Forbidden Sensations: A Dark Romance

by Savannah Rose

  Then I admonished myself for being such a materialistic bitch.

  Jesus Christ, no wonder I had to talk to someone. I was a fucking mess.

  I glanced over to my chauffeur du jour, a middle aged woman by the name of Sheila. The French fries belonged to her grandkids, she had explained, and further went on to apologize for the aroma. She hadn't been able to locate the offending leftover spuds since their last excursion to Epcot Center.

  I told her it was no big deal, I've smelled worse. And besides, her car had a nice high center of gravity. You didn't have to bend down too far in order to get your ass in the seat. Sheila nodded politely, and had enough courtesy not to ask why a young gal such as myself was hobbling around with an old-person's cane.

  “Old gymnastics injury,” I explained. Although I didn't have to.

  “Balance beam?” she asked, turning left onto the highway.

  “Tide pool,” I said, and looked out the window.

  The sun was an hour or so away from hitting the horizon. Sunsets were always a favorite time of ours, so I figured it was the perfect time to visit.

  I wiped my hands on my pants. I was sweating.

  - - -

  Sheila asked if I wanted her to wait. She wouldn't keep the meter running, as it were, as somehow she felt that would be sinful. Charging someone who was paying respects at a cemetery – especially a Catholic cemetery – was like breaking an unwritten commandment or something.

  I told her no, I was fine, and had her drop me off just down the hill from where Rebecca and Leslie were laid to rest.

  I'd skipped my afternoon therapy appointment to see them, and hiking up the winding, asphalt path to where they were would be good for my leg, and my heart.

  A sweet, ocean breeze kept the air nice and cool. It blew through the giant palms, and brushed the hair from my eyes.

  I kept my breathing in a regulated cadence, inhale two three four, exhale two three four. In through my nose, out through my mouth. And if my leg doth protest too much, keep going, soldier.

  The hill had a slight incline, just like the treadmill's Advanced Setting at the sports medicine facility. That piece of equipment was state of the fucking art, and you could chose from walking excursions through Italian villas, Australian outbacks, Mount Everest, the list went on and on. No cemeteries to select from, though. Which was a darn shame. Talk about motivation. Keep on truckin', or this'll be your next stop.

  Inhale, exhale.

  There were quite a few newly erected headstones since last I was here. I didn't try to count them, as I was concentrating on my respiration. I wasn't much of a multi-tasker.

  Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Inhale exhale, in God we trust.

  I recognized most of the granite angels and marbled saints who kept their heavenly watch over the six-foot-under crowd. The same giant monoliths carved with the names of the dearly departed sprouted from the grass like blocky, rectangular trees.

  My sister and niece didn't have such expensive, statuesque displays watching over them. Just two crosses – one smaller than the other to let the average passer-by know there was a dead kid in the ground.

  Sad as fuck. This whole place was sad as fuck. But pretty, somehow.

  My leg was getting tired. And my knee was reminding me of its damaged cartilage by the way the joints creaked and groaned. It sounded, and felt, like two bricks being rubbed together.

  A lilting, faint scent of apples carried upon the ocean wind. I took in a deep breath, and closed my eyes. Apple was a funny aroma for a cemetery. It's usually lilies or orchids, jasmine, and definitely roses. Where would apple be coming from? I opened my eyes, the lovely, fruity smell still on the air, and suddenly remembered I forgot to bring any flowers.

  “Oh, shit,” I said. You can't visit a grave site without flowers. Well, you could, but it's tacky. And Rebecca and Leslie both loved flowers. God damn it.

  I turned and looked back down the hill. The excursion to the gift shop and florist would be about five bridges too far for me. Maybe I should call Sheila. Or ask the grounds-keeper guys if they have any leftover blooms I could have. I didn't see any guys at the moment, but their truck was here. A piece of crap brown Chevy – the traditional work horse of any self respecting landscaper. No grounds-keepers, though. God damn it, again.

  A dull stab of pain encircled my knee, traveled up my hip, and down to the pins in the other leg. Maybe this was God's way of reminding me not to swear in His presence, or my edible wearing off. Most likely both, and in any case, I absolutely needed to sit.

  I put my hand on the pedestal, giving myself extra support, and rounded the corner.

  The bench was already taken.

  A man in a denim jacket, head bowed, and hands clasped together sat in reverent repose. A half flat of tulip bulbs and Angelonias was beside him. Well, that explained the apple scent. Angelonias smelled like apples, in a way, and there was a brand new bunch of them in the flower holder in front of Rebecca's cross. A smaller bunch adorned Leslie's. What wasn't explicable, however, was why Maddox was sitting on my bench.

  My stomach fluttered, slightly. And for a brief moment, I forgot about the cornucopia of pains in my leg and knee. I slapped the bench with my cane.

  “Seriously?”

  He spun around. I'd snuck up on him, apparently. How could he not have heard me? The cane and I were as stealthy as a backhoe.

  “Ramona?” he said, as if I were the last person he expected to show up here.

  Those green eyes of his were wide with surprise, and complimented the red hair growing thick on his head and face.

  “You going for the lumberjack look?”

  “Oh, I, I –”

  “Well said,” I replied. “Move over. Please.”

  He picked up the flat of flowers, and set it on the ground as I took a much needed load off. He smiled at me, but I was in no mood for it.

  “Ramona, hi. How are you feel–”

  “Spare the small talk. What are you doing?”

  Maddox looked toward the crosses, then back at me. “Paying my respects.”

  “What the fuck for?”

  His brows knitted. His brows, which I noted, were no longer victims to a dye job. “Should you be talking like that? Here?”

  I narrowed my eyes.

  He scratched behind his ear. “That's what you do at a cemetery.”

  “Why are you dressed like that?” I pointed to the rugged look he was obviously going for, which, if I was honest, looked damn nice on him.

  Maddox pulled at the lapel of the jacket. Sheepskin lined. “I guess I don't need business suits anymore,” he replied.

  “So I gather. Which leads me to my next question.”

  “Which is?”

  “Where the hell have you been? Finding yourself?”

  “You could say that,” he said, and leaned back on the bench. “I've missed you.”

  I opened my mouth to say something, then shut it.

  He continued. “I don't know if I should say 'I'm sorry' or not. You know, for disappearing. I figured you'd just rather I drop off the planet, anyway.”

  “You could say that,” I replied, unsure if I meant it or not. At this point in time, at this place in time, I was leaning toward the latter. I sucked in a huge draw of air, then expelled it. “Don't take this the wrong way, Maddox, but...” Another draw, another expulsion. “Thanks. For, y'know, covering the expenses.” I held out the cane then pulled it back toward me.

  “You're welcome. Is everything going okay? The doctors, rehab, everything?”

  “They're little slices of heaven, every day,” I said, and tapped the flat of flowers with my foot. “And, thanks for those. Most people bring bouquets.”

  “They're from my mom. Josh has the same kind.” A sad grin crossed his lips.

  He clasped his fingers together and leaned his elbows on his knees. Faint marks where the cuffs had nearly strangled his wrists off were still there. White, ghostly bracelets.

  “I thought your mom d
idn't speak to you.”

  “Neither did my dad,” he said, and took a look over his shoulder at that beat up old Chevy. “A lot's changed in a little while.”

  “I can see that.”

  “So, are you having me arrested or what?”

  I laughed. Couldn't help it. The overall randomness of the question caught me off guard.

  “Funny you should ask,” I said, and pointed to my sister's cross. “That's actually the reason I'm here. I wanted to talk to her about it. Since you're here, however…” I adjusted myself on the bench, putting my hands under my legs, and looked him straight in the eye. “What about you?”

  “What about me what?”

  “Pretty sure you've got my breaking and entering thing on tape. The pointing a gun at your face deal. Shit like that. Why haven't the agents shown up at my door? Y'know, flashing their badges and asking if they could speak to me for a minute.”

  “What I believe you're referring to could be labeled Exhibit A. If I hadn't torched them in my fire pit. Of course, you have a lot of trust issues, so whether or not you believe me is anyone's guess.”

  The ocean wind blew across the purple blossoms of the newly planted Angelonia. They bowed and dipped with the breeze.

  Maddox continued. “You should see my fire pit.”

  “That sounds suspiciously like a proposition.”

  “That's where the tapes are. Or, were. No, they still are. Just… melty.”

  I kept my eyes on Becca's cross, and Leslie's tiny one, just beside it. “I don't know, Maddy. This whole thing is fucked up.”

  “Is that entirely bad? I mean, sure, we started out on a weird foot, and I am not the kind of person that believes everything happens for a reason. Not at fucking all. But...” He reached into his jacket pocket, and took out his phone. Drew his finger up the screen, scrolling, then held it out to me. “Look familiar?”

  Yes, it was very familiar. It was our island. The white sand beaches, the bowing palm trees, even the alcove where I'd kept the funky lumberjack on my right prisoner for a while.

  “It has a name, actually,” he said, and reached over to scroll up to another picture. It was a perfectly innocent gesture, his arm across me for a moment. The delightful scent of his aftershave blended extraordinarily well with the aromas of surrounding bouquets. “Santa Diabla. Which I thought was pretty great. So I bought it.”

  I cocked my head to the side. “You bought it. You just, bought an island.”

  “Not just any island. Our island.” He smiled slightly.

  “Oh, for the love of shit. Are you fucking with me?”

  “What's wrong?”

  “How rich white guy bastard can you get? You bought an island? Jesus Christ, Petersen. Just when I thought you had some potential to be a real guy, a real dude, you flash a picture of your own private chunk of the Caribbean in my face and blow any potential respect I may have had for you straight out of the water. Shit head.”

  He pointed to the picture I hadn't bothered looking at yet. “Slow your roll, Maria. It's not for me. It's not even for you.”

  Maddox tapped the screen, and brought up an article from the American Journal of Medicine. According to the headline, philanthropists J&J Petersen were funding the construction and development of a new nonprofit dedicated to addiction recovery and suicide prevention. Completely self-sustainable, and with no adverse environmental impacts, Cliffside Passages would cater to those in the low-to-no income brackets affected by substance abuse.

  There was more. A lot more. But I couldn't read it right now.

  “Whose...” I cleared my throat. “Who're the Js?”

  “Johnathan and Joshua. Dad thought it should be J and M, but I thought Josh's name was a better representative. I'm just a rich, entitled pervert. Josh was the one with the real problem. Funny thing was that my dad and I came up with the idea when we were working on the truck. That's some shit right there, isn't it? Me, working on a truck with my dad. Like real people.” He took his phone back.

  “That's… that's your truck?”

  He laughed. “Yeah. Sweet set of wheels, isn't it?”

  “Not really,” I replied. “It's going to be a bitch for me to climb into it.”

  Maddox turned to me, anticipation and dare I say a hopeful innocence behind his eyes.

  And for some reason, which I will never quite be able to explain, I put my hand on his. It was a lot like the feeling I had when I rammed the Insatiable onto a reef. Unseen forces, invisible spirits, name the cosmic compulsion.

  Whatever it was, when he entwined his fingers with mine, I didn't pull away. In fact, I found myself hoping we would stay like that for a while. Which we did. We sat there in a strange, comfortable silence as the breeze continued to rustle the palms, with the sound of the ocean waves crashing behind us, and surrounded by the lilting scent of apples.

  Maddox and I were definitely starting a new chapter. Or maybe a new book. It would take a lot of forgetting the past, forgiving it, to have any real shot at a future.

  As he turned into me, palm on my cheek and his lips on mine, I think I finally understood what letting go of the bad felt like. I finally felt what it felt like to not be alone anymore.

  In this moment, I wasn’t really trying to map out a future. Which is exactly what I should have been doing. Because then, and only then, would I have realized that the only right thing to do, was to kiss Maddox this one last time, and say my goodbyes.

  Instead, I climbed into his truck.

  Into his bed.

  Into his heart.

  Epilogue

  RAMONA

  I was floating. Weightless. As if I could fly.

  Naked, and beneath the canopy of dusk, I watched as the full moon began to rise through the wispy tendrils of clouds.

  Far below, the waves crashed against the shore in their strange, rhythmic roar of the ocean's lullaby. Here in the water, I felt glorious, ethereal. Like the Lady of the Lake. Or in my case, the lady of the infinity pool.

  Maddox’s lips brushed against my breasts. Gently, slowly, one then the other. He lightly kissed the very tip of my nipple, the scruff of his mustache a delicious contradiction to the soft touch of his lips.

  “You never get enough, do you?” I said, my voice a little hoarse. I was still recovering from one of the most delightfully excruciating orgasms of my sexual career.

  “Mmm-mm,” he replied, and took his hand from the small of my back, drew it across my buttocks, and placed it just between my legs. He squeezed me, just a little, and pressed his thumb against my pubic bone, making small, exact circles.

  I gasped, arching my back, feeling the surface of the water lapping against my forehead. He was making me come, again, and this one erupted inside my pussy in a single, magnificent pulse.

  I grabbed his hand, and held it, tightly, as my third climax of the night ebbed away.

  “You’re killing me, little by little,” I managed, once I could breathe again.

  “Yeah, but what a way to go. Am I right?”

  I nodded, pulled myself onto his lap, and nestled my head beneath his. The water lapped gently against my back as I hooked my arms around his neck.

  “This couldn't be construed as against policy, could it?”

  “Nah. Technically, it's our pool,” he said, and scooted us back against the baja shelf – a smooth ledge of tiled concrete that ran just below the surface – every other ceramic square painted with various images of ashen-plumed, island birds.

  We sat in silence for a while, simply watching the night sky take over the day, and feeling perfectly at home in paradise. And that was the whole idea.

  Cliffside Passages was designed to be peaceful. Healing. A kind of twenty four seven meditative state of mind. Not your normal, industrially designed detox facility.

  Its grand opening was tomorrow, almost a year to the day when Maddox and I were plucked from Santa Diabla by Captain Rogero and his good ship Dicey.

  I had a hell of a lot of adjustments to make i
n the months that followed – personally, and physically. Learning how to walk without the damn crutch again was an absolute bitch.

  Shacking up with Maddox? Surreal.

  It was as if I was becoming a whole new person, all without leaving the old one behind. The award-winning weirdest part of my trip down this rabbit hole, however, was avoiding the press.

  In the months that followed, Maddox and I had gotten quite accomplished at ducking and weaving the media. So far, we'd managed to keep our, shall we say, sordid history from them.

  Fortunately, Atlantic Charter had been bought off and sworn to secrecy, and Rogero and his first mate happily scrawled their signatures at the bottom of one of Maddox's non-disclosure agreements. An agreement that was modified in certain sections and with greater financial incentives, of course. But there was always the looming possibility of someone, somewhere, leaking out what they knew. Maybe Martin Stiller, or Phyllis. The bozos from Jericho Security. The numerous, faceless women my fiancé had slept with once upon a darker time.

  That was the biggest metaphoric pill I had to swallow. Women are jealous, vindictive beasts, and I'm not speaking of former lovers Maddox had chained to his bed at one point or another. I was talking about me. Jealousy and revenge were two character traits that ranked high on my list of shitty behaviors. Mix those into the fiery blood of a hotheaded Latina, and you may as well go ahead and light the fuse of the proverbial time bomb. Or screw it and cut the mysterious blue wire.

  But, I was working on it. Anger management helped.

  I had a stable of counselors and therapists to choose from. Physiologists, psychiatrists… just like the infinity pool at Cliffside Passages, the choices for a better life were endless.

  People can change, if they want to. But first, they have to want to. Need will eventually need to follow. And need is not necessarily a bad thing, or a sign of weakness. It can be a useful tool, if you know how to exploit it.

  So despite what 'they' say, people can – and do – change.

  Take Maddox, for instance. He'd changed, for the most parts. I suppose being tied to a tree and cock-teased for a few days was his personal kind of prescription therapy. Such questionable methods wouldn't be a treatment option at Cliffside, however, and no one was more surprised than I when I discovered I could joke about it. I couldn't say laughter was the best medicine, necessarily, but it certainly didn't hurt.