Kay scanned the mountain valley through the fog of veils. Someone had to have a Jeep. Shadowy houses spread across the rambling encampment below her. Which house was Alma’s?
A footstep sounded. “Do you have permission to be outside the home?” Someone black and hazy around the edges stepped in front of her.
Inching the veils up, Kay squinted through a slit. Permission? She wasn’t a child. The person in front of her was though. The boy couldn’t be much over twelve. “Um . . .”
“Show me your mahram’s male relative’s written permission.” The half-grown kid held a military grade weapon across his swelled out chest, the skin of his hands as smooth as his cheeks. A clip of ammunition circled his skinny shoulder. The kid should be holding a baseball bat, not an automatic gun.
“I’m just going to see my friend.” Kay pointed left. That big concrete block structure on the hill across, that looked like the kind of house the leader of Al-Qaeda would inhabit. She turned away from the child. Pebbles scattered underneath her bare feet. The hot dirt scorched her skin. Man, one couldn’t get a breath behind all these veils. She panted.
With a shout and flurry of pounding feet, the kid ran after her. “You need your mahram’s permission to leave the house.” He aimed an assault rifle in her face.
She stared at him, all blurry, black five feet of him. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
The boy moved his finger to the trigger.
This was the most ignorant, oppressive, misogynistic excuse for a terrorist camp. She raised her gaze to the sky. Three veils turned the blue sky black. “Certainly, I’ll go ask my noble husband for a hall pass.” She rolled her eyes.
“I should order you beaten.” The boy tried to deepen his voice, but his words ended in a squeak. He flourished the gun with as little concern for gun safety as women’s rights.
“I’m going back.” Turning, Kay retraced her ten paces of freedom and walked into the house. The jail door slammed shut behind her.
She tore off layer after layer of now sweat-drenched fabric. Her skin looked pink beneath it. Sweat dribbled down her neck to the awful blouse.
Could she forge Joe’s signature? She turned her gaze around the house. No paper. No pen. She’d have to wait for Joe to get any of those things. Thirst burned in her throat. The morning prayer call had ended a half hour ago. Surely Joe would have had time to get water by now.
She paced her jail cell. The heat in this skillet intensified with every minute.
Why did every flipping thing you needed in this inferno require a man?
The patch of sunlight that filtered through the tiny grate overhead moved slowly, marking the passing time.
One hour of mounting frustration. Two hours. The sun bombarded the tin roof. Sweat poured down her arms.
Unbuttoning her blouse, she flapped the loose fabric around her rapidly reddening skin. What were the signs of heat stroke?
Three hours. She sipped off the trace of liquid floating above the beans. Four. Why hadn’t Joe brought that blasted water?
Five hours, six. Had Abdullah killed him? She tried to sleep, no luck. She’d already slept more hours in this jail cell than during post-finals crash week. There was literally nothing to do but sleep. She kicked the shack’s wall. The metal shivered. She kicked it again.
The sun started its downward arc, but its heat still enveloped her. Now even after she got that stupid permission slip, she’d have to wait until tomorrow to visit Alma. Where was Joe? Was he all right?
Fear cut through her frustration and burning throat.
Yanking at more blouse buttons, she ripped the shirt off and flapped the fabric through the air. Even the breeze from the fanning cloth didn’t dissipate the heatstroke pounding against her temples. She ate a scoop of beans sans water.
Where was Joe? Her head pounded. The edges of her vision wobbled.
The door creaked. Joe ducked his head under the doorway. He held a plastic barrel of water. “Sorry I took so long. Mandatory forced march and weapons practice.” Joe kicked the door shut and set the barrel on the metal table.
Water!
Falling to her knees, Kay opened the spout and drank directly from the tap. The cool freshness fell over her, washing the sweat off her bare shoulders and cooling her flushed cheeks.
When she’d drunk her fill of the blessed liquid, Kay closed the tap and stood. The cool goodness trickled from her wet hair to her neck, dripping down her bare stomach. Wrinkling her nose, she grabbed her shirt and shoved her arms through sweat-stained fabric.
Holding the blouse together with one hand, Kay turned.
Joe looked almost Arabic with his red-checkered turban and a shemagh wrapped above his camo jacket. If Joe were in the marketplace with ten babbling children and an oppressed wife following behind him, she would have mistaken him for Yemeni. Only his blue eyes betrayed his nationality.
She shoved a couple blouse buttons through holes. “Done for the day? There are beans, but they’re cold, and I couldn’t cook you rice without water.” She crossed to the propane heater and fumbled with the starter.
“You look beautiful.” Joe stared at her as water dripped from her hair to the cream-colored blouse.
“Bet you say that to all the girls you marry to save from an honor-killing.” She rolled her sleeves up, but she let her eyes smile. She touched the bean pot.
He moved closer to her, his combat boots making imprints in the dirt floor. He touched the ends of her hair, his brush as light as a summer zephyr. Dirt had ground into his chapped cuticles. The pink of his nails appeared almost white by the sunshine filtering through the tiny grate.
He touched her lips, his fingers gentle against the skin of her lips. “I was thinking last night that you were right.” The edge of his arm scraped against her waist.
“About what?” She grabbed the bag of beans, though she’d rather throw them across this jail cell after a day like today. What business did that stupid preteen have locking her in this house?
“The janitor closet at your school was way more interesting than the one at mine.” Joe touched his mouth to hers.
She startled as his kiss washed over her like rain on desert sands. He touched her shoulder, spinning her away from the propane heater. He ran his hand up above her shoulder blades.
She didn’t breathe as she soaked in his kiss. Her blouse gapped around cleavage. She stood to tiptoes. The frustration of seven dehydrated hours and a dweeb-ish boy with an AK-47 who thought she needed a mahram to leave the house rolled off her shoulders, like sand dunes giving way to the power of the wind.
Joe’s eyes were so blue. His stubbly hair cut across his forehead, one dribble of sweat rolling down from there around his nose. He closed his other hand behind her waist, pulling her toward him.
Moving closer, she pressed against him, arms around his neck. Her lips just brushed his. The taste of desert breeze was on his mouth. The smell of salty sweat rose from his camo jacket.
Her blouse slid beneath the pressure of his forearms against her back. As her skin touched his, two souls met as one. He gazed at her, then dipped his head for another kiss.
She stepped back against the circle of his arms. “Hot in here, don’t you think?” Unlike on her balcony in Massachusetts, she spoke the factual truth.
“Sure is.” Stepping away, he unzipped the camo jacket. He cast the fabric by the water barrel. Touching the hem of his sweat-stained T-shirt, he glanced back at her. “You don’t care, do you?”
“You’re scarring me for life.” She smiled at him and watched every move as he stripped off the soaked T-shirt. Perhaps the desert air had muddled her senses, or his heroics rescuing her from an honor-killing altered her judgment, but he looked better than any shirtless man who’d ever stood inside her room before.
Sweat glistened on his pectoral muscles, begging her to touch his body. Her skirt swished against the propane heater as she moved next to him. She touched that bare skin, her fingers gliding over moist muscle.
/> His eyes laughed at her as he closed his arms around her. “So very forward? I’m sure the imam would insist I divorce you.” Bending his head, he kissed her again.
Hot as the desert sun, the kiss seared against her lips.
Even sticky with sweat, his powerful arms felt wonderful wrapped around her. She tasted the ruggedness of the Yemeni mountains in his kiss. The smell of gunpowder clung to him, the hairs of his arm singed by whatever jihad activity Abdullah had forced him into participating in today.
Only a mostly unbuttoned blouse separated his chest from hers. He brushed his fingers down her bare neck past her clavicle. The tip of his thumb touched the Greek letters of her tattoo. No desert wind playing tricks with her now, she knew from the core of her being that she’d never felt this strong of a connection with any man before.
“What does αὐτὸς ἔφα mean?” He slid his thumb across the tip of the phi letter. The heel of his hand rubbed against the white trim of her uncovered bra.
His Greek pronunciation was surprisingly good. She slid her hands up over his bare shoulders. “It means, ‘he himself said it,’ a logical fallacy first postulated by Aristotle’s students where they relied on an authority’s words rather than the facts.”
He ran his forefinger across the letters. The weight of his hand pushed her blouse further open and cracked buttons escaped worn buttonholes. Only a single button still secured the piece of fabric to her body. His other hand touched bare skin on her waist where her blouse rode up.
Her ears rang with the silence. The water on the propane heater bubbled slowly.
He pulled her closer and shifted his hand up her spine, beneath her blouse. He touched his mouth to hers. She placed her hands on his bare back. His sweat heated as adrenaline seared through their touch.
“I’d tell you how much I like kissing you, but then I’d have to stop.” He quirked up the left side of his mouth, eyes shining.
Her shirt slid beneath the pressure of his hands and the last broken button gave way. Her blouse fell open.
His blue eyes held an enraptured look as if her kisses rivaled movie actresses and super models. His heart pounded against her, stretching his bare skin and disrupting the stripes of sweat that ran down his chest.
As she clung to Joe’s kiss, she moved her hands down, searching for his belt. She pushed the ribbed nylon through the slide buckle.
His gaze jerked to her hands. He froze.
She looked up at him. “What?” The passion burned in his eyes same as hers.
“Were you just . . .” Joe let the sentence die, his hands clasped behind her. His gaze still riveted on her fingers where she gripped his belt. He looked uncomfortable.
“It’s all right. I’m on birth control.” She reached up for another kiss. His eyes looked bluer than the ocean waves at Cape Cod.
She went to Cape Cod every summer with her family, walked the white beaches, suntanned beside the picket fence enclosing the family beach house. If Joe and she got out of this alive, she’d dearly love to take him to that beach house.
Wordless, Joe looked at her. He shifted his shoulders uneasily as he stared in silence at her hand touching his belt. He swallowed, the sound loud in this tiny shack.
“Unless you have an STD?” Gross. Could HIV pass through a kiss? What about herpes? She pulled back from him.
His hands still rested on her waist, allowing only six inches between his body and hers.
She wrinkled her forehead. Joe didn’t look like the type to have an STD. She’d bet he could name the number of girlfriends he’d had on one hand.
“Of course not.” Joe spoke in a level tone, gaze far off as if his brain were miles away. Giving himself a shake, he looked at her. His hand still touched her waist, his fingers warm against bare skin.
“What then?” Her unbuttoned blouse wrinkled as she shifted back from him.
“You’re not really my wife.”
“Duh.” Though they would have a heck of a mess at immigration explaining Bahrain paperwork. Assuming they got out of this alive. She ran her gaze over his sunburned face, bare chest, dirt-stained camo pants.
Joe stood as rigid as the awkward statue of John Harvard that towered over Harvard Yard.
She blinked. “Wait, you’re not one of those save yourself for marriage people, are you?”
He just looked at her. He dropped his hand from her waist, removing the tenderness of his touch.
Her jaw sagged. Stepping back, she collapsed on the mattress and brought her knees up in front of her. “Are you a virgin?”
His face turned red all the way across his jaw to his ears, the uncomfortable heat even coloring his scalp beneath that short blond hair.
“You travel the world, fight terrorists, probably shoot your way through abandoned buildings like some CIA-style James Bond and you haven’t even . . .” her words tapered off. She stared into his blue eyes. She dropped her hand. It hit the mattress and bounced against the broken springs.
The red spread down his bare chest where his to-die-for six pack moved with each breath he took. Not that she’d be touching those abs tonight. Nor stripping off his clothes to see what else lay underneath. He was a virgin. A virgin. Even the sixteen-year-old football quarterback who’d been her first hadn’t been a virgin.
Tugging her hands onto her lap, she pushed back against the wall.
Joe reached down. His fingers closed on his damp T-shirt. He slid the moist fabric over his head and shoved his arms through the sleeves. Taking a seat on the other end of the mattress, he looked at her, discomfort in his eyes. “Now what? You think I’m an even more impossible Jesus-freak?”
Once more she glanced at that CIA-worthy frame, then she met his gaze. She shook her head, her hair sliding across her shoulders with the motion. “No. It’s kind of sweet.” She hoped he’d find the Midwestern Bible girl he’d been saving himself for. A girl like one of those who had protested outside her apartment last month holding a “God wants you to vote Republican” sign would find a good husband in Joe.
In the meantime, her cheeks heated the same color as his flaming neck. Kay shoved blouse buttons back into button holes at a desperate rate, raising her neckline high as an Amish girl’s.
Awkwardness hung in the overheated air. Joe’s body imprinted the mattress fabric eighteen inches away from her. She squirmed, her body making the mattress coils creak eighteen inches from him. It’s not as if this shack boasted privacy or another room to disappear into.
Above the propane heater, the water boiled, the bubbling the only sound disturbing the silence.
Joe stood and grabbed a bowl. With the clack of metal spoon against pot, he began to dish still-hard rice into his bowl. He didn’t make eye contact. Red heated the back of his neck, his military haircut revealing every inch of skin.
“We can talk about this if you want.” Her voice rose half an octave as she perched on the edge of the ragged mattress.
“Talking’s not going to make this any less uncomfortable.”
“Okay.” She stood. Her legs felt wobbly and a nervous chill ran through her fingers. Stupidity. Two consenting adults shouldn’t feel shame over what they chose or didn’t choose to do. She made eye contact with Joe.
Heat flushed across her entire face. Like some scarlet woman, she’d brazenly propositioned a church boy. The heck with mature adults talking about things. She wanted a closet to go run and hide in and ice water to splash across her burning cheeks.
“I’m going to go back out, check on things.” Joe kept his voice steady.
Whether he looked at her or not, she didn’t know, because she couldn’t meet his gaze. She swallowed. Just act natural. She forced her chin up. “Any progress on contacting the embassy?”
“No.” He scooped up beans. Silence as he swallowed them down, still standing, bowl poised in the air.
“What did you do today?” She waved her hand to the free air outside this jail cell.
He set down the bowl, a haunted look in his eyes.
“Witnessed an execution. Only narrowly avoided being forced to participate.”
“I’m sorry.” Kay swallowed. “Also, I need a permission thing from you for me to leave the house.”
“A what?” He squinted in the now dusky room.
“Would you please give me your written consent to leave these four walls, oh all-powerful male relative. The guard stopped me and said I needed it.” She laughed and tried to break the mortifying mood.
“What? My wife leave the sanctity of my house?” He smiled back at her.
See, things grew less awkward already. She grabbed his crumpled camo jacket and tugged a pen from the sleeve pocket. “I know. I might do something truly horrific, like buy a bowl of beans without your permission.” Did he have notebook paper in that jacket?
He took the coat from her, but not the pen. “You know this encampment isn’t safe for women.”
“The men all believe women should be dressed in garbage bags. You can’t tell me they’re going around raping women.” The pen slipped beneath her sweaty fingers.
“About that.” Joe coughed. “The execution, it was a woman from the village and her two daughters. Terrorists raped them, then they killed the women calling them infidel prostitutes.”
What evil. Kay felt her face blanch. She thrust the pen into his hands. “I’ll be careful.”
“What are you going to do out there?” Joe nodded to the outdoors beyond this prison as he closed his fingers on a brown notepad. The cover crinkled between his thumb and forefinger.
“Ensure Alma’s safe and help us plan a way to rescue her.” She glanced to the grate above. She should probably wait until morning. Still, she itched to leave this jail cell.
“You’re not trained in espionage, neither are you at all good at following cultural mandates.” Joe glanced at the notebook in his hands.
“Cultural? More like Nazi-style oppression aimed at the female gender.” Kay looked beyond Joe to where the cracked door let in a glimmer of light. The sliver revealed a glimpse of stark mountain valleys. She’d leave early tomorrow before the heat turned to sweltering and she got heatstroke beneath the three suffocating veils.
Veiled By Privilege (Radical Book 1) Page 25