The rain stopped overnight after one last hurrah. The downpour woke me and I lay listening to the retreating thunder until the rumble faded to near silence. I realized then I could hear the quivering softness of Zita’s breath. She slept in the crook of my arm.

In the final flashes of lightening coming through the eastern bedroom window, I admired her beauty. My lips slipped closer, kissing the hair from her face. Daybreak would not come for another few hours but the sun had already begun to radiate the warmth of my day in her flushed cheeks.

She smiled, sharing a fleeting dream between us. Was she thinking of me? It didn’t matter. Whatever made her happy was all I could want. That inviting smile lured me more than once through the heavens with willing desire.

Her bare breasts rose and fell with the slow wind whispering through the dark night. I kissed her forehead and the end of her nose. Her face moved with my touch. She pulled me tighter with an arm across my chest then settled again.

“Why are you awake?” Her voice was faint. I wasn’t certain I heard her.

“Thinking.”

“That’s a dangerous proposition for you.” She smiled and raised up over me. Hair covered my face. Her searching mouth found its way to my lips. “Let me distract you a little,” she said. There was that smile again.

Zita’s kiss warmed my skin. The heat burned through to the bone, to the sinew, to my imaginary soul and I began to see the white light of heaven’s stars. I visited every one of those sparkling pinpoints with her that night in the back seat of a red, drop-top Cadillac. With fingers laced and bodies twined, the engine purred, stretched, strained then asked for more.

The pools in her deep blue eyes washed away the doubts, the misgivings, the disappointments. I was clean again, drenched in naked sweat, immersed in her arms, and drowning between her legs. She was my sun, my moon, my life, and my death whenever she might want it. There was nothing else but sweet delirium.

Our modesty slipped to the floor, tossed aside with the sheets. I lay next to her, near collapse and begging for another kiss, knowing it would be the joy that killed me. Her smile urged me closer, replacing all thought with a yearning for only her.

Ignoring a wavering out of body feeling from total exhaustion, I reached for Zita as the phone rang. She gave me a wet kiss and answered on the seventh ring. Her face turned serious as she listened. She handed me the receiver.

“It’s for you, darling.”

“Hello?” I asked, more than a little confused.

“Did I wake you, lover boy?” It was my handler from Fort Meade.​

​London Bridge is Falling Down Excerpt 6

​The Hollow Man     |     The Hollow Man Series, International Espionage​

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