One Night on the Island(50)

‘Beautiful you,’ he murmurs, liquid sexy, moving against me, inside me. His mouth drags down my throat, the roughness of his jaw, his hands gripping mine, the arch of my body, the steady thrust of his hips. I’m drenched in him, so hot inside I think I might actually explode. And then I do, and the intensity makes me cry out, unexpected tears on my cheeks. Mack kisses my tears, clutching my hands so tight it almost hurts as he lets go of control, my thighs clamped around his body. It’s powerful. It wasn’t making love because we don’t love each other, but it wasn’t just sex either. It was another level of intimate, fire-hot, a whole new emotion I don’t have the words for yet.

‘Holy fuck, Cleo,’ he gasps, his heart banging against mine.

A shaky laugh rattles through me because it’s still an understatement. ‘I thought I was going to actually die for a minute there,’ I say.

He rests his forehead against mine, catching his breath, kissing me slowly. ‘I’m glad you didn’t.’

‘At least they’d have sent the bloody boat,’ I mutter, making him laugh.

I let my hands learn the angles and curves of his shoulders, the indentations of his spine. I close my eyes. Some kisses have an end. This one doesn’t. It goes on, our new way to communicate. My tongue slides over his, his hands move in my hair, we roll on to our sides. He breathes my name like a spell, I move so I’m comfortable in his arms, and still we kiss. He reaches down and pulls the blanket over our bodies, my legs intertwined with his, and still we kiss.

For a woman who finds her way through the world with words, this is a whole new language.

I’m more asleep than awake when Mack speaks, his breath warm against the top of my head.

‘One – I came here scared that Susie would get over me, and right now I’m more scared that I might get over her.’

I feel his turmoil in the rise and fall of his chest.

‘Two – I drank my first beer at ten years old. I stole it from my dad’s fridge after I walked in and caught him having sex with his dental assistant. Right there in his patient chair. He didn’t see me. She did, but I don’t think she ever told him.’

‘And three …’ He runs his hand lightly down my arm from shoulder to elbow. ‘I don’t regret you.’

I cover his hand with mine. ‘And I’m supposed to be the one who has a way with words,’ I whisper, pressing my lips against his chest.

‘One – I’m worried about going back to London. I didn’t even want to come here, but leaving feels somehow scarier than staying now. I came for one thing and it’s become about something else, and I’m trying to work out what that means for me.’

That’s the way it is sometimes, isn’t it? Life is the stuff that happens between the cracks in your plans and expectations. I cast around for something random to throw in as my number two.

‘Two – I didn’t hate the ending of Lost, although I wish Kate and Sawyer had been together at the end.’ As usual, I was a sucker for the bad boy. ‘And I still don’t understand where those polar bears came from, either.’

Mack laughs at that. Wind howls around outside and rattles the windows of the lodge, but here in bed it’s warm and blissful.

‘Three,’ I say. ‘I don’t regret you either.’

Grey fingers of shadowed dawn slide over Mack’s features as I lie awake and study him. He’s peaceful in a way he usually isn’t, not around me at least. Does he look this untroubled every night when he sleeps? Or has our night together released a tension in him, as it has in me? True to my word, I don’t regret what has happened between us. I hope he feels the same when he wakes, that shame doesn’t diminish the star-bright burn of last night. There was an inevitability and a trueness to what happened between us, and in the quiet hours afterwards, a soul-deep calmness.

I knew it was a gamble, asking him to be with me this week. There was no plan B, no back-up place to go if he rebuffed me. I realize also that it was probably a harder decision for him than for me. My love life has been a spluttering series of stops and starts. Mack’s spent more than a decade as someone’s husband, held the same woman in his arms every night. We are at opposite ends, but there’s something about this island, this lodge, a fairy-tale edge-of-the-world feel I can’t easily explain. It’s as if a passing bubble snagged on the chimney last night and settled, snow-globing us inside. I hope it will linger for eight days, a suspended iridescent gossamer, protecting us until a brisk northerly blows in and whips it out to sea, taking Mack with it, leaving me behind. Eight days and seven nights. How many hours will that give us together? I move closer into his warmth and his arm settles around my shoulders, his fingers splayed flat against my hair. I close my eyes as I turn my face into his chest.

‘Two hundred hours of us,’ I whisper. I can hear the clock ticking down already.





Mack





20 October


Salvation Island





PART OF NOT DROWNING IS SWIMMING



‘What are you doing out here?’ I say.

It’s early afternoon and she’s been sitting on the porch steps for a good while now, her dark hair whipping around her face in the wind. I want to tell her she reminds me of an ethereal sea goddess but I don’t because even inside my head it sounds clichéd.