He let himself out the side door and stepped softly down the sidewalk to where an elderly beige Ford four-door sedan was parked. He put the case in the trunk and slid behind the wheel. The engine started without fuss and he pulled away from the curb, willing himself not to look in the rearview mirror.
He parked in the garage at Miami International in the deepest, darkest corner he could find, and killed the engine.
From the backseat came a whisper of sound and he whirled instinctively, throwing his body over the gearshift and thudding into the passenger seat. He launched himself into the backseat in a continuation of the same movement and came down with all the force of a sledgehammer.
"Daoud!" she said, the barest breath of sound left to her after he slammed into her chest, his hands around her throat and squeezing.
"Zahirah!" he said, astonished.
She choked, pulling feebly at his hands, and he loosened them. He sat up and drew a shaky hand through his hair. He tried to collect his scattered thoughts, to regain some semblance of his customary equilibrium. "What are you doing here?" he said, and marveled to hear his voice shake over the words.
She bent over, wheezing as she tried to catch her breath. He couldn't help himself, he patted her back soothingly. "It's all right," he said, "it's all right now. I'm sorry, I didn't know it was you."
She looked up, her breath still coming fast, her eyes frightened. "Why did you attack me like that?"
"I didn't know it was you," he said again, very gently. "I'm sorry. Zahirah, what are you doing here?"
She blushed. He could barely see it in the dim light of the garage. She looked down, and her voice dropped to a whisper. "I-was coming to talk to you. My mother was there before me. I heard what she said to you. When she said you had to leave tomorrow, I knew somehow you would leave tonight. I went out and hid in the back of your car." She waited, head bent, for him to say something. When he didn't she looked up again. "Oh, Daoud, how could she have been so cruel?"
His mind had been racing while she spoke, the thoughts chasing each other like rats in a cage.
"Daoud?" she said timidly. "I want to be with you, and I know you feel the same way." When he didn't respond, only stared at her with a stone face, she said, "Please, Daoud, won't you say something?"
At last his expression broke. A smile of a sort spread across his face. She looked relieved. "That's better," she said with a trace of her old spirit. "For a minute I thought you weren't happy to see me."
"I am always happy to see you, Zahirah," he said.
She blushed again, her love making her deaf to the mournful note in his voice. "I am happy to hear it."
He felt his hands slide of their own accord around her waist. His head bent to hers, and she raised her face eagerly to meet his lips in their first kiss. Her lips were warm and wide and smooth, and he thought that in another life he might have been able to lose himself in them forever.
He deepened it, pulling her to him so that her breasts pressed into his chest. The soft curves were so warm and full against him, he'd never felt anything like it. He stretched out backwards so that she lay full length against him and her legs naturally fell to either side, so that the feminine heat of her was pressed full against the erection that had suddenly and inexplicably manifested itself.
"Oh!" she said, raising her head to stare down at him.
He pulled her back down into another kiss. He didn't want to talk.
She was as virgin as he was. There was a breathless bit of fumbling with unfamiliar fastenings and undergarments, a matter of deciding what went where, but they managed. He was trembling with the need to be inside her but he forced himself to wait, to play with her gently until she was slippery with desire. She stiffened at the sharp pain of his entry and he summoned up all his willpower to hold himself still, letting her become accustomed to him before he began moving again. When he did he moved very slowly, in and out, going as deeply as he could on the down-stroke, pulling out almost all the way, continuing so until he felt her hands on his back pulling him down. He began to move faster, and she pushed up to meet him, gasping, eyes staring blindly up. When her climax came she squeezed around him, milking him, sucking on him, and his own end came with a shout he muffled in the musty fabric of the seat next to her head.
"Oh," she said some moments later. "Oh, Daoud. I didn't know it could be like that."
He raised his head and slid his hands to her throat, his thumbs caressing the hollow beneath her chin. He was still inside her, his wetness and her own such a warm haven. She kissed him, with a tenderness that brought tears to his eyes. "I didn't, either," he said.
Her neck-such a slender, fragile stem-broke easily when he twisted it. The cracking vertebrae sounded like distant gunfire.
17
MIAMI
Back in port, Cal turned everyone loose, which since they were only temporarily homeported in Miami didn't mean much. They all knew working the shuttle launch was more of a PR mission than it was a real job, and crew was bailing right, left, and center. D7 was keeping Munro in bravo-24 status, available for recall and sailing within twenty-four hours in the event of urgent tasking, but when the "Liberty, liberty, liberty!" call went out over the pipe most of the crew scattered to cheap motels and holed up for three days, leaving a skeleton crew just large enough to respond to an emergency behind. Cal hoped they managed to stay out of trouble when they started checking out the bars. He remembered some pretty wild times as an ensign in Miami, assigned to a 110 off the Everglades. Lots of opportunity for a Coastie to get into trouble if he or she wasn't careful, but these were grown men and women and it was pretty much up to them. The XO cautioned them against sailing into stupidland and turned them loose.
It was a great honor to work security during a shuttle launch, no doubt, but the crew was homesick, discouraged that people had died during their last patrol and they had been unable to save them, and that they hadn't responded to any SARS or made any drug busts on this one. "I guess all the smugglers have up and moved ops to EPAC," the XO said, inspecting the map of the Caribbean Cal had duct-taped over the map of Alaska in the wardroom. He looked around and smiled. "Damn, we're good."
"Yeah," Cal said, without enthusiasm. "How many left on board as of liberty this morning?"
"Forty-four."
"Okay."
"You taking off?"
Cal thought about Kenai in Houston. "I don't know yet. Probably not."
"When do we leave?"
"Three days."