Dearest Teuila,
I'll never forget the delicate love and tenderness we shared during my short stay on your island. I'll carry the precious memories with me as long as I live. But I don't want you to pine for me after I leave. Your people share this wonderful culture of aropa, and in time I believe you will grow to appreciate the peaceful comforts of your community. I'll always be with you in mind and spirit.
I signed the note with a heart symbol and the letter J scrawled inside. Then I pulled the curtain aside on the side facing the chief's cabin, noticing Nona weaving quietly on the front porch. I feigned a cough and she looked up in my direction. I looked around to make sure I wasn't being watched, then I motioned with my hands for her to come back toward me. I knew this would be my last chance to leave a message with Teuila before the ship arrived.
She placed some fruit in a bowl and carried it back to me, and when she slid it through the slot in my cage, I dropped the husk in the pot and looked up at her. She paused for a moment, and I nodded as she slid the scroll under her dress.
"For Teuila," I said, pointing to her hut. "Thank you for all your kindness."
I steepled my palms in front of my chest and smiled, bowing in gratitude.
At least Teuila won't be entirely on her own once I leave, I thought. She'll still have the love of her siblings and grandmother to keep her spirits buoyed.
As Nona walked back toward her hut, I closed my blinds and sat down on the sand of my crate and began to sob uncontrollably.
32
For the next couple of hours, the village square was a bustle of activity as the children pointed excitedly toward the horizon and the men began bundling up piles of shark fins they'd caught on their recent fishing expeditions. A foghorn sounded from the direction of the lagoon, and my guards began dismantling my crate. Soon after, the bow of a large cargo ship glided into view beyond the cape. As a small skiff jetted toward the beach, Te's father and grandmother emerged from their cabin. Nona was carrying my handbag, and as they began walking toward me, I realized this was to be my final sendoff from the island.
I glanced in the direction of Te's hut and noticed that it was eerily still. It was obvious that Manaia was keeping her from me, and I suddenly began hyperventilating at the thought of not seeing her again. It seemed unimaginably cruel of him and Teuila's father to deny us the opportunity to say one last goodbye.
When the guards pulled the last of the ties away from my crate, they each grabbed one of my arms as Nona handed me my handbag. It was obvious that Te's father wasn't going to take any chances that I wouldn't be getting on the boat. I looked inside my handbag and noticed that everything was just as I had left it. It felt strange and surreal to see all the usual trappings of my old life lying in the bottom of the bag. There was my bikini, a bottle of sunscreen, my smartphone, and of all things—a business card, which must have fallen out of one of my travel guides as a bookmark. It was hard to imagine returning so abruptly to my privileged life on the mainland.
The guards escorted me down the courtyard toward the beach, and as I began stepping into the boat, I turned around one last time, hoping to catch sight of Teuila. Suddenly, she leaped out the front door of her hut with Manaia in hot pursuit and began running down the path toward me. This time she was the one with a head start, and it only took a few seconds before she traversed the full length of the courtyard and flung her arms around me. As Manaia pulled up behind her breathing heavily, the chief held up his hand and nodded, indicating he was going to permit us a few moments to say our goodbyes.
"Jade," Teuila cried with tears streaming down her face. "I got your message, but I don't understand. Don't you love me anymore?"
I pulled away and cupped Te's face gently in my hands.
"Of course I do, baby. I'll never stop loving you. I just wanted you to see the inevitability of our situation. You belong here on Anuta." I glanced at her grandmother and her siblings looking on from the porch of their hut. "You're surrounded by people that love you."
"But what about you?!" she said. "I thought you said you were starting to like it here? We could hide away on the other side of the island."
"If we stayed here, we'd eventually be hunted down. And your father will never let you leave this island."
I choked up, fighting to say the words.
"It's time to move on. I'm sure that once I'm gone, everything will quiet down and return to normal. You can still live a good life in this beautiful place."
"But I don't want to stay!" Te' cried. She turned to face Manaia and scowled. "I will never love that man. You're the only one that I want."
"Oh Te'—" I said, trying to hold back my tears.
Te's father suddenly motioned to the guards, and they grabbed her arms, pulling her away from me. I despaired at the thought of never speaking with her again and reached into my handbag, passing her my card.
"I don't know if you can send mail via the cargo ship, but this has my address if you want to keep in touch."
The boatmen started up the engine and pushed the skiff off the beach, and my face tightened in anguish as Teuila screamed and flailed, trying to escape the guards' grasp. I blew her a kiss and mouthed the words I love you, then the boat turned around and headed toward the cargo ship over the bumpy surf. When we reached the big ship, they threw a rope ladder over the side and I leaned over the gunwales, retching into the sea. I couldn't bear the thought of never seeing my island girl again.
After I got on deck, I peered over the railing toward the village lagoon, but Teuila was nowhere to be seen. For a brief moment, I considered asking the crew to drop me off on the other side of the island, then I realized I'd just be prolonging her agony. I asked the porter to escort me to my stateroom, where I cried myself to sleep.
33
It took me four full days to return home to Chicago. I had to have new credit cards delivered to a branch of my bank in Honiara, then take three flights to transport me from the Solomon Islands back to the continental USA via Sydney and Hawaii. But I was in no hurry to return to the comforts of my previous life. I didn't even buy new clothes en route to the States, happy to wear my tapa dress for a few more days as my fellow fliers looked on curiously.
It wasn't until I'd been home for a few weeks that I began to settle in to my normal routine. But I never stopped thinking of Teuila. Whenever I passed the pineapple stand in my local grocery store, I smiled recalling how she'd scaled the prickly tree to harvest some fruit for us to eat near our favorite waterhole. I cooked seafood on my barbeque and marinated it in lime juice, trying to remember how good the fresh-caught grouper tasted after we'd trapped it in the lagoon. But the only tangible memento I had of her was my little unicorn shell, which I placed on my office desk and gently caressed whenever I needed to let my mind wander back to the pristine waters of our private paradise.
One particularly lonely day, I opened the photo app on my iPhone, intending to browse through the few pictures I'd taken of Anuta before getting lost in the jungle. I knew that I didn't have any photos of Teuila, but I wanted to see the pink sand and big leafy trees of the island again to remind me of the few blissful days we'd shared in our lagoon. I smiled at the pictures of Captain Ben and the rest of the crew of our sailing vessel, and my heart skipped a beat looking at the images of my fellow passengers enjoying our first catch in the lagoon.
But as I flipped through the pictures, my eyes suddenly widened when I came upon some photos of Manaia hunched over one of the village's dugout canoes as smoke poured from the inner hull. I paused for a moment, dumbfounded at how the villagers had figured out how to use the sophisticated electronic device. I knew that young children could quickly decipher the graphical user interface, and I assumed that one of Te's siblings had picked up my unlocked phone and begun playing with it before it ran out of battery power. The camera app was at the top of the screen, and they must have accidentally tapped the capture button while running around the courtyard.
I studied the photos for a mom
ent and spread my fingers to zoom in on the images. The pictures provided unmistakable proof that Manaia had sabotaged the canoes shortly before the battle with the other tribe. But what could I do with them? I could try printing the images and sending them back to Teuila and her father. But how would that change anything? He'd just think it was another trick by the jealous American, who was manipulating her Western technology to accuse a rival of violating their custom of Aropa.
But I couldn't just stand by and do nothing. If there was the slightest chance to use the pictures to convict Manaia of his crimes, maybe the chief would excommunicate him from the tribe, or at least annul his marriage to his daughter. And if the wedding was overturned, this could open a window for me to return to the island and reclaim my girl. I rushed to the nearest photo shop and asked to have the pictures developed immediately then called the shipping company that had picked me up from Anuta to see when the next ship would be passing by the island. They said another ship was scheduled to return the following month and that they could deliver a package to the island for a fee.
I mailed them the photos together with a bank draft for two hundred dollars, with explicit instructions to deliver the package to the chief's daughter only. Concerned they might just take my money and run, I told them if they could return a note from Teuila, I'd send them another two hundred dollars as proof of delivery. Four hundred bucks was a pretty steep price to send a package overseas, but it would be worth it for my peace of mind knowing that her father at least had tangible proof of Manaia's treachery.
I waited over a month for some kind of word back from Teuila. Then another month passed. And another. Eventually, I resigned myself to the fact that there was nothing further I could do to convince the chief of Manaia's lack of fitness for his daughter. For weeks, I cried myself to sleep every night pining for my lost love, realizing that I'd never see her again. It seemed ironic that I was the one having difficulty letting go, not her.
Then one day, returning from running some errands, I noticed a shiny stone lying atop the welcome mat in front of my front door. I squinted at the object, then widened my eyes, recognizing the familiar shape. I picked up the gem and ran my fingers around the edges as my heart began to thump in my chest. It looked just like the stone Te’ had picked up off the beach of our lagoon and said she'd keep it as a memento of our love.
I suddenly gasped and swung around to see Teuila’s pretty face smiling at me.
Want More Steamy Romance?
Other books by Victoria Rush:
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Some habits are harder to break than others…
Everything’s sexier in the dark…
Getting wet was never this much fun…
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The Girl Next Door - Preview
Stolen Glances
In the days leading up to her parents' flight to Europe, all I could think about was Abby. She'd finally be alone, free to express herself and do anything she wanted. At the very least, I hoped she'd spend a little more time in her backyard. A late-summer heat wave had struck the city, and there'd be plenty of opportunities for her to take a refreshing dip in the pool. Maybe she’d been secretly harboring a two-piece swimsuit or — God forbid — planning a skinny-dip after dark. Either way, I'd be glued to my balcony in hopes of stealing another glance at her sweet, nubile body.
But after her parents left, I was disappointed to see her resume her sequestered ways. One day she left the house to pick up groceries and a couple of days later a middle-aged woman I presumed to be her aunt visited for a couple of hours. But during that first week, she ventured into her backyard only a few times to sunbathe in her one-piece suit. By the middle of the vacation fortnight, I began to despair of seeing any part of her beyond her bare legs.
One night as I was getting ready for bed, I noticed her bedroom light was on later than usual. Our windows faced each other on the same side of our house, but she'd always kept her curtains drawn for privacy. Tonight though, I noticed a sliver of light emanating from a crack in the canopy. I crept up to the side of my window and separated my blinds with two fingers, then peered across the narrow laneway.
Abby was sitting at her desk, peering at a computer screen. She was wearing a light nightgown, and I could see the outline of her full breasts from the backlight of the computer through the gauzy material. The screen was flickering with some kind of moving image, but it was hard to make out what she was watching from my distance about twenty feet away. I reached into my nightstand and pulled out a pair of binoculars that I kept on hand for occasional neighbor spying.
Raising the field glasses to my eyes, I gasped when I adjusted the focus and zoomed in on her. The image on the screen was a porno, showing a man and a woman having missionary sex on a bed! I tilted my binoculars down a few inches and saw Abby had her legs spread apart with her hand moving in a strange thrusting motion between her thighs.
She’s masturbating while watching the video!
I've never pulled my clothes off my body so quickly in my entire life. I stripped off my jeans and dropped my panties to the floor and immediately began circling my clit. My pussy was already soaked in excitement, as my juices ran down the inside of my legs. I struggled to steady the binoculars with my left hand as I furiously tribbed myself with my other hand.
As Abby watched the video, her mouth parted and I could see a pink flush on her cheeks. Her tits bounced up and down under her skimpy negligee as she rocked gently in her chair, while she thrust her fingers between her legs in rhythm with the lovers on the bed. I was just about to come when the man in the video lifted himself off his lover and stood by the side of the bed while she began to perform fellatio. Suddenly, Abby removed her hands from between her legs and lifted a strange green object in front of her face. It was a large cucumber!
Poor girl, I thought. She doesn't even have a proper vibrator, having to resort to common household vegetables to get off.
But what she did next soon made me forget about her deficiency of sex toys. She placed the end of cucumber in her mouth and began sucking on the tip, imitating what the woman was doing in the video. Then she moved her left hand back between her legs and began moving it rapidly up and down. I could see her body shaking in obvious pleasure as she sucked on the green phallus.
This girl is going to make at least one Christian college boy very happy.
The man in the video placed his hands at the side of the woman's head and began deep-throating her. I could see his butt cheeks contracting as he thrust his hips forward, while Abby mimicked his movements with her own rocking action on her chair. Suddenly the man stopped thrusting as he held the woman's head tightly against his stomach.
Abby pulled the cucumber out of her mouth and thrust it between her legs, then arched her back and moaned. I didn't realize that her window also was ajar a few inches, and the sound carried clearly over the small space between our houses. I'd hardly paid any attention to my own pleasure up to that moment, but when I saw her coming, I thrust my fingers into my snatch and gushed all over my hand, biting my lip to stifle my own screams of euphoria.
Abby rested for a minute with the cucumber still embedded in her pussy, then she grabbed the computer mouse and the screen flashed a few times before she settled on a new video. I turned my binoculars back to the
monitor and noticed this time the video was of two naked women scissoring on the floor. Abby paused for a moment as I saw her eyes widen and her mouth part in surprise. Then she grabbed the cucumber with two hands and started pumping it into her cunny.
Fuck, that's hot! She likes women! Thank God.
My mind was already racing with thoughts of how I could entice her into my bed. But right now, I needed something in my own honeypot. I reached back down into my night table and pulled out my favorite vibrator, then I turned it on maximum and plunged it deep into my snatch. Abby and I were both fucking ourselves watching other women getting off, but suddenly Abby looked up and turned her head in my direction.
Had she noticed the movement in my window? I froze with the vibrator buzzing away in my pussy, suddenly aware that I was standing stark naked in front of my window with the shades half open. As she stared in my direction and squinted her eyebrows trying to detect any sign of intrusion, I suddenly came at the thought of her seeing me. My orgasm consumed me, and I struggled to remain motionless as my upper body quaked and quivered in powerful convulsions. I stared back at her, praying she hadn't noticed me.
When she returned her attention to her screen, I suddenly became aware of the dim glow that was being cast in my own room from my open bathroom door. I quickly walked over to the bathroom and turned off the light, then returned to the edge of the window and peered through the blinds. When I looked back up at Abby's window, she'd pulled her curtains and I could only see the faint shadow of her voluptuous body standing behind the sheers.
Polynesian Pleasure Page 15
