“Hey,” he says simply.
“Hey.” I open the door wider, scanning his face. “Is something wrong?”
“Yeah, there is.” His voice is solemn. He walks past me and into my room. I look down at the rest of him, noticing that he is wearing his robe as well.
He places his unfettered hand into one of the pockets. “We’ve been missing something. I didn’t know what it was, but then it came to me…. as if from a dream.”
I am practically on my tippy-toes in anticipation. His countenance is still serious.
He removes a rounded glass bottle full of brown liquid from the robe and raises it for me to see.
“It’s local whiskey. The ‘best around’… or so Jack from the front desk says. He offered it to me tonight. And now I’m offering it to you. Care to join me?” His lips curve, twisting wickedly into a devilish smile. His hair is wet like mine, and it curls over his forehead in this adorable way.
I could smack him… or kiss him.
He just scared the living daylights out of me, but he is looking so freaking edible at this point that I can barely find the will to grow angry. My fatigue has disappeared: vanished into thin air the second that Trevor smiled at me.
Get a grip, Katarina. I try to respond as I would’ve, not even a week ago… when he flashed his white teeth at me on the aisle of the bus. He’s imposing. Kick him out. Show him the door. Say something.
“Listen,” I start. “And I’m only going to say this once… we are going to do one shot and then, that is it. Capisce?”
“Got it… princess. One shot, and that’s all.” He sits down on the edge of the bed, a grin still plastered on his handsome face.
Five shots later, Trevor is still in my room, and I can barely feel my own face.
I’ve got no bark left, no bite. I’m as gentle as a kitten, and all I want is for Trevor to make me purr. And this is all before I’d even tasted the whiskey.
My iron liver, made strong by many unhappy “happy-hours,” is Charmin tissue at this juncture, and I am now spilling all of the secrets that have been bottled up since our Tampa departure.
“Aren’t Ama and Viho absolutely wonderfullll?” I slur.
“Yes,” Trevor laughs softly at me. “Yes, they are.”
“And I am sooo lucky to have found them. And it wasn’t easy. I had to do some serious digging. I’d heard about the Oasis when I was a teen and thought it was…” I hiccup, losing my train of thought.
“Thought it was a…?” Trevor extends a hand, prompting me to finish.
I tap on my lip, gazing up at the ceiling. OH, yeah. “A myth. I thought it was just a story, an old wives’ tale.”
“Why is that?”
“Becaaauuussseee,” I drawl. “Nobody had ever found it. At least, nobody I know. I came here to Madisonville, to Maryville, all the way up and down Highway 411: looking for answers for years. Nothiiiiing.
“And then I lucked out amongst the relationships that I built here in East Tennessee. A friend of a friend of a friend led me to Ama. Took another entire year before she grew to even trust me.”
I laugh, but the sound is lifeless. This story is sobering, and I’m tempted to down another shot to drown out the returning solemnity.
“I took the story, the truth, back to my supervisors.” I look up at Trevor, who is listening with infinite patience. “They rejected it immediately. It didn’t fit with their ‘image.’” I mimic imaginary quotes with my fingers.
“They told me… to stop ‘chasing ghosts’: fairytales. They told me to appeal to our readership. I mean, the name of the magazine I worked for was called Journey Life. Journey. Life.
“How much more appealing could a story get than this?? Damn those rich, pompous bastards.” I grab the bottle, taking another swig.
“Ok, slow down,” Trevor says, prying the bottle from my grip. “I think you should take it easy, Kat.”
“No. You don’t get it, Trevor. You have no idea what I’ve been through. Putting my heart and soul into a true travel story: a once-in-a-lifetime kind of story… only to be told that such an article would not work well with the advertisers.
“Virtual parasites who spend every green dollar swindling tourists out of their hard-earned money so that they can travel to over-the-top locations where they eat at over-the top restaurants and sleep in their over-the-top hotel rooms. It’s all bullshit.
“And Journey Life…?” I scoff. “They’re worse than the advertisers. Ya see, the advertisers might be the suppliers, but the magazine was the drug dealer, selling overpriced and superficial wanderlust dreams to tourists that deserved a fairer shake.
“The magazine pushed opulence like it was an opiate, catering to an agenda that had more interest in drawing bigger bucks than maintaining any journalistic integrity.
“After my boss, Rick Hunt, and I decided to pursue the article anyway, we found ourselves unceremoniously canned.” I chuckle faintly, but again… there is no humor in it. “Who would hire me now?”
A minute stretches onward as Trevor and I sit on the edge of the bed with the bottle between us, our gazes glued to the mattress and not each other.
Trevor is the first to talk, and when he does, I’m shocked by his insightfulness.
“I feel like… there’s more to this. There’s a contempt hidden in this somewhere. I said that you were running once. What were you running from?”
I look up at him this time, and when I do, my eyes are wet. He’s hit my sore spot. God, it hurts.
My voice is surprisingly strong when I respond.
“The one person I trusted the most at the time. My boss.” I hesitate. “And boyfriend.” Trevor raises an eyebrow, but says nothing. “Well… technically, he was my boss’s boss. And an ex-boyfriend when we started working together.
“He was a grad student when I was an undergrad at Vanderbilt. We met… fell in love, the whole nine. Graduation came for him. He said he needed to focus on his career and had to end our relationship. Said he would always be a friend to me. Yeah, right.
“By the time I graduated, he was climbing up the ladder at Journey Life and the publishing company, Foxxhole.
“He used his connections to land himself a cushiony office job while I did the grunt work. I was hired by the magazine and house directly out of college, by way of a co-op that I had done with the company.
“I thought he had my back. He made it seem like he was responsible for my hire, and my naive ass felt indebted to him. Turns out he was just using me to further his career and, ultimately, as his fall guy. He turned on me the first chance he got.
“Placing my full trust in people – him, my company – well… it just bit me in the ass. They had no loyalty to me: no remorse.”
Trevor looks absolutely sick: disgusted. “And that was ‘all she wrote’, huh?”
“Yup. That was it. After that, I set out to find the Oasis on my own… you know, finish the story. Sort of a… vindication trip, I’d say. And then…”
“Then…”
Something snaps inside of me. I grow animated, clenching my fists enthusiastically.
“It was something more than just vindication, more than simply getting revenge. It’s the paradise aspect of it all.
“I’ve been searching for a place like this my entire life. Somewhere serene, safe. Away from Memphis. Away from mediocrity. Where I can be… me.”
I wilt like a flower, sinking back down to the bed. Trevor shakes his head, picking up the bottle this time. He swallows a mouthful from its lip and replaces it on the bed beside him.
“Jesus, Kat. That’s rough… and unfair. That guy…”
“Greg.”
“Yeah,” he affirms. “You’re better off without him: without him, without Journey Life, without Foxxhole. You’re so much better than that bullshit. You always were…”
I look harder at him than I did before. I’m shocked at how earnest he sounds, how passionate he appears to be.
“Thank you… for thinking that,”
I tell him.
“It’s the truth.”
“Maybe… but now I don’t know what to do.”
He squints at me. “What do you mean? Know what you’re going to do without him?” He sounds offended: incredulous.
“No. No, no, no. I don’t know what I’m going to do about the article. I sought Ama, Viho, the Oasis for one reason: the article. I wrote the ‘Before’ piece; I needed to complete the ‘After’ piece. Except…”
I pause, taking a deep breath. I can’t even say the words.
“Except what?” Trevor inquires.
“I’m an outsider, Trevor. I wasn’t even supposed to be invited in. The Oasis… it belongs to the Cherokee. Not legally, per se… but in every other sense. It is a part of their culture, their history, their world. I wanted to explore it. But there are some… according to Ama… who believe I would exploit it.
“To many of the Cherokee, guests to the land aren’t really guests; they’re intruders.”
Trevor’s brow furrows, turning his beautiful features into a hardened scowl. “So, what are you going to do? How does Ama feel about it?”
“Well, she thinks I should pray about it: do what’s in my heart. Do what the land would tell me to do.”
He leans in closer. “And what do you think it would tell you to do?”
I open my mouth, but stop before any words come out. I blame my sudden nausea on the drinking, but I know it’s more than that.
“Honestly… I don’t know.” I’m almost embarrassed by my lack of an answer. All this planning and plotting… and I’m just as confused as the day I set out.
“I changed who I was for that job. And now I have nothing to show for it. I’m a sell-out.” I shake my head. “I’m a coward.”
Trevor recoils slightly as if struck, before bending slowly toward me. “You are not a coward, Kat.”
“No, I am. I take the easy way out of things; I run when the going gets too tough. I never take care of things head-on.”
He places his large hand gently beneath my chin, tilting it toward him.
“I don’t think a woman who faced death and beat it, defied all lowered expectations, and ultimately followed her own path is, in any way, shape or form, a coward.
“In fact… I think that that woman… is the bravest… most talented and driven person I may have ever known.” His stony face breaks out into a slow lopsided grin. “If not the craziest.”
I start to chuckle at his crack, but the giggle tapers out as time stretches onward. Trevor hasn’t let go of my jaw, and suddenly nothing is very funny at the moment. In actuality, things have become serious: dead serious in a very short amount of time.
We’re staring at each other, and neither one of us seems able to look away.
His hand is the only thing that moves between us; his fingers run absently along my jaw, tickling gently on the smooth skin beneath. His glare deviates from my own, trailing its way to my mouth.
He’s going to kiss me. I want him to.
I close my eyes slowly, preparing myself for the pressure of Trevor’s mouth.
But it never comes. He withdraws suddenly, clearing his throat and standing before I can even blink. I open my eyes to discover my blond Zeus shifting strangely on his feet, his voice uncharacteristically deep and soothing.
“Look, I know it’s getting late. I didn’t mean to barge in like this in the first place, but I appreciate you letting me in, Kat.” He pauses then, and it becomes clear that his words have a double meaning.
“Knock if you need anything… anything at all.” He looks sheepish under the cover of his wavy blond hair. He turns to go. He walks stolidly away, but stops at the door, his hand on the knob.
He turns his head sideways, but never looks back at me. “I just want you to know that you’re special,” he says. “And you deserve something special. You were right not to settle.” He turns the knob without a backward glance.
And then… he’s gone.
Trevor
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
I blew it. I know I did. And what absolutely fucking sucks… is that I had to. Or I’d touch her, kiss her… lay her. And I can’t.
I can’t do any of those things.
To say that it would be a conflict of interest would be putting it mildly. Chris and Griff would have my goddamn balls for breakfast if I did. Our first big step as a team… blown to smithereens: all because I couldn’t keep my damn dick in my pants.
If it were anybody else – ANYBODY else. Why did it have to be her? What kind of cruel, twisted irony is God working? Nothing, and I do mean nothing, worked out as expected. Hell, the first time we met, I wasn’t even sure if I liked her: wasn’t sure she’d even be a right fit. Now, I can’t think of anybody more perfect.
I realize, yet again, how much we need her: how much I need her. I just didn’t think that I would need her in this way: this desire to devour her, possess her, take care of her: both in mind and body.
God, that body.
Even cloaked in soft white cotton, I could see through to her beautiful form: see that lithe, little figure with the small waist and round breasts, peeking beneath the opening of her oversized robe.
Argh. I fist a hand near my mouth, fighting the urge to bite down into it. I pace the floor of my room in an attempt to cool myself down. Kat. With that long, lush brown hair. Kat. Peering through those frosty blue eyes.
Kat. Moving around with that body that belies her small stature, touting this tiny curvaceous silhouette with that adorably ample ass and dancer legs. Must be all that yoga. All that stretching and sweating…
I stop pacing, looking down at the tent in my robe. Down, little soldier. Stay down.
But the stubborn little bastard refuses to comply. No wonder why he’s stuck up. He has an attitude just like his cocky ass owner.
I ignore my inflexible cock and continue to walk the length of the room, contemplating just what the hell I’m going to do now.
With Kat, it’s more than just the physical.
She’s surprising to me in so many little ways. Every time I expect one thing from her, I discover another: something completely new and unpredictable. I’ve encountered the good and the bad… and it’s made me want her all the more.
I’ve watched her sour turn to sweet: her bitter into savory. I love the way she challenges me, even more so when she flips the script, becoming supple… and soft.
Like tonight…
She parted her lips, waiting. Waiting for me to come get a taste. Everything in me, every single fiber of my being, wanted to. I nearly burst a blood vein, forcing my body to resist.
Ten minutes later, I finally find the will to settle my body down, maybe enough to get some sleep. I sit down on the edge of the bed, removing the robe carefully from my body before lying down.
A groan finds its way from my lips as I lean back. A bed. Finally.
Maybe this won’t be so bad after all. I’ll recoup, get some rest, gain some perspective and maybe I can approach this Kat thing differently tomorrow. Maybe grow some balls and find the strength to leave her alone. The way I should’ve done it in the first place.
I close my eyes, letting the mattress meld around my body as my weight sinks into it. Mmmm….
Knock Knock Knock.
My eyes shoot open. I groan again: this time out of frustration. Goddamn it. I forgot that I told the front desk clerk, Jack, that I’d be back down to check in on a bottle of the really good whiskey that he was looking for behind the counter.
Guess he found that extra bottle.
I shrug the robe back onto my shoulders, taking care with the injured one. I wrap the robe loosely around my waist, not concerning myself with decency for the sake of such a quick visit.
I open the door to my room. I’m now face-to-face with icy blue irises.
As if the eyes weren’t a dead giveaway, those chewed-to-a-cherry-colored lips are beet red and practically pulsating in front of my face, inviting me in. Kat.
She looks
nervous and almost apologetic. Her eyes are wide and darkly fringed. She looks worried, and the expression that she’s showing me is nearly giving me a heart attack from fear.
I turn the light on that I recently snuffed, reaching my hand out to lead Kat inside my threshold. I’m so fixated on her face that I almost forget to close my robe, fumbling awkwardly with the sash to tie it tightly.
Kat’s eyes follow my fingers, watching my clumsy attempts before averting to my face. She places her hands on my own, stilling my seemingly endless efforts at modesty.
Fuck the robe. Kat’s in trouble; I can tell.
“I need something,” she says, confirming what I already suspected.
My voice is rushed, breathless. I rub my hand at her side, nearly checking for injuries.
“What’s going on, Kat? What do you need?”
She hesitates, and I nearly explode, my chest heaving with the anticipation of what’s to come. I search her eyes, but find no answers.
“You.”
She stands quietly there, staring at me. I’m waiting for something further, but nothing comes. And then the realization of what’s she saying finally finds it mark, smacking me dead center like a bulls-eye.
The word is like a bomb. It detonates in my chest, creating this intense pressure that squeezes like a vice. I can’t breathe at all.
When I do inhale, the breath is painful and long. I don’t even trust my own ears to have heard correctly. I narrow my eyes at her face, as if the act itself will give me clarity.
“What are you saying, Kat?”
She sighs soundly, taking a step towards me. I can smell her hair. I can smell her skin.
“I’m saying,” she continues, “that I… I need you. I’ve needed you since the moment we met. And despite fighting it… every step of the way… I’ve decided to give in. To let myself need you… and… to let myself want you.”
She gazes up into my face and finally I can see what I’d been missing. It wasn’t worry that was in her eyes when she showed up at my door. It was expectancy. It was her, preparing to ask a question, preparing to prompt for an answer.
Paradise Forbidden Page 13