by Anthology
She let me sit in silence, studying the brothel, the business—hell, the family—that I’d built. Whether she was studying the Magnolia or me, I wasn’t sure.
“I’m glad to be with you, Samwise Gamgee… here at the end of all things.” Trixie’s laugh sent another chill down my spine.
“Did you just quote Tolkien to me?” I arched my eyebrow as I looked at her out of the corner of my eye.
“Yup. Yes, I did. I’m deep as fuck,” she answered just before she lit a match and flicked.
*****
Shep
She’d blown it all to hell. Gracie had taken my moment of weakness and obliterated my career. No matter what I said, what reasoning I gave, Director Bradley couldn’t accept that I hadn’t tipped someone off. They’d disappeared. All of them, Marcus, the girls, the clients, the evidence, and into thin air. Well, not thin air, into a scorched and barely standing house frame in the middle of a blackened field.
I was lucky I was allowed to comb through her house for evidence. It was the only way I could feel as though she was still there, the only way I could feel like I hadn’t lost or let Gracie down twice.
“Anything that might say where she’s gone. Don’t fuck this up, Finley,” an agent ordered from the doorframe. I shot him the bird the second he turned around.
They’d shoved me into a guest bedroom, not trusting me with her more intimate spaces, and I turned blowing out a deep breath. As angry as I was, I was back to blaming myself. And for losing her, no less. Not for the investigation, not for my career, but for using her exactly as she’d accused me of. I aimlessly shifted through some random paperwork on a desk, my fingers ran along her furniture, and I moved a fur that she’d left piled on the floor.
There was a beat up shoebox beneath it and I crouched down to inspect it further.
My heart stopped.
Every love letter I’d ever given her, every photo we’d ever taken, every dream we’d ever planned was staring back up at me. She’d kept it, she’d kept me, despite the years and the miles. Until now. Until I really betrayed her. I deserved any punishment that any person, force of nature, or even God above chose to throw at me for breaking the woman that I loved.
I couldn’t feel my fingertips. I couldn’t talk my heart into starting again. All I could do was sift through the contents of the box. And the ashes that my insides had burned down to.
In the bottom of the box was a postcard, one I vaguely remembered finding in a library book. A long wooden dock stretched above piercing turquoise blue water on its way to a white washed wood bungalow. Creamy white curtains blew in an imaginary wind, dancing against distant palm trees and tiny strips of bright sand. I’d told her I’d feed her grapes in The Maldives if she let me have anal sex with her. The desperate ploy of a sixteen year old suddenly seemed oddly appropriate. The instinct that had lead me here, lead me to this case and to this brothel, was damn near screaming at me.
I grabbed the box and without thinking, without hesitating, walked out the front door of the house. Mercifully, no one stopped me. God only knows what I would have unleashed on them if they had. I had a plane to catch and, conveniently, a non-extradition country to visit.
*****
M
The postcard from my shoebox hadn’t done it justice. The colors of The Maldives were vibrant, assaulting almost, and after a week of being there, they hadn’t stopped shocking me when I laid eyes on them each morning through the open-air walls. The air was salty but otherwise bright and fresh. I still couldn’t take in a deep breath.
This time the cut ran too deep. Shepherd Finely was supposed to be the salve to my wounds not the most violent injury.
I’d ran here out of sheer desperation, remembering from one of the eight thousand times I researched it, sure I’d visit someday with Shep, that the FBI couldn’t force me back to the USA once I arrived. The massive stack of hundred dollar bills I’d kept handy for just such an occasion had happily obliged.
My heart on the other hand…
I turned over in the giant white bed and looked down the wooden walkway, wondering if today was the day I finally had the strength to get out of bed and start rebuilding. Though rebuilding what I hadn’t a fucking clue. Control? A life? A family? The tears that still hadn’t spilled, threatened but just like every moment since Shep said those words out loud, they didn’t actually come. Exhaustion did. And soon my eyelids drooped, sending me back into a numb and restless sleep.
This time when I woke, the stars were out in all their splendor. The colors weren’t any more muted in the night, black went inky, stars brilliant white, and the tinges of pinks and blues that swirled in space shown for the whole world to see. None of them were as spectacular as the glowing neon blue that swirled in the surf as bioluminescent critters washed up onto shore. The night colors, mysterious and meant for a lover’s embrace, were harder on my heart—they were the colors I ached to share with Shep.
I sat up and watched the waves break upon the shore for as far as I could see along the curve of the island. There was a pillar of darkness more solid than the rest of the night slowly moving toward me and when the bioluminescents shaped into foot prints, I realized someone was walking toward my secluded bungalow. Something about the way the figure moved made me sure it was coming for me. Something about the way my heart fluttered said I didn’t need to worry.
The soft pad of footfalls came right up to the edge of the dock, then the man easily hauled himself up and started toward me. My heart ratcheted up but I couldn’t bring myself to move. A tall body with beautiful broad shoulders approached, and when he was almost to my bed, golden eyes peaked out from the depth of night.
“I found you.” Shep’s deep, warm honey voice hit me harder than the wall of humidity.
My mouth flopped open once or twice before he bent down and took it. Took every inch of my lips and let his tongue weave with mine.
“I lost you the moment you thought I used you. The moment I didn’t put you above everything else. I will not make that mistake twice. I found you, and this time I’m going to keep you.”
He peeled off his shirt and used the weight of his body to press me down to the mattress. His body started moving against mine, his hands snaking their way between my thighs.
“Shep,” I whined as I shoved half-heartedly against his hand.
“No. Don’t Shep me.” His words came out tumbled and breathy in between kisses. “Not unless you’re going to say, ‘Shep, I know you were lost. You were lost until the moment you found that shoebox in my guest bedroom. And Shep, I found you too.’”
His lips locked on mine and his hand fondled me and fiddled with his belt. As soon as he sprung free, I knew that I would cave to him. Fighting the missing piece my soul had been searching for was too tiring. I needed Shepherd Finely more than I needed food or air. He was what really ran through my veins.
I reached down between my thighs and slid him lower, pushing him up against the pucker of my backside. Gold glinted in his gorgeous eyes.
“Really?” he whispered barely louder than the rolling waves.
I nodded and had a feeling that the ring of matching gold in my eyes flashed the same. He slid down between my thighs and let his tongue work against me. My hips automatically bucked up into his mouth. He hummed his approval against my sensitive clit. Then his fingers replaced the vibration, working their way from outside to in.
He circled, stroked, plunged, and all in perfect amounts. Until he moved inside me and started exploring. His fingers found my G-spot faster than I’d thought possible and, damn, did he work it. I was building fast but I was sure it was the fact that Shepherd Finely was the man behind the fingers, not the skill of the fingers themselves.
All too fast, I was coming, and I knew why he’d worked so furiously on me. The splash on his face was enough to make me try to press my knees together. He growled as he held them apart and slowly moved up my body.
His perfect cock was back at my ass, nudging against me.
There was enough lubrication for him to slide in. Every flex, every thrust was so gentle, but they filled me, stretched me. The taut skin of his insane abs brushed my clit and made me jerk and twitch with pleasure. The longer he thrust into me, the more timed with the lap of the ocean we became.
For a million of the most precious heartbeats my body had ever shuddered out, everything in the world made sense. Everything had conspired to get us here. The good times, but more importantly, the bad ones. Even the brothel was part of the magnetic pull between us, the magnetic pull determined to hold the whole universe together just so we could have this moment reveling in each other’s bodies the way we’d dreamed about when we were young.
Now, knowing everything that I did, I wouldn’t change it. I wouldn’t change it in the hopes that even in a do-over, I’d get this moment beneath the stars, amongst the neon blue of bioluminescence, when all I cared about was twinkling gold.
Shep groaned as he shoved in to me and stilled. The way his hips brushed me, sent me off like a bomb, and for a moment, we both rode the crashing wave of spectacular orgasms, clinging desperately to each other. He sank down onto me and his heavy weight kept me from splitting into a thousand pieces. I wrapped my legs around his and found a way to cling tighter to the dips and grooves of his shoulders.
The beautiful haze of us together began to fade and reality set back in. And even if the reality was we were together in The Maldives, it was still very real and rife with stumbling blocks.
“What do we do? Where do we go from here?” I whispered, letting my lips brush his cheek.
“If I remember correctly, I think I feed you grapes.” The low, husky laugh was thick in his voice.
“No, I mean for our future.”
“We’re going to talk about this right now?”
“Yes, while I’m holding onto you and onto hope that maybe this can be salvaged even after everything.” My heart slammed against his at the thought.
“I don’t care if we fucking open a brothel as long as I’m by your side.” He kissed down along my neck and nuzzled in. “As a matter of fact, I know a gorgeous and talented Madame. You can call her M.”
A smile accompanied a lightness I hadn’t felt in years. A light matching the magic washing around on the beach and swirling in the deep night sky. And of course, the magic tangled up between the two of us.
“Shep,” I whispered, “I think I finally found you too.”