Drowning (12 page)

“My wife’s stuck in town,” he told me. “She’s been there for three days now—couldn’t get back because of the flood. I’ve been living on TV dinners cooked outside on the barbecue. After the first time, I realized you need to take them out of the plastic container before you heat them up on the coals. And, worst of all, my wife took my credit card with her when she left. She’s been phoning me to say that every place in town is booked up apart from the brand new five-star
Hyatt
. No other accommodation to be had, apparently. So that’s where she’s staying, and I’m paying!”

He roared with laughter and I joined in. Mr. Bosnik was a natural comedian. Half an hour later we were the center of a group including Miriam and Joshua, and a couple of other locals. He had a fresh beer in his hand and I was halfway through my second glass of wine.

“So we’ve driven this road for twenty years now,” he said, “and I swear, until this time last week, I’d never seen the pothole just before the intersection that was so deep we actually expected somebody to come along and ask about mining rights. I mean, you’ve never seen anything like it. My tire was shredded. Shredded. So there I am, with no truck, and a whole load of macadamias in the back, to deliver to the
Spar
by that afternoon, except by then I thought I was the one who was nuts.”

“You are nuts,” one of the other men commented, to general laughter.

“So then I start looking for my car jack. You know, to change the tire. And I didn’t have one in the vehicle, so I walk all the way down to the main road, and along comes a minibus full of tourists. So I step into the middle of the road and flag it down. My luck, the damn driver is half German and mostly deaf. He leans out of the window and asks if he can help. So I say, ‘Car jack. I need a car jack.’”

“And then?”

“And then he sticks his head back in again and they close all the windows. I start phoning my wife to ask her for a set of tools, but a minute later I hear sirens over the hill, coming my way, and there’s a
helicopter circling overhead. And the flippin’ cops from over in Nelspruit pitch up with the chopper and three emergency vehicles—oh, and an ambulance, because the German bus driver thought I’d been car-jacked. Because I’d said to him, ‘car jack.’ And by the time the story got through to the police, they thought the whole tour bus had been car-jacked!”

Amid the laughter that followed, Joshua leaned over to me and asked in a low voice, “Where is Mr. Nicholas?”

I shrugged, then gestured in the direction of the entertainment area. “Last seen in there, being introduced to a young redhead and clearly getting along very well with her.”

Joshua had seen Nicholas and me in the swimming pool together—he knew how things were between us. Now he stared at me, frowning in concern, clearly not knowing what an appropriate response to this might be.

Nor did I. I sipped my wine and tried not to think about how angry I felt and how confused I was. Tried instead to laugh at my entertaining companions, and not to imagine Nicholas in the room next door, turning all his charm on to the gorgeous Colette. I stood in miserable silence while Joshua offered me silent sympathy and Miriam, poised and smiling, squeezed my arm briefly.

My second glass of
wine was almost finished when two warm, strong hands clasped me around my waist. My heart accelerated instantly. Mr. Bosnik paused mid-sentence in yet another of his funny stories.

“Well, hello, Nick!” he said. “Where’ve you been?”

“Doing the rounds inside,” he said. “I’ve come to say hello, and check up on how my guest is faring.” I arched away from his touch but his grasp followed me, warm and sure. “Good to see you, Kobus. Mrs. B. not home yet?”

“No. I’ve been making emergency arrangements with the bank. I should get the card paid off in another fifty years or so.”

Nicholas laughed. “Is everyone okay for a drink?” he asked. “My glass needs a refill. So does yours,” he said, removing mine from my grasp.

“No, I’m fine, honestly,” I told him, but he took my hand and led me away from the laughing group and back into the entertainment area, where rock music was pulsing from the speakers and, I could see, the two Groenewald women were craning their necks to keep track of him.

I tugged my hand out of his.

“Really, I’m good,” I told him, shouting to be heard over the beat. “I’m having a lovely time. You must… Go on, enjoy yourself.” I gestured to the group he’d recently left—discreetly, I hoped.

“Glad
you’re
having a lovely time. I’d be having more fun with you.” He removed the champagne bottle from the large ice-filled tub where it had been chilling. “Come on. Let’s go somewhere quieter.”

My ears were ringing from the music as we walked out of the entertainment area and through the treed garden into the darkening evening.

“I saw they built a bonfire on the other side of the garden,” Nicholas said, and ahead I could see the flicker of flames in the center of a large sandy clearing.

He sat on a wooden bench on the far side of the bonfire and patted the seat beside him.

“Sit.”

The hiss of the champagne cork sounded very loud in the silence. I sat next to him. Our knees brushed, then pressed together.

“We only have one glass,” I said.

“We’ll share.” He filled it slowly and carefully before handing it to me. The bubbles sparkled on the surface, bursting on my lips as I sipped.

“I feel bad for leaving you alone,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

“You didn’t leave me. I left you. I saw you were otherwise occupied. I didn’t want to interfere.”

“Otherwise monopolized,” he said with a rueful smile.

“She looks like a lovely girl.”

“I’m sure she is.”

“Isn’t she your type?”

“Erin, I don’t have a type.”

“Well, ’scuse me for assuming that a sexy young redhead might be your type,” I said, letting my voice drip with sarcasm. “Or do you prefer blondes?”

I knew that if I’d spoken like that to Vince it would have enraged him. But Nicholas only smiled. “How much wine have you had?” he asked, sounding amused.

“Only two glasses. Poured for me by your friendly neighbor Kobus.”

“Ah. So more like four glasses, then, if he was pouring.”

“Do I appear drunk?”

“No. You appear honest and outspoken. I’m liking it.”

He passed me the champagne and I took a large gulp.

“Go back to your redhead,” I told him. “She’s beautiful.”

“She’s not my redhead.”

“She could be. She wants to be.”

“And I don’t.”

“What does she have an honors degree in?”

“Um. She did tell me… or her aunt did. Er… fine arts, I think. Art of some kind, definitely.”

“Oh, great,” I said, hating her all the more.

“Why do you say that?”

“Because art’s what I wanted to study. I would have studied it if I hadn’t fucked up my life beforehand.”

“Tell me why that happened.” He put his arm round me and I leaned against him.

“No. I’m not going to tell you.”

“And I’m not going to stop asking.”

I watched him pour more champagne, while my resentful thoughts toward Colette bubbled.

“I can see your future mapped out now, Nicholas,” I told him. “In a few years you’ll be married. Probably, you’ll have had a big wedding ceremony at the lodge. You’ll have a couple of beautiful kids running round. Maybe you’ll be faithful to your wife. Maybe you won’t. But that’s your life. That’s the way it will go. I can predict it. And I’m sure you’ll be very complacent with your happy ending.”

He was silent for a moment while the crackle of the flaming logs snapped in my ears.

Then he let out a sigh.

“If only happy endings were so easy,” he said. “You know, that’s what I was thinking earlier on, when I was standing with the Groenewalds. That is exactly what was going through my mind. Here I am, being set up with a very suitable, attractive, single young woman, and everybody’s hope and expectation would be that, best
case, in a few years we’d be where you’ve just described. Even I tried to go along with it—for the first thirty seconds, anyway.”

“Well, I agree life is not always simple,” I said.

“For a number of important reasons, Erin, my life is not going to go that route.” He sipped from the glass, then handed it to me.

“What are those reasons?”

“There are some I won’t tell you.”

“I’ll keep asking.”

“Okay, then. I’ll tell you one. You’re a reason,” he said, and his words surprised me so much I almost fell off the bench and onto the carefully raked, pale sand below.

“Me?”

“Yes.”

“You mean—you don’t want to fool around with anybody else while I’m still here?” I was clutching at possible explanations, not understanding him at all.

“Well, that’s true, actually. I’m a faithful type, in my own way. I only commit adultery with one married woman at a time,” he said, offering a mischievous grin. “But it’s not that. It’s… hell, I don’t know. All I know is I can’t stop thinking about you. When I was standing with the Groenewalds, I didn’t want to be with them. I wanted to be with you, Erin.”

Suddenly I felt as if I could not breathe.

He put the bottle and the glass carefully down on the sandy ground.

My head was whirling now, partly from a fair amount of alcohol on an empty stomach, and partly from his words, his closeness. Nicholas must never know that I felt the same way about him, too, I told myself. I should not even take what he’d said too seriously. Clearly, he had a marvelous line in smooth talk, which I was sure he gave all the girls. Coming from me, though, those same words would show vulnerability.

Then I forgot my stern self-talk as he leaned close to me and with eagerness I met his kiss. The touch of his lips had the same instant effect on me as it had done before, melting my insides, making me
lustful, needy, reckless. His hands smoothed up my legs, pushing the silken skirt of my dress higher, catching his breath as his fingers traveled all the way up my thighs to encounter only bare and naked skin.

“No panties… you have no idea what a turn-on that is,” he murmured. “What it does to me.”

“That isn’t exactly by choice. I only have one pair with me. I can’t wear them all the time,” I protested. My voice was complaining—rather breathlessly, I had to admit—but my body was not. I could not contain my desire for him. I was pushing my hips toward him, silently begging for him to touch me more intimately, to fulfill my limitless craving for him.

“You are so sexy. With or without underwear.” He stroked his fingertips lightly over my cleft, and I caught my breath at the sensuality of that gossamer touch. “It’s just that without… you offer me far too much temptation. You can’t imagine how badly I’ve been needing you. And I can’t sit here knowing that you are here… uncovered, open, waiting… not without doing something about it.”

The movements of his hand and my body had caused my dress to ruche up around my thighs, and now he encouraged me to lean back before lifting the front of the skirt higher and bending to kiss the soft, sensitive skin of my inner thigh.

“Nicholas!” I whispered. “I… ooh… you can’t do this now. What if somebody sees us?”

“We’re on the far side of the fire, and it’s very dark out. If anyone walks this way we’ll hear them on the gravel path. Then we’ll have time to make a plan.”

His breath was warm on my skin. He trailed kisses up my thigh before parting my lips gently with his fingers and sliding his tongue in between. Desire bloomed inside me; the orgasm I’d had earlier that day only serving to make me hungrier for his touch now.

With exquisite tenderness, his tongue stroked over my clitoris, the soft thrill of the touch causing me to gasp. I realized that my body was yielding to him, any resistance I might have mustered ebbing away before I could even consider it. I could not have moved if I had wanted to. All I could think about, all that mattered, were his intimate
caresses. His tongue slid warmly over my delicate flesh, he sucked my lips in ways that made me bite back a moan of delight.

Such wicked intimacy, and in a place where we could so easily be interrupted. Would I have time to warn him—would I have any wits left to pull myself together if somebody did appear? Oh, this was bold and entirely wrong—but so addictively exciting. I was loving this; loving how much he turned me on, and that he seemed to find me as impossible to resist as I found him.

The thrill of what we were doing was only intensifying the sensory rapture he was offering me.

He circled the tip of his tongue lightly over my clitoris until I was gasping with delight, then thrust his tongue deep inside me, and I felt my fingernails scrape over the wooden corner of the bench as my grip tightened. Sensing my movement, he found my hand with his own and grasped it, his fingers twined in mine and his thumb caressing my palm.

I was throbbing, opened to him, he already had me trembling on the edge. He circled my clitoris again, fluttering his tongue over the swollen nubbin of bliss, then slid a finger inside me. I gasped with delight as he began slowly, gently fucking me with two fingers. With each thrust, his fingertips massaged my G-spot. I could feel myself starting to tighten inside as heat suffused my lower body. I knew that he was going to make me orgasm again soon… easily, effortlessly.

And then, over the thrumming of the blood in my own ears, I heard another and far less welcome sound—the noise of low voices and footsteps scrunching over the gravel path behind me.

I froze into place, listening. I found myself suddenly, intensely aware of every movement that Nicholas was making. The sensual, sliding exploration of his fingers; the soft flickering of his tongue.

“… yes, I’ve got a dish for the meat.” It was Thandiwe’s voice.

“Have you seen Nicholas?” Berndt spoke, and his words sent a thrill of apprehension through me. “Mrs. Groenewald was looking for him.”

“I haven’t seen him for a little while.”

“Who’s that over there by the fire?”

For a moment, I wished I could feign deafness, or preferably disappear into the ground. Then, taking a deep breath, I looked over my shoulder and called, “It’s me, Erin.”

“Ah, Erin. You’re doing okay there on your own?”

At the words, Nicholas’s fingers slid more deeply inside me and I caught my breath. With him sprawled in front of me on the log bench, there was no way Thandiwe or Berndt, who were standing behind me, could see him. Not in this flickering darkness… not unless they came closer, or I gave the game away.

“I’m doing fine, thanks. Star gazing.” I fought for control, to keep my voice steady.

“Dinner’s ready in about ten minutes. You must come and eat.”

“Oh, I will,” I called back.

“Do you know where Nicholas is?” Berndt’s voice this time.

He’s right here on this bench, giving me the most divine oral sex I’ve ever had…

“Last I saw, he was inside, talking to the Groenewalds,” I said, deciding to exact some sweet revenge. “He seemed to be getting on very well with Colette.”

Bad idea to rile him on this subject, Erin, I realized immediately. Bad, bad idea.

Nicholas’s other hand pushed further underneath me and with a start I felt his finger, slick and wet, stroking gently over my anus.

No
way
. This was too outrageous… far too forbidden. I’d managed to remain coherent so far, but I knew I could not possibly conduct a conversation while he was stimulating me in that way. And nor could I yell “Stop!” Discreetly, I tried to shove his head away with the palm of my hand, but it was like trying to move the Rock of Gibraltar.

“Oh, I’m so glad to hear that. She is a lovely young woman,” Berndt said.

“I think they seem… very well suited,” I responded. My voice sounded wobbly, my heart was pounding, but I might as well keep agreeing with him now because I was sure nothing I said now would distract my lover from his mission of wickedness.

Slowly, sensually, taking his time over the actions, Nicholas slid the tip of his finger into my backside. I had to bite my lip to keep from moaning at the audacious pleasure of it.

“Can I bring you another drink?” Berndt called.

Oh, God, now Nicholas was pumping his finger gently in and out of my rear, each time pushing in a little deeper. It felt amazingly, shamefully good. He nibbled my clitoris, pressed into my G-spot with the fingers of his other hand, and I felt an urgent heat flood my body.

“Join you… in a minute,” I said, then clamped my lips together hard to stifle a cry of delight. His fingers were all the way inside me, his tongue teasing pulses of ecstasy from my throbbing clit. I was filled by him; opened and utterly possessed, and then, thank God, the scrunching of feet on gravel indicated my hosts were making their way to the entertainment area.

I let out a deep, fast breath as I came painfully hard, thrusting myself against him. I twined my fingers through his hair and tugged his head closer as pleasure spiked through me again and again.

He slipped his fingers out of me. Extricating himself from under my skirt, he sat up, locked his arms around me and kissed me deeply. I tasted myself in his mouth, the flavor of my own arousal on his lips. I kissed him back hard, realizing that while this orgasm had sated my hunger for him, it had also made me greedy for more.

In the firelight I could see his face, taut with lust.

Reaching down for the glass, he gulped a mouthful of champagne and kissed me, letting some of the cold, bubbly liquid froth into my mouth. The sensation was incredible. It made me feel dizzy, as if I was floating.