by KD Robichaux
Then there was Lance in high school. He was a friend of Erin’s and mine who shared our love of history and often studied with us, even when there wasn’t a test to be preparing for. He had a crush on Rebecca Barbara Broussard. I can’t even think back to her without it being her full name, because that’s how she always introduced herself, like some sort of debutante. Anyway, he’d finally scored a date with the sweet southern belle, and was super nervous about the end of the night kiss he was hoping she’d give him. When he asked if he could practice on me, it really wasn’t even a big deal. He was my best guy friend and I would do anything to help him out. When we’d kissed, the purely physical act was pleasant enough, and when it ended a few moments later, we went right back to the conversation we’d been having on the history of the Golden Gate Bridge.
Finally, there was Paul, the guy I ended up losing my virginity to. We went on a few dates, more than I’d been on with any other guy to this day, and we shared some kisses at the end of each date. At the end of the first semester during our freshman year, he invited me to a party his frat was throwing. Although crowds, especially rambunctious ones, usually sets off my anxiety, I decided since I’d scored the highest grade in the class that I needed to celebrate, so I agreed to go to my first and only party of my college career.
Erin came with me, and we drank red Solo cups of Jungle Juice—a huge storage tub full to the top with fruit punch, Everclear, grapes, and cherries—before she found one of Paul’s fraternity brothers to spend the rest of the evening with, but not before encouraging me to finally lose my V-card. God, it was awful, to say the least. I don’t even want to think about it right now.
What I want to think about in this very moment is the best damn kiss I’ve ever had in my entire life. Never mind the fact it’s being given to me by my self-proclaimed mortal enemy, who has now turned into my life-saving hero who fascinates me more and more with every moment I spend with him.
I don’t know what to focus on. The feel of his tongue sliding against mine in a rhythmic dance I’ve never felt before. The most overwhelming yet comforting embrace as his massive arms wrap completely around my much smaller frame. The strong hand at the back of my head that gently guides me into angles that deepen the hottest kiss I’ve ever experienced. The sexy sound of his breath coming in and out of his nose and mouth just as heatedly as my own, filling the tunnel with the echoes of our earth-shattering exchange.
I didn’t know kisses could feel like this. For the rest of my life, this is the one all other kisses will be compared against. And I have a sneaking suspicion none will even hold a candle.
Suddenly, I’m aware I’m moving, and our kiss is broken long enough for Dean to pull my purse over my head and drop it to the ground. The next thing I know, I feel a hard surface at my back as he presses me against the wall, and then I’m weightless as he lifts me, and instinctively my legs wrap around his waist. This puts me at a different angle, slightly higher than him, and not an ounce of uncertainty is present as I use the opportunity to explore his mouth with my tongue.
Subconsciously, I’m aware of the motion of my hips as I grind my center against his abs, not caring I won’t be able to pass off the wetness growing there as just sweat. If he can be completely shameless about the rock-hard bulge in his pants, then by God, I can embrace this amazing, freeing feeling I have as I cling to him and put my very soul into this kiss.
Yet the second I feel his hand on the skin of my side as he reaches beneath my tank, the escalation from first to second base is as shocking as if a stadium full of fans exploded into cheers, and I jerk my head back. If it weren’t for his hand still tangled in the back of my hair, I would’ve cracked my head on the wall.
I stare down into his eyes, embarrassment at my reaction starting to fill me. But instead of finding confusion or disappointment in his face, I find understanding, as if I just confirmed something he’d been pondering, and it lessens my shame.
“Damn, love. You are one hell of a kisser. And I suspect a fast learner too. Am I right?” he asks quietly, and then leans forward to kiss the tattoo on my collarbone, sending shivers throughout my body.
“Apparently,” I breathe, relaxing once more into his embrace.
“Have you never been kissed before?” His voice is gentle, as if trying not to make a big deal about it so he doesn’t scare me away. It works.
“Not like that,” I admit.
He continues his trail of kisses up my chest and across my throat until he reaches my ear, where he asks in a whisper, “Have you never been with anyone before?”
I stiffen a little, my legs clenching around his waist, but I’ve been more open with him than even the guy I lost my virginity to, so why stop now? “Once, a long time ago.”
He pulls his head away to look into my eyes, his eyebrows slightly pulled together. “Just the once?”
“Um, yeah,” I confess. “It was terrible, and I never felt the desire for a repeat experience. If that’s what sex was supposed to be like, then it was something I could live without. I found my studies much more satisfying.”
“I actually get that,” he says, surprising me. “It’s been quite a while for me too. And I have to tell you, I’ve never felt a kiss like that before.”
I feel my cheeks heat, but this time, it’s not from embarrassment. His words make me feel better about my weird quirks than anyone has since my best friend and parents. I’ve always felt a bit ashamed that my brain doesn’t focus on the same stuff other girls do, like there was something wrong with me for never being boy crazy or having even the slightest yearning for anything but fulfilling my dream of being an archaeologist. I’ve always had a one-track mind, never veering off course or letting anything distract me from my goals. It’s always just been me trying to progress, my sights set on my one purpose, and it dawns on me that my legs are currently wrapped around my biggest roadblock for the past two years.
The thought makes me snort, and amusement fills his now dark blue eyes, so smoldering that I can barely make out the gold flecks I know are there. “What?” he prompts.
I wiggle a little, indicating I want down, and he reluctantly lets me slide down his body until my feet hit the ground. “I just realized I had a make-out session with the one guy who’s been standing in the way of everything I’ve worked for since I was young. And you know what? I’m not even mad about it.”
He quirks his head at me, studying my face like he’s trying to figure out what’s going on in my brain. “Funny thing is, love, at all those places I saw you, I honest to God thought you were a ghost I’d picked up on one of my excavations. If you’d spoken to me…” He shakes his head. “There’s no way I would’ve turned down such a beautiful, intelligent woman as yourself, if you’d asked to check out one of the locations with me. I would’ve let you tag along in a heartbeat.”
My mouth falls open. I don’t know whether to laugh, scream, cry, or what. All I know is my chest tightens and I want to throw the hissy fit to end all hissy fits. Gah! Two years. Two fucking years I’ve held onto these ugly feelings toward a man who not only saved my life, but come to find out would’ve opened up and held the door to let me step right into my dream. So many times I’d written out hate mail to send to the man I’d been completely jealous of, always deleting it, thinking it would’ve never reached him anyways. When all I had to do was ask him the first time I’d seen him if I could come with him.
I’m trembling with my fury at myself, but I at least have the mind to not scream out my frustration and bring the ceiling down on our heads… again. I take a few deep breaths, trying to calm my nerves, and I feel some of my anger leave me when he lifts my chin to meet his eyes.
“Little did I know you weren’t an apparition, but a real life angel here on earth,” he tells me, and I feel my lip tremble. God, I’m such a horrible human being. How could I have judged him so terribly?
“You wouldn’t be saying that if you knew the awful things I’ve said about you in the last couple years,” I
confess, but instead of looking hurt that someone he didn’t even know had been talking shit about him, he looks amused and even chuckles a little.
“And I’m sure I deserved every single name you called me, just not for the reason you said them,” he pledges. He takes a step back, a smile still on his face, and he bends down to pick up my bags. “As much as I would love to continue what we started, I don’t want to risk scaring you away when I just found you. How about… we forget about the recent past, and focus more on the one from centuries ago? Because I don’t know about you, love, but I am dying to know what these bread crumbs could be leading us to.”
Wow, there’s so much in what he said that I could pick apart and analyze—especially that guilt-healing part about not wanting to scare me away when he just found me—but what I gather as a whole is that he forgives me for all my previous malevolence and wants to keep exploring where this adventure could take us.
SHE’S A GODDAMN unicorn. I fucking knew it! Thank you, Atlantean Ring. This gorgeous, smart-as-hell, voracious, and goal-driven creature has had sex only once in her life? Really? I mean, the thought of any man having his hands on her, even once, makes me want to find him and choke him out, which I try not to focus on at the moment, because shit, it could be worse. Much worse. I could’ve been forced to crave a woman who’d had countless sexual partners in the past that I would have to fume about. So I can live with just the one. And only the one time, she said. And it was so terrible she didn’t even want to talk about it.
I would pull the information out of her later, but after her reaction to my fingers touching the softest skin I’ve ever felt when I got a little handsy during our make-out session, I decide not to push her too far too soon. The ferocious feline I thought she was in the beginning is actually more of a skittish kitten, and I don’t want to do anything to frighten her away when I really want to pet her. Even if it is fun to watch her claws come out.
We walk slowly down the tunnel, searching carefully for any more clues to our mystery, and right when I’m about to get discouraged, thinking there isn’t anything left for us to find, Emmy squeals from my right, “Got one, Dean!”
I hurry over, my cell already out to shine light and take a picture, seeing this one reads Nombre d’Or. I know nombre means ‘number’ in French, but I’m not sure of the rest. It’s right there on the cusp of my brain. Something familiar. Something that wants to click into place. I know this. Why won’t it reveal itself to me?
“The Golden Ratio,” she breathes, and there it is. “The Golden Ratio, Dean!” She jumps up, running in place and waving her hands out in front of her. “It all makes sense! 1618. One-point-six-one-eight! It’s the fucking Golden Ratio!”
Like a bucket of ice water being dumped over my head, everything falls into place. And I jump up and start dancing around with her, feeling like a kid again—better, actually—when all the numbers we’ve found start aligning themselves in my brain with perfect clarity.
Like a nerd version of a dance crew, I freeze into a robot pose, while she does the running man and names off a fact about the Golden Ratio. “Sacred Geometry, universal patterns used in the design of virtually every-damn-thing in our reality. It can be seen in architecture and art, and is also found in nature. Sacred geometry and math ratios, harmonics, and proportion can also be found in music, light, and cosmology. Go!” She freezes in a pose pointing at me, and I take it as my cue to throw out my own fun fact while making my robot body move.
“Also known as ‘God’s blueprint’, the ratio is all throughout nature. The chambered nautilus grows at a continuous rate, so its shell forms a logarithmic spiral to accommodate that growth without changing its shape. Just like honeybees construct hexagonal compartments to hold their honey. Go!”
I point back at her and still, and she hops facing the left, shakes her sexy ass, hops to the back, shakes it again, and continues in a circle, as she sings out, “The Golden Ratio was used to build the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Parthenon, and even the United Nations Building. And it can be found in art like the Mona Lisa and the Statue of Venus. This is why they are so aesthetically pleasing to the human eye. Go!”
I grab my foot behind me in one hand and place my other hand behind my head, and then crunch my knee to my elbow, while calling out, “It’s found countless times in flora, but most commonly in the number of petals on a flower. Go!”
When she breaks out the sprinkler, I realize with every fact we yell out to each other that I have never had this much fun with a woman before, and I can feel myself falling for her, which is crazy. I’ve known her all of a couple hours, even though I had unknowingly been coming to her perfect face for years.
“The Golden Ratio in the human body. Ready?” she asks, starting to pant with all the exertion of our sweet dance battle.
I nod and grin, crossing my arms over my chest like I’m getting ready for her to deliver her side of the fight. “Challenge accepted.”
“The bones in your fingers,” she wheezes, as she attempts to twerk, but fails miserably.
My turn. “Length between your shoulder line, and the length of your head.”
She stops dancing, trying to catch her breath, but still says, “Length between fingertip to elbow, and length between your wrist and elbow.
I keep my feet still, but move my arms to dance the shopping cart, as I name, “Width of your adorable nose, and length between its nostrils.” That makes her smile shyly, and she pushes some of her fallen hair out of her face with the back of her hand. I stop dancing and saunter up to her, my cock already hard just from the brilliance of my beautiful Emmy’s mind.
Her green eyes look up into mine almost dreamily, and she breathes, “The length between your pupils, and the length between your eyebrows.”
“The length of your angelic face, and the width of it,” I add, my voice dropping low as I trace a finger along her delicate jawline. Then I cup her jaw and run my thumb over her perfect lips, while whispering, “The width of your delicious mouth, and the width of your nose.” I lean down to run the tip of my nose down the bridge of hers before sealing her lips to mine, reveling in the feel of her shuddering breath followed by a sigh of pleasure.
As I pull back to look down at her, her eyes stay closed and I see her visibly swallow. I skip her turn again when she doesn’t speak. “Length between your bellybutton to your knee, and the length between your knee and foot.” I reach between us to circle her bellybutton through her shirt before sliding my hand downward, running my palm over the firm line of her thigh to her knee before moving inward. I take her mouth in a searing kiss as I run it up the inseam of her jeans, feeling her jump slightly when I finally reach the top and briskly let my fingers glide over her center, just long enough to feel she is as wet as I am hard.
When I break our kiss once more, her eyes flutter open, and we stare into each other’s eyes for what feels like forever, waiting to see what the other will do, until finally she smiles softly, and says, “You win.”
For a moment, I think she’s giving me permission to let go of the control I have over my raging hunger for her, but just in time, I realize she’s talking about our fun fact dance battle. Surprising me, she leans up on her tiptoes and places a sweet kiss to my lips before pulling away and bending down to pick my cell off the ground. She goes to my photos and starts flipping through all the placards while I stand dumbfounded. Jesus, I can barely think straight around this girl.
“Okay, now we know 1618 is really the Nombre d’Or, the Golden Ratio, one-point-six-one-eight. So now we need to figure out what the three, two, and six mean,” she thinks out loud, and I watch as she crosses one ankle over the other before sliding to the ground to sit Indian-style. How someone so sexy can also look adorably innocent is beyond me, but she does it. I hear her mumbling under her breath, and realize she’s saying the clues over and over, each time in a different order, trying to make sense of the sequence. And just when I’m about to tell her we should keep looking, the brilliant woman sti
ffens, and by the look on her face, I can see she just figured it out.
Her head jerks in my direction as she looks at me, and then her eyes glaze over, as if she’s looking straight through me. “One-point-six-one-eight. The Golden Ratio. Three. Six. Two. Three lines. Framed by six squares. Bracketed by two triangles. Dean, the answer is the Atlantean Ring!”
Suddenly, my world spins and my knees give out, and I plop down onto the ground next to her, reciting part of the book I’d read about the subject so many times I had it memorized like the script to one of my shows. “The Atlantis Ring’s composition follows the Sacred Geometry principles of the Golden Ratio for the alignment of its design elements, proportions, and angles. This design, when properly crafted, will work like an antenna, receiving and transmitting powerful waves that help transmute harmful energies. When you are in this vibration, your energy will merge with the ring’s, creating a strong and powerful subtle energy field that will manifest as Protection, Intuition, and Healing.”
When she says nothing else, I glance in her direction, and see one side of her mouth is lifted in a half smile. When I raise an eyebrow in question, she asks, “Do you memorize everything you read verbatim?”
“Most of the time, yes. Came in handy for college, and even more so now, when I have to learn a ton of information quickly for each new episode,” I reply.
We sit for a while in silence, both of us turning the answer over in our brains, yet not understanding what the puzzle was in the first place, until finally she speaks again. “Well what the hell does it all mean?” She jumps to her feet and starts pacing. “Great, we figured out what the numbers mean, and how it all leads to the Atlantean Ring, but—”
