Captured

by Ann Jacobs

A smile lit her beautiful face. She'd said all along that they would have sensed it if Bear's young cousin had died when his plane had gone down during the Gulf War. "I told you he'd come back. Who was that?"

  "A prison guard, apparently a Marsh Arab from his dialect. I couldn't understand a lot of what he said, but I gather he felt his interests would be best served by assisting Jamil in his escape. I leave for Abdali at first light."

  "Surely you won't go alone."

  When her arms tightened about his waist, his cock came to life against the softness of her slender belly. "I will take Jake if he can pry himself away from his bride, and two of the oilfield workers."

  "You must bring Jamil here."

  "I will." Where else did his cousin have to go since the Iraqi invaders had destroyed his home near Al Wafrah and killed his parents? "He may have others with him," Bear told Shana, recalling a few snippets of Maktoum's message that he thought he'd understood correctly.

  "The more the merrier. They will all be welcome."

  "Good. Should the Iraqi dogs attempt crossing into Kuwait to recapture them, they will be safer here than they would be, closer to the border."

  A shudder went through Shana's slender body. "Tell me more about this rescue you're planning."

  "Jake and I, and two of my oilfield workers who know how to handle weapons will fly to Abdali in the morning. We will meet with this Maktoum and learn exactly where we are to pick up Jamil and his companions."

  It was fortuitous that Shana's brother had decided to spend part of his honeymoon here at their villa. Having another qualified helicopter pilot onboard might mean the difference between success and failure since Bear's regular chopper pilot was away on holiday.

  Shana pulled away and looked him in the eye. "Tell me you aren't going into Iraq. Bear, this is a job for the Army."

  "I won't know until we get to Abdali. But trust me, love, I have no desire to risk my neck. Or to lose the life we have made together here for ourselves and our family. There will be no shortage of soldiers near the border. The American army is conducting exercises with Kuwaiti troops along the northern border with Iraq."

  Deliberately, he stroked her back, stoking the sexual fire that always smoldered just below the surface in his wife, even now after eleven years of marriage. "Come back to bed. Warm me."

  When she lay back down, he didn't join her but knelt at the edge of the couch and parted her silky legs. Draping them over his shoulders as he caught her clit ring on the tip of his tongue, he played with it and ran his palms along the skin of her inner thighs.

  "You're not going to distract me no matter how hard you try," she told him.

  But the catch in her voice and her rapid breathing told him he was well on the way to banishing everything but sexual pleasure from Shana's mind. Accelerating his assault, Bear slid his hands up her body until he cupped both of her firm, full breasts.

  Her nipples already jutted forward, hard little buttons pierced with gold barbells that secured the sapphire-encrusted nipple shields he'd found in an Egyptian bazaar. When he rubbed his thumbs over their tips, they hardened more, as though begging for the suction of his mouth and tongue.

  But his tongue was busy elsewhere, flicking her swollen clit and toying with the tiny gold ring she'd had inserted there three months earlier during their visit with her ailing father in Houston.

  She'd told him she'd had it put there for her own pleasure, but the tiny piece of jewelry had proven arousing to him as well.

  His balls tightened when he tasted her wet, warm pussy and stroked the satiny skin that covered her breasts and belly. Insha'Allah, he would never lose Shana, the woman who'd held his heart since she'd asked him nearly twelve years ago to fulfill her fantasy of becoming a captive houri to an Arab sheikh.

  "No fair. I want my fun, too. And I can't reach your cock when you're way down there."

  Bear wiggled his tongue in her pussy for a minute before climbing up to join her on the couch. "Think you'd like it if I got one of those rings through my cock?" he asked, tugging gently on her clit ring as he knelt between her legs and rubbed his cock head along her hot, wet labia before sinking deep inside her tight, welcoming sheath.

  Her talented inner muscles that clasped his cock seemed to get stronger instead of weaker as time passed.

  "Mmmm. Maybe. Oh, God. Your cock feels so good inside me. I don't think you need to do anything to make it better. Oh, yesss. Like that, my sheikh. Harder." She let out the little moan of pleasure he loved to hear, then shook her head and laughed. "There must be something wrong with us, still fucking like minks every day after all these years."

  Her next breathy scream told him he'd hit her G-spot, and that she liked it. A lot.

  "Fate, love. Allah brought me my perfect houri, all the way from Houston. Come again with me," he coaxed, sinking deeper into her with every measured motion of his hips.

  Her breathing grew shallow. Sweat glistened on her brow. They moved together in perfect harmony, two lovers for whom time had heightened sensations and brought them as close to being one entity as a man and a woman could become.

  Her vaginal muscles clenched his cock like a fist, pulsating and full of life. And when she dragged her nails down his back and clasped her legs around his waist like a vise, Bear let go of his iron control, shooting his load in hard, as she milked him dry with every undulating contraction of her pussy.

  "Just think. Jamil has done without this for eleven long years," Shana murmured moments later. "I imagine he'll be ready to take on a couple of bimbos like the ones you hired that time-"

  "Quiet, woman. Morning will come far too soon."

  * * * * *

  Sated from a night of hot but monogamous sex, Jamil wakened in his cot the following morning, his body unshackled but for Leila's slender arms and legs that twined about his naked body.

  When he opened his eyes, he noticed her scarf and veil had slipped during the night, exposing short, silky black hair and the creamy skin of her cheek and neck that had remained untouched by the fierce desert sun. Idly, he stroked her there, regretting that when he lay with her tonight he would betray her trust-the trust she had exhibited when she had not confined him again once she had achieved her sexual satisfaction.

  Her eyelids fluttered, and she leaned into his body momentarily before jerking away and adjusting the scarf about her head and neck.

  "Your scars are marks of valor, Leila. They do not repel me."

  "Do not lie, Kuwaiti."

  "My name is Jamil." He pressed his swollen cock against her backside. "And I do not lie. I cannot deny my desire for you."

  As badly as he hated to admit it, his desire for her was real. He, Jamil al Hassan, who had once prided himself as being a skilled seducer before falling into this hell, had succumbed to forced seduction by a scarred woman who was a close relative to his mortal enemy.

  He couldn't bring himself to call Leila's actions rape, though she had first taken him when he was chained and helpless-as certainly as her brother-by-marriage had done years earlier. And as Jamil came to know her, he could no longer consider her simply an enemy he might use to further his efforts at escape.

  In her dark eyes he saw sadness. And a softness he imagined she would deny should he try to coax it from her heavily guarded soul.

  But he did not see the consummate evil that lurked in the eyes of Dubaq and some of his men.

  Knowing he would betray the trust she had bestowed on him filled him with guilt. He would do it, though, because he would not relinquish his only chance for life-and freedom.

  Chapter Six

  Jake Green couldn't begin to imagine enduring eleven years in prison, in Iraq or anywhere else. As he changed into the traditional desert robes Bear had given him along with a rundown on his plan to rescue Jamil al Hassan, he recalled the fun-loving college boy he'd partied with the week of Shana and Bear's wedding.

  He wouldn't be meeting the same Jamil, that was for sure. What Jake had gone through since then had changed
him, too. Most recently for the better, he thought as he bent to give his bride a farewell kiss.

  Kate's eyelids fluttered. Then she looked at him with wide-eyed wonder. "What? Oh, it's you, love. I didn't recognize you at first."

  "Surprised to see me dressed like a desert nomad?" he asked as he sat on the bed and laid a possessive hand over her slightly swollen belly. "You and our baby go on back to sleep, now. Bear and I are going to take a little helicopter ride."

  "We're supposed to be on our honeymoon." She smiled, though, and that took the bite off her complaint.

  "We are. But Bear needs to go up north, near the Iraqi border, to pick up his cousin Jamil. Since his regular pilot is on vacation, he asked me to ride up there with him in case he needs a break from flying the chopper. Let Shana and my nieces pamper you for a day or two while we're away."

  "Okay." Having toured Bear's desert oilfields from the air a few days earlier, Kate wasn't anxious to ride along again on a bone-jarring helicopter to see miles and miles of endless desert where only derricks and pumpjacks dotted the barren landscape. "Go make love to your precious oil wells," she said.

  "I'd rather stay here and fuck around with you." Bending, he kissed her. A long, open-mouthed kiss that made her want to strip him out of that exotic-looking garb and devour him from head to toe.

  "I wouldn't go if this wasn't important. And I'll be ravenous when we get back," he said, cupping her tender breasts and tweaking the hardened nipples. "Keep the bed warm for me while I help Bear collect his cousin Jamil."

  When Jake stood, the look he gave her could have set an oilfield on fire. It didn't register with Kate at first that this Jamil they were going to collect was Bear's cousin who'd been missing since the Gulf War, or that Jake might be putting himself in danger. But when she got up a few minutes later and glanced out their bedroom window, she quickly realized the situation.

  What she saw on the nearby helicopter pad chilled her to the bone despite the warmth of the day. Two men loaded down with big, lethal-looking guns climbed inside the open cargo door of Bear's company chopper before the door closed and the twin rotors began to churn up sand.

  May God protect them all. Fear rose in Kate's throat, threatening to choke her. Jake had tried to avoid worrying her, but it was obvious that he and Bear had just embarked on a hazardous mission to extract Bear's long-lost cousin from an Iraqi jail.

  * * * * *

  If Maktoum had managed to cross into Kuwait and contact Dahoud, help should already be on the way. If not…

  Jamil wouldn't consider that possibility, though it was very real. In less than eight hours, he would be on his way to freedom.

  Or death. But it would be better to die escaping than wait for Dubaq to do the job.

  His leg irons chafed his ankles as he shuffled alongside of Brian toward the broken pump that so far had been keeping them both alive in order to repair it. "Tonight," he whispered in English, unsure whether the guard who accompanied them today could understand.

  "You are certain the woman will release you from your shackles, and that you can take the key from her?" Brian asked after the guard had taken himself away to the shade of a scraggly palm tree.

  Jamil shrugged. "Nothing is certain but that we will be killed if we do not escape. If all goes well, you are to subdue the guard once your chains are released. Then we will head south along the railroad track, where the old man will be waiting at the crossroad not far from the edge of the oilfield. With luck we should be able to reach the border by tomorrow evening or the next day, and my cousin will be there to meet us."

  * * * * *

  A few hours after they'd taken off from the villa at Mina Su'ud, Bear put the chopper down at the military outpost in Abdali. The rotors set loose sand in motion, obscuring their vision of the command center where he was to meet the messenger Maktoum.

  "Good landing," Jake commented when he'd taken off his ear protectors after Bear shut down the noisy engines. "I'd hate to have had to put her down on sand the way you just did. What next?"

  "We meet with Maktoum. Then we wait."

  After assigning the two oilfield workers to stay and watch the chopper, Bear motioned for Jake to join him, and they headed to the nearest building, shading their eyes from the blistering sun.

  While Bear spoke with Maktoum through a Kuwaiti officer who apparently understood the man's unusual dialect, Jake sipped strong, sweet coffee and stared through the window at row after row of Humvees, tanks, and other war equipment bearing the U. S. Army insignia.

  He adjusted the braided band that held the ghutra on his head. Hell, he'd have fit right in at this particular border outpost if he'd stuck with western attire.

  "Jake?"

  He turned at the sound of his name. He'd never seen his easygoing brother-in-law look so fierce. "What is it?" he asked.

  "Jamil has spent eleven years in hell."

  The tale of horror Bear related through clenched teeth was beyond Jake's comprehension. To have been kept in a constant state of terror…

  And to have watched his fellow prisoners die slowly, painfully. The sound of jailers approaching must have filled hearts with fear that they would be the ones chosen for beatings, electric shocks, amputations, castration, and rape.

  The hell where Jake occasionally imagined his enemies rotting was more like paradise, compared with what Bear had just described. "I wouldn't wish that on anybody. Not even Durwood Yates," he muttered, visualizing the man who'd been caught sabotaging his company's oil wells languishing in comparatively plush surroundings of a Mississippi prison for the criminally insane.

  "No one does torture quite as imaginatively as the Iraqis," Bear commented, his expression shadowed. "Only Jamil and an American pilot who will attempt escaping with him remain. Apparently the jailer, a fiend named Dubaq, has been singling prisoners out one by one for the past eleven years and torturing them to death for his twisted amusement."

  Jake glanced at the Marsh Arab, then met Bear's gaze. "Are you sure he's telling you the truth?"

  "Why would I doubt it? We're talking about the same Iraqi army that used prisoners of war as human shields to protect military targets. Soldiers who follow a leader who uses poison gas against his own people as well as his enemies." Bear clenched his fists. "One of the pilots in my squadron who was repatriated at the end of the Gulf War told me his captors had stuffed toilet tissue in his flight suit and set it on fire."

  Jake had a sudden urge to throw up-or run for his life. A hundred miles or so was not a long enough distance to be away from demons like this jailer, to his way of thinking.

  "Maktoum said Jamil has been kept alive to supervise repairs in the Zugayr oilfield, where the prison is located. Apparently the American was recently transferred there from another prison camp for the same purpose. Damn it, man, the bastards tortured Asad to death."

  "The quiet guy who stuck with you like glue before your wedding?" Jake asked.

  Bear's jaw tightened. "Yeah. The one who learned to fly jet fighters because that's what I wanted to do. If he hadn't, he might still be here today instead of being buried in that mass grave in a prison camp somewhere in the middle of Al Zubayr."

  "What's the plan?" Jake visualized wiping out that camp and treating the fiend who ran it to a taste of his own torture.

  "They will escape after dark tonight, make their way through the desert between the railroad and the main road from Al Basrah to the border. We are to wait on this side of the border, about a mile east of the road."

  "Seventy kilos is a long way to walk. Couldn't we fly inside Iraq and pick them up immediately after they escape?"

  "We'd be shot down the minute we crossed the border." Bear pulled out a detailed map, pointed to a spot about three-quarters of the way from the prison to Abdali. "Maktoum says they will stop to rest at this oasis. If Jamil doesn't arrive at our meeting place by tomorrow night, we will head out on camelback and look for them."

  Jake hated riding camels. "Why not horses?"

&
nbsp; "Because if they don't arrive on schedule, one or both of them will most likely be hurt. Camels make better pack animals. Besides, they're what the Bedouins who live around here ride. If we rode horses, we'd attract too much attention."

  * * * * *

  Your scars do not repel me. I cannot hide my desire…

  Jamil's declaration rang in Leila's ears as she watched Dubaq's soldiers loading equipment onto the trucks. Mernoosh had just confirmed that the troop would move out the following morning.

  When she'd awakened today to the touch of Jamil's callused fingers on her undamaged cheek, she felt desirable for the first time since Saqr had left Baghdad with his Republican Guard division to try to repel the seemingly invincible American army.

  For the first time since awakening in a makeshift hospital to pain and the knowledge that her beauty was gone forever, Leila had almost welcomed the light of day.

  And Jamil al Hassan was the reason.

  An engine coughed, then roared to life, and the troop's only battered tank lumbered up a ramp onto the biggest of the trucks, its treads making an ominous crunching sound. Apparently Dubaq intended that they travel too quickly for the tank to keep up under its own power.

  Tomorrow they would leave.

  And tomorrow Jamil would die.

  Dubaq would shoot him and the American as though they were but pesky desert foxes. He would leave their lifeless bodies on the sand for the ever-present vultures and dung beetles to feast upon.

  Sick at heart, Leila turned to the west, squinting into the afternoon sun where she sought a glimpse of Jamil in the oilfield, repairing the pump that had so far kept him and the American alive. Such a beautiful man.

  A beautiful enemy.

  But was he her enemy?

  Jamil had done nothing to her, nothing but bring her greater sexual pleasure than she'd known for years. Once she had freed him from his shackles, he'd devoured her as though driven by his desire, not by the circumstance of his helplessness that had brought him to her.