A chopper rumbled its approach overhead. They made her jumpy, these airborne invaders. They were so loud, yet seemed so passive-aggressive. Couldn’t they just come out and say what they wanted instead of all this noisy intimation? She slipped into her house and shut the door. A second later, she popped her head out, scanned the street, and with a swift tug, pulled the welcome mat inside.

The full, late-August moon shone on Arik like a spotlight, and he was paranoid someone might see him standing outside Rosemary’s house and take him for a burglar. All those choppers were still flying by randomly, looking for Al Qaeda operatives.

“I can’t get this thing off,” he whispered, tugging at the bug screen in her window. “It’s nailed to the freakin’ frame. What should we do?” He swiveled around nervously for police cruisers. “I feel really exposed out here.”

Abruptly her room light went off. Now Arik couldn’t see her at all. He cupped his hands on the sides of his eyes and pressed them against the screen.

“Rose? You there? What’re you doing?”

Then slowly, as his eyes got used to the darkness, he got his answer. She was undressing, methodically and completely. Her shirt came off first, then her shorts. She did a 360-degree spin before she removed her bra and finally her panties. She did this simply and without Mata Hari flair, but it was plenty.

“Oh God, Rose, please don’t do that!”

She came to the window and pressed her body against the screen to let him feel her breasts through the mesh.

“Your nipples are hard,” he gasped. “God, you’re so hot!”

He pressed his face on the screen so his cheek rubbed against her chest, but the mesh in between scratched and scraped at both of them. When he pulled away, Rosemary saw pink crosshatches on his flesh. He lunged back to kiss her breast almost immediately, glistening wet tongue lashing at the screen.

“You taste like metal.” He laughed, frustrated. “God, I want to be inside . . .”

“I want you in here, too.”

She lowered her hand to her inner thigh and started touching herself. They both heard the moist, sucking sounds this made and Arik sighed with increasing torment. Her flesh looked so grabbable, so bitable.

“Christ, Rose, I need to be inside you!”

“I have to get back to my bed, okay? I can’t come standing up.” She moved onto her bed a few feet away, and switched on her Jesus night-light so he could see her.

“You’re driving me crazy, Rose! I am so hard right now. I want to”—he lowered his voice to a whisper—“plunge my cock deep inside you and fuck you so hard.”