A Prince Among Men Read online

  “No? Fine. Then I’m afraid you’re going to have to stick to your end of the deal. Take off your pants and get on the bed.” He flung off his bulletproof vest and then paused with his hand on his belt as he stared at her defiantly.

  Maybe she should have been frightened, but something about him, maybe his concern for her well being, maybe the way he acted more like a father than a letch, struck her. Vicki remained unmoving, arms still crossed. “You’re not fooling anyone, Hawk. You would never do it.”

  “The hell I wouldn’t!” He watched her closely while he undid his belt and started to unbutton the fly to his cammies.

  For one brief moment Vicki feared she may have made a mistake, but still she held firm. When she continued to boldly stare right back at him, his hands halted their task and flew up in the air. “Damn it, woman! Why are so stubborn?”

  Silently, Vicki smiled. Ha! She knew it. Scary or not, Hawk was a good guy deep down.

  With a huge sigh, he dropped down and sat on his bed, burying his face in his hands. Finally, he raised his head to look at her. “Just because I was bluffing, doesn’t mean the next guy will be. You are going to get yourself into big trouble playing this game.”

  She decided to play to his nice side. “You are probably right. In fact, I think the only way you can make sure I am safe is to let me stay here until I get my story. If you do that, then I promise I will go back to the States, or at least to London, and never bother you again.”

  “More blackmail?”

  “No. Not blackmail. Think of it as a bargain.”

  Hawk shook his head as waves of frustration radiated nearly visibly off of him. He was the kind of man whose every feeling and emotion showed clearly in his body language. Poor guy. No wonder he couldn’t bluff for shit.

  “Do I have a choice?” he asked. She almost pitied him. The caveman had caved before her very eyes.

  She stood firm. “Not really. No.”

  He huffed out a sigh. “Alright. Fine. But don’t expect me to baby-sit you. You are on your own. And don’t expect my guys to hold your hand, either. Pettit and Wally and the rest of the squad have too much to do already and not enough hours in the day to do it.”

  She nodded. “Okay. But I want to go out with them into the countryside.”

  Hawk’s jaw tensed again. “Not on missions, and not on patrol.”

  “But I need to meet the locals.”

  Head shaking, Hawk stood firm. “No missions or patrols. It’s too dangerous.”

  “Then when?” Vicki realized that last question sounded suspiciously like a whine. She hoped Hawk hadn’t noticed.

  “You can go with us on humanitarian trips only. That’s when we go into the villages, eat and drink with the locals, sit down and talk to them through our interpreter, give the kids chocolate and toys, stuff like that. It’s still too frigging dangerous for you to be out there, but I guess if we stay close to the firebase you might not get killed.”

  Vicki ignored that last comment as her eyes opened wide with excitement. Going out to meet the local families was exactly what she needed for her story. “Okay. When can we do that?”

  Hawk shook his head discouragingly. “With the waxing of the new moon and the poppy harvest finished, contact has picked back up again.”

  Vicki sat and simply stared at Hawk as he talked in poetic riddles about moons and flowers. Not quite sure if he was speaking in some sort of military code or pulling her leg, she simply asked again, “So when?”

  He rose, refastening his buttons and belt. “I’ll let you know. Until then, try to keep out of our way and out of trouble. These men haven’t seen an American woman in a very, very long time. I’d stay out of sight if I were you.”

  After that less than encouraging revelation, Vicki watched as Hawk grabbed his vest and prepared to leave her alone again, a lone woman in the middle of a camp full of strange and foreign men who hadn’t seen a woman in a very, very long time. She swallowed nervously. “Okay.”

  Buttoned up and fully armored again, Hawk was nearly to the door when she said, “Hawk?”

  One hand on the doorknob, he glanced back at her. “Yeah?”

  “Thanks.”

  “Eat your dinner, Vicki, before it gets cold.” And with a frustrated sigh, he was gone and she was alone in the mud hut once again.

  Vicki had a feeling that was as close to polite as Hawk got, but since he was going to help get her story, she’d gladly take it and be grateful. Besides, Ryan, who seemed to be Hawk’s right hand man and her assigned babysitter while she was here, was polite enough for both of them. And, he was a hottie. In fact, he could be the end to her dry spell. Vicki would have to consider that possibility.

  She could handle this. She would handle this, and come out of it with one hell of a story and maybe even a few hot memories to tide her over in the dark days of sexual draught ahead.

  “What’s up with the little filly Hawk flew in? Who is she?”

  Ryan smiled, again, as he had done repeatedly since he’d left her, pretty much every time Vicki came to mind. And it wasn’t just the spider incident, either. The woman just made him smile like a schoolboy, he couldn’t explain why. “Get this. She’s a reporter.”

  “Shit.” Wally’s southern drawl drew the one-syllable word out to be at least three by the time he was done. “Hawk hates reporters.”

  Ryan grinned broader. “Yeah, I know.”

  “You ain’t shitting? She’s really a reporter?”

  Ryan nodded.

  Wally let out a long slow whistle. “A female reporter, right here, smack in the middle of our humble base. Damn. But I guess I can see why Hawk agreed to her coming here. She’s enough to make a man squirrelly in the drawers.”

  Ryan agreed. Although he wouldn’t have put it in those exact words, Vicki had managed to make him a bit squirrelly in his drawers. “She is cute, but that’s not why Hawk brought her here. And believe me, he regrets it now. He’s trying to convince her to go home.”

  Well, not so much “convince”, as scare away.

  Wally scowled. “It figures he’d go and ruin it for the rest of us by sending her back. What does he care? He’s got that sweet blonde young thing of his waiting for him back in the States. What about the rest of us single guys here? Don’t we deserve a little romance, too?”

  Romance. Yeah, right! What Wally was interested in was definitely not romance.

  “It doesn’t matter whether she stays or goes, Wally, ‘cause she’s off limits. You got it?” Ryan’s voice held an unmistakable warning.

  The irony wasn’t lost on him that although Wally might be known as the notorious squad ladies man, Ryan couldn’t wait to get back to the hut where he’d left Vicki. In fact, why the hell was he sitting there talking to Wally when he could be with her instead?

  “I’m outta here. See you later, Wally.”

  Still looking a bit too interested in the woman who Ryan was already beginning to think of as his, Wally nodded a goodbye. Outside, Ryan decided he’d keep a close watch on Wally while Vicki was here.

  A few minutes later, he reached his quarters and realized that for the first time in a long time, he’d crossed the base without thinking about baddies, snipers, RPGs, vipers, wild jackals or any of the other assorted dangers that normally occupied his mind the moment he was out in the open. That probably wasn’t a good thing, but at the moment, he didn’t care because for once, there was something awaiting him in the hut worth looking forward to, besides his thin mattress and too little sleep.

  He opened the door to find Vicki sitting at the room’s only desk, which was really just an old piece of plywood Ryan had supported with two makeshift sawhorses. She had her laptop out, set up right where he usually used his.

  The scene was extremely surreal, kind of a warped glimpse at normalcy. It could be happening in any town back home in the States. Ryan, coming home from work to find Vicki busy on the computer, except that they both wore body armor and he was about to go out on a mission which
had the potential to result in multiple deaths, hopefully not his own or any of his men.

  When he’d opened the door, a startled Vicki had spun around in the chair to look at him with a bit of fright in her eyes. When she saw it was him she looked relieved. Ryan wondered if he should start to knock on his own door before entering, at least for while they had company.

  He pulled the wooden door of the quarters closed behind him, beyond happy that she seemed to relax the moment she saw him. “Hey, Vicki. What have you been up to?”

  “Hi, Ryan.” Was Vicki blushing again? Wasn’t that interesting. “I was going to type up some of my notes into the computer to kill some time and when I booted up, I found there was a wireless connection. Here, in a mud hut in Afghanistan. Needless to say, I was pretty surprised.”

  Amused by Vicki’s nervous babbling, Ryan stripped off his helmet and vest, reaching to hang both on a nail stuck in the wall, while joking, “Yeah. All the comforts of home.”

  He watched as her smile illuminated her face. His hand faltered and the helmet clattered to the floor. The sound knocked him out of the trance caused by Vicki.

  Ryan resisted the urge to physically shake his head to rid himself of the haze that had clouded his brain when Vicki had smiled at him. He finally broke eye contact, glancing at her screen, instead…and found his blog up on her laptop.

  He nearly faltered again and tripped into her lap as he leaned forward to make sure he was really seeing what he thought he saw. Something niggled at the back of his brain and he struggled to bring it forward.

  Noticing his interest, Vicki moved further to one side so Ryan could see the laptop better. “Have you ever read any of these milblogs? They’re pretty interesting. This guy, Groundpounder, is my favorite.”

  Her favorite. Oh, really? Hmm.

  Then it hit him. His biggest fan, the woman he flirted with and then jerked off to, screen name Vicki V, was reporter Vicki Vanover and she was sitting right here before him. Ryan, aka Groundpounder, was so amazed, not to mention thrilled, he could have done a happy dance. He bit his lip to control the huge grin he felt creeping upon him and decided to play dumb a bit longer and pick Vicki’s brain. “Why is he your favorite? What do you like about him?”

  Vicki shrugged. “Lots of things, I guess. He’s really a talented writer. He makes the reader, well, at least he makes me, laugh one minute and cry the next.”

  What he wrote reduced Vicki to tears? Ryan felt ridiculously happy at that revelation. What exactly did that say about him?

  “And the imagery he uses, it’s so descriptive you practically feel like you are there. He is amazing.”

  Vicki thought he was amazing! That thought made Ryan even squirrellier in the drawers. Feeling guilty about letting her go on and on about how wonderful she thought he was, Ryan considered confessing that he was Groundpounder and it was his blog she was reading. Then he realized that would mean confessing he was also the one who wrote those very sexually suggestive comments in answer to hers. What if online flirting was fine in her opinion, but she didn’t mean any of it for real?

  But still, Ryan couldn’t keep her in the dark. He would just have to take his chances at rejection.

  He opened his mouth to tell her when she interrupted his good intentions.

  “Hey, Ryan.”

  Phew! A reprieve. “Yeah?”

  “Can I ask you something?”

  He imagined what she may want to ask and how he would answer her. Will I help you out of those restrictive clothes? Yes, of course, I will. “Um, sure. What is it?”

  “I asked Hawk when you guys could take me out into the countryside to meet the locals, and instead of answering me, all he did was talk about the moon and poppies. Was he pulling my chain trying to avoid taking me?”

  At that question, an image popped into his head. The vision of his hands, chained and bound, unable to move. Vicki, clad in leather, torturing him with her tongue as he writhed with pleasure.

  What the… Where the hell had that come from?

  Ryan raised his eyes to find Vicki watching him expectantly, waiting for an answer to her perfectly innocent and logical question, not knowing at all that she starred as the dominatrix in the porn movie currently running in his head.

  “Um. No, he wasn’t, uh, yanking your chain.” Ryan’s face felt hot. And jeez, was he starting to sweat? He launched into his answer to Vicki’s question in hopes it would calm his libido, which had apparently sensed a female nearby and had kicked into overdrive.

  “Hawk meant that when there’s no moon showing the Taliban take advantage of the darkness and their movements and attacks are more frequent. And now that they aren’t all busy harvesting and transporting the poppies they use to produce heroine they sell to fund their little militant efforts, they have all the time in the world to plan and stage attacks, and our region gets pretty hot. The squad may have to travel outside of base under those conditions, but you don’t.”

  Vicki’s face paled a bit. “So knowing that the enemy is out there and the likelihood of your getting attacked when you go out into the countryside is very high, you guys still leave the safety of base?”

  While Ryan debated how to tell her that the base wasn’t all that safe, just safer than outside in the mountains, Vicki continued. “How can you do that? Why do you do it?”

  He shrugged. “It’s my job.”

  She still looked doubtful so he went on. “And I do it for the guy standing next to me, just as he does it for me.”

  Vicki let out a short laugh and shook her head, still looking baffled.

  Ryan raised a brow. “What?”

  “You guys, soldiers I mean, are a different breed. You’re not like other men.”

  He considered that a moment, weighing his chances with this girl. “And in your opinion, is that a good thing, or a bad thing?”

  Vicki’s face softened as her eyes met his. “I haven’t decided yet.”

  Ryan suddenly felt it was tough to breathe as the squirrels moved from his drawers up into his chest. He had better start talking before he instead started kissing her. “So, um, you can sleep in here tonight.”

  Vicki’s face showed her surprise as her eyes swept the room that was already nearly wall-to-wall beds. Ryan decided he better clarify before she assumed she’d be sharing one of their beds, not that he would mind. Nuh, uh. Not one bit!

  “The squad’s going to be out all night on an overwatch mission. You’ll have the place to yourself until we get back in the morning.”

  She nodded, looking a bit relieved, until she frowned. “This all-night mission is tonight?”

  Vicki’s hand landed lightly on his forearm. He felt a shiver run through him. Ryan nodded.

  “Do you want me to go somewhere else so you can take a nap before you have to leave?”

  In spite of the feeling being this close to her caused in him, Ryan’s face broke out into a smile as he pictured suggesting to Hawk that they schedule naps before night missions at the next meeting. He nearly started laughing at the thought of how well that would go over. Yeah, they did try and rack out during the infrequent times they had a chance, when there were no attacks and no work to do. The amount of time they had to crash still only amounted to a few hours of sleep total per day. Last night had been an exception. Ryan had actually gotten a fairly solid night’s sleep and he was raring to go, body and mind, judging by his cock.

  “A nap? Um, no, that’s okay. I’m fine.”

  However, he did need to shower and relieve this tension. Wouldn’t do any good to get killed by the bad guys because he couldn’t keep his mind off of his Vicki-induced hard-on.

  While he was at it, he might as well brush his teeth and change into a fresh t-shirt, underwear and socks before he left for the overwatch. Starting out a mission horny and with already smelly and sweat-soaked clothes did not a happy soldier make. Neither did going out hungry. He would have to grab some chow before he left, too. Maybe if he satisfied all the rest of his body’s needs, he c
ould keep his mind off wanting Vicki. The fact it was really her, Vicki V, still amazed him.

  Then Ryan managed to stop thinking of himself and remembered something. “Hey. Did you ever get to eat?”

  A wide grin lit Vicki’s face. “Yeah. It was my first MRE!”

  Ryan laughed. The woman actually got excited over eating the thing that was the bane of every soldier’s existence—Meals Ready to Eat. Suddenly realizing he could fall for a girl like this, he felt his stomach begin to flutter.

  Taking a deep, steadying breath, Ryan blamed it all on the squirrels.

  Chapter Seven

  The new moon worked both for and against them. As Ryan had explained to Vicki before he had to tear himself away from her, the baddies used the darkness to cover their movements, just as Ryan’s squad hoped it would do for them now as they pushed further from the firebase.

  The squad had departed the relative safety of the base in the black of night, weapons locked and loaded. The light was so low it was difficult to see even while wearing their night vision goggles. The world before Ryan’s eyes appeared in shades of green as they trudged the many kilometers silently, or as silently as they could while carrying their assault rucksacks, loaded down to be even heavier than usual.

  Far from base, they would have little or no assistance from the others. Ryan’s squad was basically on their own that night, but the knowledge they had a mortar tube with them, just in case things got bad, helped Ryan feel a little bit better. Although, if he didn’t manage to keep his thoughts from straying to the woman in his mud hut, no amount of weaponry would save them if he screwed up.

  Behind the lenses of his night vision goggles, Ryan’s eyes adjusted to the low light conditions. Things became clearer and more distinct for Ryan with each careful, well- placed step he took. He tried to stay alert, keeping watch for any nooks or crannies in the mountains that might hide the unseen enemy. The night was silent around them as the men moved as rapidly as possible without compromising safety. They had only a short time to reach their destination, but that they arrived there unseen was equally important.