Bring On the Dusk (17 page)

Claudia didn't make a sound as she moved to straddle Michael where he sat. Her hair a halo in the shining sun, she leaned down to kiss him. Ever so gently, she tipped him over backward until he lay on the sun-baked bark. They'd both shed their jackets when the sun had found them, and now she removed his shirt.

She did not trace his chest with her hands, nor tease him with her kisses. Instead, she pulled her hair from its ponytail and let it fall about her face and onto his skin. Softer than a kiss, she brushed it over him until he ached for her.

When he reached, she pushed his hands aside. Pinned them to either side of his head with her fingers interlaced with his. Not releasing him, she continued her journey over him. She moved over him, at times languid and enticing, at times sensuous and erotic.

She moved to offer him her breast and hissed when he took its tip between his teeth. Only her T-shirt separated them as he nuzzled and teased her.

Michael would have spoken, if he'd been able to think of anything to say. Instead, he did something he'd never done before—he let go, allowing himself to exist only to follow where Claudia led.

When they each shed their clothes, it was her doing, not his. Here, in the wilderness, the soft breezes of the woodland floor brushed over him as lightly as her hair. They cooled him where her kisses had left moisture and heated him where he and Claudia touched.

He lay and watched the forest, a thousand trunks rocketing skyward. Watched the slice of blue sky that revealed a window into a world beyond. And drank in the woman who knelt over him. Claudia was truly the finest sight he'd ever seen in his life.

She knelt over him and commanded a loving experience that was not about man and woman but rather about Michael and Claudia. She sent him flying, and he let her.

When they were done, when they had taken their fill of each other, she descended upon him with a sigh rather than a crash.

She lay down upon him, and they remained there together until there were only trees, sunlight, a glorious woman, and the man who loved her.

* * *

Michael had been strangely silent after they'd woken to the cooling evening. Even by Michael standards, his reticence was notable.

Claudia tried not to feel put out by it, but it was difficult. The best sex of her life, the first time she'd ever made love out of doors—because the masthead of the
Peleliu
didn't really count for that—and she felt a need to talk about it. To somehow validate that it was real.

Michael had woken her with a gentle though brief kiss. Without a word he had dug into their packs and set up a small stove to make them a soup of freeze-dried stew with a chocolate bar for dessert.

The silence had continued to echo as full dark set in and he led her along the length of the horizontal trunk toward the branches of the fallen tree. After a little exploration by flashlight, he found whatever he was looking for. In minutes he had a large hammock hung just a few feet over the trunk, tied off to branches now sticking up into the air rather than outward. The hammock included a layer of insulation below, and he tossed in a pair of sleeping bags.

She was no longer sure she wanted to share a hammock with him.

“Michael.”

He continued his preparations as if he hadn't heard her.

“Michael!” Her sharp tone elicited a surprised retort from an owl perched somewhere nearby.

He stopped and turned to face her, but it was dark and she couldn't see his face to read his expression.

“Speak, damn you!” She could see his shrug and almost lit into him. No! She'd asked for this. She'd chosen as her lover a man who barely spoke—and certainly not about his feelings.

Claudia wanted to storm away, go back to the truck and drive far away. Back to the desert she understood. But it was dark night in the middle of an uncomfortable wilderness that smelled of green growing things and the rotting damp of wood and moss. Even if it were full light, she wasn't sure she could find her way. They'd left the stream long before reaching this tree, following some signs only Michael could read.

“What do you want me to say?”

“Goddamn it, Michael!” She'd known he was like this, so why was it suddenly pissing her off? Turning, she stalked off along the trunk until she lost any assistance from the flashlight Michael had propped in the bark in order to hang the hammock. For fear of making a misstep and falling two stories to the ground, she stopped and sat.

Claudia didn't know how long she remained there before Michael came up behind her; long enough to get cold without her jacket. His tread so soft that she didn't feel him walking along the trunk until he was almost upon her. She hunched her shoulders more, as if that would fend him off. Possessed of some superior form of night vision, he circled around her to sit in the darkness facing her. At least she assumed the vague silhouette in the night was turned toward her rather than away.

Too bad he didn't walk off the side of the trunk. She'd enjoy hearing him thud down into the moss and ferns.

“I don't know what to say or why you're upset. I know that you are, and I'm sorry for causing that because I can only assume it was my doing.”

“And how did you reach that conclusion, Colonel?” She never spoke like that. She wasn't one of those bitchy women who spoke in vitriolic tones.

“Well, there are only the two of us here. And I can only guess that you aren't mad at yourself.”

Oh, but she was. Mad at herself for… That stopped her. She was angry, horribly. Was it for the lovemaking they'd done? No. Michael had done an exceptional job of ruining her for any other man on the planet. His body fit hers like it had been custom made to her exact specifications and his thoughtfulness was, well, outside her experience.

She was mad at herself because…

Still the answer eluded her. She hugged her legs more tightly against her and tucked her hands between her knees, trying to warm them.

Michael waited her out, which didn't help in the least. If she could see him…but not even the starlight reached this far through the rent in the forest canopy. And the moon wouldn't be up for hours, and who knew when it would find the break in the trees. Why did the woods have to be so dense and dark?

“I'm angry”—she started in hopes that would help her find the rest of her sentence—“because…I have no idea what you're feeling.” She also had no idea what she was feeling, which wasn't helping matters in the slightest.

Michael offered a low chuckle. “Well, that makes two of us.”

“It…what?”

He must have reached out because she felt a hand brush down her jeans from knee to mid-calf before withdrawing. Now that she had some guess as to her distance from a likely target, she had to resist the urge to kick it.

“Captain Claudia Jean Casperson, you are a jumble in my brain. You are making me feel things I don't understand and don't know how to interpret.”

“Is that why you aren't speaking to me?”

His silence was eloquent.

“I'm not wearing any goddamn night-vision gear, Colonel. I can't see shit! Was that a negligent shrug?”

Again that soft, warm laugh that fought back against her shivers. “I'd say perplexed rather than negligent, but yes.”

“Care to try explaining that one to me? Simple words. Any words. I just don't know what to do with your bloody silence.” She was shivering pretty continuously now. January and February in Fort Rucker, Alabama, where she finished her SOAR training, had been warmer than this. The Horn of Africa was about a thousand degrees warmer than this damp forest in the middle of the night. Who knew any part of California was this cold in early May?

Michael took his time. Just as she was about to lambast him one last time, he started to speak.

“I've never met anyone like you. Frankly, I never thought I would. I enjoy women. I appreciate them when they choose to spend time with me. But you are the only woman who ever made me wonder if perhaps I've been missing something.”

Claudia held her breath so that she didn't risk interrupting him.

“You are a lover like none ever born or imagined.”

If he was about to go on and call what was going on between them “sex,” then she was going to push him off this damn log and find her own way home.

“You make me think about more than this week or this month.”

His silence stretched so long that she had to breathe.

“Or this year…” His voice was a whisper of surprise at his own statement.

He was right. That's what was wrong with her. She'd occasionally wondered if she'd find someone after she retired from the service. But he made her want to be with him for a lot more than that.

“That's why you went silent on me?”

“I guess. I suppose I was on a mission of trying to understand what I was feeling. It's good, I know that much. But you are confusing as hell, Claudia.”

She tried chafing her arms to no avail. Blowing on her cupped fingers just made them damp and cold. Then the damp made them even colder.

“Well, next time you set off on an internal mission like that, know that going silent doesn't work. There are two of us in…whatever this relationship is. Now and again I need to hear from you, just like you probably need to hear from me. Are we clear, soldier?”

“Yes, ma'am!”

She could imagine his salute with that smile that always warmed her insides. But it wasn't enough. Not tonight.

“Your next order, soldier…”

“Yes, ma'am?”

“Get me into a damned sleeping bag before I die of hypothermia.”

He cursed as he scrambled to his feet.

They'd woken with the birds at dawn. They were wrapped together, naked together in two sleeping bags zipped together. Claudia didn't remember falling asleep. The last thing she could sort out of her sleepy mind was Michael stripping them both naked before climbing into the hammock. She had burrowed against his warmth and let the shivers take her until she slept.

Aboard ship, they'd always returned to their own berths. She'd never woken in his arms, not after a night together. Definitely not to the sounds of birdsong.

Well, there was a potential advantage to their current state of undress. She kissed him awake, enjoying his rapid shift from sleep through surprise and into full participation. They didn't need any words afterward to agree that it was a glorious way to wake up.

Their clothes, strewn about beneath the hammock, were damp with dew. Resigned, she shrugged into them and did her best to warm up with a cup of instant coffee while Michael packed the Treeboat.

“Treeboat?”

“The best hammocks made, designed specifically for tree climbers. Four-point harness made of four-thousand-pound test nylon webbing with…” And he was off on one of his geek rants. Damn, but the man knew how to charm her even if he didn't know he knew.

It took two more hours of march and scrabble as tough as any route ever set by the most hard-assed drill sergeant before they reached where Michael was headed. At the bottom of a notch canyon—a stream trickled by not a dozen feet from her toes, hidden behind a wall of sword ferns and lesser trees—stood a monster.

“I found and measured this tree when I was fourteen. She ranks as
the
true Titan, the tallest tree ever measured. I haven't even told the other climbers how to find her. By chance she was also the first tree I ever pioneered in a solo climb.”

Claudia gazed upward. “You climbed that at fourteen?” She couldn't even imagine climbing the tree now.

“I named her Nell.”

She looked back down at Michael. “And who the hell is Nell that she gets such a huge tree named after her?”

“Uh, Nell Fenwick.”

“And who was she?” She could feel herself steaming up again. What was wrong with her emotions that they'd gone all chaotic on her?

“The true love of Dudley Do-Right.”

She opened her mouth but, not knowing what to say with it, closed it again.

“Mom and Pop are huge fans of
The
Rocky
and
Bullwinkle
Show
. They had all five seasons on VHS way back when, then got the DVDs when the old tapes wore out. I kind of grew up with them.”

More like he grew up to
be
him. Michael was everything Dudley had aspired to be: handsome, trustworthy, and ever victorious.

“Guess I fell a little in love with Nell Fenwick myself. Me and Horse.”

Claudia bit the inside of her cheek. Laughing in the man's face probably wasn't the best of choices, but it was hard to resist.

“You look a bit like her actually. Taller and more beautiful, but you do.”

“You're comparing your ‘magnificent' lover to a cartoon character or a tree?”

“The cartoon character.” Michael looked at her seriously, turned back to inspect his precious tree, then back at her. “Is that a bad thing?”

She lost it. There was no chance of keeping it inside. The laughter cut her down at the knees as she struggled for breath. She finally had to lie down and curled up beneath a sword fern that towered and nodded above her in agreement.

It was several minutes before she could stop gasping for air enough to massage her sides and whimper out, “Oh my.”

“You”—she managed around a fresh wince of pain in her side—“are a ceaseless wonder, Mr. Colonel Gibson.”

He sat patiently on his pack that he'd dropped near her.

“Okay. Perhaps I should have said that differently.”

She leaned her head back against Nell's heavy bark and closed her eyes as her breathing slowed.

“Wait.” She opened one eye and looked at him. “I thought Nell Fenwick had red hair.”

“She's a blond in the comic books, which my parents had collected as kids and hung on to. I read those first, so I always think of her as being blond. More yellow than yours, but still blond.”

“Not red like Trisha O'Malley?”

His eyes slid aside and she jerked upright.

“You and—” She couldn't even say it. But she didn't need to. He wasn't a stupid man and knew he had to explain quickly.

“Before she met Bill. It only lasted a couple nights. It was fun, but she—” Then he actually flapped his hands in confusion. A gesture she'd never seen before from Michael and would wager that she'd never get to see again. Well, if ever a mismatch was made on earth, it would be the fiery redhead and the quiet colonel.

Oh God. She could feel the giggles trying to reemerge and did her best to fight them back.

“What?”

“The image.” She took a careful breath. “The two of you.” She swallowed hard and steeled her stomach. “Bet you…” It didn't help, so she finished on a single gasp of breath, “Made-each-other-totally-nuts.”

At his reluctant nod, she lost it again.

* * *

Michael had expected Claudia to be offended, but not to laugh in his face. He liked Trisha O'Malley and respected her as well. Though Claudia was right—he'd certainly never understood her. Half of what she expended energy on struck him as totally senseless, but it seemed to work for her and for Bill. He'd married her after all.

“Does Bill know about the two of you?”

Michael shrugged uncertainly.

“Don't you dare tell him. Ever. For any reason.”

He glanced over, but she looked abruptly dead serious. Okay, at least he wouldn't have to worry about that decision any longer. He trusted Claudia's judgment far more than his own when it came to personalities. She'd proven time and again that she was far more observant on that point than he was.

Digging through the gear, he found his collapsible recurve bow. He folded the arms into place, locked them down, and strung it. Clipping the fishing reel on the lower part of the bow, he tied the free end onto a blunt-tipped arrow. He studied the tree. Nell was not kind about accepting his arrows, but he didn't want to look sloppy in front of Claudia.

Then he had an evil idea. He considered for a moment. Thinking such thoughts wasn't typical for him, but as he and Claudia had already acknowledged, nothing between them was typical.

“You're the archer. You want to make the first attempt?” He wouldn't tell her it often took him five to ten shots to loft the arrow over the lowest branch—and that was on a good day. Nell's trunk ran up true and clean to a hundred and sixty-seven feet. “You have to get it over that big limb there on the left.”

Claudia took the bow and plucked the string a few times. “Never shot a folding bow before.”

“Excuses, excuses,” he teased. That too was new. Claudia didn't appear to notice, so he let it go by.

First, she jerked out a length of fishing line, wound it back onto the spool, and jerked it again. He knew from experience that the monofilament offered little resistance to the arrow's flight. Then she pulled the first full draw, testing the bow's flex, and he appreciated anew the way her muscles flowed and aligned on her frame.

It was as she moved about the forest floor to find the best angle that she revealed a new Claudia.

He had analyzed and could catalog each of her mannerisms: the smooth pilot, the silent observer in groups, the uninhibited lover. Last night he'd added the infuriated woman and this morning the most unexpected, the spontaneity of her humor and the accompanying complete loss of composure.

This one was different.

She was steadier, but it wasn't just the steadiness of the pilot. A flicker of morning sunlight reached down through the trees and cloaked her in glory as she nocked an arrow and drew the bow in earnest. Every muscle shifted into the alignment she'd shown Dilya on the Chinook. But it wasn't the alignment of practice; instead it was the way the best D-boys ran and fired their rifles, as if it was instilled in Claudia's very soul.

Every muscle was defined through her thin T-shirt. No bra strap broke the smooth lines. She was so skilled that he could watch the balance and her aim shift, could even see her pulse beat in the tiniest shifts of the bow. Then, on an exhaled breath, she loosed the bolt skyward.

The arrow roared aloft with a sharp whistle he'd never achieved and the high whine of the fishing line spooling so fast. He didn't have to look up to know that it had flown true over the branch. There was no discouraging
plonk
as the arrow bounced off branch or bark. The fishing line continued to hiss out as the arrow fell toward the underbrush on the far side of the tree. He didn't turn from the magnificent woman to see where it fell.

No, that simply wasn't enough.

He was going to have to find a new word to describe her.

* * *

Claudia enjoyed watching Michael flail about in the huckleberry underbrush to retrieve the arrow. Once he'd scrabbled around and dragged it back to the tree base, he tied on the thin line of accessory cord. Next, as Claudia wound the line back into the spool, he used the fishing monofilament to drag the light pulling line over the branch and back down to them. Then he lashed on a hank of nine-millimeter black tactical rope used throughout Special Ops and dragged that up and over with the pulling line.

He lashed one end to a stout tree nearby, only a half-dozen feet through, rather than the thirty-foot-diameter monster they were about to ascend. The knot looked good to her. To the other end, he attached their packs and then began fishing through them.

“Have you ever worn a harness?” He held up a knot of buckles and straps.

“I've put one on a horse and I've worn a parachute—Airborne qualified to be in SOAR, remember?” She enjoyed sassing him. “Neither tells me what to do with that thing you're waving at me.”

With a flick of his wrist as he came over to her, it untangled and fell into place.

“Oh, that looks comfortable.” But when he held it out, she braced herself on his shoulder and stepped through the double loops—first one leg, then the other. They slid up, one to mid-thigh and the upper one to just below her crotch. Then he raised the wide belt past her hips and fastened it around her waist. He made a series of adjustments, then clipped a large carabineer ring to the front and gave it a sharp tug.

“Once you leave the ground, this ring is always attached to a line that is attached to the tree. Always!” He tugged it again for emphasis, forcing her to stagger forward as he practically lifted her clear off the ground. The man's unconscious strength felt as if it tugged at something far deeper and far more carnal. She let her momentum take the extra step and moved into his arms.

When she finally let him move back a half step, he drew in a deep breath. “You keep doing that and we'll never get up this tree.”

“That's okay. Nell's a sweet girl; she can take care of herself.”

He hauled her back against him using the harness ring as leverage. By the time he stopped, her lips were sore and her head was spinning. He climbed into his own harness before she recovered.

“Cheater!”

He grinned at her and kept pulling out gear.

“These are called Jumars.” He handed two to her. It was a metal loop about twice the size of her hand. The outer part had clearly been shaped to grab on to. The other side was a confusing cluster of gaps and adjusters. Below them dangled a strap that ended in a loop about a foot across.

He snapped them onto the main rope—that's what the gaps and adjusters were for—and showed her that while they wouldn't pull down, they could slip up the rope easily.

“See, you hold on and push them up the rope. Then you can't slide back down,” he explained as he put keeper rings through holes. He then hung with both hands on one of the Jumars to prove his point.

She could feel that foreign world descending over her once again. She knew how to parachute down, but now she was being asked to climb up a rope. It was the size of her pinkie and hung a good three feet away from Nell's trunk. When she tried to follow the rope upward with her eyes, all it did was make her head spin.

“Step into the lower loops. Hands on the handles. This is a little old school, but it's the way my parents and I climbed when I was a kid. That was back before someone thought up boot cleats and all that.”

Greek. Greek. Greek. Why did he think he was speaking any form of a language that she understood? Though the analogy failed as she understood Greek, or as much as she'd been able to pick up during a two-month training exercise with their navy.

Urdu. Urdu. Urdu.

When she stepped into the loops lying on the ground, he tied two short lines to the harness ring at her waist and tied the other ends to the two Jumars, obviously safety lines.

He slapped a hard-shell helmet on her head and fastened it under her chin. That was actually the first comforting element of the whole episode so far; it reminded her of her pilot's helmet. That took away a tiny bit of the mass of foreign newness that surrounded everything about Michael and this whole experience.

He'd become a different man in the woods. He still moved with that easy, sliding pace that all the D-boys had, even Billy the ex-SEAL. But he was somehow lighter here, younger—as if he'd never gone to war and seen what he must have seen and done. Perhaps here he could just be himself instead of “Colonel Gibson, the country's most skilled soldier.”

He clipped a long line to the back of her harness. It looked complexly tied and included several more safety rings.

“Just ignore this. It's called a split-tail lanyard, and you won't need it until we're up there. Now, raise your right foot as if you're climbing a ladder.”