Saffron Nights

by Everly, Liz

  He was scheduled to visit some damiana gardens tomorrow on the coast. He hoped for good light. He’d take along his folding screen, just in case he needed it. Maeve was going with him to interview the garden owner and then they were going to a market. He’d take shots of all the food and people there. This was his favorite kind of food photography. Oh sure, he like the staged shots of food. Some were gorgeous pieces of art. But he liked food in the natural environment. A market? Eureka.

  Maeve ran her fingers over a page of the book. “I don’t know what kind of paper this is, but it’s interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like it.”

  “You know Paul. He was into some interesting stuff,” Jackson said, taking a bite of his eggs.

  Maeve laughed. “Yeah. How about that?”

  A knock came abruptly at the door. Jackson answered to an austere-looking Mexican man. “Can I help you?

  “Hello, Señor. I am Paolo Rodriguez, at your service.”

  “Security?”

  “No, Señor, service. I was hired by Alice to serve you.”

  “What?” Maeve came up behind Jackson.

  “I am a messenger. You make lists and I will get you what you need. Groceries. Paper. Whatever you need, Señor.”

  “Well, scratch that trip to the grocery, Maeve. Alice has taken care of us. We don’t even need to go out,” he said. “Please come in.”

  “Let me make a list for you … let’s see …” Maeve said, scratching on the paper.

  He looked over the list and raised an eyebrow. “Damiana liqueur? Is that right?”

  “Yes,” Jackson said.

  “Well,” he said, looking at Jackson, then Maeve. Was he blushing? “Okay. No problem. Be back in a few hours.”

  “Hours?” Maeve said.

  “Yes. I need to take the ferry into the city for this,” he said. “It’s okay. No problem.”

  After Maeve posted an entry on her blog about damiana, she went for a long swim on the beach and Jackson watched her until he dozed off to a deep sleep of a nap, awakening when Paolo delivered the goods. Maeve was just in from the beach, looking slightly sun-kissed, hair still damp, her new beach robe thrown carelessly over her shoulders, untied. He stood transfixed by the sight of her glowing skin, firm legs, breasts peeking out from her bikini. She made his balls tighten. Just breathe, he told himself.

  “Well,” she said.

  Had she noticed? Was it all over him? He turned and looked out the window.

  “I better go upstairs and get a quick shower. I’ve got sand everywhere.”

  Oh God. Did she say that? An image of all the delicious crevices in her body was planted firmly in his brain. She had no idea what she was doing to him. Was she really that oblivious?

  “Then we’ll make a damiana feast, and get to work, heh?”

  He grunted in acknowledgment as she traipsed upstairs. Okay, yeah. So it wasn’t simply the saffron they sampled that night. He wanted her. He might as well admit it. He was so hard he wasn’t sure he could walk. Okay. Think of something else. Hmmm. The groceries. He pulled out the pasta and a bottle shaped like a voluptuous woman—damiana liqueur.

  Hmmm. He glanced at the clock. She would probably be a while. Maybe he had time to take care of this hard-on—it wasn’t going to go away, otherwise.

  “You look, um, I don’t know, happy?” she said to him as they were eating.

  “What’s not to be happy about? Here I am eating delicious food, drinking damiana margaritas, with a beautiful woman,” he said.

  “Stop it,” she told him.

  “What? I can’t say you’re beautiful or you’ll think I’m coming on to you?”

  She took a long drink of her margarita and her eyes met his. “Aren’t you?”

  Her glance sent shocks through him. Her amber eyes took him in. Did she know what she was doing to him?

  “You know, I’ve thought that maybe we should just sleep together… that way you’ll get me out of your system. What’s a woman good for in your book—once, twice?”

  He’d laugh, if he could. But she had him by the balls, metaphorically speaking.

  “I’ve no moral problem with a one-off,” she said, nonchalantly. “But I prefer a longtime lover. You see, for me it takes a while to feel comfortable enough to really … explore. So, the one-off seems kind of a waste of time.”

  He wasn’t sure if her nonchalant attitude about sex was a turn-off or a turn-on—well, one part of him thought it was hot. The other part, well, thought it was a bit scary. Just how much sex had this woman had? How experienced was she? Was that a good or bad thing? Intriguing. Many of the women he slept with all knew it was for one night or two, and none of them seemed to care, but they all had tried to maintain some kind of connection with him. One or two of them had scared the shit out of him—as in Fatal Attraction scary. With Maeve, his fear was different. It wasn’t just the work thing. It was also the intimacy thing. She knew him very well—if they slept together, man, what would that mean? He couldn’t walk away from her afterward—even if they weren’t partners.

  As she sat there looking at him from across the table, it was as if her amber eyes were burning a hole into the deepest, darkest, hardest part of him. He could feel that softening again. See that light. He snapped it shut.

  “Eh, well, you think pretty highly of yourself,” he said and took another drink, leaning back in the chair.

  She looked away from him, setting her drink down. “Yes,” she said, almost to herself. “Of course that’s what a man like you might think.”

  Soon, she had that glassy, faraway look—“poetry la-la land” he called it. He’d seen it before, of course, and soon she’d be reaching for her pen and notebook, then searching for her laptop. She rose and took her dishes to the sink, grabbed her notebook from the table, and her hand brushed up against his face.

  He reached for it, brought her hand to his mouth, could smell the damiana liqueur and her soap underneath. His kissed it lightly, then opened his mouth, reveling in her taste, in her smell, the touch of her skin.

  She pulled away from him. “Jackson—”

  He looked up at her—not knowing what he’d see in those eyes. The spark of anger set off by lust. Oh yes. He may not be the smartest guy in the world. But she was his already. The question was what would he do with her after? She slipped her hand out of his and lifted her notebook.

  He sighed, grabbed his laptop, and started editing and labeling pictures he’d already taken.

  “What was the name of the restaurant where we got the tea from, again?” He asked, and looked at his partner, who had fallen asleep on the couch and didn’t stir.

  He glanced at the clock and saw that it was 1:00 a.m. He watched her sleeping—her auburn hair fell across her freckled, heart-shaped face. Her full lips open slightly—oh, he wanted to hold those cheekbones in his hands and slide himself into her. But instead, he watched the gentle rise and fall of her breath escaping, rising, falling, rising, falling.

  He slid out of the chair. The moon was full and bright in the sky, giving enough light that it appeared the couch was bathed in a soft glow. He gently pulled off her glasses from her face. Once again, he questioned himself. His for the taking. And then?

  Chapter 13

  It was a busy week. They’d settled into a rhythm of working, eating, walking, swimming, and more eating and more working—often into the late hours of the night.

  Maeve was checking off her list:

  Damiana.

  Avocado.

  Papaya.

  She’d interviewed experts on all three plants and Jackson took photos of her, her subjects, and the plants in their native habitat. But her market conversations and the photographs of the vendors were the best work they’d done so far. The wizened old woman with the colorful shawl holding up a basket of grain. The children dancing in the square while their parents either shopped or sold the produce. The old guy, a huge hat on his head, smiling over rows of cucumbers without a tooth in his head.r />
  Jackson was fussing with his light screen over a plate of cut papaya, its orange flesh startling against the green of its skin. He was muttering something about the morning light and the need to get these photos to their editor ASAP. She’d already written an essay about it and they were holding the piece until they got the pictures, which would go up on a new blog the publisher created to follow them and their travels.

  “C’mon Jackson, that shot is fine.”

  “Not quite,” he moved the screen a bit. “Ahhh.” He took the picture.

  “You’re always late,” she muttered.

  “Late, but perfect. Look at this,” he said and showed her the shot on his camera.

  “Damn, I’ve never seen such a sexy-looking fruit in my life. It kind of reminds me of—”

  “That’s what I’m saying,” he said, licking his lips and grinning.

  Friday came quicker than either one of them expected, beginning with a phone call from Alice.

  “How’s it going?”

  “Great,” Maeve said. “I’ve gotten some interesting research done on the damiana and also avocados. Papaya. We had this incredible salad last night.”

  “We are changing your itinerary,” Alice said. “With the breakin and the chicken and mushrooms … I felt it would be best to shift the plans a bit. You’ll be going straight to Hawaii.”

  Hawaii? That was supposed to be last on the program. England was supposed to be next—after a week at home in New York.

  “That’s a pretty drastic shift,” Jackson said.

  “Chef was murdered,” Alice said. “No doubt about that now. And it was the same kind of mushroom found in the chicken hanging over your sink. We don’t know that there’s cause for concern. But better safe than sorry.”

  Jackson looked at Maeve as if to say “I told you so”—but she was focused on calming her heart.

  “We have you both booked for Hawaii. You’ll be leaving tomorrow afternoon. I realize it’s last minute, but the rest of it will go according to the itinerary I’m e-mailing you,” Alice said. “Have you gotten to read Chef’s book, Maeve?”

  “Bits and pieces. The papaya salad recipe is Paul’s. Do you know who SB is?”

  “Why?”

  “Well, he references her throughout. I assume it’s a her.”

  Alice cleared her throat. “Just a moment,” she said, leaving the phone.

  “I’m so excited for both of you,” she said, when she came back. “You’re young, have no family commitments, and the world is your—”

  “Oyster,” Jackson said and laughed. “I, for one, am thrilled.”

  She never answered the question.

  She knows more than what she is telling us.

  But Maeve didn’t have the time to wonder what that was. She was happy to be getting on with things—out of Mexico, out of the huge beach house where her things had been stolen and ransacked.

  They packed quickly and were able to catch the next boat for the city. On the way to the airport in Puerto Vallarta, Jackson was able to find another iPod. Thank God he would soon be immersed safely, quietly, in his music. Maeve had been feeling a little hemmed in. She’d already had more than enough of her partner. Living in the same close quarters was not a good idea. In Hawaii, they would have separate situations. Yet she was a little shaken by Alice’s phone call.

  Maeve was hoping for a little more privacy—and some relief from the pent-up sexual feelings. She wouldn’t sleep with her partner. She couldn’t. But she also couldn’t deny that the heat between them was palpable. She tried to stay focused on her work—God knows there was plenty of it to do, and their deadlines were tight.

  Jackson sat next to her on the plane and busied himself downloading music from his laptop onto his new iPod. It would only be a few hours to San Diego, then on to Hawaii.

  Maeve thumbed through Chef’s book. She found the section on mushrooms. “Hey, Jackson listen to this, it’s about the mushrooms we’re going to try.”

  He took his earbuds out of his ears.

  “The mushrooms grow only in the kipuka ecosystems of the Big Island. The legends of the island tell of women who encounter this mushroom in the forest and go into fits of sexual ecstasy,” Maeve read.

  “Wow. Wonder what that’s like?” he said and laughed.

  “Kipukas are areas that have older vegetation than the surrounding areas. It’s what happens when lava flows cover the surrounding areas, missing the kipuka and sparing its vegetation. So there is a huge difference in the species and their size between the outside and inside of a kipuka.”

  “Interesting,” Jackson said, wondering what the light would be like there.

  “A fungus similar to Dictyphora indusiata is one such species. The lifetime of the fungus is often only three to four hours, and its flesh is very pungent—so pungent, in fact, that it attracts species other than insects. They say that women living on the Big Island gather to seek out this fungus because its odor is arousing when sniffed.”

  “Arousing when it’s sniffed?” Jackson said and grinned. “Cool.”

  “In a controlled clinical trial involving sixteen women, six had orgasms while smelling the fruiting body of the fungus. The results suggest that the hormone-like compounds present in the volatile portion of the spore mass may have some similarity to human neurotransmitters released in females during sexual encounters.

  “And look, here’s a note from Chef on this: ‘Absolutely true, according to Yvette and Alice, who were both nearly uncontrollable after eating this mushroom.’ ”

  “Alice?” Jackson said. “Our Alice?”

  “Let’s not jump to any conclusions,” Maeve said. “It’s too much to fathom.”

  Jackson flipped the next page over. They both read over the recipe that Paul created for this mushroom. Just onions and olive oil, with some fresh herbs.

  “Simple,” Jackson said.

  “He must have liked the flavor of the mushroom. I’ll probably get sick just smelling it, let alone tasting it.”

  “You keep telling yourself that. But as for me, I’m looking forward to seeing your reaction to it.” His eyebrows twitched.

  “Listen, I’ve already hit you once. Don’t make me do it again.” she said, looking out the airplane window.

  Settled onto their next plane, bound for Hawaii, Maeve checked her e-mail. One from Martin, her brother, wondering where she was, thinking she was in London. Evidently, they hadn’t received her postcards yet.

  Damn, there was an e-mail from Mark. Did she even want to see it?

  Despite herself, she opened it …

  Hello, Love,

  Saw your photo this morning with your partner. Big news, eh? So where are you off to next? Or are they keeping it a secret? I ran into Peter the other day. He sent along the pictures he took of us. They are delicious, darling. As we discussed, I’ll be sending you copies in the mail. No digital copies were made.

  Maeve flushed, remembering Peter snapping photos of her and Mark in bed together. That might have been the stupidest thing she’d ever done in her life. She hadn’t been thinking clearly—that was for sure. But damn. It was one of the hottest experiences in her life.

  Mark had introduced Peter as a photographer—he’ d hired him to take some pictures of them having sex, which had always been a fantasy of Maeve’s. But first they’d feasted on oysters, the best Maeve ever had. The English had a way with oysters, and Mark’s cook had mastered them.

  The wine was strong, heady, and a perfect complement to the oysters. Mark fed her one and the photographer snapped a photo of her opening her mouth to the oyster. She took another drink of the wine—so spicy and fragrant she felt a bit dizzy. Mark pulled her closer to him. He kissed her with deep soulful longing. He knew how his kisses affected her. She had weakened.

  Then, he’d led her from the table into his study.

  “C’mon darling, he’s a pro,” he said grabbing her, kissing her with force and placing her hand discreetly on his bulge. She remembered h
ow she shuddered. “Let’s put on a little show for him, shall we?”

  Suddenly feeling playful because of the scene unfolding around her, she heard a camera click and then gracefully slipped off her T-shirt. She pushed herself against his then bare chest and kissed him hard. Her bra came off next.

  “Can you face me?” The photographer’s soft voice rung out into the air.

  Mark got behind her and wrapped his arms around her, cupping her breasts in his hands.

  “Mmmm. So milky. So gorgeous,” he whispered, kissing her back. She felt his hot breath along her tender shoulder and neck, as she was looking at Peter’s face. He was intent on the camera. No eye contact whatsoever. He had probably seen a million bare-breasted women. But she wanted eye contact from this Adonis-like photographer.

  She slipped her jeans off, her panties, and slid her hand between her thighs. Still no eye contact.

  Mark, on the other hand, touched her, laying her back on his overstuffed leather couch, opening her wide.

  “Gorgeous, so sweet,” he said. Snap. Snap. Snap.

  His tongue there. The heat and wetness rose in her hips, swirling through her. As her need escalated, she watched the photographer—she wanted his hands on her breasts. She tried to will him to her and suddenly, Mark’s expert lips sent her into oblivion and she was seized by an orgasm so intense she forgot there was anybody in the room with them.

  Click. Click. Click.

  He slid himself into her and rocked once, twice, three times, and he was spent. He fell off her onto the couch and reached for a towel. She opened her eyes to see Peter, now staring at her.

  Maeve took a deep breath, almost gasped at his beauty. He was blond, with deep dimples, and chiseled arms. His green eyes met hers, and then turned away. He was close to them now. How did that happen?

  She held out her hand to him, touched him. He felt clammy, sweaty. “Did you get some good shots?”

  He nodded; Mark was lying on his elbow. “How could you not? Didn’t I tell you about those breasts? That ass? If only you could feel the way she feels.”