Paradise Lust (6 page)

Chapter 8

Even a full day after her strange and sexually charged “detention” with Ajuni, the unreleased sexual energy of the encounter coursed through her veins. She had wanted to release it herself, but exhaustion, anxiety about sound carrying, and too many mosquitos had thwarted her efforts.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the sexual energy found a point of focus not in Ajuni but in Danny. While Ajuni had lit this fire within her, she found that it was Danny’s scruffy face and sun-red nose and—yes—perfect dick that she craved. Sprawled on a towel in the small lawn of her cabin, catching the last rays of sun as she tried to focus on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, she turned the notion of Danny over in her head. Why had she been so terrified of their encounter? Why had she decided that self-discovery and connection (sexual and otherwise) with another person needed to be mutually exclusive? Wasn’t this adventure of reinvention and inner exploration
enhanced
rather than hurt by exploration of another person? After all, she’d closed herself off to any sort of real romance after Jeremy—with the excuse that she needed to focus on turning her career around—and that hadn’t brought her any closer to enlightenment.

In a flash of decisiveness—or horniness?—she shut her book, jumped up from her towel, and yanked her little sundress over her bikini. A moment later, she was jogging toward Danny’s cabin.

Just as murmurings of hesitancy and second-guessing began to roll into her mind, his hut came into sight, and she knew it was too late to change her mind. He was sitting on the porch, rocking back and forth lightly in the bench swing, and she could tell by the way he moved his head that he saw her. Resolved, she quickened her pace and was at the steps of his porch in a moment.

“Hey,” she said, slightly out of breath, as she stopped on the grass below the first step.

“Hey yourself,” he said. He smiled. She melted. That smile, those dimples, even the sunburnt crinkles on the bridge of his nose—it was too much. An insuppressible grin spread across her face.

“Unwinding after a rough day?”

He laughed richly, and answered “Yup, really needed to just take some time for myself. It was a tough one, what with all the cloudless blue skies and the sound of rolling waves in the ocean and the smell of lotus flowers. Plus I had to surf for three hours and then eat fresh papaya and fish caught in front of me.” He looked down, shaking his head ruefully, then looked back at her. “It’s been a doozy.”

She met his laughter with her own, letting her hair tumble across her face in a way that she thought—hoped?—looked carefree and sexy.

“Can I come up?” she asked after a moment.

“By all means,” he said, shifting a few inches to one side of the bench to make space for her. Butterflies surged in her belly as she did so, and she pushed them down as schoolgirl’s silliness.

“So,” she said, settling herself next to him on the bench. She looked out at the horizon, the pinks and oranges of sunset playing off the rippled water, but she could feel his gaze on her. She knew she’d just need to blurt this out or she’d start doubting her decision or lose her nerve. “So I’m sorry for just running out the other night.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw him turn his head toward the horizon as well and nod slowly. “It’s cool,” he said.

“No,” she said, turning to him. He looked back at her. “No, it wasn’t cool. It was weird and shady, and you deserve an apology and an explanation.”

His response was a laugh and a gentle smile, and then, “Okay.”

“I just…this whole thing, me being here, it’s sort of the result of a…” she paused, searching for the right phrase. “Of the beginning of a new chapter in my life. I had a, I had….an unexpected transition a few months ago, and this trip is sort of a way to reflect, you know? To really think about what I want, and what’s possible, and decide what my next move is. Does that make sense?”

Danny nodded.

“And I felt like, when you and I…” she trailed off, suddenly embarrassed to articulate what had happened. “I felt like that was somehow undermining my whole mission, that I really needed to focus on myself and not get caught up with a guy, and I just sort of panicked in that moment and decided I needed to leave.”

“Okay,” Danny said again, his eyes locked on hers.

“But I was thinking about it today,” she continued, and turned again to the sea. “And I think that’s kind of idiotic and a very limited way of thinking about things. Self-discovery doesn’t mean isolation. And if it does, then that self-discovery isn’t going to fare very well when you test it out in the real world, where there are, you know, people.”

Danny laughed again, and rested a hand lightly on her thigh. The butterflies surged again.

“Well,” he said. “I couldn’t agree more. And I’m really happy that you decided that.”

She looked back at him with an open smile. “Me too.”

“You know what, let’s celebrate your revelation,” he said, standing up from the bench.

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said, and she felt an inexpressible tenderness to see the childlike happiness in his smile. “I’m gonna go get us some coconuts from the main hut. Stay here.” He pressed both hands to her legs and leaned forward to peck her on the cheeks, then was gone. She watched him jog across the grass toward the thatched restaurant, smiling and giddy.

When he was far enough away that she could no longer discern the tanned ripples on his back, she turned her gaze away from him. It was a really lovely little porch, she noticed for the first time. The only one she’d seen on the resort with a hanging swing bench, and big double pocket doors that always stood open, letting in the ocean breeze and salt. Always stood open, that is, except for at least once, she thought with a mischievous grin. A small blue rectangle caught her eye on the bench next to her, where Danny had been sitting. It was his passport—must’ve fallen out of his pocket when he’d sprung up.

Before she could stop herself, Adele had picked it up and was flipping through the pages. It wasn’t that she was seeking anything, or snooping, she told herself, she was just so curious about this wonderful man suddenly in her life. She wanted to know everything about him, to soak him all up the same way she soaked up the equatorial sun’s rays on the beach. The pages were many—he must’ve gotten extra ones added, she’d never felt a passport this thick—and covered in stamps of countries she’d only seen on maps. Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Japan, Nigeria, Cameroon, Chile, Peru, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Russia.
Wow, this guy had travelled.
Briefly noting the years on the stamps, she raised an eyebrow at how much traveling he’d done in such a short amount of time.

With no more pages left to flip, she paused at the beginning, holding the passport open to his photo and personal information. Daniel Andresen, American citizen. Somehow thinking of him as Daniel made him even sexier. His age slightly surprised her—32, a bit older than she’d imagined—but also seemed perfectly fitting. He had a worldly knowledge. Place of birth, Chicago. It hadn’t occurred to her yet to imagine his previous life, his upbringing, what had brought him here, and yet being from Chicago seemed just perfect.

His photo—taken four years ago—was no less endearing than all the other seemingly mundane facts on the page. His hair was cut shorter, and his face more pale, giving him the look of a sharp businessman rather than a Zen-ed out surfer dude in Bali. His lips pressed firmly one against the other, as if someone had told him he should look serious in the picture, but the left corner of his mouth had crept up into the hint of a smirk. She smirked back at the image.

Abruptly aware of the fact that she was, in fact, flipping through the personal effects of a near stranger, she snapped her head up just in time to see Danny slide some rupiah across the bar toward Adi, pick up two large coconuts, and swing around to face Adele and the hut. She snapped the passport shut and put it back where she’d found it, hoping that the expanse of the lawn between them had veiled her movement from Danny’s eyes.

In a moment, he was hopping up the porch steps, and then handing her a heavy coconut with a straw poking out of the top. Noticing his passport on the bench, he plucked it up and stuck it in the pocket of his swim trunks before settling down next to her again.

“Don’t want to lose that!” He said, laughing.  “I don’t even want to know how many rupiah it would take to get me out of that pickle.”

Her nerves at being caught snooping dissolved in an instant and transformed into a fit of giggles.

“That pickle?” She managed to get out between breathless laughter. “What are you, a 1950’s cartoon?” She doubled over her legs, laughing with a childish giddiness she hadn’t felt in years. “Like,” she erupted again, vaguely unsure what was so funny but not caring, “are you for real?”

“A pickle!” He said, an enormous grin breaking over his face, watching her laughing fit with amused delight. “C’mon, people say that! I’d be in a pickle if I lost my passport!”

At that, she stopped laughing abruptly and looked at him. They locked eyes in silence for one moment, then both exploded.

The giddy glee of everything—the waves, the sun, the breeze, the coconuts, the absurdly idyllic location, each other, the passport, the pickle, their chemistry—blended together into a thick frenzy of joy all around them.
Things are good
, Adele thought to herself, and was surprised at the notion, but allowed it.
Things are good
.

After the laughter died down, she felt Danny’s hand on her back. She’d remained doubled over, and was now resting her elbows on her knees, looking out at the ocean, her face framed by her palms.

“Well,” she heard him say. She knew she should sit up to come back to his level, but was reluctant to feel his warm hand leave her back. She savored the sensation for one more moment, then straightened up. “Well,” he said again, now catching her eyes and smiling. “Let’s cheers.”

“Yes,” she said. “Let’s.” She turned and picked up the coconut that she’d placed next to her.

They raised their coconuts, touching the hard shells to each other.

“To…” Adele’s voice trailed off. She couldn’t think what they were toasting.

“To freedom,” said Danny.

The word struck her as a bit strange, but somehow exactly right. She absorbed it, then nodded back at him.

“Yeah,” she said. “To freedom.”

He winked at her, and she felt warmth radiating from between her thighs.

Then he pulled his coconut away and she did they same, and they both drank the fresh coconut water, watching the sun fall slowly below the horizon. By the time the pinks faded to deep purples, and her coconut was empty, her hand was interlaced with his.

“My coconut is empty,” she said softly, keeping her eyes trained on the ocean. Her voice sounded as liquid as the waves before them.

“Mine too,” he said, and lifted their joined hands up off the bench and onto her lap. He released her fingers and spread his around the curve of her thigh, his pinkie almost brushing the juncture of her legs. She inhaled sharply, quietly. He moved his hand down her leg toward her knee, and she relaxed, only to tense in tortured and delicious anticipation as it crept back in the other direction. This time, when he came to the top of her thigh, he let his hand continue on, disappearing between her legs, pressing against the already damp fabric of her tiny yoga shorts.

She grew dizzy at his touch and had to close her eyes to steady herself, then snapped them open again as a wave of pleasure swept through her body. On reflex, one hand shot down and gripped his firm wrist, futilely attempting to pull it away.

“What’s wrong?” He murmured as his fingers continued to do their work on her. He breathed hotly on her neck.

“There’s people,” she managed, unconvincing even to herself.

His hot breath stopped for a moment, and she guessed that he was looking around. Two fingers applied perfect pressure between her legs, began to move more quickly.

“There’s no one,” he murmured, his lips back at her neck. She felt as if her entire body were floating, attached to the world only by those fingers. The ocean waves reverberated in her ears.

“I don’t,” she began, her voice sounding weak and unfamiliar to her ears. “I don’t want to come yet.”
              “Why not, silly?” He asked, and his tongue flicked inside her ear for a moment.

“Because then it’ll be over,” she said.

He laughed softly against her neck, a kind laugh, and then pulled his face away to look at her. “Well, then we’ll just have to do it again,” he said, his eyes sparkling at her earnestly as two fingers found her clit and circled it lightly. “There’s nothing to worry about, babe.”

With that, he increased the pressure, and she gave up her resistance. A moment later, she was coming powerfully in his arms, the vibrating pulse of her orgasm leaving her arms and fingers tingling.

She fell back against the bench, panting, her eyes closed, and breathed deeply as she recovered herself. Opening her eyes, she saw Danny looking patiently out at the ocean again. At her movement, he turned his head back.

“You said something about again?” She said, her voice low and sleepy, and he grinned back at her.

In one sweeping motion, he scooped her up from the bench and carried her inside, deftly shutting the double doors with his feet, then threw her playfully onto the couch.