Free A Clear and Present Danger by Buck Sanders

the soft flesh of her round hips, guiding her downward, rocking her. Her breasts bobbled not far from
     his face. She used one hand to pull his head to her bosom.
    He tasted the sweetness of her skin, the different textures of soft breast and rigid nipples; and he listened as she cried
     out each time she thrust herself down on him, again and again, going on long after he had spent himself inside her.
    Now dizzy and pleasantly exhausted, they lay on the bed’s cool linens, their naked bodies covered only by a sheet and a thin
     blanket.
    Slayton watched the sun rising over the treeline in the east. Bare wooden limbs were tinged with a cold orange. The day would
     dawn bright and chill.
    She clung to him, like a small child. He could smell her crisp scent, gentle and feminine, and the feral odors of their love-making.
     Women, he thought; such gentle creatures, capable of such frequent and unbridled passion, truly deadlier than the male.
    When his breathing returned to normal, he leaned across her lush body for the nightstand, brushing the sheet and blanket away
     from her breasts. He kissed her breasts and they grew instantly rigid at the tips.
    But he ignored this second chance, reaching instead for the nightstand. He slid open a small drawer, felt for the box he knew
     to be there.
    “A token of our time together,” he said, holding out the box to her.
    Slayton had met her several months ago at the Kennedy Center, during a performance of
Evita
. She was with another man and Slayton was with another woman. But accessories didn’t matter. Slayton smiled at her during
     intermission while the two waited for their respective partners to return from the
pissoirs
.
    He had said, “We’ll have lunch tomorrow.”
    And she had sputtered something about a trial beginning tomorrow, how she was a lawyer and how this was a major case—
    “Break the date,” he told her.
    She did, and they dined that next afternoon. And evening. And at breakfast the next morning, in her apartment.
    She looked so much like Jean Marie… he thought it then and he thought it now, as she examined the contents of the box, holding
     it up to the morning light shafting in through the windows.
    “A sapphire,” she said. “A perfect star sapphire. It’s beautiful, Ben. Gorgeous.”
    Then she pouted, jutting out her lower lip, which was about twice the fullness of her upper number. The Julie Christie look.
    “I’d rather have you, especially today,” she said.
    “So you shall, my flower. But not today. The sapphire will have to do until I return. Take care of things.”
    But he made no effort then to leave the bed. Instead, he lay back, as if to enjoy a cigarette, had he been a smoking man.
     She hugged him, nodding her acceptance, silently understanding.
    Slayton was momentarily saddened. Then he snapped out of it. He understood the meaning of Winship’s invitation and knew he
     had to attend. It was the Washington way.
    He closed his eyes, pretending to sleep, listening until his woman drifted off for another hour or two of sleep before rising
     for the day. Only then did Slayton slip out of the bed.
    Quietly, he showered and dressed in jeans, boots, and an oiled wool sweater. He made coffee, and downed two cups while he
     watered vegetables and flower plants in the greenhouse at the far end of the kitchen.
    The greenhouse was an adjunct of the solar heating unit Slayton had constructed on the south side of his house. He had first
     seen this combination in Vietnam, in the rural cities and villages outside Saigon—or Ho Chi Minh City. Slayton had immediately
     admired the self-sufficiency of the Vietnamese people and determined to build a home of his own modeled after the typical
     Vietnamese plan. Even the poorest home was rigged with a solar heat and power generator; even the poorest home contained its
     own greenhouse.
    Jean Marie had loved this greenhouse.
    Slayton had met her in his stock car racing days, an improbable but thoroughly