Drowning

by Jassy Mackenzie

  “No, I do, it’s just…”

  “Well, then. I need to go for a drive. I’d like for you to come along. Say no and I’ll let you out now.”

  “You know I’m not going to say no.” Damn it, I was smiling now, feeling as if a shaky equilibrium had been restored.

  “I missed you last night,” he said, driving carefully down a steeply sloping section of road, and I felt my stomach contract at his words.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t come back to your bedroom.” I stared out of the window as the big truck eased carefully over a rocky section, while branches scraped lightly across its sides. What I had just said was an acknowledgement that things were not yet over between us. And why should they be, given that my husband and I were now facing the prospect of a trial separation?

  “You had your reasons. I understand.”

  “I thought you were angry about it.”

  “No. I was disappointed, that’s all.”

  “You seemed really pissed off this morning when I heard you in the gym.”

  “I was, but not with you.”

  “Do you always gym when you’re pissed?”

  “Mostly. It’s a safe way of getting rid of it. And going for a drive is a good way of calming down.”

  As I pondered what he had said, I noticed the sky was beginning to clear and the sun was breaking through the clouds at last, brightening the morning. We drove past the place where we had fixed the fence the day before. After the rains last night, the river was flowing more rapidly through it, but no other trees had been uprooted or washed into the wires.

  “I wouldn’t have thought you would have much to be angry about,” I said, thinking again of what it must be like to live in this utopia.

  “Oh, trust me, Erin, I have plenty.”

  “What would an unsafe way be of handling it, then?”

  “Of handling temper?”

  “Yes.”

  “Taking it out on somebody else.” His voice was hard, but it was his words that silenced me. Was he implying that this was what Vince had been doing?

  Had Vince been doing this?

  One thing I knew for sure was that, under normal circumstances, Vince’s behavior would have had me frantic with worry. I would have been calling him every hour, thinking of little else, desperate to reassure him and to get our relationship back onto an even keel.

  I hadn’t done that, though.

  Was that what was making Vince behave so weirdly?

  “There!” Nicholas’s voice interrupted my thoughts. He was pointing out of my window and looking in that direction, I saw a pair of rhino.

  “Oh, wow,” I breathed. The magnificent animals, their massive bodies a matte grey in color, their long, curved horns intact, were peacefully browsing some nearby bushes.

  He stopped the car and for a few minutes we sat and watched them as they made their way across the dirt track before disappearing into an area of thicker bush.

  “They’re so beautiful,” I breathed.

  “Beautiful and endangered,” Nicholas said sadly. The last remnants of the anger I’d sensed smoldering within him seemed to have dissipated. I felt calmer, too, the frayed emotions that I’d felt at Vince’s words now soothed by the drive and this amazing sight.

  “At least they’re protected here.”

  “They’re on my property,” Nicholas agreed. “I’ll do whatever it takes to keep them safe.”

  The passion with which he said the words made me glance at him in surprise. I didn’t understand why, but I thought that the safety that Nicholas was striving so hard to uphold meant more than simply protecting the wildlife within his property’s inner boundaries. Protecting his own was a matter that seemed to be deeply personal for him—but I could not guess at why.

  “Here’s the access gate that leads through into the main part of the estate, where the Big Five roam.” He stopped the car by a wide gate that was closed and locked with a thick chain and padlock. “About a twenty-minute drive away from here is the most amazing place. It’s a small wooden chalet, set on a hillside overlooking a dam. Occasionally, I spend one or two nights there; or just a lazy afternoon. I don’t think I’ll get the chance to take you there. I wish I could.”

  “Why don’t we go now? Or have you got other things planned for today?”

  He turned to stare at me and I was startled by the intensity in his eyes.

  “We can go,” he said slowly. “Even if I had plans, I’d put them aside for you.”

  He climbed out of the car and unlocked the gate. The chain clanked and rattled as the massive, heavy-duty padlock opened. Then he drove through, stopped the car again, and locked it once more behind him.

  “I should warn you, just in case…” he said softly, and with a hint of embarrassment in his tone, “I’m out of condoms.”

  “Oh.” Silently, I took in the implications of this statement.

  “I’m not a risk, Erin. I have regular physicals before I travel to work in other countries, including blood tests. The most recent of those was in July this year. I don’t know if you’re on birth control, but if we end up making love, I will be careful, I promise.” His voice was like a caress.

  Making love? What happened to sex? To fucking? His choice of words was confusing me, although the desire that swept through me was not.

  “I don’t have any sexually transmitted diseases. I was tested for all of them recently,” I told him. In fact, I’d had the tests done during one of Vince’s jealous episodes. I’d hoped the results would set his mind at rest. They hadn’t, of course.

  “And I’m not on birth control,” I added more slowly. “But you don’t have to be careful in that regard.”

  He stared at me wide-eyed. “Why’s that?”

  I took a deep breath. “Long story.”

  “So, tell me the long story,” he said. “I think it’s time we learned more about each other.”

  “You’ve refused to tell me anything about yourself,” I said.

  “I know. I’m sorry. I’m bad that way. I promise to try, though.”

  Time to come clean with him, then. He might as well know what had happened to me to make me the person I was today.

  “My little brother, Aidan, died when I was fourteen. It was such a shock—he was killed when a car went out of control. Two teenagers, drag racing. He was only ten years old at the time.” I took a deep breath. “My mother went into a depression. She basically didn’t leave the house for—oh, I don’t know—two years, maybe. Those two years were hell. For me, and for my dad. He ended up divorcing her. Although maybe it’s unfair to put it that way. Aidan’s death led to them getting divorced.”

  “That must have been tough for you to cope with.”

  “It was. I coped by going off the rails. By the time I was sixteen I was out every night—my parents never knew where I was and if they had known, they would have forbidden me to go to those places. I went through a stage of doing drugs. I had a series of boyfriends. My longest relationship was with a man who was thirty years old, who’d been married and who’d fathered a child.”

  “Go on?” There was nothing but concern in Nicholas’s tone. I could hear no disapproval. That was a relief. I hadn’t gotten this far in my story when I’d tried to tell Vince. He’d been so judgmental when I mentioned the drugs, I’d thought it safer not to share the rest.

  “Of course, I wasn’t careful enough. I ended up having an ectopic pregnancy and didn’t know until it ruptured. I had massive internal bleeding. I nearly died, and both my tubes were damaged so badly they had to remove them. If I were ever to have kids it would have to be through IVF, which might or might not work, and is not a prospect I’d be overly enthusiastic about in any case.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” His face was serious. He moved his hand onto my leg and massaged it gently.

  I shrugged, gave him a smile I didn’t mean. “Shit happens.”

  “It does indeed.”

  I wasn’t going to tell him that Vince had sai
d, when we discussed this before we married, that he didn’t want kids. But then, just a few weeks ago, he’d suddenly started criticizing me about being infertile, and had blamed me for the fact that he would never have a son.

  Vince’s words had left me feeling deeply insecure. But that was not something to speak about now. I really did not want to think any further about a topic which always made me feel angry and ashamed.

  “My grades suffered as a result of all of this, of course,” I told Nicholas. “I missed half of my final exams. I’d been planning on studying fine art, but in the end I had to settle for doing a photography course. I decided I needed to get away. From my family, my environment, the friends I’d lost. So I moved away and then I just kept going. Packing up and moving on became a habit.”

  “That must have been tough for you.”

  “It was my fault. I made some terrible decisions and I paid for them. I’m damaged goods now, and that is what…”

  “No!” Nicholas just about shouted the word. He stopped the car and turned to face me, taking my hands in his own, and, surprised, I stared back at him. “Not damaged goods. Never. Don’t ever say that, Erin.”

  “I—”

  “Not unless you want to believe for the rest of your life that you’re not good enough. And you know where that can lead.” His voice was dark and I understood the warning behind it, even though it made me feel uncomfortable.

  “There have been plenty of good times in my life, too,” I said, making an effort to lighten the conversation.

  “And in mine,” Nicholas agreed, smiling slightly. “Present circumstances included.”

  I wanted to offer a casual agreement, but there was suddenly a lump in my throat that felt too big to swallow. I had been such an idiot. My decisions, in every way, had been so misguided, up to and including the ones I’d just made. Sleeping with this gorgeous man had been bad enough—but falling for him? And how on earth was I going to be able to leave him without leaving a piece of my heart behind?

  We headed in silence down a track that became increasingly overgrown. Branches scraped against the sides of the car and the tires splashed through flooded ruts and ditches. The area was both incredibly beautiful and devastatingly wild. I felt at that moment, driving through that rough and lonely landscape, as if we might be the only two people in the world.

  “It gives you a real sense of isolation, coming here,” I said, wishing I could capture the sea of greenery, the empty sky with its towering clouds, in the eye of my camera lens.

  “It does. It always makes me feel peaceful. I spend time here when I want to think.”

  Fifteen minutes later, he eased the car up a steep, winding road. I saw to my amazement that at the top of the hill was a small wooden chalet, built partly on long stilts and partly bermed into the hillside itself. Nicholas parked under the chalet and we climbed out.

  “I’ll go first,” he said, walking around to a steep wooden staircase on the side of the building. “There is a tiny chance that there might be a stray scorpion in the bathroom, or another unwanted creature somewhere inside.”

  After that warning, I followed cautiously behind and waited outside the wooden door until he gave the all-clear.

  Stepping inside, I caught my breath.

  The small building smelled pleasantly of the mahogany boards that had been used in its construction. It had a surprisingly high, sloped roof and a simple layout. The main room, a bedroom, had a double bed positioned against the back wall and an enormous glazed window opposite. The window looked out over the sheer cliff-side onto the astonishing view below. Here, the azure waters of a large dam were spread out in front of us.

  I caught my breath as I saw that, so close that I could make out every detail of their lithe, powerful bodies, a pride of five lions and two cubs were at the water’s edge, drinking.

  “Oh, wow!” I moved over to the window and stood, transfixed, watching this visual feast until the last of the lions had drunk their fill. Even then, the pride did not leave the dam area but instead moved to a shady spot of grass where they settled down to rest or, in the cubs’ case, to play pouncing games with each other.

  “It’s amazing, isn’t it?”

  Nicholas’s voice resonated from the room to the right of the bedroom, a kitchenette. Here, another door led out onto a small, shady balcony which also overlooked the dam. Nicholas was pouring water from a plastic jerry can into a kettle on a gas plate. A small gas-powered fridge stood by the window.

  “The room opposite is a bathroom,” he told me, pointing to the door. “Its water supply comes from a rainwater catchment tank on the roof.”

  When he made the coffee, I noticed there was only one mug on the wooden shelf.

  “We’ll have to share,” Nicholas said. “You’re the first person apart from me who’s been in this hideaway since I had it built last year.”

  So he hadn’t even brought Angela here? I felt illogically pleased to be the only one he’d shared this special hideaway with.

  “Thank you for bringing me. It’s incredible.”

  We sat down on the bed and leaned back on the cushions, passing the mug back and forth while staring out at the view of the endless sky and the grasslands and dam below. The peaceful sight soothed me and helped to calm my frazzled emotions. There was an extraordinary stillness in this place. The only sounds were of nature—insects, the calling of birds, the faint babble of water from somewhere nearby.

  Nicholas was right—being part of this timeless, wild landscape was giving me the opportunity I required to think.

  And I was thinking I needed to get back across that river fast.

  Whatever this attraction was between us, I was prepared to admit that Nicholas was as much under its spell as I. While I was with him, the magnetism between us created a static that made it impossible to reason. Even now I could feel its tug—this ridiculous desire, this longing to touch him, this crazy feeling of happiness inside, of being at peace—as if everything had turned from impossibly complicated to utterly simple.

  I told myself sternly that this was not real. It was an illusion of happiness. It could not last, and it was interfering with my perception of everything—including, most crucially, my own marriage.

  I owed it to my husband to try and fix what had gone wrong between us. If my efforts did not work—and the idea of that happening made me feel disoriented, as if I were teetering on the edge of a tall building—then the foundations of my world would crumble.

  I had to get out of here as soon as was humanly possible. This place—and this man—were becoming addictive. Nicholas and Leopard Rock Estate were drawing me in, making me forget that there was a world outside the borders and that I had a life I needed to go back to. I was becoming entangled, and this was not right, not healthy, and simply not acceptable.

  I could not afford to let this happen. The next few days would be difficult enough. I needed to come to terms with what I had done, and try and fix my marriage. I would require all my strength of mind to get through this.

  I handed the empty mug back to Nicholas and our fingers brushed. Quickly, I moved my hand away but he moved his towards me.

  The touch interrupted my thoughts and distracted me from the task of shoring up my resolve. In any case, I told myself, I had made my decision. As soon as there was any way out of here—any way at all—I was going to take it. That would be within another two days at the most. In the meantime, I acknowledged reluctantly, I could not win the battle against my own desires. Besides, giving in to temptation would be all the sweeter now that I knew, for sure, there was so little time left for me to surrender.

  CHAPTER 17

  As our hands idly caressed, Nicholas’ touch caused my heart to pound.

  “This is something I’ve dreamt of doing for days. Bringing you here. Sharing this place with you.”

  He put the cup down and sprawled on the bed, pulling me close with one strong arm. His lips tasted of coffee and his kiss swiftly grew urgent. Only two more
days at the most, I promised myself… and I must take every moment of pleasure they offered. In fact, I must saturate my senses with Nicholas de Lanoy in the hope that doing so would finally satisfy my craving for him.

  His hands roamed over my body, stroking my breasts, teasing my nipples which stood out taut and hard under my shirt. He tugged at the fastening of my pants, and in turn, my fingers were at his jeans, unbuckling, unzipping, pulling them down, revealing him.

  He made to remove my clothes, but I stopped him.

  “No,” I whispered. “Not yet.” With the flat of my hand on his chest, I pushed him back onto the cushions, seeing the bewilderment in his eyes and feeling a sudden surge of power at having seized the moment, taken control for just a while of this powerful, magnificent man.

  I kissed my way down his body, loving the silken sensation of his skin under my lips, the coarser tickle of hair, feeling the tension in him, the breathless anticipation of what I was about to do.

  “Oh, Erin,” he groaned as I wrapped my right hand around the pulsing length of his cock and flickered my tongue around its head. “God, that’s good.”

  I could hear his breathing, rough and hard, and found I was breathless myself. I could feel his desire as if it was my own. I was trembling with excitement at his response. I longed to give him more; to take him to the same heights of bliss where he had taken me.

  I opened my lips and slid them around the wide head of his cock, then circled the tip of my tongue slowly, lusciously around it, tasting him. I loved the feel of his skin, so silken soft compared to the powerful hardness underneath. I moved my lips further down his shaft, sucking him as deep as I could take him, caressing his thickness with my tongue. His helpless groans of delight made me feel incredibly aroused.

  This was a sensual pleasure for me in a way I’d never felt it to be before, with other men… but, if I was truthful with myself, it was more than that. I was amazed by how much I needed to do this for him. I wanted to give him my all, to let him know the honesty of my desire, holding nothing back. It was as if, by pleasuring him so intimately, I was letting myself show the feelings I could never tell him.