“Do it,” she demanded finally, “or I’m going to lop off that tree between your legs.”
Camille had a way with compliments betimes.
He rolled onto his back and arranged her on top of him. “Do you want me, Camille?” he asked.
“You know I do,” she snapped, rather dazed with overarousal.
“Do you ride?”
She smiled, the kind of smile Eve invented and Mona Lisa perfected. “Do I ever!”
“Show me.”
And she did.
Holy clouds! Did she ever!
Then Brad and Angelina walked in . . .
Camille slept late the next morning. Well, eight o’clock. Which was not surprising because Harek, who snored beside her, hadn’t let her rest until close to dawn.
The man had been insatiable.
Who was she kidding? She’d been insatiable.
She slid quietly off the bed and looked down at Harek, who was splayed out on his back, arms above his head, legs spread, sleeping the deep sleep of the well-satisfied male. His limp penis, which looked darn good even at half-mast, lay spent on his balls. She went into the adjoining bathroom and splashed water on her face. She wasn’t about to take a shower, not right now here in the guest bathroom, lest she awaken the monster in the bed, who would no doubt be ready to go another round, limp willy or not. She’d heard what they said about Navy SEALs and their staying power, but whoever said that had never shaken the sheets with a Viking.
She pulled her Snoopy shirt over her head and went back to her bedroom, where she donned a belted, pink candy-striped cotton robe, another legacy from her teen years. She could smell fresh coffee brewing before she even got to the kitchen, which was empty except for Tenecia, their longtime cook.
After exchanging some warm hugs and inquiries about her family—Tenecia had a son who owned an auto body shop and a daughter who worked as a special ed teacher—Camille asked, “Mom and Dad not down yet?”
“Oh, they be down, all right. Went fer a walk, they did.”
“Together?”
Tenecia laughed, putting both hands over her apron-covered belly. “Yep. Holdin’ hands ’n everythin’.” Tenecia rolled her eyes meaningfully.
Could Harek have really worked his magic on her father? He’d certainly worked some kind of magic on her.
Tenecia handed her a steaming cup of coffee, and Camille took a welcoming swallow. There was nothing anywhere else in the world like strong Creole coffee, the chicory mellowed by Tenecia’s own secret of crushed eggshells and a pinch of salt in the water.
Camille glanced around the large, sunny kitchen. Every one of the six burners on the commercial gas stove had pots or frying pans bubbling away with a wonderful-smelling concoction, and both ovens were lit up with baked goods. Caterers were outside setting up tables and tents for the brunch to be held here early this afternoon. Household staff could be seen in the dining room polishing silver.
“What’s on the menu for today?”
“Three kinds of quiche, smoked ham, thick sliced bacon, eggs Benedict, scrambled eggs, fresh fruit salad, Waldorf salad, banana puddin’, sweet rolls, lazy bread, biscuits, okra jelly, my grandma’s special relish with watermelon pickles, beignets, of course, cain’t have no meal in Loo-zee-anna without beignets.” She took a deep breath and continued, “Boudin sausage, crawfish and shrimp omelettes, an’ that’s jist fer starters.”
“Good Lord! You must have been working for weeks on this.”
“I have, though some of it’s gonna be made, on the spot, by that fancy-pancy chef out in the yard,” Tenecia told her with disapproval in her voice. “I coulda done it myself with a helper ’r two. Don’t know why yer mama had to hire no fancy chef who cooked for Emeril one time. If he says ‘Bam!’ jist one time, I’m gonna show him, ‘Bam!’ ”
Camille smiled and helped herself to a beignet that had not only been sprinkled with sugar but drizzled with chocolate. The first bite was like an explosion of taste in her mouth, and she moaned her appreciation. You’d think after all the “chocolate” last night, she’d be stall fed with the taste. Instead, her appetite had increased.
“Not again,” she heard a male voice say behind her.
Harek had come in wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and athletic shoes. His usually meticulous hair was rumpled, and not designer rumpled. More like I’ve-just-had-some-badass-sex rumpled. He grinned at her and kissed her cheek.
“Not again what?” she asked.
“The moaning. I don’t think I could survive any more of your moaning.”
Tenecia giggled, and Camille gave Harek an admonishing frown.
He said hello to Tenecia, whose acquaintance he’d apparently made the day before, as evidenced by his saying, “You made beignets again, Tenecia. A woman after a man’s heart. Your husband is a lucky man.”
“I got no husband.”
“Will you marry me?”
Tenecia giggled, again, and Harek helped himself to a beignet and a cup of coffee. When Tenecia bustled off to speak to the caterers about some mistake they were making with the placement of steam tureens, Harek sat down at the table next to Camille. Real close. “Hi,” he said, and waggled his eyebrows at her.
“Don’t ‘hi’ me. The last time you said hi to me, I ended up with my face in a pillow and my rear in the air.”
“You don’t need to thank me.”
“I wasn’t thanking you.”
“You did at the time. As I recall, you kept saying—”
“Don’t remind me.”
“Don’t go all morning-after-ish on me, Camille. Last night . . . this morning was too good. Don’t spoil it with regrets.”
“It was good for me, too,” she admitted.
They smiled at each other, and the warmest feeling suffused her. It wasn’t sexual, more like loving.
Whoa! Nobody said anything about love. Before you know it, she’d be planning another wedding and then having a fourth ex-fiancé to contend with.
Another Whoa! That was some leap. From good sex to bad breakup all in one breath.
Just then, her mother and father walked in, and, yes, they were holding hands and grinning at each other like teenagers who’d just discovered French kissing. Camille would bet her WEALS medallion that they’d made love last night. Yeech! Not a picture she wanted in her head.
Her mother wore white sneakers and neatly pressed capris topped by a lightweight aqua sweater set and Great-Aunt Effie’s opal and diamond earrings. Her father wore white deck shoes and Bermuda shorts, also neatly pressed, topped with an aqua Bayou DeSiard Country Club golf shirt. They looked like senior citizen dress-alikes. Wannabe twins. Camille didn’t think her father had played golf a day in his life. These clothes must have been packed away from when they were lots younger. In fact, the two of them looked lots younger this morning. Amazing what good sex could do for appearance, like a shot of Botox to the libido. No, no, no, I am not thinking that. Otherwise, I’d have to admit to being ten years younger myself after last night.
“Good morning, sweetheart,” her father said, leaning down to give her a kiss on the top of her head and a pat on the shoulder.
“It’s a beautiful day,” her mother added, actually hugging Camille from behind. A real hug, not one of those fly-by hugs Camille had become accustomed to. “Are you sure you can’t stay another day, dear? With all the wedding madness, we haven’t had a chance to catch up.”
Catch up on what? Camille almost asked. Since when was her mother interested in Camille’s life?
“No, sorry, I have to be back at the base this afternoon.”
“I could call that commander person and ask for a special excuse for you to stay over,” her father suggested.
“Good idea, Emile,” her mother said, and the two of them exchanged more sappy grins.
But what had her father said? Special excuse? Did he think the military was like grade school where all he had to do was send a note excusing her from class for the day because she had a tummy ache?
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“And you, too?” her father said to Harek. “I could request a dispensation for you, as well.”
A dispensation now? Here’s a news flash, Papa, the CO is not like a pope.
“Uh, no thanks,” Harek said. “I actually have a different commander.”
Does he mean God? Or St. Michael? Oh Lord!
“Well, give me his name and number and I’ll make the call,” her father offered magnanimously, while her mother beamed at him with pride.
“Uh, my boss has an unlisted number,” Harek mumbled, looking to Camille for help.
Forget that. He was the one who’d turned her parents into a bleepin’ newlywed couple. A regular Brad and Angelina. If they started adopting kids from third world countries, Camille was going to puke, or throttle someone’s neck. That someone was concentrating on his coffee now like the secrets of the universe were hidden in its black depths.
“What is that delicious smell in here?” her mother asked.
“Tenecia has been cooking up a storm,” Camille said, as if her mother didn’t already know that.
Her mother was checking the various pots to make sure all her directions had been followed. Camille was sure the menu had been put together by her mother, who had many years’ experience as a hostess for faculty parties.
“No, it’s chocolate I smell, and not just that itty-bitty drizzle over the beignets.”
“I don’t smell chocolate,” her father said. “I smell roses. Lots of roses. Are your roses in bloom now, honey? They must be. Or the florist delivered more flowers. It’s beginning to smell like a funeral parlor, ha, ha, ha.”
Her father cracking a joke?
Camille and Harek exchanged glances. Chocolate and roses. Were they giving off scents to other people now, too, not just to each other?
Camille felt as if she’d fallen into some Alice in Wonderland rabbit hole, and all the characters were not what they appeared to be.
“Well, I need to take a shower and get dressed,” her mother said brightly. “We can talk more when I come back down. Will you bring two coffees up with you, darling?”
At first, Camille thought her mother was asking her to bring the coffees, but then she realized that it was darling dad she’d been addressing. He was already at the counter, placing two cups and two beignets on a tray.
“By the way, Harek,” her mother said, causing Harek’s head to jerk up. “Thank you.” There were tears in her mother’s eyes as she addressed Harek. “I don’t know what you did, but Emile tells me that I have you to thank for . . .” She shrugged at her unfinished statement.
But Harek nodded in understanding.
“Yes. I owe you . . . we owe you,” her father attempted to speak in a choked voice. “If there’s ever anything we can do for you . . .”
“No. This is my job. Your job is to . . . you know,” Harek said enigmatically to her father.
What? What job? Camille wasn’t sure she wanted to know.
Once she and Harek were alone again in the kitchen, she stared at him. “You really are one of those things, aren’t you? A vangel.”
“For my sins, yes.”
“Wow!”
“Is that a good wow or a bad wow?”
“I’m not sure. A vangel, for heaven’s sake. I had sex with a vangel!”
“Hot vangel sex, I might add.” He smiled at her, and whoo boy, his smiles were hard to resist. “Wouldst thou consider a quick return to your bed furs and some more hot vangel sex?”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“Not a bit. If we hurry, I might have time to show you the famous Viking S-spot.”
She shouldn’t ask. She really shouldn’t. “Is that the same as the G-spot?”
“No. The S-spot is far better.” The smile on his face was pure wickedness.
What kind of angel was he anyway? A wicked angel, for sure!
“Where is . . . No, don’t tell me,” she said, then flashed her own wicked smile back at him. “Show me.”
Chapter 13
Surprise, surprise! . . .
Harek’s sexual relationship with Camille, if it could be called a relationship, was short-lived. In fact, the casualness with which she had treated him since they left New Orleans yesterday bordered on sexist.
The more she treated him like a friend, or a professional colleague, the more he wanted to show her just how friendly he could be. To think, he’d even gone to the trouble of showing her the famous Viking S-spot! Talk about ingratitude!
For the first time in his life, Harek felt like he was the one-night stand. Face it, I’ve been used. And I don’t like it. Not one bit.
Harek had been working out with the Deadly Wind mission participants all morning, starting with the obligatory six-mile run in heavy boots before a six a.m., or 0600 (whoopee-dam-militaryspeak-dee!) breakfast of “doggie dicks,” a Navy name for small sausages, powdered eggs, referred to as “yellow puke,” and black coffee thick enough to hold a standing spoon, so loaded with caffeine it ought to be called “black bull.” Beignets and specially brewed chicory coffee were a thing of the past. Lunch in the chow hall had been no better. The only good thing Harek could say was there was plenty of it, especially carbs to build up energy. Can anyone say SPAM? And he didn’t mean the Internet kind.
Harek was in prime physical health, but this was hard. His brother, guilty of the sin of sloth or laziness, had the energy of a, well, sloth. “How do you do it?” he’d asked Trond at one point.
Trond had just grinned. He was enjoying Harek’s discomfort way too much. “Mayhap you need a break, little brother. There’s a rocking chair in the lounge, I believe.”
“Rock my ass,” Harek had replied.
“Seems to me your ass was already rocked enough this past weekend.”
It was useless complaining to his brother.
The morning had been filled with physical exercises that bordered on torture. Really. The O-course or obstacle course of workout rotations was also called the Oh-my-God course, for good reason. As for the grinder—the concrete arena where many of the maneuvers took place, surrounded by buildings, much like a penitentiary yard—it did indeed grind away at the poor saps, male and female, who participated. And people signed up for this crap, willingly? And they thought Vikings were unbalanced!
Harek would hurl his guts out before he quit now, in light of Trond’s challenge—rocking chair, indeed!—even though he, as an outsider, was not required to complete all the grueling drills. Besides, Camille seemed to have no trouble climbing the cargo net like a friggin’ monkey or freezing her pretty butt off in “surf appreciation” nonsense. He would be damned if he would cry off.
As a result, Harek was practically limping as he entered the classroom for the afternoon tactical session. It had about fifty of those school chairs in it, the ones with a small desk attached. Harek sat in the back row next to an FBI agent, Henry Rawlings, who was hurting as much as Harek, as evidenced by the groan as he adjusted himself on the hard chair.
“Can you believe these SEALs? They either have a God complex or a Rambo fixation,” Henry muttered.
“Well, they say there are three reasons why anyone would become a SEAL. To prove something to themselves, to prove something to someone else, or because they’re crazy,” Harek commented. Or because they’re ordered to by none other than St. Michael the Archangel.
“I vote for crazy.”
“Ditto.”
“That F.U. character said I run like a girl. I told him to suck my dick and he said he’d rather suck his own, and claimed he could, if he wanted, it was that big.”
The SEALs were rather full of themselves, some more than others. F.U. was known to be particularly obnoxious.
Lieutenant Avenil, Slick, came in then and strode up to the front. “Time to get down to the nitty-gritty,” he said right off. “Open the folders on your desk. On top, you’ll see a schedule for the next week. There will be some modifications as we go.”
Paper rustled as occupants of the r
oom did as they were told, followed by a few groans.
That afternoon they would be engaged in CQ, or close quarter training, in simulated settings, mock-ups of the Nigerian school complex they were targeting. Tomorrow they were off to San Clemente Island for a jungle survival rotation, followed by a day of skydiving at Camp McCall. Everyone on this team was jump qualified, including Harek, or they wouldn’t have been accepted for the mission. There would be instructions regarding the culture that would involve body posture, treatment of women, deference to authority or religious figures. Plus a short course on jungle animals and pests. The Sambisa Forest region was primitive, to say the least.
Harek was coming to realize, if he didn’t know already, that many of the SEALs were highly intelligent, even with master’s degrees. When out on an op, they were often called upon to be not just commando warriors, but also doctors, engineers, mechanics, and survivalists, not to mention a bit of “rootin’-tootin’-parachutin’ ” rodeo cowboy.
“Now, you all know that language is often a problem when we are OUTCONUS,” Slick said. “The bad news is that there are more than five hundred different languages and dialects spoken in Nigeria by the two hundred and fifty different tribes.”
FU exclaimed, “Oh crap!”
Slick ignored FU and went on, “The good news is that English is the official language of Nigeria due to its early colonization. If all else fails, many people there speak a form of pidgin or broken English. Cage and even Camille will give us tips on that vernacular since Cajun and Creole languages utilize forms of pidgin English.” Navy SEAL Justin “Cage” LeBlanc and Marie Delacroix were Cajuns from Louisiana, Harek already knew from Trond; so Camille must be Creole.
“What the hell is pigeon English?” someone called out.
“Not pigeon. Pidgin,” Slick corrected.
Cage stood and turned to face the class. “Di ting wey mai eyes see, mi mouth no fit talk abo. If I said that to you, it would mean something like, Words fail me. I read that somewhere on the Internet.”