Two Out of Three

Avi tugged on her hand and she rose, following him farther up the hillside to the caves they had seen. The heat was getting to both of them despite the sun's descent and the lengthened shadows, and they had to stop and sip their water often. The darkness of the caves was inviting. Inside one, Avi led her to one of the wide benches carved into the walls on either side. He pulled her head to his and kissed her mouth deeply, then lifted her hair and planted small kisses all the way down from behind her ear down the column of her neck to the left clavicle, then moved to her right and repeated the process in reverse. She closed her eyes, lost in the touch of his lips.

"I have wanted to see your breasts again ever since I first saw them in Avdat," he said. "May I?"

At her looking around, lingering to the front of the cave where others might wander in, he whispered, "There aren't going to be many tourists coming up here at this time. The day trippers are on their way back to the buses, and it's getting to be cocktail hour for the others who're staying the night."

She nodded, and let him push her shirt up and over her head. The contrast between the warmth of his hands, long fingers spread out on her ribcage, and the cool air moving around the cave made her draw in her breath. He sat down on the bench and pulled her between her knees, pushing her bra up and releasing her full breasts.

She looked down as his mouth closed on one nipple, standing prominently to attention, caressed by his breath and his swirling tongue. His touch became more forceful and he switched to teeth, gnawing on the swollen nubs of flesh he held. When the pain became sharper, he closed his lips around the areola and sucked while his teeth still gnawed on the nipple. She arched her back, pushing her breast farther into his mouth.

"Ahhhh," she moaned, and he released one breast and moved to the other. "Avi!"

He released her second nipple and rubbed his nose in her cleavage, pushing her breasts together, using his tongue to lick the sweat that coated her. His hands ran down her back, thumbs pressing into her spinal cord. When he reached the elastic waistline, he looked into her eyes, looking for an answer to his unspoken questions. She gave it to him, and he slid the skirt down around her thighs, past her knees, and helped her feet out of it. He wrapped his large hands around her thighs, bringing her mound to his nose, inhaling deeply.

She felt his shudder as he drew in her scent.

"Oh, Val! You are so wet, so slippery! I love your scent," he said, inhaling her again as if he was sucking in life-giving water.

He used his tongue to lap up the juices that had run down the inside of her thighs, first one and then the other, and buried his nose into her pussy, pushing her panties into the cleft between her swollen labia. She couldn't restrain the movement of her hips pushing her pubis into his mouth, and he suckled her like a wild man through the silky fabric that was sopping wet from her juices.

When he pushed the fabric aside with his nose and rubbed her mound downwards, reaching her clit and going back and forth, up and down, she moaned loudly and ground herself against him. He slid her panties down and spent a few seconds sniffing them deeply, eyes closed and nostrils flaring broadly, then returned his mouth to her mound.

Val looked down at the top of his head, running her fingers through his soft curls and pulling him to her harder. His tongue had insinuated itself between her labia and she felt his saliva mix with her own viscosity, the tongue shoving deep into her as his hands, spread wide on her ass, pulled her into his mouth, against his teeth, pushing his tongue as deep as it could possibly go.

"Please, Avi!"

"Please what?" he managed in a rasp.

"Please... suck my clit."

Avi grinned, teasingly: "With pleasure, my dear."

He then lowered his face to her glistening cunt and proceeded to suck on her, at first tentatively, then more and more desperately as he began to savor her taste and texture, flicking her clit with his tongue back and forth. He sucked to either side and licked her above and below her swollen, prominent clit, shoving his tongue into her again and again. Soon he added his hand, those long elegant fingers she remembered from when he'd helped her with her BCD, and which had held the weight of her breasts, probed her deep, his firm touch making her suck air in between her teeth.

He looked up at her briefly, seeming to register her half-closed eyes and the bucking of her hips, now much more insistent. And as he continued sucking hard on her clit and pumping his fingers in and out of her pussy, she dug her fingers into his shoulders, not knowing how hard was too hard and losing the ability to care. His fingertips grazed her G-spot and his thumb rasped against the top of her vulva, and she suddenly felt the inexorable climb and clenching of her muscles and the spasms that took her over, delicious and uncontrollable.

She held onto him, every muscle clenched as the spasms peaked and then, slowly, began to subside. She took his head between her hands and kissed his lips, nose, and eyes, keeping her own eyes closed. She sucked her own juices off his mouth and nose and chin, letting her mouth express every wild and wanton feeling and thought she'd had since she'd last been fucked by a man. When the picture of Josh came to her, she opened her eyes and looked into Avi's. His were much darker than Josh's. He was not Josh. Josh would never again be with her like this.

"Avi, I want you to cum in me. I want you to take me, hard!"

She tugged on his arms, encouraging him to stand. Her hands trembled and she fumbled with his waistband and belt until, taking pity on both of them, he undid the buckle for her. As her hands pulled down the zipper of his army fatigues, she felt the hard shaft pressing against her. He was completely naked underneath, and she didn't resist the impulse to take her in her fingers, slide down in front of him, and run her mouth and chin in the soft curls surrounding the base of his cock.

He had a long, shapely cock and her mouth watered as she touched it gently with her nose and lips. When she finally wrapped lips around it, he groaned and let her pull him more deeply into her mouth. She ran her tongue along the long vein that led to the small notch at the base of the helmet, and sucked him in again and again, her cheeks tight against his shaft. But she didn't want him to cum in her mouth, not the first time.

She stood and turned and, stepping forward, she propped her hands on the bench in front of her and looked at him over her shoulder.

"Cum in me, Avi. Take me!"

"Let me pull on a condom."

"Are you clean?"

"We get tested regularly. I am clean, darling. Are you sure? Are you clean, are you protected?"

She nodded and turned away from her, bending her head forward and rubbing her ass cheeks against his cock. She felt him probing her with the head, moving his cock up and down against her vulva, becoming slick with her drippings.

"Please, god!"

He slid his cock into her, a smooth entry, while she, head thrown back, squeezed him with her cunt's muscles, sucking him even farther into her. He began the timeless rhythm in and out of her, his cock setting the walls of her cunt aflame as he filled her perfectly, the head scraping against her G-spot and his balls slapping against her ass. She could no longer tell whether he was pulling her or she was pushing into him, and they fell into a perfect dance in which they moved together, stroking in and out. At his deepest, he rubbed against her cervix and she screamed like a wild animal.

"I'm cumming, Val! Please, please, cum with me, I can't... I can't hold back!" and as he erupted his seed into her, her cunt closed on him and she joined his spasms, magnified. She felt completely filled by him and with him.

He relaxed his head against her back and his arms embraced her, strong and tight and needy. As his cock slowly slid out of her, his seed spilled out of her, running down her legs. She turned and sat on the bench, leaning her head and back against the wall. He crouched in front of her, and leaned his head on her thigh, mouth near her cum-filled cunt. When she felt his mouth move again towards her cunt, she moved her hips towards him.

"Avi..."

He put his lips on her labia and sucked the mixture of his juices and hers into his mouth, the suction arousing her and bringing on another spasm. Then he raised his head to her and smiled, and she lowered her mouth to his. They shared their fluids, thick and salty, a slight tangy aftertaste she couldn't assign to herself or to him. When they ran out of air and had to break off the kiss, they looked into each other's eyes and were lost.

"Come sit next to me," she patted the bench next to her. "Thank you."

"Thank you, Val."

His hand loosely around her waist, he pulled her head to his chest and they relaxed, feeling and listening to their heartbeats. She thought about how comfortable and relaxed she felt around him. Just like she'd felt with Josh. Strange, she thought she might have felt guilty, as if cheating on Josh's memory. Avi was definitely Josh, no mistaking the two. But Josh would have liked Avi, she was sure of it, and would have approved.

"So, I hate to break the mood, but I'm starving. Lunch was a little rushed," he chuckled.

"Yes, I hear faint rumbles that may be coming from your stomach. Come to think of it, me too."

"There are two restaurants near our hotel that are really good."

"What kind of food?" she asked.

"One is sort of French-Lebanese. The other serves awesome seafood, brought fresh over from Aqaba. We're not that far here. That's why it was such an important trade route."

"Hmmmm... which one is better?"

"Well, I love seafood. Can never get enough. What about you?"

"The French-Lebanese place sounded kind of interesting. Not what I normally get."

"Then we'll go there!"

"But you wanted seafood. I love seafood, too. Tell you what. Let's do rock, paper, scissors. That's how we'll decide."

She felt him stiffen under her. "What's wrong?"

"No, nothing. Let's do it," he said, and held his hand between them.

When he won the first time, she asked, smiling, "Two out of three?"

Waiting for their food in the French-Lebanese restaurant, they sipped their wine and relaxed, exchanging chit-chat. Avi had entertained her with stories of army life, and she had reciprocated with funny stories of her family and her job. When it came, the food was elegantly served and delicious, and Val relaxed even more. The date sorbet served with honey and nuts completed the meal. As she was finishing her dessert, Avi pushed a letter across the table to her. The envelope was addressed to her, in Josh's handwriting.

She took the envelope and turned it over, noticing the open flap. She flicked at it and looked up at Avi.

"How did you get this, Avi? Did you know Josh?"

He nodded. "He was in my unit. We'd worked together. He was there all the time, while I'm in service only one month out of the year these days, and on call as they need me. We'd become close friends. He confided in me sometimes, looked up to me. I guess because I was older."

She touched the envelope again. "Why did this not get to my family? Why do you have it?"

He hesitated just a few seconds. "That letter was for you alone, Val. He wanted you to see it, not your family."

She had noticed his hesitation, and gave him a hard stare.

"Avi, how did he die? We never learned any details."

Avi looked down at his hands, then up at her.

"I'd like you to read the letter first, Val."

"OK. But not here."

He paid for their meal after insisting it was his treat. Val, eager to leave the restaurant, gave in. They walked back and she found a bench outside their hotel, sat down, and held the letter in her lap for a while, silent. The scent of night-blooming jasmine wafted through the air from the pots of flowers on the porch. Avi leaned on the wall nearby for support.

She looked at him, his tall frame comfortably poised, arms crossed in front. According to the psychobabble she'd picked up, his stance was associated with people hiding something. She wondered how true that was, and if it might have to do with her and her cousin. She looked back at her lap and finally took out the single page, written front and back in Josh's sloping and nearly illegible script.

My dearest Valerie,

You have been the most precious thing in my life, my closest friend, my most ardent lover. But I couldn't stay in the US with you - it was never home for me. And I couldn't make you see how much I needed to return home.

I had to come back and replant myself here. It wasn't about us, my love. I never doubted that our families would come to terms with us and our love for each other, even if some among them would have been angry with us at first. I never thought our love was wrong. More than anything, I feared that you thought that.

My dearest, I returned to pay back a debt I felt I owed, to my father, my family, even to you. To make this place home. And perhaps, in time, a home for us.

I have only ever loved you, and will love you always.

Your devoted Josh.

"You read it?" she asked, not looking at Avi.

"Yes, I did. He gave it to me for you, right before he left on his last mission. He wanted me to give it to you in person. He wasn't sure he'd make it back, and he wanted you to know how much he cared for you. But nothing about his last mission was made public, and neither of us could have mailed it. And anyway, I really had to meet you in person - give it to you directly. His last wish."

"But you had no way of knowing I'd come."

"The colonel knew. Your aunt wrote him that you might show up. He mentioned it to me because he knew we were close, and that I'd be down there about the same time."

"And you had no idea what I looked like..."

"Well, I sort of figured it out during the car trip to Eilat. You look quite a bit like Josh. Even Dov, the guard at the military compound in Eilat, remarked that you looked very familiar when he saw you. I thought about it, looked up some of his pictures, then looked at his file and family. I knew your name, so I Googled you. I put it all together pretty easily."

"Why didn't you give me the letter during the diving trip? Or tell me you knew Josh?" But even as she said it, she knew the answer.

"That was my intent. Then Ylva's epileptic seizure made that impossible. I stayed with her at the hospital until she got over the hump. Then the cops wanted to make sure it wasn't my fault, or the captain's. And check whether something was wrong with the tanks. Anyway, I felt responsible for that whole episode."

"Why?

"I should have said no, that she couldn't dive. But she begged me so much. She's always being told "no". She said she'd been seizure-free for over five years, which is what the docs recommend."

"So you couldn't talk to me then. So you arranged to follow me here?"

"Val, all of the tourbuses to Petra are accompanied by teams from our unit. It's part of our job down here. I just told the colonel that you were going, and explained a bit why I needed to talk to you."

She looked at him long and hard.

"Avi, I still don't understand. Why did you need to talk to me? You could have easily tracked down my address in the States."

"Yea, I could have. But I worried about just mailing it. Listen, Val... in the last few weeks before leaving on that last mission, he became listless. Dragging around, not talking to anyone much, never going out with the rest of unit. It was really unlike him, at least for someone like me, who knew him so well. I tried to get him to talk. He did a bit, about home. About you."

Avi took a deep breath and continued, slowly, looking into her eyes.

"And Josh died cleaning his service weapon. That is pretty damn unlikely for someone so used to doing that, like we are, day in and day out. So unlikely that some think Josh committed suicide."

Val didn't recognize the wail that came out of her chest, and it was seconds before she realized he'd gathered her in his arms, and that her head was tucked into his chest, which muffled her screams.

"Shhh, shhh, shhh. Val, oh Val."

"Do... do you think that?"

"I don't know. I really don't know. It's not such an uncommon accident, when you look at the stats. But he was careful and experienced. The only thing I can imagine that would drive him to it is that he was really depressed about something. I really don't know what. It could have been something else, having to do with the mission. At any rate, how could I tell you any of that by mail? I knew how much he loved you, and he'd read me a couple of your letters. I knew how much you loved him."

She could barely get enough air into her lungs to keep breathing, and her voice came out distorted by tears and anguish. He somehow managed to lead her into the hotel and up to their room. He'd held her for what seemed like hours as she alternately cried and fell into a light sleep. Each time she awoke, he was there, his arms tight and warm and comforting around her.

Eventually she ran out of tears for herself and for Josh. Until she thought about them, his making love to her in the cave in Petra, releasing a new bout of tears. Was that real? Had he done it as a way to insinuate himself into her good graces? Atone for something? That didn't make sense. Finally those tears subsided as well, as she decided that only time would give her the answer.

It was already the early hours of morning, dawn barely peeking through the thin voile curtains, and she got up to visit the bathroom. When she came back, he was awake, looking at her and making sure she was all right.

"Avi, we better get some sleep. Which side of the bed do you want?"

"I don't care. How about the one closer to the window?"

"Rock paper scissors. Come on." She won the round.

He threw up his arms in mock exasperation.

"Two out of three?"

The end.

~~~~~

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