Until the End of Time (4 page)

“And I knew the moment I heard your name that this
was it. This was the something. This was my reason to get to my feet and move.”
Sansone
straightened his shoulders and stood taller.
“I didn’t see how I could fight or argue with that. I didn’t see how I could run.
Because I loved you instantly.
It was such an insane,
horrifying reaction to simply shaking your hand
;
a
span of seconds that should have been insignificant. But it wasn’t. No moment
has been insignificant with you.
Nothing too small.
Nothing has been meaningless.” He pointed towards the hall. “Before I even
reach the driveway when I return home my hands tremble because I remember that
they can touch you freely now. I don’t have to curl my fingers into my palms
and shove them into my pockets with you. I don’t have to make sure I don’t
stare for too long when we’re in the same room. I can look at you,”—
Sansone
shook his head and laughed softly—“I can look
at you.” Stopping, he speared her with that stare and held her eyes. “That was
all I’d ever wanted.
You’re
all I’ve
ever wanted.”

He lifted his arms in a shrug and spread them wide.
“You’re enough for me. You’re
more
than enough. If you’re to be the only blessing my unfaithful Catholic heart
experiences in this life and the one following, I know now that I was not
cheated.
Ti
amo
più
di
quanto
si
potrà
mai
comprendere
.
And you need to know that it won’t
change twenty years from now. Or forty. Or sixty. Or seventy. It won’t shift
when I can’t stand anymore. It won’t be forgotten when breathing is hard. Or
when my grip on your hand isn’t as strong as it used to be. I am so
ridiculously, terrifyingly, exhaustingly in love with you Nyssa Sidra
Blackwell-Sultana and it will be that way until the end of time; baby or no.”

She gazed at him, silent and still, for the longest
stretch. When Nyssa finally opened her mouth to speak, a sob came out.

Er
…
not his first
choice of a reaction but since there was no cursing following the flow of tears,
or things being thrown at his head,
Sansone
considered
himself safe enough to venture into dangerous territory. A quick shuffle of his
feet took him to the edge of the bed where he slid his arms beneath and around
his wife, shifting her onto his lap.

“
Dimmi
,”
he
demanded quietly.

She shook her head.

“Nyssa—”

“Just…stay here?” she asked in a small voice. “Stay
here with me?”

She sounded almost broken and it made him pull her in
closer, hold her tighter. He pressed his face to her hair and nodded. “Whatever
you want.”

“I want you,” his wife told him. “I want you and I
want to go to
Moorea
. I want normalcy again. I want
to stop feeling like…” She abruptly cut the sentence off.

Sansone
lifted his head.
“You want to stop feeling like what?”

Nyssa buried her face into his chest and hid from
him. “Nothing. It’s nothing.”

She wasn’t talking to him again. “
Cara—”

“When do we leave?” she questioned. There was no
doubt that she was trying to distract him.

He could have pushed. He could have backed her into a
corner and forced her to voice whatever it was that made her shake in his arms,
but decided against it.
Sansone
wouldn’t get it out
of her here. However, after some time in a place where she had nowhere to run,
he could turn the tides. So he indulged her, whispering a great deal of his
plans against her temple until her breaths evened out and she stopped
responding. Then he laid her out, doing just as he said he’d always wanted, and
looked at her. There was just one problem. His stare wasn’t full of its typical
lust or devotion. No, this time there was only concern.

“
Bienvenue
sur
notre
belle
île
!”

Sansone
tried and failed to
focus on the boisterous words announced by captain of the ferry steadily
bustling he and Nyssa, along with several other passengers, towards the
Vai’are
wharf. His attention was on his wife who’d left him
near their bags to go stand at the railing and turn her face towards the sun.
Her oversized glasses were long gone, tucked away into one of her many pieces
of luggage, and her lashes rested on her cheeks. She had her small palms
pressed against the metal of the huge boat, barely moving with the speed while
she practically glowed. The backdrop of light bracketed her bronzed skin
perfectly, highlighting yellow undertones set off by the soft pastel color of
her maxi dress.

With the realization that she’d be spending several
days away from home and her hair stylist, she’d endured hours at the salon,
getting meticulous twists that roped downwards past her shoulders and stopped a
few scant inches above her ass. Before their early morning trek to the airport,
she’d looped them into a bun and wrapped a silken scarf around where they
rooted from her scalp, keeping them in place. Had they wandered into the isles
with a bit more Afro-Latin ancestry such as the Dominican Republic where they’d
spent their honeymoon, she could have easily been mistaken for one of the
local, stunning island girls. It was in the fluid, rhythmic movement of her
hips and the dusted gold effect of her complexion.

Nyssa was indeed a rough talking, cement stomping,
city
born shark. But at the heart of her, she couldn’t deny
her love for this atmosphere. Hence why he’d brought her here. Vacations out of
the country tended to restore whatever depleted energy they had, allowing them
to rest before they were forced to return to the real world. He sensed that
this time, his wife needed it more than him. Something was weighing on her.
Something that she couldn’t seem to verbalize.
They’d been
friends long before they’d been lovers and somehow, intimacy had been lost and
replaced with this driving need to play the roles appointed to them. Woman.
Man. Wife. Husband. Sister. Brother. Aunt. Uncle. Mother. Father.

Where
Sansone
and
Nyssa
had traipsed off to in the midst of obligation, he didn’t know. But he intended
to find them on this trip and force them back home. The connection that had
made them unstoppable for years—that extraordinary ESP exclusive to
them—was blurring. He didn’t like it. She didn’t like it. They needed to
fix it. He’d contemplated the solutions for hours a day as to how.

When Nyssa suddenly grinned, those bright hazel orbs
still closed to all around her as she just took in the feel of the breeze,
Sansone
grappled with his camera. Getting it turned on and
to the right setting, he took a snapshot or four, marking the moment as the
beginning of them finding their equilibrium again. She looked happy
;
an expression that had been fleeting for months now. He
could see her visibly relaxing the closer they got to the dock and hoped that
things could only get better from here.

As if sensing his stare, she suddenly opened her eyes
and looked directly at him. She raised a brow at the camera, but said nothing.
His next shot was that of her lush mouth lifted on one side in a smirk that
he’d come to know well over the years. She then shook her head and went back to
admiring the waves.

He stood and walked over to her, stopping at her side
to press a kiss to her cheek and take another shot. The picture captured her
scrunching up her nose while he smiled against her face.

“
Stai
bene
.”

“I
feel
good,”
she murmured back, absentmindedly patting his jaw. “I do believe this was one
of your better ideas, Mr. Sultana.”

He twisted his mouth as he stared down at her.
“Including that thing you only let me do to you during leap years and the night
after
Christmas because you claim
that doing it
on
Christmas would
offend the infant carpenter?”

Nyssa patted his face a little rougher this time. “Go
away.”

“
Nooope
,”
Sansone
drew out, wrapping an arm about her waist and
squeezing her. “I flew you out, so you have to put up with me. Dem’s the
rules.”

She snorted. “Where? On Twitter where children who
should be learning how to spell are too busy arguing how much a first date
should cost, while coming up with hypothetical scenarios that only happen in
scripts written by
Shonda
Rhimes
?”

He nodded. “
Yuuup
.”

“I want you to understand that with each passing day,
I’m concerned about the state of your mental health.”

“I’ve been hearing this for the last eleven or so
years and yet, I have not been committed.” Grinning down at her, he waggled his
brows when he asked, “Can’t do it can you? Can’t lock up the D.”

Nyssa blinked slowly. “I wonder if I can have your
passport revoked on the way back home…get you trapped in a third world
territory…”

“I love you too, sugarplum. I love you too…”

“Well
this
is gorgeous. Unrealistically, insanely gorgeous.”

“So I take it that you approve?” her husband
questioned from over her shoulder as she walked further into the bungalow and
eyed the expanse of space reserved just for them.
 
It was a lagoon front
pushed out into the waves. Just from where she stood in the foyer, she could
hear the movement of the ocean. The sitting room itself had a huge bay window
that gave a backdrop of picturesque mountain views and the incredible cerulean
blue water lapping up the shore.

“Approve? Dude, I want to lustily rub my nipples
against everything in here!”

“
Er
…I’d advise against
that. Because, you know, bacteria.”

With another few steps, Nyssa discovered that their
bedroom had the same window along with a small pathway that led directly to the
back deck. That was where she found oversized rattan furniture with
comfortable, plush cushions and a ladder off to the side, edging into the South
Pacific. Everything created had been done so with the thought of decadence and
she couldn’t wait to strip and take up residence on that…

“What, precisely, do you think you’re doing?”
Sansone
barked from behind her.

Swinging around, she jerked up her dress and faced
him with wide eyes. “Getting half naked so I can lounge around in luxury?”

He was shaking his head before she even finished. “There
shall be no lounging for you on this night I’m afraid.” Her husband clapped his
hands together. “We’ve got plans.”

Nyssa frowned. “Plans? Sunny we just withstood the
torture of several hours in the air, along with an unnecessary amount of Ferry
trips from island to island so we could comfortably rest here. Why, in God’s
name, would I want to leave this place?”

Walking forward, he cupped her face and made a
soothing sound. “Sweet, sweet,
cara
.
You want to
leave because if you stay, you will have absolutely
no
peace.” Leaning forward,
Sansone
whispered against her mouth. “I will haunt you.”

She slapped his hands away. “The hell, man
?!
”

“This is not a trip intended for the sole purpose of
lazy immorality—”

“Immorality?
Immorality?”

“—You and I are here to remind ourselves as to
why we shouldn’t take one another for granted. By ‘
ourselves
’
I mean
you.”

Nyssa snarled a little. “Me
?!
I take us for granted?”

“I wouldn’t voice that particular opinion per se…”
Sansone’s
voice trailed off as he pursed his lips and
stared over her shoulder, rocking back on his heels. “I lie,” he suddenly amended.
“Yes, yes I would. You’ve been a bit…goal oriented as of late.”

She squeezed the bridge of her nose. “And to punish
me, you’re going to make me do God knows what as penance on vacation?”

“Wrong,” her husband responded in an imitation of
Charlie Murphy as he jerked his fists in her direction. “
Wrong.”

Laughing wasn’t an option right now. She was entirely
too annoyed. “Then enlighten me as to what your bright, ridiculous plan is.”

He did a toe tapping melody with his giant feet and
then spread his arms out, waving his palms in a disturbing rendition of jazz
hands before answering, “Intimacy.”

Thinking she’d heard him wrong, she tugged on her
right ear and queried, “Huh?”

“You and I are going to reestablish our intimacy,”
Sansone
happily informed her. “The beautiful connection of
souls that has made us—as a married couple—so wonderfully unique in
our union.”

Nyssa rubbed the heels of her palms over her now
closed lids. “I think I would have rather had you bring me here to tell me that
you and Brian’s husband have been in the throes of an intense affair for the last
several years.”

“Brian’s husband isn’t my type,” he quipped. “The thighs
and calves aren’t proportionate. I’ve tried to overlook it considering his
previous profession, but I find myself afraid that one day he’ll tip over like
a beetle and won’t be able to regain footing.”

No. No laughing. Annoyance. Annoyance was key. “
Sansone
…”

“We’ve lost
our
footing,
cara
,”—
he rubbed the pad of his thumb
beneath her mouth—“it’s time to get it back.”

She lightly stamped her feet like a toddler who’d
been told no to candy for breakfast. “Can’t we just do that thing I only let
you do during leap years and after Christmas, before taking a nap?”

Sansone
clicked his tongue
against his teeth. “As tempting as
that
particular
offer sounds…no.” His palm came down on her hip. “Shower. Get dressed in something
comfortable and easy to move in.”

Stopping his retreat, Nyssa pressed a quick kiss to
his mouth and softly admitted, “What you’re doing…most men wouldn’t. Most men
are clueless until someone sends a fairly expensive vase sailing towards their
head.”

His expression was typically haughty. “How many times
do we have to learn that
I’m
not most
men?
I’m
superior. Lord of all. Ruler
of everything the light touches. King of—”

She covered his lips with her palm. “I try to say thank
you and you just ruin it. You ruin it every time.”

He lifted her hand and nipped it. “I love you too,
sugarplum. I love you too…”

***

Watching
her
mouth was torment. Something he’d come to know well. It was amazing that he
hadn’t fallen to the floor on his knees, offering himself as tribute when
they’d first met. Temptation in flesh, Nyssa was. Made all the more appealing
because she embraced the wanton creation of herself. She didn’t pretend to know
otherwise. She didn’t deny her beauty like so many others had the tendency to
do in false modesty. Arrogant? Not in this sense.
Comfortable
in her power?
Sure. Which was why the next few days would be hell on
Earth. Taking talks of babies from the equation left the man and the woman, and
no matter what he’d told Luciano,
Sansone
wanted to
lay her down on the nearest hard surface at almost every opportunity given. He
simply couldn’t help himself. It was a part of what made them…
them.
Wanting that back is what had
brought them here. Pleasure had been the repetitive motive in touching her over
the years. He intended to make her remember that.

She’d asked about punishment earlier in the day, her
expression full of exasperation. Punishment was too harsh of a word. He didn’t
want to alienate her, but he
did
want
her totally aware of what life was like in a constant state of arousal with
nothing to slate the pulse of lust. They’d lived that way once before
;
unable to move around the elephant in the room. Having to
face everything as friends and nothing else. Days and nights spent in
companionable silence all the while wondering what would happen if they just
gave in.

Today’s outing had been a lovely taste of that. He’d
nudged her down to the docks where they’d found a small luxury boat waiting
along with fishing supplies. Ignoring Nyssa’s immediate, “
Oh, absolutely not,”
Sansone
had simply
lifted her with one arm, the supplies in the other and got them situated on the
vessel. He’d pushed them off and out into
Opunohu
Bay, laughing at how she’d leaned over into the bucket of fish bait for a peek,
only to pull back with her face slightly green.

When they’d gotten to a reasonably lovely spot, he’d
pulled out a bucket cap, pushed it down over her loose twists and kissed her
nose. She still wore a frown but it faded as she noticed the beauty of the reef
and the different schools of fish swimming about. Once he’d told her about the
whale watching they would do and their visit to the
Moorea
Dolphin center, excitement pushed aside her previous annoyance. After a while
they’d sat next to each other in the quiet, feeling the boat rock as their
lines were tugged periodically. Parrotfish were caught and kept along with
bonito while triggerfish and jacks were thrown back. At her raised brow, he
told her that their catches would be for dinner along with things he’d already
had ordered and delivered to the bungalow. The boat trip was over too soon for
his tastes. The quiet of being out in the bay with nothing but their thoughts
had been soothing.