Eagle, Kathleen (24 page)

"No,
the clouds," she said as she slipped her hand inside his jeans.
"Touch the clouds, my beautiful man, while I touch this heavenly Blue
Sky."

The
drum tenderly pummeled the night from below. The stars cheerfully jigged in
their places on high. Helen felt small but abundantly significant, bundled in
her lover's arms. Perched high on a hill where nothing could see her but the
silent rock, where no one could touch her but the man she loved, she felt
utterly secure, otherworldly safe. Red flags fluttered in the back of her mind
the way they always did, yet she intended to ignore them right now. She knew
the moment couldn't last, but she could surely live it as though it would.

She
didn't want to think too much about what he had told her, only about what he
had given her, what she had tried to give him. Pure bliss. Sensational
oblivion. She had stroked him and nursed him, straddled him, taken him into her
body and milked him until he had given over, given in, and given her his seed.
If she said such a thing aloud, she would feel foolish about it, but there was
no self-consciousness under the stars. The black sky was too vast, and the drum
was too elemental, and self dissolved into the beauty of it all. In that
ageless, timeless context, seed was a beautiful thing.

Reese's
seed most particularly.

Particularly.
Back
to particulars, back to self, back to consciousness, back to Reese's particular
seed, which felt powerful and tasted like the salt of the earth and made life.
Her lofty thoughts turned to self, returned to a consciousness of her own petty
fears as she pressed her ear to his chest, thinking, How are you, my love? Are
you feeling all right now?

Su-per,
su-per, su-per.

His
heart beat strong and sound, and she couldn't imagine it faltering, no matter
what he'd told about thickened muscle, about demands for more oxygen, about
pain when the demands could not be met. He could not die from it. He was such a
big man. His powerful arm cradled her against a long and lovely bed of muscle,
and muscle was invincible. He was a tower. He was a wall. His hip and thigh buttressed
her fully, keeping her off the ground, caring for her comfort. He felt solid, a
sure winner.

But
what about her son?

This
was not a selfish question. It was not a petty fear. Sidney was still a boy. He
had his father's eyes and nose and feet. He even had his father's smile, and
yesterday she would have said what a good thing it would be if he had his
father's big heart. Not his mother's, forever protecting itself, forever in
hiding.

But
that was yesterday. Tonight she loved his father more than ever, and tonight
she prayed that her son was not like him in the heart. An awful wish, another
of her narrowly focused prayers. Don't take my son away, don't make him weak,
don't make him sick, don't let him know what I've done, don't let him hate me
for it, don't don't don't...

Don't
ever go away from me. Somehow I'll fix this if you give me a chance.

She
didn't realize how fast she was holding him, hanging on for dear life, until
Reese shifted so that he could look into her eyes. "So what was that
about? Not sympathy, I hope."

"No."
She made a conscious effort to relax. "I'm pretty sure it was about
sex."

"I
could have sworn there was more to it," he said as he finger-combed her
hair, separated a piece, and carefully wrapped it around his finger. "Some
kind of urgency, like time might be a little short, so you're gonna make sure I
get to come once more."

"You
wanted me to happen to you."

"That's
what I get for trying to be clever with words." His finger was bound in
her hair, with a tassel of it left to be used as a paintbrush for her lips.
"I want us to happen to each other."

"I
didn't do it right, did I?" She'd only meant to give him pleasure, though
she wasn't exactly practiced in the art.

"You
did it just right, but you wouldn't let me have a turn. I don't want you to be
afraid to let me love you for all I'm worth. I promise you, it won't kill
me."

"I
should hope not." She followed his lead, adding lightly, "Imagine a
story like that getting out."

He
used her hair to play-write a headline across her forehead. " 'Retired
Basketball Player Goes Out Coming.' "

"Oh,
no, Reese, it would be a terrible scandal. You're in politics now. I'd
be—"

"You
could name your price. They'd be beating down your door for an interview,
wanting to know every intimate detail."

"Even
if it's just between us?"

"You,
me, the coroner, the Internet."

She
sighed dramatically. "What's this world coming to?"

"Jeez,
then guys would be beating down your door looking for the ultimate orgasm, and
I couldn't do a damn thing about it. I'd be dead."

"You'd
be a spirit."

"That's
riiight, e'en it?" The prospect had him grinning in the dark. "There
I'd be, looming in the doorway. Pretty soon they'd all be freakin' out and
streakin' back to where they came from." He was using her hair brush on
his own full, luscious lower lip now. "You think big people get to be big
spirits? Big and scary?"

"I
hope so. Especially if the tribal chairman can appoint a special
prosecutor." She raised her right hand. "It was an accident. That
wasn't what I meant by 'touch the clouds,' sir, I swear."

"Then
what did you mean?"

"Well...
do you ever fantasize when you're making love? When you go deep inside me and
you close your eyes, what do you see?"

"I
try not to close my eyes. I might miss something."

"So
you don't imagine that I'm, say, Julia Roberts?"

"I
imagined that she was you."

"Julia
Roberts?"

"She's
a real basketball fan," he said, deadpan. She couldn't tell in the dark,
couldn't see the light in his eyes, wasn't quite sure until he said,
"Kidding." And then she laughed, though there was an unwelcome image
in her mind, one she couldn't hold a candle to.

But
he passed her a torch.

"I
make love to you," he told her, tickling her nose with her hair.
"It's all pleasure. Looking at you, touching you, being inside you. Making
you fantasize whatever you want to fantasize. I enjoy the whole trip."

"You
were telling the kids to visualize before they shot the ball. To imagine—"

"That's
different. When I want to make something happen, I visualize execution,
completion. But this was complete every step of the way. It was all
pleasure."

"It
was about mending." The tickling stopped. He waited for her to explain.
"I saw us mending you," she whispered.

"With
sex?"

"Good
sex is powerful."

"It
brings us together, but I don't know if it fixes anything. I mean..." He
cursed a sharp stone beneath the blanket as he shifted his hips. "Do you
think we can be fixed, Helen?"

"You
mean...?"

"You
and me, can we be fixed? If we're gonna do any mending, let's work on
us,
not
me. Let's fix
us."

The
red flags in the back of her mind moved forward.

"Reese..."

"Maybe
there wasn't anything to start with, huh? Nothing breakable. I don't think sex
is breakable, do you? By itself it's—" He snapped his fingers. "Here
and gone. You can't break anything that fleeting."

"It
isn't that fleeting, not for me." She drew a deep breath.
Well enough
was
an illusion, and she knew it couldn't,
shouldn't,
be left alone much
longer. "There are things I should—things I wish I could tell you. I want
to tell you. I
will
tell you, but I want you to promise..."

Unfair,
the
red flags warned.
You can't expect to extract promises before you roll out
the moment of truth, you idiot.

"About
why you're here?" he demanded gently. "You think I can't put two and
two together? Hell, you work for some three-letter government agency, and
you're under more covers than just mine. And you're not supposed to be
fraternizing with any Blue Skys because they're on the prime-suspect
list."

He
lifted his unencumbered shoulder, and he went on, unruffled. "Or maybe
fraternizing is actually part of your job, but the boss draws the line at
sleeping with the suspects. So now that you've crossed the line, you might as
well tell me—" He shifted gears, gently turning serious. "Tell me
just how much trouble you think my brother is in."

"He's
not in any trouble with me," she said, grateful for a temporary reprieve
from the hook.

"Or
the people you work for?"

"Or
the people I work for. It's the people
he
works for whom he probably
needs to watch, and so do you."

"Ten
Star?"

"I
don't have much on them yet, but I know they're powerful, and I believe they
can be dangerous." She turned her head for a better view of the lights
below. Okay, so this was a diversion, but it was a better topic right now,
wasn't it? She hadn't divulged anything that he hadn't figured out himself, and
there was clear danger to be considered. Danger that didn't involve her child.
"I want to know who's holding Carter's marker," she said.

"You
think he's gambling?"

"I
think we're all gambling. But I think he's doing it with borrowed money."
She looked up at the stars. "I've been there, Reese, and I know how a
perfectly intelligent person can get sucked in. This is all I want, you say to
yourself. Just this much. When I have this much, I'll be happy, and we'll be
all set. I know what I'm doing, and it'll only take a little bit more. One more
good game. One more shot. I'll only risk what I can afford to lose, right?

"Before
you know it, all you're paying is the interest, and then you can't pay that, so
you get desperate, and you dig a deeper hole for yourself, and your whole life
becomes the perfect model of the vicious circle." Turning to him with a
humorless laugh, she said, "It sounds stupid, doesn't it? Total
insanity?"

He
flexed the arm that held her, effecting a small hug. "Sure it sounds
crazy, but so does a car wreck. So does getting into deep water and being
washed downstream. You can't talk about a thing like that and make it sound
like something that could happen to anybody. It's too wild. Nobody thinks it
could happen to them."

"Do
you?"

"Sure,"
he said, with the ease of innocence. "Anybody can get carried away."

"Can
you see yourself as a compulsive gambler?" When he stammered a little, she
came to his rescue. "You're not just anybody, Reese. But I am, and so is
Carter. We're the anybodies who get caught up in these whirlwinds that—"

"Jesus,
Helen!" He sighed. "I can't seem to say the right thing around you.
I'm trying to tell you that I don't think you're stupid or crazy. No matter
what you've done or what you're up to, you're still..." He was holding her
tighter now, unwilling to be separated from her by what she was and what he was
not. "You're still Helen. You still make me crazy. One look and I'm high
on you again. High as a damn bird, I swear."

"Touch
The Clouds," she whispered to the winking stars. "Whenever I fly, I
look out the window, and I think of the clouds as a cushion. If anything
happened up there, they would catch you. If I walked out on the wings, I could
jump down on a cloud, walk on them, see if they feel as soft as they look.
Everybody wants to touch clouds." She buried her face in the pocket of his
shoulder and kissed his smooth, musk-scented skin. "You do that for us,
you know, for all of us. Sometimes you even lift us up and give us a moment up
there with you. The first time I saw you, you were doing just that."

"I
had only one thing going for me back then, and I knew that wasn't enough for
somebody like you. I had a lot to learn, a lot to prove. A lot of boasts to
make good on." He kissed the top of her head, then tipped her face up with
his free hand. "You like gambling, Helen? Good. That's good, because
that's just what I need. I need a gambler. I need somebody to take a chance on
me, help me beat the odds." Lovingly he stroked her hair. "You want
to touch the clouds? I'll carry you on my shoulders. I'll give you the ride of
your life. What I don't know is—"

"So
much has happened."

"So
what? There's more to come. You're worried about this job you're doing and how
it might affect us if my brother's caught up in something—"

"No,
Reese, don't. Your calculations are going to be a little off. It's more than
just two plus two."

"I'm
missing some numbers, huh? The value of X?" He gave a dry chuckle.
"Damn. I'm pretty good at arithmetic, but I hate algebra. I guess you just
do what you have to do."

"You're
like your father in some ways," she said, and he groaned. "No, you
are, and in
good
ways. I saw you in him, and now I'm hearing... certain
principles of his." That drew a disgusted snort. "Well, you
are
his
son," she insisted. "He was afraid of what Carter's involvement might
be, too, but he did what he thought was right when he asked for an
investigation."