by Lynne, Donya
For the remainder of the day, she dismissed Mark’s secrets. He led her from one falls to the next, up dirt paths enhanced by man-made steps built of fallen branches, down ivy-covered ridges, through vibrantly flowered gardens, stopping to swim in one of the larger ponds and rest under the falling water a while before leading her back to the entrance midafternoon.
Back at the villa, they napped in the hammock after eating a late lunch then lounged by the pool until dinner. Afterward, they took their wine back out to the pool and relaxed.
“So, what did you think of the gardens?” Mark said, his voice quiet.
The sun hung low on the horizon in a cloudless sky. A breeze blew off the ocean, rejuvenating her spirit.
“They were beautiful.” Maybe for the islanders, the falls were status quo, but for a Midwesterner like her, where flat farmland was the norm, the falls were like a luxurious mirage, too brilliant to be real.
“Told you.”
They fell into silence for a while, staring at the endless ocean and the deepening sunset.
When she was younger, she had often fantasized about faraway lands, wondering what life was like in other parts of the world. To her, everywhere seemed like a happier place than where she was. Maybe that was a product of being bullied, but she had wanted to escape and go somewhere new. Somewhere she could start over.
She smiled to herself as she made the connection to making New Year’s resolutions. New beginnings. Forgetting the past. She’d been thinking a lot about both the past two days.
“Have you made your New Year’s resolutions, yet?” She turned toward Mark.
He rolled his head on the cushion to look at her. “No. Why? Have you?”
“I started, but couldn’t come up with anything.”
His gaze drifted back to the clear sky. “I haven’t really thought about it. I don’t usually make resolutions. I used to, but . . .”
The way he trailed off set Karma’s awareness on end. “Why did you stop?”
He sighed and turned back toward her, his expression almost apologetic as guilt shadowed his eyes. “Do you really want me to say it?”
This had to do with Carol. Once again, that woman shot up like a spiked wall between them, interfering, getting in the way. And she’d had enough.
She abruptly sat up. “Yes, Mark, I really want you to say it.” Damn him if he didn’t just get whatever was bugging him off his chest. She huffed and slapped her hands on her thighs. “You’ve been hinting for two days that there’s something you want to tell me. I wish you’d just come out and say whatever it is, because it’s eating me up. It’s eating you up.” She waved her hand toward him. “I hate seeing you like this. This is supposed to be our romantic vacation, but whatever’s bugging you is mucking it all up. Just when I think it’s gone, it comes back and gets in the way.” She stood and walked toward the edge of the pool deck, facing the beach below, arms crossed.
A moment later, Mark eased up behind her and traced his palms up her arms to her shoulders. “I know I’m being secretive. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“What aren’t you telling me, Mark?”
He let out a heavy exhale and tipped his forehead against the back of her head. “Karma . . I . . .”
She turned and faced him. “Just tell me.” When he didn’t answer, she pushed further. “Why won’t you talk to me?”
He frowned and looked down with a shake of his head.
“Come on, Mark, what’s going on?”
“You don’t understand, Karma.”
“Then enlighten me.” She crossed her arms again. “It can’t be that bad, can it?”
He blew out a scornful exhale. “For someone as pure as you, it might—”
“Pure? You think I’m pure? What are you saying? That you’re not?” She lifted her hands to the sides. “Tell me something I don’t know, Mark.”
He frowned. “But—”
“And I can assure you, I’m not as pure as you think. Maybe I’m not as experienced as you are, but that doesn’t mean my thoughts haven’t gone down a wayward trail or two.”
“Fantasizing and doing are two different things. One isn’t as bad as the other.”
“I’ll be the judge of that. Oh wait, that’s right, you won’t let me, because you won’t tell me what’s going on.”
He let out an exasperated growl. “It’s not that simple, Karma. What if you don’t like what I have to say? What if it changes everything?”
“You think I’m so superficial that I would base my feelings for you on something you did before you even knew me? And what if it does change everything? For the better? How is opening up and sharing your most personal fears with me a bad thing if it means it will bring us closer?”
His jaw tightened. “You’re making assumptions.”
“Because you won’t talk to me!”
“You’re assuming that what I want to tell you is all about my past and what I’ve done. What if it’s something else. What if . . . ?”
She waited for him to finish, but he didn’t. His mouth opened, closed, opened again, but he said nothing further. Only stood there and shook his head as if he couldn’t speak.
Couldn’t? Or wouldn’t?
“Forget it.” She pushed past him and took the steps to the upper deck.
If he wasn’t going to talk to her, she wasn’t going to stick around and argue with him, especially when she was one breath shy of crying.
At times like this, it felt like he would never let her in, and she hated how that felt.
* * *
Mark watched her disappear inside then slumped against the railing separating the pool deck from a sharp decline to the beach below.
He was messing up everything. This wasn’t how he’d wanted the conversation about his past to go. He’d planned to ease Karma into the discussion, feeding her small bits a little at a time. But then she’d brought it up, and he hadn’t known how to respond, and now everything was fucked. She was inside and angry with him, and he was out here alone. An enormous chasm separated them when they should have been enjoying the sunset together.
Maybe he hadn’t given her enough credit. She said she loved him and wanted him to tell her everything. Maybe he should put more faith in her. Because if their roles were switched, wouldn’t he be forgiving if she revealed her darkest secrets to him? He loved her enough to accept anything and everything about her, no matter how damnable she thought it was.
He needed to unburden himself. Let the chips fall where they may. Maybe it wasn’t how he’d wanted this discussion to happen, but he couldn’t put it off anymore.
He took the steps two at a time then crossed the upper deck to the open sliding door to the bedroom. The bathroom door was closed, and he heard her soft sobs beneath the sound of the shower.
“Karma?” He knocked.
She quieted.
“Can I come in?”
Silence.
He turned the handle and eased open the door.
The glass panel hid nothing of her slender, beautiful body, but she was turned away from him, shoulders hunched, face hidden.
He quickly undressed then opened the shower door and stepped in behind her, hugging her close as the warm water spilled over them.
“I’m sorry. Okay? I’m so sorry.”
“Why won’t you talk to me?”
“I will. Now. I promise. I just didn’t want to do it this way. I’d planned to—”
“You need to quit planning so much and just do.” Her tone was chastising but gracious.
“I know. I’ll try harder.” He turned her toward him and forced a tight smile. “I’ll make that one of my New Year’s resolutions. See? You helped me find one.”
Her eyebrows turned up in the middle a split second before a forgiving smile broke over her face. She wrapped her arms around him and pressed her face against his chest.
He held and rocked her a couple of minutes then ran his palm down her silky, wet hair. “Come on. Let’s fin
ish in here so I can . . .” He took a shaky breath and blew it out. “So I can tell you everything I need to tell you.”
She lifted her head. “You promise?”
He kissed her. “I promise. This is just hard for me, Karma. These are things I’ve never told anyone.”
“Not even Rob?” Her slim eyebrows scrunched.
“No. Not even Rob.”
“And it scares you.” Not a question.
He answered anyway. “Yes.”
“Why?”
He shifted uncomfortably, not liking how fear felt rolling down his back. “Because what you think of me is important. More important than anything else. I don’t want to disappoint you.”
She folded her hands around his. “There’s nothing you can say that will change how I feel about you. I love you. I’ve always loved you. The only thing that will disappoint me is if you continue keeping secrets from me.”
His gaze dropped to the tiled shower floor. “It’s just that I’ve lived like this for a long time. It’s hard for me to open up, even when I know I need to.”
She tipped her head back to rinse her hair then looked back up at him. “I’m not going anywhere. You’re stuck with me, Strong.” She let go of his hands and opened the shower door. “I’ll meet you in the bedroom.” She pulled a towel from the rack and wrapped it around her then twisted another around her hair before smiling encouragingly over her shoulder at him as she left the bathroom.
Was he really going to confess everything? Right now?
Jesus. His hands were shaking.
He quickly washed, rinsed, and dried off. When he joined her back in the bedroom, she was sitting cross-legged on the bed, wearing the silk, floral-print robe he’d bought her two summers ago. She had a pair of notebooks in her lap.
“I have an idea,” she said, lifting one of the notebooks and a pen.
He slipped into his own red, cotton robe and approached the bed. “What’s this?” He took the pen and notebook and sat down across from her.
“I thought this might make things easier.” She flipped the cover of her own notebook open and turned to a blank page. “You can jot down what you want to tell me, and I’ll write down a few things I want to share with you, too. Then we can take turns revealing what we wrote to one another.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to. It will make it easier for you to share your secrets if I share mine, too.” They were sitting in the center of the bed, and she reached behind her to untie the sheer curtains so they fell halfway around them. “This way you’ll see I’m not as pure as you think I am.”
“I don’t think you’ll ever prove to me you’re not pure.” He pulled the drapes closed, sealing them into a cocoon. “But if it makes you feel more comfortable, I won’t stop you.”
“Then it’s settled.” She set her notebook in her lap. “And writing down what you want to say will help organize your thoughts. Trust me, I know. I used to write in a journal almost every day.”
An expectant air hung over them, like a giant balloon just waiting to be popped.
“So . . . just write?” he said, flipping to a blank page.
“Yep. And I’ll do the same.”
Okay, here goes.
With a trembling hand, he pressed the ballpoint to the paper and scrawled the first item on his list.
1. Cocaine and alcohol.
He didn’t need to write more than that. He knew what needed to be said, and he’d already told her about the alcohol. Now he just needed to make her see how bad his post-Carol devastation had really been. How far he’d actually fallen, if only temporarily.
2. Sex addiction. The parties, the clubs, Nina and her hard-core fantasies, group sex.
This point contained too many variables to list, none of them he was proud of. Those first eighteen months following Carol had been filled with shameless hedonism. They’d been a blurry, fucked up hive of depravity. But they were a part of his past, and he needed to own them. It was time.
3. Role-play sex.
Not dressed-up-like-a-French-maid bullshit. He was talking about full-on, intense, highly developed fantasies. His role-play fetish was about so much more than playful sex. He wanted to live the parts. To become the roles and set up elaborate scenes that extended for hours or even days. To him role-play sex wasn’t as much about escapism as it was about enhancement. It had been a long time since he’d found a partner he wanted to play such games with. But only because, for him, role-playing opened doors between the players he hadn’t wanted to open again until now.
4. Anal play.
So this item was a complicated one. What if, when she learned exactly what he wanted, it made her too uncomfortable? What if she looked at him differently? Because . . . yeah, that could easily happen.
He needed Karma to understand his fetish was normal and healthy, not dysfunctional.
5. Exhibitionist sex.
Something about getting caught having sex was an incredible turn-on. Even just the threat they could be caught excited him. He had sensed such tendencies in Karma, too, but so far hadn’t explored them. He wanted to, but that might mean finding a sex club tame enough not to offend Karma but not so tame that it would be like attending a book club discussion on better sex. At the very least, he would have to get creative about finding places that allowed them enough privacy to play yet put them close to potentially prying eyes.
6. I want to dance again.
He stared down at the paper.
There it was.
The big one.
The one item on his list he wasn’t even sure he could do, anymore. Yeah, lame, right? But for him, dancing was about so much more than learning a few steps. It was about joy and intimacy, as well as a hundred other little things.
Carol had stolen his joy of dancing. She’d stripped away his desire to sweep a woman into his arms and truly dance with her the way he used to. As if his heart depended on every roll of his hips during a sensual rumba or every commanding snap of his arms during a paso doble. As if his soul longed to guide his partner through the dance, his arms and hands caressing, turning, touching.
To him, ballroom dancing wasn’t about competition. It was a sharing of hearts, of two bodies so tuned in to one another they flowed seamlessly as one over the dance floor.
It was about true partnership. Complete trust.
And Carol had shattered that. Much in the same way her deception had created an inborn fear of weddings, it had scared him away from the dance floor, as well.
He didn’t count slow dancing, though.
No, wait. His eyebrows scrunched inward. That wasn’t entirely true.
Until he met Karma at the benefit in Chicago, he hadn’t even slow danced in six years. Six whole years. How had he not made that connection before? Of all the women he’d dated during that time period, he hadn’t danced with a single one. But within thirty minutes of meeting Karma, he’d had his arms around her, swaying to easy jazz played by a live band. He should have known then just how different she was from all the rest.
But slow dancing wasn’t Latin ballroom dancing. And the idea of dancing Latin ballroom style still shackled him with the shakes and a side of cold sweats. But damn it, he wanted to dance like that again. With Karma. And not just dance, but live. That’s what dancing meant to him. It was foreplay, almost as intimate as making love. As much a part of sexual intimacy as kissing.
But he couldn’t expect Karma to fill Carol’s shoes. She wasn’t a professional Latin ballroom dancer. It wasn’t fair to expect her to indulge this side of him simply because he missed it. In fact, he imagined she would be offended—and maybe even intimidated—that he still longed for something that had clearly been a sizable aspect in his and Carol’s relationship.
He frowned at his words on the sheet of paper. He was selfish to want that with Karma.
No. Number six had to go.
He slashed a line of black ink through it.
He could deny himself this one
point for the sake of their relationship, even though it was the one thing he longed for more than all the others.
But relationships required compromise, and this would be his.
“Are you finished?” Karma asked, capping her pen.
Scanning the first five items, he ignored number six and nodded.
“Yes.” He handed her his pen.
She set it next to hers on the bedside table. “Okay. I’ll go first.” She shifted her legs, creeping closer until their knees touched.
He took her hands. “Wasn’t this supposed to be about me opening up to you?”
“Yes, but I figured it might make it easier for you if I broke the ice.” Her fingers tightened around his reassuringly.
Her compassion never ceased to amaze him. Only a short while ago, she’d been angry with him. Angry enough to walk away and cry.
He’d made her cry, for God’s sake.
And yet, here she was now, lovingly laying a path for him to follow, trying to make this easier for him. Whether she believed it or not, she was pure. Only a pure soul could give so selflessly.
“Okay.” She let go of his hands and clasped hers together. “Here’s something I’ve never told you.” The guilty, mischievous sparkle in her eyes made him smile. “Remember when you first came to Solar?”
“How could I forget?”
She bit her lip and grinned shyly. “Well, there were days I was so turned on just sitting so close to you that I had to go to the restroom and . . . you know . . .” Her face shaded bright pink, and she squirmed, making her knees rub against his.
He curled his palms encouragingly over her knees. He already knew how her confession ended, but that made him want to hear her say the words even more. He pushed his hands up her inner thighs, his fingers disappearing under the hem of her robe. “Come on, you can say it.”