Rhys step over the line, right? Rhys is in command here, right? But Jamie grabbed Rhys's hand. And she begged. "Oh G.o.d, Marty, please touch me. Just this once. Please. I can't stand it anymore."

"Mmm." Rhys's gaze strayed the length of Jamie's restlessness.

"Just this once."

Rhys descended quick, catlike, her breath bathing Jamie's face as she pumped her hip between Jamie's legs and roughly pinned Jamie's wrists. Raised up on both arms, her face ruled by a fierceness Jamie hadn't seen before, Rhys stared down and thrust her hip again.

It's said that whenever two marines are together, one is in command and the other is formed. Every muscle in Jamie's body quivered as she formed up beneath Rhys, arching into Rhys's energy. "Please touch me," she whispered.

Rhys went abruptly still, her eyes softening. "I will. Just this once." She sinuated herself along Jamie's length, and beneath the humid sweetness of her breath Jamie met her lips, startled at the new tremor of contact, and undulated into her kiss.

"Close your eyes," Rhys ordered.

Jamie obeyed. Rhys's warm fingertips danced under Jamie's tank top and played with her eager nipples. Yes! Jamie wanted to shout. Yes, yes, just like that.

But Rhys abandoned her. For an abyssal second, Rhys was gone and Jamie almost opened her eyes. Then Rhys's hand was ma.s.saging her belly in a slow, deliberate, descending circle.

"Did you know in women this is called the mons veneris?" Rhys ran her fingers into Jamie's pubic hair.

"Uhh...n-no-oh... oh... G.o.d..."

Rhys cupped her hand and continued her ma.s.sage. "Mmm..." Rhys's fingers plunged and circ.u.mnavigated their prize. "Like in venerate."

And that's when Jamie discovered what ascension was; at the end of Rhys's fingers, she levitated, bounced, rollicked, like a puppet on a string. This is gonna make me... I wanna see her, look at her when I...

"Uh-uh..." Rhys matched the movement of her finger to the cadence of her command. "Keep...your...eyes...closed..." The rhythm of Rhys's touch accelerated, then ceased. "Unless you want me to stop."

* 70 *

"N-no...please..."

"Mmm," Rhys purred, fingers trilling.

Jamie shuddered, molten and helpless. In all her many antic.i.p.ations of surrender, she had never quite imagined this. "Oh G.o.d oh G.o.d oh G.o.d," she heaved, bucking on the bed, her throat tensing futilely against sound as she dangled at the end of Rhys's fingers.

"Shh." Rhys slowed, her touch lightened. "Eeeeasy." She leaned in and kissed Jamie, absorbing the small sounds of Jamie's whimper.

Simmering now, Jamie defied Rhys and opened her eyes. She had to look at this woman who made her feel so... "Oh G.o.d, Marty...I...

didn't...know..."

Rhys grinned. "Now you do." Her rhythm syncopated, quickened, deepened. "Almost." She bent close again, kissing Jamie's breathy moan, riding Jamie's surge. "Do you like Almost?"

"Y-yes." Oh yes yes yes yes yes...

Rhys's rhythm changed again, the air Jamie had just inhaled burst out of her, and Almost tipped into a spinning, spiraling, electric climax that lit every synapse.

Arching, twisting, Jamie clutched Rhys as she came, remembering their first moments together, naked and manacled in a prison cell, afraid and in pain. She was thankful for it. If they hadn't shared that torment, they'd never be allowing themselves this ecstasy. Jamie ebbed slowly, unwillingly, chasing the waves of quaking elation.

At last, she turned on her side toward Rhys. "I want to do that for you," she said in a hush, maneuvering Rhys beneath her. "Just this once."

"Yeah." Rhys's eyes sparked. "Just this once." In exactly the way she'd always imagined initiating a kiss with a woman, Jamie kissed Rhys-lightly at first, to make sure she was really wanted, then strengthening, committing.

Mons veneris. Jamie nuzzled into the soft, resilient warmth of Rhys's b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Rhys didn't move, but her breathing went quick and shallow and her nipples stood at full attention, ready for inspection in the ghostly moonlight. Jamie approached them slowly, slowly, watching Rhys's b.r.e.a.s.t.s rise and retreat and rise again with her respiration, then shiver with the first hint of Jamie's breath upon them.

Like in venerate. Mouth lingering at Rhys's nipples, Jamie stroked * 71 *

Rhys's contracting abdomen and slipped her fingers between Rhys's legs. She'd wondered so often about this First Time. Would she know what to do, recognize when she was doing it right? Should she ask?

It's said that marines are taught to think for themselves. With scrupulous care, Jamie gazed at Rhys, listened to Rhys, explored Rhys, and discovered a body eager to adhere to Newton's third law of motion: If you press a c.l.i.t with your finger, your finger is also pressed by the c.l.i.t.

And then Jamie closed her eyes and lost herself in Marty Rhys.

"Not bad for a beginner," Rhys said later before climbing into her own rack.

"Really truly?"

"Um, yes, really truly."

But Jamie couldn't shake the impression that there was something Rhys preferred not to say.

v "No leave after graduation." Rhys reported one day in early May as the squad took a pee break. "Just overheard the chief instructor talking about it."

"That is not funny," said Jamie. They were supposed to get ten days' leave after Scout/Sniper School. Just three weeks left and then ten days when she'd get to go home with Marty, have ten whole days with Marty.

"We're shipping out right away. No leave."

"You serious?" asked Moss.

"They already got us a.s.signed to units," Rhys insisted. "Gonna end up in Okinawa, most of us. Then the Philippines. Another fight over the Spratly Shelf."

"Nah," said Jamie. "That's way too f.u.c.ked up. You must've heard wrong."

But, as usual, Rhys had heard right. Several days later, it was official. They were all about to become part of Operation Palawan Liberation.

"What the f.u.c.k is a Palawan, anyway?" grumbled Arnoldt.

"Didn't you listen to anything they said?" Rhys grumbled back.

* 72 *

"Southmost major island in the Philippines, Arnie," said Moss.

"Oh yeah." But Arnoldt's tone was a question.

"Officially an Incursion," sighed Jamie. "Islamist, but Chinese backing."

"Yeah?"

Rhys rolled her eyes. "Jeezus, Arnie, were you f.u.c.king sleeping?"

"We were f.u.c.king up all night!" Arnoldt protested. "I only dozed off for a couple minutes. So what else?"

Jamie ticked off the grim details. "Bad guys took over bunches of gas and oil platforms on the Spratly Shelf, and also Palawan and, uh- oh yeah-the Calamian islands to the north and Balabac to the south.

Expeditionary Unit's been deployed from Oki-amphibious a.s.sault on one of the Calamians. Place called Busuanga. Fierce resistance." Jamie tapped Arnoldt's head once, twice. "Any of this ringing a little bell up there?"

"Oh yeah. What else?"

"No leave after graduation," said Moss glumly. "Been cancelled.

We go straight to Oki like thirty-six hours later."

"What?"

v "Hey you. Gwynmorgan."

Jamie welcomed the sound of Rhys's voice, even so hoa.r.s.e and subdued. Somehow, as Jamie couldn't help but hope, Rhys had found her way to Jamie's side in the enormous plane.

After the graduation ceremony, when Jamie received the Cla.s.s Top Gun award and a boost to lance corporal, she wondered if Rhys would even try to hook up with her for the long flight west.

Because Rhys had taken a tough double punch. She'd come in a humiliating third in the marksmanship scores. Worse, Cla.s.s 2801's lance corporal promotions had been based on points and, according to scuttleb.u.t.t, Rhys had missed the cut by only one-a single devastating point. She'd concealed her disappointment well, but Jamie saw the tense lines locked in around her mouth, the small cleft that lingered between her eyebrows.

* 73 *

Yet here she was anyway. Surrounded by their gear and the reverberations of the plane's four huge engines, Jamie found real comfort in sitting shoulder to shoulder with her and hoped Rhys felt the same, even in their silence. Among the three hundred marines aboard, conversation stayed clipped, utilitarian. They were all preparing for the combat that was about to define their lives.

After they'd been airborne for about an hour, Rhys talked some, trying to tease, before reading from the duty station orders she yanked out of Jamie's right chest pocket. "You told me where you're going, but G.o.d, my mother wouldn't stop bawling, and I forgot. Let's see: Second Marine Division, Eighth Marine Regiment, Third Battalion Scout/Sniper Platoon."

"Just back from Busuanga. Word is they had it pretty rough."

"I, uh..." There was a higher frequency in Rhys's voice and she had trouble pulling in a full breath. "I didn't think my very first duty station would take me into actual combat."

"Yeah." Jamie grunted sympathetically, staring down at her knees.

"Me either."

But what else could she say?

The first time she held an E19 at Parris Island, Jamie knew the Corps had given her the weapon and taught her how to use it for a reason. Sooner or later, she understood right then, she'd probably shoot at someone, and they'd probably shoot back. When she found out she could do Scout/Sniper School, she grasped that she might get shot at plenty. And she figured that, yes, she could get killed. Now, as the plane rumbled westward, she felt the odds climbing fast.

Who'd give a s.h.i.t if I die? Jamie quashed a shrug, but the thought persisted. She glanced at Rhys, who gazed intently at her. What did Marty want? Solace? Hope? For herself, Jamie had neither. But, but- "You want Marty to care if you die."

Jamie knew that voice. The white-haired woman from her dream, from some inner world that couldn't possibly be real, had whispered to her again, soft in her ear. Yet the voice sounded as real, as tangible as anything Jamie had ever heard. What's more, she had to admit, it had a point. And impeccable timing. How much should she worry about which side of the reality tracks it came from?

From her left chest pocket, Jamie retrieved a neatly folded black * 74 *

bandanna with a red winking skull and crossbones. She handed it to Rhys with her own wink and a small smile.

"Hey." She b.u.mped Rhys's shoulder. "You'll be okay." Jamie believed it, too. Marty would continue to exist; Marty would be the one who'd care about what happened to her. The only one, probably, but at least there'd be somebody.

Maybe Jamie's faith was catching, because the apprehension in Rhys's face eased as she held the now-unfolded bandanna with both hands and stared at it.

"Wait." She turned to Jamie, her eyes worried. "You should have this-"

Nudging Rhys's shoulder again, Jamie patted her left chest pocket.

"I kept two," she lied. "That one's yours." Rhys carefully refolded the bandanna, put it into her own left chest pocket, and after that, Jamie could tell, Rhys found it a little easier to breathe.

They slipped into silence, then into fitful sleep. They got to disembark for twenty minutes and stretch when the plane refueled on the West Coast, then once more on Oahu, but they didn't talk, merely stood beside one another, shoulder leaning into shoulder. Jamie pushed away thoughts of what would come next, sometimes having to blink back tears, and inhaled Rhys's scent while she silently counted down the hours, the minutes left to them. Rhys had been a.s.signed to the same regiment but a different battalion, and they wouldn't see each other much. Maybe not at all. Maybe not ever again.

For a brief while after she first made love with Marty Rhys, Jamie allowed herself the illusion that some sort of intelligent hand might be at work. h.e.l.l, for the first time in her life she could actually envision being happy-after just-this-once turned into twice and then into three times and then she stopped counting.

When she stopped counting, she started dreaming, imagining.

Even imagined that she and her buddy, her lover might get away with serving in a unit together, and that might turn into a life together.

Now, however, Jamie reverted to what she knew to be the implacable truth. Alby might've been a weary river, but I'm just a grain of sand caught in the wind. And there sure as s.h.i.t ain't no such thing as an intelligent hand.

* 75 *

When the plane's wheels. .h.i.t the Marine base tarmac on Okinawa, Rhys laced her fingers through Jamie's and held on until the plane stopped moving.

As they lugged their seabags into the Okinawan humidity, Jamie said to Rhys, "Text me so I know you're not in the brig, okay?"

"Yeah, you too, Gwynmorgan."

"Promise."

"Promise," Rhys said and managed to hold on to her smile.

* 76 *

Chapter eiGht.

Cherry Gonzo! This one's yours."

Shaking his head, a square rock of a guy whose nametape read "Alonzo" inspected her like she was a dubious piece of meat.

Three meters away, Lance Corporal Gwynmorgan wanted to make a careful examination of the gra.s.s at her feet, but she forced herself to meet Alonzo's obsidian gaze while he checked her out. Abruptly, he began to walk away. As an apparent afterthought, he said over his shoulder, "On me, cherry."