Christmas at Peleliu Cove Read online

  Each mallet’s sharp crack against the puck sent it ricocheting off the left and right sides of the table’s edge, then zipping toward the opponent’s goal. Desperate attempts to block it with the tiny mallet were made and, impossibly, succeeded fairly often.

  Except that it succeeded far less often for Dupree than for Jerome.

  In under three minutes, Jerome was the victor at a score of seven to three. Clint offered Dupree a sympathetic look, but it wasn’t a good one, a Ranger should be able to whip a swabbie at anything.

  Jerome took out Tom and then Dave from the LCAC’s crew: seven-zip, seven-two.

  Clint felt a little more sympathetic toward Dupree after that; Jerome was clearly very good. He spotted Sly in the gathering crowd.

  “What about you, Chief?”

  “Don’t like to shame my crew, Lieutenant.”

  That earned him the expected round of razzing, especially after Jerome beat him seven-one.

  Clint was only too happy to add his own round of abuse onto Sly’s head.

  “Let’s see you take him, Lieutenant.” Nika drawled out Clint’s rank like an insult.

  He’d rather play foosball, but figured that was no longer an option. He liked the energy of foosball games. They tended to be rowdier because they moved a little slower and they were played two-on-two instead of one-on-one like air hockey. He could hear a roar from the crowd over there, half cheers and half groans as someone nailed a winning goal with a sharp rattle of the small plastic ball rocketing into the pocket.

  Air hockey was silent, fast, and very intense, much like the woman standing beside him.

  Knowing his Ranger reputation was on the line, no way would he be backing down in front of Nika Maier.

  He moved to the table and went up on his toes. Been a while since he’d played air hockey.

  # # #

  Just as she’d expected. Jerome nailed the first two goals against Clint almost immediately.

  But then Clint got one back.

  Nika started watching less of the game and more of the man. Despite his size, Clint moved lightly. And those big hands that had occupied so much of her waking thoughts last night had a control and finesse that was unexpected. Just as how gentle they had been when he’d cradled her face to kiss her. It had shocked her into stillness not to be grabbed or pinned or dragged forward, but instead to be cradled. For a top-tier warrior to possess such a soft caress had been an electrifying contrast—right down to her toes.

  She liked Clint. And even before that kiss, had been thinking what fun it might be to bed the man. Big, handsome warriors didn’t typically do much for her, but Clint didn’t fit any of the stereotypes that usually went along with those two attributes.

  A Ranger Lieutenant who could laugh at himself. Who could wear a Santa hat just to make people smile. And who could kiss like…

  A sharp crack and the puck hummed as it flew past her ear before she could even flinch aside. It wasn’t like Jerome to send one airborne.

  She focused back on the game and was shocked when Clint sunk a goal within seconds of returning the puck to play and announced the score, “Six-four.”

  Nobody beat Jerome.

  Well, almost nobody.

  Her crewmate held on for seven-five, but he went down.

  Clint looked over at her, “Air hockey, Maier. Do you play air hockey, Petty Officer?”

  “Might,” Nika answered and ignored the roll of soft laughter from her team.

  “Any good? Or should I go get a Ranger so that I can have a decent challenge?”

  “Care to put a twenty on that, Lieutenant?” Nika asked him with all of the innocence she could muster.

  “No gambling is allowed aboard ship, Petty Officer.” She have liked winning back the money that she’d lost betting she’d be able to sleep last night.

  “I—” then she glanced aside at her teammates. She wasn’t about to explain that particular lapse in front of her teammates. “We’ll make it a friendly game then.” But she’d make sure that there was hell to pay later.

  Being magnanimous, he gave her first control of the puck…which she sunk in the first three seconds of play.

  “One-zero,” she offered in her mildest tone. There was a small buzz of laughter by the few people paying any attention to the game.

  Clint smile went from easy to cautious. By the time they were at three-zero, even that was gone.

  Flying an air hockey table was like flying a hovercraft, it was in her blood. She didn’t focus on the table. Instead she let her vision blur slightly and allowed her body to react without trying to think about plans or strategies.

  A puck rocketed off the mid-point of the left bank and she’d shift her weight right to flick her wrist left for the block. A drive down the center could be deflected into her own corner so that she could take control.

  Clint got control of the puck and called a time-out.

  “Ten seconds,” someone called out. Jerome. Stepping in as referee. They didn’t normally use one in these games.

  Nika didn’t move, didn’t shift. She was in the zone and Clint needing a break wasn’t going to ruin her focus. She waited out the break, counting beats of her heart.

  “Back in play,” Jerome announced.

  Clint fired a lightning shot and even though she was ready, there was the sickening thunk of the puck sliding home.

  “Three-one,” Jerome declared. That turned a few people’s heads; typically Jerome was the only one able to score against her at all.

  By four-three, Nika could no longer merely dominate the table as she typically did. And she began getting a feel for Clint’s style of play. It was as unexpected as his kiss.

  The powerful warrior played with lightness and agility.

  At five-five, she identified something else. He played with…a sense of fun. Little wrist flicks would tease her about how the puck might fly one way and then he’d send it the other. She ignored the growing crowd.

  She became aware of more than the table, which was sufficient to beat most players. Nika started noticing the player himself. The way his shoulders would shift the instant before a hard drive ahead. The furrowing of his brow on a hard block.

  After six-five they had a roaring battle that must have lasted at least a minute. A typical time to goal was under twenty seconds in air hockey, but he kept anticipating her moves with such grace.

  # # #

  “Six-six. Game point,” Jerome’s declaration was music to Clint’s ears and he resisted swiping at the sweat on his brow.

  They’d gathered a packed crowd now. Even the foosball table had fallen to silence—the ball game was still on the TV, but no one was watching it—everyone straining to see over each other’s shoulders. Apparently no one kept up with Nika and now he knew why.

  She was the best player he’d ever faced. She played with a blinding focus, so intense that he could feel it washing across the table. Her gaze never wavered; her stance never altered. No time out called.

  Game point.

  She brought the puck into play with an unexpectedly soft move. It ricocheted back to her barely moving by air hockey standards. Far to the side, it hadn’t even been an attack on the goal.

  Twice more she’d let it practically drift down the table, drawing his attention well clear of the goal.

  The next shot came so viciously hard that it was all he could do to block it.

  Each rebound she fired back with the speed of an M134 Gatling gun.

  He finally managed to break the attack and gain control of the puck, only barely missing sinking it in his own goal in the process. He fired some testing shots down the table, mixed with tapping it side to side in his own end so that he could gauge her reactions.

  And somehow he knew, he just knew he had her. He built up to it slowly. A double-corner to the right, a straight in to the l
eft and again to the right.

  And then she shifted left in anticipation—just as he’d set her up to do—and he fired a hard bank to the right for all he was worth.

  The entire hall was silent. Rangers and Navy alike were standing up on benches and tables to see the game so that the two of them were at the center of a rising bowl of humanity.

  The puck flew toward her goal and—

  Nika didn’t block it.

  She didn’t just block it.

  Moving in some impossible state of speed and precision, she hammered all of the power of his strike into a straight drive directly toward the center of his goal.

  There was no way to move fast enough; it just wasn’t physically possible.

  The puck slammed into Clint’s goal slot with the sharp Snap! that only occurred at the highest speeds.

  There was a moment of perfect silence in which the only sound was the clattering of the puck as it tumbled to a rest inside his goal.

  “Seven-six! Game!” Jerome shouted above the roar that erupted in the next instant. “The champ retains her title!”

  Clint raised his mallet to his forehead and saluted her with it.

  Ignoring the congratulations of her crew and others, she saluted him back the same way. And didn’t turn those big brown eyes away from his for a hypnotically long moment.

  Clint really needed to get this woman somewhere alone and he needed to do it now.

  But Nika turned away from him as if the air between them wasn’t glowing with the heat. He tracked her as far as he could. Only at the far door did she turn back to look at him.

  The heat was still there. She displayed no signs of triumph, no feral smile of victory upon her features. Nika Maier simply stood and looked at him across the room and the dispersing crowd.

  Kept looking until he realized that she was departing by the hatch that was closest to her bunk. She waited until some form of recognition must have passed over his features, then she turned and walked away.

  The fact that he didn’t want a woman that intense was no longer a choice; he did. In the process of exfiltrating himself from the room without being too obvious, he got sucked into a game of foosball with Mitchum against Dave and Tom from the LCAC crew. He lost miserably and quickly much to Mitchum’s dismay.

  He then exited through the opposite hatchway closest to his own quarters. Rangers didn’t sneak up on targets. Well, they did, but it was for purposes of stealth and surprise not for hiding something from your own crew. But this time he wanted no one to know where he was headed.

  As he doubled back through the silent corridors of the vast ship, climbed ladderways and ducked through hatches, he began to wonder quite what he was doing. Clandestine meetings weren’t his style.

  And with a shock at the very moment he arrived silently outside Nika Maier’s bunk, Clint realized that Nika wasn’t his style either. His, ah, encounters were invariably with long, leggy women who knew the meaning of the word fling.

  Despite his doubts, his hand raised to knock on her door, but it was cracked open.

  What are you doing, Clint? You don’t want this.

  No. But he wanted her.

  He eased the door open, stepped in, and closed it behind him.

  Chapter 7

  Nika hadn’t heard Clint arrive outside her door, even as he blocked the corridor light that shone through the crack. Again that unexpected lightness of a Special Operations soldier.

  She had no doubt that he would come, even if she did wonder at the invitation she’d offered. In the eight years of four tours and a blur of deployments, she’d been with a Marine pilot for six months and a Petty Officer from the engine crew for three. Other than a couple brief encounters while on leave, that had been the extent of her relationships since that day she walked off the college campus and into the military.

  She never went into sex thinking it was just casual, even if she quickly concluded that’s all it could ever be with that person. But with Clint, she’d decided that casual was the only safe way to go other than none at all. None at all didn’t sound like fun and she’d pretty much signed off on discarding that option.

  This doesn’t mean anything she’d kept assuring herself while she waited. That would be the answer. This is only about assuaging the heat that had inexplicably built between them. But how had it become so charged in just these last few days?

  It was only when Clint knelt in front of the lone desk chair she’d sat in, that she focused on him.

  Of its own volition, her hand reached out to stroke his cheek; her slender fingers so light against his darker complexion. His day’s growth of beard gave texture to his smooth skin. She ran her thumb back and forth over the grain of it not quite daring to focus on those dark eyes that were studying her so intently.

  But neither could she speak.

  Instead, she gently brushed his hat off his head and leaned forward until their lips met. Neither of them made a sound. No groans, moans, or sighs— there was simply connection.

  When his hand rested on her knee and slid up and down her thigh, it was as natural as the arm she slid around his neck to hang on. The transition from sitting in her chair to straddling his lap happened as smoothly as the hovercraft coming to rest in the Well Deck where it belonged.

  They explored together.

  His hands shifted to cradle her behind and hold her close to him with such easy strength. She allowed herself to tip back so that his lips could explore her neck and where her collarbone met the line of her Navy blue t-shirt.

  “I—”

  She pulled herself back in to stop his words with her mouth. This wasn’t about words. When she did, he’d clearly gotten the message.

  It was a bit of a struggle because he kept holding her so close, but she worked his t-shirt free and pulled it off over his head.

  His arms were the size of her thighs and rippled with muscle every time he moved. His chest was a thing of glory and she yanked off her own t-shirt and bra so that she could revel in the feel of skin against skin.

  He kept one of those big arms around her waist and rose to his feet as if she didn’t weigh anything. Once they gained their feet, it didn’t take long to shed the rest of their clothes.

  She stepped back a single step, all that her berth allowed, to admire the man before her.

  “You’re beautiful, Lieutenant Barstowe.”

  “I think that’s my line, Petty Officer Maier.”

  “What, You’re beautiful, Lieutenant Barstowe? The mirror is behind you if you’re that much of a narcissist.”

  He didn’t glance over his shoulder, but she did. And the view had a great deal to recommend it.

  She felt suddenly awkward and shy. Nika had never been one to stand naked to be admired. She was far more likely to slip out of her clothes under the covers with the lights off. But Clint was a man well worth looking at, and not just the impressive proof of his attraction to her.

  He was battered, his skin was far from perfect, as you’d expect from an Army Ranger with a decade of service. But it gave him more character. He’d seen things, done things, and traveled through them to end up magnificent.

  “If one of us doesn’t do something soon,” he dragged his gaze back up from her body to look her in the eyes, “I’m going to die standing here and that will—”

  She shoved hard against the center of his chest.

  # # #

  Clint tried to stumble back, but there was nowhere to go. Maier’s bunk caught him behind the knees and he landed flat on his back with a squeal of springs.

  She produced a foil packet of protection and slid it over him. Her fingers brushing down him almost undid his control. Then, without hesitation or preamble, she straddled over him and took him into her body.

  As forthright in sex as she was in words.

  He looked down at where they were j
oined, startled by the contrast. Her slim figure and light skin such a contrast to his own, yet they fit as if they’d been custom designed for the match.

  He let his hands travel over her torso and her palm-filling breasts that fit her so perfectly. He marveled at the contrast between the soft skin and gentle contact when compared with the mind-blowing power of his connection so deep inside her.

  When he cupped both her breasts, she clamped her hands over his, pinning them in place and interlacing their fingers so that they seemed to blur together, light and dark, slim and powerful. It was as if their hands formed some kind of artwork that he’d never understand but couldn’t stop admiring.

  She leaned her weight against his palms as she tipped her head back and exposed a neck that would put a swan to shame.

  Clint knew he had never been with such an amazing woman.

  And when the release slammed into her and then him moments later, he also knew he’d never been with a woman he wanted so badly to have again right away. A plan of action that would be only a little delayed.

  Chapter 8

  Sly shook her shoulder as Nika almost planted her nose in her third cup of coffee. The caffeine was not coursing through her system and turning her into Wonder Woman…nor Supergirl…not even Batgirl. Navy coffee was supposed to be able to cure all ills, but it sure wasn’t working this morning.

  “Mission briefing, Maier. Let’s go.”

  She blinked at Chief Stowell stupidly, stupidly like when she’d been a fresh recruit in way over her head. She stared down at her breakfast, barely half finished. She’d gone a dozen nights with very little sleep, but could find few reasons to complain. As a matter of fact, her main complaint at the moment was that the caffeine that had sustained her through two weeks of having Clint as a lover no longer seemed to have any effect.

  She really needed to get some sleep, but men like Clint Barstowe only happened in the movies or novels, not real life. So, she greedily took all he could give and, being a US Ranger, he never stopped delivering. It didn’t matter if they’d had a brutal exercise or another mission ashore, each night he found his way to her bed.