apart and fingers splayed at his sides, Hawk tipped his face up toward the juncture where the top stone of the wall met the ceiling. His nostrils flared, but his breathing was almost undetectable.

  "Hawk?" She called to him again, shining her light on the wall, trying to see what picture in particular fascinated him so. Frowning, she looked at him again. The only thing on the top of that wall was a shallow crevice where the mortar between the stones had disintegrated into dust.

  She could almost hear a hum of tension radiating from his body like the fallout of a controlled chemical reaction. It thrummed and rippled through the air, as tangible as heat rising from hot pavement. But the air inside the perpetual twilight of the tomb remained chilly in its gloom, pricking her skin with goose bumps.

  Her light flickered to his face, and Sarah gasped at the unblinking intensity of his eyes. His pupils had dilated, forming bottomless pits in the reflecting pools of endless night. The stifling air sucked at her breath, making her light-headed.

  She tried to call his name again.

  He didn't hear her.

  Chapter Four

  Sarah shook her head, trying to clear her ears of the heavy air. Dropping the flashlight, she raked her fingers into her hair at either temple, squeezing out the haze that clouded her mind.

  Her breath came in shallow pants. Blindly she reached out, squinting to find Hawk's shadowy, still frame silhouetted in the darkness.

  Was he feeling this, too? Was there some leak of poisonous air, gone stale after eons bottled up in the tomb with a dead man? Could the excavations already in progress in other parts of the pyramid have tapped into a fissure beneath the earth, releasing gases from the dormant volcano that formed the island? Although they had barely begun exploring, Luis had warned them of the uncharted network of endless passages. Addicting, toxic air could travel along pathways a man might never find.

  They had to get out of there. Now!

  "Hawk?" Sarah leaned forward, battling an unseen force inside her head that made her feet feel like lead weights mired in a deep snowdrift. She pressed on, inches at a time, her progress hampered as if she were moving upwind into a blizzard.

  The spinning vertigo in her head worsened the closer she got. Sucking in a fortifying breath, she reached out and touched his arm. "Hawk?"

  He snapped his head around as if she'd given him an electric shock. Sarah jerked back, singed by the sudden violence roiling through him.

  He stepped toward her, then took another step. Sarah stumbled backward, terrified by the unrecognizing glint in his eyes and the grim look of purpose on his wild, striking, sinister face. He advanced on her, a devilish wraith emerging from the night. Her back hit a wall, puffing up a cloud of ancient dust around her face and shoulders. She put her hands up in a futile attempt to ward off his overpowering strength, and still he kept coming.

  "Hawk!" she cried out, desperate for him to recognize her and regain his senses. "It's me. Sarah. The schoolmarm!"

  She bit out the awful name he'd dubbed her, just as his fingertips grazed her neck. His hand closed around her throat and she shrank against the wall. Dust sifted into her nostrils and clogged her throat. Her neck constricted against his hand and she coughed. Panicked in her need for air, she grasped at his bare forearm and dug in eight of her short nails, crying his name on a gasping breath.

  Hawk squeezed his eyes shut and gritted his teeth, dragging in a lungful of air. When his chest receded on the exhale she heard the barest whisper of a word. "Sch…school…"

  "Hawk?" She tried again, her own voice a ragged little squeak. She repeated his name over and over as he struggled to find his way back to her.

  Finally, when she had no voice of her own left to call to him, he loosened his grip on her. She breathed in deeply, sucking the dusty, rank air down her throat. The action triggered a spasm of coughing that inflamed the bruised and tender skin around her neck.

  Maybe it was her hushed groan of pain, maybe it was the shaking of her body, but Hawk opened his eyes and glared at her with a fierce determination that she felt rather than saw. With her back literally against the wall, she was helpless when he reached for her again.

  He crushed the collar of her shirt in his fist and tugged her forward. He ignored the beseeching gesture of her outstretched arms and spun her around, taking her by the shoulders and pushing her in front of him. He shoved her around the corner into the hallway, where she could see the lighter shadows of the night outside waiting several feet away, the literal light at the end of the tunnel.

  He shoved her again, following behind her in heavy, staggering steps. "Out…" His voice sounded behind her like the strangled croak of a trapped animal. "Now"

  Risking a glance over her shoulder, she saw Hawk stumble to his knees. His eyes were scarcely more than black slits cutting through the agony that clenched his features. Damning her foolishness and forgetting her fear, Sarah stopped and reached out to him when she should have run.

  He snatched her wrist, his painful grip cutting into her skin. He swung her arm aside and used the momentum to drag himself back up to his feet.

  "Get out now!" he hollered in her face, and in one fluid motion he hauled her up into his arms. Ignoring her shriek of protest, he crushed her to his chest and lurched toward the opening.

  Sarah slung her arms around his neck to shield herself from the jarring ride. His hands on her thigh and shoulder were fierce talons, gripping her in desperation as much as protection. As he neared the opening, his pace quickened. And when they reached the air outside, he lengthened his stride into a run, evening out his steps into a feral smoothness that carried them both deep into the jungle.

  She tucked her head beneath Hawk's chin and curled into a ball to protect herself from the stinging slap of thick leaves and hanging vines as he ran. An eternity passed, though maybe only a minute of real time, before he stopped abruptly and released her. She sailed out of his arms, landing with a cushioned thud on a bed of giant ferns.

  While she scrambled from her bottom to her knees, stiffly giving her body time to adjust from its human roller-coaster ride, Hawk bent over at the waist, grasping his knees for support and gulping in lungfuls of the reviving air. Though more humid than fresh, it was nonetheless clean, and Sarah knelt beside him, transfixed, while his chest heaved in and out with an exertion more emotional than physical.

  Again drawn by his pain in a way she didn't understand, Sarah touched his side. He might not have noticed the shy touch through the layers of his vest and shirt, but when he didn't flinch away, she grew bolder. She rose up on her knees beside him, laying one hand at the small of his back and the other over his bicep, holding him in a gentle embrace. She patted and stroked him, silly gestures, really, for a man of his size, but she didn't know what else to do for him. She had no idea what to say that might help.

  She had no idea what was wrong.

  He slowly angled his head back to see her. Confusion banked in his eyes, a dullness that darkened and engulfed his gaze until it squeezed out a tiny rim of light that ringed his irises. He blinked, and when he looked at her again, recognition dawned.

  "Sarah? Are you real?"

  Held still by his gaze, Sarah barely nodded. Then, before she could utter a word, he was on his knees in front of her, crushing her in his arms. He palmed the back of her head and pressed it to his shoulder. He fo
lded her into him, wrapping her up so tightly that breathing wasn't much of an option. Her hands settled at his waist as he rocked her back and forth. Sarah simply held on, sensing he needed the kind of comfort that holding on to another human being could provide.

  Time seemed suspended in that nameless place in the tropical night. Hawk released her, and she felt suddenly bereft of his warmth, of his hardness and need. Walter had never clung to her like that. No man had ever held on to her as if she were a lifeline. It didn't matter that it could have been anybody that Hawk needed right then. What mattered was that he had needed someone. She was there. And he hadn't pushed her away.

  Sarah pursed her lips together, trying to come up with a suitable excuse to move away from him. While the sounds hummed in her vocal cords, he cupped her jaw in his large hands and tipped her face up to his. His gaze roamed her features, searching, seeking answers to an unasked question. His fingers feathered across her ears, sending tremors of awareness through her. His gaze focused on her mouth, just as his thumbs pressed against her lips.

  Her bottom lip throbbed with the memory of his touch the night before. Walter had kissed her on occasion. He had taught her how to open her mouth and touch his tongue with her own. At the time, she thought herself daring, on the verge of discovering passion. But the memory of that intimacy seemed a pale imitation of what this man did to her with just the brush of his fingertips and the power of his gaze.

  He traced her lips with his thumbs. The callused tips abraded her sensitive skin, making her feel hot inside. Her pores opened to cool her from the oppressive humidity outside, but inside she felt breathless and trapped, with no way to assuage the rise in pressure and temperature swirling from all the points where he touched her with his hands and eyes. The heat spiraled downward, gathering deep in the heart of her.

  How did she ask a man to kiss her? What could she say or do to make him understand what she wanted?

  "Hawk." She breathed his name like a prayer. And shocking her right down to her feverish little toes, he answered her.