My dick thickened in my hand, and my head hung between my shoulders as I rubbed one out frantically. It wasn’t enough, and it left me just as starved for his touch, but it would have to do for now.
Afterward, dressed in fresh clothes, I took the pills he had left on the bedside table and collapsed into the clinic bed. Most beds were too small for my frame. This was no exception, but thankfully, it wasn’t so small that my feet dangled.
He had been keen as a hawk and caught right off the bat that I had been having trouble sleeping. I was highly functional, or else they wouldn’t have cleared me for Antarctica. Only Daniel knew my baseline readings.
And yes, I had been sleep-deprived, but that was just a side effect. My “diagnosis” was that I was heartsick.
For my husband.
For the man who married me four years ago and then disappeared off the face of the earth.
***
Thirty meters out, a cluster of red parkas moved across the dock by Waypoint Station. Two of them crouched over some equipment while a third pointed to something on the horizon. A team was getting ready for an evening launch.
I sipped my coffee as I watched the Zodiac leave the dock, the outboard engine cutting a low mechanical buzz across the flat water, trailing a thin white wake that closed behind it in seconds. It reached the first cluster of ice, slowed down, navigated between two chunks, then kept going. It grew smaller. The engine sound faded until there was only the cold.
In the distance, the Antarctic sun hung low over the horizon, its golden glow reflected off gigantic icebergs.
I lifted the coffee to my lips and let my gaze drift left along the shoreline, past the corner of the building, to the stretch of flat, compacted ice behind the station.
My chopper sat on the ice. It was navy blue—a deep metallic finish that caught the sun and held it. The body was compact, a single round bubble at the front where the cockpit glass curved down to meet the nose, the tail extending back in a long, tapered line. Two short landing skids sat level on the ice.
She was absolutely stunning.
“Sorry.” Daniel exited the building behind me and walked up to me. “I was waiting for your blood work to be transmitted from your station. The internet is being particularly slow today.”
A smile slowly pulled at one corner of my mouth. I couldn’t help it. He was so earnest and yet so easily flustered by my presence. While I had taken a long six-hour nap, Daniel seemedto have regained some of his footing. He had even agreed to accompany me on my maintenance trip, which I was taking as a good sign.
“What’re you smiling at?” he glared.
I shook my head. “Nothing. Ready for the tune-up?”
He nodded, and we walked together toward my bird, ice crunching under our boots.
“This is new,” he said, his breath coming out in white puffs. The temperature had fallen sharply during my six-hour slumber. “You didn’t need to tune up the military birds back… back when we were deployed.”
“Different environments, different protocols. Down here in the cold, the engine oil gets thick as paste if she sits too long. So I need to warm her up periodically. If I skip a cycle, the rotor head seals stiffen up and the pitch control linkages stop moving cleanly.”
“Oh.”
“Antarctica doesn’t forgive easily, Daniel.” I glanced down at him.
And neither do you, but I let that go unsaid.
He must have sensed it, though, because he frowned and looked up at me with questioning eyes.
I put down the gearbox I had been carrying in one hand and pulled the sliding door open on the side of the helicopter. The metal track ground against the cold.
Quickly, I ducked inside, making sure everything was safe. Satisfied, I popped back out and gestured toward the cockpit.
“Get in. And climb over to the other seat.”
Daniel grabbed the doorframe with both hands and hauled himself up off the ice, but his boots slid on the smooth skid rail. He pulled harder, fighting the cumbersome parka and the awkward angle of the door. He wasn’t a short guy, but he was shorter than me.
I chuckled at his fumbling and placed my large hands on his ass, pushing him in.
He landed in the seat with considerably less dignity than he usually displayed, accompanied by a yelp.
