Call Me Crazy (Janet Lomayestewa, Tracker)

by Bonds, Parris Afton

  Even the scent of his cologne elicited from her an involuntary sensual response. This stunned her. Sensual? She, who knew nothing about sex except the violence, the indifference, and her hatred of rapists was feeling such a stirring as that of sensual?

  On the next thudding bounce, his arm grabbed her waist to keep her from colliding with the truck ceiling. His arm stayed where it was as the truck roller coastered through the deepening dusk. She should have shrugged it off, but it was such a considerate gesture. Comforting. Caring. For so long she had felt as if she had been slowly dying. His touch reminded her she was still alive, her senses still vibrant.

  Janet tapped the truck’s dash-mounted compass ball. “We’re far enough northeast of Sheba’s Temple to hold up for the night. We want to make sure we’re there first come sunup.”

  “What if this Nuke had already beaten us to it?” Yasmin asked. “To the Ark?”

  Janet’s dead-of-night dark eyes slid her an unrelenting look. “Then I track him down.”

  “How about the lee of this next rise?” Jack said, slowing the 4X4 to park it.

  Yasmin was not surprised when Janet extracted from one of the truck’s tool boxes bottles of water and a couple of the red plastic table sheetings from The Bilquis Restaurant. The AK-47 was unloaded, as well, which she shouldered.

  The Native American woman was resourceful. And self sufficient. And fiercely courageous. All that she herself was not. She was just foolish enough to get mad and speak up at times when she would be better off duct-taping her mouth. That reminded her of the man Nuke, and her teeth gritted and her dirt-bandaged hands gripped her upper arms. Whatever horror that might lay ahead for her, she would have her vengeance.

  Jack took one of the tarps from Janet and tossed it to Sam, who had to juggle it to keep from dropping it. “For you and Yasmin.”

  Sam leveled a questioning gaze in her direction. Her eyes swerved to the compact truck. She could fit herself around the cab’s stick shift and try to sleep, or she could . . . .

  Sam didn’t wait for her reply. He stepped to the side of the sandy slope and snapped out the sheeting, lowering it onto the sand. It billowed then settled. He followed. Sitting, an arm propped on one bent knee, hand braced on the slight rise, he watched her and waited. She glanced back at Jack and Janet. They were already headed toward the rise’s other end, out of sight. She turned back to Sam. He dazzled her with the warmth of his smile. She sighed and joined him.

  “Why don’t you take off that infernal abaya?” he asked as she sat stiffly within inches of him. “It has to be a misery to wear.”

  She stared out at the horizon, where a giant orange moon was cresting it. “You would be surprised, glamour boy, the misery one can be taught to endure.” Nevertheless, she began shrugging out of the abaya. He was right, no longer did she need to hide under the shroud.

  He reclined against the slope now, his legs stretched on in his impeccable dress khakis. Turning toward her, he supported himself on one elbow. “I know some of what you’ve had to endure. Read about it. Saw you on TV.”

  She paused, glanced over at him. “Then you know who I am?” This surprised her. This man with the Mickey Mouse wristwatch and set of Mickey Mouse ears impressed her as having a limited range of interest. She tossed the abaya aside, glad to be rid of the imprisoning garb once and for all.

  “You said you were are a mixture of French and Arab tribal blood.” She saw his surreptitious scan of her skinny jeans and red, mid-drift knotted top, formerly hidden beneath the bulky abaya. “Quite exotic.”

  She cast him a mocking smile. “You are commenting on my heritage, of course?

  “But, yes, yes, of course.”

  “Exotic? You think so?” She tugged off the flimsy hijab and shook loose her heavy hair to fall over her shoulders. Glancing over at him, she saw his lids flare. For all his dandy ways, he certainly wasn’t gay. She wasn’t afraid of him but nevertheless felt uneasy, as if he could breach a part of her walls she had forgotten to fortify. She reclined, propping herself on both elbows, her hair mantling the sheeting, and talked to fill the sensual silence. “I doubt exotic is the right word. Maybe, savage or wild or barbaric would be better. My father’s tribe – ”

  “The Yamani?”

  “Yes. They are camel herders and horse breeders. Not something you would call exotic, but nonetheless breeders of the best horses to be found anywhere in the world. Presidents and princes travel to the Yamani encampment to do horse trading.” What are Janet and Jack doing? It’s so quite from their end of the dune. “My father’s tribe doesn’t believe in educating females. Once, I watched my father skin alive a screaming Dutch arms trader. After a few drinks from his private supply, the arms trader had foolishly tried to kiss my mother.” At the memory, a shudder rippled her spine.

  Sam cleared his throat. “Your mother never missed . . . France?”

  “If so, my mother never said so.” She settled onto her back, her gaze sweeping the emerging billions of twinkle stars overhead. “She was as luminous as any of those stars. She signed on to come to a Yemeni village to teach. The school had been built with foreign aid yet stood empty for lack of a teacher and school supplies. When she went before the Yemeni parliament to plead for supplies, she – ”

  “So the activist’s spirit is in your DNA,” he mused.

  “ . . . she met Sheikh Karim al-Ahman, the leader of the powerful Yamani tribe and a Yemeni parliament member. He was charismatic, wealthy, educated in England, and very, very handsome.” She looked across her shoulder at Sam. “Handsome like you.”

  “You think so?”

  “But much taller than you.”

  “Oh.”

  She shouldn’t have pricked his pride, yet she wasn’t about to give glamour boy the edge.

  “Did your parents marry?”

  “No, she bore me out of wedlock. She gave my father and desert living, despite its lack of intellectual stimulation, a good dozen years of her life. I worshipped my father . . . and feared his fierceness. Ultimately, my mother fled the nomadic life with me.”

  “Because of that, the lack of stimulation – boredom?”

  “Well she certainly wanted me to have an education. Still, when certain tribal members insisted on practicing an age-old rite of circumcision on me, she decamped, so to speak, and hid us in the Jewish Quarter of Sana’a’s Old City.”

  “And your father?”

  “It took him more than two years to track us down. After all, women are invisible in Yemen. We were on the run. We changed our surname and lost ourselves among Sana’a’s two million people. But my father would not give up what he considered his. My mother had taken small-paying jobs teaching English, French, and Arabic to foreigners. Thanks to her and the international exposure found in the capital, I received a well rounded education. At last, word of our whereabouts got back to my father.” She paused, swallowed. “He was sitting on the floor of our tiny rented room, talking calmly with me about the return to his tribe. My mother impaled him from the back with his own jambiya.”

  She heard Sam’s shocked intake of air. His arm slid beneath her shoulder, gently tugging her into the hollow created by his body and arm. “I can’t even begin to imagine the horror.”

  She sank into the comfort his nearness offered and wondered why she felt safe enough with him to ease her guard. She should move away, yet her stamina was spent.

  “And your mother, where is she now?”

  “Several years ago, she was hospitalized for a high fever. Yemen hospitals are not the best. She died there.”

  It was so quite, she could almost hear the light breeze rustle the sand. Then she felt his lips brush her the crown of her head. “So you’ve turned out to be a little scrapper,” he murmured.

  “Scrapper? I’ve never thought of myself like that. I always thought of myself as . . . cowardly, like one of those kids who throws a rock, then ducks for cover.” Her fingers flexed painfully. “But not this time.” She looked up at him out of the co
rners of her eyes. “And how do you think of yourself?”

  His smile was slight, derisive. “I always imagined myself as being a bold leader, like one of those Disney heroes – the ones in Arabian Nights.” He sighed. “Maybe Sinbad and the Seven Seas or Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.”

  She caught his wistful expression, and the breeze whisked wisps of her yard-long hair against his lips. She saw his fleeting wince, felt his shoulder tense, as if the breeze-lashed hair were a physical blow. “Yet your name, Dr. Sampson al-Addin, it suggests another Disney character, Aladdin.”

  He smiled ruefully. “Alas, my surname wasn’t my choice. You do know Yasmin suggests Princess Jasmine from the film Aladdin? If I recall correctly, Princess Jasmine and Aladdin were both masquerading as other than what they were – Princess Jasmine as a commoner and Aladdin as royalty, when he had been nothing but a street urchin. Regrettably, that is what I am, little more than a guy off the streets of Detroit.”

  She felt badly for her disparagement of this seemingly shallow young man. All her life she had known fierceness and violence from males. This man presented the gentler, more tender side of masculinity. He wasn’t a threat. A light, teasing note crept into her voice. “Which is it then? Do I call you Sinbad or Ali Baba?”

  His expression beamed with pleasure. He paused for a second, considering. “Well, thousands of years ago the Yemeni were once a seafaring nation. That could justify my Yemeni half as Sinbad. Still, it’s Ali Baba, I think.” He tucked her more closely, spoon-wise, into his body’s curve. His voice was mellow like a plucked harp string that thrummed her heart’s chords. “The Forty Thieves part of this adventure is going to come quite early tomorrow morning. I propose we sleep, princess.”

  She lay with her cheek cradled on one palm. “What? No seduction?”

  After a pause that revealed she had rattled his strategy, he said, “Only enticement.”

  That one word, enticement, conjured up a different image of this man. A man not of easy disposition, nor even a sang froid attitude, but a temperament composed of something dark, powerful, and possessive. “That enticement would be . . . what?”

  “Unpredictability.”

  She stared out into the pure darkness. Perversely, she felt let down. “That’s it? “Unpredictability?”

  “Yes, yes. Unpredictability means adventure. Adventure is the spice of life, is it not? Now sleep.”

  What a disappointment Sampson al Addin was. Still, exhausted as she was, how could she sleep with the opulent scent of his cologne curling around her, his sweet breath fanning her ear, and his hardened groin nudging her?

  * * * * *

  The timeless magic of the moon silvered the sky, the sand, and Janet. Jack posed above her, his hands anchoring her wrists on either side of her head. He held her with a gentle strength, which was in conflict with the psychologically dark frustration building in him. “Can just once surrender be a part of your vocabulary?”

  Hard speculation was stamped all over her face and then replaced by passionate indignity. “When I surrender is when I agree to be muffled. And while we’re on the subject of surrender, when are you going to surrender the hair shirt your wearing for your late wife?”

  Against his will, he again felt covered in an unbreathable plastic film of gray that had dulled everything around him, as before. Food, sunlight, conversation. Raw, jagged misery. He had fought back too long to close himself off in that coffin of grief and remorse. The tragedy of his wife’s death had forced upon him the extreme of options. Dullness – or rashness. “I don’t believe that’s up for discussion.”

  Her black-as-night gaze held his fast. “Because you’re afraid to go there.”

  She was right, but he would not allow her that superiority. He smiled slowly, with a pure glittering wickedness. “Not any more afraid than your are of CSD’s.”

  Her breath hissed in. He had found a breach in her impregnability!

  Before she could deny it, he demanded, “Say it. Say ‘I surrender, Jack.” He wasn’t making a appeal, nor a recommendation. It was an order. Anything less would never hold her respect, not for long, and respect was both the key to her heart and its Achilles’ heel.

  “Surrender – never.”

  With a sigh, he lowered his forehead to hers. He committed himself to ruthless patience. Because this wasn’t about surrendering to his lovemaking. It was about surrendering to him. Surrendering to trust in him. “You won’t surrender,” his lips whispeed just above hers, “yet you make no effort to escape.” He knew how to use her anger, her uncertainty, and her wanting. He lifted his head to gauge his effect.

  Starlight softened her almost innocent yet defiant gaze. Her voice had smoky edges and the timbre of an Indian flute that vibrated softly inside him. “Surrender, no. But allow, maybe.”

  At that, he grinned. “I know you too well, Woman-Yes-To-You.” And he realized he did. It seemed lately that he knew her better, understood her better, than she did herself. He knew her sense of adventure, her intelligence, and subtle charm that was not overly sophisticated. She had been his palliative for pain. She had enchanted him. He would have preferred his old detachment that had kept him safe from further pain. But that detachment had vaporized the first time they had made love, the night he had permitted her to glimpse the wounded, rebellious nerd of a boy inside him. A boy who had preferred the stars in the galaxy to the football clete in the earth.

  All the same, he didn’t want to be caught up in this wild woman’s emotional demands of him.

  Yet his emotions were wild, a bonfire of desire. Still pinning her rigid body beneath his, his lowered his mouth on hers, his lips demanding that hers yield. They were sealed firmly. He molded his hips to hers, gauging her response intuitively.

  “You fight unfairly.”

  Not the response he had hoped but the pliancy in her voice gave him hope. “Look at me, sweetheart. Look at me, damn’t!”

  In that moment, her face shimmered with defenselessness, and he took the opportunity her parted lips presented. His tongue penetrated, delicately sweeping just inside. It progressed from that initial soft testing that when not thwarted deepened into a fierce exploration. Her resisting arms, once rigid, went limp beneath the restraint of his manacling hands. Her reactive moan was more of a sigh, and her hips bowed against his, as if seeking relief from the dominance he was inflicting upon her and relief from her unbearable masquerade of fearlessness, of indifference, invulnerability, of ennui.

  With that, he released her right wrist, kissing oh-so-lightly its palm, and held his breath. He never knew which to expect. Would it be the blinding, stinging dust devil or the beguiling djinni of the Arabian Nights? To his bemusement, he realized he welcomed either. He relinquished her other wrist. Which would it be? A slap or a caress? He lowered his head so that his cheek was a feather’s touch from hers, and whispered in her ear. “Give me what you’ve got, sweetheart.”

  She made a valiant effort at defiance. “You can’t handle what I’ve got.”

  “The point is I am willing to relinquish control. Are you?” The real point was that he was not willing to relinquish her. Not yet.

  Her hand swept up, and he stiffened, waiting for the blow. But, her palm aligned the side of his face in a gentle gesture such as what Linda had often made; yet unaccountably Janet’s gesture was much more breathtaking because it contained both life and death, both joy and pain, both despair and hope, both fierce anger and the seeds of powerful, intoxicating love.

  Her arms encircled his shoulders. She lifted her head and lightly brushed her mouth across his, once and then again. She pulled back, one brow lifted, and her eyes searched his as if to ask, Are you sure you know what you’re in for?

  He waited. Whatever it would be, it would be solid and real and challenging. It would not be wishy-washy, placid, lackluster, or merely pleasant.

  In contrast to the lulling softness of her lips, her teeth next nipped his ear lobe – and every drop of blood in his veins tsunamied towar
d his crotch.

  Her hands clenched at his t-shirt, shoving it high. She traced a finger around his nipple, causing it to ruch into leathery pebble. Even as head dipped and her tongue followed in the wake of her fingers, her hand slid down the seam created by his ribs to his navel, paused at the sharp intake of his breath, then journeyed farther. In a distant corner of his mind, he realized he was losing control. It was he who was surrendering, surrendering to the sheer energy force of her little body.

  Desperate desire knotted his muscles. He should just hightail it in the night, while he had the chance, and claim the chip for himself. Instead, his mouth found hers, and he could feel her trembling, so starved was she for connection. He slid both hands inside her shirt, pushing it up to expose her tiny breasts. Ta-tas, she had once called them. He felt her quiver and knew, deny it though she might, that she was caught in the same web of longing. They both were shaking. Like binary stars, they both traveled in orbit only around each other.

  He slipped her t-shirt over her head, his lips dropping kisses along her nape, the gentle curve of her collarbone, and back once more to her lips, parted for little betraying gasps. He ignored her urgency, expressed in the way her hips undulated beneath him. Instead, he kissed her swollen lips again. Of course, her tongue would both dance and duel with his. At last, he could hold himself back no longer. His fingers slid between their stomachs to release her jeans and dip inside. Her gasp told him she was ready for him. “Surrender yet?” he whispered.

  “Bastard!”

  “No, I’m one of your CSD’s,” he said, fighting to control his give-away panting. He was banking that if she could accept him as a CSD, she could accept and release her past.

  Her eyes flashed wide. He didn’t give her a chance to resist him. Her jeans tossed to one side, he knelt over her, his eyes reveling in her small, eager figure, silvered by moonlight. Relentlessly holding her with his gaze, he put his hand between her legs and gently massaged until her knees fell to either side, opening herself wide, wide, wide for him.