by Eboni Snoe
The line of patrons was diminishing as they climbed aboard the boat for a late-night ride along the downtown shoreline of Miami. Most of them, couples like Gloria and Larry, had already settled down on the long cushioned seats outlining the twin hulls of the boat.
At first Nadine had been reluctant to go on the five-day trip to Mexico. She felt as if she would be the odd man out traveling with Gloria and Larry, without a partner. But Gloria had been her old persistent self. She told Nadine the cruise was free. She had earned it through a frequent traveler program. All Nadine had to do was come to Florida.
So here she was on the beautiful ocean-trimmed, palm-sprinkled peninsula. Her room in the International Omni was tasteful but not extravagant. It faced the bay, and further out the Atlantic Ocean.
Nadine had felt like a true woman of the world as the porter brought up her richly colored tapestry luggage. Not Gloria’s taste in travel gear, of course, which her girlfriend voiced to her in no uncertain terms, but solely her own.
Gloria was in particularly high spirits as she waved the pear-shaped diamond engagement ring about whenever she talked. She and Larry planned to tie the knot in her hometown of Atlanta four months in the future.
“Isn’t this just marvelous, queen?” Gloria’s softly accented voice crept into her thoughts.
Nadine looked out over the bay, at the diverse Miami skyline, and finally at the sky littered with stars.
“It really is beautiful.”
“Almost as beautiful as the Caribbean . . . but not quite.” Her friend’s voice trailed away as soon as she realized what feelings and memories her words evoked for Nadine.
“What do you mean, not quite? Nothing compares to the Caribbean, especially the island of Eros.” A deep sultry voice pressed its way into their conversation.
Nadine turned. Her brownish-jade eyes enlarged with disbelief to find Ulysses, black curls longer than ever, blowing wildly in the nighttime breeze.
“Well, it’s about time, Ulysses, I was wondering if you were ever going to make it,” Gloria exclaimed. “They nearly scared me to death when they said you hadn’t checked into your room. The last time I asked was before we came down here to the catamaran.” She was so relieved to see him that all her clandestine actions were forgotten as she spoke openly.
Nadine looked from Gloria to Ulysses, her heart pounding. Gloria’s words were a blur as she wrestled with Ulysses’ presence beside her in the United States.
“Hello, Nadine.” His dark gaze focused on her flushed face.
Breathless, Nadine managed a barely audible “Hello.”
“I’m going to leave you two alone. I know you’ve got all kinds of things to talk about, and I’m not one to stand in the way of progress. I’ve done all I can do to get you two back together; the rest is up to you.” Gloria sauntered back to Larry, a satisfied look on her face.
Ulysses’ unexpected appearance unnerved Nadine to the point where she had to take a seat on the cushions; her wobbly knees would not hold her. She turned her face toward the shoreline and the water beyond. Nadine was so full of emotion she felt as if she might explode, and she dared not assume too much. She knew if she looked into Ulysses’ face for any extended period of time, her eyes would tell everything she was not prepared for him to know.
While they sailed within the bay, Nadine and Ulysses carried on a conversation like two tourists just getting acquainted. They kept the conversation to the sights and sounds around them. Nadine did not realize it, but they both felt comfortable with this approach.
Ulysses dared not press his position too far after the uncertain reception Nadine had given him. But it was obvious to both of them—a man did not travel from the Caribbean to Florida just to talk about skylines and sea breezes.
The slow gliding catamaran ended its round within an hour, and the two couples disembarked and made their way back to the hotel. As they approached the towering building, Larry announced he could use a Bloody Mary, and automatically the foursome began to drift toward the bar.
Something inside Nadine would not allow her to walk contentedly at Ulysses’ side as they strolled toward the outside entrance of the hotel lounge. Gloria and Larry’s lackadaisical acceptance of Ulysses’ presence had become an irritant. Everyone had known he would be in Florida! Everyone but her, and within one hour her life had turned topsyturvy because of it! Not being able to bear the incredibleness of the situation any longer, before they sat down at a table, Nadine excused herself from the cozy group. She needed space to explore how she really felt about Ulysses resurfacing.
She was not in her hotel room for long before a bold knock shook the door. When she opened it a somber Ulysses was standing outside.
“Well. May I come in?”
Silently, Nadine moved to the side.
“Mmmm . . . you do not have anything to say to me? Any kind of welcome?” Ulysses asked, his voice low.
“What do you expect from me, Ulysses? Three and a half months have passed and I didn’t hear a word from you. Not a phone call . . . letter . . . not even a card.” The pain and bitterness of her loneliness crept more openly into her voice.
“Now you pop up here in Miami on a catamaran and everyone tells me we’re booked on the same cruise ship for Mexico. You’ve always been presumptuous but how do you know I want you back in my life? How do you know I haven’t arranged to meet some man tomorrow at the dock?” She threw up her arms in desperation.
The few minutes alone in her hotel room had helped to clear away the cobwebs of surprise and confusion. Nadine had finally adjusted to the idea that Ulysses was actually here and sailing to Mexico with them on the Princess, but somehow it still felt threatening.
“I knew there was no man, and there would be no man, Nadine, Gloria has told me everything.” His seductively accented voice reproached her.
“Good old Gloria. The mouth of the South.” She marveled at her girlfriend’s audacity.
Ulysses understood her frustration. He could see resistance in every part of her body. He needed to make her understand why he had come, and why it had taken him so long.
“Let me tell you why I have stayed away. At first, after you left, I had made up my mind to forget you. I thought you had betrayed me with Basil,” he looked down at his large hands, “then I found out the truth. You had gone to him because of your love for me.”
His words were a knife, opening an old wound. A deep, naked hurt appeared in her shimmering eyes as Nadine remembered and felt the pain of his rejection. “You should have trusted me, Ulysses. I had given you all of me. Bared my soul and body to you . . . and you still did not trust me. How can I believe you can trust me now, or ever?”
The question hung between them.
Ulysses had prayed during his entire trip to the United States that he had not waited until it was too late. Now as he looked at Nadine he still was not sure. “First I had to truly trust myself,” he confessed. “Nadine, when my parents died, a part of me died with them, even though I was very young. Then I met you. And feelings I had never felt made themselves known to me. Life began to change drastically as we shared some extraordinary experiences. I realized it was my ability to trust and love that died that day on the path to Sovereign.” He watched her fold her arms protectively across her chest. Ulysses saw her arms as a barrier between them, just like the one he had erected, but at least she was listening, and at the moment he felt he could not ask for more.
Ulysses walked over and leaned against the television stand. “As I grew up, whenever I felt even the slightest hint of love or caring coming alive in me, I would will it away. To say it plainly, I was afraid.” He paused. “Loving and trusting made me remember, and I could not stand the pain of it, or the memory.” Ulysses sighed. “Then as a grown man, I learned to seek my pleasure with many women. It provided a sense of satisfaction, but I made sure I never gave them my heart. I never gave it until I met you.” His dark, thickly fringed gaze burned with intense feeling as he continued. “It was not my
intention, Nadine, to love you. It was my fate.”
Numbed by Ulysses’ fervent pronouncement, Nadine did not know what to say. All she had dared to hope for had been fulfilled by his words. She trembled with relief as she stared at his open features.
Ulysses crossed the room and touched her for the first time. He caressed her cheek where a single tear traveled down the velvety softness. “I am sorry that I have hurt you in my process of finding myself. But now that I have found myself, I have come to find the woman I love, and claim her for my own.”
He wrapped her quivering body in his strong, muscular arms. Then he kissed her. The taste was unbelievably sweet with an underlying passion, and an unfulfilled need lit a liquid fire within them.
Reeling from the effect of the kiss, Nadine’s body became limp, so ready was she to give in and ease the torture that had plagued her nightly since her return to the States. Yet her mind and her pride were more difficult to persuade. Her newfound self-acceptance and love demanded more than a few words and a kiss.
Nadine pulled away. She forced herself to walk over to the sliding-glass doors and out onto the terrace where the wind whipped her spongy cinnamon twists away from her face, and repeatedly popped the material of her wide circular skirt. “But how could someone else’s words convince you of my sincerity, when my own could not?” Her voice was carried on the wind.
Ulysses came up behind her and placed his hands on her upper arms and his face in her soft bed of locks. “No one else’s words did, my sweet. It was responses to your own words that convinced me I was wrong. Each night I would read the pages of Gloria’s letters that addressed your thoughts and feelings about life—”
Shocked, Nadine moved away from him, pushing back the hair the wind kept blowing in her face. “How did you get my letters?”
“I wanted to find out more about you . . . so I hired a private detective.” He spoke hesitantly. Ulysses knew how incriminating his words sounded and how wrong he had been. “He was the one who bought your old bedroom set.”
“What! How deceitful can you be?” Nadine asked in full-blown indignation. “I hope you got your money’s worth,” she said, disgusted.
“‘I did and more,” was his throaty, remorseful reply. “But there were so many things that caused me not to trust you, Nadine. You knew of the cliff dwellers’ symbol, but you claimed you had never been to Eros. You never spoke of the onyx carving that was hidden in your drawer. The same carving that had been stolen from Sovereign only weeks before. I did what I thought I had to do to protect Eros’ treasures and learn more about you,” he confessed. “But in reading those letters over and over again, I discovered the woman they had been written to. They were responses to an unbreakable belief in the goodness of humankind, and how you planned to make a difference, not just in your hometown, but in the world. Your dreams were so grand for one so naive with no experience.” Ulysses smiled and his eyes softened as he spoke. “And I knew that kind of resolve could never be broken in a human being. Not for money or glory. Not for anything.” He looked at Nadine, and he could tell she was listening once again. “Then Gloria contacted me about some of the things she had purchased at the sale. She told me they had become such a hit amongst her friends and family, and then of course, you became the focus of our communication. It was Gloria who told me what actually happened the night of the book sale. About how you found the carving with the manuscript inside among the artifacts at the library/museum, and how Basil had threatened you with my losing Sovereign if you refused to meet him or told me. A person who could love so unselfishly, Nadine, could surely find it in her heart to forgive.” His dark, searing gaze bore into her leery hazel one.
“I can’t believe you.” She held on to the anger she felt against him. For some reason it felt more comfortable than giving in to the love she knew she harbored inside. “You deceived my grandmother with some phony antique lover, read my private letters, and now present yourself as Honest John, is that it?” She laughed, almost out of control. “Well, you can take—”
Ulysses grabbed her and picked her up in his arms before she could finish her rebuke. “No. I don’t need you to tell me what I can take.” The passion behind his words was a living thing. “But I don’t want to take it, Nadine.” The feeling of her soft body against his was edging him on. “You gave yourself to me once before, my sweet, and will do so again before this night is over if I have anything to do with it.”
Ulysses was incensed by her refusal to accept his apology. He crossed the threshold of the sliding-glass doors with a flailing Nadine in his arms, then plopped her unceremoniously down on the king-sized bed.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked, breathing hard.
“Whatever I have to do.” Ulysses pinned her to the bed. His hungry lips sought hers, but Nadine evaded him, twisting her head from side to side, the only part of her body she was able to move freely, her small frame being no match for his larger one.
Instantly, she was terrorized by the thought that he was trying to best her physically, and she resisted him until he pinned her arms above her head.
“I love you, Nadine Clayton. I have told you everything in my heart, but that does not seem to be what you want. I have wanted no other woman since having you.”
He managed to capture her lips as her head lay turned to the side. Like a man dying of thirst he drank of their moistness. Ulysses forgot about tenderness as he probed the inner recesses of Nadine’s full lips, while continuing to restrain her.
The kiss felt like an eternity, as he demanded her submission through his expertise and fervor. “Stop fighting me, Nadine, and love me as I want to love you.”
Nadine’s heart answered his plea, and she wanted to return his loving ministrations, but a residue of hurt was still there. “Let me go, Ulysses,” she commanded through clenched teeth.
He looked down into her squinting eyes filled with resolve and drew back.
“You hurt me, Ulysses. You hurt me like I have never been hurt before. I gave you everything I had and you rejected me. Thought I was some kind of fraud, when I was totally innocent. I never lied to you, Ulysses. Never.” She poured out her feelings as she remembered it.
“But you did lie,” he quickly retorted. “You said you did not have any kind of secret alliance with Basil, and even though it was to protect me and Sovereign there was no way for me to know that.” He probed deep into her gaze, his forehead crinkled. “All I knew was you had left my home, full of guests, and even your dearest friend to go to him. I did not know anything else until I spoke to Gloria several months later. Nadine,” he paused, “you must understand, of all men, Basil was my enemy. He hated me for who and what I am and he wanted to steal the only thing I had left of my parents from me, Sovereign. And in my eyes and in my heart, the only woman I had ever loved had betrayed me with him. I could not bear it, Nadine. And if it were true now, I would not be here.” Their gazes remained locked as they searched for the truth in the other’s eyes.
Slowly, the flame of anger in Nadine’s eyes was replaced by the fire of love. Although her mind had fought against it, Nadine knew she loved Ulysses, and as she probed his gaze she knew he loved her.
Ulysses recognized Nadine’s surrender. He began to lower himself toward her, murmuring tender words as he kissed her hair, her eyes, her face. “You forgive me for staying away so long? Please say you forgive me.”
“I forgive you, Ulysses,” Nadine said, as her body involuntarily arched against his. She wrapped her arms around him. They hugged for a prolonged period of time until their closeness sparked the passion that their long separation had nurtured. Now, no matter how close they were, it was not close enough. They needed more.
As Ulysses made love to her body, he spoke of their separation. “I would see you when I closed my eyes, when I walked the land at Sovereign and in the statues and busts in the treasure room.”
“You haunted me as well, Ulysses,” Nadine confessed, softly.
A strange l
ook entered Ulysses’ gaze. “Nadine,” his voice was husky, “you must let me see you as I have envisioned all of these lonely months. Your memory has nearly driven me insane over the miles that separated us.”
Nadine nodded, unsure of what he meant, but she wanted to please him in any way she could, and she knew Ulysses would not hurt or abuse her.
Nadine watched Ulysses cross the floor and close the curtains in front of the glass doors. He looked about, then chose an ornate crystal boudoir lamp. Ulysses placed the lamp on the floor near an empty wall. When it was turned on the little light shone surrealistically inside the dark room. Ulysses stepped back from the illumination, and turned and reached out his hand to Nadine.
“I just want you to stand in front of the light. Stand as still as a statue with your arms outstretched before you, and your feet spread apart. So many times have I envisioned you this way. So many times have I stroked the cold stone of the statues of my private collection only wishing it was your warm skin beneath my hand. In my mind’s eye you became one of the objects of art,” Ulysses told her with passion in his eyes. “Your arms perpetually reaching out for my love and affection. Would you do this one thing for me, Nadine?”
“Yes.” The word was hesitant, breathy.
Nadine crossed the room to stand in front of Ulysses. With reticence she raised her arms, and stood deathly still, her eyes focused on his face, several feet in front of her.
His heated gaze trailed from the top of her head, pausing momentarily on her face, her breasts, then the covered triangle between her tender thighs. “There is nothing in this world as beautiful as you are.” The soft phrase poured from his lips as the gentle lamplight outlined Nadine’s reddish-brown skin in a golden glow. In Ulysses’ mind she was the epitome of womanhood, as her shadow loomed behind her.
Silently, he came toward her and descended down on his knees, placing pliant kisses on her feet, then traveling upward.