by Anne Calhoun
Based on the bulge in his cargo pants, he certainly did. Her body quaked, remembering the hot stretch that slid so deliciously close to pain and back again. She wanted him inside her, now, not hours from now.
“What’s in there?” Grannie asked when she emerged.
“These were all shops, I think,” Rose said vaguely. She felt stunned, hot, flushed, blinking in the sunlight suddenly at odds with the tension throbbing inside her. Her thoughts spun, jerked. It wasn’t supposed to feel like this. She wasn’t supposed to like this, want this, much less get it from a man who lived on the other side of the world, a man it was entirely possible her brother would dismember and dissolve in lye if he found out what had happened between them.
The thought made her laugh. As if she’d ever have reason to tell Jack what happened. This wasn’t real life. It wasn’t part of her plan. Keenan had no interest in being ordinary, in coming home, much less in white picket fences. Jack would never need to know what happened.
* * *
By the time his boner subsided, Rose and Grannie were two hundred yards in front, heading for the rows of stalls just outside the site’s exit. He shifted his pack higher on his shoulder and followed at a measured pace designed to keep his steps, breath, and thoughts under control.
He’d never felt more wild. Dangerous. On edge. God help him if Jack found out. He’d done long-term missions behind enemy lines, crept into compounds and caves, killed, and left, all without waking a sleeping household. But not a single mission, not even the one that went tits up at the end, felt as dangerous as what he was doing with Rose. There was obvious danger, and then there was this uncharted territory, off the map, outside time and space.
Ignoring the vendor’s stalls, he unlocked the Land Rover and opened the windows to air out the warm interior. One hip perched on the driver’s seat, he entered the carpet museum and factory’s address into the GPS. A small restaurant next door came highly recommended. Lunch, a presentation at the factory, then the drive to Troy.
Troy.
He turned his thoughts back to the present moment. Gas tank three-quarters full. A quick glance at the sun, then his watch, told him they were well within schedule. Grannie and Rose were coming out of the bathrooms as Marian and Florence turned the corner from one of the stalls, bags of souvenirs in hand.
“Ready?”
They arrived at the restaurant after a short drive. They sat down at one of the round tables in the yard, taking off their hats and saying hello to the cat sunning itself in the courtyard .The meal of fish, bread, cheese, olives, and salad was one of the best Keenan had ever had. When the Babes got up to explore the carpet store, he politely declined the offer to join them. Instead he slid down in his chair, tipped his head back, closed his eyes, and tried to figure out what the hell was going on inside him.
“Not interested in Turkish carpets?”
Rose. He didn’t open his eyes, just inhaled her scent. Her skin, the faint aura of roses from that room out of time. “I’ve got nowhere to put one.”
“You have an apartment in Galata,” she said reasonably.
The planning required to move a Turkish rug from place to place would definitely add more than minutes to the time he needed to get gone. “What about you?”
“I ordered a small one for my office at home,” she said, and set The Iliad on the table beside her plate. She made a ch-ch-ch noise with her tongue and crooked her fingers under the table. The cat, a long-haired tortoiseshell far too finely groomed to be a stray, ignored her.
“She likes you,” she said.
“Or my socks smell like fish,” Keenan said, and lifted his tea to his mouth.
Rose smiled at his little joke. The glorious spring day in Ephesus danced around him: filtered sunlight picking out the reddish tone in Rose’s hair; the shade from the trees dappling the remains of their lunch; the purring cat winding around his ankle, angling for leftover fish. Rose smiled at him, a small smile, subtle, provocative, like the woman he’d kissed in a ruin. Like a woman who’d forgotten she owned a mobile, much less had nearly a thousand emails waiting on her laptop.
He didn’t speak, because he didn’t need to. This … thing … affair … whatever it was, belonged in the vacation-fling category, the one-shot fantasy-fulfillment category. It belonged in the basket of a hot air balloon, in Rumi’s lyric poetry, in the magical, mysterious sunshine and heat of a Turkish spring drenching ancient ruins, not in the artificial light of a retina display on a laptop. She didn’t live in this world, and he wasn’t going back to hers.
All he had to do was compartmentalize. Shut out the world for the mission. Good. Fine. He could do that. He was a SEAL, the best in the world at everything he chose to do. Let in what he needed, keep out what he didn’t. So he let the dark desire simmering low in his belly flood his eyes, and watched Rose’s lips part on a soft exhale. Birds chirped in the tree above him, their trilling song adding to the conversation’s slightly unreal cast. Rose set her plate on the ground at her feet. The cat immediately abandoned Keenan’s ankle for Rose’s half-finished fish.
“How far is Troy?”
“Four hours, give or take,” he said. “Some of the drive is along the coast. Should be pretty.”
She made that soft humming noise, scratching behind the cat’s ears. He knew he was hearing things, but he would have sworn both she and the cat were purring.
* * *
The Babes emerged from the carpet shop discussing the manufacturing process and clutching receipts for rugs being shipped back to Lancaster. They drove through the late afternoon sun and into the early evening. When the conversation faded to that companionable silence, Rose opened The Iliad, alternately reading and watching the scenery flow by. He glanced at the book open on her lap. Achilles was arming for battle, a description that went on for several pages. Most of it was committed to memory, the shield like the light flashing to guide sailors on the open sea, the spear that would be the death of heroes.
Did she understand? Even as the hope flared, he knew it was ridiculous. No one knew unless they’d been there, in a war zone. Even the people who stayed on big bases didn’t really know what it was like to track someone in dusty, rocky silence until you slit his throat then faded into the landscape. You could read all the books, watch all the movies, and you still wouldn’t know.
She periodically glanced out the windshield when the setting sun streamed over the sea, or when the road wound through rocky cliffs, and he wondered what it would be like to read The Iliad for the first time surrounded by the landscape that inspired it. She’d be excited to see the excavations at Troy, to connect the descriptions with the actual place.
He was dreading it.
* * *
They stopped for the night at a luxury resort hotel on the coast a few miles from Troy. Everyone washed up, then reconvened in the lounge, Rose carrying her laptop and The Iliad. The dining room was closed, but the bar served a light menu until midnight. They ordered wine and shared platters of bread, hummus, cheese, olives, and shellfish. Grannie yawned and stretched. “I’m going to bed,” she said.
“Me, too,” Florence said, collecting her guidebook.
Marian set her hands on the arms of her chair and got to her feet. “As am I.”
“I’m going to check in with work,” Rose said, lifting her face to kiss her grandmother’s cheek. “I’ll be quiet when I come in.”
“I won’t hear you,” Grannie said. “I’ve been sleeping like a log. Stay up late, dear.”
“Good night, ma’am,” Keenan said formally. When they’d left, the lounge was so quiet he could hear the stars vibrating in the inky sky. More magic. Rose spun it from her fingertips, tracing the eye holes in the Corinthian helmet on the cover of The Iliad.
He cleared his throat. “Are you actually going to work?”
Her lips curved in a smile. “No,” she said.
Magic. Sheer magic. Don’t think about feeling like you’re on the brink. Don’t talk. Just act.
> He leaned forward and held out his hand. Without flinching, without hesitation she put her hand in his. He rubbed this thumb back and forth over her knuckles, sensitizing the skin before lifting her hand to his lips. Her smile softened, and her eyelids drooped.
Still holding her hand, he got to his feet, giving her brace to straighten. He took her laptop and the book. As they crossed the lobby together, he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror, and nearly tripped over the rug. Her with a trusting smile on her face, holding his hand, him carrying her books like they were in high school in the fifties or something.
The elevator dinged, then the door opened. They stepped inside with another couple, trotting in from the parking lot, chattering away. Rose made one brief abortive tug to free herself, but he tightened his grip.
A tremor ran through her, invisible in the mirrored walls but eddying through him like she’d dropped a rock into his soul. The doors opened on the eighth floor.
“Excuse us, please,” he said, politely, in Turkish.
Faint conversation and television sounds rose and fell as they walked down the hallway, hand in hand. It was tricky, balancing the laptop and book between his hip and the door, sliding in the key card. The laptop nearly hit the floor when Rose leaned into his side and went on tiptoe to press a soft kiss just below his ear. He swore under his breath and solved the problem of not enough hands by shifting the laptop and book to his left and pulling Rose hard against his body, then wrapping his arm around her waist. Book, computer, woman all restrained while he opened the door. They stumbled inside, Keenan ending up with his back to the wall and Rose plastered against him from shoulders to thighs. He slung the laptop and book onto the low dresser that held the television, got a handful of hip and thigh, and kissed her.
Ten seconds. They’d been in the room ten seconds. The whole thing had been going on less than a minute, if he included the time in the elevator. But that wasn’t right either, because the fire between them had blazed this hot since their first time in Cappadocia. It was immediate, potent, and undeniable. Rose was panting against him, her breath catching in her throat brokenly, and the sound went straight to his cock. He’d been semi-hard all day, thinking about this, watching her bite her lip as she read a book about the causes and spoils of war. Did she understand he would always be a warrior? Maybe. She knew Jack, after all.
Desperate for connection, he wove his fingers into her hair and kissed her. When that wasn’t enough, he turned them so she was trapped between his body and the wall, putting everything he wanted, everything he felt into the next voracious kiss. The roots of her hair were slightly damp, the air in the room warm, close. He could smell the sweat rising from the nape of her neck, tinged with arousal, and it was all he could do not to close his teeth on her nape and mark her. He wanted to touch her, fuck her, and not against the wall.
Time for a change of venue. In one smooth motion he pushed back, putting inches between their bodies. Then he crouched down and hoisted her right off her feet.
Chapter Seven
The world spun, a dizzying glimpse of moonlight spilling through filmy curtains, white sheets on a bed. She bounced into the pillows, then Keenan’s body landed on hers again, just as hard, just as unrelenting, just as dangerous.
He wasn’t being nice. Or tame. Thank God. Rather than coddling her, he expected her to keep up. Right now she was as turned on as she’d ever been in her life. She arched, craving the sweet grind of his hips against hers. He pushed back, obviously just as desperate for friction and pressure, his hand in her hair, hips to hers, the weight of his body charging up the nerves in her skin. When his hand went to the button on her jeans, she helped him, loving the way his strong fingers brushed against hers, then against her belly.
“Oh, fuck, this is going to be good,” he murmured into her hair as his deft fingers opened the button. He worked his hand into the slight opening. Her awareness narrowed as his fingers moved down, brushing her mound, then the top of her folds. With a grunt he spread his legs, spreading hers. She panted, the nerves in her clit and sex quivering in anticipation.
Then two fingers slid to either side of her clit and into the slick heat drawn from her body by the fight. He didn’t stop but slid inside, as deep as he could go in this position, caressing the sensitive tissue just inside her opening. She groaned, involuntary and helpless.
Impossibly, his body got hotter, heavier. “Fuck, oh, fuck,” he said, half-laugh, half-growl. He thrust against her hip, a quick, opportunistic grind, his fingers teasingly circling her opening, stimulating the damp flesh until an answering throb in her nipples as she undulated under him.
Then he pulled his hand free, using her body’s shock at being abandoned on the peak to sit back and work off the rest of her clothes. Cool air brushed against her heated skin. Eyes closed, she absorbed the sounds of a man getting ready for sex, his zipper rasping down, then the distinctive sound of a condom packet opening. She simply lay there and let waves of arousal wash over her, until he straddled her and set the blunt head of his cock against the folds of her sex, prodding at her until he slipped inside. It was as sudden, shocking, and arousing as the first time, forcing a hitching moan from her throat into the darkness.
Then he started to move, short, sharp thrusts that worked the head of his cock over that shivery hot spot inside her. She was on the edge again, legs straining to open, taking it.
He paused, leaving her sheath to ripple around him, and pushed her shirt up and over her head, trapping her arms. The cool air was once again a relief, then his chest came to rest on her back, hot and slick, muscles shifting as he started thrusting again.
It was going to tear her apart. He was going to tear her apart, at his pace, in his time. It became about the moment-by-moment experience, his skin against hers, her hair clinging to her hot cheeks as she tossed her head back and forth on the pillow, his cock inside her, cotton sheets damp under her back, the growing strain in her legs and the way that fed the fire inside.
He took his time, his soft huffs and rasping breath as erotic as the way his cock stretched her, stimulating the nerves until she was tense, quivering, tightly strung. The gliding, stretching friction drove her up, up, until she exploded. His mouth stifled her sharp cries, and then she free-fell into blackness.
* * *
Cool air drifted against her skin. She drew a deep breath and registered the absence of heated skin, the ability to inhale. Sensation came back next, the raw, sensitized skin of her sex, tingling and swollen. She stretched luxuriously, cataloging every tender spot and ache in her body. “That was, hands down, the best sex I’ve ever had,” she said when he came out of the bathroom.
His pants hung loose on his hips, exposing a really gorgeous strip of muscled abdominal wall, a tuft of hair. He folded his arms across his chest and smiled. “Yeah. You okay?”
The smile hadn’t reached his eyes. “I am fine,” she said with a sigh. “Really, really fine. So fine, in fact, I don’t want to move.”
“So don’t.”
“I can’t,” she said with genuine regret. Her room was only two doors down and across the hall, but with the adrenaline subsiding and her body’s sudden, enthusiastic appreciation for sleep, it might as well have been back in Cappadocia. Or Lancaster.
Where this wouldn’t happen. Ever. Suddenly her mood matched his, distant, withdrawn.
Her bra and shirt were rucked up around her armpits. She tugged them down, then sat up to disentangle her jeans and underwear and wriggle into them. Fully dressed, she paused when the room tilted a little. In two steps he was at her side, holding out his hand to help her to her feet.
“Thanks,” she said.
He kissed her then, a sweet kiss that felt as stolen as the ones in the hidden rose bower at Ephesus. “Rose,” he started.
“We don’t have to talk about it,” she said, reassuring herself as much as him. “We both know what this is.”
It was her turn to kiss him then, soaking up the moments of tenderness
, the heated plushness of his mouth. She wanted to stay, wanted that more than she’d wanted anything in her life. “I need to go,” she said. He held her hand until they stretched to the limits of his reach and hers, then let her go. She gathered her laptop and book, and let herself out.
* * *
The whole group had a rather melancholy air the next morning as they waited for the ticket booth at Troy to open for visitors. Keenan attributed that to the impending departure, just a couple of days away. The guide he’d hired met them right on time, and led all five of them into the walls of varying materials and heights, explaining Troy’s three-thousand-year history of destruction and rebirth as he went. Built, destroyed by fire, rebuilt, destroyed by earthquake, enlarged and rebuilt yet again, destroyed by war, rebuilt, destroyed by war again, rebuilt again, before finally being abandoned for good during the Ottoman period to disappear under the earth.
One thumb hooked in his backpack strap, Keenan looked around. The unexcavated portions of the site were covered in a grass so green it hurt his eyes to look at it. The sky was a rich, cloudless blue. He found it incredible to stand under the same sky Hector and Achilles had fought under, to see the walls they’d defended, breached. Or was it the evidence that time passed, all wars end, the reasons for fighting them disappearing into history along with the bones of the warriors? The factions disappeared, the emotions dissipated, leaving behind at best an epic poem that was as much about the horror of war as it was about the glory of it. At worst, time left behind nothing at all.
“We’re a long way from the coast,” Florence pointed out to the guide as they stood on an excavated rock ramp, probably used to transport goods into the city.
“Just like Ephesus, Troy was at the mouth of a river,” the guide said. “Over time the silt built up, pushing the coastline out. The real cause of the Trojan war was not a beautiful woman. It was control over the Dardanelles and trade routes to the Black Sea. It’s probably also why the site was abandoned finally. No real strategic value, other than good farming land.” He finished with a pragmatic shrug.
