Until You

She brought him to her lips.

The warmth and heat of her mouth enclosed him. He moaned softly and his head fell back.

"Miranda," he said, "sweetheart..."

When he could take no more, he drew her to her feet, undid her robe and fell back with her onto the bed.

"I love you," he said, as he parted her thighs. His voice shook with emotion, then turned fierce. "Will you remember that? Promise me, Miranda. Say you'll never forget that I love you."

"Never," she whispered.

She arched and took him deep inside her, where he exploded and burned with the shattering force of a thousand shooting stars.

* * *

He awoke hours later, with Miranda cradled in his arms. Her hair was spread over his shoulder; her hand lay curled on his chest.

Christ, how he loved her!

He wasn't a sentimental man and he didn't think of himself as an especially romantic one but he'd read his fair share of poets and poetry. He knew all about love and the power it was supposed to have to transform lives, but knowing and believing were not the same thing.

He had never counted himself among the believers.

Until now.

Miranda sighed in her sleep. She shifted in his arms and her hand rose and flattened against his heart.

Despite all the odds stacked against him in this random, unfeeling universe, he had found this woman. Her innocence and her love had healed him.

Conor put his hand over hers.

He had done a lot of things in his life and he'd truly believed some of them to be important for his country. Now, he knew that nothing he'd ever done in the name of survival or even of patriotism, had been worth a damn compared to what lay ahead.

Miranda was a pawn in someone's game. He had to keep her safe from the horror snapping at her heels, and he had to tell her the truth about himself without losing her.

If he failed at either, his life would be meaningless.

Chapter 18

John O'Neil, Detective-Sergeant, NYPD, Retired, sat in his high-backed chair and watched the flickering shadows on the screen of his television set.

The set was a Sony, a new one, and he'd paid a lot of money for it, but the reception was piss-poor. He'd called Crazy Howie's, down on 34th and 6th where he'd bought it, and after a lot of back-and-forth they'd finally sent over somebody to take a look. The guy had poked, and prodded, and taken a shit-load of readings with an Ohm meter as if he was a doctor taking its temperature, and then he'd shrugged and said there wasn't a thing wrong with it that moving it away from the window wouldn't cure.

"Too much light on the screen," the guy had said, and put his ropy arms around the Sony, and John had said, what do you think you're doing? "Movin' it over there, back against that wall," the guy said, as if he was doing him a favor, and John told him to leave the damn thing alone, that he was perfectly capable of moving the TV himself if he wanted to, which he didn't.

"Yahoos," Detective-Sergeant John O'Neil, NYPD, Retired, muttered as he changed channels.

Every TV he'd ever owned in this apartment, forty years worth of them, had stood over there, against the wall. What was wrong with a little change every now and then?

"Not a thing," he said, answering his own question, "not a damn thing."

This way, with the set and his chair beside the window, he could catch a breeze as the weather grew warmer. He could see down to the street, too, if he wanted, watch the kids playing stickball or whatever it was kids played today, see the young mothers sitting on the stoops, warming their round bellies and their babies under the spring sun.

Not that he watched what was going on for pleasure. No way. The street had changed, most of the Kellys and O'Briens and Guardinos gone now, giving way to names like Cruz and Rodriguez. Well, he was staying. He'd lived here the better part of his life and he'd be damned if he'd leave.

It was still okay here. Safe enough, even clean enough. Al Brady, who lived in 2G, said it was because people on the block were working to keep it that way but that was just because he was pushing what he called the Block Association. Truth was, John O'Neil was the reason things were all right on this street. Everybody knew he'd been a cop, knew he still gave a damn about doing

things right. It was one of the reasons he'd moved his chair here, by the window.