He moved to the side, releasing the hatch as she stepped toward the door. For a brief moment they were only a hair’s breadth apart. She paused, her hand touching the handle to the hatch, but she didn’t grip it. He’d paused as well, and she could smell his essence suddenly beside her, surrounding her, engulfing her.
Kristen opened her eyes, her disciplined mind unable to dismiss what she was feeling. She looked up into his eyes, seeing the weariness evident there. He was about to say something, perhaps some comment to cause the brief, unexpected moment to pass without another thought. But the words disappeared on his lips as he looked at her.
Kristen heard Patricia’s words echoing in her ears. She’d never seized the moment. She’d never enjoyed the few opportunities life offered. Patricia had cast off convention and had still achieved her goals. Kristen had suppressed the natural rebel within her and had suffered for it.
“Lieutenant?” Brodie’s voice was different than she’d ever heard it. The tone was no longer strong or commanding. He sounded almost timid, perhaps even a little afraid.
“Captain?” Kristen replied hungrily but with a hint of fear as well. She felt his warmth just beyond her own. She could almost drink the scent of him.
There could be nothing.
They were a lifetime apart.
They could be nothing, she reminded herself as her secret side, the side she’d suppressed for so long, leaned slightly forward. Her eyes saw his lips hesitating near hers. She could feel the desire a breath away.
“Kris…” he whispered, his tone filled with many meanings. He didn’t want it to happen. He’d kept his distance. He’d tried to ignore her. He wanted her to leave. But he was too tired. His strength — his resolve — gone. So many thoughts conveyed with but a word.
“Sean,” she answered him, feeling the same fears, the same concerns.
Inside her head, she heard the secret rebel within screaming to finally be let out, shouting for her to finally reach out and grasp what she wanted. She was in a dream world as she felt her left hand touch his right arm. She could feel the tension in his muscles as he resisted. She wanted him so terribly, nothing else mattered. He was everything she’d ever imagined and more. Kristen didn’t want another moment to slip by without him knowing how she felt.
She relished the feel of his rough skin against her cheek. She could hear his breathing; long, deep breaths drawing in her scent. She felt his chest brush against her own. Her body tingled with energy and excitement but also apprehension.
Kristen felt his warm breath against the side of her neck. She turned her lips hungrily toward him. She kissed the side of his neck, tasting the salt on his flesh.
“I can’t,” he whispered before she felt his lips touch her closed eyes.
“I know,” Kristen agreed as her left hand slipped behind his neck and pulled him to her.
She felt him resist; his hands were on the bulkhead on each side of her as if to hold himself back. But whatever defenses he’d erected crumbled as she pulled him to her, finding his lips with her own. She felt the strength within his powerful frame melt as his arms encircled her. Tentatively at first, his hands gripped her and then, as the last vestiges of resistance collapsed, he pulled her tight, crushing her to him.
His lips were more pleasurable than anything she’d ever imagined. She felt her arms pulling herself up to him as if afraid he might pull away. She felt the bulkhead behind her as he pressed her against it, her boot heels pushing against the bottom of the bulkhead trying to lift herself up against him. She felt her hands move through his thick brown hair as her lips pressed against his, refusing to let go. She could no longer discriminate her own throbbing heart from the thunderous pounding of his…
Chapter Twenty Seven
The high pitched whine from the WLR-9 acoustic intercept box sounded through the sonar shack, awakening Kristen with a start. She was seated on the floor, her knees drawn up against her chest, her head and arms resting on them. She scrambled to her feet. The alarm had awakened her, but Kristen’s head was still filled with the cobwebs of sleep.
“What’s going on?” Kristen asked as she struggled to regain her senses. It seemed like a moment ago she’d been in his cabin… but it had been nothing but a dream.
Just a dream…
As she regained her wits, Kristen recognized the WLR-9 alerting them to an inbound torpedo. The sleepy sonar operators sprang to action too late. The Seawolf was traveling through the Persian Gulf searching for any hint of the Borei. The groggy sonar operators and the hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of computers and acoustical equipment had failed to detect another submarine as it slipped in on their starboard quarter. She cleared her mind of the delightful dream and moved toward the spectrum analyzer where Greenberg only too happily gave up his seat.
“Torpedo bearing one-three-five!” Goodman shouted a bit louder than necessary. “Range four thousand yards.”
Kristen felt the submarine accelerating and begin turning. “What is it?” she asked. “Where did it come from?”
“Out of fucking nowhere!” Greenberg cursed. “We had nothing from that direction.”
“Con, sonar,” Fabrini shouted into the microphone. “Inbound torpedo bearing one-three-five, range four thousand, speed fifty knots!”
Kristen slipped into her seat and strapped in as the deck beneath her tilted at a bizarre angle. She felt herself pressed forward by the growing acceleration as the entire boat shuddered. The boat’s own noise monitoring system sounded, alerting them to the cavitating pump-jet propulsor. Over the squawk box, she heard Brodie’s voice order the submarine to emergency flank speed.
Kristen didn’t want to hear it. She didn’t want to hear his voice. She didn’t want to think about him or the all-too-real dream she’d been enjoying a moment earlier. She had to focus. She tightened her seatbelt and grabbed the headphones as they slid off the console and donned them. She turned her energy away from his voice and toward the sound of the approaching torpedo, forcing herself to ignore her fear and exhaustion and just concentrate. The computer had already recognized the torpedo as a Russian-made, Soviet Era, USET-80 torpedo, and it was coming directly for the Seawolf.
Brodie turned the Seawolf away and was accelerating rapidly to run from the approaching torpedo. The sonar shack momentarily lost the torpedo in their baffles. But then a far more ominous sound reached them as the torpedo went active and began lashing the Seawolf’s hull with sonar to help the torpedo guide itself to its target.
“The fucker’s got us,” Greenberg warned.
“Torpedo is active and homing. Range two thousand yards. Bearing one-eight-zero,” Fabrini reported, his voice again returning to a more normal pitch.
Kristen could hear nothing any more in her headphones except the homing torpedo getting closer and the sonar pings lashing the Seawolf’s hull.
“Sonar, this is Brodie,” she heard his voice, once again calm and controlled. “Count down the range by hundreds.”
Fabrini did as ordered, counting down the range as the Seawolf, now at forty-one knots, raced as fast as she could to hopefully outrun the torpedo. But the torpedo continued to bore in on them remorselessly. She heard the range drop below one thousand yards, and then the collision alarm sound. Kristen removed her headphones, hanging them on the peg by her display and gripped the edge of the console.