The Ajax Protocol

CHAPTER 38

Nick and Selena lay in a tangle of sheets looking out through the tall windows of Selena's bedroom, open to the warm, tropical night. The room was in the front of the house. Nick could see the dark shape of the extinct volcano rising at the other end of the island. Sheer white curtains around the windows fluttered in a light breeze. The moon was up, shedding a pale silver glow over the dark jungle interior of the island. Two tall palm trees formed silhouettes against the starlit sky outside the window. The room was warm after the heat of the day. It smelled of sex and sweat and Selena's perfume.

Selena nestled against him. She ran her fingers over the ridges of scar tissue on his body, where shrapnel from the grenade had torn into his side.

"It looks like a romantic postcard," Nick said.

"What does?"

He gestured at the open window. "That. The moon, the palm trees. All that's missing is violins playing somewhere in the background."

She laughed. "Postcards don't play music."

"Some do. You know, Happy Birthday, John Philip Sousa, things like that."

"I don't think Sousa is quite the right mood," she said.

She moved her hand across his chest, feeling the solid muscle underneath, the puckered scar on his shoulder. "I wish this could last forever," she said.

He almost said nothing ever does but caught himself in time.

He buried his face in her hair. "Mmm," he said. "You smell good."

"Passion flower shampoo," she said. "It's supposed to drive men wild."

"I am man, I am wild," he said. "You have driven me there. Now I must ravish you."

She laughed. "You sound like a bad line in a pirate movie."

"Isn't that what wild men do?"

"What?"

"Ravish. You know." He leered at her and pretended to stroke a mustache.

"I think you must read romance novels when nobody's looking," she said. "Nobody says ravish anymore."

"When I was a kid, I heard an actor say ravish in a movie. I thought he said radish. I couldn't figure out what he meant."

She began laughing. He grinned at her, pleased.

After she'd stopped laughing she was quiet, suddenly serious.

"Don't you get tired of this?" she said. "Doing what we do?"

"I don't know if tired is the right word. Look at what we deal with. People who don't care about anything except power and control, who'll do anything to get what they want. I don't get tired of trying to stop people like that."

"It seems like there are always people like that," she said.

She got up out of bed and walked naked to the window. Nick looked at the way the moonlight fell over her body, the way it made shadows under her breasts, the curve of her buttocks. He could make out the thin scar near her spine where the doctors had operated after she'd been shot in Mexico. There was something otherworldly about the way she looked in the moonlight, like a visitor from some magical realm. He felt his heart skip a beat.

She's so beautiful.

He wished he could keep this moment from changing, this timeless, moonlit vision. It came to him that he could no longer imagine life without her, not a life he wanted. With the thought came a touch of fear that he could lose her.

He couldn't let that happen.

Nick got up and walked over to where she stood looking out at the Caribbean. A night bird cried somewhere in the darkness. He stood behind her and wrapped his arms around her. His heart was pounding.

"Selena," he said.

She heard something in his voice. She turned to look at him.

"Selena," he said again. "I love you."

She looked up into his eyes. "I love you, too."

"Marry me. Will you marry me?"

Oh my God. He's asking me to marry him. What about children? He could get killed. A cascade of thoughts flooded her mind. She let out a deep sigh.

"Nick…"

He waited.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, I will."

He kissed her. "Come back to bed."

There was something different about the way they made love, something more intimate, more familiar.

Later, Nick fell asleep. Selena lay awake for a long time.