The Edge of Courage (Red Team) by Elaine Levine

She walked to the edge of the porch, looking sweet and feminine as she leaned against the support beam.
    “Thank you.” He told himself not to notice the way the light hit her hair. “For feeding me.” For the sunshine. The work. The place to be. Her eyes met his. “You sure I can’t kill him?” He grinned at her.
    Her eyes widened. “I mean it, Rocco! That’s not funny.”

Chapter 7
    Rocco stood in the narrow shower stall two days later. Hot water sluiced down his back. It did little to ease the tension gripping his neck and shoulders thanks to the night’s virulent dreams. He lifted his face into the sheeting streams of water.
    Despite the sun and the work, the meals with Mandy, he lost a little more of himself every day. What pieces remained of his soul jangled against each other like the unglued shards of a broken pot, more apart than together.
    A vision of wispy, gold-red hair sifted through his mind. Big, green eyes. Mandy. He couldn’t see her or think of her without heat slashing through his body. The meals they shared in the evenings were a blessing and a curse. He ate because she would sit with him, chatting about lots of things. Nothing. The wind. Kitano. The progress of the construction. It didn’t matter. Her voice flowed through him like a river. His source.
    Thank God she wasn’t a mind reader. His thoughts about her were never pure. He listened to her, watched her, all the while wondering what her voice would sound like as she straddled him. He would feel her laughter, her breathing. Her life would be a jumper cable to his, feeding it energy, strength. Life.
    He ached to hold her, to draw her into himself. To pretend for a short while that he was whole. That he could feel something. Anything.
    He opened his eyes through the streaming water. His dick stood at a right angle to his body, wide and thick, pointing straight toward the wall. He touched himself, felt his balls tighten even more. He slipped his fist over his rigid cock, slowly, imagining her mouth moving over him, those soft, pink lips parting, taking him deeper, deeper into her throat. He hadn’t been blown in almost a decade. He’d lived the chaste existence of an unmarried Muslim while undercover. And once he was married, oral sex wasn’t an acceptable practice.
    Ah, God, Mandy. She would look up at him with those enormous green eyes, her mouth full of his cock. Rocco’s nostrils flared. He shut his eyes, seeing her kneel before him. He pumped into his fist. In his mind’s eye, he was easing deeper into her. Pulling back. He soaped his hand, making his grip slicker, moving faster. Harder.
    He’d make her go to all fours, lifting her sweet entrance up toward him. He’d slip into her, easing in deep, feeling her sheath grab him. Then he’d take hold of her hips and slam into her, pumping, pumping until he felt her small muscles grab him, milk him, force him to release.
    As he thought it, his semen shot out, sluicing in hot jets into the water that now ran cold. He leaned his head against the wall of the shower, feeling a long, long way from sated.
    Nothing about him was right.
    Wasn’t that what had given him away? He’d been married for four years to the daughter of a powerful Afghan warlord tightly aligned with the Taliban. It had taken three years to infiltrate her people, but once there, it had been so easy to catch her eye, to find himself in her circle, to be accepted by her father. He’d paid the bride price of forty goats, ten cows, and five RPGs. They’d married in a long ceremony. He’d thrown himself into the act, giving her amorous looks and secret smiles. People saw what they wanted to see. He wanted them to see two people in love, a rare enough situation in a country so ravaged by war.
    Kadisha had been promised to another before him. Ehsan Asir. Asir was a power-hungry zealot who’d worked hard to earn a spot on the Taliban’s top leadership council, beneath GhalibHalim. Asir was furious when Halim broke his