Our Finest Hour

Our finest hour

Thump!

Doom!

Thump!

Doom!

In the near dark I hold the shivering young woman, my niece, at my side tightly. She shakes with a terror I wish I could let show myself. I fear if I did I would lose the hard won calm I've tried to maintain.

Thump!

Doom!

Dust rains down on us. It's an improvement over the pebbles. I tore pieces of soft cloth from my handkerchief and made us plugs to protect our ears but they are hardly enough.

I can smell smoke and that's hardly the worst smell that drifting down to us here. I wish I wasn't smelling the other things. I wish I could shield her from them. But I can't. I can shield her from the war that is tearing the world apart around us. I can hear the intensity of the bombing grow, or maybe it's growing closer. She holds me so tightly it's painful.

"Easy, love, we will be alright."

I know she doesn't understand, but I hope my even tone is a calm to her.

I move my foot and ensure that the valise is still by my foot. I can't really see that far.

Thump! Thump Doom!...Doom!

Pebbles rain down on us again and she gives a little scream of fear that disappears into the heavy wool of my coat.

"Easy, Colleen. Easy lovely."

Doom!

I listen to the shelling drift away for a bit. I know the second wave of bombers with their tons of destruction will be over head at any time now. Will this be the load that will land above us? Will the gutted building finally collapse trapping us here so deep underground?

I try not to dwell on it as I hold her, it will break my nerves. I must be strong for her. I lean my head down into her hair. I smile when I realize the sweet smell I'm now sniffing is the perfume I brought with me from Washington.

I remember the sweet smile on her face when I was presented to her and I gave it to her. A gift from her uncle all the way from America.

I bury my face in her hair to hide the uglier smells that are growing stronger by the minute.

Her fingers grip my shirt tighter as we hear bombs falling in the distance. I sigh when I hear them growing no closer.

I feel wetness on my cheek. I know she's crying but again I wish I could help and cant. I wish I could speak to her but beyond a few words I can't. Her English is limited to a few words and my French is nonexistent but as the bombs start to drift closer we don't need words between us. Family holding family, fear seeking comfort in the dark. A man and a woman huddled together as the thunder booms.

As water drips from a broken pipe I suddenly have a great deal of sympathy for my cave dwelling ancestors. They had to live their whole lives like this. Deep in holes listening with terror to the unknowable sound of thunder. Was it the gods fighting? They must have thought that.

Doom!

Were gods fighting now? No just men.

Men with the power of gods!

I move my foot on the bag to again insure it safely. I had been a fool to not immediately see to my duty. I was to deliver the news it carries upon arrival. But when I discovered that my family from France had come here to London to escape the war I have made all attempts to find them. My sister, her French husband the niece I've never seen they were here!

That information was only half-right I came to learn. No less than half.

It was only my niece.

I knew her upon sight. She so much resembled my older sister. Her dark hair, those eyes like blue pools of light.

I tried to ask of my sister. I tried to talk to this member of my family I had never seen.

But she couldn't understand me.

Nor I her.

I called the American embassy to see if a man I knew there could translate her French so I could know my sister's fate. He asked me to bring her there at once and why hadn't I delivered the courier package I had, first?""Through hand signs and broken words I got her to understand I needed her to come with me.

Then the sirens, then the planes seen leaving the ground and flying up to meet others far over head.

Londoners pulling us down with them into the basement shelters under the building. When I tried to protest that I needed to get to the embassy they told me to be quiet and live through night first.

I didn't understand then

Now I do.

Thump! Doom!

Yes doom the doom of us all. That was what was upon us now. I flinch as one lands much closer. The rain of pebbles, the shockingly brutal feeling from the floor.

The little scream from Colleen.

I move my face to down beside hers. My lips brush her cheek.

"Easy Colleen..."

Her lips are hard against mine before I know what's happening. One second I was holding her shivering, the next I'm being kissed wildly.

For a startled half second I think to push her away...she's my niece after all. She is near the mirror of my sister.

Then the next bomb lands.

DOOM!

I need then what she is giving. A place to channel the terror. That 's what I am to her and she to me. Just being held is not enough for us then. More comfort is needed. The comfort of warm lips, soft caresses. The distraction of passion fueled need.

Her hands are at the buttons of my shirt then, I feel her fingers in the hair on my chest.

Her back is damp with fear sweat when I slide my hand around her back and under the bottom of her shirt.

Colleen mumbles something to me, even if I understood her language I wouldn't have heard it but when she takes my hand and places it on her breast I get the gist of what she wanted.

Years slip from me then, no longer is my hair gray, my year growing long. It's with a young mans vigor I pull her to me. Her hands leave my shirt, the buttons down to my belt, and goes to her own. I feel when the cloth comes open. She again takes my hand only this time is a warm, much thinner, piece of cloth hat fills my hand.

And much firmer flesh under it than I have gotten to touch in many a year.

As the pebbles fall she moves out of my arms and swings her legs over mine. I'm suddenly straddles and she's back against my chest. Her lips hard and hot, her shirt now open, the bra pulled down and her bare breast pressing into the hair of my chest.

Her mouth is by my ear then.

I would give a lot to know exactly what she say then but the beauty of the language she say it I makes it just as nice as understanding would be

She jumps as pebbles rain. Then her hand is at the opening of my pants. Then, my belts hanging lose, she grabs me and pull me into the open.

"Colleen..."

I moan her name as her hand grips me her delicate fingers tightened by fear.

I feel the warmth of her thighs then under my hands. She's hiked up the skirt and has me between her legs. Soft silky cloth is against my cock It feel warm and wonderful But I know that under it will be a even greater warmth, and even silkier feel.

Working in the dark with hands that shake we mange to find openings in clothes, direct warm hard flesh to meet wet slick openings. When I slide into my sweet niece it's a heaven that makes the hell above without force.

Young and filled with the terror driven passion she rocks herself on me. I try to push up to meet her but then she holding me around the head my face in he chest driving herself down onto me with a almost painful amount of force.

I find one of her nipples in the dark and suck hard on the dark nub of skin. I hear her moans between the thunder

I set mine to joining it.

I wonder as I rock against her, adding just a bit more to each thrust, if this was the way that those ancestors shouted their defiance of the gods that shook their caves? It's what it feels like to me as I thrust harder into this flesh of my flesh, this woman, this maiden of my own blood!

There are no need for words now just grunts and screams. The terror of the thunder, the fear of the gods, the hatreds of their power to make us afraid of them, all these things fall away as the pleasure grow. Exhaustion drives us to slow, sweat makes us wet, need for air brings her and I face to face together.

The kiss then is not hurried but passion driven. Two lovers given unspoken words to their need to be loved by some one even if this is the last time it will ever be felt.

"Carl."

I smile hearing my name said with a French lilt to it. It sounds like some thing that doesn't belong to me.

"Colleen."

"Love ...mea?" her forehead is against mine and her body moves in a slow up and down hardly moving us but feeling wonderful for that little movement.

"Yes Colleen...Wee." I smile as I wonder how horrible my attempts at French must be when even so simple a word must sound wrong to her ear.

Her hands grip my hair.

"Colleen...love Carl. Wee...yes!"

We both jump as the bombs start to fall. They are horrible close. The ground shakes under us painfully. Our ears ring, the very air seems to scream in protest.

"THUMP DOOM!

I clutch her to me and renew the frenzy! I hear her scream through my contact with her chest. No sounds of ours can break through might roar of the gods thunder now But I still give even to my hatred of them, my love of her, the need to give sound to the pleasure that's driving all thoughts from my mind, all worries from my heart.

I roll us over onto the floor. We land in a heap upon the coats we discarded. I grab her thighs with my hands and drive myself into her. I catch only one word between bomb blast but that word is English

"YES!"

I can feel the need building but I deny it. I drive on into the warmth of her. I bend her under me seeking to put even more of me into her, even harder with every thrust. I feel spasm in her thighs against my chest. Her hands comes to my shoulders when she can reach them and lose long fingernails, I had so admired, dig in!

The pain is nothing. The pleasure of her is so much greater than so little thing. So much greater even than the mad thunder of angry gods or the thundering madness of angry men. This moment, this second in time, we are one body joined by the bridge of my flesh and the need to give our last breath not in cries of terror but in screaming pleasure.

Tear spring to my eyes, as I can no longer deny the approaching end. I weep as I feel its start deep within me. Then I send my defiant cry back in the very teeth of this madness. I scream out in righteous indignity my barbaric yawp that any would take even a second of this from me.

In the silence I hear her voice joined with mine!

Exhausted panting of breath I can not get I fall on top of her. She hugs me to her tightly. I can feel that she is crying under me but I have not the breath to ask if it be from pain, fear, terror or if they be tears of joy that the bombing has ended.

I manage at last to move myself enough so that my weight isn't full on her, then turning I pull her too me. I brush her soft hair smell the perfume I got her, the scent her mother so loved.

It's in that moment as I fill my nose with that wonderful remembered smell that I give up my hope of ever seeing my sister again. I give up hope for a lot of things. Life, peace in that life. Lack of fear when I sleep at night. I give that up as well.

I move my hand in the darkness to the little leather case and the terrible knowledge that it contains. The horror that so few pieces of paper can convey.

In silence we dress again. In the near dark we kiss and hold each other. In the silence we wait, wondering, hopping if that was all or if we will see the coming dawn.

Will the gods grow angry again before then?

Will more thunder fall around us from the sky?

As I lean my head into her and feel her lips on mine I know that if it does, I will again shout out my defiance of them.

Till my last breath be taken from me!