Espionage
Chapter seven
He wasn’t going to look for her.
Or he was, but in a know-thine-enemy kind of way. A get-your-damn-tenure kind of way. Definitely not a wanting-to-spy-on-her way.
He’d seen the painting. He knew the price men paid for peeping at a goddess.
As he trudged back to his Jeep—a strategic withdrawal, he told himself furiously, not a retreat—he turned the events he’d just experienced over and over in his mind.
He was a man of science. He might have focused on botany in the end, but he’d been through the full gamut of science classes in high school and undergrad.
Physics. Chemistry. Biology. Geology. Even a side course in astrophysics that hadn’t counted toward his degree but had fascinated him nonetheless.
And in his hobbies, too, in the SCA, he’d learned the hard way about kinesthetics, practical physics, herbology, more chemistry—he’d dabbled in brewing—and even medieval engineering. If he had a religion, it was science.
There was a scientific explanation for everything.
Except he could not think of one for what had just happened.
He’d laughed about land mines—but the sand hadn’t exploded under his feet.
It had rolled, pushed, undulated like a living thing, moving his feet against his will.
It had crept up onto his makeshift bridge like a snake, falling gently down into the cacti on either side once he’d reached the end.
And then it had risen like a pillar beneath the end of his bridge, as if there were an iron rod in the ground that was somehow ratcheting up with enough force to send the plank flying.
But there had been no rod. He’d been gaping, aghast, then dodging the plank’s fall, but he’d still seen it, the way the pillar of sand collapsed downward.
There had been no rod. Just sand, hard and forceful, then soft and yielding.
And even if there had been a rod, some sort of device installed in the ground, how could anyone have placed it there, just where he would choose to cross?
Either the hillside would have to be riddled with such devices, or… It couldn’t be.
And then the ladder. It had sunk into the ground, the ground he damn well knew had been stable, as if it were quicksand—just as she had disappeared the first time he’d seen her—and then rumbled underground like a cartoon, the traveling ridge like Bugs Bunny forgetting to take a left turn at Albuquerque.
Again he’d joked. But prairie dogs could not have done that.
It was impossible for his siege tower to have Looney-Tunesed its way back to his Jeep—because that was where it had gone.
It was lying on the sand beside his campsite now, as if he’d never carried it all the way to the green-eyed woman’s hill.
He set his jaw as he walked around the fallen ladder to his Jeep. It was not her hill. No matter what she said. No matter how queenly she looked as she glared down at him, making him feel like the merest bug under her heel.
God. He wished he knew her name. It felt wrong to call her just she and her in his head. Perhaps he should give her a name. Diana. Boadicea. Eve, holding out an apple in the Garden of Eden with a smile like sin.
He’d take the apple, if she offered it. Without hesitation. Sin and sin and sin with no regrets. Even if it started the twenty-first century version of the Trojan War.
Ethan was mixing up his mythological apples, but he didn’t care.
He tossed off his bags and dug out his canteen for a long drink before unfurling and staking out his sunshade.
She’d been more beautiful than he’d remembered—though clearly he’d imagined the cloak that had seemed like wings—just appearing in a silky, flowing gown that had left her curvaceous, golden legs and arms bare. It hadn’t even looked snagged.
How could someone wear a dress like that in the Sonoran Desert without it shredding like a Landsknecht’s sleeves? It would make him think she had still been a hallucination, or maybe even a ghost, except that her presence this time had been…physical.
He hadn’t touched her, though he’d wanted to, wanted to stroke her skin and see if it was as soft as it looked.
Not that he would have felt that softness through his gloves, but he’d itched to do it all the same.
But he hadn’t needed to touch her to feel her warmth.
She’d radiated heat like sun-baked sand, her every movement sending vibrations through the air that he’d felt on his cheeks and imagined he could feel on his entire body, despite his armor.
She’d cast a shadow on the sand behind her.
He was pretty sure ghosts did not cast shadows, even if he’d believed in them, which he didn’t.
The sun had glowed in her green eyes and laid a soft gleam upon her flowing hair.
Holograms wouldn’t be affected by the sun.
And she’d trembled at his closeness, as if she felt him the same way as he did her, as if she—
He cut that thought off before it took hold. She very clearly did not want him, not his presence and certainly not his body. She had said so, over and over again, and it was 2023, when vibes were not enough to indicate interest. She didn’t want him at all.
What was important was, she was real. She was a real, infuriating, intoxicating pain in his ass.
And though he didn’t want to voice it, couldn’t jot it down in his notes, he was pretty sure she was magic.
He sat heavily on the Jeep’s tailgate, letting that idea bounce around in his head.
Magic.
He didn’t believe in magic.
But it was the only word that made everything make sense, made the puzzle pieces fall into place. The garden, the barriers, her. Everything. It was all magic.
And he sure as fuck couldn’t use magic as an abstract for a scientific journal. He probably couldn’t even get away with it on fucking TikTok.
So he just had to hope that whatever magic was occurring, it produced some sort of evidence that he could present as science.
Something explainable, reproducible. Something that would convince the Dean of Physical Sciences to give a judicious nod, proffer a congratulatory pat on the back, and finally accept him into the hallowed halls of the tenured, rather than bumping him down to the fiery pits of adjunct faculty, or worse, the unemployed.
Ethan needed to know more.
And the first step to make that knowledge possible was more recon.
So he settled in his camp chair in the shade and sent his drone out again.
He wasn’t looking for her. He wasn’t. It was just that after he sent the drone over the path he’d intended to take—which was now mysteriously more blocked than he remembered—he caught a flash of what looked like her dress just a little to the south.
And it was smart to keep an eye on what his enemy was doing, wasn’t it? He sent the drone closer.
Oh, god.
What was she doing?
He’d half expected her to be stalking back and forth before her army of radio-controlled prairie dogs, or digging defensive trenches, or planting iron spikes into the dirt. Boiling a vat of oil. Being the warrior queen he now knew she was.
Instead, she was lounging.
There was no other word for it.
She lay casually up against a mound of sand, her eyes closed, a faint, serene smile on her face.
Her silken gown traversed her curves like ocean waves, and now that he wasn’t speaking to her—wasn’t caught in her green, green eyes—he could see that the silk was…
not transparent, not really, but it clung to her every contour like…
like… He couldn’t think of anything it was like but silk, which was stupid, wasn’t it?
The silk clung like silk. But silk was a perfect word, a delicious word.
Delicious as the contours of her swelling breasts, the hills and valleys and curves of her relaxed stomach.
The skirts of her gown had somehow ruched up over her curving thighs, high enough that he felt suddenly guilty looking at her, even as he automatically sent the drone closer.
She’s not taking a bath, he told himself furiously. She’s not naked. She’s wearing more clothes than half of Tucson this time of year. And she’s the enemy. She might be up to something nefarious with her…her lounging, and her sighing, and oh god where are her hands going?
Where they were going was the curves of her breasts, and oh, he should recall the drone right now, he should, but he was caught up in the way her fingertips were tracing the edge of her gown’s neckline, dragging it down into the deep valley of her cleavage.
He swallowed, shifted uncomfortably in his camp chair, sent the drone closer.
He toggled the camera’s zoom until she filled the screen, his Diana.
Her fingers lingered in the shadowed crevice of her cleavage for a moment, pulling the fabric taut enough over her breasts to reveal every contour, but then she shifted, and one finger leisurely began to travel back up, dragging the silk aside further, baring brown curves, and the silk caught on her nipple—god, was it hard?
It looked hard, aroused. The silk dragged at it, embraced it.
He imagined he could see a hint of even darker skin peeping out from the edge of the fabric.
Was she going to—? He should look away. He couldn’t.
His mouth watered and he leaned in closer to the screen—
And her eyes popped open, gazing right into the camera.
She grinned.
And the image on the screen disappeared into grainy darkness.
Ethan jerked back as if he’d taken the blast of sand right in the face, adrenaline spiking through him.
Holy fuck. He tried to recall the drone, pull it back, but it wasn’t responding.
After a moment, though, the display screen cleared.
It was pointed up at the sky, and then she appeared, leaning down into the camera’s field of vision.
It spun crazily, until she was centered in the screen again.
Her arm was extended, like she was taking a selfie.
Which was exactly what she was doing.