Betina Krahn (28 page)

Then one intrepid little traveler spotted Titan and called out—“Look, there’s a little one!” The children migrated to where the dolphin baby had edged farther into the shallows and soon dolphin offspring and human offspring were splashing and playing happily together. All of the dolphins, in fact, seemed quite interested in the children, darting into the shallows to see them, repeatedly calling to them and splashing them gently. Periodically, one of the adult dolphins would break away and go far enough out to execute several jumps, then come racing back to enjoy the squeals and laughter of the children and the attention that resulted.

It was a memorable two-hour visit; a wonderful first encounter between dolphins and humans. By the time the visitors climbed the steps of the cliff, had a bit of Maria’s wonderful lemonade, and climbed back into their coaches, Celeste’s initial misgivings about their intrusion into her world had been dispelled. She waved to the children from the step as the coaches bumped and jostled their way down the rutted drive, toward the lane.

But as she reentered the house and headed for the kitchen to heat bathing water for Titus and herself, she felt an inexplicable but growing sense of loss.

After dinner that evening, in the parlor, they took turns reading from one of her grandfather’s classic books about the people and culture of India. But it was clear her heart wasn’t in it.

“What has you so serious this evening?” he finally asked,
setting the book aside. “Those people today? I thought, considering all the possibilities, that it went very well.”

“It did go well,” she said. “But … I suppose I hadn’t really considered what it would really involve for people and dolphins to mix.” She matched his frown. “It has taken me years to learn about Prospero and Ariel and the others. And still, sometimes they surprise me. They’re big animals and fast and smart, and today I realized … I mean, I know they aren’t aggressive by nature, but to see them with those children … I wasn’t sure what to expect. It turned out well, but it could have been quite different. I suppose I just realized that there are lots of aspects to introducing dolphins to the rest of humankind.”

“Well, think of it this way: you learned something about dolphins today that you couldn’t have learned by yourself.”

“Oh?” She looked up and felt her worries melting in his warm smile.

“That dolphins—at least your dolphins—seem to like children.”

“They seemed to, didn’t they. They made regular show-offs of themselves over the children. Do you suppose they really understood that the children were the equivalent of their babies?”

“It’s not impossible. They did single them out for special attention,” he offered. “And we’ve both seen how they dote on their own babies.” He slipped an arm around her waist and she shivered with pleasure and laid her head against him. He chuckled wryly. “This whole business would be so much easier if we could learn their wretched language and just have a good long talk.”

T
HE CLOCK IN
the entry hall was striking half past eleven when Celeste sat up in bed and punched the pillow one final time. For more than an hour she had lain in bed, her head buzzing and her body heated and yearning. She thought of Titus lying in his bed not far away … his long, elegant
body draped with sheets, his hair sleep-tousled, his lips parted in sleep. And she slid from the bed to go sit in the window seat overlooking the beach.

The unseasonable warmth didn’t help. She lifted the tail of her gown and fanned herself with it, then struggled to open one of the side windows a bit wider. Movement on the ground below caught her eye. It was Titus, strolling from the house, clad in shirt and trousers, with his hands in his pockets. He was headed for the beach and didn’t seem to be in a hurry.

She pulled a robe from her wardrobe and slipped out into the hall and down the stairs, without noticing the slice of light coming from her grandmother’s doorway, or the silvery head that bobbed up at the creak of the floorboards under her feet.

Her heart beat faster as she sped along the path to the cliff. The moon was waning—a mere quarter now—but there was still enough light for her to make her way down the familiar steps toward the beach. There Titus sat on one of the boulders at the edge of the sand, staring out at the moon-brightened sea. She slowed and stopped, watching him stare at the waves coming in to the shore.

Titus had picked up two pale, rounded rocks along the path down the cliff and now sat tumbling them over and over in his hands as he watched the waves meeting the shore. They were like his thoughts, going around and around. Like Celeste, he had resented the visitors’ intrusion into their snug, sheltered world. And like Celeste he had been reminded of a wider world outside of Ashton House and the dolphin cove. Once admitted, that first thought made way for a flood of others … thoughts he hadn’t realized he had been denying. Now they were going around and around, unanswered questions and disturbing impressions that he wanted to keep in motion … to keep them from settling in his mind.

So much had happened in the last week and a half. He had finally checked the date and discovered that twelve days
had passed since he arrived at Ashton House. The count and feel of “lost time” surprised and unsettled him, but not nearly as much as the realization that he had temporarily forgotten that he was an Oxford professor who would someday have to return to the university and his colleagues.

He had spent all of his adult life at Cardinal College, first as an undergraduate, then a graduate student, and now as a full faculty member. It was all he had known, and in less than a fortnight, all of that seemed to have happened to a stranger who lived a largely incomprehensible life. It was remarkable how this place, this woman, could have opened his vision and ideas of things and had introduced him to a new viewpoint and methodology in so short a time. For the first time in his life he was experiencing things, venturing into unknown territory, seeing things that no one had ever seen—except Celeste. He stared out at the dark horizon of the moonlit ocean, feeling suddenly awed and unsettled at the thought that there was a whole, unseen world out there—

“Having trouble sleeping again?”

Her voice startled him. Whirling on his seat, he found her standing nearby, dressed in her night robe, her hair flowing free about her shoulders. He felt slightly guilty, as if his thoughts had somehow conjured her here.

“A bit,” he replied, moving aside on the rock and patting the place he had just vacated for her. “You must be having trouble, as well. Come, sit with me.”

She did sit beside him and at first he made no move to touch her. It felt strangely as if they were friends, meeting in the most ordinary of circumstances. They watched in silence as the waves of the evening tide came in. But then he looked at her, searching her profile in the moonlight, and felt a sudden and powerful surge of emotion … part desire, part desperation. He reached for her hands and pulled her up with him.

She didn’t question him or resist as he led her to the water’s edge and took her face between his hands. In the dim light she looked up into his face with hope and desire shining
in her eyes. He rubbed his thumbs across her warm cheeks and absorbed the sensation of her soft skin yielding to his touch. And he somehow sensed that he was holding his future in his own two hands.

“Swim,” he said thickly, when, he could speak. “Let’s swim together.”

She seemed to know what he wanted, because she wanted it, too. She nodded, smiling, and slid her hands up his chest to unfasten the buttons of his shirt. He pulled the ribbon ties of her robe and peeled it gently down her shoulders. His shirt came next, then shoes and trousers, and her nightgown.

She stood in the moonlight as bare as the Almighty made her, every curve a sculptor’s dream, every inch a man’s desire. He ran his hands reverently inward, along her shoulders then down her chest to trace the soft mounds of her breasts. He could feel her responding, warming to his touch, and closed his hands around her. Her eyes closed, and after a few moments, he lowered his hands to her waist and pulled her close to press a gentle kiss on her lips.

She slid her hands down his sides and beneath the waist of his one remaining garment. “For this collaboration to work, things have to be equal,” she whispered. When she slid her hands down the sides of his hips, his drawers went with them and he stepped out of them. He released her waist to take her by the hand and lead her into the surf.

She couldn’t have counted the times she had spontaneously shed her clothes for a starlight swim with her dolphins. But never before had she felt the water like this, filling every pore, caressing every inch of her skin … enlivening primal instincts, awakening the awareness of her sex within her. It was his presence, she understood, that had changed it all. The look and feel of him enlivened her senses and the possibility of him aroused her desires.

The intimate contact of the days just past had built a debt of need between them. Each time they had stopped, each time they had swallowed back their desires and reasserted
propriety and control, they had merely added the weight of that unspent pleasure to sensual imbalance inside them.

As they waded into the cool water, each stole glances at the other, sensing what was to come and savoring every movement, every delicious moment. The water swirled around them, encircling their waists, surging between their legs, caressing their limbs as they stretched out to swim. The water became an erotic bridge between them, connecting them as they glided quietly through the dark water into the uncharted territory of realized desire.

“A
WOMAN DON’T
shed her ‘mustn’t-mention-’ems’ unless she’s ready t’ take the plunge,” Anabelle observed quietly from the top of the tower. She and Sophia, sharing the second watch of the night, each had peered down the spyglass to glimpse a heap of clothes and two pale, bare-bottomed figures on the beach disappearing into the water.

“You’re right, of course,” Lady Sophia said, her eyes filling with moisture and her face lighting with a wavery smile. “It’s going to happen, I can feel it in my bones.” She hurried to the figure wrapped in a blanket and snoozing peaceably by the steps. “Stephan, wake up! It’s time. Go fetch Ned and the reverend and Daniel and tell them to hurry. Things are moving quickly now.”

While the old servant disentangled himself from the blanket, she turned to Anabelle. “You go waken Penelope and the brigadier—I’ll get the torches and garlands and the sacred puzzle, and meet you in the entry hall.”

As the others hurried down the steps, she couldn’t resist turning back for one last moment. Peering out at the beach, made indistinct by the age of her eyes, she let one tear fall. “Love well, my children.” Then she looked up at the night sky. “Make sure it’s beautiful for them, will you, Martin?”

•        •        •

T
ITUS AND
C
ELESTE
swam to the far side of the cove, where rock gradually replaced the sandy beach, and found footing beside some of the smooth, tide-washed boulders. The chill of the water was noticeable on her bare skin and she shivered as she swept her hair back. He noticed and circled her with his arms, pulling her against his body for warmth. She raised her face to him and luxuriated in the salty warmth of his kisses, wrapping her arms around his neck, opening to him. She felt the strength of his desire, pressed against her belly, and felt her body both swelling and tightening in anticipation. Closer, she wanted to be closer to him, to feel him hard against every inch of her skin. The closer she pressed, the tighter his arms clamped around her and the hotter the waves of sensation that broke over her senses.

He kissed and touched her feverishly, lavishing attention on her throat, her breasts, her sensitive nipples … recalling and reclaiming each pleasure they had shared these last few days. He slid his hands down her buttocks and lifted her against him, thrusting gently, rubbing her rhythmically with his hardness, finding the sensitive center of her pleasure. She moaned softly and parted her legs, abandoning her weight to him. He carried her back against one of the rocks, setting her partway on it.

With both hands he stroked and caressed her while suckling her nipples, nipping her shoulders, nibbling her neck. When she began to slip, he laughed softly and set her back farther on the rock … pausing to adore the erotic picture she made with her wet hair swirling around her, her breasts and nipples swollen with desire and stimulation. She was woman, beauty, pleasure … all things generative and good … worthy of worship … a goddess of desire.

Beginning with her feet, he kissed his way up to her knees. It tickled and she squirmed, but he refused to be dissuaded from adoring every possible inch of her. He nibbled and licked and kissed her knees, wringing giggles and gasps from her … which transformed into half-uttered moans as he proceeded up the insides of her thighs. Sensing
where he was headed, she closed her eyes; after all, her dolphins did this and seemed to enjoy it. Moments later, she felt his kisses reach the center of her desire and shuddered with every delicious flick of his tongue.

Her breath came in short gasps, the muscles of her legs drew taut, and her body arched to meet those breathtaking sensations. She sank back on the rock, abandoned to the tension that gripped her, spiraling higher and clenching tighter … released suddenly in a blinding, white-hot climax of pleasure. She could scarcely breathe as successive aftershocks of pleasure rumbled through her. As she sat up, she felt the tension still heavy in her limbs and that odd, expectant hollowness prominent in the core of her … and knew what more she craved.

Here, now, she slid down the edge of the rock, into both his arms and the water. Wrapping her legs around his, she mated her body to his and savored the hard prominence of his desire riding against her sex. She understood what would come next, wanting it, needing it. As the water lapped around them, he drew back slightly and began the joining of their bodies. Bit by luscious bit, he parted and invaded her yielding flesh, forcing the breath from her in soft moans. And when she felt the fullness of him in her, she sighed and relaxed closer against him as lush trills of heat and pleasure vibrated along her nerves.