Drowning (13 page)

“Do we dare?” he whispered, and I only realized what he meant when he unbuttoned and unzipped his jeans and, with practiced expertise, took a condom out of his pocket and rolled it on to sheathe his engorged cock.

“Not now,” I breathed, suppressing an amazed giggle. This man was bad, and I was loving it far too much.

“Nicholas, they’re going to come looking for me in a few minutes…” I was breathing hard, and although the risk of being interrupted was adding to my thrill, what was really turning me on was the thought of having him inside me again. I was throbbing, needy, desperate to feel that thick, hard manhood that was his essence.

“Oh, I think we can risk it, Erin.” The firelight illuminated the devilish glint in his eye. He shifted sideways so that he was straddling the narrow wooden seat of the bench. “Come sit on my lap.” His strong arms lifted me into place and I locked my arms around his neck, my face pressed against his, feeling the light rasp of his stubble against my cheek. Oh, God, I could feel him, his wide, swollen head thrusting between my slick, wet lips. I gave a tiny moan of pleasure as he entered me and he shifted his hips in response to it, breathing hard, clamping me down onto him as he arched himself deep inside me.

“If anyone sees us now they might just think we’re having a conversation,” he whispered, and in his voice I could hear the same wickedness I’d seen in his eyes. He was breathing hard, his chest rising and falling against my own, and the musky scent of his skin filled my nostrils. Holding me tight, he eased himself almost all the way out of me before pushing slowly in again and again. I sank onto him, loving the deep fullness of the sensation, loving that even while I was on top of him, he was in total, masterful control.

“A very close, very intimate one.”

Now he was circling his hips, moving his cock inside me, stretching me deliciously. I dug my fingers into his back, the deep throbbing in the pit of my stomach growing almost painfully intense.

“Don’t tell me you’re starting to enjoy this,” he whispered a while later. “I thought you were going to ask me to stop.”

“Don’t… stop….” How on earth was he managing to hold a conversation, albeit rather breathlessly, when I was now barely capable of getting a word out?

“Do you like to fuck when there’s a risk of being caught?” he murmured, and his words caused me to writhe in guilty delight, another orgasm brewing inside me like a summer storm.

“Yes,” I breathed.

His teeth nibbled at my ear, then bit the lobe just hard enough that I jumped, the involuntary movement causing him to buck his hips and gasp.

“You… are so fucking sexy.” He licked my earlobe, then flicked his tongue in and out of my ear, the warm, wet caress so pleasurable it was sending my senses into overload. I was helpless, almost sobbing with arousal, every nerve ending in my body clamoring for more.

I knew we had to be quiet, but it felt to me as if the entire world was holding its breath. I was shaking with tension at the thrilling, shameful risk of discovery. I didn’t know if it would be possible not to cry out. And then Nicholas pushed inside me again, the movement small but deep, but it was enough to trigger my orgasm. Somehow managing to swallow a moan, I buried my face in his neck, tasting his skin, abandoning my control as I spasmed around him tight and hard.

A moment later, betrayed only by the shuddering of his hips and crushing firmness of his arms around me, Nicholas came. His body barely moved as he experienced an orgasm so brutally powerful that I felt every pulsing jerk of his cock inside me.

“I don’t know how much more of this I can take,” I whispered to him, when I could speak again. “This is too intense. One way or another, my heart may give out soon.”

His breathless laugh tickled my hair. “I know. I feel the same.”

As we disengaged and did our best to straighten our clothing, the rumble of thunder and a flash of lightning from the horizon reminded me that it was far from certain that the bridge would be getting fixed the next day. Another of those storms could easily see the river flood again.

My legs felt unsteady from too much alcohol and too much sex. I was ravenously hungry and the aroma of well-cooked meat was drawing me in like a vulture to a kill. When we walked inside, everyone was already eating and we were the object of some curious glances. Mrs. Groenewald had saved just one place at the table where she and her niece were seated, but Nicholas politely refused it, and after piling our plates with food, we sat on our own together at the bar.

I carefully avoided Thandiwe’s gaze, but when I took our empty plates through to the kitchen, I walked in at the same time she was walking out. She looked at me closely and I could only guess what she saw. My hair mussed, my dress creased, my lips swollen and my skin still flushed and sensitive from the friction of Nicholas’s stubble.

She met my gaze as we stacked the plates, and in her eyes I saw a blend of confusion and concern.

Thandiwe had seen us walk in together, late for supper, after I had told her I thought Nicholas was with the Groenewalds. From her face, I guessed she had put two and two together. I felt that some kind of explanation or apology was in order and, clearly, so did she.

“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling ashamed. What must she think of me?

“I—when I said what I did earlier, about Colette—I’m sorry, Erin. That was insensitive of me. I didn’t know you and Nicholas were…”

I tried for a worldly smile, but it didn’t really work and in the end I just stared back at her with what I supposed was much the same expression as her own.

“I didn’t really know either, till a little while ago.”

“Just be careful, my dear,” she said, squeezed my hand, and walked out of the kitchen, leaving me to wonder what exactly she had meant by the words.

I don’t remember much
more about the evening. We had another glass of champagne, and after our dinner, rejoined the group to sit at Kobus’s table where I laughed my head off at his series of jokes, and so did Nicholas. Discreetly, under the table, we held hands, Nicholas’s fingers caressing my palm. I remember at one stage exchanging a glance with Joshua across the table and, if I recall correctly, we gave each other a relieved smile.

It was well after midnight when we left, with Nicholas driving slowly and following Joshua’s taillights up the hill. I was trying to conduct a one-woman sing-along, the theme being
Phantom of the Opera
. My singing voice is not my strongest attribute but, after a few drinks, I love to exercise it. When he wasn’t singing along with me, Nicholas was laughing so hard he was nearly driving off the road. All I could think about was what fun we were having. It seemed like a very long time since I’d enjoyed myself so much.

We then had a discussion about bedrooms. I insisted I was going back to my room. He overrode my decision, giving a reason that seemed compelling at the time but which subsequently escaped my memory.

I told him I needed to brush my teeth and he told me to go and brush my teeth, but to come back afterwards, or he was going to come and find me.

I made my way back to my room. I brushed my teeth and washed my face. It was strange to come back from an evening out and have no make-up to remove. It occurred to me that Nicholas had never
seen me with make-up, apart from what I’d been wearing on the day the car went into the river, which by the time he had rescued me, had certainly been a smeared mess. He’d never smelt me wearing my own perfume, only the lightly scented cosmetics in my bedroom.

He had only ever seen me as I was.

Vince, on the other hand, had seldom seen me without make-up and when I didn’t wear it, he urged me to do so.

I pondered this fact fuzzily for a while, but without reaching any significant conclusion. Then I turned on my phone, glad that thanks to all the alcohol, I did not feel the usual surge of dread as I waited to see what communications I had received.

There had been seven more missed calls from Vince, and despite my state of drunken relaxation, I felt my stomach twist with anxiety.

The phone beeped. Finally, at a quarter past eight that evening, he had left a message.

His tone was terse and hard.

“I don’t care what time it is when you get this. Call me.”

Before I had time to get too worked up about speaking to him, I phoned him back.

He answered within one ring. “Jesus Christ, Erin, for fuck’s sake, where have you been?”

“Nice to speak to you, too, Vince,” I retorted, noticing I was slurring the words.

“This is not a fucking joke. I have been trying to get hold of you all day. Where the fuck have you been?”

“This morning I was helping to fix a broken fence, to guard against poachers and cheetahs,” I stifled a hiccough. “And this evening, the neighbors hosted a dinner for everyone on this side of the river, and I’ve been over at their farm.”

“And you didn’t fucking call me back?”

“I did. I left a message for you. If it was so urgent, why didn’t you leave any messages for me? I did check my voicemail at lunchtime.”

“Because I assume that when I try to get hold of my own fucking wife, I don’t need to leave messages. And that when you see it’s me calling you would treat it as urgent. Why didn’t you keep your phone on you, for fuck’s sake?”

“Don’t speak to me that way, Vince.”

“I’ll speak to you how I fucking want. You’re drunk, aren’t you?”

Rage simmered inside me and my finger hovered over the disconnect button. Then I decided to give him the benefit of the doubt.

“I had a couple of drinks with dinner. Big deal. And I didn’t take my phone with me. I had no purse, no pockets, and nowhere to put the damned phone. So I left it here.”

“Christ, you can be stupid sometimes!”

“Vince!”

“I had a helicopter organized!” he screamed at me, and I felt myself go cold inside.

“Why didn’t you tell me earlier?”

“I was waiting for you to call me back so that I could arrange a pickup with the pilot. One of Helena’s friends was spending some time in the Kruger and said he’d be able to fly by your place and get you out. As a favor. So we spent the whole morning waiting for you to call back. Then he delayed his flight again and we waited the whole afternoon. And meanwhile you were doing other things. You didn’t bother to call back. You were just doing whatever you felt like doing, because it’s all about you, isn’t it, Erin? Really, it always has been, you stupid, fucking, self-centered…”

Abruptly, I jammed my finger onto the disconnect button. I couldn’t bear to hear any more of this. With hands trembling from haste, because I wanted to get it done before he could call me back, I turned the phone off again.

I felt far more sober than I had ten minutes ago. The fuzziness, the laughter, the sense of fun had all evaporated. I felt small, crushed, and very alone.

I was going to break my promise to go back to Nicholas’s bedroom, but it seemed like a small thing compared to the much bigger and more important vows I’d already smashed. I locked my door,
drank two glasses of water, collapsed onto my bed, and pulled the sheets over me. Outside, I heard the crashing of thunder. I thought I’d be kept awake, either by the storm or by the tumult of my own thoughts, but within a few minutes I was deeply asleep.

I was awakened by another clap of thunder and the violent hammering of rain.

Opening my eyes, I found the grey daylight unbearably bright. My mouth was a desert and my tongue felt like sandpaper.

Coffee. I needed coffee. And chocolate fudge brownies—my hangover cure of choice. Since I guessed chocolate brownies would be in short supply in the lodge, I decided to settle for a serious dose of caffeine. I fixed myself some in the kitchen, together with a slice of toast. It was six-thirty in the morning, too early for anybody else to be around. I wondered briefly if Nicholas was still asleep. However, when I walked back to my room with my breakfast, I heard the rhythmic slapping and thudding of the punching bag. He was in the gym, sweating out his hangover—and his anger, I supposed.

I stopped by the library, which was lined with mahogany shelves containing the most eclectic collection of books I’d ever seen. Many of them were medical books on everything from basic biology to the etymology of obscure diseases, but they stood spine to spine with works of fiction both old and new: travel writing, history books, biographies, and a whole shelf on art. The shelves were not all systematically arranged.
Lung Disease in the Tropics
was slotted between
Autobiography of a Yogi
and
Jefferson’s Letters
, while in the middle of a shelf of the classics, I found the
Kama Sutra
as well as the
Story of O
. I smiled when I saw he had three copies of
Life of Pi
. Perhaps that was one of his favorites, just as it was one of mine.

In the end, though, all I chose was a colorfully illustrated South African recipe book. If you can’t eat sweet baked goods, you can at least read about them, I thought. This would be the literary equivalent of comfort food—a pleasant distraction from the physical pain of my
hangover and the more hurtful emotional pain I felt when I thought about Vince’s words.

Sam had emailed back and I opened her response eagerly, looking forward to getting her opinion on the situation.

Girlfriend!!
she wrote.
Holy cow. I had no idea that all of this was going on. This is very, very, VERY complicated. Sheesh… you’ve been unfaithful to Vince? Wow. That is not what I ever thought would happen. You’re probably thinking I’m gonna say you’re wrong to have done it, and you should go for counseling. That if you’re going through a rough patch with Vince, you need to try and fix it. But actually, I feel the opposite way.

I think maybe this fling was a good thing for you. You might hate me for saying this but I have to be truthful. I think Vince is a prick. I can’t stand how he treats you, and his behavior is alienating you from your friends. I promised myself I would never tell you this, but at your engagement party, I ended up alone with him in the bar for awhile, and, do you know, he was trying to come on to me?

Anyway, this is probably too much info, and I apologize, because if you stay with him, our friendship is probably over now, but the thing is that if you stay with him, I’m never gonna see you anyway, so there’s no harm in being truthful, right? I just wish you all the best, and if you do leave him, I’m always here for you… you can call anytime, or come and stay for as long as you need to. Love you, and take care.

I closed the email quickly, not wanting to take in what it said. Then I opened it and read it again.

Sam thought Vince had come onto her?

Surely not. She must have been wrong about that. Perhaps she was exaggerating what had happened, or she remembered it wrong. Vince would never have done such a thing at our engagement party, with one of my best friends… would he?

I stared out of the window at the grey sheets of rain lashing the glass. Thunder cracked again, directly overhead, and the sound of the rain was replaced briefly by the rattling of hail. The elements were conspiring against me for sure. No work would be done on the bridge with this storm raging, and if I were especially unlucky, the sandbags shoring up the bank would be washed away.

Great.

I couldn’t let myself think about the conversation I’d had with Vince last night. How demeaning it had felt to be sworn at that way. Was Sam’s observation correct? Did people really think my husband treated me badly? I knew Vince had been angry—but why did he have to vent his temper that way? Maybe I should buy him a big red punching bag.

And, once again, I felt unfairly manipulated. If he’d only left a message earlier, or even texted me, I would have known how urgent it was and would have called him back.

Worse still, he’d been in touch with Helena. In spite of the fact that he’d obviously done so with a view to helping me, his words were troubling. He’d said “we spent the whole morning waiting for you to call back.” Had Vince meant he and the pilot? He and Helena? Did that mean Helena had, in fact, flown up to see him? And even if I hadn’t answered his call, why hadn’t he just told the helicopter pilot to fly to Leopard Rock regardless? He knew I would have been there… it wasn’t like there was anywhere else for me to go.

His words had not only wounded me, they had crushed me. He had the ability to make me feel as if I deserved his insults, and now this was causing me to become angry and resentful.

It was strange the effect that distance had. When we’d been living together, after similar fights, I had done everything I could to placate him and to restore the peace, and it had taken a day at most for things to get back to normal.

Now, without the constant demands of his presence, there was time for me to see the situation in a new perspective—to gain some distance from the effect that his moods and his criticisms invariably had on me. The problem was that I did not want the distance. It felt unsafe to have to think about Vince in this way. I longed suddenly to be back together with him. When we were together, the fights had not seemed to matter. I’d never felt anger or resentment. Vicious as they were, when we were in proximity to each other, it had been a whole lot easier to make up.

I wished I could go back to feeling the way I had done in the past. That I was incredibly lucky to have married this man—this renowned photographer, who had received international acclaim for his work, who had become wealthy through his own perseverance and talent, and who, of all the women in the world he could have chosen, had married me.

I turned on my phone, intending to phone Vince and apologize for hanging up on him, but when I called him, it rang and rang before going through to voicemail.

With a sinking heart I realized he was still angry with me.

I read Sam’s email once more and then deleted it. She had been right when she’d said it was too much info. Her words, in harsh black and white, were so troubling to me that I was not able to respond to them—not even with a thank you.

By the time I’d filled in the insurance form and made some phone calls to find out more about the car’s condition, the rain had eased up. In my stash of clothing, I found a large waterproof jacket with a hood. It would do for now. I was going to walk down to the river and see exactly what the situation was with the bridge—and, this time, I was going to take my phone with me and keep it turned on.

Putting it carefully in the Velcro pocket of the jacket, I set off.

I’d thought the distance to be a couple of miles, but even though it was mostly downhill, it was also somewhat longer. It took me more than an hour of plowing through muddy sandbanks and splashing across puddles. By the time I reached it, I was limping on at least one blister from my ill-fitting shoes, and the sight that greeted me was not what I had hoped for.

The water had torn a gaping hole in the carefully sandbagged bank. The river was in full flood again, the waters murky and grey, fast-moving and dangerous looking. There was not a soul in sight, although a tarpaulin nearby, weighed down with rocks, presumably covered some of the tools and equipment that would be used when, and if, the damned river ever stopped overflowing its banks.