Chapter Seventeen #3
“A work in progress, I like to think.” His hand rested against her thigh. “It’s easy to talk to you. It feels like…It feels like just yesterday—” his voice broke off and she was transported back to the Bainbridge Island tennis courts, lying in the moonlight together.
Slowly, he tipped his head toward hers and the anticipation sent a pleasant ripple to her core. Leaning toward him, she took her time meeting his lips.
The kiss was soft and sensual, his tongue grazing the underbelly of her lip, making her squirm with pleasure.
There was nothing left of the musk, only the fresh scents of the river and the jungle.
From downriver, the guitarist’s melody carried through the air, the singer’s voice as sweet and melancholy as the river’s song.
Although she didn’t understand the Spanish lyrics, she knew it was a love song because of the way the young man’s voice stretched with yearning.
And she wondered if he was happily in love or if his heart was breaking.
The ballad struck her, causing such a delicious pain that she savored the sound and let it transport her to a place where there was only this music and this warm water and this man who knew her, bumpy road and all, and still wanted her.
She shifted her body to face him and straddled one leg over his thigh.
Tyler gathered her in his arms, closing the space between their skin.
She tipped her head back, and he bent his mouth to where her shoulder curved into her neck.
Pressing his tongue up the length of her throat, he found the seashell swirl of her ear.
His hot breath sent such tremors through her that tasting his mouth again became an inescapable need.
Starving for him, Lulu pressed her lips to his.
Sucking at his lower lip with her teeth, she elicited a throaty moan from Tyler.
Their lips danced a tango, teasing and retreating and finally coming together in a full-on mosh fest. By the time they pulled apart, Lulu was lightheaded and breathless. “Wow,” she breathed.
“Wow,” he said.
Giddy with the intoxicating sensations, she leaned into the crook of his arm, resting her head against his shoulder. The warmth of the flowing water enhanced the warmth building between her legs.
He dunked lower into the water, leaning back against the rock.
Lulu lolled against a rounded stone, laying the length of her hair into the falls and enjoying the pleasant tug of the current running through her curls.
She closed her eyes and dipped her scalp lower until only her nose and mouth remained at the surface, and she breathed languidly through her mouth.
Beside her, the long line of Tyler’s body aligned with hers and they lay there together, the falling warm water rinsing through their hair and pouring across their shoulders.
With her ears under water, she felt rather than heard the melodic rush of the river.
He laced his fingers through hers. The sensation was so completing, so cocooning and safe, that if she were to sink all the way down, she felt she might be able to breathe under water.
They stayed like that, unmoving as the world turned around them.
Her mouth and her breath were the only contact with the outside.
A part of her wondered if time, lulled by this perfect moment into a patch of stillness, had decided to retire from its job of progressing steadily into the future.
Because all that remained were her senses and this one flawless corner of the universe.
The kiss of the warm water. The nearness of his skin. The ceaseless movement of the river.
Somewhere in her mind, the squeeze of Tyler’s hand brought her back to the present, and she lifted her head from the water.
Her eyes adjusted in the dim light. Tyler nodded his chin at the droplets pocking the surface.
She looked up to feel the cool rain land on her warm cheeks.
They could see groups of bathers pulling up stakes, grabbing for towels and flip-flops, and collecting the remains of their picnics.
The musician’s melody dropped away, and she imagined him tossing the guitar into its case and hoofing it up the embankment.
Tyler scooped a handful of the warm river, faced his cupped palm toward the sky and smiled.
They watched the raindrops collect and dribble through his fingers even as the intensity ratcheted up a notch, pattering down on the giant leaves and hitting the river like typewriter keys.
Tyler swept the landscape like she had just done.
They were the only two left in the river. “Should we go?” he asked.
Shrugging, she said, “I’m comfortable.” And to underscore her willingness to go with the flow, Lulu tipped her face up to the rain, then slid completely under the water.
From below, the rain hitting on the surface sounded musical, and the sensation woke up her senses.
The reverberation of the percussive pulses played against her skin, and she held her breath, enjoying it as long as she could.
But when she came up for air, the rainstorm had multiplied in a shift so sudden it was startling.
The drops that had seconds ago come down as pitters and patters were now pouring down in curtains.
Tyler was holding two hands to his brow to shade his eyes, laughing.
The rain bit at her scalp and stung her cheeks and drummed against her shoulders.
Tyler voiced exactly what had clicked in her head, too. “The storm.” The storm, which they had avoided so successfully, the downpour that Alejandro hoped had veered away, decided to wallop them right here, right now.
What had she been thinking?! Suddenly, her laissez-faire attitude of three minutes earlier seemed wildly irresponsible. That’s what happens when you let yourself get drugged by warm water and infatuation.
Scampering out of the indentation her butt had made in the riverbed, she shouted, “We better go!” Where did they put their shoes? Her eyes searched the bank, concern building toward panic.
Suddenly, she saw them. “Our shoes!” she cried, and she pointed to where three boots tumbled down the river, skipped against rocks, and plunged over waterfalls. Where the fourth shoe had disappeared to was anybody’s guess.
They grabbed fingers and stumbled along the rocky river floor. The water level outside their quiet pool had been calf deep but now they tripped through nearly knee-high water.
“Ow!” Lulu felt the sharp riverbed rocks scrape her soles. Her tender feet were no match for the jagged, uneven surface.
“Hop on my back. I’ll carry you!”
“No! You’ll ruin your feet!”
“Better one of us than both of us. No more arguing. Get on.” He bent forward, hands clasped on his knees.
Hesitating for only another instant, she leapt onto his back and winced, knowing that her weight would only make his progress harder.
The rain poured down through the inky sky with a thunderous fury, obscuring Lulu’s vision, and Tyler pressed on as the river frothed about his knees.
It was slow going, the trudge along the uneven riverbed.
She heard his sharp intake of breath, and with the way he jolted forward, she knew he’d stubbed his toe or hit his shin on a rock.
He was a pickleball pro. His feet were his livelihood. “You shouldn’t be doing this,” she called over the storm as he pushed forward downriver.
“I’m okay,” he yelled back, his voice barely lifting over the downpour. “I’ve got thick feet to match my thick head,” he joked. And she let it go, knowing there was no convincing him otherwise.
Tyler stumbled toward the rectangular opening of the tunnel, hopscotching around the uneven rocks and fallen logs. He moved faster now that they could see the concrete structure ahead. At the least they’d have a moment’s shelter from the torrent before making their way up to the road.
On the river’s edge, she spotted the stump where they had left their clothes, now an island amid a swirling eddy.
“Tyler! Let me off a sec. I’ll grab our clothes.” She hopped off his back and took a step, lilting sideways as she balanced against the push of the current. Lulu bundled their clothes into her arms and squeezed them pointlessly against her body.
“Grab my hand,” Tyler shouted over the roar of the rain. “Let’s get inside the tunnel!”
They ducked under the cover of the concrete tunnel, and the echo of the rainstorm dulled to a dampened din.
The tunnel openings disappeared behind the waterfalls of rain that ran down like blackout shades.
The downpour sounded like a distant train passing on a rickety track, but constant and thick and lyrical.
The respite was so complete and instantaneous that Lulu felt her whole being float down as the adrenaline mellowed in her veins.
Until she looked over at Tyler. A stream of blood trickled from his shin.
“Oh no! You’re hurt!”
“No. It’s fine. I just cut it on one of the rocks.”
“Let me see it.” She stuffed their soaked clothes on a makeshift shelf formed by the upturned roots of an enormous, downed tree.
Crouching down in the tunnel into the rapidly cooling water, she squinted in the darkness to get a good look.
The river had risen to just below his injury, and gingerly, she wiped the blood from beneath his kneecap.
At her touch, Tyler sucked in his breath. “Hurts?” she asked.
“Nope.” His voice was rough, husky. “But while you’re down there…”
She stood, and with two hands, she pushed him against the concrete wall. “You wish.”
“I do,” he said and grabbed for her hips, tugging her closer.