The Book of True Desires

by Betina Krahn

  “Oh. Right. No thinking. Good idea. Brains in the way and all tha—”

  She absorbed the rest with her kiss and molded herself to him like a second skin. She wanted every part of her in contact with every part of him. Because he was suddenly the source of all heat in the known universe. And light. And breath.

  He covered her with his hands, rubbing, stroking, and warming. Then he began to move with her… back… around…down. She was against something hard and oddly neither horizontal or vertical. It was, in fact, a perfect forty-five degrees. She knew before she opened her eyes she was lying on the sun-warmed stone of the temple itself, her bare feet in the warm sand, being covered by his big warm body. Steam escaped her. A sigh of satisfaction. Warm at last.

  His kisses drew her deeper and deeper into her own unexplored desires. By the time he drew back to remove his shirt she was beyond every limit she had ever observed in this part of her life and began to shed her own damp garments. With trembling hands she removed those last barriers and sought his touch to replace them.

  Kisses, more kisses… long, open, wine-sweet explorations… her whole body responded, tightening, preparing. She parted her thighs and welcomed the pressure and heat of him against her, wanting whatever would come, laughing with delight as his explorations drifted to her breasts and pleasure vibrated through her very sinews, arousing and tantalizing her, revealing connections she had never known existed within her.

  Then he kissed and nibbled his way across her shoulders, up her throat, and by the time he reached her mouth, she was open to him, completely, nothing held back. He began to join their bodies and groaned as she accepted him inch by delicious inch. When they were completely joined she felt him lift his weight from her and opened her eyes.

  He was braced above her, his arms flexed, his face bronzed and eyes hot.

  He was beautiful. Like a big jungle cat. Primal. Male.

  She saw and felt him move inside her and made a sound she hadn’t known herself capable of—somewhere between a sigh and a growl—then responded with a movement of her own that wrenched a similar sound from him. He slid out and thrust slowly forward again. She sucked a breath. He did it again, never taking his eyes from hers. She met his movement the third time and every time thereafter, riding escalating waves of pleasure that supplanted everything else in her consciousness.

  This, this need… this pleasure… this was what she wanted…now…now…

  “Now.” She groaned as she surged through a barrier of sensation that shattered around and within her in the same instant, launching her into a wild, free fall of release. His arms were suddenly around her, his weight was driving her, causing her to crest that wave again and again before he joined her in that final surge of passion.

  He held her against him afterward for a time, then slid to the side of her, resting back against the smooth white stone. Their location, their activity, and the possible consequences of same caused him to close his eyes for a moment.

  “I hope the Jaguar Spirit has a sense of humor about these things,” he said. “After all, it’s his… place.” He couldn’t bring himself to use the word temple, not after what he’d just done, practically on the steps of it.

  “I don’t know,” she said propping her head up and nestling her legs against his. “I think it’s kind of appropriate. Kind of like a church wedding.” She glanced down at herself. “Except I didn’t get to wear white.” She giggled. “I didn’t wear anything.”

  He looked at her in amazement. His eyes widened.

  “Don’t tell me that was… you know …your… your first.”

  “Well, yes. It was, actually.”

  He looked incredulous. “But you’re… you’re so…”

  “What? Nonretiring? Nonsqueamish? Nonspinsterish? For heaven’s sake, Goodbody, they don’t make you check your virginity at the door just because you travel a bit and boss men around effectively.”

  “I–I just assumed…” He shut his mouth before any of the thousand inappropriate things he was thinking made it out.

  With her lips kiss-swollen, her chestnut hair tangled around her, and her breasts soft and mounded just so, she was the most beautiful thing he was ever likely to see. He couldn’t believe he’d just made wild, passionate love to her on the side of a pagan temple in the middle of an extinct volcano and she was smiling at him. Suddenly he came up with the perfect thing to say, something straight from his heart.

  “Are you all right?”

  “I believe I’m better than all right, Goodbody.”

  He laughed at the sly hint of pride in her expression.

  “That you are, O’Keefe. Much better.”

  She grinned, took him by the hand, and pulled him toward the water. It was beastly cold and she could only entice him in by the promise of plentiful heat afterward. They dried with their clothes, dressed, and looked for a place to sleep. The gardens were filled with soft golden light and the fragrance of night-blooming jasmine.

  He found a soft, moss-covered spot and cut long, smooth palm branches to cover it, softening the layers with ferns.

  “You’re good at this, Goodnight. Where did you learn vegative bed building? Not from her, I take it.”

  “Who?” He looked up as he plumped and tested his construction.

  “She who taught you that women are unreliable. Who was she? A fair weather friend? Fickle flirtation? Faithless fiancée?”

  He paused for a moment, looked down, and she bit her lip. What made her bring that up now?

  “Fiancée,” he said, looking up at her with no defensiveness.

  “What happened to her?”

  “She married my brother.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said and truly meant it, thinking of the hurt he’d endured.

  “Interesting.” He frowned. “I’m not. Not anymore. I haven’t thought of her in ages.”

  “What happened?”

  “It was a matter of chemistry, actually.” He chuckled at his own double meaning. “She had it with my brother and not me. And when she learned I intended to spend my life and fortune pursuing tawdry ‘industrial’ ambitions, she chose to hold out for a different bond.” He grinned, looking quite pleased with his turn of phrase.

  She shook her head, not certain what to make of his mood.

  “Should I be weaving placemats or making grass curtains or something?”

  “Deflowered ten minutes and already she’s got nesting instincts,” he complained to a bug before he brushed it off a fern frond he was stuffing into a makeshift pillow. “We’re going to sleep,” he said to her, “not setting up housekeeping.”

  “We’re really going to sleep?” she said looking wounded.

  For her contribution to their bower, she gathered fragrant flowers and strew them on the bed. Then before his widening eyes, she put one in her hair and rubbed others into her skin, bathing in their nectar and his attention. When he joined her on their bed and began to kiss her from head to toe, she shivered and admitted she was ticklish sometimes, some places. Diligent to the core, he felt obliged to catalog every one of them, ending with her laughing and blushing and melting so that she could no longer tell what was her body, her sensation, and what was his.

  Pleasing him seemed as natural as breathing. And when she found that sweet combination of position and pressure that drove her passion to completion, he held her as she found full pleasure, then joined her beyond the very bounds of sensation.

  Later, they lay looking up at the stars, identifying constellations, arguing over which was the real Archer and getting distracted by a shooting star that she insisted they wish on. He wished aloud, which according to her defeated the purpose.

  “Which is?” he said, now roundly confused.

  “Mystery, of course,” she said snuggling against his chest, wriggling her toes with satisfaction.

  “Oh, well. That explains it. Don’t need any more mystery, thank you. I’m a man living on a planet populated 50 percent by women. That’s mystery enough for any
sane man.”

  “Nobody will ever accuse you of being sane, Goodnight.”

  “Not after today, they won’t. And it’s Hart.”

  “What?”

  “My name. After what we’ve just accomplished together, I think it appropriate you call me by my first name.”

  “Okay, Hart.” It felt so strange she had to make a joke. “You can call me anything—as long as you call me yours.”

  Thirty-one

  Hart awakened at daybreak in their leafy bower and found her gone. The pleasurable aches in his body were a testament to how they’d spent the night; he could only imagine how she must be feeling after such…exertions.

  Rising and pulling on his breeches and boots, he strolled through the gardens looking for her, picking a perfect sprig of jasmine to put in her hair when he found her. The light was tinged with rose gold and as he emerged from the trees and felt the sun strike his body, his mood expanded. He felt wonderful, alive in a way he couldn’t recall ever feeling. And he knew just who to blame.

  As he came around the far side of the pyramid, headed for the dock and the front of the temple, he stopped dead, astonished by what he saw. Cordelia stood naked on the stone quay, her clothes in discarded pools by her feet, and circling around and above her were golden butterflies. Hundreds of them. No, thousands. Her expression was one of pleasure as she slowly raised her arms and turned, offering herself to them, inviting them—and they accepted. Slowly they began to light on her, beginning with her hair and settling slowly on her shoulders and down her arms, then wrapping gently down her body like a garment of fluttering gossamer. She stood perfectly still as they covered the rest of her—every square inch of her except, oddly enough, her face. She was for that moment, the most exquisitely dressed woman in all of history. Clothed by nature in that most rare and ephemeral of garments. She made a small noise and he realized it was a laugh. He made himself move, treading softly, so that he could glimpse her face.

  It was glowing.

  “You’re all so beautiful,” she murmured to the butterflies, bringing her arms forward so she could see them. Then she caught his movement and turned her head enough to smile at him. Her amber eyes shone like iridescent wings.

  “They tickle,” she said, biting her lip. “Their little feet and fluttery wings—they’re tickling me.”

  He approached slowly, quietly, and whispered, “How did this happen?”

  “I don’t know. I just came down to bathe and they collected around me and started to—remember last night? I rubbed those flowers on my skin. Maybe they’re drawn to the nectar.”

  He stood a few feet from her, his eyes suddenly misting, his insides melting, his chest aching in a way that felt frightening and pleasurable all at once.

  “No,” he said, barely able to get the words out, “it’s you. They’re drawn to you.” He took a step closer. Then another, slowly, not wanting to frighten her living cloak. “And I know just how they feel.”

  She opened her hands to him and moved them to get the creatures to fly. Only those on her hands were displaced, and when he took her hands the butterflies relanded on their joined hands. Then, before his widening eyes, more landed on his arms.

  Soon he was covered to his shoulders, and others arrived to cover his hair, his back, and his torso. They stopped where his breeches began, covering only his bare skin, but covering it entirely, just as they had hers.

  “This is mad,” he said hoarsely, staring in wonder at his fluttering coat. “I didn’t rub any flowers on me.”

  “No.” She gave a quiet laugh. “But you just spent hours rubbing me on you. Some of the scent must have transferred.”

  It was logical, he supposed, in a clinging-to-the-brink-of-sanity sort of way. But there was something in the feel of those little creatures, in the caress of their wings, in the startling intimacy of them all over his skin that defied all rational explanations. It was too extraordinary. And it was entirely too much of a coincidence that it was happening now and in this place, and after making love with her all night.

  “Isn’t it wonderful?” she said sliding her feet closer to him, looking into his eyes. “It’s like a blessing from Nature. A kiss from the Creator. Just for us.”

  He had never wanted anything quite so much as he wanted to kiss her just then. She was right. Blessings from nature… jaguars giving gifts… temples in craters… treasures in lakes… healing in butterflies… nothing seemed impossible to him now.

  His lips touched hers and for a moment, one splendid, shining moment, they were one with each other and with everything else in creation. It was a divine dispensation that would bond them more surely than vows or ink on musty parchment ever could.

  Then almost as quickly as it was woven, that miraculous garment began to unwind. Head to toe, the butterflies slowly peeled away and took flight, joining in a shimmering cloud of gold above and around them.

  His feeling of loss was assuaged only by her presence, by her body pressed fully against his, by her moist eyes lifted with his to that golden cloud hovering nearby as if reluctant to leave.

  Then en mass the butterflies flew toward the highest point of the gardens.

  Stumbling into her camisole, knickers, and breeches, Cordie took the hand Hart held out to her and together they hurried after that golden cloud, losing sight of it as they entered the garden. They halted on the path, scouring the trees and vines and flowers for a glimpse of their destination. Just as they were about to give up, the butterflies found them, and in smaller numbers, landed on their hair and bare arms and shoulders. They stared at each other, trying to make sense of it.

  “They came back for us,” she said, knowing how crazy it must sound.

  “That must be some potent flower you chose for a perfume,” he said with a half laugh. “We ought to find out which one it was and bottle—”

  He froze, staring at her, his eyes darting over some mental image as he made connections. She was busy watching the butterflies lift from her hair and shoulders and take off again as a small cloud.

  “You know, this may sound crazy,” she said, “but I think they want us to follow—”

  “Of course they do—they’re the butterflies!” he said grabbing her hand and charging down the path with her.

  “What do you mean? You really think they’re leading us somewhere?”

  They tracked the golden cloud through the herbs, vines, and thick understory. He picked her up to carry her when she couldn’t stand the sharp stalks and plant rubble on her bare feet.

  “Ohhh.” She hung onto his shoulders, trying to help him bear her weight. “I’m sorry. I wish I’d stopped to put on my—”

  “Look!” He pointed as the cloud swooped up to drape itself on a tree.

  Suddenly, there they were. A small grove of enormously tall, stately firs at the rear of the crater gardens was covered with their butterflies. He carried her to the closest tree and let her slide down him as they both looked up.

  “The butterflies aren’t the healing power,” he said excitedly, “but I think they point to it. They must be the pollinators for some—look!”

  He pointed to the lower branches of the tree, which were still well above their heads. There were flame-red orchids growing on them. When they looked higher, they found the same orchid all over the tree—on all of the trees where the butterflies had congregated.

  “That red orchid—maybe that’s it!”

  Before she could say anything to temper his enthusiasm, he was climbing. Holding himself precariously on the first branch, which was well off the ground, he stretched for the first red orchid he could reach. It turned out to be a fine specimen, delicate blood-red flowers with snowy centers, thick, glossy leaves, and a host of wrinkled white roots. He dropped back to the ground examining his prize, and brought it back to share with her.

  She was busy thinking of the murals they’d seen and of the way the message of a healing power seemed to have gotten so lost over the centuries.

  “Why would
they go to such extremes to protect a flower?” she said.

  “It does give one pause,” he said, thinking as he examined the petals and the long feathery stamens inside. “If it wasn’t intentional, perhaps the object of the story got lost in translation along the way. If it was intentional, the ancients must have thought this was a fairly potent cure, to create such a puzzle concerning its identity and location.”

  “You think it’s unique to this place?”

  “I have no way of knowing. But I don’t recall seeing—” He frowned and pulled off one of the petals and popped it into his mouth.

  “Hart!” She was appalled. “You just said that might be fairly potent. And you’re just sticking it in your mouth?

  “Come on.” She took hold of his arm. “We’ll take it back to Yazkuz.” She looked up in dismay. “We forgot all about her. I hope she’s all right.”

  “She’s praying. What kind of trouble could she get into praying?” he said, breaking off a piece of one of the thick, glossy leaves to look at the sap. “I think I’ll wait here. I want to collect another specimen or two. She should probably see these trees.” He gestured to the trees, butterflies, and orchids in natural proximity. “She may know something about them.”

  “All right. But no sampling until we hear what Yazkuz has to say.”

  “I’ll be right here,” he said, lifting the bandage on his arm and dabbing the broken leaf under it on his snakebite.

  “Stop that.” She halted several feet away, with a strange prickle creeping up her spine. “No sampling.”

  “Right. I heard.”

  She was halfway to the pyramid when she came to the bower containing their bed of last night. The palm fronds were already starting to curl and the flowers were turning brown. The path was softer from there and she broke into a run. There was brief delay when she detoured to grab her boots from the quay and drag them on. She was only starting up the steps of the pyramid when she heard “¡Hola!” and looked up to find Yazkuz trudging down the steps.

  “We found something—rather Hart did. Come with me!” She grabbed the old girl’s arm and bustled her along toward the fir grove where Hart waited.