Camouflaged (Hiding From Love #0.5) (9 page)

“That’s very sweet,” she said, running her fingers through my hair.

“Well, at the moment it seems very stupid.”

She chuckled. “You know what?”

“Huh?” I answered dejectedly.

“I’ve had a boyfriend for two years. I’ve got the birth control thing covered.”

“But you haven’t had pills with you here, have you?”

“No.” She was quiet for a minute, and I imagined if there had been more light I would have caught a blush. “I get a shot every month. God, do we have to talk about this?”

“Well if we’re really going to do it, I think we should be able to talk about it, don’t you?”

She paused, resting her hand on my hair before she started running her fingers across it again. “That was so mature, it didn’t sound a thing like you,” she said, disbelief oozing from her voice.

“Thanks. Love the vote of confidence.”

“I’m sorry, I mean, well, I don’t know. Maybe I should quit talking.”

“Look.” I wasn’t interested in her crisis of confidence right then. She was naked, about to sit on my lap, and even through all this bullshit, I was still hard. “I’ve never been with anyone without a condom. My guess is you’ve never been with anyone but college boy. You’re all amped up on some kind of damn anti-baby hormones. So if you want to do this, I think we’re safe.”

“Gabe?”

“Yeah?”
Please let her say yes. Please let her say yes.

“I want to do this.”

Thank God.
“Then come here,” I whispered, my heart rate climbing as I pulled her to me and she straddled my legs. She sat down on my lap, my hard-on pressed between us. I drew her face to me and kissed her gently.

“You’re so strong,” I told her, my voice rough with need. “I want you to know how much I respect you. I don’t express it very well, but you have my utter and complete respect, Alexis Garcia. And if you decide that you don’t feel right about this, all you have to do is say so. I want you to want this as much as I do.”

“I do. I want it so bad. I can’t even remember anyone else. It’s like this place and you have erased everything. All I can feel or think about is this, right here, right now. I don’t want to lose this.
Please
.”

Without another word, I slipped my hand under her thigh and lifted her up. She wrapped her hand around my shaft and lowered herself onto me. A hunger blossomed up from where we were joined until it reached my chest where it lodged so deep inside of me I knew right then and there I’d never be rid of it. That need would stay inside me forever. And the only thing that could satisfy it was her.

T
he
next morning, I woke with Alexis naked, sprawled halfway across me, and the blazing pain of a gunshot wound throbbing through my arm. I knew things were bad when I actually considered not trying to have sex with her because the arm hurt too much. But then she made one of those little kitten noises like she had the previous morning and rubbed her leg against mine, and I decided as long as I was conscious, there was no pain worth giving her up for.

I nuzzled her hair with my chin. “Hey, sleeping beauty. Time to wake up.”

She rubbed her face into my chest and slapped gently at my face. “Huh uh,” she groaned.

“Nah, come on, babe. The sun’s out, you’re naked, I’m naked, and we got nothing to do all damn day but get lucky.”

She lifted her head and looked me in the eye, her curly hair a matted mess hanging in her face like every morning. She squinted. “I’m starving,” she wailed as she put her head back down and started crying.

“Wait, what?” The sounds of her sobs and the dampness oozing all over my chest told me she wasn’t kidding. I was hungry too, but not to the point of tears. I didn’t think I’d ever be hungry to the point of tears.

“Shh, shh, shh. Alexis, honey? It’s all right, really. We’ve got more MREs, and you can have mine too. We’re going to get out of here soon, I promise.”

For some unfathomable reason, this only made her cry harder. Shit. I’d never dealt with a sobbing female. I walked away from sobbing females. But even if I could have walked away then, I never would have. Not when it was Alexis sobbing. I only wanted to make it better for her.

I sat up, bringing her with me as she continued to sniffle into my chest. “Hey, sweetheart, it’s okay. I’m going to get you something to eat. Hang on just a minute.”

I disentangled myself from her, and she sat huddled in a little ball, still sniffling to beat the band, her head down on her knees. I dug through the rucksack and found our last two MREs, some more cinnamon gum, and the second to the last bottle of water. I scooted back to her, stroked her hair, and commenced with the begging.

“Alexis? I’ve got some food here. Why don’t you eat this and I bet you’ll feel a lot better.”

“I hate those things,” she wailed with renewed vigor.

“I know, but I think your blood sugar’s dropped too low. You need to have this, at least one of the snacks, even an applesauce. Choke it down and I guarantee in twenty minutes you’ll be feeling a lot better. Here. You’ve got to open it. I can’t do it with one hand.”

She nodded and took it from me, opening it and looking at it in disgust. Finally, she started eating, and I put the water bottle between my knees to hold it while I twisted off the cap. Then I handed it to her and she sat, silently eating and drinking until it was all gone.

Finally, she pushed the hair out of her face, took a deep, shuddering breath, and looked over at me. “Thanks,” she said in a little voice.

I pulled her head down onto my shoulder. “Sure. You feeling better?”

“Yeah. But Gabe?”

“Yeah?”

“Are we going to die here?”

I sucked in a breath. She’d been so tough through all of this. She hadn’t questioned anything I’d done. She’d followed my instructions and stayed hopeful the whole time. I thought this might be the low blood sugar speaking, but it was probably also past due. As much as I didn’t want to admit it to her, the thought had crossed my mind that my unit might not come for us. Maybe they couldn’t find us; maybe they couldn’t get to us.

“I’m not going to lie to you. Running out of food and water is a problem, but we’re a long way from dead and a long way from being out of options. I’ve played it really safe, but we can try some other things if we have to.”

“Like what?” she asked as we lay back down. She snuggled in close to my side, her arm lying across my chest. The whole snuggling thing had its pros and cons, but naked snuggling? I was really enjoying that.

“Well, I can try to get out to the truck and swipe some more stuff from the back. There’s water there and baby formula, which is gross but would give us some nutrition.”

“Every time you poke your head out, they shoot at you, Gabe. I don’t think you should do that.”

“Well, the first time I definitely came out on top if you’ll recall, but yesterday doesn’t count. I mean, the way this canyon echoes, starting up the truck made about as much noise as a convoy passing through. It’s no wonder they shot at me. I can be quiet if I want, you know.”

“Tell me more choices we have,” she said, ignoring my efforts at sounding casual about it all.

“We can try to walk out.”

She leaned up off of me and looked me in the eye. “Are you serious?”

I nodded. “Yep.”

“How?”

“Well, we’d have to go at night, and we’d have to hike out of here through the rocks, in the dark, with the threat of being shot or running into a Taliban camp.”

She lay back down. “Any other ideas?”

“We’re out of radio range, we’re out of food, and we’re out of water. But we’re not out of ammo, and we’re both still able to walk. In a few more days, we’ll be too dehydrated and hungry to travel on foot.”

“I don’t want to die here like this,” she said softly. “Let’s leave tonight.”

“You sure?”

“As long as you think your arm will be okay.”

“It’s good enough to do this,” I murmured as I rolled her over onto her back and began to kiss down her throat while I slipped my hand in between her legs.

She sighed. “You’re trying to distract me from thinking about bad stuff,” she said. “I’ve noticed you do that a lot.”

“Mmm. You complaining?” I ran my tongue down her silky torso and circled her belly button, spending extra time on the small silver ring there.

She arched into me. “Uh, ah, no complaints. Mmm, do that again. Yeah, that.”

I chuckled.

“But promise me we’ll go tonight.”

“I promise,” I answered as she lifted one knee. My tongue found its way into her warm, sweet wetness, and my heart found its way into her warm, strong grasp. I could only hope she was as gentle as she was strong.

The day was a blur of sleeping and sex and more sleeping and more sex. I hadn’t eaten a damn thing in close to thirty-six hours, but after experiencing Alexis’s early morning meltdown, I’d decided I could make it with the last bottle of water and gave her the last MRE. No matter what the consequences, it was time to quit living like rabbits in a hole. She’d made the right choice, and as worried as I was about keeping her safe in the open, we couldn’t stay in that cave and starve to death.

When the sun started setting, we got dressed and I gathered up the LBV with the remaining ammo. With only one functioning arm, I debated with myself over bringing the M4, but I decided to strap it on anyway. If things got that bad, I’d have to use my injured arm in spite of the pain. I put the holster on for the pistol and hoped I wouldn’t need it either. I gave Alexis my uniform jacket to wear so she’d be warm, and I put on a new t-shirt from the rucksack. My arm ached like a motherfucker, but I decided against taking any of the pain meds in the first aid kit since I hadn’t eaten in nearly two days.

When it was dark, we tied my wounded arm up in a sling to help keep it immobilized and I took her hand in my good one as we quietly walked out of the cave. We stuck to the wall of rocks behind us, slinking along almost silently until we reached a spot where there was a break in the rocks and we could climb up to the mesa above. In some ways we were more visible up there, but it got us off the road where we were most likely to run into someone—hostile or otherwise.

The hike to the top of the bluff wasn’t easy, and more than once we knocked down rocks and dirt that echoed around the space near us. Each time, I’d pulled Alexis into the lowest crouch I could, hoping against all hope that the noise wouldn’t trigger a round of fire. I didn’t want her behind me because that meant she was first in line for shots from the other side, but I also didn’t want her ahead of me because then she was first in line for whatever was up top. It was a no-win situation, and once again I wondered if I was up for the job of taking care of her.

We reached the top with no mishaps and crept along, trying to stay far enough from the edge that we couldn’t be seen from across the canyon but close enough that we could follow the road below. We’d probably been walking about an hour when I heard sounds ahead. I held up my hand for Alexis to stop walking.

“What is it?” she whispered in the dark, standing just behind my shoulder.

I turned my head enough that she could see my profile and held my finger up to my lips.

She nodded and froze. I listened carefully and then heard it again—men’s voices. And they weren’t speaking English. Fuck. I grabbed Alexis’s hand and dropped down in the weedy undergrowth that had sprouted from the dry landscape.

I could hear them talking and laughing, and then as I focused, I smelled smoke. A campfire. I couldn’t see the glow so they must still be far away, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t hear us.

I pulled Alexis’s head next to mine and mouthed into her ear, “We need to skirt around them. Step exactly where I step, and not a sound.” I pulled back and looked at her. In the moonlight, her beautiful brown eyes were wide in fear, but I could see her set her jaw and nod at me, indicating she understood the situation.

We stood and headed deeper into the mesa land, away from the edge of the cliffs. I stepped slowly, listening to whether the voices got closer or farther from us. When it seemed we’d gotten farther away, I headed back in the direction we’d been travelling, hoping I’d gone far enough to skirt their camp and that they didn’t have guys posted out here on lookout.

I guessed we were parallel to the camp when we found ourselves in front of a circle of rocks about ten feet across. I briefly wondered what it was, and then the smell hit me. It was a damn latrine, almost certainly for the group sitting at the campfire. I was about to pull Alexis around the far side when I heard a voice that wasn’t receding. I stopped dead in my tracks as the guy, who was singing, came closer and closer. We were in open desert. If we ran we’d make a ton of noise, but there was nowhere to hide. I pulled Alexis’s wrist and dropped to the ground right where we had stopped. We lay on our stomachs in the dirt and tried to control our breathing, which suddenly seemed louder than jet engines. I wrapped my arm around her waist, tucked her into my side, and looked at her, willing her to be absolutely silent. I’d die to protect her, there was no question, but I really wasn’t in the mood to cash it in right then.

Pretty soon the singing was accompanied by shuffling feet, and puffs of dust blew over us. Alexis buried her face in my shoulder and struggled to muffle a cough. Then, dust swirling around burning our eyes and noses, a pair of boot-clad feet came up and stood three feet away.

The guy was sideways to us, and I realized immediately as he rocked slightly on his feet, that he was drunk. My good arm was around Alexis and my other arm was still incapacitated. I had no way to reach the pistol at my hip. The guy kept singing and swaying, and then as if God wanted to completely fuck with us, he stopped, and released a big sigh as a stream of liquid hit the dirt right in front of Alexis’s face.

The fucker was nearly pissing on her head. As fast as I could, I pulled my hand up to her mouth where I clamped it down, muffling whatever scream she might have let out. I clenched my jaw as I felt tears rolling down her face and onto my hand wrapped over her lips. The guy pissed for what seemed like ten minutes, and then as suddenly as he’d wandered onto us, he ambled off, back into the darkness, singing to beat the band, leaving us staring at a huge puddle of piss that was rapidly draining toward our heads.

I leaped up and yanked Alexis with me. She immediately turned and started retching into the dirt behind us. I held her around the waist and rubbed her back until she stopped.

“Oh God,” she whisper-screamed. “Oh God. It splashed on me. I’m going to die, Gabe. Ugh!” She bent over and coughed some more.

I grabbed the last bottle of water we had out of my pocket. It was half empty, and I’d brought it for emergencies, but I figured for Alexis this was as much of an emergency as anything. I tore a piece off of my t-shirt and soaked it with the water.

“Here,” I whispered as I wiped it across her face. “It’s okay, sweetheart. I know it’s gross, but it won’t hurt you. You did great. I’m proud of you.”

She was still crying silently as I scrubbed all over her face and neck. “Open up and rinse and spit,” I told her as I tipped the bottle up to her mouth.

She did as I instructed and then I had her take a drink. She took a deep, shuddering breath and released it.

“You okay now?” I asked as I put the bottle away and threw the wet fabric on the ground.

She nodded. “Sorry,” she whispered.

“It’s okay. You’re doing great, tough girl. Let’s get going.”

We continued on, and in another ten minutes, I knew we’d gotten around the camp. We headed back toward the canyon so we could follow the road again. Soon, we were in sight of it and quietly making our way back to what I hoped would be safety.