Somewhere on St. Thomas: A Somewhere Series Romance (3 page)

He glanced at me, and I looked away. I took another bite, but butterflies were fluttering around in my belly so wildly my appetite was gone. I offered him the rest of my mango, holding it out mutely.

Instead of taking it, he leaned over and sucked the juicy tips of my fingers, his eyes sparkling blue mischief as he drew them into his mouth.

I gasped at the feel on the sensitive pads of my fingers. The sucking sensation, his mouth so hot and slick, seemed to go straight to my breasts. I could feel my nipples tighten, hard as acorns. My whole body seemed to light up, and I felt a rush of heat between my legs.

It was totally unfamiliar, yet as if my body had been designed for this, knew what to do, and had been waiting for a switch to turn it on
.

That switch had just been thrown.

I couldn’t seem to move. His tongue flicked my fingers, traveling between them, his mouth taking them all the way in, sliding back out, tongue flicking the sensitive nerve endings at the tips again and again.

In, out, in and out, as his blazing blue eyes held my hypnotized green ones.

I couldn’t breathe or look away as he made love to my hand with his mouth. I leaned inexorably in his direction. Finally, he encountered the mango on my palm and took it, sitting back with it between his teeth and taking a bite.

“Thanks.”

I realized my hand was still extended, as if in supplication.

Take me,
that open, trembling hand seemed to beg.

So did the rest of me, yearning toward the source of these electric feelings. I shot to my feet, flushed with humiliation and arousal, confused and terrified. I grabbed my knapsack and ran back down the trail.

I ran all the way to the truck and then stood there, dripping sweat and mortification. I looked back across the pasture. No sign of Rafe.

Well, hell if I was going to stand there and wait for that arrogant ass to meander down when he was good and ready.

Besides, I had nothing to say to him and he was as dangerous to me as kryptonite. Good thing I was in shape and it was no more than a few miles back to town. I set off at a jog down the sandy-dirt road. I could have used some water, but there was no help for it.

He eventually caught up with me close to the park, slowing the truck down beside me as I ran.

“Hop in and I’ll drop you off at home,” he said through the open window, chugging along beside me.

I wouldn’t look at him, still running, holding the straps of my knapsack. I didn’t answer.

“Suit yourself,” he said, and gunned it. The truck kicked up some bad-smelling exhaust and a little gravel in my direction. He drove on and turned left, going out of town.

“Son of a beehive!” I screamed after him, all the profanity allowed in my world.

I took a moment to wonder where he lived, what his place was like, if he wanted to try to see me again…and then I ran hard to punish myself for my weakness.

“That man is bad news.” I muttered out loud, panting. “I just have to get on the plane and get out of here. That’s all I have to do.”

Chapter 2

I managed to avoid Rafe for the rest of the two weeks until my departure. He made no gesture toward me, either, ignoring me at church and turning his back when we ran into each other at my parents’ office.

This just made me want him more. I tossed and turned at night, waking myself up with sensual dreams, all starring Rafe doing things to me I’d only read about in the coverless paperbacks I picked up at garage sales. I knew women could touch themselves and have orgasms, but every time I’d tried in the past, I got too embarrassed and couldn’t get it to work.

Now I couldn’t seem to stop. Rafe’s hands on me, Rafe in me, over me, all around me in fantasies got me there quickly. The day before I left, supposedly packing, I threw myself on the bed and tried to get him out of my mind, but all I ended up doing was touching myself.

“You feeling okay, Ruby?” Mom’s worried voice came from outside my bedroom. “You’ve been in there awhile.”

“Yeah, just sorting some things,” I said, breathless with mortification, hating myself for the whole situation.
Thank God I’ll be gone tomorrow and will never see him again.
I came out, washed my hands and splashed water on my flushed cheeks in the bathroom. “I’m okay.”

“Well, I hope you’re not coming down with something. We’ve got the bonfire party tonight and tomorrow you’re flying out.”

“Like I could forget. I’ll be fine.”

I felt like I was living a double life. On the outside was the smart, good, virtuous daughter of missionaries who’d hardly been kissed, on her way to Northeastern University. On the inside was a tormented soul whose body had been switched on by the wrong man at the wrong time and now couldn’t be turned off.

How I wish it could.

The bonfire going-away party was wonderful. My friend Jenny, who was staying in Saint Thomas and going to community college, cried the most, hanging on to me and garlanding me with flowers. We sang songs around the fire to the strumming of guitars and beating of drums, and a wonderful potluck dinner filled my tummy with delicious island food.

Rafe didn’t attend, though my parents had invited him. I’d noticed he wasn’t there from the moment the party began, and was annoyed that I noticed, annoyed with myself, that it mattered. All of those feelings added up to annoyed with him.

Dancing around the fire with my friend Jenny, I realized I was going to miss this place, but that other world was so different I didn’t know what to expect. Due to finances, I’d never been to Boston, and again due to finances, tomorrow I was boarding the plane alone.

The next morning was emotional. Getting ready to leave for the airport at Charlotte Amalie, I stood in the driveway for a last round of hugs from Jenny and my family. Both my parents were crying, and my sisters, Pearl and Jade, clung until I felt bruised.

I heard the distinctive rattling of Rafe’s truck and looked up. He pulled up, parked, and got out of the truck as if his appearance were expected. He’d dressed carefully, I saw, in a patterned dark red shirt over black slacks. His long hair was still wet from a shower and combed neatly back.

“Hi, Mr. and Mrs. Michaels. Do you mind if I have a word with Ruby?”

My dad, open-mouthed, shook his head. My mom just stared and I understood why. Rafe McCallum was indeed splendid to look at, with or without a shirt. Jenny wiggled her brows at me as Rafe took my arm firmly and towed me across the lawn to stand beneath a spreading Poinciana tree.

The pattern of the tree’s leaf shadow fell around us and we were far enough away for privacy, but I was aware of watching eyes.

“What do you want?” I snapped, tugging my arm away, because my body was humming at being so close to him. I could almost smell the pheromones spilling into the air around us, an intoxicating scent of what could never be, hovering just beneath conscious awareness but powerful nonetheless.

“Just wanted to tell you—I enjoyed meeting you. And I’d like to keep in touch. Here’s my address.” He took my hand, set a little clamshell inside it, folded my fingers over it.

“You have an address? And it’s inside a shell,” I said. He laughed. I thought I could look up at the shadow of him towering over me forever.

He was still holding my hand, and then he pulled me close in a hug, socially acceptable in the circumstances. With his arms around me, my length pressed to his, he whispered in my ear, “You’ve gotten under my skin. I’m going to miss you way more than I should.”

“It’s the same for me,” I whispered back, and he held me away from him as if using all his strength to do so.

“I wanted to see you every day since our hike, but I didn’t want to be a distraction to you,” he said. “But you are leaving today. I found I had to say goodbye.”

“I wish you had come to the bonfire last night,” I said. “I was looking for you.” The words we said felt stilted but desperate.

“Time to go!” Dad bellowed.

Rafe took my hand and we walked back. I could feel my cheeks burning, conscious of my family and best friend watching. At the car he let go of my hand finally and said, loud and clear as a statement of intent, “I’ll see you again, Ruby.”

And he hugged me one more time.

I stared after him as he got into that funky old truck. The clamshell with his address in it was clutched in my hand, and I pressed that hand against my throat.

“Wow,” Jenny said, appearing beside me and whispering into my ear. “I see why everybody’s talking about him.”

I flipped my free hand. “Just another surfer.”

“Seems a little more substantial than that,” Jenny argued. She traced a man shape, her white teeth gleaming. “I wouldn’t mind finding out how substantial. Sure you want to leave that bone behind for me to chew on?”

I forced a laugh. “All yours. I’m off to the big city.”

Dad and I got into the car after another round of hugs and turned onto the road for Charlotte Amalie and the airport.

“How well do you know Rafe?” Dad asked.

“Not well.”

“You seem to have made an impression on him.”

I thought of Rafe’s mouth on my juicy fingers. Whatever impression had been made was mutual.

More hugs and prayers with Dad at the airport, his blue eyes emotional, and I got on the small prop plane and took off. The suitcase with all my worldly possessions in it was somewhere in the cargo area and the closed clamshell Rafe had given me was tucked into my pocket. I hadn’t wanted to look at it until I was safely in the air.

I felt battered and torn and yet so excited I was guilty as the little plane climbed into the sky. Saint Thomas, cartoonishly beautiful, waved goodbye with its palm trees and blue water, dear family and forbidden lovers.

I took the shell from Rafe out of my pocket and opened the small white clam, two sides that made a heart shape when open. Inside was a tiny folded paper.

His writing was elegant, flowing, and the black cursive looked like it had been done with a fountain pen.
I think of you often. Let’s stay in touch.
His address, care of general delivery at the general store in our village, made me smile.

“I think of you often, too,” I whispered. And I dug my journal out of my backpack and started my first letter to Rafe, describing everything I saw from the air and my excitement about where I was going. In writing, I felt like I could talk to him, not like my tongue-tied stupidity and terrible blushes in person.

* * *

It took twenty long hours to make it to Boston. I arrived at night, when the city was a lacy shawl of colored lights around the harbor. The sidewalk outside the airport was warm in the early-fall night and smelled of gas fumes and the city, a whole new bouquet to get used to.

I hauled my suitcase with the broken wheel out onto the sidewalk and took my first cab ride ever, giving the address of my sight-unseen dorm to a driver with a turban on his head and skin so black it was purple.

I had expected my dorm to be fancier than it was, Northeastern University being the upscale place I had pored over pictures to see, but by the time I located the right brick building in the dark (still towing the broken-wheeled suitcase), the simple room in the gracious old building looked like heaven.

I fell face down on the bare mattress and slept fully clothed.

Chapter 3

Life at Northeastern University was colorful. Absorbing. Stimulating. Everything I’d hoped for. I was taking a general-ed slate of huge lecture classes and planning an eventual prelaw major. In French class I had a leg up because of our proximity to the French-dominated nearby islands and I was semi-fluent already.

On my second day I decided to adopt an imaginary persona as part of my Northeastern University experience. I’d be Juliette, exchange student from the French Antilles, and would speak with an accent. The red hair would throw everyone off and make me more intriguing, I hoped. It was a fun way to cast off my past and become someone new and sophisticated.

I shopped with my roommate, Shellie, a preppy girl from New York, at Boston’s thrift stores to totally redo my look. I bought berets and scarves and old jeans with peace signs on the butt and a pair of boots with high heels. I liked the look of my red hair streaming out from under a scarlet or purple beret over the old navy pea coat I wore everywhere as the cold deepened outside and the leaves changed color.

I didn’t have money because, even though I was on a scholarship, none of my living expenses were covered but the dorm room itself and a basic food plan. I got a job in the dining hall, serving students who didn’t have to have jobs. I spoke to them only in French in reply to their English requests, a silly form of revenge. I was at Northeastern, but I still didn’t feel like I belonged there. I might be smart enough, but one look at Shellie’s wardrobe, shoes, and furnishings showed me I was out of my league in every other way.

I’d write Rafe at my desk using a feather quill pen in my persona as Juliette. I wasn’t sure why I kept writing—perhaps it was because he was the only person who’d specifically asked me to keep in touch. At least, that’s what I told myself.

The phone in the dorm was exorbitantly expensive, so I didn’t call home. My parents called once, an ordeal during which Mom cried and Pearl demanded to know about all my boyfriends and my dad reminded me to stay chaste.