Bring on the Dusk: a Night Stalkers military romantic suspense by M. L. Buchman

Author:M. L. Buchman [Buchman, M. L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Buchmann Bookworks, Inc.

Michael had been strangely silent after they’d woken to the cooling evening. Even by Michael standards, his reticence was notable.

Claudia tried not to feel put out by it, but it was difficult. The best sex of her life, the first time she’d ever made love out of doors—because the masthead of the Peleliu didn’t count for that—and she felt a need to talk about it. To somehow validate that it was real.

Michael had woken her with a gentle though brief kiss. Without a word he had dug into their packs and set up a small stove to make them a soup of freeze-dried stew with a chocolate bar for dessert.

The silence had continued to echo as full dark set in and he led her along the length of the horizontal trunk toward the branches of the fallen tree. After exploration by flashlight, he found whatever he was looking for. In minutes he had a large hammock hung a few feet over the trunk, tied off to branches now sticking vertically up into the air. The hammock included a layer of insulation below, and he tossed in a pair of sleeping bags.

She was no longer sure she wanted to share a hammock with him.

“Michael.”

He continued his preparations as if he hadn’t heard her.

“Michael!” Her sharp tone elicited a surprised retort from an owl perched somewhere nearby.

He stopped and turned to face her, but it was dark and she couldn’t see his face to read his expression.

“Speak, damn you!” She could see his shrug and almost lit into him. No! She’d asked for this. She’d chosen as her lover a man who barely spoke—and certainly not about his feelings.

Claudia wanted to storm away, go back to the truck and drive far away. Back to the desert she understood. But it was dark night in the middle of an uncomfortable wilderness that smelled of green growing things and the rotting damp of wood and moss. If it were full light, she still wasn’t sure she could find her way. They’d left the stream long before reaching this tree, following certain signs only Michael could read.

“What do you want me to say?”

“Goddamn it, Michael!” She’d known he was like this, so why was it suddenly pissing her off? Turning, she stalked off along the trunk until she lost any assistance from the flashlight Michael had propped in the bark in order to hang the hammock. For fear of making a misstep and falling two stories to the ground, she stopped and sat.

Claudia didn’t know how long she remained there before Michael came up behind her; long enough to get cold without her jacket. His tread so soft that she didn’t feel him walking along the trunk until he was upon her. She hunched her shoulders more, as if that would fend him off. Possessed of a superior form of night vision, he circled around her to sit in the darkness facing her. At least she assumed the vague silhouette in the night was turned toward her and not away.

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