Cliff Ryder - The Finish Line

As he watched the nude, writhing, sable-haired woman rock back and forth above him, Harry Vaughn could scarcely believe his luck. Ah, the fringe benefits of being a radical environmentalist, he thought, trying to hold out as long as possible, to prolong their lovemaking until the very last second.

Her long locks falling over her face in a black curtain, Marlene leaned over and kissed him hard, nipping his lip in the process and making an animalistic growl rise in Harry's throat. Pulling back, she laid a slender finger against his lips. In the dark hours of the fog-shrouded London evening, they had to be quiet, lest they wake any of the other half-dozen mates of his cell crammed into the flat they had rented at Edgar House.

He felt the familiar pressure in his loins, and clenched his pelvic muscles, gritting his teeth as his hands cupped her breasts. While Marlene wasn't quite as well endowed as Harry would have liked, she had a coiled intensity that more than made up for what she may have been lacking. He'd certainly seen it before. It was the certainty that they might be arrested or even killed at any moment while preparing for and carrying out their mission. With that knowledge came the belief that every moment of freedom was precious, and should be enjoyed to the fullest before they went out to spread a plague through London's city streets. Harry himself had likened them to modern-day samurai, exhorting his comrades to fear neither the police nor death itself, as long as the mission was completed. That Japan's medieval warriors were often totally subservient to the state was a fact he was careful to omit during his carefully honed speeches.

Although his rhetoric was sometimes greeted with amused scorn, Marlene hadn't scoffed or sneered, just regarded him with those smoldering, dark brown eyes that had made his groin tighten as he had returned her steady gaze on the first day they had met. As the elder statesman of the group, which had formed under the loose auspices of the leaderless Earth Liberation Front, he had sat back and watched as the younger men, filled with their self-important nattering, had tried to gain her affections ever since she and her brother had joined their cell about two months ago. The lucky ones had escaped with only their egos bruised. One young man had been so embarrassed after his failure that he had quit the group entirely.

Harry had simply bided his time, waiting for the right moment. It had come three weeks earlier, when she had visited the room where he stayed alone, by virtue of being the leader, in the early hours of the morning. She had come by every few days since, and they had kept their relationship private by mutual consent, not wanting the others to labor under the dividing sting of jealousy. The mission was all that mattered.

He heard Marlene's ragged breath quicken as she leaned back again, her slim body settling on his thighs, and he increased the tempo of his thrusts, exulting in the small stabs of her nails on his skin as she rode him toward climax. Their coupling grew more rhythmic and frenzied as Harry, unable to contain himself any longer, bucked and arched beneath her, wanting her to come, as well. Even with the condom she'd insisted on, she made him climax faster than any other woman ever had.

Throwing her head back, Marlene's breath hissed out between her teeth as her body shook in a long, shuddering spasm, completely lost in her own pleasure. At the same time, Harry felt that familiar white light explode behind his eyes as he also trembled in release. With one final jerk, Marlene leaned forward to collapse on him, her chest heaving.

"Goddamn, that was amazing." Harry kept his voice to a whisper as he stroked her hair. He had been with many women in his thirty-eight years. The eco terrorist gig had always been a magnet for women — whether they were somewhat naive university students newly committed to the cause, or older women slumming while providing funds to fuel their low self-image. There was just something about the outsider, the rebel, that drew them like cats to clotted cream. Fortunately, both of us usually end up purring afterward, he thought.

She rolled off him with practiced economy and burrowed under the sheets, one hand snaking out to the cluttered nightstand to grab a crumpled cigarette packet. "Bloody hell," she said.

She tossed the empty pack on the floor, eliciting a frown from Harry. Unlike the more radical members of their group, he knew the value of a shower, and liked to keep his quarters neat, one of the last byproducts of a stint in the army in the late eighties before he'd gone AWOL and dropped off the government's radar completely.

He turned to her, resting his head on an elbow-propped hand. "I wish you wouldn't do that."

"Tell you what — I'll pick it up if you be a dear and run to the corner to get another pack, love." Her sultry voice never failed to send pleasurable shivers down his spine.

"First you shag a man till he can barely stand, then you want to send me out into the cold night air just so you can have a fag." He laughed quietly.

She ran a hand beneath the sheet and up his leg, her nails sending tremors of delight through him. "If you hurry, maybe it'll get your blood pumping again — and I'll still be here in this nice warm bed, waiting for you."

Harry leaned over and kissed her, relishing her eager response to him. "You drive a hard bargain, lass."

"Hopefully it won't be the only thing that's hard in a bit," she teased.

Rolling out of bed, Harry strolled to the bathroom, where he disposed of the condom in the toilet and wiped himself down with a warm washcloth. After toweling himself off and brushing his teeth, he dressed in the bedroom, pulled on boxers, pants, a T-shirt and a rugby shirt. He felt Marlene's eyes on him all the while. When he finished, he turned back and leaned over her, kissing her one last time, his hand stealing below the sheet to cup a last feel of her breast.

"Mmm, minty." She arched into him, her fingers caressing his stubbled cheek.

"You wait up for me now, eh?" he said.

"I won't move a muscle until you return. Then we'll see if you can move me again like you just did."

"Count on it." With a wink, Harry walked out of the bedroom, closing the door behind him.

The room opened into a narrow hallway with two other wooden doors along the left wall, and an ancient staircase leading down on the right. Other than the high-pitched, nasal whistle of Aron's snoring, the rest of the flat was dead silent.

Harry crept past the closed doors, one of which opened slightly as he passed. With a grin, he eased it closed — that was where Marlene had come from in the first place, where she slept with Raynie. Staying close to the side of the staircase to avoid the creaky boards, he tiptoed down to the ground floor, and, after slipping into his battered jacket and equally worn pair of Doc Martens, he ghosted out the front door into a world of white.

Wyvil Road was wreathed in evening fog, the thick mist cooling his face as he walked toward South Lambeth Road. It was so heavy he could barely make out the small dead end where truck drivers often parked for a smoke or a cup of tea on their break between runs. Squinting, he made out a high-sided delivery van, its engine off, tucked into the small alcove. With a shrug, he continued toward the main road.

Harry had been protesting a bit too much back in the bedroom. He actually preferred walking around when the detestable city was quiet and still, not filled with the frantic scurrying of the hundreds of thousands of people running to and fro through their mindless, media-saturated lives. He knew the majority didn't give a tinker's cuss about what they were doing to the planet they were slowly trampling over, choking into polluted, smoggy submission and overdeveloping into extinction.