The Paper Swan(68)

Days passed like that, a whirling dance of sensation and passion and discovery. Nights too. I started taking the birth control pills that were still in the handbag that Damian had stashed away. I’d missed a couple of weeks, but it couldn’t be helped.

Every morning, Damian went to pick mangoes for me, with strict instructions to not cook while he was gone. I made the bed, returning MaMaLu’s Lucky Strike box back under his pillow. Sometimes I sat with it, thumbing through the contents, trying to catch a whiff of her, but all I smelled was stale tobacco.

When Damian returned, we would sit on the verandah and have breakfast. We sat on the same chair, with me on his lap, although there were three others that were just as comfortable. I played with his hair. He let me, even though we both knew he hated it. He put sand in my belly button. I let him, even though I hated it. But that’s what made it special, allowing each other those small, personal liberties that only come with true intimacy.

We had picnics on the beach. Damian roasted peanuts in the sand and sprinkled them with salt water. We ate them warm, with red bananas and ice cream beans—foot long pods packed with lima bean-sized seeds that were covered with a juicy white pulp. They tasted like wet cotton candy, but when left exposed to the air for a while, they took on a distinct vanilla flavor.

We snorkeled over the reef tops, mesmerized by an underwater ballet, as schools of vivid fish darted in and out of living corals and anemones. Soft gorgonian fans and giant sponges glowed over the sun-dappled ocean floor. Blue tangs and angelfish and spotted eagle rays glided past us. Where the seabed was covered in grass, we swam with turtles, with flippers that spread like wings.

Afterward, we lay on the beach, letting the sun warm our skin. Damian decided to shield me from harmful UV rays. With his body. I thought sex on the beach was a great idea. Until the wind started blowing sand in our faces and in-between our bodies. Sex on the beach was too gritty for my taste.

“Such a princess.” Damian laughed when I broke our kiss to spit out a grain of sand.

We rinsed off in the water and swam to the boat.

“Here,” I said, leading him to the bed where I’d spent so many nights hating him.

“No. Not here.” Damian didn’t want to be reminded of that time.

“Yes. Right here. Because you need to get over it. I’ve forgiven you, but you still haven’t forgiven yourself.”

“Skye—”

I shut him up with a kiss, because everything he needed to know was in the way my lips moved against his, the way my tongue melded with his, lingering and savoring the way he felt, the way he tasted. I felt him melt, slowly, undeniably, because it didn’t matter where we were—here, on the boat, where he’d kidnapped me, or on the beach, or on the moon—because there is no space too dark or too vast or too irredeemable that can’t be filled with love.

Damian worshiped me on that bed. For every cut and bruise he’d inflicted, there was the salve of his kisses; for every restraint was a chain of caresses. He was surprisingly, touchingly restrained although his desire throbbed, hard and palpable between us. The more Damian gave, the more his passion soared, until we were lost in a sea of sensations: the thrill of his hands on my thighs, the way our hip bones grazed against each other, the slide of skin against palm.

He buried his throat in my face and whispered sweet confessions in my hair: how he felt, when he felt, what he felt. My legs clung to him, my fingers tracing the tendons of his back, wanting to hold him closer, and closer still. My hand trailed down to the space between our bellies and I guided him to me.

“Take me. Take me now,” I whispered.

I exalted in his possession, writhing as our bodies found a tempo that bound us together. We were pressed against each other, flesh-to-flesh, so close that I could feel Damian’s heart pounding through his chest. He was rotating his pelvis clockwise then counterclockwise, then quick, shallow thrusts. I pulled on a fistful of his hair and kissed him, open mouthed, wild with need. He bucked, grabbed my ass with both hands, and drove deep into me. My thoughts fragmented; I gasped in sweet agony as fiery sensations ripped through me. Damian clutched my body, a tormented groan escaping him as he gave in to his release.

I snuggled up to him, my head fitting perfectly in the hollow between his neck and shoulder. “You think we’ll have any more issues with this room now?”

“Skye?”

“What?”

“I can’t think right now.”



There was a saltwater pool on the beach, carved into a rocky ledge. Two channels flushed the pool with passing waves, allowing fish to pass through. Damian built a stone wall that allowed the fish in at high tide, but trapped them when the water receded. The fish weren’t as big as when he went fishing, and they had a gazillion bones, but neither one of us cared because it allowed us to spend more time together.