Nashville SEAL: Jameson: Nashville SEALs (33 page)

Briefly separating, he found a condom in the nightstand easily within reach and began to sheath himself, but she pushed his hands away and finished, squeezing his cock and letting her hand wrap around him tight. She led him to her opening, her fingers still forming a ring at the base of his stem, as he slowly eased his stiffness inside her, feeling every half inch at a time. She’d closed her eyes at the sheer power of their joining, feeling that place with her fingers as his body entered hers, getting lost in it.

He whispered in her ear, “Lizzie, look at me. I want to see how it makes you feel.”

Her muscles went into lockdown, and he groaned. “I remember this,” he whispered again. “And something else,” he said, as he kissed her ear, sucked on her earlobe, and found her bud with his other hand. Pressing it between his thumb and forefinger, he shattered her.

She began to shudder and shake, rockets going off behind her eyes, the delicate hairs under her ears washed in his long, languid kisses. When she pressed her neck to his mouth, she felt the sharpness of his teeth as he bit his way down to the tops of her shoulders. He lifted one knee up, holding the back of her thigh with one massive hand and slipping her lower leg over his shoulder. Having better access, he slowly added his forefinger to his own girth inside her, at the same time sliding his middle finger up the end of her sex, following the trail of her engorged lips to tap her sensitive anus. He did not penetrate her there, but rubbed her moisture all around her little flower in a ring. Her internal organs pulled at him again, and she pressed his buttocks, digging her nails into his flesh and gripping hard so that his granite shaft produced the dull ache against her cervix. She held him tight as her body milked him, not allowing him to move.

He began a long moan as his hips pivoted upward, his thrusts becoming more urgent, burying himself deep inside her, each plunge deeper still, until he held himself against her vibrating walls, catching the tail end of her orgasm, and riding her body until she caught her breath and began to calm.

A thin line of sweat drained down the small of his back. His forehead was covered with beads of perspiration. She blew into his face. He closed his eyes and accepted the gift of her breath. When he opened his eyes, they stared into each other’s souls.

How could she have even considered not seeing this man again? She reached down, pulling the sheets up over both of them. He collapsed, still inside her, and, within seconds, began a deep sleep.

She didn’t want to wake him, loving the heaviness of his body as he rested against her, making it hard to breathe. The difficulty of her rising and falling chest was a labor of love. His warm body covered her completely, including one of his arms clutching the fingers of her hand out to the side. She loved that his sleeping form demanded she still be his.

Maybe that’s what she’d been afraid of. What if she’d had to say no? What if he wasn’t the man she thought of as a magical memory? What if he had transformed into some other kind of predatory creature commanding her submission?

She knew she would have resisted him. But relief flooded her body. She could trust her feelings, her yearning for him all these years. Her instincts had been spot on. And just like magic, he had brought the one most perfect and precious thing into her life, Charlotte.

It was unfair to expect too much, but in the luxury of his arms and surrounded by the scent of him making her drunk with joy, she inhaled, grabbing all she could gather, and hoped these memories, too, didn’t have to be relegated to some distant archive she’d bring out only when she couldn’t hold it back any longer.

All that she could hope for had happened. He wanted to be Charlotte’s father and had accepted his paternity, as she dared to believe he would. And she hoped there would be room for her in there, too. Her mind wanted to embrace the vision they could be a family. But even if they weren’t meant to be a family, he would be Charlotte’s daddy.

And that was way more of a future than she ever thought possible. She’d take it one day at a time. Whatever happened, she’d accept it with her full heart.

‡

“W
e are going
on a field trip this evening. We will gather after evening prayers. Light refreshment will be provided, and then when we come back, we shall feast before turning in for bed. You will do an hour of study before we dine, before our field trip. Wear your western clothes, but wear the ones you’ve had washed, not the new ones.”

Assad opened the Rumi book and began reading.

‘With the Beloved’s water of life,

No illness remains.

In the Beloved’s rose garden of union,

No thorn remains.

They say there is a window from one heart to another,

How can there be a window where no wall remains?’

Most the boys had a confused look on their faces. “Sweet cherubs, you have no idea how the pleasures of a woman can turn your heart. Understand, some of you have been sent by parents who know you might become martyred. ‘How can this be?’ you say. The woman gives to you the baby you send off to war.”

One of the boys sitting toward the front, his best and brightest pupil, turned around behind him. “Answer the teacher,” he demanded of the crowd. He was the one they all feared. Assad knew he would make a great leader because he did not care for feelings, which helped with some of the difficult decisions.

“So, Ari, you tell them then.” Assad nodded to the pupil.

“I have felt the calling of a woman. What the poem is saying is that as your loins increase, as you swell and ache to join, it is a false sense of duty and loyalty.”

“Exactly! Ari has stated it perfectly. How can a window exist where there are no walls? In other words, they have merged, become one. This is a very dangerous concept.” He held his finger to the air, stressing the point. “There is only one calling. There is only one love greater than all others; it transcends the limits of the flesh.”

Assad walked over to the side, looking out over the green rolling hills of the farm they’d rented. The land in Tennessee was beautiful. Lush and greenish gold this time of year. It was as if Mother Earth, as the hippies in America called it, was ripe with abundance, distracting her people from their true calling. It would be easy to fall into the beauty of this land, to lie in her arms and explore her valleys like he would a lover.

“The temptations are greater here. But so is the opportunity. The Americans are weak people. They trust everybody. They don’t like to ‘make waves’ as they say it.” Assad knew they enjoyed when he spoke English idioms. His eyes rolled as he pretended to be a surfer on a surfboard somewhere in the ocean he’d never seen.

The students chuckled, similar to what he’d remembered as a schoolboy at his mother’s skirts. Again, his breath was taken away at the purity of their thoughts in face of the hell he was going to ask them to create. They’d walk into the blast furnace of their cause with a smile on their faces, willingly. And Assad knew that every time they would do this the Americans would be afraid. They grew weaker with each new bold confrontation. He wanted them not to feel safe in their land of milk and honey, wanted them to think everything was falling apart, as it would one day. They blamed their own police, everyone in charge. Soon, they’d be running in the streets like the band of thieves they really were. Selfish, beaten down by a soft belly and a lifestyle that didn’t prepare them for the blood that was coming.

“The girls you will meet will want to learn things about you. You can smile and pretend to be shy. American girls love that. And let’s face it,” he said with a shrug, “it’s true. You
will
be shy. You will see and hear things you’ve been told you are not allowed to see and hear. It will be difficult for you to sit next to all the pretty girls in their halter tops and skin-tight short pants. Their parents allow them to look like prostitutes. Even the nice girls do it. Some of them are embarrassed by what they wear, yet they do it anyway.”

The boys whispered amongst themselves, adjusting their prayer robes.

“So you pretend you are a shy boy from Syria. That there was no future for you there and you must come to the States to live with relatives. You will read them these love poems.” He held up the little book. “And they will fall all over you for them.”

The consensus of agreement was there. The school uniforms had been purchased; not real uniforms, but jeans and American Keds, sweatshirts, plain tee shirts, and even black hoodies for each boy to help them fit in. They weren’t allowed logos at the school, so Fatima and the ladies had been careful to take along one of the mothers who volunteered at the school and was their liaison.

“Teacher, I wish to ask a question.”

“Okay. What’s up? Please stand and face me when you ask a question.”

Young Sami scrambled to stand. “If it is wrong to read Rumi back home, why isn’t it wrong to read Rumi here? And wasn’t Rumi a believer? My sister told me—”

“Your sister? Your sister reads Rumi?”

“No, Teacher, but she told me Rumi lived nearly a thousand years ago. At one time, it was considered scholarly to read Rumi.”

Assad held up his book. “You think this is scholarly?”

Let the lover be disgraceful, crazy,

Absentminded. Someone sober

Will worry about things going badly.

Let the lover be.

“You think it is responsible to let yourself go like that? To fall into the clutches of a woman who lets you fuck her, over and over again, until you are crazy? That is the stuff of whores, Sami. That is an addiction to the flesh. You must be addicted to God and to his people. There is no greater good.”

“But we are to break the teachings here. You are instructing us to do something we could not do at home.”

“Correct. Because these girls you’ll be meeting are not worthy of the air they breathe. In that sense, Sami, you are allowed to cull them from the population of this land so we can claim it for our kingdom. That makes all the difference.”

‡

J
ameson rode behind
Lizzie’s car outside the Nashville city limits until they came to a modest neighborhood of smaller homes on average-sized lots. It was a blue collar neighborhood with an assortment of toys in the front yards like an occasional motorcycle or older RV. The yards were fenced and generally kept simple, but nice. He imagined that most of the people who lived here were at work.

She stopped in front of a yellow home with off-white trim. A pink plastic trike with pink and purple streamers and yellow foot pedals was parked just inside the fencing. A pile of shoes, adult sizes and a few child’s sizes, including crocs, were scattered over the doorstep. Lizzie rang the doorbell, and he heard “Mommy” from behind the door. The window beside the front door was covered by narrow mini blinds with several of the slats twisted, leaving gaps. Jameson saw a pair of brown eyes examine him from one of those gaps.

When the door opened, Jameson came face-to-face with a little angel. Her nearly white-blonde hair was floating out of braids that had ceased to hold the hair at bay. But her eyes were unmistakable. They were his eyes. The same color of aqua, clear and almost backlit. She quickly refocused on her mother.

“Mommy,” she shouted as she leaned forward, nearly leaping from a young woman’s arms into Lizzie’s. She buried her head in Lizzie’s neck and gave her a hug, all the while staring up at him.

Lizzie’s friend eyed Jameson like he was a rare and lethal bug, her arms now crossed. At her side, a toddler of about Charlotte’s age, with chocolate brown eyes and a coffee and cream complexion, gripped her thigh and waited.

“Kendra, this is Jameson Daniels. Jameson, this is my best friend, Kendra.”

Lizzie’s friend didn’t offer her hand when Jameson stuck his out. She scowled at Lizzie. “You comin’ or goin?” she asked as she ignored Jameson without any acknowledgement. He wasn’t used to the frosty reception; but then, under the circumstances, he gave her the benefit of the doubt.