Then when they pulled away he marveled at her.
“What?” She had to shout because of the water.
He dragged her back behind the falls, into the small alcove there. “You’re beautiful,” he said. Because sometimes he found himself without the words to express what was happening inside of him when he looked at her, so he told her that she was beautiful. She always said thank you. She always told him that he was beautiful in return.
She didn’t this time. Instead, she cocked her head to the side. “And?”
He drew a blank. Not because there was nothing to say. Because there were too many things to say. What could he say about Birdie? This bewitching, maddening creature who had taken over his life?
Six months ago, he had been in an unhappy marriage. Then he had become a widower. And then she had touched him. Revived a need in him that he had forgotten. And a fear. One that grabbed him low in the stomach and haunted him, made him feel like he was being chased by the very hounds of hell. But that didn’t sound like a compliment, and maybe it wasn’t. It was something more. Something deeper.
Nothing that he could shout over the din of a waterfall.
She shook her head, and turned away from him, heading back toward the waterfall, and he gripped her arm and brought her back up against his body, kissing her with everything he had inside of him. All the feelings he couldn’t form into words.
He held her against his body, swept the bottoms of her bikini aside and began to touch her, pushing two fingers inside of her as he kissed her.
She shivered in his arms.
He wanted her. Desperately. More than anything.
This was so foreign to him, and yet it was life as he knew it with Birdie. On this island. It had only been two weeks, and he had forgotten what it was to live in Basilia. To be the king. He had forgotten what it was to care about things other than his own need.
This had been a vacation. The first one he’d ever had.
He had lost himself. And he would have to find himself soon, but not now.
Not now.
He freed himself from his swim trunks, and lifted her up off the ground as he thrust inside of her. He took them both to the heights, standing like that behind the waterfall, nothing but his strength and his desperate need for her keeping them from falling.
Something inside of him burned. He wanted to make declarations. He didn’t know what they were. They were wordless, swelling sensations in the center of his chest, and he had no way to translate them.
So he didn’t. He simply felt. He simply claimed her. Over and over again until neither of them could breathe. Until their cries of pleasure reverberated off the walls in the cavern, overtaking the sound of the waterfall.
Then he gathered her to him, carried her back to the house, and up the stairs into the bedroom that they were both sharing now.
He tucked her against him, pushing her hair back off her face.
“You really are incredible,” she whispered.
“What did you like about me?”
The question sounded small. It sounded desperate, and he couldn’t say that he liked the sound of it on his lips, but he couldn’t hold back either.
“I like the orgasms,” she said, smiling up at him slyly.
“No. Not now. Before. You said you thought you loved me once.”
“Oh.” She took a deep breath. “I didn’t know you. You were a symbol of something, I suppose. Someone who had power, but who treated people well. I felt like you would take care of me. I let myself spin fantasies around that, even though I knew that it would never happen.”
“You took care of everyone else. You just wanted someone to take care of you.”
She nodded slowly. “I suppose that’s it.”
“How do you do it?”
She wrinkled her nose. “How do I…?”
