by Anne Calhoun
When it came, the confident stroke was a soft, electric contrast to the fierce, bruising grip around her wrists. She arched into the touch, murmuring yes, yes, yes as she struggled and writhed. He ignored both her pleading and her struggles, caressing her clit with his tongue in circles that tightened or widened according to some rhythm she couldn’t track. With a soft, bone-deep exhalation she surrendered, spreading her legs wide, and gave herself over to his pace.
His groan, bone-deep and chest-rough, eddied over her skin to seep into her nerves. He was as into this as she was, poised on a knife-edge for her surrender. But absolutely nothing changed. He continued to go down on her with the same relentless drive until every muscle in her body was drawn tight, clenched with the need for release.
He sent her over with a shockingly lavish, open-mouthed suckle at her clit. Her release pulsed through her, one starburst after another, stopping the air in her lungs until spots danced in the blackness in front of her eyes.
When she surfaced she heard the sound of cloth against hair-roughened skin. She opened her eyes to find him kneeling naked between her legs, studying her body as he sheathed himself. That sight was so shockingly erotic she had to close her eyes again, so she felt but didn’t see him shift lower, align his cock with her sensitized, quivering opening, and slide inside.
The compelling stretch, no less powerful after one night, tightened all her muscles to her bones with fine gold wire, until she was drawn tight around him, inside and out. He hadn’t asked if she was still with him. She was his for the claiming, so he took her conquered body because she’d surrendered it to him. Shivering, unable to process what was happening, she pressed her forehead into his shoulder, and looked between their bodies.
Big mistake. He pulled out and paused, his cock thick and flushed and gleaming with her juices, heightening her awareness of the delicious stretch as he glided back inside. Fire rippled up the nerve endings in her sheath, eddied to her nipples, the sensitized skin of her throat, making her lips tingle. She felt like her hair was standing on end, sweat-dampened and clinging to her cheeks and shoulders.
His pace was so slow, and she realized that he was totally immersed in how her body clung to his, hot and tight and wet. But he wasn’t like other men who pounded into her after she came, using her body to get off. Keenan was totally immersed in how her body made him feel, and it was the hottest thing she’d ever seen.
The muscles in her neck were trembling. Her head dropped back to the pillow. He’d been watching her watch him fuck her. When their eyes met his cock throbbed inside her, forcing him to slow down, then stop entirely to close his eyes and breathe.
“Are you taking what you want from me?” she whispered.
Another pulse inside her. He was right on the edge, fighting it. “Yes,” he growled, grinding his forehead against her shoulder. “Fuck. Yes.”
She waited until he lifted his head and looked at her. Sweat trickled from his temple to his jaw. She lifted her fingers and gathered the moisture on the tips, then brought them to his lips. His tongue flicked out, and she quickly lifted her head, touching the tip of her tongue to his, then licking the sweat from his mouth.
“Fuck. Rose. Fuck.”
For a long, hot moment their tongues tangled, clashed. He was trembling as the desire to thrust warred with the desire to hold back.
“Please,” she whispered. “Keenan. Please.”
He fisted his hand in her hair. Mouth hovering over hers so that each breath and glancing contact made her lips tingle, he pounded into her. Each stroke hit her clit with such force that she arched and cried out. Then he buried himself inside her. The grinding pressure set off another shock wave that sent her into a long fall into the void.
Chapter Five
Jack was going to have to get in line to kill him. Rose was going to give him a heart attack.
Keenan knew he should pull himself together. Roll to the side. But his muscles were slack and trembling, his joints so loose as to be useless. All he could manage at the moment was shifting his weight partially to his elbows and wait for his heart rate to drop out of the red zone.
Rose’s thighs quivered against his hips, then relaxed.
“Okay?” he asked.
She made a soft humming noise that didn’t seem to signal immediate distress, so he stayed where he was. Inside her. The connection still vibrated between them, and he was reluctant to stretch it, much less sever it. Connections weren’t supposed to happen. Pleasure, yes. Fun, absolutely. But connections weren’t in the playbook, especially a connection to Jack’s not-really-a-dumpy-ballbreaker sister. The conversation opened doors he didn’t want to open, memories of days in the woods, hours spent trying to figure out what he needed to do to earn his father’s approval. The waves of adrenaline and testosterone were crested with emotion, as dangerous as unfamiliar terrain. He swiped at his face with his shoulders, kept his gaze fixed on the wrinkled sheet under Rose’s bare shoulder, trying to get himself under control.
He was softening enough to make the condom situation perilous. He pinched the end and pulled out, for a brief moment regretting the need for one at all. But that was sheer craziness. No condoms meant blood tests and commitments, and commitments were a canyon-leap past connections that wouldn’t stretch halfway around the world. He forced his limbs to start functioning and went into the bathroom, where he dealt with practicalities, and ran a wet washcloth for Rose.
“Thanks,” she said when he came out.
He pulled on his shorts and cargo pants while she cleaned up and dressed. She picked up his copy of The Iliad, the copy he’d carried from the time he finished BUD/S. The copy prior to that had fallen apart during his first enlistment, and was now in a box in a storage unit he kept in Virginia Beach. “You’re sure you don’t mind if I borrow this?”
“Take it,” he said.
“You don’t need it to fall asleep?”
He grinned at her. “No. I can fall asleep anywhere, any time.”
“Thank you,” she said. “See you in the morning.”
He almost asked her to stay. Almost. But if her grandmother woke up and found Rose’s bed empty, she’d worry. Or not. Grannie seemed pretty savvy, even if everyone was pretending to be blind as bats.
The door closed behind her, leaving Keenan in a room scented ever so faintly with the unique smell of Rose’s heated skin, and the disconcerting knowledge that the soft snick of the latch catching hadn’t severed the connection at all.
* * *
The next morning dawned gray and blustery, gusts of dry wind battering at the big windows in the hotel’s dining room. By now the Bucket List Babes knew what to do, having left their big suitcases outside their doors for the hotel staff to collect and load into the Land Rover. Ignoring the eggs and sausage the kitchen made for tourists, Keenan loaded up a plate with Turkish breakfast food and sat down beside Marian.
“Morning,” he said.
“Good morning,” everyone chorused.
Grannie had her iPad open on the table, tapping and swiping through a botany website and Rumi’s poems while Florence and Marian peered over her should from either side.
Keenan looked at his watch, then around the room. “Where’s Rose?”
“She slept in,” Grannie said. “When I left she was getting dressed.”
“She needs the sleep,” Marian said. “I don’t think she slept at all on the flight over. She bought WiFi on the plane. When I fell asleep she was on her laptop and when I woke up, she was still on her laptop!”
“She’s the youngest member of the management team at Field Energy,” Grannie said staunchly. “She has a lot of responsibility.”
“She’s always had a lot of responsibility,” Florence said. “Running herself into the ground won’t help her handle it.”
“And she’s always been able to handle it,” Grannie said. “Look, there she is.”
Everyone looked up as Rose walked into the dining room. For five seconds Keenan let himself appreciat
e the way she moved. She wore her staple leggings and boots, with a creamy shirt decorated with flowers at the neckline, and another swingy cardigan, this one in a shade of brown that set off her hair.
She saw them looking at her, lifted a hand, and gave a little wave. “Morning,” she said as she set her shoulder bag on an empty chair. “Can I get anyone anything from the buffet?”
The Babes had switched to Rumi, and shook their heads.
“I’ll get coffee,” Keenan said.
She lifted a brow at his full plate, remembering his sharply delineated muscles. “Must be nice”
“I went for a run this morning,” he replied.
“I can’t even,” she said.
He got coffee for her while she ladled out a bowl of the traditional lentil soup, spritzed it with lemon, then added a side of dates and pastries. “Thanks,” she said when she sat down and saw the coffee waiting for her.
“So. Konya.”
“The home of Rumi and the birthplace of Sufism,” Keenan said. “We should get to the museum when it opens. The later it gets, the more packed it will be.”
“Do we have a guide joining us?”
“Not here,” Keenan said. “According to my research the museum is well organized. I can handle the architecture.”
“How much time do we have?”
“It’s seven hours to Ephesus,” Keenan said. “I’d like to be on the road by early afternoon.”
Rose delicately sipped her soup, then looked at her grandmother. “I don’t want to rush her. Rumi is her favorite poet. This particular stop means the most to her.”
“Understood,” he said.
“Have you seen the museum?”
“No,” he said. “I’ve been based out of Istanbul for a few months, but I haven’t done much sightseeing.”
“I’m glad you could come,” she said. “It seems a shame to live so close to so much history and not visit it.”
He finished his mouthful of su böreği. “I’ve gotten to know Istanbul fairly well,” he said. “Plenty of history there.”
She swallowed the last mouthful of soup. “I really need to get a good recipe for that soup,” she said. “But you haven’t been to Troy?”
“No.”
“It’s just a few hours from Istanbul,” she said, her tone making the statement an interrogative.
The ancient site of Troy was close enough for a day trip, as close as his fears. “I’ve read The Iliad so many times I’m not sure I want to replace that with the reality of an archaeological dig,” he admitted.
Her gaze sharpened. For a moment he thought she was going to call him on his bullshit, but instead she said, “Grannie really wants to go to Troy. Is this going to be a problem? Because I can hire another driver or guide.”
“No,” he said firmly. “I’m good.”
“I started the book last night,” she said. “That’s why I was late coming down.”
His eyebrow ghosted up just a millimeter or two.
She pulled the book out of her shoulder bag and showed him the sheet of hotel stationery she was using as a bookmark. “‘Now’s the time for killing! Later, at leisure, strip the corpses up and down the plain!’ I’ve watched Jack play Call of Duty, but this is something else entirely.”
“It’s personal,” he said. “It’s intensely personal. It begins over a woman and ends over a best friend.”
“I couldn’t put it down,” she said quietly.
He wasn’t sure what to make of the look in her eye. The only thing he knew for sure was that, based on the shadows under them, she’d fall asleep in the Land Rover, probably ten minutes out of Konya.
“Ready?” he said with a look at his watch. The Babes were already packing up.
Rose knocked back the rest of her coffee. “Let’s go.”
The GPS navigated them right to the museum, where a few cars and smaller tour buses were lining up in the parking lot. The wind caught Rose’s door when she opened it, rocking the Land Rover. Keenan helped the Babes from the backseat, then closed and locked the car. They paused in the middle of the parking lot to lean back and peer up at the turquoise spire brilliant against the dark gray sky and the hewn blocks that comprised the walls. A smaller minaret perched delicately between the domes of the main building. Hardy evergreen trees stood fast against the desert wind.
Grannie peered over her shoulder at Rose, then pointed up. The wind carried her words, but her body language and excited smile came through loud and clear.
“I’m so glad I’m here to see this,” Rose said. Her elastic couldn’t keep her hair confined, and strands of it blew across her cheek and clung to her mouth. She tugged them free, then gave Keenan a sweet smile. “So glad.”
“Me too. We’d better catch up with them.”
They cleared the main gate and walked into the walled compound. Using the research he’d gathered before driving to Ankara he gave a quick talk on the building’s history and architecture. He looked at his watch. “Will two hours be enough?”
Grannie pointed at the gift shop. “Let’s meet there in ninety minutes,” she said. “If we need more time, we’ll decide then.”
Keenan set the timer on his watch, and the group drifted apart. Rose strolled across the marble-paved courtyard beside her grandmother to the museum entrance, an arch set into the ornate dark wood decorating the mausoleum’s main floor and the roof jutting over the entrance. A small crowd milled around while covering their shoes with incongruous blue surgical booties to protect the fine carpets inside, and show respect for the poet’s final resting place. Rose tugged the booties over her boots, then shot Keenan a smile as Grannie used her shoulder for balance to cover her Converse sneakers. They disappeared into the crowd. Keenan followed them at a discreet distance to give them privacy but also keep an eye on them.
For Jack. He told himself he was doing this because Jack asked him to, not because he couldn’t stop watching Rose. Her hair was uncovered. Some Turkish women wore the hijab; whether to cover your hair or not was a hot topic among women in Turkey, with modern women often opting not to cover their hair in daily life, while more ardent Muslims and older women chose to wear the hijab.
But even if Rose had covered her hair, even if her hair wasn’t a distinct shade of reddish brown, he would have known where she was by some interior compass that was slowly realigning itself to her as true north.
The mausoleum’s ornate interior held sarcophagi for Rumi and his immediate family, with Rumi’s resting underneath the green dome. The room wasn’t overly crowded yet. He still didn’t feel at ease in tight spaces full of people, but he stayed behind Rose and the Babes while they examined the contents of the glass cases, clothing attributed to Rumi or his family, locks of hair, and beautifully illuminated Korans. When they were in the last small room, he walked back outside and stood by the fountain in the courtyard to wait for them, watching pilgrims lean over the low white-painted fence to fill bottles from the fountain or wash their hands and feet at one of the spigots extending from marble blocks at regular intervals in the wrought iron fence.
The Babes and the Babes’ Road Manager emerged from the museum. There was a brief moment of conference as they took off their booties, then they split up, going in a different directions, Florence and Marian toward the gift shop, probably in search of tea and souvenirs, Grannie covering her head as she walked into the small mosque at the far end of the courtyard, and Rose studying the pilgrims and the architecture in the courtyard.
“What did you think?” he asked.
She paused for a second, arms crossed over her torso as she looked around. “This is going to sound really stupid, but it’s so foreign. The architecture, the writing, the language, the culture. Every sense is bombarded with something new. The food is spiced differently, the air doesn’t smell like Lancaster, or an office building. Different music, different language, different horns,” she added when someone honked from the parking lot. “The sirens are different from emergency sirens back home. The
calls to prayer. Look at this,” she said, walking toward the small cells lining the fourth wall of the courtyard. She peered inside, taking in every element of the small rooms where a Sufi dervish would have studied and trained for his vocation. “Carpets, furniture, pictures. They’re like nothing I’ve ever seen before. I want to touch everything, simply because it doesn’t feel like my desk, or my steering wheel, or my clothes.”
Lips parted, she trailed her fingers over the hewn blocks that comprised the courtyard’s walls, and for a split second he wondered if she wanted to touch him like that—soft, exploratory, slow and curious, and so focused that nothing else existed.
“Home feels really far away right now,” she finished. “That’s what I think.”
He gave a low chuckle, then turned his back to the wall and waited while she took a closer look.
“What did you think?” she asked.
“It’s not as foreign to me,” he said. “I’ve spent years in Afghanistan and Iraq.”
“Does this feel like home now?” she asked, genuine curiosity in her voice.
Mentally he came up short. Yes. No. He could survive most places with nothing but his hands, and with the right equipment, anywhere on earth. But where he lived, where he called home, was a completely different thing. “I’ve only been here a few months,” he hedged.
She made that noncommittal humming noise again, then looked at her watch. “You’ve got time,” he said.
“How’s the gift shop look?”
“Packed,” Marian said from a few steps away. “There’s barely enough room to move, and only one clerk working.”
She and Florence held open their bags to show Rose their souvenirs. “We’re going to get some tea,” Florence said. “Want to join us?”
“I was going to get a copy of Rumi’s poems, but I think I’ll have a look in the mosque instead,” Rose said.
Grannie was coming out as she went in. Rose paused to point Grannie in Florence and Marian’s direction, then shook out a bright scarf to cover her hair and went inside. Keenan declined the offer of tea and shifted his position so he could keep an eye on the Babes having tea just outside the gift shop. He had to give the older ladies credit. The wind was gusting hard enough to send chairs skittering along the big granite slabs paving the tea shop, but they just sat on their purses and packages, zipped up their fleeces, and drank their tea.
