Bring On the Dusk (19 page)

“So?” He smiled at her.

“So, when the sun sets, it gets dark. I'm not climbing down in the dark.”

“Me neither.”

Since when had Michael discovered how to tease her? She could see him doing it, but couldn't see why this time. Claudia would have to play straight girl until she figured out what he was up to.

“So, we need to go down.”

With a little kick, he managed to swing forward just enough to grab the loop on the front of her safety harness once more. He pulled her in and kissed her. He took his time about it. It was another of those things that he did exceptionally well.

“I will never tire of doing that,” he whispered when at length he'd shifted back just a little and rested his forehead against hers.

“I promise I'll never tire of you doing that.” Then she looked over his shoulder. “But the sun has moved a lot closer to the horizon. We really need to go.”

“Why would you want to leave this?”

“I don't want to!” Her voice was practically a whine, but she couldn't help it. “It's so lovely up here that I could stay forever.”

He looked surprised, no, shocked. He opened his mouth two or three times before he finally spoke.

“Then don't leave. I brought up the hammock and sleeping bags as well.” The teasing was gone.

She'd pay a pretty penny to know what he'd been on the verge of saying before changing his mind.

“Sleep up here?” Now it was her turn to pretend she was shocked.

“Do you want to?” He missed the tease.

This time she was the one who pulled him in. “That's a big yes.”

* * *

“How do we do this?” Claudia lay curled against Michael's chest in the Treeboat hammock after they'd watched the first planets come out. Jupiter and Venus were now both well above the horizon to the west. The first stars would be following shortly.

“Do what?” She heard his voice as much through his chest as through her ears.

“Make love at three hundred and fifty feet without dying in the process.”

“We're only around three thirty.”

She rolled her head enough to plant a kiss in the center of his chest. “Then how do we make love at three hundred and thirty feet without dying in the process, Mr. Smarty Pants?”

“Well, I, uh…”

She propped herself up enough to look at him in the last of the day's fading light. “You're kidding me, right? Don't tell me you've never thought about how to make love up here.”

He shook his head.

“But—”

“I never thought I'd ever bring a woman here. I never thought I'd find one who wanted to be here.”

“Well, I'm here, so you better start thinking. Because we sure can't do anything like this.” She reached down into the sleeping bag and shook the front of his safety harness suggestively. Like hers, it was wrapped over his pants, encasing his pelvic region in thick nylon straps, and had a rope that led out of the sleeping bag, off the edge of the Treeboat hammock, and was tied off to a nearby trunk.

She didn't have to wait long. It was as if she could watch his mind work. He was so forthright and straight ahead that he really was the perfect straight man.

But once a problem was laid out before him, he was definitely the best man for the job, no matter what it was.

In the dark, he sat up from the sleeping bag and reached for the small rucksack of supplies they'd left dangling from the edge of the hammock. This time when he let the forest air into the sleeping bag, it didn't feel cold. Instead it teased an enticing caress across her unclothed torso. There was no space in the Treeboat to not feel every motion her companion made, and she enjoyed the sensations.

He leaned forward and started doing something down by her feet. He worked his way up the hammock, the slick sounds of rope sliding back and forth as he did whatever he was doing to guarantee their safety.

She didn't even try to follow his motions; she merely enjoyed them. Then she took advantage of them.

Perhaps not the wisest thing, trying to distract a man tying them in, but she had fun. She slid a hand up his leg when he went to brace it against her for balance. When he bent over again, she ran her tongue over his nipple and ticked her fingernails along his pants zipper. When he mostly lay beside her, working on the ropes at the head of the hammock, she nibbled her way over his chest until he had to brush her aside in order to focus.

She didn't stay brushed aside longer than it took her to regain her balance.

He growled, a rumbling sound that echoed from deep in his chest.

She worked harder to distract him.

He worked faster to finish his task.

She bit him through his jeans, and he groaned at his frustration.

It was perhaps the strangest foreplay she'd ever experienced, being tied into a hammock a hundred meters into the sky, but it was certainly affecting her as much as it was him. By the time he finished and lay once again beside her, she was ready to tear off his clothes.

“We're ready. Just no violent maneuvers.”

“No promises. What did you do?” She reached up and felt a latticework of the smooth tactical rope mere inches above them. It not only crossed side to side every foot, but there were also lines running head to toe with funny twists at all of the junctions.

“I made a running barrel hitch up the length of the Treeboat. Theoretically, we could flip over and be safe, though I'd rather not try that. Don't try to sit up. We can't.”

She wouldn't know a running barrel hitch from a Blake's hitch, though he'd demonstrated and explained the latter at length. And right now, she didn't care. She reached to undress him.

“No,” was all Michael said. No steel of command entered his voice, but in his deep voice the mandate was just as solid and unquestionable. Claudia didn't even think to ask why not.

Then he put his hands on her and she forgot how to speak. How they undressed in the small space, she could never quite remember. Every time she thought about it later, all she could recall what this man could do with his hands and his lips.

He didn't make love to her; he worshipped her beneath the sky. Except they weren't beneath the sky, they were in it. They were as alone as two people could be and still be on the earth. In a desert or out at sea, someone could walk in on you or sail up to you. Above them now were only the distant lights of the occasional high-flying jetliner and the bright glitter of a satellite.

It was Claudia Jean Casperson, Michael Gibson, and the stars.

She let go and lay back and let him have his way with her.

When he brushed her legs apart, she opened for him.

When he drove her upward with the ministrations of his hand, she arched against his fingers with desperate need and dragged his mouth to her breast.

When he kissed her so lightly at the base of her throat that she could barely feel it, she groaned like a woman whose heart had been too long cast in stone. Or ice. And when at long last he entered her, her cry lit the night sky until she outshone the stars and the rising moon.

She never cried out during sex, but then this was so much more than that.

The two of them had climbed atop the world together, driving each other upward. Only Michael could have led her here; Claudia tried not to be too smug about her ability to follow.

When turnabout was fair play and she had scooted down enough to pin him between her breasts, she knew that she controlled both the warrior and the man. Not with his body, though she did that as well. It was his perfect openness to her that echoed in the darkness. And she knew that it was a mountain no one before her had ever conquered.

Michael made her feel special without making her feel less.

She tasted him, ever so lightly, and he growled out his need.

He made her feel more than she ever had before. Men didn't do that; they thought about themselves and it was up to the woman alone to not feel less.

But Michael was different. He made her feel worthy of being with him, of being that incredibly exceptional. Well, she would do her best to return the favor.

This time she took him long, slow, and deep. Took him until his body shuddered. Until his infinite control shattered and what few words he normally had were lost to him. Until his breath ran rough and, when at long last she allowed it, his release hammered at her as his body writhed.

She held him a long time, leaving him there with a kiss.

When he finally came back to himself, he pulled her back up into his arms before collapsing into a well-deserved slumber.

Claudia discovered herself to be wide-awake, paralyzed by the wonders her body had just experienced, both the taking and the giving. She held Michael as he slept, listened to the silence of the trees, and let the gentle motion of the tree lull her blood until it no longer pounded through her veins.

Then she felt it, that perfect rhythm of the tree, easing ever so slowly back and forth in the still night air: tap, pause, tap, pause. The most natural motion of them all. The one Michael had done after the battle in Yemen, the one she had felt as she stood in the Somali desert.

She let the feeling wash through her as she watched the constellation of Orion the hunter set, soon followed by his faithful dog Canis Major. She watched Leo the mighty lion fly high above them with Virgo chasing close behind, the symbol for fertility of both land and woman.

The sky she knew so well kept her company as she held the sleeping warrior and attempted to unravel her own feelings about him.

Michael was such a gift to her and such a constant surprise. He gave her his passion, and he shared himself so openly. Not with words—that would never be one of his skills—but with his heart. He had taken her into the sky, the one place he went to be alone, and shared it with her.

Thinking over last night, just last night?—when she had raged at him in the forest below—perhaps she could now understand some of what she was feeling for the man who sighed in his sleep and nestled more comfortably upon her breast.

Her father's mute sullenness and her mother's resulting silence had given their child no idea of what to do with the emotions now swirling and fluttering about her and seeking somewhere to roost. The heart of the Ice Queen was a deeply protected and chilly bastion—armed and safe against all mortals, including against the one named Claudia Jean Casperson.

Yet one superhuman had found a passage to that deep core and revealed not just warmth, but passion.

Who knew.

It was not a part of her that she knew anything about. Turbine hot, it burned from within until she wondered that it didn't consume them both with its fire, even Nell the tree.

Instead, she lay quietly beneath the spring sky, holding the man she loved. It was a new word for her, one never applied by either parent or by herself. And certainly not by the ever-so-expressive wordless man wrapped around her.

Claudia tested it. Despite the newness and the unfamiliarity, she knew it to be true. On her first day with the 5D, in her first hour, hadn't she pitied Trisha for falling in love with a D-boy operator? What kind of fool did that make her? She'd fallen in love with the best one of them all.

She combed her fingers through Michael's hair, relishing the nearness, the familiarity, the joy that such a simple action evoked.

Yes, Claudia Jean Casperson loved.

She wanted to wake Michael and tell him. Instead she slipped into a peaceful slumber before the constellation of Corvus the Raven had fully flown his nightly adventure across the southern sky.

The sharp bleat of a ringing cell phone woke her up. Claudia grabbed for her hip, but instead found her arm pinned down and nerveless, burdened by the man who had slept on it all night.

Michael opened his eyes at the second ring and tried to sit up. He was stopped by the black tactical rope woven over their sky-high cocoon and collapsed back onto her, placing an elbow in her overfull kidney.

After a bit more scrabbling around, she managed to get her arm free and began rubbing it back to life. He reached out through the rope lacing and found the tied-off rucksack to extract the cruelly ringing phone.

Michael mumbled something about cell reception before he answered.

“Michael Gibson?”

Claudia could hear the woman's voice easily since they were still crammed together in the sleeping bag and trapped by the rope lines.

While he mumbled an affirmative, she started wondering how many women had his private number. She didn't. She knew that much.

“Glad we found you.” The woman sounded very pleased with herself.

“How did you find me? There are no cell towers around Nell.”

“I was told you were with a Captain Claudia Casperson. Who's Nell? There's a cell repeater in the craft circling above your location.”

Claudia would have been getting pissed if not for the total perplexity on Michael's face. Watching him try to figure out how to explain that Nell was an entirely different species was actually pretty funny.

“Emily?” Michael's face showed a dawning comprehension.

The only Emily that Claudia knew of was Emily Beale, who had retired from SOAR over a year ago. The chances that it was her were negli—

A small, black UAV slashed by so close overhead that Claudia flinched. The drone was painted with a garish set of red and orange flames.

“Oh, there you are. Very cozy. Why are you tied in?” Despite the departing buzz of the small drone's engine, Claudia could hear the woman's amusement. “Wait. Never mind. Sometimes I'm a little slow.”

Emily clearly had a bird's-eye view of their little aerial love nest. So much for feeling safely separate from the rest of the world. Any burgeoning sense of amusement at the situation had just been bludgeoned out of Claudia.

Michael glared up at the now-circling drone as the woman continued speaking.

“We'll be at your location in twenty minutes.”

“I'm on vacation,” he practically snarled. He even had the decency to mouth a “sorry” to her.

That's when Claudia realized that his irritation was at least partly on her behalf. Yes, he disliked the intrusion of the outside world, but it was the interruption of their own personal idyll that was making him so unusually irritable. His voice had gone low and dangerous. Michael was not a man she'd ever want to make angry at her, but it was pretty flattering to watch him be angry on her behalf.

“Sorry, I know. Peter's calling.”

Whatever that meant to Michael, it washed any doubt from his face.

“We'll drive out and—”

“We'll be there in twenty minutes,” Emily cut him off. It didn't make any sense, but it had to be Emily Beale.

“I have a truck—”

“Your parents have already provided the spare keys to someone or other, and they're headed down to fetch it. They say they know where it would be parked.”

Claudia watched Michael's face as he made some quick calculations.

“Better make it thirty minutes.” Then he hung up the phone and looked down at her from inches away. “We have to go.”

“Why?” She wanted to explore Nell some more, as well as this man who impossibly owned her heart.

“Peter.”

“And I care about that because?”

“Because”—Michael offered her a brief smile and brushed his fingertips down the curve of her neck—“he's our Commander-in-Chief.”

President Peter Matthews.

“Peter?”

“It's a safe way to refer to the President when we're on unencrypted comms. Emily Beale is one of his best friends. I think they grew up next door to each other.”

“Oh,” was all she managed, and she began squirming around in the sleeping bag to find what had happened to her clothes.

* * *

Michael's estimated thirty minutes took closer to forty. Getting dressed with Claudia Jean Casperson in a Treeboat was too much fun, and she hadn't complained when he'd interrupted her attempts to unsnarl her clothes from his in the tiny space. He just hoped the drone had indeed departed the area at the end of the call.

He helped her pack their aerial camp, then left her securely anchored to a stout limb before he abseiled all of the way down to the forest floor. There is no way he was leaving any indication on the ground that Nell was a Titan worthy of note. Unlashing the ground end from the anchor tree, he did a double-rope ascent, clearing each successive line upward behind him as he went. He had never departed upward out of a tree before.

Emily had to circle her garishly painted Firehawk for several minutes. The Firehawk was a Black Hawk rigged for dumping water or retardant on forest fires in thousand-gallon loads. A garishly bright Mount Hood Aviation flaming logo was splashed down the glossy black helicopter's length, a stark contrast to the unmarked, matte black birds Emily had flown for SOAR.

Once Michael returned to the branch beside Claudia, Emily began lowering several very long lines out of the Firehawk's cargo bay doors. She'd tried to come in low, but Michael had waved her back aloft to protect Nell from the downdraft of the helicopter's rotor. While Emily repositioned well above them, he took Claudia's hand and looked at her. Really looked at her.

“You belong here in so many ways.”

Her laugh charmed him as it always did. “Yep! Feel just like I'm sitting on the bench waiting for the Amtrak Southwest Chief out of Phoenix.” She looked down at her feet and wiggled them around as if they were on a floor and not three hundred and fifty feet above ground.

“There's a storm coming.” He pointed west over the Pacific. “A big one by the looks of those clouds. We'd have had to descend this morning anyway. I've ridden one out in a tree. It's not something I'd ever do on purpose.”

“So, let's hitch a ride outta here.” She looked upward and stuck out a thumb as if hitchhiking.

Then she slowly turned to him and her face went serious.

“Kiss me, Michael. Before she hauls us away from Nell. Really kiss me.”

As lines hissed down from the sky to slap against them, as the downdraft whipped near storm-level winds into the tree and their branch weaved and bobbed in the induced wind, Michael found a sense of peace and belonging in how Claudia clung to him, gave herself to him, and how he gave himself right back to her.

They sent the packs up first.

Then, once the lines were back down and attached to their climbing harnesses, they carefully unlashed their safety lines. It was the first time he'd ever been at the top of a tree and not firmly tied to it. Even the lifting line from the helicopter didn't offset the strangeness of the sensation.

There had been a world to discover here, but he and Claudia had been snatched back to reality. He hoped it wasn't forever lost, whatever they had begun to explore here among the treetops.

As Emily began to winch them aboard, he felt the initial tug on his harness. With a well-placed departing push-off, he was able to swing over and brush his fingers along the very highest and thinnest spire of Nell. It was the newest bright-green spring growth, soft conifer against his palm.

He'd finally, after all these years of trying, reached the very pinnacle of a tree. Three hundred and eighty-two feet, Nell was the unreported holder of the title of tallest living thing. The most glorious being on the planet.

Save one.