Chapter Thirty-two
“So now what?” Rose asked.
“We stay away from the windows, don’t turn on any lights. Is your phone off?”
“Yes. For how long?”
“Right now, it looks like tomorrow afternoon.”
“Oh. So we…sleep here?” Fear clouded her expression. “Not knowing when those men might come back?”
Maji shook her head. “I’m sorry. I should have said. There’s a team watching the building, perimeter sensors in the lawn and on the roof. Nobody’s coming in.”
“Well, then. Anything else I should know?”
“Yeah. It’s going to get pretty warm around sunset.” Seeing that Rose was waiting for her to explain, Maji did. “In case somebody’s out there using thermal imaging to see if we’re in here, the building has infrared blocking. Basically, the walls warm up to mask our heat signatures. So we don’t have to spend the night hiding out in the shower stalls.”
A wicked glint appeared in Rose’s eyes. “Are we allowed to run the water?”
Maji stone-faced her. “You can use the locker room if you need to.”
“Wow,” Rose said. “You really lose your sense of humor when you’re scared.”
“I’m not scared,” Maji snapped. “I’m on duty.” A cough that sounded suspiciously like bullshit sounded in her ear. “Dev,” she said, “shut it or lose it.”
“May I use Hannah’s computer?” Rose asked.
“No. No electronics, including the microwave. I can find a pack of cards.”
Rose did not look amused. “Really. We have fourteen hours alone, and you want to play cards?”
Maji ignored the comments coming through her earpiece, not wanting to tip Rose to their encouragement. What did they know? “Yes. Let’s sit in Hannah’s office.”
Rose indulged her in a game of gin rummy. Maji asked her about life in an Ohio college town and smiled and laughed in the appropriate places, while monitoring the comm and trying not to think about how she’d manage to keep her distance the entire rest of the night. Maji wasn’t sure Rose understood that if she made a serious move, her resolve would shatter.
“What about you?” Rose asked after about an hour. “Can you work for Hannah while you’re a Reservist?”
Maji raised a finger to her lips and switched her transmitter over to listen only. “What do you mean, work for Hannah?”
Rose looked taken aback, by her tone if not the question. “Well, you clearly work for Paragon sometimes. Don’t you?”
Maji closed her eyes. The CD—dammit. “Just the once. And I’d rather not discuss it with the guys. Actually, I plan to finish my master’s. That’s as far ahead as I can handle, right now. And I’d like you not to talk about that when they can hear, either. School is under my real name.”
“God, it’s complicated to be you.” Rose sounded sympathetic, not snarky.
Maji sighed, accepting the unpleasant truth stated with such diplomacy. “Not usually. Work and home never bumped into each other like this before.”
“Right,” Rose said. “You can turn that thing back on if you like. We can talk about me all night—I’m an open book.”
Maji nodded and made a show of turning the transmitter back on. “There might be a paperback in one of the lockers if you’re sick of talking.”
“I don’t get tired of talking with you,” Rose said. “But I am thirsty. Is it getting warm already?”
Maji checked her watch. “Starting to. Follow me.” She got up and led them across the hall in a quick, low crouch. Until it got a bit warmer, they should probably stay in just the office and the locker room.
They gulped down a series of little paper cups of water. “Just how warm will it get?” Rose asked.
“Perfect for hot yoga. Not so much for sleeping.”
Rose stripped off her gi top and hung it in her locker. She handed the tracking fob to Maji. “Here. I’m going to wet down.”
While the water was running, Angelo came onto the comm. “Rios. Just FYI—I came out to Ricky. So you’re off the hook. Knock yourself out.”
“What the fuck, Ang?” Was he trying to get himself killed before the Fourth?
“I needed to get Sander out of here. If Papa Bear gets wind of today’s attempt, he might do something rash. So I’m on a mission, but you—you just take a night off.”
“Ang—”
“We’re putting you on alarm-only, Rios. See you tomorrow. Out.”
“Wait!” But it was too late. Dead air.
“Everything okay?”
Maji turned and saw Rose, wrapped in a towel but glistening all over with droplets. “Um, yeah.” She swallowed. “Fine. Here,” she handed Rose her T-shirt and gi pants. The bikini underwear fell to the floor, and she blushed.
“I’m not putting those back on,” Rose said, holding out one arm as if to catch a breeze. “Evaporative cooling. Do you think it’s dark enough yet to chance the kitchen?”
To hell with staying in the locker room. “Yes. If we stay toward the wall.”
Rose stopped in the kitchen doorway. “Should we close the blinds?”
“No. No changes to how the dojo looks every night. We don’t know if they had it under surveillance before today.”
“Oh. But what about the windows? Surely they aren’t heated.”
“Nope. An IR device can’t get a good reading through glass. Just don’t turn on any lights.”
They gathered a picnic-worth of food by the glow of the streetlights and carried it into Hannah’s office. There they could eat without concern for anyone registering their movements through a window. Rose retucked her towel several times before the desk was set for supper. “You should try this,” Rose said. “It really helps.”
Maji nodded mutely. Rose in just a towel was interfering with her speech center. “Stay here,” she managed.
The tepid water washed away the day’s sweat. Despite Rose’s advice, Maji pulled on a clean T-shirt and workout shorts. She felt too exposed as it was.
Rose gave her a smile and popped a cold grape into her own mouth. “Try these,” she said. “No, wait.” She plucked one from the bunch and stepped close to Maji. “Close your eyes.”
Maji didn’t.
“I promise not to grope you. Come on.”
Maji closed her eyes and felt the chilled grape brush her lips. She opened them and sucked the grape in, catching just the tip of Rose’s finger with it. She waited until Rose had all her digits safely back in her own control and crunched down. The sweetness filled her mouth as she watched Rose watching her.
“Another?” Rose said with a wicked smile.
Maji shook her head. Her legs trembled from adrenaline, taking the cue from her brain to run. If Rose touched her again, she was done for.
“Are you okay?” Rose’s eyes shifted from teasing to concern. “Oh,” she added, touching her ear with a questioning look.
Maji fought the urge to lie, to let Rose believe they had an audience, to play to her sense of propriety. Instead, she took a deep breath and slid behind the desk, safely out of reach. “Alarm-only,” she replied.
“No voices in your head?” Rose asked. “And they can’t hear us.” She took in Maji’s discomfort and distancing behavior. “You don’t want a night alone with me. I get it.” She pulled her towel tighter and headed for the door.
Maji watched her go. Rios, you pendejo. She crossed the hall to the locker room and reached to push through the door. A memory of rushing through the back door of the diner to confront Rose’s kidnappers flashed through her mind. Maji froze. She hadn’t been scared then. Why now?
The door opened and Rose stood there, in gi pants and a T-shirt. Looking cross. “Excuse me.”
Maji leaned her outstretched hand onto the doorjamb, not blocking but not retreating either. “I’m not playing you. I just can’t do this to you.”
“What is it you think you’re doing? If you don’t want to spend another night with me, that’s between you and you.” Rose crossed her arms, letting the door swing back toward Maji, toward closing her out.
Maji stepped forward enough to catch the door, but still not crowd Rose. “I’m in no position to offer more than a couple of nights. I know I would want more than that, and I’m guessing you would, too.”
“Well, as my grandmother says, never guess—always ask.”
But asking would yield an honest answer, and Maji could not bring herself to find out what it would be. “It’s just, settling for a hookup doesn’t seem like you.”
“Before this summer, I would have agreed with you.” Rose paused, still frowning. “But then, before I met you, I’d never invited a stranger home. That wasn’t like me. Between playing make-believe at home, fighting men with guns, training to…well, I don’t know what I’m like anymore. I played my whole life safe up until now, and where did it get me? It turned me into an ivory-tower mouse. And that is not who I am. I could be another Vandana Shiva, for all I know. If Hannah sees it, maybe I should, too.”
Finally some safe ground. “You could do anything, be anything you want to be.”
“Except be in love with you.”
The words felt like a punch in the gut. “I can’t. You’ll…” What, Rios? Get hurt? Hate me?
“Tip my hand? Do something reckless, and get your friends killed? I’m not Iris, Maji.”
To hear Rose speak her name felt achingly bittersweet. Maji closed her eyes. “No. It’s not that.”
Rose grasped her hand and leaned a shoulder on the open door, propping it so Maji could let her arm go and just hold on, hand in hand. “So tell me what it is.”
“I can’t.” Not tonight, not next week, not even after Angelo was gone.
Rose gave her hand a squeeze and held her gaze. “You have five languages I don’t understand a word of. Try one of those.”
“If I could tell you everything, I would,” Maji began, in Farsi. “I would tell you about my work, about my fears, about how badly I wish I’d met you before I gave my life to the Army. But I can’t. I can’t even tell you why I can’t tell you. All I own anymore is my thoughts—and I’d give them all to you, if I could.”
Rose gave a soft tug, no harder than a dance lead, and Maji stepped into her arms, clinging fiercely with her face buried in Rose’s neck. She wanted to cry, or scream, but all she could do was vibrate silently, inhaling Rose’s warmth.
“Sh, it’s okay,” Rose murmured, stroking the back of Maji’s head. “No one’s making you do anything you don’t want to. Let’s just try one night without fear.”
Without letting Rose go, Maji pulled herself to her full height, nearly as tall as Rose, and lost herself in those deep brown eyes sparkling with golden flecks. Still in Farsi, she said what she’d been afraid to admit, even to herself. “I love you.”
Rose might not have understood the words, but the intensity of them took her breath away. She cradled Maji’s face in both her palms and kissed her deeply. When they came up for air, Maji murmured more indecipherable words and peeled Rose’s shirt off, running her hands over her bare back as they kissed again.
Before Rose even realized that she had walked backward toward the sinks, her backside pressed into the counter. The memory of what she had wanted to do that first night in the kitchen hit Rose, and she slid her hand up under Maji’s shirt, pulling it over her head. She ran her hands over Maji’s hard shoulders and corded back muscles, and reached the waistband of those infuriating little shorts. Rose slipped her hands inside them, finding no barrier to Maji’s hot skin, and cupped her butt, pulling Maji tight against her. Feeling increasingly feral, she broke their kiss and nipped Maji’s neck. “Naked. Now.”
Maji took a half step back and shimmied her shorts off, then reached for the drawstring to Rose’s pants. As they whispered to the cool tile floor, Rose reached again for Maji, looking her in the eye. Maji growled out an untranslated phrase, some kind of demand.
“Yes,” Rose said. Whatever Maji wanted from her—yes.
Maji crouched slightly and grabbed Rose by the hips, boosting her up onto the counter. She ducked one shoulder under Rose’s knee and lifted her other foot up, letting it rest by the sink basin. Then she slid one arm around Rose’s hips and leaned in. Rose gasped at the first touch of Maji’s mouth, and the second, and…the feel of her fingers, teasing. Rose braced her foot against the sink and hung on to the towel dispenser, her naked back against the mirror. “More,” she managed.
Within seconds, Rose stopped making words altogether. What she shouted, even she couldn’t decipher. And then she laughed, overwhelmed by the rush of pleasure and the absurdity of writhing on a restroom counter. As Maji started to kiss her belly, Rose grasped her shoulders and levered herself up, wrapping both legs around Maji’s waist.
Maji gave a deep-throated groan of satisfaction and buried her face between Rose’s breasts. She sucked one into her mouth and caressed the other, then rolled the nipple hard.
“Maji!” Rose arched and reached for her fierce lover’s face, finding her eyes.
The alarm in the green depths surprised her. “Hurt you?”
“No,” Rose answered. She took two calming breaths while Maji waited, concern and desire warring in her eyes. “No more countertops. I want you in the shower.”
They tumbled into the nearest shower stall, leaving the curtain open. Rose backed Maji up against the wall, pinioning her arms over her head while she explored her neck, her clavicles, her breasts and ribs. The warm water sluiced over them both. Rose sought Maji’s mouth again, but set her arms free, their fingers entwined. “Open,” Rose breathed into Maji’s ear.
Maji pressed one foot against the far wall of the shower enclosure and nodded, seeking her mouth again. Rose sucked Maji’s tongue into her mouth and slid inside her incredibly sweet, hot wetness at the same time. They cried out against each other, the kiss breaking and reforming while Maji thrust her hips to meet Rose’s hand, undulating slow and steady. Rose could feel Maji holding back, savoring the connection while the tension in all her muscles rose. She wrapped her free arm tightly around Maji’s waist and whispered her thumb over her lover’s clit. “Reach for it, baby,” she whispered in her ear.
Nearly nose to nose, they breathed each other in, dancing in place. Maji’s eyes held Rose’s, yielding and slightly glazed. Rose pressed a little harder. “Reach for it.”
Rose felt herself coiling up inside as Maji tensed all over and finally cried out, “Rose! Oh God, Rose.” She looked a bit shocked as she pitched forward. Rose caught her, holding her fast.
Rose kissed her tenderly. Her own legs started to tremble. Maji’s arms on her back moved in slow circles, and the kiss grew deeper. Rose reached blindly for the knob and shut the water off.
“Out?” Maji asked, still seeming almost disoriented.
Rose nodded, smiling. Every nerve ending from her scalp to her toes tingled. But it was the effect she had on Maji that gave her the euphoria. That, and maybe a few endorphins, too.
“Hungry?” Rose asked, handing Maji a towel.
“Ravenous.” Maji felt her lips twitch.
Rose raised one eyebrow, failing to hide her satisfaction. “For food.”
“That, too.”
They patted each other dry, on track for supper until Maji began licking moisture from her neck. The hunger returning to Rose’s eyes inspired Maji to pull her close. Maji stepped back as Rose leaned in to kiss her, and the changing bench touched one calf. Maji sank onto the long, narrow wooden bench, pulling Rose onto her lap, across her legs. Rose shook her head and stood.
Maji looked up, letting her disappointment show. But then Rose looked down and smiled, putting a hand on Maji’s shoulder to steady herself. She stepped across the bench with one foot, leaving the other between Maji’s legs, and lowered herself back down to face her properly. “I like to be able to see you,” Rose said.
As Rose slid her gaze down Maji’s body, through the space between them, Maji fought the impulse to pull Rose’s hips tight against her own. Instead, she brushed her fingers along Rose’s cheek, her neck, her shoulders. She lifted one of Rose’s breasts to her mouth, sliding her other hand to Rose’s back for support as Rose arched in response, with a small sound of pleasure.
Rose didn’t speak, just reached both hands behind Maji’s head and slid her fingers into the thick strands of hair, working the braid loose. Rose pulled Maji’s head back and gave her hungry mouth an exquisite teasing with her tongue. Maji heard herself whimper, an admission of wanting so keen Rose responded by delivering her whole mouth. Rose’s hips rolled against Maji’s thigh, moving of their own accord.
Maji slid her free hand behind Rose, bringing the other around to the gap between them. At the touch of her hand, Rose’s pelvis tilted forward, seeking. Maji broke the kiss, looking Rose in the eye. The need there shook her, not because she couldn’t meet it, but because she didn’t trust herself to hold back when she did.
Trembling with the effort of restraint, Maji slid three fingers slowly inside the lush wet silk, glorying in every sensation until the base of her palm met Rose’s labia. Rose pressed hard against her hand, and Maji curled the fingers inside her. Rose moaned loudly in response, and Maji nearly came just from the sound and sight of her pleasure. As the nearly unbearable sweetness swelled inside her chest, Maji thrummed her fingers against the tender spot deep inside Rose.
Maji kept her eyes glued to Rose’s, the most beautiful sight she’d ever beheld, until Rose’s head rolled back, and she crushed Maji’s face to her chest. Although nestling between Rose’s breasts was delicious in and of itself, air was in short supply. Maji made a sound against Rose’s sternum, and Rose loosened her hold. Maji sucked in a lungful of warm oxygen and smiled up at her.
Rose placed little kisses all over Maji’s face, laughing softly. A thought about six weeks of foreplay occurred to her, but they were bathed in sweat, and “You are so salty,” came out instead. She licked the base of Maji’s neck, heard a deep moan rising up, and felt Maji’s hand flex, still inside her. The immediate wave of pleasure rocked her sideways, and she felt dizzy.
Maji moved slowly, holding Rose steady while she drew her hand out, sending aftershocks all the way to Rose’s toes. The sweetness of Maji’s touch and the tenderness in her eyes made Rose tear up.
“Okay?” Maji asked, her voice matching her eyes and touch.
“Perfect,” Rose said. “And hungry.”
They helped each other stand on trembling legs, sliding against each other as they kissed some more. Rose started to press into her, forgetting all of her body’s other needs. Maji wobbled, the backs of her legs hitting the bench, and every muscle in her glorious physique hardened, bracing to keep them both from falling.
Rose stepped back, pulling Maji with her. Maji followed her to the sink, where they stuck their mouths under the taps and drank deeply. Maji took her hand, and they walked to the showers in silent agreement. Rose turned on a tap and stepped in, pushing Maji toward the shower next door.
When she stepped out, rinsed and refreshed, Maji handed her a towel, holding it at a safe distance. “Food next,” she said.
Rose wrapped her towel around her chest, matching Maji. If that was all the English she got from Maji tonight, it would do. They headed back to the picnic in the office, beaded with cool clean water and leaving a trail of damp footprints on the hallway’s warm linoleum.
The grapes weren’t chilly anymore, warmed with the room’s artificial heat. But the juicy flesh felt just as succulent, and they silently fed each other, smiling at the shared recognition of holding back—for now. They managed to consume some nuts and a few hard-boiled eggs, plus a whole pitcher of iced tea Maji fetched from the fridge. And then Rose gave Maji the look, and let her towel drop.