Page 71 of Whisper

“You want this?” David breathed. “You want me?”

Kris saw the spark of hesitation, of fear, in David’s eyes. He reached for David, his hands on David’s hips, pulling him closer, tighter, as if they could melt into each other’s bodies then and there. “I want you, David.”

David shuddered, his eyes squeezing shut as he drew in a breath, as he pressed into Kris. Had anyone wanted Kris before? Truly wanted him, like everything in David wanted him?

Finally, David’s lips brushed Kris’s, a tentative kiss, so unlike their bruising clash at the base of Tora Bora. Their lips caught, stuck, clung together. David tasted him slowly, like Kris was made of honey and David was tasting his soul. Kris had had hundreds of first kisses in his life, from high school to college and beyond, hundreds of kisses at parties and before one-night stands, with men he’d wanted and men he didn’t care for. No one had ever kissed him with the tenderness of David’s touch, the intensity of his desire. Kris shivered, shook. His knees went limp.

David caught him. Their bodies aligned in just the right way.

“The ambassador used to live here,” Kris gasped. “His apartment is on the top floor.”

They kissed their way up the stairs, bouncing from wall to wall, pushing each other back and molding their bodies as one. Hands cradled faces, jaws, wrapped around waists. At the top floor, they started stripping, shedding mud-spattered jackets and dusty sweaters. In two months, they’d never seen each other’s skin, had never seen beneath the contours of a thick sweater. Kris’s bare skin puckered as the cold air hit him, his thin chest contracting. David was there instantly, wrapping his arms around him, pressing his furred chest to Kris, a primal connection completed when David closed his lips over Kris’s again.

Their bodies had changed. Kris had come to Afghanistan slender and waifish, his strength always of the lean variety. Weeks of mountaineering and combat missions had molded his upper body, given him strength where he’d never had any. David’s strength had ebbed thanks to the weeks in Tora Bora, the deprivation and harshness eating away at his reserves. Bruises and scars marred his skin from impact blasts, slides down the mountain, times when he’d had to duck for cover when al-Qaeda had fought back, sent their artillery raining down near David’s position. His body was a map of the war. Kris’s hands roamed, covering every mar, every battle, as if he could heal him with his touch alone.

The ambassador’s apartment had been left unused since Dubs’s assassination. They kissed their way into a time capsule, a replica of the late ’70s, dust-covered and forgotten. The windows were slim, near the ceiling, only to let in light. No one could see as they shed the last of their clothes, boots, pants, and briefs. No one saw Kris pull David on top of him, into the ambassador’s bed. No one saw David slide onto Kris, cover him completely, begin to rock against him, like he wanted their atoms to merge, like he was trying to disappear within Kris’s being. Like he was the ocean, coming in for Kris’s shore.

David lay between Kris’s legs, his head pillowed on Kris’s chest, ear over his heart. Kris’s hand stroked up and down David’s back. They’d made love until they’d thought they would die, until Kris had thought he’d combust, explode, become a star in the heavens.

Outside, the sun had dropped beneath the mountains, and the last rays of light sent long shadows through the thin windows ringing the room. Kabul hummed beyond the empty embassy, car horns and wagon wheels and donkey snorts mixed with shouts in Dari and Pashto.

“Does this come with us to Pakistan?” Kris whispered. “Or do we leave this here?”

David’s shoulders tightened. He looked up, his beard scratching against Kris’s chest. Kris tried to lock down his emotions, shield his heart. Tried to throw up walls behind his eyes, just in case.

“We both have experience loving and leaving, I think.” Kris tried to smile. He recognized in David the same love-them-and-leave-them style he’d had back in America. Ships passing in the night. The rush of combat. Adrenaline, close quarters. Too much had happened, too fast, and they needed to burn through it somehow. “If this is just what it is, I understand.”

David’s chest rose and fell, his breath quickening. He pressed a kiss to Kris’s chest, over his heart, and spoke into his skin. “I don’t want to stop.”

Relief was physical, the unclenching of Kris’s heart, the rush of giddy joy, the way he squeezed his fingers into David’s back, nails biting into his skin.

Smiling, David slid up the bed, tangling his legs and arms around Kris. He tugged a blanket up with him, a dusty wool cover, and snuggled close. “I don’t ever want to stop this. Us.”

“I had no idea,” Kris said, turning to face David. He propped his head on one elbow. “I never thought you were gay. You confused me. But I never thought—”

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tellis the law of the land. I can fight and die for America, but they can’t handle me loving another man.” David shrugged. He laced his fingers through Kris’s, stroked his thumb over Kris’s knuckles. “I’ve lived my life like a kaleidoscope. If you look at me one way, I’m the Army Special Forces soldier. Stern. Solid. American.” He chuckled. Kris grinned. “But I’m also Arab. Muslim, in some part of me.” He swallowed, squeezed Kris’s hand. “And… gay. Even though no other part of me can accept that. It feels like I’m different people all in one body, and I don’t know how to be everyone equally, or if I even can.”

David pressed his forehead to Kris’s, turned those burning, starlight eyes into Kris’s soul. “When I am with you, I feel parts of myself come together. Parts I thought couldn’t ever mix. You make me want to be everything I am. For you.”

Kris couldn’t breathe. “I’m… just—” He was just a kid, a skinny, brown Puerto Rican who had been underestimated his entire life. He was just a side-eyed snort, an afterthought, someone people consistently expected nothing from. Hadn’t Georgejustproven that?

How was he everything to David? When David had become everything to him?

“You’re like a part of me I didn’t know was missing. Part of my mind, or my soul. Like you have the thoughts I haven’t thought yet, feelings I haven’t felt yet, waiting for me. Inside you. You feel like a part of me I’ve been craving.” David’s voice was a whisper, a breath.

“David…” His vision swam. He couldn’t breathe. He cupped David’s cheek. Words wouldn’t come, not through his strangled throat.

“Ever since we got here, things have been upside down. What’s right and wrong. According to the others, we’re here to kill all the Arabs, get revenge for what happened. But I’m Arab. And I’m not saying I condone or understand what the hijackers did, or anything about al-Qaeda, I don’t. Not at all. But I do understand… Arab pain. Muslim pain. Libya—” He hissed, and everything in him tightened. “I saw it in Somalia. And I see it here. There’s this collective pain, this ache, in the Muslim soul. And now I feel the world turning even more against us. Are we supposed to shoulder the collective guilt, the blame for nine-eleven, too? When the Muslim soul is already shattered?” He buried his face in Kris’s neck, shallow breaths warming Kris’s skin. Kris stroked his back, tangled his fingers in his dark hair.

“What do you think is going to happen?” David whispered. “Now, after this?”

Kris chewed on his lip. “This isn’t just a battle to capture Bin Laden, or to avenge the deaths from nine-eleven. Or to get rid of the Taliban to make a free Afghanistan and eliminate terrorist safe havens. Bin Laden spent years building the narrative for this attack. He’s framed his entire movement aroundonehadith from Abu Hurairah. ‘When you see the black banners coming from Khorasan, join that army, even if you have to crawl over ice’.”

David spoke the last half of the hadith with him. “‘For no power will be able to stop them, and they will reach Jerusalem, where they will erect their flags’.”

“The Islamic end times, Armageddon, begins with the fighters coming out of Khorasan, after striking a fatal blow against their enemies. Bin Laden’s declaration of war against the US was signed from ‘Hindu Kush,Khorasan, Afghanistan.’ He’s used the Khorasan hadith in all of his speeches, his videos, his recruitment. He believes, and the people who join him believe, that they are fulfilling the Islamic end times prophecies.” Kris stroked down David’s back, fingers dipping into the valley of his spine, mapping the bones of his vertebrae.

David exhaled. “There’s too much pain. Too much Muslim pain.” He swallowed. “Are you going to stay in?”