by Olivia Gates
He stroked her cheek with his, pressed her for one more moment, sending up a prayer of humble, fervent thanks for her.
“Ah—I love winning,” she purred when he finally let her go and bent to pick up the bags they’d dropped. “Does the surprise involve being someplace where I can perform my penalty on you?”
He caught her saucy lips again in a hard press, grinned at her. “I’m not saying. Keep walking and find out.”
She nipped his chin then clung to his arm and fell into step with him. His eyes raked over her with heavy desire. Hers gave back as good as she got.
She was in her swimsuit, he in his. For the last week they’d rarely worn anything more, taking their dress code from their hosts. Unlike their stay in Manis, they didn’t have much to do in Aldeia Marúbo. Apart from following up the post-operative Matcha and her tiny premature daughter, with the whole population only around two hundred and fifty, they’d wrapped up their work in the first two days and had had the opportunity to kick back and live life as simply as those people lived it. And it had been glorious.
Seeing how people lived in perfect harmony without any outside resources had put into perspective how they, as part of the “civilized” world, had not only become dependent on their modern props, but had become as reliant on social and interpersonal games and maneuvers and deceptions.
In the village, as there was no technology or amenities, there were also no social or personal complexities. And this simplicity simplified his views and emotions until he forgot there were reasons to erect shields, to not open himself up and just be happy.
And he had. He’d dropped his worries and doubts and plunged into profound happiness for the very first time inhis life.
And here was his happiness made flesh, snuggling into him.
He hugged her tighter to his side, groaned with overflowing emotions. “Meu beleza, you’re beautiful—just beautiful.”
He felt a tremor pass through her. He assigned a good reason to it. That was, until a few minutes later she was dispensing with his support and walking separately, and his doubts crashed down on him as if they’d never dissipated.
This had been happening ever since they’d arrived here. This episodic withdrawal. As if she sometimes caught herself doing something she shouldn’t. Each time it had passed and he couldn’t guess what could have triggered the dimming, the remoteness.
But couldn’t he guess, or was he just scared to acknowledge that similar episodes of withdrawal had heralded the end in the past? He’d noticed them then, rationalized them, ignored them, right up until the moment she’d told him she was leaving him. It had taken five months for her to get enough of him back then. Was his novelty wearing off faster this time? Now she was older, more experienced?
If it was, it was his fault, over-eager, starving, lovesick moron that he was. He might be scaring her, overwhelming her again. Sickening her? Deus, no. He had to slow down, back off, remember his initial resolve, try to stick by it again.
He was pathetic. Soaring in undreamed-of heaven one moment, drowning in the dregs of unspeakable hell the next.
“Oh, wow, this has to be it!”
The awe in her voice brought him crashing back to reality. They’d arrived at their destination and he hadn’t even noticed. She turned to him with a delighted smile and everything was right again. Had the world ever been anything but perfect?
He spread his arms so he wouldn’t reach for her. “Meu amor, I give you paradise.”
“Oh, Roque. I don’t think even paradise can be like this.” She pirouetted in abandon, a perfect Eve, tall and lush and vital.
This place was magic. A few acres of natural clearance within the dense forest, with a pond of turquoise water coming out of nowhere and every bird and butterfly on the face of the earth, it seemed, making it home.
The tribal shaman had brought him here yesterday, one medicine man to another. It was sacred ground and only shamans were allowed to come here to meld with nature and pray to the gods. He’d gotten the shaman’s blessing to bring his woman, but only because, to the man’s utter confusion, she was a shaman, too. He’d told him it would be the best place to get her with child. A child conceived here would be favorite of the gods.
His aching heart followed her every move as she ran here and there, exclaiming in glee, scaring the ponderous flock of herons standing on one leg in the pond.
A child. Hers. Would she ever want one again? Would it be his child she’d want? They’d been making love without protection, but she’d told him from the first day they didn’t need it. She must be protected, probably by an IUD.
But why had she had one fitted? Because she’d been sexually active? Had she indulged in unprotected sex with others? He never had. She was the only one he’d ever trusted, the only one he’d ever shared full intimacy with. Did she go around trusting men to be conscious of their health? Had he been a fool not to take precautions for that reason alone?
His heart was stabbed with a lance of jealousy and oppression. Then she turned to him, her smile elated and again, fool that he was, everything else ceased to matter.
“Roque, did you see those?” She jumped up and down as she pointed towards one of the trees ringing the glade filled with chattering, quarreling birds. “Toucans! And those have to be macaws. And I saw hummingbirds and hawks. And about a hundred kinds of butterflies.”
The last of his agitation dissipated as his lips widened indulgently. “And there are also more than two hundred species of mosquito.”
“Ha—my repellant ointment laughs at all two hundred species.” She walked up to him, hugged him around the waist. It took all his control not to crush her to him. “Thanks, darling. This is my life’s most magnificent surprise. This place is phenomenal.”
He smiled down on her, his heart constricting. “Tomorrow we go to see another phenomenon, the ‘meeting of the waters'.”
“I still can’t believe the black, clear waters of the Rio Negro can actually run side by side without mixing with the clay-colored waters of the Rio Solimoes, and for many miles.”
“That’s why it’s called a phenomenon.” He pinched her cheek when she narrowed her eyes at him, made another face and chuckled. “And then this place is more of a phenomenon than you realize. According to the shaman, places like this are magical foci, radiating fertility to the whole region. And shamans—as he considers us to be—harness their powers, use them as a nexus to the gods to bring forth bountiful sustenance—and progeny.”
Suddenly he felt as if she’d been transported to another plane, leaving him behind.
This new attack of remoteness hit him the hardest ever, shattered his resolve to cool down, to lay off. Calling himself a self-destructive, self-defeating fool, he caught her in a harder embrace. He had to stop her from drifting away. He wouldn’t survive her leaving him, not again.
He devoured her lips, and with a groan that shook him she came back to him. But not completely. And he went mad.
He barely snatched a mat from his backpack, threw it on the ground before he dragged her there. She went down, no reciprocating fervor, just limp surrender.
He had to have her fire, her ardor. He had to!
He discarded their swimsuits then his hands and lips roamed her, exploited every bit of knowledge and experience with her responses and preferences, trying to ignite her. He almost wept with relief when she caught fire at last and gasped for him.
He covered her body, thrust inside her, maddened, as if he’d stamp her with his essence, an image of a child with golden eyes and hair with a thousand shades shriveling in his soul even as his senses rocketed. Her soft screams filled his head as she writhed in the conflagration of release, catching him on the shock wave, sending him into his own explosive climax.
He didn’t move off her this time but lay over her, filling her, joined in ultimate intimacy, bitterness flooding him.
He was repeating his mistakes, being just sex to her.
But this had to be more than sex. Sh
e’s given you total surrender, absolute intimacy… Sim, fool yourself some more.
Eight years ago, she’d given him that the same day she’d left him.
Jewel stood on the edge of her boat, watching Marúbo disappear. They were turning into a tributary, heading for another village at its furthest point upstream. The tributary would get smaller on the way so they’d taken only the smaller boats. On arrival, they’d still need to hike for half a day to reach their destination. She couldn’t wait to get there.
And she couldn’t wait to leave there. To leave here, leave this expedition and Brazil.
Her efforts to keep a part of her unconquered by Roque, to save something of herself to survive with, had failed. Instead, she’d traded away her one chance of survival for two weeks of absolute bliss in his arms.
She’d opened herself to him, bared everything that she was and thought and felt, let him see the extent of her love, holding nothing back but the words.
And in return, he was already withdrawing.
It had started after that time in the glade five days ago. After he’d told her what the place signified.
Had the magical place revealed to him how empty of potential their lovemaking was and had it put him off her? Did a man who didn’t want children with a woman still feel repulsed if he knew the choice wasn’t there?
But she’d wanted longer with him, didn’t know how to give him up. And he was cutting her time, her remaining life, short.
He tried to disguise his cooling, but his endearments and light-heartedness felt strained, his spontaneity replaced by pensive watchfulness. He still made love to her, but his approach was stilted, as if he was summoning desires he no longer felt, his ferocity coming late, as if his response was building automatically, nothing to do with who his partner was.
But it was the aftermath that damaged most. Those times had been what she’d craved most with him, the sheer beauty and depth of descending together from the heights of the sensual storm, of feeling cherished and even more desired. Now his awkward kisses and caresses, his hesitant gaze, as if he were dispensing a requisite chore, added a deeper scar each time.
But what had she expected? She’d known her attraction to him was her synthetic shell, and beauty, even when real, bound no man. Hers seemed to have lost its appeal. Now he’d experienced it thoroughly, the still visible pattern where she’d been put back together must be evident. He could now be imagining what lay underneath, seeing her with the artificial effects undone. He could be remembering her when that negligible network had been a glaring map, marring her body and face, and he’d forced himself to look, to touch, to pretend to want.
But if he was becoming sated, or even sickened, he wasn’t doing anything about it. By now, she knew how compassionate he was. He probably didn’t know how to end it, was trying to do it gradually so as to cause her the least pain.
And she was too pathetic to do what she should have done weeks ago. She wasn’t sparing him the discomfort. And she had to find a way to release him, absolve him of any guilt or worry on her account. She had already been destroyed so it didn’t matter how much more doomed she became.
He suddenly appeared on the observation deck of his boat.
Longing writhed inside her. She knew he was looking at her from behind his sunglasses, was debating whether to pretend not to notice her or whether to acknowledge her. She saved him the trouble, turned away. Then she lurched forward and crashed to her knees.
They’d collided with something!
She’d barely risen to her feet, felt the pain shooting in her knees and blood trickling down her legs, seen the ominous underwater shadow of what looked like a gigantic sunken tree, when another collision from behind sent her hurtling overboard.
She heard her name being roared out as she hit the water. The plummet through the surface was like crashing through glass. The blow stunned sensation out of her whole left side. Then a thousand razors roared along her nerves. Her eyes and mouth jolted wide on the pain and panic, and warm water flooded in, cutting off sight and breath.
She thrashed, fighting the suffocating fluid, desperate arms reaching for the surface. She reached it and it only turned into attacking darkness. The boat—it was heaving, pieces of it separating, plummeting, pummeling her under with brutal blows. She went down, and down.
Her lungs burned, her vision a backlash of murky crimson. Beyond terror, the last tatters of survival instinct drove her up to break the surface—and it was there. The boat. It was capsizing.
For endless moments, it loomed over her in a merciless taunt.
Holding her last breath, she watched it make its final descent as Roque’s face filled her last thoughts.
At least this would be a way out.
For both of them…
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE macabre sequence slashed its slow-motion terror across Roque’s vision, goring his mind.
He’d come out on deck, an unreasoning urge taking him to assure himself that Jewel was still there. She had been. Then she’d turned away. Then she’d lurched and fallen to her knees.
Alarm had hit him so hard it had delayed his realization that her boat had hit something. Then terror had begun.
Her boat had shuddered to a jarring halt then veered frighteningly. Right into his boat’s path. His boat had collided with its stern with full force. This time, Jewel had become airborne, her hands clawing for non-existent purchase. A roar had shredded his throat as he’d seen her hit the water, watched it engulf her.
He’d exploded into a run, terror detonating in his gut, and had been knocked off his feet. A sunken tree had lodged in the keel of her boat and launched it at his again. His boat, still going full steam ahead on its upstream struggle, had plowed into her now horizontal boat, right in the middle, rolling it over the tree trunk, starting the unstoppable process of overturning.
His shouts had become stifled. His heart had felt like it was bursting. Horror had been killing him with every heartbeat. Jewel had just broken the surface of the water. Right under the breaking up, capsizing boat.
And he was now pummeling the river headfirst, his arms and legs mad machines slicing through the water, defying the current, propelling him at manic speed, one purpose fueling him.
Shield her. Break the impact with your body. Reach her.
He didn’t—didn’t. Two seconds too late—two feet too far…
The boat crashed down on her on a wet clap of thunder that knocked him out of the water. Shock waves rippled out, conspiring with the current to swat him away—away from her—from where she’d disappeared. Jewel, gone underneath that behemoth!
“Jewel!”
The bellow almost expelled his life force. Then he almost burst his chest on an inhalation. If he couldn’t get her out, he’d join her down there and it would be his last.
He dove after her.
He plummeted through the murky waters, desperation and terror propelling his body downwards. She could have already been swept away—the current here was swift, the visibility almost nil…
Deus, Deus… He prayed, wept. Jewel, Jewel, let me feel you, let me connect with you, just one more time, meu amor. I won’t ask or hope or want anything—anything—ever again. Just let me find you now—and I’ll be happy to lose you later…
Tears bled out of him, diffused in the turbid waters, somehow clearing his vision. The depths below the boat’s receding shadow were littered with all the debris that had spilled out of it—down, down on the muddy riverbeds Jewel. Under a huge piece of hull his boat had torn from hers…
The blast of horror knocked him empty of breath. His lungs burned. He had to go up—get enough air to fuel him all the way down, all through freeing her from her trap…
No! More minutes lost. Water filling her lungs, extinguishing her precious life. No.
His watery shroud was turning blacks Losing conscious-ness… Would be no good to her dead. Go up—now.
He kicked his fury and dread, rocketed to the surfa
ce, struggled to take one deep breath through the quakes tearing through him, a time bomb ticking in his arteries, counting down the remaining time until Jewel was beyond salvations He dove down again, like a heat-seeking torpedo now he knew where to find her. He clawed his way through the impeding water, pressure building in his head with his fast descent, almost bursting his eardrums. Only Jewel, only Jewel—lying there like a discarded doll, half-buried under that twisted hulk of metal, colorless, bruised, a cut on her forehead radiating a cloud of red in the water. Blood could bring piranhas—he had to get her out of the water—now.
He reached her, tore the debris away, scooped her limp body in his arms and thrust frantically for the surface. He broke it, expending the last of his breath on a loud cry for help. His next breath was poured down Jewel’s lungs.
He saw faces, felt hands, in the water, on board his boat, all urgent, anxious, helping. Jewel wasn’t breathing, her heart beating a sluggish twenty beats per minute. He nearly died with horror every time he emptied his lungs in hers.
He stumbled to place her on the exam table, barking ragged orders.
The instruments were already falling into his shaking hands and he had no idea how but he intubated her, placed a nasogastric tube and emptied her stomach of swallowed water. Madeline and Inácio hooked her up to a pulse oximeter and cardiac monitor then started positive-pressure ventilation and resumed compressions. All the time a litany of begging and love spilled from his lips, his tears a stream splashing all over her beloved face.
Her face. It was bruised and torn again, and it didn’t matter. It never had. She must live…
But, Deus—warm, fresh water submersion was the worst-case scenario. Inhaled fresh water destroyed lung alveoli, passed from the lungs to the bloodstream, destroying red blood cells. And if she’d been down there for longer than eight minutes, everything they were doing would mean nothing. Without oxygen for longer than that, brain cells died and permanent neurological damage resulted, even with successful resuscitation.
