Vivian's Return

by Cooper-Posey, Tracy

  “What’s your address?” she asked him.

  Chapter Eight

  Technically, Paul didn’t own the beach. He just owned all the land adjacent to it and all the access roads to the beach were his. His property and his beach, were well south of the town and as deserted as he had promised.

  It was late afternoon by the time Vivien drove along the winding road that led to his house. She had followed his careful instructions from her motel, where she had returned to collect her jogging clothes and shoes.

  She was avidly curious to see where he lived now. The little house where they had lived was long gone—sold to a giant corporation that had leveled the land and built a thriving shopping mall. Vivien hadn’t visited the mall while she was in town and had no intention of doing so.

  So far she had gained the impression from comments by Morris and the other pilots about Paul’s beach-bum address that he lived a hermit’s life in a corrugated iron beach shack, like dozens of other reclusive people up and down the coast.

  When she rounded the final bend and the house came into view, her breath caught.

  It wasn’t palatial by any means but it was a long way from a beach shack. She halted the Range Rover on a flat paved area and climbed out, studying the rendered and whitewashed walls of the group of buildings she found herself standing amongst, surprised.

  Paul appeared at the doorway of the building to her left and crossed the paving to greet her. When he went to pick up her hand in the old manner, she snatched her hand away. “I’m just here to jog.”

  He held up his hands, as if surrendering, or showing he was unarmed. “I know,” he said. “Come through. I’ll show you how to get down to the beach from here.”

  He turned and led the way back through the doorway. Vivien followed him across a short, wide entry hall with several doors leading off it, into a huge, lofty room whose two walls that faced the sea were uninterrupted walls of glass.

  Vivien found herself sighing over the view. The beach, as advertised, was long, flat and deserted and combers rolled in to break almost on the beach itself. The house sat high up on a small hillock, barely two hundred yards away from the water. There wasn’t another house in sight. On the far north horizon Vivien could see the hazy, miniature silhouette of the huge wheat silos on the town wharf and the pin shape of the lighthouse on the tip of Point Moore. To the left, dazzling white sand dunes undulated endlessly southward, out of sight.

  Paul stood back, allowing her time to soak up the details. “You like my beach shack?” he asked, with a smile.

  “Oh, yes,” Vivien admitted freely. She looked around the room. The floor of the room was cool, muted slate, an all-purpose covering that suited the room, for it appeared to be an all-purpose room. The shorter solid wall to the right was given over to shelving and storage. A desk stood close to the wall, with a complex computer set up. The office end. In the middle of the room was a huge jarrah table, highly polished, glowing with good care, surrounded by eight jarrah dining chairs. Vivien recognized the table. It had belonged to Paul’s parents. The other end of the room, where the two glass walls met, was the lounge area. Comfortable sofas, a low coffee table and a thick floor rug in spicy shades of brown and red were arranged so that no matter where you sat, you could see the ocean.

  On the other side of the glass walls was a wooden deck that ran the length of both walls. From this decking a flight of steps led down to a wide, sandy path that curved its way around sea grass and shrub-covered hillocks to the beach itself.

  From behind Paul came the harsh noise of radio static, loud enough to make Vivien jump. He turned to adjust the volume on a radio set up that was the twin of the system in the office. “Sorry,” he apologized. “Just keeping in touch.”

  “Can’t stay away, can you?” She lifted the sports bag in her hand. “Where can I change?”

  Paul took her back through the entry hall and opened another door. It was a bedroom. His bedroom, for there were books on the bedside table and his leather jacket lay across the foot of the bed. An en suite led off the opposite wall.

  “Thanks,” she said and Paul nodded and shut the door on her.

  Vivien hurriedly changed into her jogging clothes—a one-piece swimsuit and loose running shorts and her second-best running shoes, which she didn’t mind getting soaked in the occasional long-reaching wave. As she changed, she noticed a familiar spine on one of the books on the bedside table. She slid it out from under the other books to check the title. It was indeed the scuba diving manual she thought it was. Curious, Vivien opened the book at the back pages where she knew there was a personal diving log. It was blank.

  With a grimace at her own nosiness, she put the book back down on the table and turned to pick up her sports bag. Time to think. Time to hit the sand.

  * * * * *

  What was happening between her and Paul? What did she want to happen? Well, that was easy to answer. Vivien shook her head as she ran, throwing her off-stride enough to remind her of her balance. She wanted Paul. She loved him. She wanted to be a part of his life.

  There lay the rub.

  Vivien couldn’t sigh—her breathing was settled into a good rhythm—but she sighed mentally. All she had ever wanted to be a part of Paul’s life, but he kept shutting her out. Nearly every argument they’d ever had had been over this. His work, which took up the greater part of his life, was kept behind a door that was closed to her. Sure, he had encouraged her to apply for the receptionist’s job and helped her get her pilot’s license but that was just fun stuff. The real work, the serious side of the business, was different. Vivien hesitated to label it, then pushed herself into being totally honest. To Paul, it was a man’s world.

  It wasn’t that he was simply chauvinistic. It was his upbringing that influenced his attitude and the type of work he did aggravated it. If he had been in a more sedentary industry, it might have made all the difference. If he had been a lawyer or doctor or teacher, then Vivien felt sure the door would not have been shut so firmly in her face, but the very real danger he so often faced switched on an ancient instinct in him to shield others from the same risk, which shut her out as neatly as any male chauvinist could have managed.

  Could he change? Would he change? Was she prepared to risk finding out and perhaps being disappointed?

  The one thing she was absolutely sure of was that she would not risk everything she had put in place in her life to go back to the same relationship they’d had before. It had made her so miserable the first time around that she had been forced to leave him, despite loving him.

  She forced herself to be honest. It hadn’t all been bad. The bad times seemed to weigh more heavily in her memory, but there had been good times aplenty.

  What about the first time they’d made love? Vivien had been facing her first solo flight and was terrified. Paul had driven her to the airport for the flight and was going to watch from the ground. While her official instructor had stood out in the sun next to the plane, waiting for her, Paul had taken her inside the cool dark cave of the company hangar, to reassure her.

  “Just no three-point landings,” he joked. “You don’t want to show off too much.”

  “I can’t do this. What if I forget something?”

  “Like putting the landing gear down? So you’ll belly land. So what?”

  “What if I really screw up, though?”

  “Vivvy, you’ve been making full flights all on your own for the last three weeks. What does Ben do but sit next to you and gossip about Miss Sunshine?”

  “Nothing, but he’s there if I do make a mistake—”

  “But you haven’t. Not in ten flights. You haven’t forgotten a single thing. So why are you suddenly going to forget now?”

  “I don’t know!” she cried, panic settling into her bones a little more deeply. “That’s just it. I don’t know what might happen!”

  Paul drew her into his arms and wrapped himself around her. “What you do need to forget is how to panic.” His voic
e was low, soothing.

  “Easy for you to say,” Vivien murmured but his body was hot and comfortably familiar against hers.

  “Easier to do.” He kissed her, a slow, lingering, probing kiss. It caught her a little by surprise but very quickly her body responded with a strong wave of need. The strength of it was astonishing—her hearing shut down, then her sight as her eyes closed of their own volition, then even her astonishment faded under the overwhelming impulse.

  His hands were hot on her body and Vivien’s back arched. One hand swept up to her breast, cupped it through her shirt, making her gasp a little. She felt him tugging at the buttons of her shirt and a hot little spurt of anticipation tingled through her. She wanted his hand on her bare breast. She ached for it. She had felt it many times and always the touch of his hands on her flesh created a sweet-sour rush through her body that sent her senses spinning and her mind with them, into a maelstrom of wants and needs that demanded satisfaction—primal urges that she recognized on the level of instinct and reveled in.

  She found her hands were around his shoulders, sliding into his hair, encouraging him.

  His fingers closed around the swell of her breast and brushed over the taut, erect nipple, shooting a bolt of pure pleasure through her body, snapping her muscles tight and drawing a deep groan from her.

  More. She wanted more.

  But his hands lifted away.

  “No,” she murmured, opening her eyes. “Don’t stop.”

  He smiled a little. His own eyes looked sleepy. Lethargic. That was lust. She recognized it and welcomed it.

  But he was gently doing up the buttons of her shirt.

  “You know, you can always put off your solo flight for another few lessons. I had twelve lessons before I went up alone.”

  He gave the shirt a tug, straightening it out and stepped away from her. He lifted a single brow.

  He was challenging her.

  “Ben’s waiting,” he said softly.

  Vivien stumbled out into the sunlight, her mind half dazed with unappeased passion and the beginnings of indignation stirring her to the challenge he’d laid down.

  He’d taken twelve lessons?

  She’d do it in ten.

  So she had. She had dealt with the flight with offhand ease, calling up and executing the skills she had learned with the subconscious agility and preciseness that one only gains after much practice, when the skills had become second nature, for her mind was preoccupied with getting back down on the ground once more.

  She had landed, a perfect two-point touchdown, then impatiently finished the paperwork and headed directly for the hangar where she knew Paul would be waiting for her. She found him lounging against the fuselage of the turbo-prop, smiling. She recognized the knowledge in his eyes. He knew she had made a successful flight and had expected nothing less.

  Before he could say a word, however, she walked right up to him and kissed him fully on the mouth, her fingers weaving into the bound lengths of hair at the back of his head, keeping his head steady. At the contact, the hot white embers of need blazed up in her body once more. She pushed herself up against him and felt him make contact with the fuselage.

  He kissed her back, his own body stirring against hers. No words were necessary. She felt the playfulness in him change to something more fundamental. The desire for pleasure.

  She fumbled at her shirt buttons, slipping them undone with fingers made clumsy by her urgency. Finally she had the shirt undone and she pulled it aside and guided Paul’s hand to her breast, returning it to the place where he had abandoned her.

  This time it was he who groaned. His other hand came to life, pulling her hips up against his, his big hand spread across the small of her back and with hurried, hot kisses, he trailed his lips down the length of her throat and further, down to the swell of her breasts, to take her nipple into his warm mouth.

  The delicious tugging at her breast translated into a warm explosion at the juncture of her legs, a restless aching need for fulfillment and Vivien was aware of nothing else but that need. Every cell focused on the drive for completion.

  “Vivien...” Paul’s voice was strained, hoarse.

  He didn’t have to complete the sentence. She knew as well as he what was happening.

  “Here?”

  He lifted his head, looked around. “In the plane.”

  He fumbled out the keys from his pocket and unlocked the plane and they lay on the carpeted cabin floor. Paul kissed her and took off her shirt and when Vivien lifted her hands to the belt of her jeans, he caught her hands and made them still.

  “I know you’re impatient but I want to savor this.”

  She nodded and held her arms up to him. “Then kiss me again.”

  Paul kissed her, his thigh sliding between her denim-clad ones, pushing against the sensitive mound between them. His mouth continued to kiss all parts of her—her ears and throat, her shoulders and upper arms, even each one of her fingers, which he slid into his mouth, his eyes watching her every reaction. Her breasts were not spared, nor the quivering muscles over her midriff and gradually her jeans were opened and his mouth explored the flat plain of her abdomen, sending sparks of delight through her, making her hips thrust upwards in silent invitation.

  Slowly she was stripped of all clothing and all defenses and at his encouragement, she shed him of his own clothes. He was ready for her and suddenly shy, she glanced at his face to reassure herself.

  He kissed her, softly, devoid of passion. “I made a promise, remember? Don’t be afraid.”

  Her little fear disappeared. He had made a promise that he would never hurt her and he had never broken that promise.

  Paul drew her to him.

  Their lovemaking was mutual, as was everything in their lives, a paired striving for the invisible goal. When Paul lay over her, his entry was slow, gentle and caused no pain. Finally he was fully inside her and Vivien understood for the first time the physical joy of welcoming a man into her body. He moved, a tiny spasm, not quite a thrust and she caught her breath. “Ohhh.”

  “Ah, the look on your face...” he said, his voice low. “Reward enough for a lifetime’s patience.”

  She moved against him and this time it was he who gasped and Vivien felt her eyes widen at the deep ripple that moved through her body in response.

  “Don’t do that,” Paul said breathlessly.

  “No?”

  “Vivvy, I’m barely holding on as it is.”

  It was then she noticed his beaded temple and the rapid tattoo of his heart above her. She realized that the little pseudo-thrust was involuntary, a signal of unraveling control.

  The knowledge delighted her, delighted the ancient woman’s instinct within her. It was as if an entire room of genetic wisdom was unlocked and revealed to her.

  Quite deliberately, she thrust again, feeling muscles tighten in response and an answering throb.

  “Vivien,” he growled and it was the growl of a man on the edge.

  At that moment they were truly equals and Vivien acknowledged the moment by winding her arms around him and whispering in his ear, “Now.”

  With a groan, he finally moved within her, sliding out a little before thrusting home once more. Again. Vivien found herself responding to the rhythm, being caught up in it with Paul and being carried along with him in the current. She grew breathless and could feel every sinew in her body tensing. Something was building up inside her. A pressure. She recognized with her new-found instincts that the release of that pressure was the goal of their mutual striving. Her whole body seemed to be preparing for it.

  Then, for an endless eon she hung in a weightless place, a place of pure ecstasy where there was room for nothing else except that moment.

  She felt Paul strain against her and knew that he was in that place with her.

  Then together they slid into mutual climax.

  Afterward, she lay on her side and Paul cradled her from behind. His lips, warm and moist, pressed against t
he throbbing pulse below her ear. “I love you, Vivien.”

  She sighed. “Now I know what that really means. All of it.”

  “Yes.”

  She could feel a sleepy lethargy creeping up on her and remembered that she had just successfully soloed, without a quiver of fear.

  “I beat you,” she murmured. “Ten flights, not twelve.”

  Paul made a small noise that sounded suspiciously like muffled laughter.

  “What?” she prompted him.

  “I lied. I made it in eight.”

  She could feel him laughing silently by the small shaking of his body against her. Defeated, she joined his laughter, feeling the elation, the joy of being loved, escape her as she laughed.

  The girl who had burned her high school yearbook lay now in the same cold ash-filled grave. The new Vivien had emerged. It occurred to Vivien as she ran along her solitary beach, that the “new” Vivien would never have been discovered without Paul.

  Now she had a chance to have that joy again. All she had to do was give Paul time.

  I can’t believe I’m thinking about this at all. I arrived here at the beginning of the week, determined to do my job and get out. Now look where I am. I’m considering upping stakes and leaving behind everything I’ve come to love about my life.

  Vivien paused at the second point, just over a mile south of Paul’s house and considered that thought carefully. Why not? What was so scary about abandoning her life? It wasn’t as if she hadn’t done it before.

  She looked toward the north, to the long shallow arc of white sand that marked Paul’s beach and turned to start jogging back.

  But I will not go back to the way we were before. Vivien repeated the thought, each pounding footstep she took a counterpoint to the syllables.

  Her future rested on Paul’s strength and determination. She had to trust him to do the right thing. That was what had driven her out to the beach.

  She had to depend on Paul.

  She had been completely independent for a long while, now. Having to rely on someone else, to put such a high-risk outcome into someone else’s hands made her anxious. Not anxious...scared.