Despite his assertion that he couldn’t do slow, he did. He thrust slowly and tirelessly as sensation piled on sensation.
“Harder,” she cried, but the steady relentless rhythm demanded that she accept his loving.
They were both slick with sweat. She could feel his heart pounding against hers, his breath rasping loud in her ears. The room filled with the heavy, earthy scent of sex, mingling with the spiciness of him.
And then it was there, cascades of shuddering, shaking release as they fell together.
***
Garth rolled off Bronwyn. He stared at the ceiling, waiting for his breathing to return to normal. That had been… intense. Even though his body was cooling, he could still feel a warmth deep within—he didn’t know—his cells or something. His bones, his whole body hummed as if it resonated with some super-powerful, perfectly tuned engine. He felt for Bronwyn’s hand, folded it within his own.
When he could speak, not knowing if he was talking to her or himself, not sure if there was any difference, he said, “Bronny, it’s never been like that before. I’ve heard it’s different when you love someone, but I didn’t guess it would be that different. It was… I think that was making love.”
He rolled onto his side and propped his head in his hand. He lifted a strand of her silken hair and arranged it to lie straight and smooth against the pillow. “I love you. Are you in love with me yet—at least a little?”
She turned her head to look at him. “Maybe.” She smiled, slow and soft. “A little, anyway. Don’t make too much of it. I’m not ready for the big commitment.”
“How much, would you say? Fifty percent?”
“I just told you not to make too much of it.”
“I’m trying not to—see, that’s why I need an estimate. Is fifty percent too much? Come on. It doesn’t have to be precise.”
She laughed a little, helplessly. “You’re not going to give up, are you?”
“Work with me. I’m just trying to get a feel for the trend.”
“Forget it.” She pushed at his shoulder, and he obligingly went over on his back. Cool silken tips of her hair brushed his face as she brought her mouth to his. “You’re just going to have to go with the flow.”
Her tiny, strong, intelligent hands drifted over his chest to flick the copper disks of his nipples. When he sucked in his breath at the sensation, she looked very satisfied. She liked turning him on, and the knowledge itself was a potent aphrodisiac. Against all odds, this soon after the most fantastic orgasm of his life, he was already getting hard.
He quickly opened another condom packet. “Is this what you call going with the flow?”
“It is.”
He crammed a couple of pillows under his shoulders, and then he lifted her by her hips to help her straddle him. “I like to see all the action,” he told her. He found the plump, delicate folds between her legs. “Put my fingers where you want them,” he urged, his voice rough with arousal. “Show me what you want.”
Warm, soft wonder filled Bronwyn’s chest. Her clitoris was super-sensitive, and until she was very aroused, she couldn’t take direct pressure on it. He was arrogant, overbearing, and occasionally clueless but so willing to learn—not just now, but in everything. This was what she was falling in love with. Bronwyn took his hard, warm fingers in hers and used them to stroke herself.
He was watching his hand stroke her, his lips slightly parted, his expression intent, as he played and sought every nuance of pressure and direction. Excitement spiraled, wound tighter.
She took him in her hands and positioned him at her entrance. She sank down until he filled her to exquisite fullness.
Thought fled. There was only the sensation where they were joined, the gathering spirals of energy deep in the most central part of her. She moved on him. He reached up and kneaded her breasts, thumbing the nipples. The pressure burst, and suddenly she was coming in shuddering waves that had her laughing and crying. Seconds later, he was holding her hips as he drove into her seeking his own completion.
Bronwyn collapsed panting on his hard chest. He rubbed her back and buttocks with long, firm passes as she recovered her breath.
He kissed her shoulder. “This is so good.”
***
“Why didn’t we see each other when we met? We’ve wasted a lot of time.” Garth tenderly stroked Bronwyn’s cheek as they lay nestled together, her head on his chest.
“I can’t speak for you, but I know my part. I was still blinded by grief. That expression is literally true, you know. You feel like you’re in a pitch-black room looking at the world through a tiny peephole. You can only see what’s directly in front of you. When what little you can see moves, when it isn’t in the peephole, it’s… gone. Out of sight, out of mind.”
As she spoke, Bronwyn idly explored the contours of his chest, measuring, learning him by touch. He liked it. “But there was more to it.” Bronwyn began speaking again. “Anytime I was near you, I had some sort of posttraumatic stress flashback, or something. I shook all the way through the ceremony and got away as fast as I could afterward. By the time I came back, you had left to catch your plane.”
Garth hadn’t really meant anything by the question. In his opinion, it wasn’t the kind of question that had an answer. It had been more a comment on their inefficiency, okay, mostly his, because she apparently could name her reasons. He didn’t know why—since he was looking for a wife, and he was at a wedding, for Chrissake—he hadn’t even considered her candidacy.
But she’d had a flashback. “Davy told me there was some guy who died. Do I look like him?”
“No. But I think I looked at you, and my unconscious warned me that what had happened to him would happen to you.”
“Almost had happened to me. They tell me I almost bled to death. I didn’t have a pulse for about five minutes.”
“I’m glad they got you back.”
“Have you ever had a patient who had a near-death experience?”
“You mean, where people see the bright light and think they go to heaven and talk to Jesus? No, but I’ve heard of them. Who hasn’t? Why? Did you have one when you were without a pulse?”
He chilled at her not unkind but slightly amused and indulgent tone. He had never attempted to discuss the experience with anyone, because that was exactly the response he’d thought he would get—but he hadn’t thought he would get it from her.
He made himself say lightly, “I’m not sure I went to heaven—it looked more like Colorado—and I know I didn’t talk to Jesus.” He chuckled. “Actually, I talked to Davy. But I didn’t have a pulse. If I wasn’t dead, I was the next thing to it.”
“Every cell in the body doesn’t die at once. The brain releases all sorts of chemicals, endorphins that can make you feel wonderful, peaceful. Seizure activity in the parietal-temporal lobe makes people see bright lights and stimulates oceanic, religious feelings. Add to that the drugs the patient has been pumped full of… It’s no wonder people whose bodies were on the verge of death report bizarre experiences, but there’s no reason to think they visited an ‘afterlife’ and came back. People who have been nowhere near clinical death have had similar experiences.”
With all her talk today about finding the human side of medicine, he hadn’t expected her to have a hard-science reaction. More importantly, he hadn’t expected so little understanding of what he wanted to talk about from the love of his life. He hadn’t thought they had to mirror each other in every detail, but he had thought they would meet at the really important places.
“I read those ‘scientific’ explanations. The only people they would satisfy would be people who never had the experience. I don’t know what it was, and I don’t know what it meant, but it was real.”
She felt his withdrawal. “I’m sorry if I don’t seem to take you seriously. I’m not suggesting it didn’t really happen in you
r experience. I’m sure it did. But you have no idea the things people can say under drugs.”
Chapter 28
Don’t look back; you are never completely alone.
—The Moscow Rules
The next morning, Garth returned to the airstrip, carrying the recordings the video cameras had made. However undemanding, he did have a job and needed to report in, and at the airstrip he also had access to computer programs that would make reviewing the data easier.
When he drove into the garage, his eye fell on the red canoe. Although God knew there was no lack of electronic toys and gizmos available to him here, his need to get outside and to move fast on the river that was over a mile wide in places had made him buy a speedy seventeen-foot bass boat, now loaded on its trailer. But to experience the peace of the slow-moving blackwater river, he had needed a canoe for excursions of relaxed exploration. He’d spent a lot of time with both.
He ought to tie them up at Bronwyn’s landing. He’d have to get a baby-sized life jacket for Julia, and one for Bronwyn, but it would be fun to take them out whenever he felt like it.
He had never made any attempt to disguise how few hours he really logged on the job. When he’d pointed it out, he’d been told not to worry; he’d get busier soon.
He now recognized as literal truth what he had suspected. There was no need for him to be assigned to the air strip at all. Someone coming in a couple of days a month could easily keep up with all there was to do. In fact, given the paucity of traffic, he wondered if the strip itself was even needed. Sure, its combination of isolation and accessibility made it ideal, but it hardly paid for itself.
After checking the encrypted messages and noting on his calendar a package retrieval requiring diving gear, he called Clay. Clay would man the boat that they would take into international waters.
His work dealt with, Garth settled himself at his desk to hunt through last night’s DVRs for whatever had caused the noise Bronwyn said she had heard. Watching empty rooms hardly made for an action-packed, thrills-a-minute cinematic experience. However, watching and waiting without letting his mind wander was an essential skill for a SEAL. Simple patience was a rare commodity and gave anyone who had it an enormous tactical advantage.
On the screen he watched himself and Bronwyn, led by Mildred, walk into the baby’s room. Realizing he was past the time of the incident, he ejected the disc and inserted the one from the camera covering the hall and staircase. If he could establish the exact time of the incident, he could narrow down his search.
He cued it up to the approximate time and watched Bronwyn and Mildred descend the stairs, Mildred’s thick, black nails clacking loudly on the bare treads. Bronwyn’s flip-flops, decorated with huge, sparkly flowers, made soft slapping noises.
Bronwyn looked adorable and absurdly young in her little skirt and the sleeveless cotton top he now knew for a fact she went braless under. He tried to imagine her in clothes that made her look closer to her real age. It couldn’t be done. He was in for a lifetime of jokes about cradle-robbing. Not that he cared.
On the screen, while still standing in the spill of light from the upstairs, Bronwyn stopped to peer into the dark down the stairs, an apprehensive look on her face. He could see her push her shoulders back, her face tight and determined, and start down. Instead of racing to the bottom as she usually did, Mildred paced her step for step.
About halfway down, they became indistinct. The camera wasn’t sensitive enough for the low light conditions. The picture became snowy with what looked like microwave interference for a half-second. Woman and dog stopped and looked around as if they had heard something. Unfortunately, the sound, if there had been one, wasn’t picked up by the microphone on the camera.
That was interesting. Electronic interference at the precise instant was probably a coincidence but worth noting in his log.
He highlighted the section and set it to loop. Instead of allowing his eyes to dart randomly around the image, he scanned in an organized pattern, starting with the space closest to Bronwyn and working outward in successive passes—a sniper technique.
Again he noticed the movement of her shoulders. He froze the action. A lot of people believed that by watching a person’s eyes, they could read that person’s intentions. Bronwyn’s eyes were always clear and guileless. He could look into them all day, happily, but they gave little clue to how she felt or what she was covering up. He’d noticed last night how frequently she shrugged when talking about something personal. Ah. Bronwyn’s giveaway was her shoulders.
He smiled a little at the discovery. Finding his forever love was turning out to be a richer, more fulfilling experience than he had ever anticipated. The tiny bracing of her shoulders told him she was steeling herself to descend the stairs.
Who knew that with every tidbit he learned about her, he’d feel as if he had uncovered priceless treasure? And who would have guessed he would become vulnerable whenever she was vulnerable? She shouldn’t have to feel apprehensive about a problem so easily dealt with.
He’d noticed the lack of a two-way switch for the hall light. Rewiring had to wait for the major renovations, which if he had his way would never happen, but he could rig some kind of switch—a photoelectric cell, a motion sensor, something. He jotted a reminder to swing by the home improvement store to study his choices.
He hit “Start” again. Once Bronwyn and Mildred were in the shadowy area, it was hard to make out, but he had the impression Mildred was looking at Bronwyn. The figures were too indistinct to be sure. And since the camera’s mic hadn’t picked up the sound, he’d probably learned all he was going to.
His cell phone beeped. The caller ID window read, “Restricted.”
“I got a hit on Renfro, already—if you can believe it,” Davy told him in his husky baritone. “JJ has given me a list like you wouldn’t believe of jobs I have to check off for our big wedding bash. I had to call Lon Swales—you know him, don’t you?”
“Sure.” Lon was a senior chief petty officer, a burly man in his forties known for being a great instructor and for his dedication to the well-being of the men under him. Men like him really ran the navy, and everyone knew it.
“I asked Lon if he knew a SEAL named Renfro. Turns out Renfro was one of Lon’s B/UDS trainees.”
“Any idea where Renfro is?”
“Renfro got out as soon as he finished his first hitch, according to Lon. Went with Blackwater for a while, but he likes to operate solo.”
“Did Lon say what kind of gigs?” With their antiterrorism training, SEALs had many saleable skills in the post 9-11 world. There had always been a shady market for hired guns and men who would fight for whoever paid them. These days, legitimate businesses all over the world required protection. In the private security field, a man with language skills and leadership experience could pull down a quarter- to a half-million dollars a year. But companies like Blackwater weren’t an ex-SEAL’s only choices. These days, the CIA and other intelligence agencies outsourced espionage and interrogation work to private providers. Intelligence was big business.
“Bodyguard.” Davy told him. “Armed escort. Lon suspects some bounty work. Got a reputation for being discreet.” That probably meant Renfro was willing to look the other way, or maybe deliver whatever his high-profile clients asked for—including people who didn’t exactly want to come.
“That it?”
“That’s it. He’s pretty shadowy. Like I said, he likes to operate unaccompanied. Unless we ask exactly the right person—or get our hands on his dossier—we likely won’t learn more. Though there’s never any telling what Dulaude knows.”
Like their animal counterparts, SEALs were, by and large, gregarious creatures. A SEAL who really liked to work alone was relatively rare. Garth had been warned when he took the assignment with the unnamed agency not to stay in contact with old acquaintances. Since he’d foreseen a stint of only
a couple of months, it hadn’t seemed like a problem. Now he realized how the prohibition had cut him off.
The last several months had taught Garth he didn’t want to operate alone. Much as he disliked this mess he was in, an upside was that it had put him back in touch other SEALs. It was time he began to make full use of the resources they offered.
“Are you in regular contact,” he asked Davy now, “with Dulaude? Could you ask him to meet with us—using a cover? There might be no connection between Renfro and Julia, but finding Renfro is the next step, and I’d like Dulaude’s input.”
“No problem. I’ll get back to you on an ETA. How about Lon? If I mention the meeting to him, he’s going to want in. He says you are one of the most solid officers he ever trained.”
In the SEALs, officers were trained by enlisted, which meant enlisted men had power over which officers made it through. Knowing that one day their lives might depend on an officer, they made no secret of the fact that officers were held to a higher standard.
Lon’s praise, particularly now, warmed Garth’s heart. “Sure. Bring him along. A senior chief will have a lot of experience—and a lot of wiliness—to bring to the table.”
Work done for the day, Garth reset all the alarms and also placed one of Mildred’s hairs between the door and the jamb. The people he was concerned about undoubtedly knew as much as he did about how to defeat electronic security and cover their tracks. The hair wouldn’t keep anyone out, but he would know if the door had been opened in his absence.
So far he hadn’t detected signs that he was under surveillance. No sign that anyone was even aware a baby had been aboard the plane. MacMurtry had had no interest in the plane at all, once he learned Renfro wasn’t aboard.
The preponderance of evidence suggested Garth’s theory was correct—someone had stashed Julia on the plane, and any plane going to the States would have done. Some part of him wanted Bronwyn to be right, though. He wanted to believe Julia had been sent to someone, someone prepared to receive her and keep her safe.
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