The Perfect Weapon: Chapter 2017: Part 1
NOTE: Part 1 of this chapter is uploaded in three posts.
Chapter 2017: Part 1
“Inshallah,” Yasmina said softly and with sadness as she watched her husband walk away. Go with God. She had urged her daughters inside and had deliberately avoided Daoud so that he would not know that her husband was leaving. He would insist on being there and she wanted to be alone-
“My friend...” Dave said softly. “My heart breaks for your pain.”
“Daoud.” In the midst of her sadness, Yasmina smiled as he stood next to her on the roof. Daoud had known. Of course. He would find a way to know. Stubborn man. She was glad he was here. He understood their people. He understood her husband’s stiff neck and... She slumped slightly, then noticed that the little woman who looked like them but was different - and what she wanted her daughters to have the opportunity to become - was here. Of course. Daoud wanted to remind her of her priorities. As if she needed reminding.
“Nia is here. Do you want her to go to your daughters now? I will wait here with you-“
“I am not going to throw myself from the roof!”
“I know that!” Dave responded. “But sometimes pain is halved when it is shared.”
Yasmina sighed. Daoud knew all about pain. “You are correct, my old friend. I will allow you to stand with me.” She slanted Dao- David - a look.
Dave’s mouth quirked. “Thank you.”
Yasmina nodded and they stood there silently, watching the wind blow sand on a hot day, the sun seeming to bake down on them. Yasmina was glad for the warmth.
Finally, Nia put a gentle hand on Yasmina’s arm and spoke to her in her own language, urging her to turn away. “Yasmina, come inside. It's too hot--”
“He chose to leave us.” Yasmina shook her head and averted her eyes from his ever-smaller figure. He would find some tribe, some refugee camp, and another tent. Just as this Irina had made this tent of stone and mortar to leave her family behind. She shook her head again, noting absently the absence of her burka. Her choice. His choices... She had supposed him fortunate that Daoud - David, Jack, and Irina had not killed him for violating their hospitality. He had been adamant in his righteousness; there was no reasoning with the self-righteous, she thought as the wind whipped his robes around him.
“Yes, I’m sorry,” Dave whispered. Yasmina's husband had chosen to divorce his wife and leave his family to return to a life he valued above them. A lonely and foolish and all-too-common choice, Dave thought, watching the solitary figure walk off into the brown sands to the west.
“Your children will want to talk to you...” Nia whispered. Dave nodded at her and together they drew Yasmina back into the cool shade of the complex.
“Yes, my daughters.” Yasmina straightened her shoulders. She would find a way to make a home for them.
Dave sighed as he and Nia parted outside of Yasmina’s rooms. She was strong and would make a place for herself and her family. A place like this... he mused, looking around the compound. Far too large for a family, really. Far too...much. He knew Jack and Irina had been talking about it. He looked back at the door. He had an idea. He should probably talk about it with Judy first. Where was she, anyway? She had left him shortly after Jack had set off on his wild wife chase and he hadn’t seen her since.
“Where is she?” Dave muttered as he roamed the halls in a methodical fashion, looking for Judy.
“Lost?” Sark asked, leaning indolently against the wall.
“Stand up straight, Juli, and no, I’m not lost. I just can’t find Judy. Do you know where she is?”
“I don’t know, but I was wondering myself about...” Sark nodded toward the floor. “Do you know of any possible reason why there are spoons here and there along the floor?”
“Spoons?” Dave shook his head and impatiently glared at Sark. “Why the hell would I care about the servants’ failure...Wait. Irina would never allow-“
“Quite. The Queen of Hearts and anal compulsive neatness would say, ‘Off with their heads!’ for such a failure.”
Dave looked up at Sark and grinned. “I take it she was just as much of a neat freak with you as she was in real life?”
“Neat freak? Irina Derevko?” Sark smiled as well. “Control freak, I would say. Now, of course, I know why.”
Dave nodded. “Do you?”
“Yes. If she slipped even slightly out of the narrow passageway she’d created for herself then she would have seen the truth.”
“Which is?”
Sark sighed. “Suddenly, I have sympathy for Jack when he tells you to cease analyzing him and asking your damn questions.”
“I’m sure you do. Unfortunately for you, I’m persistent.” Dave crossed his arms over his chest and waited patiently.
“You’re stubborn.” Sark sighed again in resignation. Dave was just as stubborn as Irina. It was easier to give in. “The truth was that she belonged here - not Querencia, per se - but with her family and-“ Sark broke off as something caught his attention past Dave’s shoulder. He bit his lip for a split second and then shrugged nonchalantly. “What about those spoons?”
“Spoons?” Dave asked, his eyes narrowing. He looked down and then turned around, realizing that the spoons led down the hallway toward the area with the cells. “Why are there spoons in a trail, Julian? Do you know?”
“Who, me?” Sark lifted his hands helplessly. “I really need to go see Arezou one more time...”
“Watch yourself with her,” Dave ordered as he speared Sark with a glare. When Sark nodded, Dave turned back to the floor and the spoons. Spoons? Spoons. Why... Oh! Dave’s eyebrows lifted. He’d made a comment or two or twelve, possibly one even in Irina’s hearing, about Judy’s ability with a spoon. Judy and a spoon. Did she have whipped cream? “What the hell am I standing around here for?” he muttered and began to follow the trail.
“I’m quite sure I don’t know,” Sark laughed. “And you do realize you just dangled-“
“Nothing on me is dangling,” Dave quipped, looking over his shoulder with a wink.
Kendall cleared his throat and straightened his tie. “Thank you for showing me your identification. It appears to be in order. Will you confirm verbally that David Caro is your cousin?”
“Yes, David Caro was my cousin, but he’s been dead for nearly two decades!”
“Actually...” Kendall drawled. “No, he’s not.”
“Stop playing games and tell me--”
“He was a POW all these years and ma’am, he’s coming home.”
“I think I need to sit down.” She sat down hard in a leather chair. “Do you...do you have proof of this to show me?”
Kendall reached into his briefcase and pulled out a folder. “Yes. Here is a recent photograph. We recovered him a few months ago, but he was in debriefing until yesterday and...well...” Kendall cleared his throat again. “Here is a letter he wrote you,” Kendall interrupted her spiel and handed her an envelope. “He actually wrote it by hand.”
“No one does that anymore! Doesn’t he have a computer?”
“Yes, but he’s not overly fond of it, unlike you...” Kendall mused, looking around the woman’s high tech office.
She shrugged and ripped open the envelope, rapidly scanning his block-like handwriting. That hadn’t changed. She stopped when she got to the last few lines and pushed her hair over her shoulder and grinned. “Did I save his stuff? Ooh-boy, did I save his stuff.”
“Oh. The chain.” Irina shrugged as she looked up at Jack, lazily raising her hand to examine her ring. “It’s in my pack. One of them. Somewhere. I don’t know if I remem- Oomph!” Irina grunted, then laughed as Jack picked her up and carried over to her small array of cases and packs.
“Find it.” Jack set her down, then gave her a gentle slap on the butt, urging her forward.
“Hmm. Where could I have put it...” Irina began teasingly, hiding her smile. She reached her hands up behind her neck, noting how Jack’s eyes automatically went to her breasts. What a man. Her man.
She unclasped the necklace and bent down to carefully put it inside a velvet-lined case. Sliding the clasp inside the loop, she set the box aside and then bent over and waited. She grinned, hiding behind her hair, when Jack pinched her butt. Pressing his buttons was a wonderful game. But timing was critical, she knew, and pulled the small wooden box out of a case. She waited and heard that little hiss of breath he gave when he was growing impatient. Slanting him a smug smile, she opened the box.
“Finally, Pandora!” Jack complained. He clenched his hands to keep from grabbing the chain and- But no. He would have patience. It was his turn to press her buttons.
“Here’s the chain.” Irina held it in her hands. They both look at the simple links of gold spilling over her fingers. The sun caught the glimmer of the gold and reflected it back onto them, splashing their bodies here and there with circles of light. Irina held her breath, feeling a drop of sweat slide down each ridge of her spine, one by one, as she waited for his response.
Jack finally reached his hand out and slowly took the chain from her hand and held it in his. He stared at it, shifting it in his fingers, watching the light travel over Irina’s body, touching her legs, her hips, her breasts, and finally, her mouth.
"You are the most beautiful woman I've ever known." Jack lifted his eyes to look into her eyes. Did his eyes look as full of love and wonder as hers did? He angled the chain to catch the light again, sending it skimming where his hands and mouth longed to travel. Not yet. But soon.
“What are you doing?” Irina whispered. She touched her fingertips to her forehead, brushing the dampness away as she flushed, feeling as though he had touched her with every flicker of reflected light across her skin.
“I am doing what I want to do.” Jack stepped forward and slid his hand around the back of her neck. Brushing his lips against the base of her throat, he began to encircle her neck with soft kisses, then pulled the chain slowly around her neck. He allowed it to dangle briefly across the tops of her breasts, then slid the warm links over her shoulder. “I will demonstrate to you one last time -- No. Because it will never end between us, I will demonstrate one more time that being bound together gives us all the freedom we need.”
“Freedom.” Irina licked her lips as Jack dragged the chain along her arm. She held it out and watched as he wrapped her wrist with it and dragged the golden circle up her arm and then released it to resume capturing her other arm. “I captured you before...” She whispered, gesturing to the cut ropes at their feet. “To give you freedom.” She smiled up at him, feeling a leap of happiness in her heart that she had been able to give him freedom once again.
“A gift I will always treasure,” Jack whispered in return, unable to resist rewarding the joyful smile on her face with kiss after kiss. “Because only you could have given it to me in just that way...Just as only I can give this to you.”
“What is it, Jack?” Irina asked eagerly, lifting her mouth to bite at his shoulder. “Or, how will you do it?”
Jack laughed softly as he ran the chain across her back and watched her bent head while feeling her teeth leave an impression in his skin. He should get a tattoo of bite marks in that spot. As she looked up with eyes full of emotion, he knew would always feel the impression of her love in his heart. “Still excited to receive gifts?”
Irina licked the marks she had left. Mine, she thought. Moya. “Always. Show me how you would bind us together.”
“With everything in me...” Jack whispered as he circled her again and again, rolling the chain across her skin, the warmth of the day, the warmth of the fire behind them, the warmth of the fire between them making her skin, then his fingers damp and slick.
The chain rolled and wrapped around shoulder and arm, the small of the back, the back of the knee, the inner curve of a thigh, the outer curve of a breast, the sharp point of a nipple, the bow of a lip. The roll of the links across her skin were sometimes sharp, making her skin prickle with awareness, then glow with warmth as his fingertips, alternately gentle and firm, followed the chain along her body. Sharp and sweet, gentle and hard, all within the one man.
The first time she had seen him, the shy young man seeming to belie the coldly confident agent, that duality...The aggressive, demanding lover and the man happily relinquishing control to her. The deadly opponent and the tender father who had melted at his daughter’s pouting face - spoiling her rotten! Yes, all of them in the one man. So many facets, just as there were so many links in that chain. He had always fascinated her, right from the beginning to an ending that never came, not between them.
She raised a shaking hand up to stare at her ring with its three stones. Past, present, future. One of Jack’s circles. One of their circles.
“'The time will come, the time will not be long in coming...” Jack smiled as he knelt before her, gently spread her legs apart and bent his head. Slowly licking her softness and with her strong legs bracketing him and her hands holding him in that tight grasp only she had, he wove another chain of moments and memories around them. “...When new ties will be formed about you--ties that will bind you yet more tenderly and strongly to the home you so adorn-‘“
“Dickens. The Tale of..” Irina whispered, then broke off with a gasp so loud it sent a song bird to flight as Jack’s tongue told a tale of his own. He loved her, he wanted her, he needed her. Nothing else mattered. “But you’re wrong, the time has already come, we are already bound...”
“Are we?” Jack asked, lifting his mouth for only a second, then resuming his exploration of this link between them.
“Yes. We were bound together, in the past, first by others, then...by our hearts. You know that... Oh!” Irina cried out as she began to tumble over and fell to her knees, unable to stand. “Not yet, not yet. Jack, Jack. I want to lie down. My knees were trembling,” she confessed.
“Mine too,” Jack whispered back, before his mouth closed over hers and he gently pulled her down to the carpet, their lips never parting. They both sighed as they reclined and stretched along the carpet and Jack reluctantly lifted his mouth. He sat up and looked down at her, her body gleaming at him, framed by the soft old threads of red and blue, a sight he would never forget. So many images in his head of her, each one he had thought to be the most precious until the next image would burn itself into his memory.
She reached up and touched his thigh and Jack shook his head ruefully, knowing he had begun to get lost in his own book of memories he hoped they would create in the future. He picked up the chain by the clasp and began to drag the other end down her body from the base of her throat, over one shoulder, down an arm, across her hip, pelvis, other hip, up that arm and then she arched her back and levered up onto her elbows. He smiled and took her unspoken cue and trailed the chain across the top of her breast, as they both watched the chain spill over the curve to the underside.
Irina held her breath, convinced the chain was growing warmer and warmer, until Jack moved the links back and forth. She cried out as the chain brushed her nipple and it hardened instantly. Jack moved the chain to the other nipple and gave it the same slowly luxurious treatment. Jack bent his head and licked her nipple, back and forth while brushing the chain back and forth across the other one. Irina arched under him, then lay back to be able to send her hand into his hair, holding him to her.
Irina moaned helplessly at the sheer eroticism he was creating, then moaned again when she opened her eyes and saw his, saw how ensnared he was in the moment. He was as lost as she was but...She gripped his shoulders, then slid her fingers down to his biceps, feeling his strength as he surely must feel the tightness of her grip... Yes.
They were lost and found. Together. Jack blinked away the moisture in his eyes as he saw the tears in hers. “One last time...” He said softly, as once again her circled one foot, an ankle, a calf, a knee, then a thigh with the chain, then the other leg, the lips between, the heart above, the soft plump curves of a woman aside the strength of her heart. The golden links traveled from limb to limb from curve to curve, from strength to weakness, as only a lover could know them. “Only I know you like this...”
“The way only I know you...” Irina responded, knowing it was true.
“I will never let you go. Never. Do you understand that?” Jack asked, leaning over her, demanding her answer, giving her what she needed. “Do you?”
“I do know. I know that you would have chased after me-“ Irina said confidently, looking for a split second toward the pool of water beyond their sight.
“That’s the past.” Jack smiled as she looked up at him, knowing, feeling the circles linking them together, the past binding them, through choice, to the future.
“Yes. And you...you chased after me in Panama,” Irina realized. “And today and...the future. But...I won’t make you chase after me. Because I will never let you go either. Never...”
“Forever...” Jack whispered as he slid down her body to kiss her belly. He bit it gently, over and over, forming a circle around her waist, turning her over and over again until she stared up at him, her eyes wide and hopeful. He kissed her belly again. She arched under him and they both held their breath as he slid the chain under and around her waist. He watched her muscles tremble, then firm to hold herself in place as he pulled the clasp of the chain from under her and wrapped the ends around her. She reached down and pushed his hand aside and held the loop up. Jack held the clasp and together they made a soft, almost silent sound that only they could hear.
snick
“Finally...” Jack breathed, then lost his breath in her mouth as she pulled his head down to her for a kiss that sent him spinning in ever widening circles. Out of control, out of himself, out of...but there she was, her lips and her hands and legs, and her heart holding him together, holding them together. He heard her cry out although she could not have made a sound with her mouth pressed against his, open to his.
He had waited so long. So long. He had lost hope so many years before, had lost faith long before, perhaps. The love had been there, but finally and together they had found everything else, all of the links they needed to form an indissoluble chain of connection between them.
He could never have enough, he thought, as he tugged on the chain. Slowly raising his eyes to meet her gaze, Jack gasped at the heat he saw in her eyes. He wouldn’t need a tattoo or even a ring to know where and to whom he belonged. This time she was not going to let him go, this time she was bound to him as he to her, this time she would catch him, just as he would catch her. His fingers tangled in the chain. “Finally. You are--”
“Mine. Yours. Ours.” She gasped at the intensity in his face and his eyes... and the heat of his hardness against her leg. Why wasn’t he inside her? He was within her heart, in her... But she needed more, needed that physical connection. She felt burned and now, she was the one who felt branded by the power, the sexual heat he was exuding that made her...
“Yes, Jack, yes!” she cried out. “Hurry!” She shoved at his shoulders and slid her thigh across him, pushing and pulling at him as she rolled on top of him as his fingers slid along her soft wetness, sending her flying in an instant, sure only of the feel of his hands, the hardness of his body under hers and the love in his eyes. “Ia tebia liubliu. Moya!” Irina cried out, seconds before biting his shoulder and digging her nails into his shoulders.
“I love you. Mine.” Jack looped a finger under the chain and tugged her forward as he arched under her, ready to lose himself in their oneness as she moved on him, sliding down on him with a slick slide of strength that bespoke a ready need, a need ready to be assuaged, for a moment, but never lost, never again.
TBC at Chapter 2017: Part 1: 2nd post