by Merry Farmer
“Is that—” she says, and I finish her question.
“—a waterfall.”
We are on the right track. Cole marked the waterfall on the map of the island. We speed up and then edge around a large piece of rock that looks more like a piece of frozen lava wall, and there it is, a waterfall. It cascades from the very top of the mountain, where the rocks split and make way for the thin ribbon of water. The stream is white against the dark surface of the slope and falls into a small pool that looks like a giant, uneven chalice above a small strip of land. Then it falls freely from the other side of the chalice, which hangs above the path. It creates an arch of sorts, then disappears in the greenery below the slope.
“Wow,” Samantha whispers and lays her hand on my forearm. “This is amazing.”
As beautiful as nature is before us, it is not the sight of the waterfall that holds my breath and makes my throat clench. It is the sight of Samantha’s awed face and the pleasant buzzing of my skin where her hand touches me.
She leaves my side and walks towards the falling water, puts her cupped hands into the stream, drinks from it, and closes her eyes in bliss. Then she lets out a small laugh. Taking more water into her palms, she splashes her face with it. Water slips down her neck to her decollete and wets the edge of her bodice.
“God, this water is so pure. It tastes sweet. Come on, James! Try some.”
I stand next to her, and she brings me the water in her cupped palms. I drink, my eyes on her. I lick her palm and she giggles. When water is gone, I kiss her palms and she stops breathing.
“It is not the water that is sweet,” I murmur against her skin. “It is you.”
I straighten and gaze into her eyes. Her neck and her chest glisten with droplets as if covered with morning dew, and even though I have just had some water, my mouth goes dry from the thirst for her. I want to lick her skin dry and make her wet in other places.
But I know if I start, I shall not be able to stop. And I must. She must go, and I must let her. She is not the woman for me. No matter how much I desire her, I can never trust another woman as strong as her. And even if I did, she would never stay.
“Come,” I say. “Let us be on our way.”
Her eyes cloud with a hurt that slashes my heart like a knife, but I turn and walk through the waterfall and up the mountain slope. In an hour or so, we reach the very top, which looks like a giant dune. I climb over it and stop, taking it all in. Samantha stands next to me. It seems as if we are on top of the world, the island beneath our feet like a dark green hill in the middle of the blue vastness of the ocean. I see my ship anchored not far away.
On the other side of the rocks is a crater with a small blue lake not wider than a hundred feet. It feeds the waterfall we passed. The lake is as flat as a mirror, and looks as if it’s a window into a different sky with white clouds flowing by. The slopes of the crater are mostly dark volcanic sand with occasional bushes and grass.
Cole hid the chest in the lake. According to the map, the water is not deep where the chest is, and it is buried in the space between two rocks that protrude into the lake.
I help Samantha down a steep rise. After a short walk, we stand by the lake. The water here is crystal clear and between the two sharp rocks that jut above the surface of the lake like balconies without railings. Under the water, there’s a small rocky slope, a collection of stones and rocks.
My gut twists and my heart races. I jump into the water, which splashes around me and onto the shore. It is now around noon and the cold water is welcome in the heat. One after another, I remove the rocks and there it is, the chest.
I stand still and look at it for a minute, my arms refusing to move. Samantha’s gaze on my skin is heavy.
“It’s there,” she says, her voice almost a whisper. “You found it.”
I stare at the chest, which looks as if it is swaying under the moving water, and I’m torn inside with the relief and victory of finally finding it and the pain of knowing I shall soon lose her.
“Do you need help pulling it up?” she asks.
“No.”
“Then what are you waiting for?”
I meet her eyes, finally. “Once it is on shore there will be nothing to stop you from leaving me forever.”
She lowers her gaze and says nothing.
At least she has the decency not to pretend she will change her mind.
There is nothing to say anymore, and I sink into the water and lift the chest. It floats up, supported by the water. But as I bring it towards the shore, it gets heavier. I pull it up onto the ground and jump up, too, my cold, wet clothes clinging to my body. I crouch in front of the chest and open it. Gold and jewels glisten in the sun, still wet.
And in the middle of them, the jade pendant.
This is it. She will go. Without looking at Samantha, I take the necklace in my hands to give it to her, but she gently clasps my hands in hers.
With a dull ache that tears apart my gut and my chest, I look up at her. She crawls closer to me and sits on my lap. Her arms wrap around my neck, and she says, “I don’t want to go just yet. There’s still one thing I need to do.”
Despite the chill of my wet clothes, heat rushes through me. “What is that?”
“Let me show you.”
Chapter 15
Samantha
My lips melt against James’s mouth which meets them, soft and silky and hot. I have butterflies in every cell of my body. The violent beating of my pulse rages in my ears.
The jade necklace lying among the golden coins burns the edge of my vision, and I close my eyes. The moment that I lose James forever lies at my fingertips. The thought opens a gaping, black, sucking hole in the pit of my stomach.
Not yet. I can’t lose him. The need to feel him close, physically and emotionally, for the last time, burns me, urges me.
Body to body, skin to skin, soul to soul—I want him. I need him.
And no tomorrow.
James engulfs me in his strong arms. As he presses me against him, his wet clothes soak my dress, but I don’t care. He smells like wet linen and the musk of a man. Combined with the beauty and the magic of the crater lake, shielded from the wind and warmed by the Caribbean sun, he makes me feel like I’m floating.
I undo the buttons of his shirt and pull it off him, the velvet of his damp, cool skin warms my fingertips. His shirt comes off and I trace my fingers down his hard chest, along the line of his scar, down his ripped stomach, his hair soft against my palms. As I do so, I feel his breath accelerate and deepen at the same time.
The slickness of his tongue sets me on fire as he licks and caresses mine, as he sucks and nips at my lips with just the right amount of pressure that makes my insides burn and squeeze and dampen.
He undoes the laces of my jade dress, then breaks contact and undresses me. I drink in every last detail of him: his dark-violet eyes, the gold of his hair, the straight line of his jaw, his full lips, the stubble that ranges from wheat to amber. As he pulls down the bodice of my dress, he kisses the skin that he reveals, spreading bliss through my nervous system like the most exquisite champagne.
My head rolls back, and I arch into his mouth when he gets to my breasts. As he teases them, massages them, sucks on my nipples, plays over them with his tongue, I hear a moan escape my throat. James lays me on the warm, smooth rock that heats my back like the stones in a spa. He pulls down my skirts and removes my shoes, and I lie in front of him, naked and open and burning.
I want him to cover me with his body, but he freezes while kneeling before me. His eyes travel my body from the toes up, and it’s like another way of making love. His gaze doesn’t make me feel shy or embarrassed. I glow, I open up, and I soften.
“Look at you,” he groans. “So beautiful. There’s a chest of pearls, jewels, gold and gemstones, and yet they all pale next to you.”
My cheeks heat, and I stretch my arms to him, “Come here.”
But he doesn’t. He glances at the chest a
nd a wicked smile spreads across his lips. “What I want to do, is to see exactly how they pale next to you. I intend a direct comparison.”
I bite my lip and hold my breath as I watch him lean to the chest and take something out. A large golden coin that still glistens with water in the sunlight.
“Absorb the sensation, Samantha.” He puts the coin on my belly.
I gasp from the sharp bite of cold against the warmth of my skin, and everything squeezes inside of me. I arch my back and let the coolness spread and strangely it heats me up. But I tense and a dull but pleasant ache spills across my nerves.
James studies me. “You are still more beautiful than the gold. Let us try something else, a gemstone.”
He rummages in the chest again and removes a gold necklace with a large ruby pendant in the form of a teardrop. It catches the sunlight and glows. He leans over me on one straight arm, and I suck in air as a cool drop of water lands between my breasts.
“Absorb the sensation,” he murmurs.
The necklace lands on my breast, and instantly my nipples harden. I suck in the air as the tightness of the tissue on my breasts makes my nerve endings sing and vibrate. James traces the ruby around my nipple and all my being stiffens. I struggle to keep still.
“Take it in,” he says.
And, as though his words are a spell, I do. I breathe out, and instead of fighting the coldness that feels alien, unwelcome, I inhale and take it in, and a whole new world of sensations explodes within me. Heat and tingling and the rush of liquid sunlight. James moves to the other breast, circling the nipple with the smoothness of the gold and ruby. The necklace caresses my skin, continuing the sweet torture, taking me higher than I’ve ever been before.
“That is right, my sweet,” he whispers, against my breast, and his warm breath scorches me like hot lava. “And yet you still win against even these jewels.”
I open my eyes, and he looms over me.
“Then plunder me, my pirate,” I say.
He smirks and puts the jewels away, then slowly removes his belt, revealing the lower part of his ripped stomach. He pushes down his trousers, inching them over his hips, down strong thighs covered in pale hair. He stands up and kicks the trousers aside, and his erection makes my mouth water. He’s so hard, and so big, and when he sinks to his knees, I take his cock in my hand. It’s velvety, and I’m thinking I might be going insane from lust. I make a fist around him and caress him, stroke him up and down, and he tilts his head back and moans.
Wow. I can’t believe I’m making this man so hard he’s unable to control his reaction to me.
I seriously can’t take it anymore. I need my release. Now. “Hard and fast,” I plead, trying to sink his cock into me. But James isn’t moving.
“Oh no, madame,” he says. “Hard and fast is for a quick release. You think you want it. But you want slow. Slow and tender and gentle.”
I’m alert, my muscles tense to sit up. Slow and tender and gentle is for people in love. I’m not in love with him. I can’t be. I just met him and if all goes well, very soon I’ll never see him again. Ever since Leonard, that’s how sex has been. Hard and fast.
I open my mouth to say something, but he interrupts. “You are mine, treasure.” He puts the ruby necklace around my neck.
“Then take me.”
He sits up and tugs me to him and guides me so that I half sit on his legs with my back to him, my knees on either side of his thighs. His erection burns my butt cheeks. He plants soft, wet kisses on my back. “Mine,” he says against my skin.
He lifts up my thighs and surprises me by pinning me on his cock. He slides through the slick folds of my sex easily, and I gasp from the fountain of pleasure inside of me. He’s stretching me, deep inside of me, and he’s not moving, just letting me adjust to him. I convulse around him involuntarily a couple of times, and he groans.
He leans back against a rock. One hand covers my left breast and begins playing with it, his other hand travels to my swollen, aching, throbbing clit, and his fingers begin teasing me. I gasp as intense pleasure spreads through me.
“If you want me to go slow,” I moan, “you are doing it wrong.”
“We shall see,” he growls.
Continuing to play with my breast and my clit, he begins to withdraw, so slowly the pleasure is intensified tenfold. An eternity later, he’s thrusting back into me, and I meet his hips as he sends another blast of bliss through me.
He’s rocking his hips back and forth, again and again, and I’m thrusting back against him. My body is loving it, and my soul…my heart…are loving it so much it terrifies me.
Yet I can’t stop him. He’s playing me like a master plays a violin. He’s torturing me with the sweetest pleasure there is.
He’s going faster, both his hands on my hips now, moving, thrusting me onto him. My breasts and the necklace on my chest bounce, the ruby brushing against my throbbing nipples occasionally, teasing me, sending me to the next level of arousal.
And I’m falling apart. All too soon, the orgasm is building in me. Like the first wave of a tsunami born in the sea, it starts deep. James is getting close, too. He’s tensing, going faster. My release is building. There’s a pressure and tension inside me, and it intensifies. I’m meeting him thrust for thrust, as my impatience spirals out of control. I can’t get enough.
As pleasure explodes inside me, and he’s finding his release, I’m opening up to him, allowing his name to caress my lips countless times. We join together in the bliss, the sky, the eternity.
He wraps his arms around me and presses my trembling body to his. As the most world-shattering orgasm of my life is calming down, we are still breathing one breath. I’m leaning with my back against his torso, staring into the endless blue sky and the ever-changing white clouds flying by.
And all I can think of is that nothing in the world can top what I just had with James.
Not jewels, not sex on a volcano, not even time travel itself.
How the hell can I go back to a normal life after this?
But I know I can never stay.
Chapter 16
Samantha
My body molten, flooded with warmth and softness, my mind high, I absorb the delicious hardness of James’s arms around me. I lie on his chest; he cuddles me.
I wish I could stay with James forever.
What I felt just now, being one with him—like he could feel every part of me, and I could feel every part of him, body and soul—I’ve never had that with anyone. Not even Leonard.
The thought grips my stomach like icy vise. Memories of the pain and humiliation I felt with Leo rush into me like a cold stream of water. My vow to never allow another man emotional power over me rings in my head: never, never, never…
And yet that is exactly what I’m doing.
I’m falling for him, giving him the power to crush me.
You are an idiot! the voice in my head screams. You are cuddling. Cuddling is for when you are in love. You are not in love. You’re just…
Anger and fear burn me inside, shaking me and sending my body into shivering spasms as though I have a fever. I shake so hard I think the earth is moving.
I push myself off him, the softness, the warmth in my body, replaced by cold, metallic hardness, which closes over my heart like the bars of a prison cell.
I begin to dress quickly, yanking the clothes on, still shaking slightly, feeling as if even the ground is vibrating. I don’t look at James. If I do, I’m afraid I’ll allow him to change my mind.
“Are you quite finished with me?” he says, his voice broken and raspy. I see him dressing in my peripheral vision.
The words slash me. What an idiot I was to allow this to happen. I don’t respond, the metal around my heart that has protected me since Leonard is gripping my throat. Tension is building inside of me. Can I stop shaking, please? I put on the shoes.
“I knew a woman like you would never give me her heart. You only want a man to satisfy your needs,” h
e says. “Anne taught me that lesson. You only confirmed it.”
His words cut me. I don’t mean to hurt him. I should run—take the necklace now and go.
I finally meet his eyes, feeling as if my lungs are clenched in a fist. His face is stern. His mouth is a hard line. Fury and pain thunder behind his eyes.
“What do you want me to do, James?” I ask. “Stay? Okay, I stay. Then what? I can never be the kind of woman you want. One who only cares about giving birth to your babies and worries about how many eggs the chickens laid this morning. I can’t make you happy.”
The shaking is over now—it’s good that I said all that. And although the trembling tension in my legs is gone, inside I’m hurting, as if a crack has opened in my heart and it’s throbbing.
James’s jaws clench in a pained grimace. “I certainly had not planned to want someone like you.”
“Well, too bad. I’ve told you I’m not planning to stay.” I lean down to take the necklace, but just before my fingers touch it, the ground jolts so hard, a loud crack rends the air. The jewels clank, gold coins spill to the ground and roll in all directions.
I lose my balance and fall. With horror, I see the jade necklace slip and land on the ground at the edge of the rock above the lake. Waves splash, and a big one crashes near the rock where I’m plastered.
“Samantha!” James yells as he sinks to his knees by my side and helps me stand up. A barrage of waves assaults us, high and chaotic. The ground rocks, bushes and grass shake.
A wave slams into me, pushing me away from the necklace. And when the water is gone, so is the jewel.
James
“The necklace!” Samantha yells, and ice replaces the blood in my veins.
She sinks to the ground, looking into the lake, but the white waves rise high.
The desperation in her face stabs at my heart. If the necklace is lost, she stays with me forever. It seems that destiny might want us to be together.
