for a week trying to get a grip on myself again. If Reza can swim around like a beluga whale, power to him. I’ll just sit nice and dry and stinky for right now, thanks very much.”
“You better turn around, then,” she told him as she began to undo the catches on her combat smock. “No free peeks unless you do the same.”
“Jodi,” he cried, “are you crazy? You’ll freeze in there!”
“I know,” she sighed as she made him turn around to face the sloping wall of the river bank, “but they don’t heat the water in the village, either, and I’d rather not be the star of another peepshow for Hernandez’s monks. I found the little hole they drilled in the wall of the bath.” After this little discovery, the priest had been livid with his charges, and a severe tongue-lashing left them suitably terror- and guilt-stricken. But that was all ancient history now, having taken place soon after Jodi had bailed out, when such luxuries as personal hygiene had still been possible for the human combatants. “I figure I can jump in, scream, rub off some of the scum and get some of the shit out of my hair, and then jump back out and dry off with my smock and get dressed again before I turn into a popsicle.”
“You’re nuts,” Braddock said, exasperated, as he faced the opposite direction. He heard the whisper and rasp of the heavy combat uniform against Jodi’s skin as she undressed behind him. With a subtle movement, he extracted a small mirror, much like those used by dentists before more sophisticated scanners became available, from a cargo pocket on his uniform. He had used it on many occasions to see around corners without exposing his head to attack, and the seemingly primitive device had saved him from becoming a headless wonder on more than one occasion. He had to smile to himself. The young Navy lieutenant was going to have to work harder to outwit this Marine.
Holding it up in such a way as to not be too obvious, he took a surreptitious look at the scene behind him. He let his breath out slowly at what he saw when Jodi’s undershirt and panties slid to the ground. Braddock had intimately known more women than he sometimes cared to admit, but none of them compared to this one. A non- practicing Christian, he marveled at how Jodi could look at herself in a mirror and still not believe that the Universe was a divine creation.
Feeling a rush of heat, he decided that he better put the mirror away.
“You can look after I get in the water,” she told him firmly.
“Whatever you say, ma’am,” he replied innocently.
Jodi gingerly stepped toward the water, suddenly wondering if this was not a serious error in judgment on her part. “What the hell,” she sighed as the icy water touched her feet, bubbling around her ankles. Reza watched her patiently. “Here goes,” she cried, diving headfirst into the water.
There was cold, and then there was
“Shit!” she cried as her head broke the surface. Her heart was pounding and she could barely breathe, but she was still alive. As she stood precariously on the bottom, resisting the swirling currents around her, the water came to just above her breasts. “God, Reza,” she exclaimed, “how can you stand this?”
Reza, of course, did not reply, but watched with great interest as Jodi began to rub her skin with her hands and then rinse out her hair to clean off some of the accumulated grit and grime.
As she was dunking her head under, coaxing water into her hair, a sudden surge of the current knocked her off balance. Her arms flailing desperately, she lost her footing and was pulled under. She opened her mouth to cry out, but there was nothing but water, and it eagerly rushed into the void between her parted lips.
But just as suddenly as the crisis arose, it was put to an end. She felt a pair of strong arms gently grasp her around the chest and pull her away from the current. Her head broke the water, and the first thing she saw was Braddock, quickly wading into the water toward her, his face torn with concern.
“Are you all right?” he yelled.
“Yes,” she managed, spitting water from her mouth. Luckily, she had not inhaled any water. “I’m okay.”
“Goddamn stupid officers,” he grumbled as he watched, unsure if it was necessary to go any further into the water. “Never have a lick of sense.” After another moment of hesitation, he decided that Reza could handle her safety better than he could, and he beat a hasty retreat to the shore, already wet up to his waist and feeling every inch of it.
As Braddock was trudging back to dry land and comparative warmth, Jodi turned to Reza, who had one arm around her torso and the other under her legs, holding her like a groom carrying his bride across some watery threshold. She thought she could feel the heat of his body where his skin touched hers, although she knew that was impossible in water so cold. The muscles of his arms and chest, difficult to see in the water, felt as hard and resilient as his armor.
“Thank you,” she told him. She kissed him on the cheek, just below an old scar that ran down his face over his left eye. Wrapping her arms around his neck, she let him carry her from the water, overseen by the ever- watchful gunnery sergeant.
“Hell,” Braddock muttered, “I should have just gone skinny dipping.” He was soaked past his waist and already shaking with cold, and now had no dry clothes to change into.
“We can dry off near the fire,” Jodi told him as they reached the bank, “while we’re having something to eat.”
“Amen to that.”
“Is everything all right?” Father Hernandez appeared from the direction of the camp. “I came to tell you that this barbarian ritual of
“What’s wrong, Father?” Jodi asked as Reza set her down. She thought for a moment that he was looking at her, but he was not. As alluring as any man might normally have found her, particularly naked, the old priest’s eyes were firmly fixed on Reza. She turned to see what he was looking at. “Is Reza well-hung, or some…thing…”
Following Hernandez’s gaze, she saw that Reza’s skin boasted some differences that she at once found fascinating and repellant, things that she could not have seen with his armor on. For one thing, he had no hair except on his head. His groin and underarms were bereft of even a single pubic hair, and she could not see a single strand on his chest or arms, either, even a patch of downy fuzz. And on his face, there was not even a trace of a beard’s shadow.
But that was not what really caught her attention. It was the scars. She had seen the half-dozen or so on his face, of course, and had thought it unfortunate that such a handsome man had to carry such terrible marks, especially the long one that ran over his left eye. But the highways of pinkish tendrils that coiled and meandered over the taut muscles of his body was like nothing she had ever seen. It was like a catalogue of pain and suffering, from the tiny puckers that seemed little more than oversized pinpricks to the scar in his side that looked like someone had skewered him like the gazelle now roasting on the fire. Leaning to one side, she caught a glimpse of a matching scar in his back. She had seen enough entry-exit wound combinations to know what one looked like. He had been stabbed clean through with what must have been a sword, just below the heart, and had lived to tell about it.
Urged on by morbid fascination, forgetting both her nakedness and the cold water that clung to her skin, she slowly circled this stranger, marveling at the unspeakable cruelty he must have endured.
“My God, Reza,” she whispered, “what did they do to you?” She gently touched his back where seven jagged scars remained where the Kreelan barbed whip must have once struck him. Running a finger over the scar where another sword had pierced him, she traced the gnarled tissue that was as long as her palm and almost as thick as her hand.
“Yeah,” Braddock said quietly, “he carries quite a history, doesn’t he?” He had already seen the scars, when Reza undressed to go swimming. Braddock had seen enough scars to not be shocked by Reza’s appearance, but he was still impressed that a man, any man, could endure such punishment and still function. “Look,” he went on, “I don’t know about you all, but I’m heading back to the fire. I’m freezing my ass and I’m starving.” He looked at Jodi until they made eye contact. “And I’d recommend you get dressed and do the same.”
“I will… ah, prepare some dry things for you,” Father Hernandez said quickly. He had gotten an eyeful of Reza, and was not about to stay long enough that his attention wandered to the other exposed body standing on the river bank. He hurried back toward the camp, trailed only slightly by Braddock, who was now so cold his teeth were chattering.
Entranced as Jodi was by the tale seared into Reza’s skin, her own body finally made known its own needs.
