I swerved on impulse to charge to her aid, but a bottle shot past me from behind and exploded against a wall. War-zone reflexes slammed me to the pavement. When the crowd closed in it was move or be trampled, so I struggled upright and moved. By then there was no sign of her, and the cops were crouching behind their vehicle.

  For an hour or so I hung around on the periphery of the action, not quite feeling like I had a right to be in the front lines. I’d never been hassled by the law, and in the military I’d kept a low, clean profile because my nursing was needed. Or so I told myself. Now I played medic to a few victims of shattered glass and pavement abrasions, applying disinfectants and Band-Aids from an all-night drugstore and ice packs rigged up in nearby bars. In between I cheered on the drag queens and pretty boys who turned the tables on the cops until the boys in blue had to barricade themselves inside the Stonewall Inn and call for more reinforcements.

  Once in a while I caught distant glimpses of long black braids and a fringed jacket in the heart of the fight, where uprooted parking meters and benches were being used as battering rams to try to get at the police pinned down inside the tavern. She’d got loose, of course. Whenever I tried to get closer she disappeared into the shifting masses.

  Frustration gnawed at me. All geared up, and nowhere to go: I’d come looking for sex, and the charged, manic atmosphere just pumped up my need, but this time groping in a secluded booth at a girls’ bar wasn’t going to do it for me. Even a wrestling match in a grubby restroom would be too tame. Even…

  “Hey, medic, over here.”

  She was down a blind alleyway, slouching against a wall just at the blurred border where dim light gave way to darkness. Her fringed jacket was off, and slung over one shoulder.

  Medic. She must have seen me patching up the wounded, but I hoped she wanted something more than first aid. Either way, I didn’t hesitate for an instant. “Are you okay?” I didn’t see any obvious signs of injury even when my vest brushed against her sweat-streaked tank top. “What do you need?”

  No smile now, just a long, searching look into my eyes. My breathing quickened. So did my pulse rate, and an aching knot of need tightened my groin.

  “What do you need, medic?” It wasn’t a question. Her voice was low, husky and certain. My answer was a half step forward that brought me up firmly against her. One thigh pressed into her crotch, I straddled her slightly raised knee. Just a little more pressure, the slowest of movements…and the need was building, along with the haunting fear of giving in to a need for more than I could get.

  A glare of blue light flashed past the end of the alley as a cop car sped by. My back was exposed, vulnerable. What if I were caught, arrested, disgraced, discharged…

  The prickle of fear down my spine made my pulse beat even faster, my body strain harder to feel the responding pressure of hers. I clutched at her back, my hands already under her thin shirt, raising it. Her arms were around me, and she gripped my ass, forcing me to move, to rub against her in a rhythm that demanded fierce acceleration. “What do you need, what do you need,” she muttered over and over, a low, compelling chant, and all I could do was move faster, rub harder, feel her hardened nipples flick across my aching breasts and slide my cunt along her thigh while my own thigh met her thrusts.

  There were distant crashes…panic was threatening to take hold…but she edged a hand inside my jeans and wrenched all my awareness back to where our bodies merged. Her fingers slid through my folds into my hungry cunt, her thumb went at my clit with hard, sure strokes—and I plummeted over the edge, all defenses gone, all trust given, nothing mattering but to get more and more, harder, please, more!—until the whole battery of sensations, fear, urgent need, loss of control, came together in one massive jolt of pleasure.

  It took a while to breathe again without panting. I knew I’d been dangerously noisy and didn’t care. She still held me close, without demand, although I could feel her heavy breathing.

  It was my turn to chant, “What do you need, what do you need…” but my voice was muffled, first against her sweaty throat, then in the swell of her high breasts, then in the curve of waist and belly and lower still. She was the one getting noisy now. By the time my knees ground into the alley’s grit I had her zipper open and her briefs worked down enough to give my tongue and fingers access.

  The intensity of her taste; the deep, rasping moans vibrating right through into my mouth; the flailing of long hair as her head thrashed back and forth—I wanted to savor all these, but I let the thrusting of her pelvis set the pace. The faster I licked and rubbed, the harder she needed it, until she came in such a flurry of violent jerks that I had to hold tight to stay with her. I managed to hang on, not easing up, until at last she pulled back and sank down beside me.

  “So,” she said between shuddering gasps, “you come here often, medic?”

  “Never did an alley before,” I said. “Always bars.”

  “And always strangers?”

  “Always.” I was still in too much of a post-fuck daze to think clearly.

  She was quiet for a minute or two, catching her breath, maybe pondering in ways I was too dense to notice then. Finally she stood, giving me a hand to help me up. “All right then. Glad I qualified. Thanks for the ride. Maybe I’ll see you around.” She moved out of the alley into the light of the city, and then she was gone, leaving me with a hazy feeling that however well I’d been fucked, I’d somehow really fucked up.

  The action in the alley had drained me, but only for a while. The turmoil of protest was still roiling up and down one street or another, recharging me to a high pitch of nervous energy, so I went to check out the girl bars after all. But I found no prospects that came close to what I needed, not that I even knew what I needed anymore.

  When massive police forces with riot shields finally arrived, the battling crowds fragmented into pockets of guerrilla action and then drifted away like tendrils of pot smoke. Anybody left on the streets was in danger of arrest or worse. A remnant of survival instinct sent me hurrying back to the apartment.

  “Hey…medic…” The voice was low this time, strained. She emerged from the shadows across the street, exhausted, bedraggled, shivering, coming down from the high of surging adrenaline. The hair straggling loose from one braid was sticky with blood. “Come on in,” I said, and unlocked the door.

  After three flights of stairs, her face looked greenish in the harsh light of the kitchen. “Sit down,” I ordered. “Head between your knees.” She obeyed without question, long, strong hands braced on her booted ankles. I thought wryly that having her head between my own knees would have been my first choice in other circumstances.

  She’d caught a hit above her left ear hard enough to split the skin and raise a still-swelling lump. “Did you pass out when you got hit?” I was cleaning the wound gently with a soaking wet dishtowel. I’d already had a look at her eyes and didn’t see any signs of concussion.

  “Nope. Just got real mad. And maybe a tad destructive.” Her voice was getting steadier.

  “You’re lucky to have such a thick skull.” I felt around through her hair for more damage.

  “Lucky to find a cute nurse close at hand.” A cocky attitude isn’t easy to pull off with your head down and bloody water trickling over your neck and down your chin but she managed. There was something about the tone of voice and an old, raised scar across the nape of her neck that diverted the flow of reddened water… I knew with sudden certainty that “Haven’t we met somewhere?” wouldn’t have been just a hackneyed pickup line, after all. That scar was just about a year and a half old, the result of a mortar attack that blasted her ambulance apart and killed an already-wounded soldier. Her collarbone had been broken, too, but she’d managed to get the other two guys out and away before flames hit the gas tank.

  I let her sit up while I went to fix an ice pack. “What makes you think I’m a nurse?” That had been a stupid question—so much for anonymity. Not that she’d be likely to give me away to the Army bureaucracy, but some fear even deeper made my gut tense, some danger I couldn’t even give a name.

  “Well, you were one hell of a nurse in Long Binh, and I figure that’s something you never forget. Like riding a bike. Or a woman.” Her grin, now that I could see it, was cocky, too, but her eyes were grimly sober. She knew all about the things I couldn’t forget. She’d been there, too, right through the worst of it. Her hair had been much shorter, not quite as dark, and the only time I’d seen her up close was when I was stitching up that gash on the nape of her neck. I might not have recognized anything about her, even my own handiwork—but I did remember the cockiness under stress. And those hands.

  “You were in ’Nam, right? Ambulance driver?” I pressed the ice pack against her wound. “Hold that.” Her hand went up obediently.

  “Jeep jockey, mostly, on loan to the nurses’ motor pool from the WAC base at Long Binh. When things got hot, every vehicle had to double as an ambulance.”

  I drew a deep breath. “And nurses had to be doctors half the time.”

  “Right.” She held out the hand that wasn’t holding the ice. “Thanks for the fine stitching job, Kim. I asked around about your name.”

  “You’re more than welcome…Gale, isn’t it?” I shook her hand, then forced myself to let it go. “Once we get the swelling under control, I’ll put on a dressing, and you can hang out here tonight and get some rest.”

  Whether she had a concussion or not—could be a mild Class A—she had to be badly shaken, her defenses down. Better stick to the nurse role. “How about a bite to eat?” I went to the cupboard and riffled through it. “Hungry?”

  “Could work up an appetite.” Gale’s tone made me glance back over my shoulder. She was surveying my ass and back with open appreciation.

  “Definitely a sign of recovery.” I put some chicken noodle soup on to heat. She didn’t have such weak defenses, after all, if her offensive game was anything to go by.

  “A little something to keep your strength up,” I told her, once I’d set out soup and crackers for us both and sat down at the table to join her. Then, while she was still formulating a snappy comeback, I turned seriously apologetic. “I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you sooner. It was…hard, over there, keeping a balance between caring enough about patients and not caring too much. And afterward there was so much to block out…”

  She started to shake her head, and winced. “No problem. I figure I got more mileage tonight out of being a stranger.” The grin she managed was strained. My various sensitized pulse points stirred hopefully at the reminder, but I swung back into nurse mode with an effort, gathering up disinfectant and scissors and bandages from the bathroom.

  “Yeah, well…” I felt my face flush. “Back to business for now. This will sting a little. And I’m going to have to snip some hair around the wound site.”

  “Hack it all off,” Gale said curtly. “If I hit the streets tomorrow looking anything like I did tonight, I’ll be painting a bright red target on my ass. The cops are probably throwing darts at sketches of me right now. “

  I gave her a trim that, bandage aside, left her looking like the teenaged love child of Katharine Hepburn and Marlon Brando: elegant cheekbones; short, unruly hair; sultry eyes. “You clean up pretty well,” I told her. “The image of a target on your ass is pretty intriguing, though. You sure there isn’t one there already? Was all that”—I motioned toward the fringed jacket and the braided, dyed hair showing above the rim of the wicker wastebasket—“some kind of disguise? You’re not just worried about the local cops, are you?”

  An attempted shrug made her wince again. She yawned and rubbed her eyes, shock and exhaustion beginning to catch up to her, but she answered me frankly. “I’m AWOL, and wanted by everybody from the MPs to the Oakland Police Department to the SDS. A little episode coming out of the Oakland Army Base just after I got stateside.”

  I knew all too well the treatment a uniform could get you back in the land of your birth. Even nurses ran the risk of taunts and spitting when protesters got their mob mentality on. I might agree with some of what they were for, but their methods seemed like the mindless tantrums of overprivileged brats. “That bad, huh?” I wished I hadn’t brought up the subject. She didn’t need any more stress tonight.

  “It wasn’t what they yelled at me. I hadn’t slept for forty-eight hours, had waking nightmares, barely remembered my own name, and I still kept my shit together through all that. But there was this guy in a wheelchair, a Marine. When they threw things, he couldn’t get out of the way fast enough. I don’t even remember much after that, but I know I grabbed a babykiller sign and started swinging it. Some people got hurt. I ran and kept on running.”

  Her head slumped. I caught it against my breast as my arms went around her. “Come on to bed now,” I said, my lips brushing her hair so lightly she couldn’t have felt them. So much for my longing for unscarred, unbroken women. What a delusion.

  She managed to stand, moved across to the bedroom with my help and even tried to pull me down beside her while I eased her clothes off. “Later,” I said, and turned out the lights. “Get some sleep now. Nurse’s orders.”

  A faint glow of sunrise already showed around the curtains. I sat and watched Gale sleep for a while, nearly dozing myself. I was wrung out and hyped up, a combination not optimal for clear thought.

  A trash can lid clanged outside. A split second later an unearthly string of explosions rocked the air. Firecrackers, not grenades, I realized, after the first panicked lurch of my heart, but by then I was holding tight to Gale as she thrashed and kicked and yelled in short, incoherent bursts.

  “It’s all right,” I said, soothingly and then more sharply, trying to penetrate her nightmare. “It’s okay, all right, you’re safe, I’ve got you.” It took a while, and at least once her kicks knocked me off of the bed. “Cut it out!” I yelled at last, and then, as her eyes finally opened, I said, “It’s me, Kim, the nurse, remember?”

  She stared, still not quite awake. The kicking stopped, but shivering set in, in spite of the blankets I’d pulled over her. “It’s all right,” I repeated, pulling off my clothes. “You’re safe, here, with me.” I crawled under the covers to warm her and pressed my body along the length of hers. “Remember?”

  “Medic,” she muttered. “What…?”

  “Just firecrackers in a trash can. It’s okay. We’re safe.” I held her closer, and she relaxed a little. “Remember last night?”

  Now her arms went around me. Relaxation gave way to something entirely different. “Remember last night? Always.” She moved against me, sliding her body along mine, and I responded in ways wholly unrelated to nursing ethics.

  “Careful,” I said and rolled her gently on her back. “Don’t move your head too much. Take it slowly, just let me… gently…” So she did, or tried, until the slow, achingly sweet movements of skin on skin, fingers stroking along curves and hollows and burrowing into deep warm places, mouths feasting on just about everything, led to rolling waves of pleasure that ultimately demanded a faster pace. Thrusts became harder, licks alternated with bites, until we were both sobbing in our desperate need—and then even harder in our release.

  Gale slept again. I watched her face, vulnerable in this temporary illusion of safety, and faced my own vulnerability. Danger was a bond between us: the fear of it, the need of it, the inability to trust in peace. On some deep level, though, we did trust each other. That scared me right down to my bones. To open up, to let yourself care, was to offer a hostage to an ever-cruel fate.

  She slept all day and then finally left as the protests were picking up steam again. “I have to move on, Kim. At least for now. Probably get into more trouble. I wish…”

  “I know. I have to go back to work. People need me.”

  “I know all about needing you. If there are times—if I track you down…”

  “I’ll be there. No matter what, or when.” I gave her an address that would always, eventually, reach me. And she did, many times over the years, when she needed healing, or bail money, or sex with nothing held back; until finally it wasn’t necessary any longer. The time came when we needed to be together more than we needed danger, and by then there were places where the world had changed enough that we didn’t have to hide from anything. Even ourselves.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  CRYSTAL BARELA has been published in more than a dozen erotic anthologies.

  JOVE BELLE (jovebelle.wordpress.com) lives in Portland, Oregon, with her partner of fifteen years and their three children. Her novels include Chaps, Split the Aces and Edge of Darkness.

  CHEYENNE BLUE’s (cheyenneblue.com) erotica has appeared in many anthologies, including Best Women’s Erotica, Lesbian Cowboys and Best Lesbian Romance. She lives in Denver.

  RACHEL KRAMERr BUSSEL (rachelkramerbussel.com) has edited many books of erotica, including Up All Night, Glamour Girls, First-Timers, Spanked, The Mile High Club and the nonfiction collections Best Sex Writing 2008, 2009 and 2010.

  ANDREA DALE’s (cyvarwydd.com) stories have appeared in Lesbian Cowboys, The Sweetest Kiss and Bottoms Up, among many others. With coauthors, she has sold two novels to Virgin Books.

  DEJAY’s (dejaynovl.net) short stories can be found in Khimairal Ink, Lesbian Cowboys, Year’s Best Lesbian Fiction 2008 and Nuance.

  DELILAH DEVLlN (DelilahDevlin.com) is an author with a rapidly expanding reputation for writing deliciously edgy stories with complex characters.

  R. G. EMANUELLE is a writer and editor living in New York City. She is coeditor of Skulls and Crossbones, an anthology of female pirate stories, and her short stories can be found in Best Lesbian Erotica 2010 and the 2010 issue of Khimairal Ink.