“There again they might force you into another marriage with a Palestinian thug loyal to their cause, depriving our side of a valuable negotiator. Just the thought of another man so much as touching you makes me want to hit something.” Raoul sent her a searching look. “Or someone. Damn it, Cantara, can’t you see, you’re being played?”
She left Zeke and walked over to Raoul, reaching out a hand to touch him. Raoul hastily moved out of her range. Both of them were hopelessly addicted to her touch and couldn’t think straight the moment her fingers made contact with their flesh.
“Don’t go, darlin’,” he said bleakly. “Don’t leave us.”
“I have no intention of leaving you, Raoul, or you either, Zeke.” She shared a smile between them, her eyes misty with tears. They didn’t return that smile, knowing they hadn’t persuaded her and had no choice but to watch her walk off, most likely to her death. “They won’t try and hold me. They know it will cause more problems than it will solve if they do.”
“You’re making the mistake of assuming they’re rational thinkers,” Zeke said, shaking his head.
“She won’t listen to us.” Raoul sighed. “Okay, babe, if you absolutely insist upon being involved in this madness, then Zeke and I will have your back.”
“No!”
Raoul flexed a brow. “I beg your pardon?”
“No, I don’t want you putting yourselves in danger.”
“But it’s not dangerous, according to you,” Zeke pointed out.
“Not for me, so much, but if two Yanks gets caught in the occupied territories—”
“This is not up for debate, Cantara. The only way to stop us is by not going yourself.”
“That’s not fair.”
Raoul glowered at her. “And you’re the epitome of reasoned argument?”
“Please, let’s not fight.” She held up her hands. “We’ll all do what we have to do, and there’s nothing more to be said. There’s a few days left before I need to leave. Let’s make the most of them, starting with something to eat. I’m famished. Sex always gives me a ravenous hunger.”
Zeke and Raoul locked gazes, shrugged and pulled on their shirts.
“Come on then,” Raoul said, holding out a hand to her and sighing. “Let’s get you fed and watered.”
The following days were a blur of activity. Cantara was locked into long briefing sessions with intelligence gurus, telling her precisely what to do and say in every given situation. Raoul grunted when she related some of the stuff they’d told her to expect. She was risking her life and they were treating her like an idiot. Go figure.
The guys kept fit, training until they dropped, determined not to lose Cantara because they didn’t measure up physically. In between their respective duties there were frantic bouts of love making, sweet, poignant, and brutal all at the same time, loaded with emotion because they all felt, but did not say, it was important to make every second count.
Cantara became reckless. She wanted to make love outside, on the training course, virtually beneath the noses of the perimeter guards. And so they did. She wanted to lean over the pummel horse in the gym and have her ass whipped, aware that anyone might walk in at any moment. Raoul and Zeke obliged her. She wanted to be fucked in the deep end of the swimming pool. No problem.
They were incapable of denying her anything, and she appeared to know it. No further time was wasted trying to talk her out of the mission. She was as fiercely determined as ever to go. Raoul seriously considered forbidding it. He knew she would listen to a direct order, but she would also never look at him in quite the same way again. He had fallen in love with a reckless, passionate, yet deeply determined woman whose wings he could never bring himself to clip, no matter the consequences.
“This is it,” he said when the three of them woke early on the day of the mission. Significantly, they did not make love. “Last chance to change your mind.”
Cantara kissed each of them. “I can’t,” she said quietly, slithering out from between them and heading for the shower. Neither man joined her there.
She was in the bathroom for a long time. When she emerged she was wearing a long, loose dress that completely covered her arms and legs, concealing her figure. Raoul didn’t need to see her body. He had committed every curve, every precious dip and hollow, to memory. She wrapped a long scarf—a hattah—around her head, mostly concealing her hair, but still looked as sexy as get-go to Raoul. He and Zeke had used the second bathroom to shower and dress and were both wearing long shirts, belted to indicate they were working class Palestinians. Their pants were loose and they wore long coats over the ensembles. With their tanned, bearded faces they looked just like average Palestinian men, especially when they donned keffiyehes—traditional male Middle Eastern headdresses held in place by circlets of rope known as agals.
No words were exchanged but there were tears in her eyes as she fiercely hugged each of them. They took turns to kiss her, still not speaking. There was nothing more to be said. They left the apartment and Cantara was swallowed up by the intelligence people offering her last-minute instructions. The guys checked their weapons and prepared to leave the compound. She was to catch the public bus to the agreed point where she would be collected. Raoul and Zeke hopped onto a rusty motor bike that looked as though it was about to expire, but its souped-up engine would get them out of just about any trouble they were likely to encounter.
It might well need to.