Sacred Waters (25 page)

She climbed out of the water and stood on the dock. Her eyes took in her new vantage point and saw the beautiful view anew. When she turned full circle, cataloging the spectacular panoramic display, Colin was standing before her.

Rivulets of water slipped over his chest. His damp flesh appeared blue under the moonlit sky.

Her body shivered as a breeze kissed her shoulders. Sam wondered if these mountains could talk or if the wind was God’s whisper to them.

Colin’s smile faded and he looked at her in a manner she had never seen before. There was such unspoken meaning in his expression. Her smile fell as well. His hand reached for hers, squeezing reassuringly. Sam stepped closer. Slowly, without haste, he leaned down and pressed his lips to hers.

His mouth was warm, a contrast to their cooling skin. She stepped into Colin’s arms and he held her as he kissed her. Her hair was wet at the tips and the pieces clumped together over his arm that had wrapped around her back. Her panties had sealed themselves over her flesh like a second skin and her breasts hung heavily as she pressed them into his chest.

Her fingers traveled over his broad sturdy shoulders and down his arms. His tongue tickled hidden corners of her mouth and teased the soft pillows of her lips. Seemingly in accordance, they both lowered to the dock as one, Colin holding her as he guided her to her back.

His mouth nipped at her jaw and sipped from the crevice between her shoulder and neck. She arched and sighed when her nipples abraded against his flesh. His palm reached for her breast and squeezed her. She needed the pressure, needed to know he held her tight, not by chance, but out of want.

His thumb tripped over her nipple and his lips found her other breast. The heat of his mouth enclosing over her hardened tip was heaven. He suckled her breasts deeply until they became red and pointed. His tongue passed his lips and she watched as he licked at each proud peak. When his gaze met hers, she saw the shameless seduction in his eyes and her insides melted.

Colin’s hands found the edge of her panties and peeled them away from her hips. The material slurped and clung as he tried to separate it from her skin and they giggled. He tossed the wet material aside and it landed with a soft splat.

Heavy palms slowly pressed her knees wide. If ever there was an expression of reverence, Colin was wearing it. Lowering his head, he brought his mouth to her sex and softly kissed her there.

His tongue pierced her folds and traveled in and out of her channel then up and down her crease. His thumb found her clit and began to run in insistent circles while his other hand pinched at her nipples. Her bottom raised off the dock as the sensation became too much, too fast. She moaned and cried out, uncaring of her passion echoing off the forest walls. The orgasm happened so quickly, it blindsided her.

Her legs trembled as Colin placed a few soft kisses on her thighs and sat back on his knees. Focusing on one bright star that still shined in the pinkening sky, she breathed as her heartbeat slowly return to normal. Colin pushed back between her knees and kissed a trail up her belly and to her breasts.

When he reached her mouth awareness stepped in and she tensed. He was naked. His arousal hung heavily against her belly as he kissed her. Her body tightened as she wondered what his nudity meant. His length dragged between her legs and over her sex. His skin there was hot and smooth, yet hard at the same time. He was large, but Colin was a large man so that made sense.

Her sex wept for him to become a part of her. They kissed slowly and passionately for several minutes and with ever slight change of their position, his erection seemed to settle closer to her opening, as if it had a mind of its own and knew where it needed to go.

Her moisture coated his flesh and the image in her mind only made her wetter. His cock slipped over her folds, nudging ever so slightly past her lips. His hips were broad between her thighs and her legs spread to accommodate him.

There was no thought about the hardness of the dock or the dawn creeping up on them. The only thought she had was of him being with her, filling her, making love to her once and for all. She knew she couldn’t keep him, but she wanted this part of him. She wanted his virginity and needed to give him hers.

Instinctively she maneuvered her hips under him and somehow aligned his sex with hers, using skill she didn’t know she possessed, and thrust her body up at his. He sunk into her and they both hissed and stilled.

He broke the kiss and turned his face away from her, resting his forehead on her shoulder as he breathed. She knew he was struggling. He was inside of her, but not yet deep enough to breach her, to break the mark of her virtue. He panted and she waited.

Slowly he raised his head and looked down at her, a sheen of unshed tears in his eyes. “You’re the only woman who will ever know this side of me Sammy. This part of me belongs only to you.” He slammed his hips forward entering her completely.

There was a momentary shock and pinch, but her elation at having him inside of her overrode those lesser feelings. The fullness and completeness she experienced in that moment was indescribable. He seemed to be analyzing the overwhelming sensation as well. His eyes remained closed, his expression pinched, and she hoped she did not just force him to do something he hadn’t wanted to do.

Insecurely, she whispered his name. “Colin?”

He breathed a sigh and slowly opened his eyes. In that moment she saw more than the man. She was seeing his naked soul, bare and vulnerable in a way he’d never showed anyone else.

“Dear God, Samantha, never had I imagined…”

Words seemed to fail him. She raised a hand and brushed her fingertips along the side of his face. He pressed his cheek into her palm.

“I love you, Colin.”

“I love you too, Samantha. More than any man should love any woman.”

He adjusted his arms and braced his palms on the wood beside her shoulders. The first thrust was slow. His body pulled from hers and her sex fought to hold him there. When he pushed deep, her slickness accepted him without hindrance. They moaned and found a rhythm as one. He slid over her, gliding in and out, the pressure building with each sure thrust.

The weight of him between her legs was something cherished, knowing she would not feel the weight of a man there again, likely for a long, long time. When he drove into her deeply she felt it all the way to her shoulders as if her spinal cord was tingling out to every nerve of her body. He waited, seated deep inside of her, allowing her to experience the fullness with each stroke. When she rotated her hips beneath him she could cause him to press into soft tissue that was especially sensitive to his presence. She loved the feel of her mound pressing against his pelvis, his hair there abrading her deliciously.

Lifting her hips, they moaned in uncontainable pleasure. While his flesh rubbed coarsely over her clit his length reached a new sweet spot.

They repeated the motion and realized they were onto something incredible. Mimicking the move again and again, coming back to it faster than the time before, they began to grind and thrust their bodies together, Colin picking up power with each pump of his hips.

Sam grasped the back of his neck tightly as he drove into her with forceful, quick strokes. They moaned and murmured to the beat of his thrusts. Sam’s back slid against the weathered dock and Colin lifted one arm and held her hip to keep her in place.

He plunged into her with such intensity that her body coiled tighter than a snake ready to spring. There was probably some ironic biblical parody about a serpent and Eve seducing Adam leading to the downfall of man, but Samantha allowed no judgment to tarnish this moment for her. There’d be a day that she would have to answer for her selfish sins, but that day was not today.

Their slick bodies became frantic, as if they were trying to not just be one with each other, but break through one another. Finally, her center twisted too tight and, like a universe being born, she shattered from the inside out. Colin gave a guttural groan and fed himself into her one last time before heat filled her and eventually seeped down her thighs.

He kissed her hard, passionately, and she refused to cry.

As she came back to herself her mind slowly filled with unutterable fears. It was not a vibrant dawn, but a melancholy morning. The crystalline skyline beckoned the blue, but Sam saw the coming clouds. Dawn's magnificence was doomed to fade on such a day and she suddenly felt engulfed by the waters that surrounded her, as if she’d have to swim alone evermore.

“I want this to be our goodbye, Colin,” she whispered. “This is how I want to remember you.”

He looked at her, such resigned sadness surrounding his eyes, but said nothing, only nodded.

* * * *

When they pulled up to the house a while later everything was quiet. There was only a moment of silence, weighted in unspeakable regret and longing that passed between them before Sam climbed out of the car. She stood facing Colin, as he seemed to search for the right words.

It was better this way. She didn’t want to hear his goodbye. Words would only cheapen the memory. Standing stoically before him, she looked him in the eyes.

“I wish you the best of luck, Colin. Thank you for these two weeks. I’ll never forget them.”

As she was about to shut the door he quickly said, “Sammy…” She paused and gazed at him. The pain in his eyes was too much to bear. “We could write. Maybe see each other one last time before August.”

She shook her head. “No, Colin. I will not share you with a monastery. You chose your church and she’s the only mistress you can have. Please, just let me have this memory without turning it into some shameful secret we’ll always have to hide.”

“We could be friends,” he pleaded.

“No.”

She convulsively swallowed back the lump forming in her throat. “I’ll never be able to look at you as only a friend. This is goodbye. We can’t…” Why was he making this so hard? She was losing her resolve. “Please don’t try to contact me. Goodbye.”

She shut the door to the car and walked up the porch steps without looking back. When she heard him pull out of the driveway her shoulders sagged and she pressed a fist to her mouth as she began to cry. Stifling her emotions, knowing there would be endless time to cry later, she quickly wiped away the few tears that had escaped and raised her chin. She would not look back. Opening the door, she quietly slipped inside.

* * * *

It wasn’t watching the cabin fading away in the distance or the sight of Braydon waving goodbye from the train station platform that did her in. It wasn’t the voicemails waiting for her from her parents saying how lovely their trip was going or the letter from the school she student taught at asking her to come in for a second interview. Nor was it the lonesome hike home from the train station through the labyrinth of walkways and crossroads that made her loss sink in. It wasn’t the quiet echo of her keys dropping onto the table in her silent and empty apartment either. No. It was the rain.

Samantha walked past the lightly dusted tables and the forgotten article she had left unread on her sofa. She sidestepped the few weeks of mail, knowing it was without a single letter from a friend. She went to her window and pulled back the drapes and watched as the clouded sky finally broke in two and began to cry. And with the deep blue grayness blanketing the world, she wept.

Surrendering to it all, Samantha wept for the moments she never allowed herself to cry for Meghan. She wept for the family she would never have with the McCulloughs. She wept for Braydon’s understanding and Luke’s secret. She wept for the tiny part of their home that marked the day Frank had given his heart to Maureen and the moment of truth when she saw Italian Mary help Morai the way only a true friend could.

She wept for her parents’ loss and for the blessings they gave her anyway, without ever blaming her for taking their baby. And when she found herself sitting on the floor of her empty apartment, trembling with the weight of emotions she’d spent years fighting, she cried for him.

She let her sobs take her away to a place she had never had the courage to go. She knew she might never come back to herself again after admitting her heart had broken, but she cried anyway. She sobbed past the point of feeling raw and into a state of numb acceptance. She cried because he loved her, because he let her go, because she would never forget those sacred moments they shared at the water, and because she would never have him again. She cried harder than she’d ever allowed herself to cry. And she knew that as the last tear fell, she’d never allow herself to cry so freely for him again.

Hours later, Sam woke on the floor of her apartment as the sun faded behind the Philadelphia skyline. Another webbing of cracks spread over her heart at the reminder she would never again see those purple mountains that had been her view the day before.

After showering and forcing herself to eat a cup of powdered broth and tepid water, she changed into her pajamas and crawled into bed where she remained for the next several days aside from the time she needed to go to campus for class. Moving like a zombie, promising herself that this feeling would soon pass, but with each day she suffered the disappointing reality that her heart was still broken.

She wasn’t sure if she was even passing her classes, let alone maintaining her GPA of straight A’s. Yet she couldn’t muster the concern to even pretend she cared. When her four-week term finished she was surprised to see that she had actually achieved two low B’s. It wasn’t until Sam faced the fact that she had to be out of her apartment by the end of June that she admitted how far she had gone off the deep end.

She faced the disaster her home had become over the last month and wondered how she had lost such track of herself. It was as if days had come and gone, yet she had no recollection of them passing. Four Saturdays she had no memory of. Thirty evenings of staring at the television set, but no memory of what shows she had watched. When she threw away the twentieth empty pint of Ben and Jerry’s littering her end tables and nightstands, she finally admitted she was depressed.