The SEAL’s Secret Lover (11 page)

Then he started to move, short, sharp thrusts that worked the head of his cock over that shivery hot spot inside her. She was on the edge again, legs straining to open, taking it.

He paused, leaving her sheath to ripple around him, and pushed her shirt up and over her head, trapping her arms. The cool air was once again a relief, then his chest came to rest on her back, hot and slick, muscles shifting as he started thrusting again.

It was going to tear her apart. He was going to tear her apart, at his pace, in his time. It became about the moment-by-moment experience, his skin against hers, her hair clinging to her hot cheeks as she tossed her head back and forth on the pillow, his cock inside her, cotton sheets damp under her back, the growing strain in her legs and the way that fed the fire inside.

He took his time, his soft huffs and rasping breath as erotic as the way his cock stretched her, stimulating the nerves until she was tense, quivering, tightly strung. The gliding, stretching friction drove her up, up, until she exploded. His mouth stifled her sharp cries, and then she free-fell into blackness.

*   *   *

Cool air drifted against her skin. She drew a deep breath and registered the absence of heated skin, the ability to inhale. Sensation came back next, the raw, sensitized skin of her sex, tingling and swollen. She stretched luxuriously, cataloging every tender spot and ache in her body. “That was, hands down, the best sex I’ve ever had,” she said when he came out of the bathroom.

His pants hung loose on his hips, exposing a really gorgeous strip of muscled abdominal wall, a tuft of hair. He folded his arms across his chest and smiled. “Yeah. You okay?”

The smile hadn’t reached his eyes. “I am fine,” she said with a sigh. “Really, really fine. So fine, in fact, I don’t want to move.”

“So don’t.”

“I can’t,” she said with genuine regret. Her room was only two doors down and across the hall, but with the adrenaline subsiding and her body’s sudden, enthusiastic appreciation for sleep, it might as well have been back in Cappadocia. Or Lancaster.

Where this wouldn’t happen. Ever. Suddenly her mood matched his, distant, withdrawn.

Her bra and shirt were rucked up around her armpits. She tugged them down, then sat up to disentangle her jeans and underwear and wriggle into them. Fully dressed, she paused when the room tilted a little. In two steps he was at her side, holding out his hand to help her to her feet.

“Thanks,” she said.

He kissed her then, a sweet kiss that felt as stolen as the ones in the hidden rose bower at Ephesus. “Rose,” he started.

“We don’t have to talk about it,” she said, reassuring herself as much as him. “We both know what this is.”

It was her turn to kiss him then, soaking up the moments of tenderness, the heated plushness of his mouth. She wanted to stay, wanted that more than she’d wanted anything in her life. “I need to go,” she said. He held her hand until they stretched to the limits of his reach and hers, then let her go. She gathered her laptop and book, and let herself out.

*   *   *

The whole group had a rather melancholy air the next morning as they waited for the ticket booth at Troy to open for visitors. Keenan attributed that to the impending departure, just a couple of days away. The guide he’d hired met them right on time, and led all five of them into the walls of varying materials and heights, explaining Troy’s three-thousand-year history of destruction and rebirth as he went. Built, destroyed by fire, rebuilt, destroyed by earthquake, enlarged and rebuilt yet again, destroyed by war, rebuilt, destroyed by war again, rebuilt again, before finally being abandoned for good during the Ottoman period to disappear under the earth.

One thumb hooked in his backpack strap, Keenan looked around. The unexcavated portions of the site were covered in a grass so green it hurt his eyes to look at it. The sky was a rich, cloudless blue. He found it incredible to stand under the same sky Hector and Achilles had fought under, to see the walls they’d defended, breached. Or was it the evidence that time passed, all wars end, the reasons for fighting them disappearing into history along with the bones of the warriors? The factions disappeared, the emotions dissipated, leaving behind at best an epic poem that was as much about the horror of war as it was about the glory of it. At worst, time left behind nothing at all.

“We’re a long way from the coast,” Florence pointed out to the guide as they stood on an excavated rock ramp, probably used to transport goods into the city.

“Just like Ephesus, Troy was at the mouth of a river,” the guide said. “Over time the silt built up, pushing the coastline out. The real cause of the Trojan war was not a beautiful woman. It was control over the Dardanelles and trade routes to the Black Sea. It’s probably also why the site was abandoned finally. No real strategic value, other than good farming land.” He finished with a pragmatic shrug.

“Going to war over a woman is much more poetic,” Grannie pointed out.

“But much less likely,” Marian said dryly.

“I’m a romantic,” Grannie said. “I’ll stick with the fictional version.”

Still quibbling, they drifted out of sight around a corner, leaving him alone with Rose.

“So the Aegeans probably didn’t breach the walls with a hollow horse, either,” she said, looking around. “I’m a little disappointed.”

She was standing by the towering walls reputed to belong to the Troy of Achilles and Patroclus, of Helen and Hector and Paris. Lines from the poem rose to the surface of Keenan’s mind, glorifying war, a warrior’s striving for victory, for justice, for patriotism. “No one wants to admit we go to war over things like trade. So we dress it up in patriotism and freedom, make it less ugly.”

“Controlling trade routes to the Black Sea is far less memorable than love and an illicit affair between Paris and Helen.”

“It’s smaller than I thought it would be,” he said after a long silence. Voicing the thought was easier with Rose by his side. “This inspired the most powerful epic poem in all of human history? I thought it would be … bigger.”

She looked around. Bees buzzed in and out of the hive in a tree growing out of the grass on the earth above them. “The size makes that much more compelling. Think of these tiny passages crammed with the bodies of warriors, no matter how they got here. Fighting. Dying.” She looked at him, just inches away. “It’s extraordinarily intimate. War sounds so big, such a grand scale. Maybe it was when they fought on the beaches.” She shrugged. “Maybe it never happened. Maybe the scope presented in the poem contributes to the myth, which is a metaphor for the battles we fight inside. Love. Honor. Respect. A place, or people to call home.”

He didn’t know what to say.

“What are you thinking?” she said, a quizzical smile on her face. “And don’t feed me some line of bullshit. I’ve asked Jack that question. I know from bullshit.”

“Have you ever heard of the dead-man-walking approach to combat?”

She shook her head.

“It’s a trick for dealing with the terror. Even with the training we have, it still comes sometimes, so you just assume you’re dead. That you’re never going home. You have nothing to fear, because you’re already dead. You just … fight, push ahead with the mission, because you’ve got nothing left to lose.”

She trailed her fingers along the earthen walls as they rounded a corner. “Is it effective?”

“No one’s ever told me otherwise,” he said, amused by her emphasis on practicalities. They walked in silence for a while, looking between the walls and the blue sky overhead. He tried to imagine seeing only these walls, this sky, hunkered in a defensive position with other Trojans, then tried to imagine the view from the other side, huge swaths of sea and sky and beach. He tried to imagine what came next, but failed. “I’m thinking that whatever’s wrong with me has been wrong with men since we crawled out of the oceans,” he said finally. “Look at this place. Besieged and sacked and rebuilt, then sacked again. Then forgotten. What’s left are the stories people told about the battles, and some walls. All for a woman.”

A smile curved her lips. “Are you saying you wouldn’t go to war for me? That my face won’t launch a thousand ships?”

He didn’t know what to say to that. Fuck trade routes. In that moment, he understood every jealous-lover story, the volcanic passion and rage and possessiveness that would drive a man to launch a thousand ships to reclaim a woman. Suddenly, he felt like he could build a siege engine with his bare hands, rage down the walls.

“Maybe there’s nothing wrong with you,” she said, studying him with an awareness that singed him. A bee landed on her elbow, and waddled up her arm. She watched it, unflinching, until it lifted in flight. “Maybe you are the way you are, and you just need to find your way home.”

*   *   *

At Grannie’s insistence Rose gamely climbed to the top of the replica of the wooden Trojan horse to wave at Keenan from four stories up. He stayed on the ground to take pictures with various cameras and cell phones, then aired out the Land Rover while they shopped.

Rose emerged from the gift shop with a bag she tucked into her suitcase, stowed in the Land Rover’s rear compartment. “How long to Istanbul?” she asked.

He looked at his watch. “If they finish the mandatory shopping and restroom stops in the next half hour or so, we should be in Istanbul in time for dinner.”

“They’re looking forward to crossing the Dardanelles,” Rose said. “Thanks for rearranging the schedule so efficiently.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Are you going to sightsee around Istanbul with us?” she asked softly.

He hadn’t planned to. Rose and the Babes could handle a modern city; the buses and cabs were all easy to use, and most people spoke enough English to be of assistance. He’d planned to drop them at their hotel in the Beyoğlu district, leave Rose his contact information in case anything happened, and get back to his life.

“Yeah,” he said. “Might as well see this through.”

*   *   *

The mood perked up on the drive to Istanbul. Between them, the Babes hammered out a schedule that included the Spice Market, the Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sophia, and a cruise on the Bosphorus.

“We’re staying in the nightlife center of Istanbul,” Grannie said. The wind on the Dardanelles flapped the pages of her guidebook. “Bay-og-lu. Is that how you say it?”

“Bey-o-lu,” Keenan said, then repeated himself as he plucked Florence’s hat from the breeze before it flew off the side of the ferry. “The
g
is silent.”

Florence crammed the hat on her head and tightened the chin strap, then repeated the word.

“Where do you live?” Rose asked, as innocent as a nun. Her cheeks were slightly sunburned. He found himself wanting to press his lips to them, feel the heat.

“Near the Galata Tower,” he said.

“That’s just a few blocks from our hotel!” Grannie exclaimed, flipping pages in the guidebook. “That’s convenient.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, straight-faced. “Very convenient.”

Rose simply smiled, and turned her face to the sun.

*   *   *

Back in the Land Rover, they crossed the Galata Bridge, then slowly made their way through traffic to the hotel’s entrance. “I can’t park here,” Keenan said. “I’ll unload your bags, then return the truck.”

Rose’s phone started to ding. “Oh, thank goodness,” she said, shouldering her tote and reaching for her big suitcase. “I have cell service!”

The Babes groaned. “Keenan, take that away from her,” Marian said.

Rose clutched it to her chest. “You need to text me to know where to meet us for dinner tonight, right?”

“Sure,” he said, bland as vanilla pudding.

*   *   *

He had every intention of meeting them for dinner, but when he got back to his apartment, his cell phone rang. When Rose’s text came through, he was on the phone with his team leader, going over the specifics to extract a hostage negotiator from a nasty little situation in Syria. The entire team was on standby, ready to fly out on thirty minutes’ notice.

Can’t make it. Sorry.

Work?

Work.

I understand.

*   *   *

When Rose trotted down the hotel’s steps at seven the next morning, cell phone in hand and GPS providing directions to a Starbucks only yards away where she could obtain her first grande caramel macchiato in nearly a week, the last person she expected to see across the paver-lined street was Keenan.

But there he was. Dressed in jeans, a button-down, and a crew neck sweater. With his beard and sandy blond hair, he almost blended into the street. But that was the point of the SEALs. The quiet professionals. Right now Keenan looked very quiet, and very professional. Whatever kept him from a really excellent dinner the previous night still occupied ninety percent of his mind.

“Can you read minds?” she asked lightly as she crossed the pavers to stand in front of him.

“I figured you’d be on the hunt for fancy coffee.”

“I thought about going for a run,” she said, feeling marginally guilty. They were moving at a brisk pace down the nearly empty İstiklal Avenue, sidestepping a street sweeper cleaning up the previous night’s trash.

He shot her a mischievous look, but let it go. “What’s the plan for today?”

“See everything. Pack. Thanks,” she said, and walked through the door he held for her. Just like that the pace of their feet became the pace of the conversation, equally brisk, superficial. She didn’t like it.

Her phone rang, a colleague’s number flashing on the screen. It was a supplier, someone who probably didn’t know she was on vacation. Instinct compelled her to answer it, even if just to say she was on vacation and could he please call Hua Li?

Keenan was sneaking a glance at her phone. “Stop that,” she said.

“Sorry. It’s the job.”

“I know. Jack does it too,” she said.

“You going to answer that?”

He was there, right there beside her, a Navy SEAL in a Starbucks in Istanbul. Hers for the next twenty-four hours. “No,” she said, and swiped the call to voice mail.

“One more day,” he said when they had their coffees.