The Charm School (30 page)

He lifted his mouth—his warm, sweet, soft mouth— from hers and whispered, “Oh, love, yes, if indeed we were making love, you would touch me like that.

And I” — he kissed her again, slowly, lavishly, writing poetry with his tongue “—I would touch you like this.”

He caressed her most private, most feminine places. Places she was forbidden even to put a name to or think about, but she thought about them now, about the trail of fire that blazed through her, unslaked by the cool water. She understood that she was addled from smoking the hemp leaves and so was he, yet she was glad. Grateful. Pleased that there was a substance that would make it all right for her to bathe naked with a naked man.

“And finally,” he whispered in her ear while his hand still did those magical things, “finally I would have to bring you onto dry land so I could finish what I started.”

“What you started …” she whispered.

His hand slid between her thighs.

“I want to be where the water is.”

Oh, my. This time she couldn’t even find her voice, could only nod a mute, fascinated assent. Hand in hand they waded to the shore and fell back on the soft heap formed by her fallen petticoats.

“I knew these things were good for something,” he said, then laughed, bracing himself on one arm to gaze at her.

“Look at you, all wet and glistening.” He bent and drew his tongue in a circle around each of her nipples. And she was too shocked and thrilled even to breathe.

“You’re a goddess, and if I happened to be making love to you for real, this would be a form of worship.”

All her life she had been made to understand that she was unworthy.

That no one—particularly no man— could possibly want her. Yet all those lessons—beaten into her not with a hickory cane but with the far more brutal cudgel of verbal logic—suddenly flowed away on a raft of sweet words from this laughing, red-haired man.

He had declared her a goddess. She reclined in an ecstasy of amazement as his lips drank the spring water from her breasts and shoulders and belly, as his fingers, probing with exquisite tenderness, parted her thighs to explore the damp folds of her womanhood.

“Shall I go on with my explanation?”

“What … explanation?” Rather than sobering up, she was growing dizzier and more intoxicated by the moment.

“Poor Isadora. Shall I continue?”

“Please … do.”

Her breathy assent seemed to amuse him. He slid his fingers provocatively over her most sensitive spot.

“The next thing I would do …”

She lifted her hips slightly, the motion far beyond the control of her will.

“is kiss you right … here.”

“No!”

“Ah, you know your part well. For I would expect from you a slight squawk of protest at this point.”

“Protest?” Even as she spoke, her hips shifted under the delicate torture of his touch.

“Of course there would be a protest. It’s unnatural.”

“What could be more natural than wanting to bring the ultimate pleasure to my goddess?”

“It’s sinful.”

“Have you seen it listed along with the seven deadly sins?”

“I don’t even know what it’s called.”

“Then surely it doesn’t exist.” He slid his mouth down her neck and along her arm, up again and then down. lower, over her belly, sipping spring water from her navel.

“So you have nothing to fear.”

“We shall burn in hell.”

“Not so.” He nibbled her thigh.

“We shall burn now.”

His tongue traced the curve of her hipbone. And he gave her the deepest, most tender kiss she had never dared to imagine, and she had the most extraordinary reaction. As if she had drunk a great swallow of Curasao. only this was sweeter. As if she had inhaled a huge breath of herbal smoke. only this was lighter. As if she had dived into a spring of perfectly clear water. only this was more buoyant.

She had never flown like a bird, but that was how it felt. She had never burst into flames, but that was how it seemed. She had never seen stars with her eyes closed, but that was how it looked.

When the shattering sensations subsided, he made a leisurely meandering path of kisses northward. She felt stunned. And curiously, achingly incomplete.

“Ryan?” Her voice was a broken whisper.

‘ “Mm?” He suckled soothingly at her breast.

“Is … is your … explanation over?”

“That depends.”

“Depends on what?”

“On what you would expect from an encounter like this.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Well, if I were to make love to you, would you expect a fine physical release similar to the one you just experienced, or would you prefer a deeper, more spiritual joy?”

“You mean, there’s a difference?”

He chuckled, his hand cupping her hip.

“Oh, love. There is.”

“I think,” she said, winding her arms around his neck, “that I need a further explanation.”

“It would take a far more serious commitment on your part. A sacrifice, you might call it.”

“What sort of sacrifice?”

“Your heart and soul. Your will. Would you give them up? And your purity—well, I suppose you could say that’s already gone. But your chastity. Technically speaking, that’s still intact. Would you give that up?”

“For the spiritual joy you offer?” She shrugged. “Why not?”

“There’s a more practical consideration. In an actual lovemaking situation, you would lose your virginity.”

‘ “Well, thank God. It has been an unwelcome encumbrance for far too long.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

‘ “You’re not concerned that, should you marry, a husband might expect an explanation?”

“I would have to tell him I was hopelessly seduced in the middle of the jungle by a pirate who mistook me for a goddess.”

“That was no mistake.”

Boldly she touched him. There. And smiled wickedly when he caught his breath.

“Neither is this.”

“Then you want it. The rest of the demonstration, that is.”

“Yes.” She could not get over the remarkable hardness of him.

“Is this painful?” she asked.

“Not … in the way you’d think. It’s quite … normal, I assure you.”

“Then you should definitely continue. What would happen next?”

‘ “Well, since we are about to take a step I never take lightly, I would kiss you some more.” He did so, and now his kisses were more yielding and soft and moist than ever before, flavored with the forbidden essence of passion.

“And then,” he whispered, his lips moving to her ear, “and then I would probably tell you that I love you.”

Time stopped. Movement, heartbeat, wind, water. Everything stopped.

Finally Isadora found her voice.

“And would you mean it?”

“Probably not in the sense most ladies prefer. It would be a sort of ” If I don’t have you now I’ll explode’ declaration. As opposed to the “I will commit to you for life’ declaration.” He rippled his hand over her breasts.

“And of course at this point such distinctions wouldn’t matter much.”

“I don’t suppose they would,” she conceded. But she could not deny that his words had carved out a small, ridiculous, hopeful spot in her heart.

“Then what? What would happen next?”

“Hold on to me, and I’ll show you.”

She clung to his shoulders. She wondered if he realized he’d said the exact same words before teaching her to swim. He sank down, probing, pushing and in an age-old motion she’d never been taught but had always known, she raised her hips and wrapped her legs around him.

There was a brief pressure, a flash of pain and between clenched teeth he said, “Ah, Christ, I’m sorry, I” — “I’m not,” she whispered, lost and loving it; lost in his embrace and loving the sensation of being covered by him, filled and possessed by him, their bodies sliding and straining together in a rhythm that was as natural to her as breathing, yet as new to her as the rainbow thrown up by the scintillating light through the waterfall. She could see it beyond his taut shoulders, could open her eyes and see a burst of sun-shot color, and it was a wonder to her, for it was the perfect wordless expression of the fantastic pleasure rising higher and higher within her, filling her chest, her throat, her flushed delighted face and finally coming out in the form of a sound she’d never heard before, a burst of awe and ecstasy, a single note that said, in one rush of joyful clamor, everything that she was feeling, everything that was inside her.

A moment later Ryan went motionless, arms braced and straining, face curiously intent as, for precisely one heartbeat he stared down at her. And in that brief pulse of time she became swiftly terrified, terrified that it was over, that this moment would end and the magic would disappear, taking the joy with it.

Yet it didn’t happen that way. He spoke her name, no more, and she felt the startling rush of his release. A thrust, a ripple, a spasm.

His eyelids lowered to half-mast and his expression mellowed to one of unfettered bliss. Finally he sank down slowly, very slowly, while the long dream stretched out like sunlight across the water, and the illusion was more real to her than life itself. She waited, feeling the pressure of his weight atop her, smelling his scent of spring water, then something dark, musky, evocative. Haunting.

And finally, he spoke.

“Oh, Christ. What have I done?”

Even as he swore, he pulled away from her, pulled back, and for the first time since they’d dived into the lagoon, she felt her nakedness, felt ashamed.

“I wanted you to,” she said in a small voice, snatching up her chemise and holding it like a shield in front of her.

“A moment ago you looked at me and you saw a goddess. Now what do you see?”

“The biggest mistake of my life.” He hid his gaze as he tugged on his smallclothes and trousers, negligently buttoning them.

“I took shameless advantage of you. Made you inebriated and then seduced you.”

“Ryan.” Her voice rang crisply across the water, startling a flock of hyacinth macaws.

“What precisely is your point?”

Without even looking at her, he handed her the corset. “I have no idea why women insist on wearing these contraptions.”

She put it on, tugging absently at the front laces, feeling her hypersensitive breasts press against the top edge and wondering how he could so quickly dismiss her. She had experienced the greatest pleasure of her life, and he said it was all a mistake.

She thought suddenly of the whore he’d been with back in Boston. And the one in Rio that first day ashore. Of course. He took all such encounters quite casually.

“I think I understand,” she said, stepping into her petticoats. The damp fabric held the faint scent of their love; she forced herself to ignore it.

The blurred elation imparted by the smoking began to dissipate, mist driven back by a cold wind.

“When you are inebriated, I’m a goddess. Then when you sober up, I’m a mistake.”

He paused in dressing himself. Reaching out, he brushed his finger over her mortified cheek, once, so tenderly that she wanted to weep.

“Ah, Isadora. I’m the one who made the mistake.”

Part Three.

The Bird of Winter.

The winter grew cold—so bitterly cold that the duckling had to swim to and fro in the water to keep it from freezing over. But every night the hole in which he swam kept getting smaller and smaller.

Then it froze so hard that the duckling had to paddle continuously to keep the crackling ice from closing in upon him. At last, too tired to move, he was frozen fast in the ice.

Hans Christian Andersen, The Ugly Duckling (1843).

CHAPTER Seventeen.

No coward soul is mine.

Emily Bronte (1846).

JXYAN sat contemplating the largest fortune he’d ever seen in his life. In the glaring sunlight slanting through the stem windows of the captain’s cabin, the stacks of pounds sterling glittered with eye-smarting brilliance.

At one time, this moment would have been one of triumph. He had earned far more than Easterbrook’s margin had called for. Thanks to a fast trip on the brow of fair winds, he had accrued bonuses and premiums most sea captains only dreamed of.

He could not enjoy his success, though. Could not even look forward to setting sail. He could not do anything but think of Isadora.

He cringed, recalling the seductive interlude in the rain forest. He had truly hit bottom. On the pretext of protecting her, he’d followed her to the lagoon. On the pretext of introducing her to a new pleasure, he’d taught her to smoke hemp leaves. And on no particular pretext at all, he’d taken shameless advantage of her trust, her naivete and God help them both her state of helpless inebriation.

No matter that she’d wanted it, she was a proper lady of Boston who deserved a little restraint.

No matter that she’d asked for it, she was an innocent who didn’t know the consequences of the act.

No matter that she’d enjoyed it, it would take an icon made of stone to be impervious to the pleasure they had found, the pleasure enhanced by the gentle lassitude of the drug combined with a setting that rivaled paradise.

Worst of all, far worse than taking advantage of a naive woman, was the fact that Ryan himself had done the unthinkable.

He had fallen in love.

He took a sullen sip of lemonade ‘-everything else since his orgiastic consumption of spirits last night made his head pound and scowled at the tally page in front of him.

How could he be so stupid? How could he lose his heart here, now, to a woman like Isadora? His future was a hazy dangerous cloud on the horizon. He couldn’t drag her along this path with him. He was about to face his greatest ordeal yet and he might have to violate every principle of maritime commerce in order to do it.

He had to free Journey’s wife and children. He might well have to commit an act that could get him hanged. Everything depended on what happened in Virginia.

“My, my,” Journey said from the doorway.

“You do look a mite glum for a man sitting in front of all that money.”

Ryan felt a painful stab of affection as he regarded his lifelong friend.

“I do, do I?” He picked up his pen and used the lever to fill the cartridge.