Doe Eyes leaned against the railing, watching the sky and occasionally blindly seeking the straw in the coconut with her mouth. For the first time since he’d seen her watching him, she was completely unguarded. It suited her.
He smiled at the way she seemed to unconsciously lean into his shoulder with her eyes trained on the horizon, watching the slow fall of the sun into the sea. The flash of light grew increasingly dim until the sun fell completely in the water and the sky glowed with the remnants of its flame.
“I could see this every day,” she breathed.
“We have similar sunsets in Miami,” he said although he didn’t know where that came from.
“Similar but not the same.”
“Similar but not the same,” he agreed.
Miami was unquestionably striking to him. Just the way that Jamaica, the island where his grandparents were born and where his immediate family returned year after year, was the most beautiful place in the world to him. And he’d been around the world enough to see most of the competition.
“You should see Jamaica if you haven’t already,” he told her, pressing his shoulder into hers. “The sunsets there will make you cry.”
She laughed and turned briefly to him, the sunset’s colors brushing her face in shades of amber. “Have they made you cry?”
“Not yet, but I’m a hard sell.”
She laughed again; this time he could see the distance in the smile that lingered, that her attention was no longer on the sky and the joy it made her feel.
“You ready to get going?” he asked.
She bit the corner of her lip. “Yes.”
He waited for her to finish the coconut; then took her down to the beach where the others waited. She walked just ahead of him, watching his three friends sitting around the fire with a mixture of wariness and relief, obviously having suspected that it would just be the two of them after all.
“We didn’t think you’d make it back,” Carlos said in Spanish. With his cropped hair, thick beard and full-sleeve tattoos, he looked like a typical hipster.
“I can see why,” Annika said in Dutch, smiling widely at Doe Eyes. “She’s pretty. How did you manage to find such a hot woman to play with after being on the island only a few days?”
Steven, serious and slender in his designer T-shirt and matching shorts, watched all the action like someone at a tennis match, gaze moving back and forth between the players.
Kingsley shook his head. “English, guys.” Then he laughingly introduced her as Doe Eyes, enduring his friends’ inevitable teasing that the woman he wanted hadn’t even told him her name.
“I speak a decent amount of Spanish,” Doe Eyes said. “If it makes you feel more comfortable speaking your own languages, it’s okay with me.”
Annika laughed. “We love her!” she crowed in English, then jumped up from her cross-legged seat near the fire to hug Doe Eyes, who grinned widely and hugged Annika tightly in return.
“Hi!”
“I might just love her, too,” Carlos said, this time in Dutch, as he watched the two women, dark and light, as they hugged.
“Pervert,” Kingsley muttered.
“Not at all, just a lover of women.”
Steven greeted her in his subdued way, squeezing her hand before sinking back down into a graceful lotus on the sand. He wrestled a beer from the depths of the cooler and gave it to Doe Eyes.
“Thanks for being okay with me coming out with you all,” she said, looking at each face around the fire. “I’ve never gone snorkeling at night, but Kingsley says it’s safe.” The lilt in her voice plainly asked them to confirm the safety of what she was about to do.
“It is safe,” Steven confirmed. “I’ve done it more times than I can count.”
Annika nodded. “It’ll be fun. Even though I’ve lived in Aruba for nearly two years, I haven’t done it before. But Kingsley said it’s something I absolutely have to try.”
“He’s very convincing,” Carlos said. “I swear if he said I had to eat fire to be a real Aruban, I would do it even though he doesn’t know a damn thing about being from here.”
“Or about fire,” Kingsley said with a laugh.
“It burns,” Doe Eyes murmured, looking at him.
Kingsley locked eyes with her. “It certainly does.”
Annika laughed, her pale blue eyes brimming with mirth. It was embarrassingly obvious she knew what Kingsley was up to. Yes, if he got the chance he would absolutely sleep with Doe Eyes. Well, not exactly sleep. He wanted to make long and deep love with her, press her into any available surface and show her just how much he knew about making a woman feel good. Kingsley cleared his throat and sat on the side of the fire opposite her, hiding the sudden tightness at his crotch with his beer.
They finished their drinks while the lights in the sky faded into gray, leaving trails of dark against the paleness of the moon. Dusk amplified the light from the crackling fire, a signal for them to get ready.
Steven was the first one to stand up. “Ready whenever you guys are.”
Although Steven had been the one to organize the trip, he’d asked Kingsley to give the prep talk to the group about the particulars of night snorkeling and partnering up. He also passed out the waterproof flashlights. Annika snickered when Kingsley announced he was partnering with Doe Eyes even after he told her the obvious reason, which was that Doe Eyes hadn’t done a night dive before and would need all the help she could get.
“But what about me?” Annika asked with a mischievous grin, determined to torture him. “I’m a newbie, too.”
At a look from Kingsley, Steven grabbed her by the waist and pulled her off toward the boat anchored nearby.
With everyone else sitting in the small motorboat, Kingsley pushed it into the water. Once it was far enough, he released the anchor and climbed in. Steven started the engine and it growled, propelling them toward the place where the sun had disappeared nearly half an hour before. The engine’s noise took away the silence, and the five of them were lost in their own thoughts and in the beauty of the night as they raced toward the reefs.
Kingsley sat across from Doe Eyes, watching the beach and their banked fire get smaller and smaller. Nervousness vibrated from her, and he wanted very much to slide closer to her and convince her nothing would happen tonight she didn’t want to. The sea was a vast and frightening place. But that didn’t mean he would allow her to disappear beneath it.
“Here we are,” Steven said. He cut the engine.
In the sudden silence, the boat bobbed in the dark water, the sound of the sea slapping gently against the hull.
“Here” was far away from shore and nowhere in sight of their fire at all. There was nothing but the dark and writhing water around them.
“It’s a little creepy out here,” Annika muttered, most of her bravado gone.
“Yeah, but it’s nice,” Carlos said. “The quiet is very soothing.”
Doe Eyes sat with her hands curled around the edge of the boat, the fear slowly clearing from her face the longer they sat in the quiet with the sound of the water lapping at the boat.
Kingsley leaned close to her. “You okay?”
She jumped, looking away from the dark and rippling water. “Yeah. I’m fine. This is just...it’s all new to me. Amazing. Scary.”
He lifted his gaze from her to take in their surroundings, trying to pretend the others weren’t watching every move they made. “Facing the things that scare you is a great way to grow.”
Doe Eyes snorted. “And to get eaten by a shark, too, I’m sure.”
“No shark bites here.” Kingsley pulled off his shirt to show his unscarred belly in the moonlight. Annika snickered, having apparently gotten over her own nervousness. He thought he saw a smile from Doe Eyes. When her hands loosened from the edge of the boat, he considered his
mission of distraction a success. He shoved his shirt in his waterproof pack while Annika laughed at him outright.
“Gear up, everyone,” Steven said, unsuccessfully hiding his own laughter.
Although there had been a quick tutorial on the beach, Kingsley stayed close to Doe Eyes to make sure she put on her gear properly. Despite her obvious nervousness, she put on her snorkel and fins with easy and practiced movements, checking the fit and the security and brightness of the flashlight secured to her wrists, while everyone else did the same. After a quick verbal check all around, the group slipped into the water. Kingsley and Doe Eyes were the last.
“Ready?”
“Absolutely.” She looked like she was trying to convince herself, and he wondered why. But he mentally shrugged and slipped into the water first, keeping his head above the surface and his body close to the anchored boat. He flicked on his flashlight. In his board shorts and otherwise bare skin, he felt the pressure of the water, the night’s brisk breeze on his face and neck. A shiver of reaction climbed up his spine.
She sat in the belly of the boat for a moment, watching him, then walked to the very edge, took a quick breath and splashed down beside him. The splatter of water made her blink her eyes behind the mask, and he floated away from the boat slowly, signaling for her to follow him.
His flashlight illuminated a long line of water around them, pushing aside the shadows and, he hoped, any potential fear for her. She brushed against him briefly, and he felt her tremble. Then she adjusted her mask, gave him the thumbs-up, turned her face into the water and began to explore. After a moment Kingsley began to do the same.
The reef was close to the surface. Only a few feet separated the tips of Kingsley’s fins from the coral alive with color and darting fish whose scales shimmered under the light from their torches. Sea urchins, spiny and dangerous, poked out from holes in the coral. Kingsley tapped her shoulder and pointed to make sure she saw them.
This wasn’t Kingsley’s first time snorkeling at night. He’d even done some night diving, traveling down to the ocean floor to watch octopi, their bodies dotted with phosphorescence, slide along the coral. He’d swum through massive schools of brilliantly colored fish not present during the day. All of it had been breathtaking.
But there was nothing like the wonder on this woman’s face, her eyes widening, hands clutching fiercely at his when she saw something new: the powerful and steadily moving sea through the beams of their torches, large schools of bright blue parrot fish swimming lazily in the night waters. He wanted to show her more. He wanted her to see everything.
This feeling wasn’t a new one, wanting to preen and introduce a woman to the best of what he knew. What was new to him was the lack of urgency. Kingsley enjoyed the brush of her arm against his, rising up to the surface to take a breath and catch sight of the twin globes of her bottom resting on top of the water. It was a deep and pure pleasure he could bask in for hours. But despite the vague possibility of this unnamed and beautiful woman disappearing from his life at any moment, he wasn’t frantic in his desire for her.
He knew he would have her.
Still, his ache to touch her was almost a painful thing, a desire that clung to the backs of his teeth and burned steadily. It was slow. It was hot. And it easily melted away the memory of any other woman he’d ever wanted.
In just his mask and fins, he swam farther down, holding his breath and lighting up the darkness for her. Deeper into the water, he saw a school of spotted turquoise fish, their scales bright even in the small grotto where they hid. Kingsley propelled himself up to the surface, taking a deep breath when he hit fresh air. She took out her snorkel.
“You okay?”
He nodded yes. “There’s something you should see, lower.”
Her eyes widened. “This is snorkeling, not diving,” she said.
“You can handle it.”
She gave him a curious look, then put her mask back on, refitted her snorkel and nodded at him in acceptance of his challenge. Kingsley grinned, took her hand and dove deep with her fingers wrapped tightly around his.
Nearly an hour later, they surfaced for the last time to the sound of MC Solaar playing from the speaker Carlos had brought. It was a miracle they’d gotten any reception on the battered, old thing. Kingsley could hear Annika “singing” along to the old-school French rap and laughing at herself when she tripped over the words. A look at his watch told Kingsley they’d already been out there for nearly three hours and at almost ten o’clock at night, the others were ready to wash off the salt, get someplace dry and drink something a little harder than beer to close out the night.
A sleek head appeared from beneath the surface barely a foot away, and Kingsley smiled at her automatically, having quickly grown used to the brightness of her eyes behind the mask and the way she grinned around the snorkel in excitement at the things they’d found together. He pulled off his mask, and, after a glance around them, she did the same. She wiped water from her face.
“Time to go in, huh?”
“Yup. They’ve probably been waiting for us a little while.”
Doe Eyes didn’t hide her disappointed look, but she nodded, cast one look at the glare of his flashlight that illuminated their bodies just under the water. “Let’s go then.”
Kingsley gestured for her to go first. Once she’d swum a fair distance in front of him, he followed at a leisurely pace, enjoying the last of their privacy.
“I thought you two were going to stay out there until sunrise,” Carlos said, blowing a stream of cigarette smoke over his shoulder.
“I’d prune up too much by then,” Doe Eyes said. “I value the softness of my skin too much.”
“Even at the risk of denying yourself the company of this hunka burnin’ love?” Annika tossed a look at Kingsley as he clambered into the boat.
He ignored her and turned up his nose at Carlos. “The only thing burning up out here is our nose hairs from that cigarette. You couldn’t wait until we got back to land to light up, Carlos?” His friend smoked the cheapest and most offensive cigarettes known to humankind, having exchanged his addiction to hard drugs for one to nicotine.
“You know I have a vice, man.” Carlos blew another stream of smoke, this time through his clenched teeth.
“Those things will kill you just like the other crap you gave up,” Kingsley said. He sensed Doe Eyes watching him with curiosity.
“Not this again.” Steven groaned over the long-standing source of disagreement. “Everybody ready?”
After he got the appropriate number of grunts and yeses, he started the boat’s engine and propelled them back toward land.
* * *
At the beach, Steven anchored the boat and cut the engine. The others moved slowly to get their few belongings, sealed in watertight bags, and climbed from the boat to the beach, where the battery-operated lantern they’d left stuck in the sand still blazed but the fire had long since died. Kingsley felt pleasantly exhausted but didn’t want to go back to his place yet. Although his body was tired from the swim, he felt mentally energized by the snorkeling, and by the presence of the woman he couldn’t get off his mind.
“I’m tired, but I’m not tired,” Carlos said as he zipped up his backpack with the last of his stuff and hefted it onto his back. “You get me?”
“Yeah.” Steven sighed with his own exhaustion.
“You don’t have to go home,” Annika said. “I told you to come over to Elina’s place. She’s having a thing tonight.”
“I’m not going to bust into a party I wasn’t invited to,” Steven said.
“Consider yourself invited then, damn.” Annika rolled her eyes. She was sleeping with Elina and Elina’s boyfriend, Alexander.
She dragged her own pack to the sand as she helped Kingsley disassemble their camp on the beach, put away the lamp and
the rest of their gear in the anchored boat and under a secured tarp.
“That’s good enough for me.” Carlos grinned.
“Sounds good.” Kingsley didn’t give it a second thought. It was either that or invite Doe Eyes back to his place in a shameless attempt at getting into her pants. “You should come,” he tossed to her over one shoulder.
Doe Eyes already had her dry clothes back on and, with her backpack on one shoulder, looked ready to head back to her hotel.
“I don’t think I can stay out any later than this,” she said, regret and reluctance coloring her voice.
Kingsley jumped out of the boat and shouldered his pack. “What, do you have a curfew or something?”
Her shoulders went stiff like someone had just poked her with a pointed stick.
“No, I don’t have a curfew. You ever thought I might have to get up early tomorrow for something?”
“No. You’re here on vacation. Unless you’re getting up early for a sunrise wedding or one of those boring-ass island tours they sell to tourists.”
She winced again, and Kingsley could feel the others watching them even though half had already climbed into Annika’s van. Annika was at the wheel and tossing them occasional annoyed glances. She was ready to go.
“The party should be pretty low-key. Nothing at all to challenge your virtue or your tolerance for loud music,” Kingsley said. “But if you get bored or scared, I’ll take you home.”
His house was only a ten-minute walk from Elina’s. If Doe Eyes truly wanted to go home, he could easily take her in his truck. “A win-win situation, really,” Kingsley finished.
She looked skeptical but interested, her hips inclined toward him even as she plucked at the frayed edge of her shorts, apparently thinking seriously about the offer of a decent party with good booze and people. “Why does it feel like I’m being lured into the lion’s den?”
Kingsley gave her a mock roar. Incredibly, she laughed at his weak joke. “Okay. I’ll come.”
As soon as she got in the van, Annika drove off, barely giving Kingsley time to pull the door shut.
The Pleasure of His Company Page 4