Authors: Emma Taylor
“It wasn’t that at all, from the first time I saw you, walking on the sidewalk you enchanted me Melina. Then when you got hit, I came back to save your life. I couldn’t just let you
die
. Then we spent time together and I fell for you, I love you,” I said desperately. I was just trying to make her understand by that point.
“I don’t—I can’t…I need a break. I need some air,” Melina turned to walk inside and I followed after her as she shrugged on her coat and told Jayden that she’d be right back. I started to panic when I realized she was going out there where it wasn’t safe.
“You can’t be serious Melina. You’re going out on the street after what I just
told you
?” I asked her and she brushed me off.
“I’ll be careful not to go into the street, I don’t even have a scarf with me,” she said before she stormed out. I watched helplessly as she walked out.
*****
I went into the kitchen to set the groceries down on the counter. Jayden walked out of his room with a long, thin, white box that had a red bow on the top.
“Where is Melina? I have something for her that I made,” he said with a small smile on his lips. As I stared at the box I knew exactly what it was. The white scarf she was wearing; it must have been why she had such a happy expression on her face the first time I saw her.
“I’ll go and get her, she just went around the corner,” I said and then hurried out of Jayden’s apartment. By the time I got downstairs and outside there was no sign of Melina anywhere. I couldn’t let this happen to her, she simply
could not
die. The sense of urgency I felt was palpable, it saturated the air around me wherever I walked. I circled Jayden’s block three times before I started to branch out to the surrounding four blocks. I couldn’t find Melina anywhere and I was beginning to get desperate. Especially as time was progressing like a freight train down a steady track.
Even though Melina knew about her fate, no matter how careful she was, a variation of the accident would happen again and she
would
die after all. That was how it went. I wondered if I should go back again and fix things in the past.
When I heard a crack of thunder and a flash of lightning that signaled a new wormhole, I realized that I was too keyed up. I needed to calm down. Creating a pathway into the past would not be helpful at that point. It would more likely just make things more tangled.
I kept walking, my eyes in search for red hair and a red coat. I turned a corner and realized that I was at the sports bar. My eyes glanced over to the other side of the street and I saw her. She was upset this time and walking with heavy feet. I felt a brief sense of relief until I heard the roaring engine of a bright yellow Jaguar as it barreled up the street. The guy in the driver’s seat didn’t seem to be paying attention to the road and he was swerving all over the place.
I acted before I could watch what would happen. I created a portal quicker than I ever have before and jumped over to the other side of the road. Just as the driver veered to the right and jumped the curb, I grabbed Melina and jumped just as quickly to my place in Midtown. We appeared in my foyer and she was frozen against me. Her hands clutched my coat with a death grip and I held onto her tight, my arms wrapped around her as we both recovered from the shock and rush of adrenaline that the near death experience brought us.
“Are you okay? Please tell me you’re okay,” I said and Melina nodded her head woodenly against my chest.
“We just teleported…we teleported and you saved my life,” she gasped with blind shock in her voice.
“Yeah…I told you I was here to save you. But I’m not going to leave you Melina. I love you and I want to be with you,” I said.
Melina pulled back a fraction and she looked up into my eyes with her wide blue ones. She studied my face for a long moment as I looked back at her with sincerity.
“I was just scared that…I was just scared that you would leave me once you managed to save me, that we’d amount to nothing,” she said with a shaky voice. I shook my head no.
“I have never told another woman that I love her before, apart from my mother. I don’t say it to you lightly. I do love you Melina and I want to be with you,” I said earnestly and she gave me a watery smile.
“Good…because I love you too,” she said and I smiled from ear to ear.
“Are you sure?” I asked her and she laughed, but then nodded.
“I’m sure,” she said and then I picked her up and twirled her around in a circle before I set her down and pressed my lips to hers. The reality of my having saved her set in and I grew ecstatic.
“You’re alive! We’re here together!” I said enthusiastically. She giggled as she wiped her eyes of unshed tears.
“We are, all thanks to you…I’m sorry I made it difficult though, I shouldn’t have left Jayden’s apartment. I should have stayed inside,” she said with a sniffle and I hugged her again.
“As long as you’re here now, as long as you’re here,” I said.
*****
Melina and I teleported back to Jayden’s place where we had dinner and he gave her the scarf he’d made. Melina absolutely loved it. I respected his ability to make her smile.
After dinner I didn’t want to take any chances. I teleported back to my apartment with her and she sat down in the living room with a ton of questions for me.
“So…how long have you been able to time travel?” she asked curiously. I shrugged.
“I was always able to do it; I just didn’t know how until it just…
happened.
Same thing with teleporting. I was always able to make the little cracks in time, I just didn’t realize it or hone in on it until I was thirteen,” I answered.
“Can your parents do it? Do they know about you?” I shook my head.
“They have no idea…though sometimes when I think back to my childhood I think my grandfather was able to do it. He was always off on ‘business trips’. He always said that I was special, too, that I was just like him,” I said. Melina’s eyes widened a fraction as she took in the information.
“Well not even your parents know, I guess I can’t be too mad at you for not telling me before,” I chuckled.
“I don’t think they would take it well at all. I never told anyone because I was scared of becoming some lab rat, or worse,” I said. Melina nodded thoughtfully and she got up to walk into the kitchen for ice cream.
“So…if we had a baby boy then he’d be able to teleport and time travel like you?” Melina asked cautiously.
“Now that you mention it…my grandfather only had two girls and my mother’s sister only had daughters. And I’m the only child of my parent’s.” I said. “Maybe it’s some weird trait passed on to boys in our family.”
“Interesting,” she said. I watched Melina scoop out some ice cream into a small glass bowl, then put the carton of chocolate ice cream with cookie and brownie dough back into the freezer.
“So what do you think about all this, really?” I asked her. She shook her head.
“I think I’ve overcome the shock and I’m coming to terms with it. After all I’m a little bit stuck with you,” she said as she ate a spoonful of ice cream.
“You’re stuck with me?” I asked and she smirked.
“Well yeah, it’s not like I’m leaving you. I love you, and you did travel back in
time
to save me from dying so we can be together. Right?” I smiled. She was right. Though I hadn’t fully realized it at the time that’s exactly why I went back.
“You read me like a book. What can I say, it was love at first sight for me,” Melina laughed and I watched her finish her ice cream. I wanted to make sure she was done before I threw her over my shoulder and took her to my bedroom. Melina giggled the whole way over and I plopped her down onto the bed.
“I’m so glad it’s Friday, because I don’t think I’ll let you out of here for a long, long time.” I said. She quirked an eyebrow at me.
“Is that a promise?” she said and I smiled devilishly before I attacked her with tickles. Her laughter turned into moans as I pressed the bulge in my pants right against her core and nibbled on her neck. I pushed her sweater up and then kissed the soft skin of her stomach, waist, and hips which were moving restlessly under my hands. I unfastened her jeans and then pulled them slowly down along with her panties. When her clothing hit the floor I spread her legs and then put my mouth against her slick folds.
Melina’s hips moved restlessly as she rubbed herself against my mouth. I flicked my tongue against her clitoris relentlessly and she tangled her fingers in my hair as I worked her towards orgasm. Melina came swiftly and she shuddered as waves of pleasure coursed through her.
We undressed each other quickly. Neither of us could wait to be lost in the other. I spread her legs and then pushed myself into her sweet, warm depths. She clenched and squeezed around me impatiently and I grit my teeth as the pleasure shot through my cock and up from the base of my spine all throughout me.
“Uhh,” I breathed and she squeezed me again. I groaned and began to move, thrusting into her until she was calling out my name. We both came together.
I wasn’t sure how it could have gotten any better with Melina, but it had. As we lay beside each other, spent, I whispered to her.
“So do you want to go to Italy tomorrow after your rehearsal?” I asked and she looked up at me strangely. I gave her a pointed look and realization dawned on her face.
“Wow, this is crazy…we can actually do that,” she said and I laughed at her expression.
“Yeah, we can go wherever you want to go, you name it,” I said and she grinned.
“Then let’s go to Italy tomorrow, I’ve always wanted to see Rome,” she said just before she pulled my head to hers for a scorching kiss. I groaned and she broke the kiss to look at me questioningly.
“Kissing me like that won’t get us to Italy; we might have to sleep in tomorrow instead,” I said, and she smacked my lightly on the chest.
“You know, this means I get to pull out my bucket list of places to visit and you have to take me to each one,” she said. I smiled.
“Yes,” I said.
The End
“You brought me home to kill me?”
“Not kill, whore of a daughter. Execute.”
“How could you do that?”
“With a gun.”
Halah Hussein sat in a chair in the kitchen of her parents’ home. She was tied hand and foot. She had the classic look of the Middle East; slender body, black hair and deep, brown eyes. She was twenty-one years old.
Her father, Amil Hussein, looked like a religious zealot. His eyes had a crazed appearance. His body was thin from fasting more than he should. His hands made people think of claws.
He picked up an AK47 from the kitchen table and shouted, “So shall it be to all harlots! Whores like my daughter, who kept company with unbelievers!” He pointed the weapon at her head and began to squeeze the trigger.
He heard wails of grief from the front room. He stomped in and shouted. “You will stop this at once. My daughter died when she left my home. She is already dead.”
Amil’s wife and the two daughters, who still lived at home, wound down and became silent. Dalal was nineteen years old, and Janay sixteen. His son, Kaseem, stood with arms folded, next to his family. He said, “I tried to tell them, father. They wouldn’t listen.”
“You’re a good son, Kaseem. You make me proud.”
Kaseem smirked at the compliment.
Amil steamed back to the kitchen and, once again, prepared to execute his daughter.
Halah didn’t close her eyes or shrink away. She looked at her father with deep disappointment.
The phone rang. Kaseem answered it then shouted to his father. “Don’t kill her. She has value.”
Amil took the phone from his son and spoke a few words. He put it down. “She lives. Sheikh Abu El Mofty wants her for his own. He will pay us five thousand riyals for her.” He ran back to the kitchen and pointed the rifle at his daughter. “Speak the truth, traitorous daughter. Are you a virgin?”
She nodded. “I am.”
“We are saved.”
Amil made two thousand riyals a year driving an old taxi.
Halah said, “You accuse me of being a harlot yet I am a virgin. You sell me to a man I do not know who will make me a harlot and rejoice. You are not my father.”
Amil slapped Halah twice. “Silence, whore.”
Halah had traveled to the United States a year earlier to escape her abusive father. She studied Foreign Policy at USC. She was a good student, but missed her mother and sisters. She went back home after the other women in her family told her that her father had become quiet and calm.
*****
The Sheikh sent two men to deliver the money to Amil and take possession of Halah.
Amil untied her and had her display herself before them. She held out her arms and turned gracefully in a circle.
One of the men wore a western suit and tie. He had a calm smile. “Very good. Most beautiful,” he said. “Are you are a virgin?”
She said, “Yes. I have never been with a man.”
“That is good. When you live with the Sheikh, you will be required to be in his bed every night. Can you perform well?”
Halah was honest. She realized that she had to please the Sheikh or stay home with her father and die. She told him, “I am truly inexperienced. No man has ever touched me nor made my skin burn with yearning. I will try, but I can’t tell you that I will be able to respond to the Sheikh.”
“We will find out,” said the man. He called for Amil. “Hussein. Come here.”
Amil trotted into the kitchen.
“We know she has an older sister who married a man above her class. We must have Halah witness an act of love between this girl and her husband. We will take her with us. She may ask one of her sisters to go with her.”
Amil interrupted. His voice was the whipped dog to the other man’s lion. “But sir, will this not sully the other daughter? She will see the things that only wives should know, and be worthless for a marriage.”
“We may buy her as well.”
Amil bowed his head. “That is acceptable.”
Halah called her sister, Dalal, into the kitchen.
Dalal shared her sister’s good looks, except that Halah was tall and graceful and Dalal was medium-sized and bouncy. Being the third daughter, she usually escaped her father’s notice. She’d been out with men to clubs and dance halls.
Halah said, “Will you go with me to watch Fadiyah and Jamaal in their bed?”
Dalal smiled. “I will go with you. It should be interesting.”
The man gave Amil an envelope with five thousand Riyals and took the two girls with him. The man made a call on his cell phone. He said, “It’s finished. I’m bringing two women with me right now.” He paused. “Good. Tomorrow night’s celebration will be a success.”
In the car, Halah said, “Do you have a definition of Mr. Right?”
“Yes. I’ll never meet him, but the usual tall, dark, handsome, sweep me off my feet. What’s yours?”
“A man who doesn’t want to kill me, sell me or fuck me. I think my standards have fallen.”
*****
The Navy built the headquarters of SEAL Team 13 in a compound in Fujairah in Saudi Arabia. The third squad of the fourth platoon consisted of six men; a sniper/scout, an explosives expert, two riflemen and a communications specialist. The communications specialist, Tom Walters, stayed at base and managed the use of drones, air strikes and intra-squad communications. The sixth man, Lieutenant James Hostel, ran everything as Commanding Officer. He was a solid, bulky man who seldom smiled.
The squad’s youngest member carried the name of John Steele. His parents hadn’t thought of the effect of giving a super hero’s name to a small baby.
John didn’t look like a super hero. He was just under six feet and weighed 220 pounds. He spoke Farsi and went undercover occasionally. Infiltrators have to pass through a crowd without attracting notice. He’d cut his body fat down to less than ten percent. Muscle takes up less room than fat. Two hundred and twenty pounds on a stocky frame could pass for the body of a normal man if he wore loose clothing and remembered to move slowly. He had brown eyes and dark hair and a face that caused sighs among the women who saw it. He occupied the sniper/scout position in the squad.
The most visible member of the squad was Henry Tilman, nicknamed ‘Nitro’. Nitro couldn’t move through a crowd without being noticed. He stood six feet eight inches tall and weighed two hundred and sixty pounds. Tattoos and scars covered his body. Unless he remembered to smile, his expression could make babies cry from a distance of a hundred yards. He got the nickname from his specialty in explosives.
All of the enlisted men in the squad were between 23 and 25 years of age.
Lt. Hostel saw John Steele walk past and called him into the office. He said, “How are you doing?”
“It’s alright sir, as long as I keep busy.”
“The death of a fiancée is tough to get over. Have you started looking at girls yet?”
“No sir. I know I should but it doesn’t work. Everything reminds me of her.”
Out in the ready room, Nitro read a letter. His face was pale. His shoulders sank more and more. John sat down next to him. He said, “Nitro, are you alright?”
Nitro grunted, pensively. That grunt, if it had been translated from guy-speak, would have meant, “No, I’m not alright. The woman I loved just dumped me. It’s ripped me apart. I’m bleeding all over the floor.”
Lt. Hostel called everyone into the briefing room. “We’ve got work to do. One of the CIA’s assets is in danger in Saudi Arabia. Her name is Halah Hussein.” Lt. Hostel sat at a computer in front of tables and chairs with room for five men. Each seat had a computer in front of it. As he talked, Lt. Hostel brought up images for the men to see. When Halah’s face appeared on the screen, he said, “The CIA recruited Miss Hussein when she was a student at USC. Her father is active in Al Qaeda. She recently returned to her home for a visit. We’ve gotten good intelligence that her return home was due to a ruse carried out by her father. He considers her soiled by her association with the West and plans on killing her. As of yesterday, she was still alive. John will infiltrate to make sure she’s at home. The rest will go in during the early morning hours and extract her. It is vital that we keep casualties to a bare minimum. She can be a good asset as long as she doesn’t resent us for killing some member of her family. We leave in two hours.”
*****
Dalal, Halah and the man in the suit representing the Sheikh took seats on hard wooden chairs in a large closet in a suite in the Riyadh Hilton. The man said, “We sent a letter telling Fadiyah and Jamaal that they’d won a night in a luxury suite in the Hilton. They were last reported as being in a good mood.”
They sat on chairs behind a sheet of black gauze in a large closet in the bedroom. They couldn’t be seen from the room, but they could see everything in the room. The man allowed them to remove their veils in order to see the scene better.
The man in the suit got a phone call and stepped outside to take it. Halah turned to Dalal. “I can’t believe this. My life depends on doing something I haven’t done with skills I don’t have.”
“I’m sorry. It’s not the ideal life for a woman. Here’s a hint. Try to get inside our sister’s emotions. If you can’t get excited, you’ll have to pretend. Do lots of deep breathing and rub your neck and arms. You shouldn’t have to do that. You’ll be alright.”
The man in the suit came back and took a chair to the side of Dalal and Halah.
They heard Fadiyah and Jamaal before they came into the bedroom. Fadiyah’s voice carried irritation and worry. “I know it will fail. It has failed for the last twelve attempts. Why should it work this time?”
Jamaal answered in a reasonable voice, “It doesn’t hurt to try, does it? We have this beautiful suite all to ourselves. No neighbors making noise. No children out on the street who might hear us. It’s perfect.”
Fadiyah stamped her foot. “It’s the same thing every time. All the pressure’s on me, and I’ve failed twelve times in the past. I hate this.” She burst into tears. Jamaal took her into his arms and held her close. She nuzzled against his chest. “You’re a good man, Jamaal. Very patient and loving.”
“It’s my pleasure. I value you. However, you have too many clothes on.”
Fadiyah sniffed and burrowed into his chest. “Hold me a little longer. I’ll be alright.”
Jamaal brought her closer and listened to her sniff and felt her tremble. After a few minutes, she was better.
He said, “Are you ready.”
“Yes. Thank you.”
“If we don’t try, we’ll never succeed. And you’re still wearing too many clothes.”
Fadiyah removed her veil, revealing her face, and smiled. “And so it begins.”
Jamaal Hussein was a distant member of the royal family. As such he could court and marry Fadiyah without Amil Hussein’s consent. Amil wanted to deny consent. He had wanted money for his daughter. He didn’t have the courage to bring it up.
Jamaal’s striking good looks made him quite a catch before he got married. His traditional Saudi robes hid wide shoulders and a muscular chest. He’d gone to school in England and been introduced to rugby. It gave him the muscles to move like a prowling tiger.
Fadiyah put her hands on his cheeks and kissed him. “Shall we make love as graceful and caring human beings or will you take me as a slave girl owned by a prince?”
“Do you want to be touched with delicacy or thrown around, given no choices and taken with almost violent brutality?”
“Before I make a decision, take my clothes off for me. I always like the way you do that.”
“Certainly.”
Dalal leaned over to Halah and whispered, “Which would you like?”
She whispered back, “That’s the problem. I have no idea. What about you?”
“The slave girl and the prince. It gives me a chance to be vulnerable and yielding, and I’d have more control of the man.”
Jamaal removed Fadiyah’s niqab, and kissed her neck. She smiled and tilted her head to the side.
Under the niqab, Fadiyah wore a blouse and skirt. Jamaal pulled her blouse from her skirt, slipped it down her arms and dropped it on a chair. She wore only a lace bra under her blouse. He came around to her front and kissed her again.
He lifted her breasts with his hands. “You’re so beautiful.”
“Thank you. I’m glad you like me.”
In the closet, Halah whispered, “He’s very good at this.”
“I know. He’s handsome too.”
Halah looked with speculation at Fadiyah. “Pretty bra.”
“Victoria’s Secret.”
“Am I supposed to be feeling something yet?”
“No, wait until Fadiyah does. Don’t worry, you’ll do it naturally.”
Jamaal pulled her into his arms and kissed her with passion. She responded happily.
While he kissed her, he unhooked her bra. When the kiss ended and she stepped back, her bra stayed in his hands. She looked down in mock surprise. “Why look, my boobies are out in the air for anyone to see.”