Sleeper Excerpt: Reed Having A Problem With Lily's Clothes

There was no getting around it. He had to get her out of her clothes. Being in the icy water and wearing wet clothes had made her body lethargic. It was natural for the body to shut down and go to sleep. Besides, he couldn’t put her into bed in these clothes.

His hand reached around to the back of her top, and he slowly slid the zipper down. She stirred as the water hit her bare skin.

“I’m taking these dirty clothes off,” he said to her, hoping she could hear him. She didn’t say anything.

He paused. She wasn’t wearing a bra. He took a breath, then started to peel off the wet dress.

“Hurt,” she told him.

Her shoulder. Like it or not, he had to see how badly she was injured. And to do that…he pulled her top off her shoulders, sliding her arms off him so he could see her front. There was a nasty crimson gash on her forearm, but it wasn’t bleeding profusely. The bullet must have grazed her when she had leaned down to look at their assailant.

Get her clean first, then take care of the wound. Reed pulled the rest of the fabric down to Lily’s waist, trying to ignore the soft skin revealed underneath. Water washed over her as he tried to take the top off. He pulled it lower, his fingers working around the edges, concentrating on the flesh rather than what part of her body he was touching. He then realized it was the kind of dress a woman had to pull over her head.

Reed looked down again. He couldn’t keep his eyes from wandering. Her breasts were high and small, her nipples pink and erect. Drops of water settled on each areola, shimmering as they grew in size before toppling over, running down the sides of the soft mounds. He closed his eyes, took a deep breath.

“Dress,” he told himself firmly. “Off.”

He gathered her upper body against his bare chest as he worked with the zipper in the back. The damn thing just wasn’t coming off easily. All the while he could feel her slick breasts against him, sliding up and down, as he struggled with the top. He thought of the pink, erect nipples. Not good. His jeans were growing tighter by the second.

He tugged harder and heard the material tear. It came off easily then. He ran a tentative hand over her shoulder, wiping off the red and brown streaks. He caught sight of the bar of soap sitting on the dish nearby. He paused.

This was going to be harder than he thought.

He looked down at Lily again. Okay, he could skip soaping the front. She would understand…. The thought made his lips twist in self-mockery. He looked lower and shook his head. Whatever happened to underwear? He could see right through the thin material of her dark panty hose. There were tears here and there, caked with clumps of mud. Those had to come off too.

Water splashed on his head as he leaned forward and hooked his thumb under the material, tugging it downwards. He’d never taken panty hose off a woman before. They didn’t slide off like he’d thought they would. His hand went lower. He closed his eyes and pulled hard. He could feel the clingy material pulling away and felt the bare skin with his knuckles. He patted the area awkwardly.

You can’t get her clean if you don’t open your eyes, Vincenzio. Besides, he had to carry her out of the bathroom sooner or later.

It’s just a human body. He’d seen naked women before. Reed opened his eyes. And wished he hadn’t. He was never going to get out of his jeans in this condition.

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 Smashwords is for those who want to download into their computers and other e-reading devices. Esp. good for international readers who don't have a Kindle or Nook.

(Excerpt) Favorite Conversation Between Crossfire SEALs in SLEEPER

SLEEPER AVAILABLE ON KINDLE

Hawk chuckled from his end. “At the rate you guys were moving down there, I considered coming down to give you sloths a hand.”

Reed checked the surroundings again with the nightscope as he continued listening. The practice runs were to familiarize the team with terrain and weather, so whether the code was red or yellow, it meant doing everything—from rolling in mud to setting up lookout points to staying up in shifts—by the book. Still nothing out there.

“Sloths. Like slothful in the Bible?” someone asked.

“He meant sloths, man,” Mink’s voice came over. “Those creatures don’t move more than an inch at a time or something. I read somewhere that it takes them a year to get down from a tree to have an annual crap.”

“Man, why don’t they just crap from the tree then?” Dirk asked.

Reed shook his head, a reluctant smile lifting the corner of his lips. It was a good thing no one else could hear their inane conversation. This was how his team was when they were semi-relaxed. Conversations like this reminded him of surfing. The ocean, too, had a language all its own, and the surfer had to pay attention to the ebb and flow of the tide as one rode the board and paddled out. Reed shook his head again. It’d been a while since he’d ridden the waves. He was missing it tonight.

“Do you think sloths have big balls?” someone lazily chimed in after a quiet lull.

“Ask Cumber,” Mink quipped back.

“Yo. Cumber, you awake?”

“I’m jerking off, scumbag. Go bother some other sloth.”

“You think if there were a Cumber Sloth he would take a year to jerk off to get an annual big O?” Dirk asked.

The suppressed chuckles came from different directions. There was another silence.

“Yo, Cumber.”

“I’m still jerking off.”

“I think a Cucumber Sloth would crap and jerk off at the same time,” Hawk observed. “Who’s on lookout duty?”

“Joker,” Jazz replied. “He’ll be on for the next two hours.”

Joker, as Reed knew everyone expected, didn’t acknowledge. He rarely had anything to say anyway. Unless he saw something out of the ordinary, he usually stayed away from conversation of any kind. He would check in every hour.

“Talk to you next Satellite update then, sloth.”

“Yeah, don’t have too much fun with your girl there, over.” Jazz signed off.

Amber Hutchens was also in the hospital, transferred to the UN base in Kosovo along with his commander, still recovering from an almost-overdose of drugs in her system. Reed hadn’t met her, but from what he’d heard from Jazz and Dirk, she was beautiful, very smart, and incredibly brave because of her role in saving a bunch of girls who had been kidnapped from their respective countries. Which made him think of Jazz’s fiancée, Vivienne Verreau, who was also beautiful, smart, and brave. Where the hell did they find these women?

“Hey, Cumber, you still jerking off?”

“Nah, taking a crap.”

“Knock off, Stooges.” Jazz brought them back on task.

In The Beginning

In the beginning, there was light, and the light was good. It was pure and beautiful, something remarkable in its wondrousness, because all it did was to light up things.

In the beginning, it's always fresh because there was no thought of endings, and the space was always filled with good feelings, like hope, dreams, and good intentions. The light glows like bright spring sunshine and every color showed up brilliantly--the green of the grass, the red splash upon the robin's breast, the cloudless blue of the morning sky.

And the writer writes with so much joy because it was all pretty and fresh and so easy. There was no one to ask about imperfections because there were none yet. There was no fear of a mistep. No accidents. There was no deadline. Everything was about the light and how it lit up the world through her eyes.

Sometimes, as a writer, you struggle to retain this moment because the journey in the light could shift; sometimes it'd dim and in that slow darkness those colors that had mesmerized before seem so difficult to remember. The child-like springiness becomes plodding steps, brought on by fear. Because that darkness makes every movement tentative and malevolent voices start to eat one's soul.

It is a New Year, my dear. Nay, since you're cynical about such things, it is a NEW DECADE. Your 00s are over, with its dark ending and self-beating attitude. Make this your beginning again, when the light held that specialness that brought out your sense of wonder and your joy in sharing yourself to others with words. Lessons are meant to be put to good use, and you've learned many, but in this NEW DECADE, you should just let the light guide you while it's still bright and innocent.