Chapter 20 #3
It was a good day for talking. The kindly fates, after separating Devon and Merry in experience and temperament, had looked back with regretful sighs and cast camellia garlands of warm conversation to the ill-omened pair.
The young man who was a spy and the girl who was a spy-of-sorts had earned this fate-given opportunity, he for the sacrifice he had made for her, though that meant he must accept her honesty on faith alone, which was not an easy thing for a man who had never learned to trust his lovers.
And if he was deserving for his sacrifice, she won her laurels for its opposite, for the meager, unheralded act of heroism of withholding from him the secret that was not hers to reveal.
So, when anyone would think that they wouldn’t have much to talk about, neutral subjects arrived for them the way shells appear on the newly strewn seashore with each flooding tide.
Devon had the kind of natural charisma that would have made a crowd of two thousand listen with bated breath as he discussed the digging of a drainage ditch.
At age eighteen Merry Wilding was not so talented.
Most men would have been happy to stare at her by the hour; only the kind ones would be equally content to listen to her talk; that would come later in her life.
And though not one of his myriad discarded mistresses, however fond, would have called him kind, Devon delighted even in the most na?ve of Merry’s minutiae.
There was little he had not seen on the battlefield or in the bedroom, but he could still find drama in her story about the time she had seen lightning strike a windmill and ignite the canvas covering on the vanes to dancing flames.
When little fish nibbled the bait from Devon’s line, he laughed and didn’t put it out again.
Later he rowed them to a cove he knew where the beach skipped inward between two dormant volcanic peaks. Primitive forests brightened the twin cones and reflected with them in the shimmering film of water that iced the ivory sands as the waves withdrew.
Together Devon and Merry beached the canoe beside a pile of driftwood and wandered along the wave line. He casually held out his hand, and she took it, letting the dangerously unresolved problems between them ride out with the tide.
The sand was heated gossamer, deep enough to cover their ankles.
He made her pause before a great conch shell that lay half-buried in the glittering silt.
A large butterfly perched atop the shell, its translucent yellow wings parting and closing in soft, gentle beats.
He picked up the shell and held it to her, and as she reached for it, feeling its hardness and satiny texture beneath her fingertips, the butterfly took wing.
His hands spread under hers, supporting them, taking the conch’s weight as she gazed into its swelling folds.
The pure colors dazzled her, pearly white along the rim deepening first to pink and then to a brighter scarlet hue, until in the inner mysteries where the light could not reach, the shell became a lovely mixture of dusky purple and hazy deep red.
Their joined hands carried the shell to her ear, and the silver-toned roar wept into her senses.
Sunlight stung her shoulders, sea moisture found her lips.
The bright golden hairs on his chest lifted at the casual affectionate touch of the ocean breeze, and she longed to rub her cheek against their softness.
Smiling at him, she raised her head, and they walked again.
He carried the shell, with his fingers curled into its open lip, and slipped his other arm around her waist. Her head rested on his shoulder, and her hair, blown by the trade winds, streamed across his chest and throat like fine gold dust.
Eden.
They found a brook that fed the aqua bay with spring water.
Two pelicans had landed among the black rocks there and preened their feathers and tossed water over their wings as Merry and Devon strolled by them, following the freshet inland.
The foliage of the giant mahoganies met overhead in a natural arbor that allowed sunlight to seep through in pale-green bands.
The freshet fed a stream, and that a cascade of rapids widening at the base into a secluded pool.
An aged frame of limestone swept along the far side of the pool.
Masses of wall marigolds exploded between the broken stones along with heavy blossom bundles in red and violet.
Mincing like a fawn over the sharp little rocks at the pool’s edge, Merry walked into the shallows as Devon set down the shell and followed her with more assured steps.
The pool was fed by a warm underground spring which she could feel rushing over her feet, and as they waded they found to their delight that it was quite deep, and she leaned back luxuriantly into his arms as the warm, relaxing fluid lapped about her thighs.
A mound of swollen scarlet flowers dripped from the limestone outcropping overlooking the pool, and the musky scent tickled at her nostrils.
She sighed with joy at the wash of sensations.
The sunlight, falling down through the arch of trees above them, probed at her, awakening her, playing across the freckled cheeks, the tiny nose, the huge heavy-lidded eyes.
Her thick hair tumbled over her breasts like the cascade that spilled down the rocks behind them, and he could feel her breathe beneath his wrists as he encircled her from behind; it was such a pleasing picture to him, one of lovely skin tugging at thin fabric, wet and diaphanous where the water had done its work—it seemed like she was a new creature, half human, half flower, her gown swirling about her like petals.
He turned her to him, and she leaned back against the soft fall of flowers, lifting her chin, letting the sun touch the most delicate and unreachable softness of her throat, her back arching gracefully, bending under the warmth of his hands on her sides.
Their bodies touched, his hard and muscle-knit, hers soft and yielding, holding each other in a soul-spinning embrace, his desire and her response as innocent and as rich and as floral as the bud plumes lying splendidly against her cheek.
Her lips parted slightly as she breathed the perfumed, nectarlike air.
He studied the young face, remembering the dark hours when death had laid its coldly beckoning hands on her, and his kiss, when it came to her, was chaste and urgent.
But the free-flowing fire between them began to soften and shape their mouths, and the pressure of his lips increased.
… He pulled back then, pleasuring in the sight of her, learning the full curve of her cheek with the caress of his finger.
She tilted her head under his touch, inadvertently brushing her own lips against his; and drew back, startled by the heat rising within her.
Suspended in tenderness, she held the impression of his willing male flesh upon her mouth, the form of the alien lips, which were firm and winning.
Her lashes danced open, and her eyes met his subtly tempting gaze.
He murmured, “Kiss me again.” And then, softly, “Please.”
Initiating their contact was awkward for her, perhaps partly because he was infinitely more skilled than she.
“Please,” he had said, and stood courteously silent.
He touched her lower lip, gently rubbing back and forth there as it distended under his thumb.
The water touched warmly at her thighs with innocent provocation; the sun was constant upon them, a halo.
Finally she put up her chin, gazing into his eyes for a moment before she closed hers, and pressed her mouth to his in a full, open kiss.
When she broke from him, she was trembling so that he had to support her with his hands, and her cheeks were hotly flushed.
As though she believed she were making a confession that would surprise him, she said, “I’m never sure if I’m doing it the right way.”
Laughing huskily, he collected her body and dragged her close. “Then you’ll be reassured when you see I’m too overcome to paddle us home.”
“That wasn’t really an answer,” she said.
Stroking back her hair with his palm, he said, “Oh, my dear, I’m sorry.
” He smoothed his lips into her rosy curls.
“I didn’t know you wanted a real answer.
” His fingertips thrilled in light strokes over the quivering skin on her neckline.
“There aren’t ways that are right or wrong.
Please yourself. That’s all you need to do with me, Merry.
Watching as you touch clouds takes me there with you. ”
With a graceful movement he plucked her from the water, nurturing her in his arms, and carried her with her legs dripping to the flat ocher shelf of a boulder.
He set her on the rock, standing in front of her as she stretched back on her hands, losing herself in the sudden penetrating sensation of hot, hard stone beneath her thighs.
But her gown was heavy with spring water and clung like gauze to her hips, and driplets melted from the fabric and explored the inside of her thighs in an oddly dulcet manner.
She plucked at her wet skirts and began to wring them out, trying without success to avoid baring her legs.
“I should take you home,” he said. “You’re”—his gaze traveled the length of her, taking in her slim, shapely body, and below, the pale skin of her legs, the dainty swelling muscles of her calves, the way her legs were slightly parted on the rock—“wet.”