Somewhere on St. Thomas

by Toby Neal

  Oh yeah. We want to have sex, and Rafe won’t do it without being married.

  Rafe’s friend who had a license to perform weddings, Captain Jock Huskins, situated us in front of him with gentle instructional murmurings. He was an imposing figure in dress whites with a lot of gold braid on them.

  “Our ceremony today is to witness the marriage of Rafael Leland McCallum the Third to Ruby Day Michaels, this twenty-seventh day of May, 1989.” Captain Huskins sent a glance around the properly somber group of the Maid’s staff. I hung on to Rafe’s hand, unable to look up or at him because I could feel tears of emotion welling in my eyes and getting ready to pop out the way they did. I breathed shallowly so as not to sob.

  “Do you, Rafe McCallum, take Ruby to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, until death do you part?”

  “I do,” Rafe said, and gave my hand a powerful squeeze. I looked up, and sure enough the tears popped out. He lifted a hand and wiped them away with the ball of his thumb, leaning down to kiss me gently. I drew a deep shuddering breath and felt stronger.

  Huskins cleared his throat and said, “Do you, Ruby Day Michaels, take Rafe to be your husband, to have and to hold, in sickness and in health, for richer or for poorer, until death do you part?”

  Somewhere off in the distance I could hear the approaching thunder of a helicopter, but now my eyes were fixed on Rafe’s, green drowning in his blue. “I do,” I said, and it came out clear and strong.

  “You may exchange the rings.”

  I felt my stomach drop. I had no ring for Rafe! I started to look around wildly, and he squeezed my hands again as one of the sailors approached. He was holding the little silver music box Rafe had mailed me, and he opened it beside me. The sweet tinkling music lifted into the air as he opened it, and I saw a heavy gold band inside, battered and old-looking, along with a slim woman’s band.

  Rafe slid the plain band onto my finger above the ruby and whispered in my ear, “These were my parents’ rings.”

  “Oh. Where are they?” I asked, feeling terrible for yet another thing I hadn’t asked him about.

  He just shook his head, avoiding my eyes, and I picked up the heavy masculine band and slid it over the thick knuckle of his finger, surprised to see how well it fit and feeling sad his father wasn’t here to see what a magnificent son he had.

  “I pronounce you husband and wife. You may kiss the bride.”

  There was some restrained applause from the sailors as Rafe swept me in for a good, hard smack full of promises. I heard and felt the thrum of the engines starting.

  Huskins all but ran to the side to climb down to his tender, yelling, “Good luck!” as he did so. I could still hear the thrumming of the helicopter, and now Rafe circled my shoulders, glancing toward the helicopter.

  “Let’s get under the canopy.” Our company moved deep into the shadow of the bridge. “Let’s get underway.” The crew dispersed like a well-oiled machine, and I stood in my dress, feeling ridiculous.

  “Let me take you down to the cabin and you can change if you like,” Rafe said. There was a frown line between his dark brows. “I want you to be comfortable.”

  “Are you coming down soon?”

  “Of course. I just have to make sure we’re on our way and on course.”

  I felt rattled and unsettled and generally like I wanted to work up to a major temper tantrum as he hustled me below to the luxurious cabin in the bow of the yacht.

  “Where are we going?” The boat had begun to cleave the waves with a rolling sensation, and I thanked God I’d never been a seasick type or I’d be in hell right now, trapped down here.

  “First leg of our honeymoon.”

  That told me a whole lot of nothing. I bit my lip and tried not to cry or yell at him as he shut the door firmly behind me and hustled off to do whatever he needed to do. I knew he’d be back, and I could let him have it then. In fact, I had the rest of my life to fight with him.

  That thought was going to take some getting used to.

  I had taken the ribbon that pulled up the zipper off to tie around my head, so now I couldn’t get the zipper down. After some ineffectual contortions, I gave up and crawled onto the large, tidy, triangular bed dressed in bright navy bedding and built into the bow of the boat. I looked out the row of portholes on either side of the bow.

  They were placed about five feet above the surface of the water and just a foot above the bed’s surface, so I could lie on my side and look out.

  It was beautiful outside. The boat purred through the waves, rising and falling with a rhythm like breathing. I loved the alternating blue-green of the sea with the purity of the sky. I would see an occasional gull, or a cormorant, and then, suddenly and magically, the portholes filled with dolphins, leaping and surfing the bow wave, just feet away from me.

  Their silver bodies flashed and leaped, and I even saw one look at me, its smile totally contented, as if everything was right with the world.

  “Rafe! Rafe! Oh my God!” I shrieked. I am not quiet when I shriek, and I wasn’t surprised to hear the thunder of footsteps on the ladder and hear the door whack open.

  I turned over to face him. “Dolphins, Rafe! Dolphins!” I felt my face fill with happiness.

  I have always loved dolphins. They are everywhere in Saint Thomas, those emissaries of playful joy, and they’d always seemed to like me, too. I’d swum with them in Magens Bay more times than I could count, and that they’d appear now brought more reassurance to me than anything else could have.

  If I had a spirit animal, it was the dolphin.

  The high color of alarm ebbed out of Rafe’s face, and he looked out the window, a grin breaking over his face.

  “Well, damn,” he said. “Haven’t seen any since we got into Boston. Nice escort.” He shut the door, turned the lock. “It’s time to be with my bride, anyway. They can figure out anything else that needs figuring out.”

  He yanked at his tie, but it refused to come undone. I hefted up my frothing skirts and crawled to the end of the bed. “Let me help you.” I reached up and tugged the tie, undid the stiff collar. “I don’t know why you decided to go all formal with these clothes,” I said, gesturing to his tux and my dress. “It was just us.”

  His blue eyes smoldered. “I didn’t want you to feel slighted. You deserve the best. And we’ll use them again, for the ceremony on Saint Thomas.”

  I shrugged. “I would have been fine in shorts and a T-shirt.”

  “I wanted to see you in a dress,” Rafe said. “And what’s under it. I have fantasized about this for so long. You have no idea.”

  Now my cheeks heated up. “Oh.” I had no words, since I was the latecomer to this rapidly coordinated party. “Well, I tried to get the dress off, but I can’t get the zipper down.” I gestured.

  “Let me help.”

  I turned my back and watched the dolphins playfully leaping, entranced, as Rafe slid the zipper down, kissing the knobs of my spine as they were revealed.

  He stopped with an intake of breath at the narrow ruffled strap of the G-string curving up my butt and over the top of my hips.

  “You bought that,” I said a little irritably, to hide how nervous I was.

  “So I did,” he said. And the zipper continued all the way down to the top of my ass, and he peeled the dress forward and helped me take my arms out of the long, tight sleeves.

  “We should hang it up,” I fussed. He didn’t answer, just swung me around, stood me up, and lifted the whole rustling garment away from my body so that it fell with a shushing noise and a gush of warm air around my feet, and left me standing there in the ivory underwear set he’d picked out.

  His eyes looked glazed as he stood there staring at me. I took the ribbon off my forehead and shook out the mane of my hair so it covered me like a cape, and I struck a sassy pose.

  “What?”

  “I can’t believe this moment is actually happening,” Rafe said. “You
, in front of me. Looking like this. Wearing this. About to be mine. And just to make it really over-the-top, there are dolphins jumping in the background.”

  “I expect bluebirds of happiness to start flapping around our heads any minute now,” I said, and he laughed, and I did, too, and stepped forward to undo the black buttons of his shirt, tugging the shirt’s tail out of the black slacks.

  “But before we get too far with beginning official married life, I have some questions,” I said, my hands coming to rest on his shirtfront.

  Rafe rolled his eyes. “Of course you do. It so happens I knew you would. I have champagne to help this go better.” He busied himself at the silver bucket on the tidy sideboard. I felt chilly in the fancy underwear, so I unzipped my battered suitcase and put on my fuzzy yellow terry-cloth robe. The dolphins had moved on, I saw to my regret.

  Rafe turned, holding two bubbling flutes, and broke into a grin at the sight of me. “God, you’re adorable.”

  “Good thing you think so. You’re a lot more likely to see me in this robe than in the sexy underwear.”

  “I’m pretty sure my favorite outfit for you is nothing at all,” he said, handing me the glass. “To us.”

  “To us.”

  The champagne was tickly and tart, and I smacked my lips. “Another acquired taste I think I can acquire. So, questions. Who the heck are you, Rafe, that we’re hightailing it out of the harbor with helicopters after us and reporters are trying to get pictures of me in my sweats at the Ramada Inn?”

  He took a long sip of his champagne, belched a little, and looked at me in appeal over the rim. “I think I’d like to do the deflowering thing first. I’m not sure this is going to put you in the mood.”

  “Oh God. Are you an ax murderer who did in his first wife or something?” I tried to laugh, but I could feel the color draining out of my cheeks.

  “Bottoms up. Drink your champagne,” he said. “We can’t leave half-full glasses rattling around with the motion we’ve got going on.” I tipped back my head and drank my champagne, and it immediately made me feel a little dizzy and warm.

  Rafe set both empty glasses in the little metal sink built into the sideboard and crawled up on the bed beside me, pulling me into his arms. We stretched out, and he pillowed my head on his arm and stroked my body through the fuzzy robe. I put my ear against his chest so I could hear the thump of his heart and the deep rhythm of his breathing.

  “I haven’t been entirely honest with you,” he said. “I want you to remember I didn’t ever lie to you. I just didn’t volunteer everything.”

  Chapter 20

  “Just tell me, please.” I wriggled closer, because I was scared to hear whatever came next.

  “I’m not who you and your family assumed I was. Yes, I’m a surfer and a sailor, and for a while I was a drifter, but that’s not the whole story. During that time I met you in Saint Thomas, I was at a crossroads. I was trying to figure out what I wanted from life. I was fleeing a lot of things and working out some grief. Because, you see, my parents died.”

  I turned to him, pressing my face to the triangle of warm skin I’d uncovered as I’d begun unbuttoning his shirt. Just his presence was melting me like wax, and I kissed his chest. “I’m so sorry. How long ago was it?”

  “Three years. They died in a plane crash. Their private jet. The rings we’re wearing? They were old ones they’d upgraded. That’s why I had them at all.”

  I lifted my head. “Private jet?”

  He nodded. “The Maid is my boat. Lisa’s house in Cliffside is my house. I’m actually annoyingly wealthy.”

  I felt my eyes bug out. “And you were going to tell me when?”

  “Now was always when I’d planned to tell you. After we were married. Because I wanted you to choose me for me.”

  I had begun scooting away, and now my butt came up against the portholes. “You were worried I’d marry you for your money?” I snorted, feeling betrayed and insulted—and a tiny bit guilty, too, because I had judged him and I had wrestled with my goals and decided to pick him anyway.

  Realizing I needn’t have worried about it made me mad. So did the fact that he’d thought it would be a major factor in whether or not I chose to be with him.

  It was a factor, but not a major one. More bothersome to me had always been that Rafe wanted me to make such a big commitment with so little to go on and at such a young age.

  Rafe was still trying to explain. “It wasn’t you. It was me. I was sick of the burden of being the only son of two powerful people with too much money. I loved my parents very much, but the pressure of managing everything after they died was just too much for me, I guess, and I wasn’t at all sure I wanted to live their lifestyle, the lifestyle I’d been groomed for. So I farmed the companies out to management and took the Maid out on a trip around the world. Everywhere I went, I challenged myself to survive without my family’s money. I went into each port wearing just the clothes on my back. I found work and made friends and got by, and along the way I began to find peace. I had a few trusty crewmates who’ve been with me forever who knew who I was; and, of course, Lisa knows.”

  I crawled to the edge of the bed and went and poured us each another glass of champagne. I handed him his and settled my back against a porthole. “Lisa. I thought she was a friend. I was so naive.”

  “Well, you were, but adorably so. And like I told you in San Francisco, she was my friend first. I wasn’t deliberately hiding anything. I knew there were clues about me, but I decided to let the whole thing play out, let you make your assumptions about me and work through them on your own. I’d been burned by women who wanted Rafe McCallum the Third. Not for who I am—as you said so well, surfer, sailor, drifter, art lover.” He lifted the flute in a little toast and we both sipped. “No, they wanted the position. The money. I was so devastated after Mom and Dad died that I didn’t trust myself not to fall prey to someone pretending to love me. So I started my quest.” He spun the fragile glass’s stem. “I know how young you are, that you have lots of ideas about your life and how it will go. And I didn’t want to mess up that process. At the same time, the minute I met you that evening in Saint Thomas, everything changed for me.”

  I eyed him though the bubbles. “I can’t believe you let me think the things I thought about you.”

  “What did you think?”

  “I thought of you as a pirate. Dangerous and poor.”

  “It turns out I am a bit of a pirate.” Rafe set his glass aside. “I know a treasure when I see one, and I’ll do anything to get it.”

  He crawled over to me and plucked the glass out of my hand, draining the last sip of champagne. “Do you have any more questions?”

  “Yes,” I whispered.

  “What?” He opened the robe and set his lips on the fluttering pulse at the base of my neck.

  “What is your degree in?”

  “Business administration.”

  “Of course,” I said. “But I bet you wanted to major in art history.” I’d never forget his passion as he’d explained the modern period to me at the DeYoung. He raised his head and those dark blue eyes blazed down at me.

  “You know me so well already.”

  “You could go back to school with me. And major in art history this time.” I pulled his shirt off with hands clumsy with eagerness. “I want to see all of you.”

  “And I want to see those undies I had Lisa pick out.”

  I yanked my old robe closed. “Lisa saw this outfit?”

  “I had her order the dress custom-made. She swiped some of your clothes for measurements. And I told her to pick out all the incidentals.”

  “When was this?”

  “During spring break I told her I was going to marry you, and I had her start working on it.”

  “Oh my God,” I said. “I’d be embarrassed if she weren’t three thousand miles away.”

  He opened the robe and stared at my breasts in the lacy ivory cups. He was down to his dress slacks, and I let him pe
el the robe off of me and work his magic with his stroking hands, nipping teeth, busy tongue. I warmed and melted, heating up beside him, my own hands sliding hungrily over the hard planes of his chest, the sensitive nubs of his nipples, the bands of muscle around his belly and back.

  I finally pushed his big, hard shoulder and climbed astride him, and he moaned as he played with the straps of the lingerie and the innocent ruffle on the G-string.

  “I think it’s time for your pants to go,” I said. I undid them and slid them and his boxers off.

  The Captain was at full attention, and once again he gave me pause.

  “Don’t worry. We’ll go as slow as you need,” Rafe said, rolling me to the side. “Let’s get this underwear off you.”

  I hid my face in his neck, suddenly shy, as he unclipped the stockings and peeled them and the G-string away. Only my bra was left now, and he spent some time on my breasts, teasing and licking, finally sucking them hard so I cried out and arched against him.

  “Yes!” I said. “Do it! Just do it!”

  He laughed. “Not sure the crew heard that, love. A little louder.” He sucked the other breast, and the sound I made was somewhere between a moan and a shout.

  And still he didn’t do it. No, he tortured me with pleasure, with mini orgasms, with total worship of my body until I thought he could stick a cannon in me and I’d do nothing but yell with happiness.

  After my second orgasm with him kneeling between my thighs, I looked up and took his face in my hands. “Please, Rafe, I want you. All of you. I’m not afraid. I’m in all the way. No seat belts.”

  “Well, there is the condom. It’s a kind of seat belt,” he said with that wicked grin, and I even found the sight of him rolling on the condom sexy. I was in no mood by then for half measures, and I sat up and grabbed his hips and pulled him down toward my throbbing, aching center.

  He tried to go slow. I know he did. But I’ve always been of the yank-the-Band-Aid-off-quick school. I thrust my hips up hard as soon as I felt that suspicious fullness at my entrance, and he slid in, filling me with a not-unpleasant sensation that felt both new and completely familiar.