Flash of Fire (24 page)

“There will be no surveying.”

“There has to be. We will inform you when we do so and we welcome your protection.”

“Damn straight,” Tim muttered.

Nobody wanted standard border patrol forces trying to fry their asses.

There was a long silence before the North Koreans answered, “It is permitted.” And they were gone off the air.

Robin turned her helo and Mickey followed suit so that they were face-to-face, hovering a hundred feet apart. Not knowing what else to do, he offered her a nod of support.

He was pretty sure she shrugged a “What the hell!” in return.

In unison, they turned and rolled down into the Demilitarized Zone, the most fiercely armed and contested strip of soil in the world, to load their tanks from forbidden waters.

“Let's never do this again.” Mickey sat beside her in the main restaurant of the Sol Resort. The massive resort in Yangyang was close to the defunct airfield. They sat in a neat spread of tables lined up in orderly rows. A three-story-tall wall of windows shining with the last pinks and oranges of the ending day curved along one side of the room.

And Robin knew that, despite sitting inside air-conditioned helicopters all day, they stank. She couldn't care less.

This stretch of the beach was only officially “open”—whatever that meant—for forty-two days of the summer, and this wasn't one of them. That meant that the resort's main restaurant was echoingly empty at eight at night. Five of the fifty or more tables were occupied by small, quiet groups.

Which was good, because MHA's whole team stank and were too tired to worry about polite noise levels. They smelled of wood smoke and they smelled of exhaustion.

“Beat's Denny's,” she teased Mickey.

“I meant let's never fly in formation with a dozen tons of North Korean attack helicopters manned by the severely paranoid.” He was so tired he'd taken her statement at face value. “They stayed so close, except when we were actually dropping on the fire, that I swear I could see the bullets in their guns. My knuckles are still white from fear I was going to ram one of them.”

“I hear ya, bro.” Tim thumped Mickey hard on the back. “We, I mean, the, you know, U.S. military guys, don't fly formations that close.”

Robin wanted a burger and fries but had settled for fish and chips. There was a lot of seafood on the menu, very little meat. Mickey was splitting a pepperoni pizza with Vern from which Robin stole a slice.

“At least there's a decent amount of darkness here. Nine full hours,” Jeannie groaned, almost nodding into her chowder. None of them had slept since Alaska.

“Certainly beats three hours of twilight we just came from.” Cal rubbed his wife's back.

“And the North Koreans said no nighttime flying, which I'm not gonna argue with,” Tim agreed and worked on the steak that Robin hadn't seen anywhere on the menu. Of course she was so tired, it might have been on the middle of the page in bold type and she wouldn't have seen it.

“How many people would normally be needed to fight a fire this huge?” Lola asked from Tim's other side. She had a surf 'n' turf, of which Robin was also quite envious.

“This one is running around twenty thousand acres,” Mark replied. “Which is low-end average by our standards.” He too had ended up with fish and chips and was eyeing Tim's steak.

That made Robin feel a little better. She was wolfing her meal down anyway, her body wanted the calories, but they would have tasted so much better as red meat.

“I'd like another two helos, a pair of air tankers, and at least one full load of smokejumpers—twenty of them would be very handy right now,” Mark continued. “Though I bet even they would hesitate about jumping into a mess like the DMZ. Normally, because the terrain is so rugged, we'd also have a half-dozen wildland fire engines on the ground and maybe a hotshot crew.”

“Based on what I can tell from the limited feed from the drone”—Carly sipped at her tea—“and the little that I can pull off the helo's cameras, the only assets they have are a couple hundred peasants out on the line beating at the fire with pine boughs.”

“Damn.” Mickey sounded pissed.

Robin wondered at his irritation and then imagined some poor, underfed farmer without any Nomex gear beating at a forty-foot flame with a highly flammable tree branch. They'd have no training about entrapment or escape routes. Now she was getting as angry as Mickey, not that they could do anything about it. “They lose any in the fire yet?”

“Can't be sure,” Carly said quietly enough to make the answer a clear affirmative. “I'm sure they will as the fire progresses. They don't even have a crew boss based on how they're deployed along the line, at least not one that's ever faced a big fire.”

That killed any lightness to the mood. What had been…not celebratory, because they were too exhausted for that, but positive, had just been swept under the table.

Robin looked at the faces around the table and not a one of them didn't look hammered down and hurting after the long flight from Alaska, the crossing from Japan, and eight hours on the fire.

“Any word on anything else?” Robin asked Mark.

He shook his head and didn't look happy. He still didn't know why they'd been sent here.

Fine.

“Tonight, sleep.” Robin looked over the weary and discouraged crew. “Tomorrow, we're in the air at dawn. If we beat the shit out of this fire, it won't have a chance to burn anybody. Deal?”

One by the one, everyone looked at her and nodded, resigned but in agreement.

There were two exceptions.

Mark was looking at her as if Robin had just fulfilled all of Emily's plans for her. They'd been looking for someone to lead. Why else would they have given her command of Firehawk One? By all rights she should have been copilot in someone else's bird for a few months first. But Mark's smile looked terribly smug and self-satisfied. Well, they'd pushed her into the position and she'd pulled on her big-girl boots and stepped into it. He made as if he was tipping his hat to her, if he'd been wearing one.

The other exception was Mickey. He was looking at her like…like she'd be an idiot if she didn't drag him straight to bed.

Robin was many things, but she wasn't an idiot.

“Excuse us.” She pulled Mickey to his feet, reached over to steal another slice of pepperoni pizza, and led him out of the restaurant.

* * *

Mickey didn't wait for the elevator doors to close.

He didn't give Robin Harrow a chance to take a bite of her pizza.

She stepped into the elevator, punched in for the fourth floor, and he drove her back against the brass rail and mahogany veneer of the elevator wall. He pinned her there and she didn't complain when he drove his mouth against hers. He scooped her butt and pulled her hard against him, frustrated by the layers of clothes that separated them, but unable to control himself.

He had her untucked and totally disheveled by the time the elevator door opened. The transition from elevator to room was a blur. She kept slowing him down by tossing articles of her clothing in his face as she scampered down the hall just out of his reach.

She arrived at the door, carrying a key card and a half-eaten piece of pizza, and wearing a smile.

Robin unlocked the door and dodged inside—it was a good thing the key card worked on the first try, or he'd have taken her right there. She made as if to close it in his face and leave him out in the hall with nothing but her clothes.

He jammed a palm against the door as she laughed, and he forced his way into the room.

“Oh my God, Mickey.” The wonder in her voice was enough to stop him, though she was in easy reach.

“What?”

“A bed. A real bed. We get to make love in a real bed.”

No way could Mickey wait that long. It was at least a dozen steps away. He also couldn't wait to take off his own clothes and find some protection.

Not with Robin Harrow standing naked in front of him. A part of him wanted to hold her, cradle her to him, take his time—and that was just one more thing he discarded as he tossed his armful of her clothes aside.

As he pushed her back against the wall and took her, she dumped her pizza slice on the entryway table. He took her with his mouth, with his hands, with kneeling down and rubbing his cheek against her, like Adam must have as a supplicant the first time he knelt before Eve.

Robin protested.

Writhed.

And wholly cooperated, finally ending up with her back against the golden wallpaper and her legs over his shoulders as he held her aloft and sent her flying.

Only when she was done, when her hands had eased their purchase in his short hair, did he finally come back to himself and rest his head on her belly.

“So, I'm guessing you want me, Hamilton?” Her tone was teasing, though her voice was husky and her breathing hard. But her hands were gentle as they stroked and smoothed his hair back into place.

“Seem to.”
Want?
He didn't
want
Robin. He
needed
her like a drug. He tipped his head back to look up at her. “And I'm nowhere near done, my Robin of the nice breasts. Just warning you.”

“Good!” She untangled herself from him. “Strip 'em down, Mickey me boy. We both need a shower desperately.”

Shower was not on his list of priorities. Bury himself in this woman was his entire list at the moment.

She held out the pizza for him to take a bite as he stripped, teasing him forward as if he needed more encouragement. They split the last of the crust as they went into the bathroom.

“I want to cry,” Robin cooed. There was a big soaking tub and a glassed-in shower that would easily fit several people.

“Never had a base camp like this one before.” Not in all of his years of flying to fire.

“Maybe we should fight fires for an unfriendly foreign power more often.”

“Pass.”

She strode across the room and entered the shower.

Mickey stood there unable to move. Robin in motion was a powerful wonder. It was the way she flew, powerful movements that didn't doubt themselves. Graceful—not because they were delicate, but because their purpose was so consistently clear.

Robin striding across the silver-and-black tile without a stitch of clothing on left him helpless to do anything more than watch.

She had the shower going, the temperature set, and had stepped under the falling water, and still he couldn't so much as blink or wiggle a toe.

Robin turned to look at him through the glass. Her hair so light that it barely darkened in the water. Her eyes so bright. Her form ever so slightly blurred by the water sheathing over her.

She moved, back out of the shower until she was standing close before him, dripping on the tile floor. Her blue eyes looked up at him and waited, but he couldn't think of what to do.

* * *

“Oh boy. What am I going to do with you?” Robin took Mickey's hand and pulled him toward the shower.

Men had looked at her with need before, with hunger, with avarice, and even with a desire for vengeance—perhaps against their past, perhaps against all women. She was plenty capable of protecting herself, to many a male's dismay she'd left on the ground in deep physical pain.

She was less sure how to protect herself against the look on Mickey's face. She wasn't even sure how to interpret it.

Deal with what you do know, honey
had always been Grandma Phoebe's advice, along with one of her whiskey-rough laughs.

Well, she knew that Mickey had just given her exactly what she'd needed. She picked up a bar of soap as she nudged Mickey under the water and closed the shower door behind them. She also knew that Mickey had a body that could make
any
woman happy, and she was really going to enjoy giving him exactly what he needed.

He stood unmoving beneath that hot water, head tucked down as the water streamed down his neck and over his back. She soaped up a washcloth and began scrubbing at his broad shoulders.

He moaned in pleasure.

Oh yeah—she worked her way down his back—he'd be moaning but good by the time she was done with him.

* * *

When Robin finally slipped in between the sheets beside Mickey, she knew that their record of not having sex in a bed was going to remain unbroken. He'd already crashed into exhausted sleep and she was only a moment behind him.

What she hadn't counted on was Mickey. Somewhere in the dark of the night, Mickey kissed her awake as if she was a princess and he was absolutely the charming prince.

She'd expected to be woken by the firefighter with his insatiable fire-hot need for her or perhaps the sly Mickey “Blue Eyes” Hamilton. Prince Charmings were outside of her experience, so she didn't recognize that's what he was until she'd been swept up by this one.

He cradled her against him, brushing his hand over her, sometimes getting lost in the curve of her hip, sometimes the arch of her eyebrow. There was no question what he was doing to her, memorizing her as if she were worth more than a passing fancy.

She felt a moment of panic that his powerful hand brushed away as if it were a fire in full retreat.

Then she felt that it was a cheat to accept something like Mickey was offering, but when she said his name in a warning tone, he kissed it away, whispering into her ear as he continued to nuzzle it, “No promises. I know.”

And with that, she let go and for the first time in her life, chose to let a man make love to her.

There was nothing else she could call it, nothing less that she could pretend it might be.

Mickey didn't take a single moment for granted as he made love to her: not a single bit of curve, not the least reaction, not any of who Robin was. Sex was always about giving and taking and hopefully having a good enough time to make it worth remembering the next day after reality had come crashing back in.

In Mickey's hands and the darkness of a South Korean hotel, Robin became more of who she was than perhaps she had ever been.

Rather than making a thing of her unusual strength, he dug strong fingers into tight muscles until they went liquid.

When he kissed the inside of her palm, he left behind a memory that she knew would return every time she wrapped her hand around a helicopter cyclic.

And when he at long last entered her, it was a long, slow slide. No pumping fire, no pounding her down into the broad support of a soft mattress. It was a gentle climb of unstoppable power.

How he held on as long as he did, she couldn't imagine, but she enjoyed every single moment of it.

What she could imagine as she locked him against her afterward was never, ever letting go of him again.