by Cat Johnson
Braver now, Vicki shook her head stubbornly. “I’m not going.”
“No? Fine. Then I’m afraid you’re going to have to stick to your end of the deal. Take off your pants and get on the bed.” He flung off his bulletproof vest and then paused with his hand on his belt as he stared at her defiantly.
Maybe she should have been frightened, but something about him—maybe his concern for her well-being, maybe the way he acted more like a father than a letch—struck her. Vicki remained unmoving, arms still crossed. “You’re not fooling anyone, Hawk. You would never do it.”
“The hell I wouldn’t.” He watched her closely while he undid his belt and started to unbutton the fly to his cammies.
For one brief moment, Vicki feared she might have made a mistake, but still she held firm. When she continued to boldly stare right back at him, his hands halted their task and flew up in the air. “Damn it, woman. Why are you so stubborn?”
Vicki smiled. She knew it. Scary or not, Hawk was a good guy deep down.
With a huge sigh, he dropped down and sat on his bed, burying his face in his hands. Finally, he raised his head to look at her. “Just because I was bluffing doesn’t mean the next guy will be. You’re going to get yourself into big trouble playing this game.”
She decided to play to his nice side. “You’re probably right. In fact, I think the only way you can make sure I’m safe is to let me stay here until I get my story. If you do that, then I promise I’ll go back to the States, or at least to London, and never bother you again.”
“More blackmail?”
“No. Not blackmail. Think of it as a bargain and a promise.”
Hawk shook his head as nearly visible waves of frustration radiated off him. He was the kind of man whose every feeling and emotion showed clearly in his body language. Poor guy. No wonder he couldn’t bluff for shit.
“Do I have a choice?” he asked.
She almost pitied him. The caveman had caved before her very eyes. She stood firm. “Not really, no.”
He huffed out a sigh. “All right. Fine. But don’t expect me to babysit you. You’re on your own. And don’t expect my guys to hold your hand either. Pettit and Wally and the rest of the squad have too much to do already, and not enough hours in the day to do it.”
She nodded. “Okay. But I want to go out with them into the countryside.”
Hawk’s jaw tensed again. “Not on missions and not on patrol.”
“But I need to meet the locals.”
Head shaking, Hawk stood firm. “No missions or patrols. It’s too dangerous.”
“Then when?” Vicki realized that last question sounded suspiciously like a whine. She hoped Hawk hadn’t noticed.
“You can go with us on humanitarian trips only. That’s when we go into the villages, eat and drink with the locals, sit down and talk to them through our interpreter, give the kids chocolate and toys, stuff like that. It’s still too frigging dangerous for you to be out there, but I guess if we stay close to the firebase you might not get killed.”
Vicki ignored that last comment as her eyes opened wide with excitement. Going out to meet the local families was exactly what she needed for her story. “Okay. When can we do that?”
Hawk shook his head. “With the waxing of the new moon and the poppy harvest finished, contact has picked back up again.”
Vicki sat and stared at Hawk as he talked in poetic riddles about moons and flowers. Not quite sure if he was speaking in some sort of military code or pulling her leg, she asked again, “So when?”
He rose, refastening his buttons and belt. “I’ll let you know. Until then, try to keep out of our way and out of trouble. These men haven’t seen an American woman in a very, very long time. I’d stay out of sight if I were you.”
“Okay.” After that less-than-encouraging revelation, Vicki watched as Hawk grabbed his vest and prepared to leave her again—a lone woman in the middle of a camp full of strange and foreign men who hadn’t seen a woman in a very, very long time. She swallowed. “Um, Hawk?”
Buttoned up and fully armored again, Hawk had one hand on the doorknob about to leave when he glanced back at her. “Yeah?”
“Thanks.”
“Eat your dinner, Vicki, before it gets cold.” And with a frustrated sigh, he was gone and she was alone in the mud hut once again.
Vicki had a feeling that was as close to polite as Hawk got, but since he was going to help get her story, she’d gladly take it and be grateful. Besides, Ryan, who seemed to be Hawk’s right-hand man and her assigned babysitter while she was here, was polite enough for both of them, and he was a hottie.
She could handle this. She would handle this and come out of it with one hell of a story and maybe even a few hot memories to tide her over in the dark days of sexual drought ahead.
“What’s up with the little filly Hawk flew in? Who is she?” Wally asked.
Ryan smiled again as he’d done often since he’d left her. Pretty much every time Vicki came to mind. It wasn’t just his remembering the spider incident either. The woman just made him smile like a schoolboy; he couldn’t explain why. “Get this. She’s a reporter.”
“Shit.” Wally’s southern drawl drew the one-syllable word out to be at least three by the time he was done. “Hawk hates reporters.”
Ryan grinned broader. “Yeah, I know.”
“You ain’t shitting? She’s really a reporter?”
Ryan nodded.
Wally let out a long, slow whistle. “A female reporter, right here, smack in the middle of our humble base. Damn. But I guess I can see why Hawk agreed to her coming here. She’s enough to make a man squirrelly in the drawers.”
Ryan agreed. Although he wouldn’t have put it in those exact words, Vicki had managed to make him a bit squirrelly in his drawers. “She’s cute, but that’s not why Hawk brought her here. And believe me, he regrets it now. He’s trying to convince her to go home.”
Well, not so much convince as scare away.
Wally scowled. “It figures he’d go and ruin it for the rest of us by sending her back. What does he care? He’s got that sweet blonde of his waiting for him back in the States. What about the rest of us single guys here? Don’t we deserve a little romance too?”
Romance. Right. What Wally was interested in was definitely not romance.
“It doesn’t matter whether she stays or goes, Wally, because she’s off-limits. You got it?” Ryan’s voice held an unmistakable warning.
The irony wasn’t lost on him that, although Wally might be known as the squad’s ladies’ man, Ryan couldn’t wait to get back to the hut where he’d left Vicki. In fact, why the hell was he sitting here talking to Wally when he could be with her instead?
“I’m outta here. See you later, Wally.”
Still looking a bit too interested in the woman Ryan was already beginning to think of as his, as least to protect, Wally nodded a goodbye. Outside, Ryan decided he’d keep a close watch on Wally while Vicki was here.
A few minutes later, he reached his quarters and realized that for the first time in a long time, he’d crossed the base without thinking about baddies, snipers, RPGs, vipers, wild jackals or any of the other assorted dangers that normally occupied his mind the moment he was out in the open. That probably wasn’t a good thing, but right now he didn’t care. For once there was something awaiting him in the hut worth looking forward to.
He opened the door to find Vicki sitting at the room’s only desk, which was really just an old piece of plywood Ryan had supported with two makeshift sawhorses. She had her laptop out, set up right where he usually used his.
The scene was extremely surreal, kind of a warped glimpse at normalcy. It could be happening in any town back home in the States. Ryan, coming home from work to find Vicki busy on the computer, except that they both wore body armor and he was about to go out on a mission that had the potential to result in multiple deaths, hopefully not his own or any of his men.
When he’d opened the
door, a startled Vicki had spun around in the chair. There was fright in her eyes until she saw it was him, then she looked relieved. Ryan wondered if he should start to knock on his own door before entering, at least while they had company.
He pulled the wooden door of the quarters closed behind him, beyond happy that she’d seemed to relax the moment she saw him. “Hey, Vicki. What have you been up to?”
“Ryan. Hi. I was going to type up some of my notes to kill some time, and when I booted up I found there was a wireless connection. Here, in a mud hut in Afghanistan. Isn’t that funny?”
Amused by Vicki’s nervous babbling, Ryan stripped off his helmet and vest and reached to hang both on a nail stuck in the wall. “Yeah. All the comforts of home. And keep the connection on the down-low if you don’t mind. I kinda hijacked the signal from the operations center.”
“Okay. I will. I promise.” Her smile illuminated her face.
His hand faltered and the helmet clattered to the floor. The sound knocked him out of the trance caused by Vicki.
Ryan resisted the urge to physically shake his head to rid himself of the haze that had clouded his brain when Vicki had smiled at him. He finally broke eye contact, glanced at her screen…and found his blog up on her laptop.
He nearly faltered again and tripped into her lap as he leaned forward to make sure he was really seeing what he thought he saw. Something niggled at the back of his brain, and he struggled to bring it forward.
Noticing his interest, Vicki moved farther to one side so Ryan could see the laptop better. “Have you ever read any of these milblogs? I started reading them regularly for research, especially once I got approved to come here. They’re pretty interesting. This guy, Groundpounder, is my favorite.”
Her favorite.
Then it hit him. He glanced at her luggage tag again and read her full name written there, which only confirmed his suspicions. His biggest fan, the woman he flirted with online and then jerked off to in the shower, screen name Vicki V, was reporter Victoria Ann Vanover, Vicki for short, and she was sitting right here before him.
It took him a second to wrap his brain around this new development. Ryan bit his lip to stop himself from telling her who he was. Instead, he decided to play dumb a bit longer and pick Vicki’s brain. “Why is he your favorite? What do you like about him?”
Vicki shrugged. “Lots of things, I guess. He’s really a talented writer. He makes the reader, well, at least he makes me, laugh one minute and cry the next.”
What he wrote reduced Vicki to tears? Ryan felt ridiculously happy at that revelation. What exactly did that say about him?
“And the imagery he uses, it’s so descriptive you practically feel like you’re there. He’s amazing.”
Vicki thought he was amazing. That thought made Ryan even more squirrely in the drawers. Feeling guilty about letting her go on and on about how wonderful she thought he was, Ryan considered confessing, but then he realized that would mean confessing he was also the one who wrote those very sexually suggestive comments in answer to hers. He’d written all that stuff under the assumption they would never meet, yet here she was. What if she’d written it thinking the same? That online flirting was one thing, but she’d never follow through in real life?
But still, Ryan couldn’t keep her in the dark. Withholding the truth didn’t sit well with his conscience. He would just have to take his chances at rejection.
He opened his mouth to tell her when she interrupted his good intentions.
“Hey, Ryan.”
Phew. A reprieve. “Yeah?”
“Can I ask you something?”
His sex-deprived brain imagined what she might want to ask and how he would answer her. Will I help you out of those restrictive clothes? Yes, of course, I will. “Um, sure. What is it?”
“I asked Hawk when you guys could take me out into the countryside to meet the locals, and instead of answering me, all he did was talk about the moon and poppies. Was he pulling my chain trying to avoid taking me?”
At that question, an image popped into his head. The vision of his hands, chained and bound, unable to move. Vicki, clad in leather, torturing him with her tongue as he writhed with pleasure.
What the… Where the hell had that come from?
Ryan raised his eyes to find Vicki watching him expectantly, waiting for an answer to her perfectly innocent and logical question, not knowing at all that she starred as the dominatrix in the porn movie currently running in his head.
“Um. No, he wasn’t, uh, yanking your chain.” Ryan’s face felt hot. And jeez, was he starting to sweat? He launched into his answer to Vicki’s question in hopes it would calm his libido, which had apparently sensed a female nearby and had kicked into overdrive.
“Hawk meant that when there’s no moon showing the Taliban take advantage of the darkness and their movements and attacks are more frequent. And now that they aren’t all busy harvesting and transporting the poppies they use to produce the heroin that funds their little militant efforts, they have all the time in the world to plan and stage attacks. Our region gets pretty hot. The squad may have to travel outside of base under those conditions, but you don’t.”
Vicki’s face paled a bit. “So knowing the enemy is out there and the likelihood of your getting attacked when you go into the countryside is very high, you guys still leave the safety of base?”
While Ryan debated how to tell her that the base wasn’t all that safe, just safer than outside in the mountains, Vicki continued, “How can you do that? Why do you do it?”
He shrugged. “It’s my job.”
She still looked doubtful, so he went on. “And I do it for the guy standing next to me, just as he does it for me.”
Vicki let out a short laugh and shook her head, still looking baffled.
Ryan raised a brow. “What?”
“You guys, soldiers I mean, are a different breed. You’re not like other men.”
He considered that for a moment, weighing his chances with this girl. “And in your opinion, is that a good thing or a bad thing?”
Vicki’s face softened as her eyes met his. “I haven’t decided yet.”
Suddenly it was very tough to breathe as the squirrels moved from his drawers up into his chest. He had better start talking before he started kissing her. “So, um, you can sleep in here tonight.”
Vicki’s expression showed her surprise. Her gaze swept the room that was already nearly wall-to-wall beds.
Ryan decided he better clarify before she assumed she’d be sharing one of their beds, not that he would mind. Nuh, uh. Not one bit. “The squad’s going to be out all night on an overwatch mission. You’ll have the place to yourself until we get back in the morning.”
She nodded, looking a bit relieved until she frowned. “This all-night mission is tonight?”
Vicki’s hand landed lightly on Ryan’s forearm. He felt a shiver run through him. He nodded. “Yes.”
“Do you want me to go somewhere else so you can take a nap before you have to leave?” she asked.
“A nap? Um, no, that’s okay. I’m fine.”
In spite of the feeling being this close physically to her caused in him, Ryan broke out into a smile. He pictured suggesting to Hawk at the next meeting that they schedule naps before night missions. Ryan nearly laughed out loud at the thought of how well that would go over.
The amount of time they had to crash only amounted to a few hours of rest total per day. Last night had been an exception. Ryan had actually gotten a fairly solid night’s sleep. Judging by his overactive cock, he was raring to go.
However, he did need to shower and relieve this tension. Wouldn’t do any good to get killed by the bad guys because he couldn’t keep his mind off his Vicki-induced hard-on.
While he was at it, he might as well brush his teeth and change into a fresh T-shirt, underwear and socks before he left for the overwatch. Starting out a mission horny and with already smelly and sweat-soaked clothes did not a happy sol
dier make. Neither did going out hungry. He’d have to grab some chow before he left too.
Maybe if he satisfied all the rest of his body’s needs, he could keep his mind off wanting Vicki.
Ryan managed to stop thinking of himself and his horniness long enough to remember something. “Hey. Did you ever get to eat?”
A wide grin lit Vicki’s face. “Yeah. It was my first MRE.”
Ryan laughed. The woman actually got excited over eating the thing that was the bane of every soldier’s existence—Meals Ready to Eat. He could fall for a girl like this.
His stomach began to flutter at that thought. Taking a deep, steadying breath, Ryan blamed it all on the squirrels.
Chapter Seven
The new moon worked both for and against them. As Ryan had explained to Vicki before he had to tear himself away from her, the baddies used the darkness to cover their movements, just as Ryan’s squad hoped to cover their own as they pushed farther into the countryside.
The squad had departed the relative safety of the base in the black of night, weapons locked and loaded. The light was so low it was difficult to see even while wearing their night-vision goggles. The world before Ryan’s eyes appeared in shades of green as they trudged the many kilometers silently. Or as silently as a group of men could while carrying assault rucksacks.
Far from base, Ryan’s squad was basically on their own. The mortar tube they had with them just in case things got bad helped him feel a little bit better. Although, if he screwed up because he couldn’t manage to keep his thoughts from straying to the woman in his mud hut, no amount of weaponry would save him from Hawk’s wrath.
Behind the lenses of his night-vision goggles, Ryan’s eyes adjusted to the low light conditions. Things became clearer and more distinct with each careful step he took. He tried to stay alert, keeping watch for any nooks or crannies in the mountains that might hide the unseen enemy.
The night was silent around them as the men moved as rapidly as possible without compromising safety. They only had a short time to reach their destination, but that they arrived there unseen was equally important.
