Precedent for Passion

by Amber Cross

  His soul.

  Even to him it sounded melodramatic but didn’t make it any less true. In just a short time she had become that important to him. Every night he looked forward to stretching out in his easy chair with only the lamp above the chessboard on while they talked and played for hours. It was better than sex. And the sex was fantastic. If ever two people were compatible in bed, it was he and Abby. She was adventurous and bold and comforting. This last was important to him. He didn’t have to carry the weight of the world on his shoulders because he had someone to share it with now, and he would do the same for her. Despite the lack of any vows between them, he would take care of her in sickness and in health.

  Glancing at her in the airplane’s executive pod across the aisle from his, he was glad he had upgraded their flights to business class. She didn’t need the seven feet of space provided when the seat was reclined, as hers was now, but she looked a lot more comfortable than she would have been back in economy. Especially after lift-off when she was hit by a dizzy spell that had her running for the washroom.

  “You need to see a doctor when we get there,” he’d told her. Worried, because the sinus infection she’d had in January must not have completely cleared up and flying could exacerbate the problem. He didn’t want her time here ruined by something a stronger dose of antibiotics could prevent.

  He wanted her to be as relaxed as she was now, curled up beneath the complimentary blanket and sleeping like a baby. And she had been as excited as a child for her spring trip to the Bahamas. Just five days, but with Trevor backing him up he was able to get the time off, and already he was looking forward to it.

  Her enthusiasm for all things Bahamian was catchy. Before takeoff she had given him a run-down on her grandparents, the islands, and her summers spent with them.

  “They’re called either Ms. Mutia and Mr. Robert or Ma and Pa. You should greet them with the first form of address, but they’ll probably tell you to use the second. Ma doesn’t run the fruit stand anymore. My aunt Sabrina does, and Ma goes there just often enough to make them both think she’s still in charge.” She smiled fondly. “Aunt Sabrina is my father’s little sister. Grampa sold his boat to my uncle Chris, her husband, and he’s happy to let him run it without any help or interference. He’ll make an exception for us, though.”

  “We’re going fishing?” Now he was the one filled with anticipation. He thought they were just going to lie on the beach, which was fine, but some of his best memories were his summer fishing trips to the Finger Lakes with Jason. He still looked forward to that getaway each year.

  “I have to keep my skills from getting rusty,” she explained. “You know, as first mate.”

  Only now the first mate was out of commission.

  “Can I get you anything else to make you more comfortable, sir?” their flight attendant asked, keeping her voice low so she wouldn’t disturb Abby. He shook his head rather than reply. Abby seemed to react to his voice, even in sleep, and he didn’t want her waking before she had to.

  “I’ll leave the immigration cards here with you, then. We should be landing in about half an hour, and they’ll collect them from you when they stamp your passport.”

  It was exactly thirty minutes later when they deplaned in Nassau. Abby blinked herself awake just before landing, filled out her card, then sat with her face glued to the window to watch their approach. Glen noted the forested island marked by roads in a parallel and perpendicular design, the aquamarine color of the sea where it fell away from white sand beaches, but most of his attention was on her. She was an independent woman, successful and confident, yet as they approached her second home she was young again, and he enjoyed seeing the excitement shine from her eyes.

  “It’s a bit of a walk,” she said once their arrival had been processed and the length of their stay noted on their passports.

  She led the way along a blue, carpeted corridor set between curving walls of white with occasional tourist “windows” depicting marine and island life and glamorous tourist posters advertising expensive items like cars and diamonds.

  “Uncle Chris will be meeting us,” she said when they cleared customs and baggage claims, passed through the lobby, and emerged into the parking area. The warm, still afternoon caressed his skin. They had stowed their coats in their suitcases inside the lobby, but Glen could feel the heat seeping into the fabric of his pants and molding them to his legs. Abby’s little ringlets were coming to life at her temples.

  Drivers stood among the white columns holding signs with visitor names. She ignored them, scanning their surroundings for a familiar face. “Oh! There he is.”

  A big bear of a man with dark folds of skin upon folds of skin creasing bright, smiling eyes threw out his arms and hurried toward them. Abby lunged into his welcoming embrace. Glen thought he might crack her spine with the strength of his hug, but she laughed and patted his face with both small hands.

  “You got yourself a man, Miss Abby?” her uncle asked affectionately, raising his eyebrows and staring over her shoulder at Glen.

  “You bet I do.” Wriggling out of his hold, she snagged Glen by the elbow and brought him forward for an introduction. “Uncle Chris, this is Glen Plankey. Glen, my Aunt Sabrina’s husband, Mr. Merrill.”

  “Just Chris.”

  “Nice to meet you.”

  They shook hands, then walked to another terminal while Glen and Abby pulled their luggage behind them. Inside Chris spoke to someone at the counter. “Just making sure our flight is all set,” he explained, and they were out in the balmy afternoon again, crossing the tarmac behind the terminal to a single-engine aircraft with three passenger windows on each side. “Tommy is taking us,” he said to Abby.

  “My honorary uncle,” she explained. “Dad’s best friend growing up.”

  Tommy was as lean and light as Chris was hefty and dark, but he had the same smile of welcome for both of them, and he entertained them with island news during the fifteen-minute flight to the north end of Andros Island.

  “Biggest island in the Bahamas,” Abby told him. “But most of it doesn’t have roads you can drive on.”

  “And Hurricane Matthew damaged a lot of those we do have,” Chris added.

  “It’s still not fixed?” Abby asked.

  “You know things move slow around here. Then we had another round last fall.”

  Glen could see the damage even before they landed. A ship lying broken on the beach, antenna bent at an awkward angle, and a hole as big as a door in its side. Palm trees snapped off halfway up the trunks, their dead fronds sweeping the ground. Creased vehicles and broken signs skewed across the landscape. Roofs of buildings hung drunkenly off the walls or collapsed in on themselves. “It reminds me of Vermont after Irene.”

  “Hmmm. I was in Rutland then.”

  He understood her solemn tone. That city was in the worst hit part of the state, and although there weren’t a high number of deaths, in a state that small everyone knew someone who knew the victims and was affected by their loss.

  “And now let’s talk about happier things,” Tommy suggested. “Like our little girl bringing a man to visit her Ma and Pa. This must mean something special. Right, Miss Abby?”

  If that was the first time her loved ones tried to embarrass her, it certainly wasn’t the last. Glen heard story after story during their five-day stay of Abby’s youth, all told with fond indulgence. She was the apple of her grandparents’ eye. Her grandmother talked non-stop from sunup to sundown, using her round little body and her hands to emphasize everything, but the subject was always the same: Abby. Her grandfather spoke rarely, inserting dry comments here and there in the best English tradition, but his blue eyes softened every time he looked at his granddaughter.

  Aunt Sabrina plied them with fruit dishes, conch fritters, and rum on their first night until Glen didn’t know what he was actually drunk on, but the next morning he and Abby still met her uncle at his skiff bright and early. “Let’s go fight the bone fish.
” He smiled, as chipper as if he had slept ten hours and hadn’t consumed quarts of alcohol along with the rest of them.

  It didn’t take Glen any time at all to understand why the other man used the word fight, though. He had never encountered such smart creatures. Every time they found milk in the water, indicating that the fish were burying their snouts in the silt and stirring up mud, the school moved on. If the wind shifted, they did too. It seemed crazy that they lived in just a few feet of water but were so difficult to catch.

  When they moved farther from the shoreline, he could see the tails of the fish, but Chris explained that they were easily spooked. “Never cast your line too close to them or they swim away. You watch Miss Abby.” He winked. “She’s been doing this since she could walk. That’s why I gave her the seven-weight rod, because she knows how to fight these things. You look strong enough, but I gave you a nine weight since this is your first time.”

  Glen wasn’t insulted, especially when she was the first to catch one. Casting her line ten or fifteen feet away from the ripples in the water, she slowly, patiently, stripped it back toward the fish. When one took the bait, it swam away on an incredible burst of speed, but Abby reeled it quickly toward the boat.

  “Shark and barracuda eat them,” she said while Glen stood watching her skill with admiration. “That’s why they’re so fast, to avoid predators.”

  In the end she was victorious over the bonefish, and eventually he was too. They caught just enough to make fish patties for supper before returning to her grandparents’ home.

  “I’ll take care of the bone fish,” her grandmother said. “You two go have some fun.”

  “Can we get to Andros Town by road?” Abby asked.

  “Sure, sure. Borrow Pa’s car.”

  “Thanks, Ma.” She hugged the slightly shorter woman around her ample waist before taking Glen’s hand and leading him outside.

  She did that a lot. Took his hand, stroked his back, snuggled up against him. He loved her physically affectionate nature just as he loved her sharp mind and her sense of humor.

  “One of the times it pays to be a lefty,” she joked when they were heading down the east coast of the island in her grandfather’s left-wheeled jeep on the left side of the road.

  Glen laughed, enjoying himself as he hadn’t done in years. It was a beautiful day, the top was down, and the warm breeze wafted over his body. Abby’s hair was thrown back in a casual ponytail. Ringlets bounced around her forehead, the sun doing wonderful things for her golden skin. Wearing a tankini top and skort, she had him positively salivating.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she teased.

  “Could be.”

  “I’m sorry about last night.”

  She had fallen asleep not long after they arrived, which surprised him after her nap on the plane, but not when he remembered she had been working long hours before this trip to make sure her clients were taken care of and her desk clear. Then there was the sinus infection.

  “It’s okay. I think the sleep did you good.”

  When she raised her eyebrows in question, he said, “You haven’t been dizzy once today. Or at least, you haven’t told me you were.”

  She tilted her head to the side, appearing to give it some thought. “I guess I haven’t. Maybe I just needed some good, hot island air to clear my head.”

  They didn’t talk much after that, enjoying the warm day and the scenery, but when they passed a sign for Blue Holes National Park, he asked her what that was about.

  “The island is full of blue holes,” she said. “Underwater caves that can go down hundreds of feet, so the water in the center is dark blue and light around the shallow rims.”

  “Do people swim there?”

  “Swim, dive. I avoid them, though.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “I don’t like deep water.”

  Glen was surprised by this. She swam like a fish and was obviously at home on a boat.

  “I need to see the sun or I get claustrophobic,” she explained. When he didn’t comment, she said, “Maybe like you and public speaking?”

  “Point taken.” He had no trouble talking to people, any kind of people really, but put him in front of an audience and he almost passed out from fear.

  “I can do it for a little while, like when I’m fishing because I’m concentrating on something, but I just don’t understand people wanting to do it for fun. It doesn’t help that I was raised on stories of the Lusca. A sea monster, kind of like an octopus, that sucks children down into the blue holes out in the ocean.”

  “That’s awful. Why would anyone tell a child a story like that?”

  “Kind of like the bogeyman? It keeps you from wandering off into the night, doesn’t it?”

  “Touché.”

  About an hour after leaving her grandparents’ house, they arrived at Morgan’s Bluff. While leading him through the caves, Abby explained that Captain Morgan used to lure ships there with a light only to have them crash against the reefs where he and his pirates could rob them. “I heard the story years ago but didn’t know it was here. What ever happened to him?”

  “He had a very successful career protecting the colonies for the British and died a natural death as lieutenant governor of Jamaica.” She smiled. “And then they named a rum after him.”

  The caves and the point were fascinating when explored with someone who knew the area as well as she did acting as guide. Glen was surprised to encounter few people, even on the rocky bluff with the beautiful view. Only a small group was there taking photographs when they reached the top, but the ocean crashed into the cliffs and spewed its angry froth all over them, drenching their cameras and sending them away muttering about how the salt probably ruined their equipment.

  Glen didn’t mind the water at all. It was hot, he wasn’t carrying anything valuable, and it plastered Abby’s little skort to her hips and thighs. Catching her ponytail in his hand, he pulled until her lips were turned up to his. “I want to make love to you.”

  “What, here?” She laughed. “Now?”

  “Anywhere.” He kissed her until she was breathless. “Now.” He kissed her again and the ocean cascaded over them. “Maybe not here,” he said. “How about up against one of those gumbo limbo trees?”

  “Hermit crabs.” Two words but they made him shudder. Then she resumed their kiss, sliding her small hands into the back of his shorts to cup his buttocks.

  He wasn’t going to let her get away with that. Bringing his own hands up between them, he easily slipped his fingers beneath the hem of her tankini top and plucked at her nipples. She inhaled sharply, then ground against him for relief.

  Breaking away, he demanded, “Where, then? I’ve been dying to have you all morning.”

  “You didn’t say anything.” Her voice was breathless, but he didn’t stop working her nipples and she didn’t stop kneading his bottom, pulling him up against her body.

  “With your uncle watching? Believe me, it was hard.”

  “I think you’re pretty hard.” She smiled.

  “And are you still easy?”

  “For you.” She kissed him again. “Always for you.”

  ****

  Abby lay sprawled naked across Glen’s back, her thighs cradling his hips and her breasts pressed into his flesh. She stroked his calves with her feet and kissed his shoulders, but the movements were lethargic. She was still recovering from their last bout of lovemaking, this time in their bedroom at her grandparents’ house. Above them a fan blew mildly cool air that barely touched their overheated bodies.

  “I can’t move,” Glen said, his deep voice rumbling into the still afternoon.

  She kissed his shoulder again. There was something about three days of swimming, lovemaking, conch, and lobster that rendered a person almost catatonic.

  Two days ago they made love on the white sand beach below Morgan’s Bluff. Yesterday was a quick tryst in a cabana by the scuba shop where they rented snorkeling gear.
But today was spent in Nassau with her cousin Aliyah, talking, shopping, and dining in a fancy restaurant, so they had to wait until they got back to her grandparents’ house and a real bed before they could satisfy the lust that seemed to only abate for a while and return even stronger each time they indulged in it.

  Would she ever get enough of this man? She couldn’t imagine that happening.

  Suddenly the door to the bedroom flew open, hitting the wall before bouncing half closed again. “Hey, little sister, I heard the great spear fisherwoman was in town.”

  “Oh my God.” Hastily pulling the sheet up from where it lay twisted around her hips, Abby covered her breasts and rolled onto her side. “Romney, did you even think about knocking?”

  “Nope.” He gifted her with his devil-may-care smile, white teeth slashing in his too-handsome, dark face, and propped his shoulder against the door frame. “How’s it hanging, Glen?”

  “Tíngzhǐ!”

  While her face grew hot with embarrassment, her brother’s smile only widened.

  “Shame on you, Romney,” Ma scolded from the hallway. “Come and leave those two alone. You know how hard your sister works. She deserves this time alone with her man.”

  “Yes, Miz Mutia.” He winked at Abby and made a mock salute before pivoting on his heel and stepping out of the doorway.

  Beside her Glen’s shoulders shook and his blue eyes danced with laughter.

  Romney wasn’t done yet. Ducking back into the bedroom, he said, “Spearfishing tomorrow.”

  “I’m not going deep.”

  “I wasn’t talking to you, little sister.”

  Abby groaned.

  Glen rolled over and pulled her down beside him, kissing her lightly on the nose. “You spear fish?”

  “Sometimes. It’s not my favorite type of fishing, though.”

  “Because it’s deep?”