Burning Moon

by Jo Watson

  And he gave it to me. He explored every inch of my body with his hungry hands, mouth, and hot tongue.

  When he finally gave me what I was now loudly and repeatedly begging for, I cried out instantly as he pulled me on top of him. He was strong. Stronger than I’d thought, and I felt like a rag doll in his arms. His hands gripped my waist so tightly that I was sure he’d leave bruises. I hoped he would, because I wanted to walk away from this with his mark on my body. I wanted to be branded by him. His possession.

  Sometimes he was slow and deep, and other times fast and forceful. All inhibitions were gone now and I told him what I wanted, how I wanted it, and when it felt good. I never thought that I’d be the kind of girl to do all that. But Damien made me feel like the sexiest woman on the planet and with him, I was alive. More alive than I’d ever been.

  There was nothing tender or gentle about what we were doing now. It was about fulfilling a desperate need. And we couldn’t get enough of each other. I’d never imagined that sex could be this good. Mind-blowing.

  The pace built, and during the heavy breathing and moaning I heard Damien say, “You’re amazing, Lilly.” I wanted to say something back, but I couldn’t speak. We were racing toward the finish line now. Damien had somehow managed to get me up against the wall; I can’t even tell you how or when he’d lifted me up, but I was pinned. The cold wall felt hard against my back, and Damien had wrapped my legs around him.

  As he was coming, he grabbed my face between his hands and stared into my eyes. I watched as they glazed over and it was beautiful. He was beautiful. He kissed me when it was all over. “I’m so fucking in love with you, Lilly. And I don’t think I’m ever going to get tired of saying that to you.”

  My heart screamed in my chest, every neuron in my brain fired and was flooded with intoxicating dopamine, and every nerve ending stung.

  No words had ever meant so much.

  * * *

  Breakfast was a rowdy affair. Partygoers were still drunk and happy after the night’s festivities. Damien and I were in high spirits, too, walking around like a young couple in love—which we were—holding hands and whispering sweet nothings. I felt so proud to have him on my arm. He was my guy. Mark and Francoise also seemed pleased, judging by the wolf whistles we got.

  Jess and Sharon were a bit worse for wear when we finally found them in a tent on the beach with hoodies and sunglasses on. Jess was cursing those red-and-yellow cocktails, and Sharon was cursing the fact she’d mixed them with a brownie obtained from the Rastafarian contingent. They both declared that this had been the best Burning Moon ever and, much to my delight, Damien had jumped in quickly and said that it had been not only his best Burning Moon, but also probably the best night of his life.

  Of course this made me flush a deep crimson that didn’t go unnoticed by Jess.

  “Best night, huh?” Jess teased.

  Damien reached forward and pulled her dark glasses off, exposing her vampire eyes to the blinding sun. She winced and threw her hands up in defeat.

  “That will teach you,” Damien said, waggling a finger at her.

  “I know the perfect cure for that.” A loud voice startled us and we all turned. The voice was coming from a young, cool-looking guy who seemed very pleased with himself. He was flanked by a small group of eager-looking followers. They looked as if they were there to recruit people, like a cult might.

  “The best hangover cure in the world,” he said again, and then looked down at us with a sly smile, the kind a charismatic cult leader might have just before he talks you into skinning your granny’s cat. I was trying to imagine what kind of “hangover cure” this guy was peddling when Damien chirped up.

  “Oh yes. I think I’ve heard about this, too,” Damien added with an equally sly smile, followed by a knowing, mischievous look. Why did they look like they were sharing the world’s biggest secret?

  “What?” I asked abruptly.

  “Come. We’re all going there now.” The guy beckoned for us to follow him and his little group. Damien immediately shot up, pulling me with him. Jess and Sharon seemed more reluctant, though; that is to say that Damien had to practically pry them off the sand with a spatula.

  Our strange little group strode across the sand. I had no idea where we were going or what the hell we would be doing. And every time I asked Damien, I was met with a blanket “you’ll see.”

  With each step, I was starting to feel more and more suspicious. Not to mention I had the distinct impression that I wasn’t going to like what lay ahead. We marched past Francoise and Mark and, not being the kind of folk to be left out of an adventure, they joined in.

  “It’s like following the pied piper!” Mark added with sheer delight as he skipped next to me. A few more stragglers got up and followed us too when the words hangover cure were mentioned. This guy clearly had some kind of animal magnetism that drew people toward him. Perhaps he gave off a pheromone? We walked all the way across the beach to the edge of the thick tropical jungle. Our pack leader paused for a moment. He turned and looked at us with a satisfied smile.

  “Let’s go!”

  But it soon became obvious that this was turning out to be far from a hangover cure. It was more hangover-inducing. The terrain had gotten very rocky and the walk had become distinctly vertical. A few followers threw their hands up in despair and mumbled expletives before turning back. Jess and Sharon had almost done the same thing, but Damien had mysteriously insisted that it would be worth it.

  “Damien, where are we going? It’s sort of getting very high and steep and the path is getting very—”

  He placed a finger over his lips and silenced me, then slid an arm around my waist and whispered in my ear, “You look so sexy when you’re worried.”

  Well that about did it; I almost forgot where I was for a dizzying second and my fear of heights seemed to magically disappear.

  The climb continued until we finally broke out of the vertical thicket and walked onto a flat plateau. I got the sense we were high up, and my suspicions were confirmed quickly. The plateau ended very abruptly. A steep white cliff face plummeted a million miles down into still, dark waters below. I looked from the waters to Damien and back again, and that’s when I got it.

  “Nooooo.” I backed away from the edge of the cliff. “I don’t even have a hangover.”

  “Jesus!” Jess suddenly exclaimed when she caught on a second or two after me. And then gasps and curses and exclamations rose up from the small party as they also began to realize what was afoot. Surprisingly, some people seemed excited by the prospect of throwing their bodies off a deadly cliff.

  “It’s totally safe. Just keep your arms and legs tucked in,” our fearless leader said. He gave us all the thumbs-up and then threw himself off the ledge. Everyone rushed up to the edge and looked over. I crept there, slowly. The cliff was so high that it looked like he was falling in slow motion.

  If it were so safe, I wondered why the hell he was screaming at the top of his lungs as he plummeted to what could be his death. A few more gasps and shrieks rose up from the audience as he hit the water with an almighty bang. He went under and everyone held their breath until his head finally popped back up. He gave a loud victory cry that reverberated around us.

  “No fucking way!” Mark was backing off, pulling Francoise with him. But Francoise had a little twinkle in his eye that I’d never seen before. All of a sudden he broke away from Mark’s protective grasp and jumped off the cliff.

  “You’re going to die!” Mark screamed after him as he disappeared over the edge. “Fine! We’ll die together.” And with that, he dramatically flung himself off the cliff. Their bodies disappeared into the water. I held my breath for a few tense moments until they bobbed back up and proof of life was confirmed. The shouts of adulation and excitement that rose up from the pool below were earth-shattering. They whooped and screeched and this just caused more bodies to go flying. They reminded me of lemmings.

  “Hangover cure, hey?” Je
ss asked, tentatively gazing from Sharon to Damien and back again. What was going on, was everyone out of their minds? Jess looked at Sharon meaningfully and they both nodded at each other.

  “And in one, two, three…” I watched in horror as they too flung themselves off the cliff. There was no way I was going to do this. But the crowd around me started to dissipate, as one after the other went flying over the edge. And soon it was just Damien and me.

  “No, no, no, no!” I backed off as if I were retreating from a blazing inferno. “There is no way, no way, none, no!” I had expected Damien to have an amused smile plastered across his face, but he didn’t. Instead he looked at me very solemnly and held out his hand.

  We stayed like that for what seemed like minutes, my eyes fixed on his hand as I tried to decide whether or not to take it. The thought was totally terrifying in that way that paralyzed my entire body from top to bottom. My stomach rose and fell a few times, giving way to a slightly nauseous feeling.

  “Do you trust me?” Damien finally broke the long silence.

  My eyes came up and met his and he smiled at me…God I was so in love with this man. A man that was asking me to jump off a cliff with him.

  “Sure.” I half swallowed the word down, hoping that he hadn’t heard it. I took a tiny step forward and put my hand into his. The second our hands touched he intertwined his fingers with mine and locked them together. We walked up to the edge of the cliff and a cheer rose up from the waters below.

  I couldn’t believe I was about to do this. This was the single most mad, insane, frightening thing I’d ever done in my life.

  “When in Thailand…” Damien whispered. My heart jumped into my already constricted throat and adrenaline started to surge.

  “AND one, two, three, go!” I closed my eyes and suddenly the ground was no longer under my feet. The air rushed past me so fast that it stung my body like a million needles. I could hear myself screaming, even though I wasn’t aware of doing it. I closed my eyes tightly, gripped on to Damien’s hand for dear life, and waited for the plummeting feeling to stop…

  WHOOSH.

  My body was consumed by water and I slipped farther and farther down until I finally lost momentum and came to a halt. I cautiously opened my eyes. I was submerged in the clearest, warmest water. I looked up and could see the blurry outline of the cliff through the ripples on the surface. I’d just leapt off a cliff and I felt so fucking alive in that moment. More alive than I’d ever felt. I felt like a superhero. I stayed under for a while, enjoying the feeling of being suspended in the warm quiet. The calm after the storm, the quiet after the chaos. But then a hand came toward me and I gripped it. Damien and I swam up to the surface together.

  My eardrums almost burst when the cheers and screams assaulted them. I looked at Damien and my face felt like it was going to rip open from my smile.

  “That was the fucking coolest thing I’ve ever done in my life.” The words just flew out and they were followed by another massive cheer.

  We all swam to the edge and climbed out. Once on dry land we hugged and compared notes and I felt so close to these total strangers. I felt connected to something that was so much greater than me. It was both a happy and sad thought; this all had to end at some point. This utopian life we’d all been living.

  We made our way back to the party in high spirits and everyone swore that their hangovers were all but a distant memory. The smell of food filled the air, and I walked straight over to the nearest barbeque—what’s with Thailand and this desire to serve every food imaginable on a stick? But I grabbed a few things. Not the prawns, though, I have a no-eating-animals-with-their-heads-still-on policy.

  Damien disappeared for a moment and it gave me the opportunity to grab some quiet time. I sat on the sand eating my meaty stick and looked around. A few days ago I would never have imagined myself in a place like this, not to mention enjoying it and not wanting it to end. And I certainly never imagined that I would be in love with someone else, the strange guy I’d met on my honeymoon.

  “Come, Lilly, let’s swim.” Damien came up behind me and planted a kiss on the back of my neck. But he didn’t wait for me to respond; instead he put his hands under my arms and pulled me to my feet. I shrieked as he picked me up in his arms and ran toward the water.

  The water was warm.

  The sun was bright.

  And I drank in my surroundings.

  “This is the most beautiful place in the world,” I said.

  “Wait until you see some of the temples in the jungles of Malaysia.”

  “I’d like to see them one day.”

  “Not one day, next week.”

  I looked at Damien, confused. “What do you mean, next week?”

  “Well, we’re all off to Malaysia next week.” He was still happily splashing in the water.

  “We?”

  “Yeah, sure. Me, you, Jess, and Sharon.”

  My stomach plummeted.

  “I’m going home tomorrow…” I said tentatively. “My flight is booked.”

  Damien suddenly stopped and the color drained from his face in one swift motion. “But I thought…” His eyes betrayed his feelings. “I assumed that you would be coming with me. Aren’t you?”

  My heart started racing and a desert formed in my mouth.

  “I, I hadn’t thought about it.”

  “Well think about it now.” He sounded anxious.

  “But I have a life. I…I…” I was stammering. My tongue felt twice its usual size and it made the words stick.

  “But I thought, because you didn’t get married, and you came on your honeymoon alone, I thought you wouldn’t be in a rush to get back.”

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “I have work, though. Family. Friends. I can’t just up and leave.”

  “It’s not forever. It’s only a year.”

  “A year! That’s a long time.”

  Damien suddenly swam away from me.

  “Where are you going?”

  He disappeared under the water. This was no time to be running away from the conversation, and suddenly I was pissed off. I folded my arms and waited for him to resurface.

  “Sorry, I just needed a moment of silence to think,” he said, standing up and running his hands through his wet hair. God, he was beautiful.

  “You’re only twenty-four, Lilly. You have your whole life ahead of you to work. One year isn’t going to kill you. It will be an adventure. I mean, you just jumped off a cliff with me.”

  “Just because I jumped off a cliff doesn’t mean I’m prepared to jump and leave my whole life behind.”

  It suddenly dawned on me that Damien might have seen the whole Trust me, jump with me thing as some kind of metaphor for our relationship.

  “Come on, Lilly. Didn’t it feel good to let go like that?” He sounded like he was pleading.

  I couldn’t believe what he was saying. But then I suppose I hadn’t thought about what would happen after today. I hadn’t once thought about the actual logistics of having a relationship with Damien. We hadn’t discussed it. But we hadn’t exactly planned this, either.

  Tears welled up in my eyes. “I…I…” That bloody stammering again.

  Damien stared at me as if he was trying to read my thoughts.

  “Shit!” he said, and made a sudden and very hasty exit for the beach. I followed him. “I knew this would happen. It always happens.”

  “Where’re you going?” I was struggling to keep up, he was moving so fast.

  “Somewhere where we don’t have an audience.”

  He walked across the beach to one of the tents and sat down inside. I followed.

  “So let me get this straight.” I didn’t like his tone now; it was cold and angry. “After last night, you’re just going to go back home?”

  “I could say the same for you.” I lashed out. “Why don’t you come back with me?”

  “That’s totally impossible. I have a year’s worth of flights booked. Friends I’m mee
ting in China, more friends in Japan. A friend’s wedding in Russia. I have plans.”

  “And I don’t have plans?” I hissed back at him sarcastically. “My life is somehow inferior to yours just because it’s not all jumpy and cool and spontaneous? That’s very judgmental of you.”

  Damien paused and the mood changed again.

  “Just come with me, Lilly. I know you’re not the dishwashing-for-money, backpacking type of girl, but I actually have lots of money, shitloads, in fact—we can do it in style. Not the dirty student way. We’ll stay in nice hotels, I won’t make you strip in nightclubs to earn travel money. We’ll fly business class. It will be fun.” He grabbed a fistful of sand and let it run through his fingers. I could see he was hurting. “I can’t offer you marriage and kids and stuff like that. I’m not saying that stuff won’t ever come, but not in the near future, that’s for sure. But what I can offer you is my love and the biggest adventure of our lives.”

  My heart broke as I listened to him. I wanted nothing more than to go with him, but I had a whole life back home. How could I just pick up and leave? Rent, bills, job, friends, family. I couldn’t just press pause for a year.

  “I can’t.” The words felt physically painful to say.

  Damien looked away from me.

  “So what was last night about? I thought it was…” He cut himself off and tossed a handful of sand against the tent wall. “Never mind. Clearly I was wrong.”

  He started getting up and I felt the panic rise again. I grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him back.