Excerpt

She came from nowhere
to grow up and go everywhere
to return to the only man she had ever loved





I fired. He fell. Khalid fled inside the house. Hassan turned and ran. And someone we had not spotted, zoned in on the flash from my rifle fire and shot me in the left arm. They couldn’t hit the fucking Kevlar vest? That’s just rude. The adrenaline was enough to get me off the roof and back to the safe house on the edge of town. Jack hit the door seconds after I did.

“Where are you hit? Shit where are you hit?”

“Give me a damn minute and I’ll let you know. Mercy, calm down,” I said being anything but calm inside my head. I had forgotten how much I loved this rush, a dangerous addiction, and the pain was kicking in.

“I thought you were hit in the head. Oh god. I thought you were dead. Damn, I’ve never been so scared. The sight of you scrambling over that roof was the prettiest thing I’ve ever seen.” As he talked he was wiping the sweat off his brow and pulling down my robes to get to the wounded arm. “Sit down. I’ve got the med kit, and we have to stay put until the ruckus dies down. I checked our trail, we’re clear. How do you feel? Are you hit anywhere else? You need to drink water. You’re bleeding like a sieve.”

“Thank you for the visual Jack, I think you should take a breath. I’ve been shot before you know, but I can’t say it’s any easier the second time. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck! It hurts!” I could tell by looking, the bullet had done a fly by on my upper arm. As they say in the movies, just a flesh wound – but I’m so not Bruce Willis – it hurt and was bleeding like there was no tomorrow. With the bullet out and little or no muscle damage, I should be able to travel – not happily, but able. “Where’s Khalid?”

“I had him taken to his mother’s house.” It’s a sign of how badly my arm hurt that I didn’t ask whom he had found to take Khalid home. We were here alone, or so I thought. “You sound like a chicken, an obscene chicken.” Jack had my vest and the top of my kurta down. It’s a good thing the kurta is more like pajamas than skin tight jeans and a tank top, my normal working outfit – although the tank top would have made things easier. He was cleaning the wound with some brown stuff that stung.

“Shut the fuck up. You’re not the one who’s shot,” I said, the laugh I couldn’t hold in making my arm shake and hurt. “Easy with that cleaning action, that hurts. Damn, that’s going to scar,” I said looking over at the horizontal crevice in my arm.

“What happen to the kid who was so proud of her war wounds?” he asked drawing up the morphine.

“I was younger, a lot younger – and not too terribly bright. Oh goody, drugs. Beam me up Scotty.”

“You’re nuts you know that?”

“Yes, but that’s why you love me,” I said feeling the warm glow of the morphine spreading through my system.

“Yes it is,” he said so quietly I wasn’t sure if I heard him, or it was the morphine.

“Bonnie is going to kill me,” I said as I nodded off. The last thing I remember is putting my head on his chest, and his arms closing around me.



“Catherine? Sparky. Wake up baby.” I heard Jack from far away, but I didn’t want to wake up, I was very comfortable where I was thank you. His lap was nice and warm. I burrowed my head into his comforting chest.

“What?”

I heard him chuckle. “You always have been grumpy when you wake up,” he said, as he checked the bandage on my arm.

He put his hand on my neck to hold me up and put the canteen to my mouth. “Drink up. You lost a fair amount of blood. You need to get your fluid level back up before we head out.”

This was nuts. The feel of his hand on the back of my neck and his face and those succulent, sexy lips in close proximity, were turning me on – big time. I was filthy and dressed in the clothing of a man with a dirtied face and a fake scar on my throat – not exactly every guy’s wet dream. “How long was I out? My rifle?”

“Just an hour. Your rifle is right here. We can start out of here in another hour or so. How do you feel?” He was running his hand down my back to my bum, slowly. Uh oh.

“Better. Fine. Good. Yes, I’m good.” Except for the fact I was having trouble breathing, and the desire to reach out and pull his mouth to mine was overwhelming. He took the water and left to check the window and I felt bereft and cold sitting on the floor.

“Jesus you’re shivering. Here let me rub your back and your legs.”

“O.K.” I said. My teeth were chattering, but I really think it had more to do with the 230 pounds of hot male three inches away from me than the bullet wound. He had removed the scarf from around his neck; his shirt was open enough for me to see his hairy, muscled chest underneath, and the black curls pushing against the cloth as he tried to get some relief from the heat. My nails itched and curved into my palms to keep from running my hands under his shirt and sinking my fingers into that massive chest.

“Is the friction working? Are you getting warmer?”

“Oh aye, your hands rubbing all over my body are making me definitely warmer,” I said with emphasis on warmer.

He stopped and looked at me as though I had lost my mind. I wasn’t too sure he was wrong, but if he didn’t have me soon, I was going to implode. “I’m scared shitless and you’re getting turned on?”

In spite of my appearance, and our tenuous location, I indeed was hot, and wet in all the right places. The fellows with guns could come barreling in the door at any time if we had been followed or found. “Aye, I’m afraid that’s it sir,” I said with a little mock salute and grin. I think a large part of my lack of inhibition was due to the morphine, but lust was pounding me with an onslaught of need. Even though I knew intellectually that a part of my urgency and desire was from a primordial urge to affirm life after death, it did not lessen the desideratum. I had not been able to put that kiss on the ledge, and Billy’s revelations, out of my mind for the past week. I wanted to feel Jack’s mouth on me again. I wanted to know if it would be the same - a cosmic explosion. I looked down to eyeball the sizeable erection pushing against his trousers. “It would appear I’m not the only one.” I looked at him, and raised my eyebrow in invitation. His eyes fell to where my shirt had fallen open after he treated my arm. The tops of my breasts were showing, and my nipples were pushing against the fabric wrapped tightly around my chest in fine points of delicious pain.

Sitting in a squat next to me, he closed his eyes, and went so still I thought he’d passed out. Then he reached for me, and pulled me to him with an urgency and hunger that matched my own. I was tearing at his kurta trousers trying to get them down, as he was pushing up the top of my identical outfit. Jack took his knife from the scabbard on his leg and cut the breast binder off me with one slice through the course material. His mouth latched onto my breast like it was his last meal, and my hips arched up off the floor. I had to get his shirt up. I had to feel his skin against mine. I couldn’t get the damn thing off over his head because his hands were busy elsewhere so I ripped it down the front. He pulled his mouth away from my very aroused nipple and I groaned as he took my mouth in a carnal kiss that melted my insides. His thumb was rubbing back and forth over my nipple, then he took it between his fingers and squeezed. The liquid fire went right to my groin. “Down. Get. Your. Pants. Down.” I was tugging and pulling without much success, but I got my hand far enough past the waistband to discover he was commando – my lust meter went up another notch. I ran my hand over that luscious derrière that I had been fantasizing about for days; his skin was sizzling and smooth to touch.

“Oh sailor,” I laughed, “good call”. He was biting my neck and shoulder, nips and kisses. “I hate to sound like a character from “Young Frankenstein”, but don’t mess up my makeup. I walk out that door not looking like a chap and we could be in trouble. Ooooh god, oh yes do that,” as he moved his talented tongue and teeth to my nipples. I was on the razor’s edge here, my entire body was feverish. I felt like every nerve ending was exposed and on fire. “Now. I want you in me now. Please.” I felt desperate. I felt the need clawing at me like an addict's craving as I put my hands on his face and brought it up to mine. I was so wet between my thighs I was afraid if I didn’t get my trousers off, I would slide out of my skin.

“Your arm.”

“Shit Jack, I can’t even feel my arm. Forget my arm, get my trousers down!” I had been shoving at the waistband, but it was tough enough getting into this rig with two hands. My bhugg had fallen off when we started, and my hair tumbled out, but I could put that back on my head easily enough. I wanted my trousers off, now! The heat was building, so out of control and so fast I felt like I was going up in flames. The danger of being discovered was fuel to the fire, adding to the inferno, building the heat.

“I don’t have a condom,” he said into my mouth, with a moan that sounded like despair.

“I don’t care!” I figured I had used them with Hassan, and before that I hadn’t had sex for eight years, so I’m clean.

“It’s been five years since I’ve had sex, and I had a clean bill of health from a physical two months ago,” he said like he was giving me his statistics. His breathing was as erratic as mine as he managed to get the trousers down, and continued ravaging my mouth with his tongue as he pulled my thong down my legs.

I pushed him back to look into his face. “Five years! How can that be? How can a man like you not have sex for five years?”

“A man like me?”

“Oh please, use a mirror.” He trailed his hand down to settle in the hot moist folds between my legs, and I forgot what I was saying. He inserted two fingers into my wet heat. “Oh god. Oh shit. Oh Jack. Get me up from here. I’m not lying down on this filthy floor for a nap, much less having sex on it.” He lifted me in his arms, and slid me down his front, then backed me into the wall while stealing my breath with his mouth. I kicked my trousers the rest of the way free to puddle on the rug. Hot. Hot. I was so hot I thought I would burn to a cinder before I could find release. My blood was burning a trail through me and the fluid flooding my mound was superheated.

“I..” he began.

“Tell me later. Tell me later.” I said, as I crawled up his front, and locked my legs together behind his back. I could feel his erection, hot and pulsing on the bundle of nerves at my center. I almost climaxed right then. My nipples were pressed into the soft hair of his chest, and his feverish skin.

“Oh god you’re so wet. If I enter you now, I won’t last ten seconds. Be. Still.” He lowered his head to my breast again holding my bum with one hand and brought me to another level of heat with the wicked machinations of his tongue and teeth. He replaced his mouth with his palm and moved to the other breast. The roar of my heart beating was so loud in my ears I was sure he could hear it.

I moved my wet, burning mound slowly up and down over the soft skin of his penis, velvet over marble, and heard him moan with need. “God damn it Jack. If you don’t put yourself inside me this instant I will shoot you. I’m not fucking kidding.”

He moved his head up. I could feel him trembling with the effort to restrain himself. “I have to be balls deep in you. Oh god. I’m about to explode. Give me your eyes. Look at me. I want you to see that it’s me.” He buried himself to the hilt inside me with a single powerful thrust. I held his face in my hands, looking into his emerald eyes that were searing through me with emotion so intense it magnetized the air between us. He grasped my bum with his hands, pulling me tight against him, holding us both still. I could feel his fingers pressing into me with an unyielding hold. His wicked, delicious tongue was holding my mouth captive. The heat liquefied me. The feel of his erection inside me, pushing against the walls of my channel, filling me, growing longer and thicker was delightfully excruciating, taking me higher and winding me tighter to a state of suspense and anticipation beyond anything I could imagine. The rest of the world fell away and there was only the two of us and the raging firestorm that threaten to consume us. When I could stand it no longer, I lifted my hips to slide up the steel length of him. He dug his fingers into my hips and began moving me to match the gut-wrenching pace he set. My back was slamming up against the cool mud wall, the rough texture abrading my back where it was exposed. I was sandwiched between the chilled wall behind me and the scorching heat of Jack in front. I could feel the sweat dripping from both of us. I smelled the dirt from the walls, the garbage in the alley through the window, the scent of our combined arousal, and the overwhelming male smell of Jack – no aftershave, no perfume, just all Jack. I fisted my hands in his silky black hair; my head arched back, overwhelmed with the reaction of my body. I had to pull up and sink my teeth into his shoulder so as not to scream with the climax that tore violently through my body. I tasted the salt from his sweat. The orgasm didn’t stop, it went on and on, until one flooded into the next. I felt the sensations begin in my center, spread through my groin, seize Jack’s velvety length, and shoot to my head and through my toes. I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t control it. I was lost. The only things keeping me on earth were Jack’s hands, and the feel of him inside me. “Hold on baby, hold on,” he said, squeezing me tighter to him.

“Come with me baby, come apart for me.” The sounds of him plunging into me, the heat we were generating, his mouth on mine miming the actions below, all conspired to send me off the edge again, this time taking him with me. I felt it when he exploded into me. I could feel the hot gush as he surged into me, and the guttural, feral, sound he made when he came. We made love like we were starving – for each other.

I could not move. We were plastered together on the wall, Jack’s head buried in my neck, clinging desperately to each other as we experienced the lessening quakes of our orgasms. I was urgently trying to pull air into my lungs and I heard the same gasping sounds from Jack. I tightened my hold on him. “Wow.”

“Yeah, wow,” he said as he gently kissed me, using his eyes to say a million words we were both afraid of right now.

On the trail two hours later, I couldn’t help but wonder - if what Billy said was true, how did Jack feel about the unusual circumstances of the culmination of years of unrequited desire – not exactly wine, silk sheets, and the Ritz, eh? Oh yes, that last dose of morphine was kicking in.