Betina Krahn (26 page)

By the time they pulled up anchor and headed back to the dock, he had seen dolphins nuzzling and bumping each other, dolphins playing what appeared to be a game of tag, and dolphins batting and tossing cork floats as if they were cricket balls. The beasts clearly enjoyed socializing with each other and were either curious enough or fond enough of Celeste to stay close and investigate both the boat and her.

One by one his last, desperate exceptions to her claims were being demolished. He had come here to determine the truth, but his attitude and behavior since the day he arrived had been that of an iconoclast, not a scientist. He had come here with appallingly fixed ideas and was having to rethink them, one by one. What would happen when she had dismantled every one of his objections to her work?

“Ariel and Echo both have new babies,” she said as they tied up the boat and climbed to the dock. “We shall have to think up names. Any suggestions?”

He looked a bit put out. “Hardly my area … naming infants.”

She swayed a bit closer as they reached the beach. “All right, I’ll do it. I believe I’ll call Ariel’s baby Titus.” He paused and gave her a censuring look.

“I’m not sure I fancy having a dolphin with my name on it, running amuck out there … indiscriminately doing … ‘what dolphins always do.’ ”

She laughed. “Then we’ll use Titan instead. Would that make you feel better? And I think Echo’s baby should be—”

“Celeste?” he proposed, with one eyebrow raised.

“After myself? Hardly. I was thinking of Edgar, for Mr. Cherrybottom.”

“How do you know if they’re males or females?”

“I caught a glimpse of the slits on their bellies. I think they’re both males. But, as you recently learned, time and observation usually removes all doubt.”

Smiling at the way his ears reddened, she took his sleeve and pulled him toward the cliff, the house, and a bit of luncheon.

•        •        •

T
HAT AFTERNOON
, C
ELESTE
insisted on another swimming lesson.

“The water is thick with dolphins, out there,” Titus argued unsuccessfully, as she dragged him by the arm toward the steps down the cliff. “There probably isn’t any room.”

As it happened, there was plenty of room. Several of the new dolphins in the group had satisfied their curiosity about the cove and its resident humans and departed. By the time they reached the water, only three or four dolphins heard them splashing into the water and came to investigate.

Celeste watched Titus staying in the shallower water with his hands on his hips, and after she greeted each of the dolphins by name, she herded one into the shallows and beckoned to him. “There’s someone here I want you to meet.”

Warily, he waded deeper and soon found himself staring at a perfect miniature of a dolphin, barely four feet long.

“It’s one of the infants,” he said with surprise, watching her stroke its pale, unmarred skin and observing the little dolphin’s enthusiastic response to her touch. He knew just how the creature felt.

“Titus, meet Titan,” she said with almost maternal pride.

“This is my namesake?” He came closer and put out a hand to stroke the baby’s back. The skin was smooth and soft; it seemed thinner and more tender than that of the adult dolphins he had touched. He began to stroke and examine little Titan in earnest. When the little dolphin opened its mouth and made a series of squeaks and high-pitched screeches, he laughed with delight.

The other dolphins responded to the baby’s cries, inserting themselves around the baby and ushering it back to deeper water. “That one”—she pointed to Ariel—“is the baby’s mother.” Then she indicated another, lighter-colored dolphin. “That female is Echo, who also has a baby.”

Titus stood staring after them with a lingering air of wonder.

When Celeste collected their goggles from the blanket and insisted Titus see the dolphins interacting underwater, he was less than enthusiastic.

“All you have to do is what you did yesterday,” she explained. “Hold your breath and submerge for a while, then come up for air.” She smiled. “I’ll be there, too.”

Remembering the marvels he had witnessed the day before and considering the promise of seeing dolphins interacting in their natural habitat and association, he donned the goggles and moved carefully toward deeper water. She put her goggles on, then took his hand, and soon they were in over their heads, literally.

As on the day before, the landscape beneath the surface was blue-tinged and otherworldly. But now, in the depths of the lagoon, there were more than half a dozen dolphins, swimming close together, romping, and stroking each other. With each arch and turn, their bodies flashed in the sunlight that penetrated the water, making them seem as if they were made of living quicksilver. Titus rose to the surface, took a breath, then submerged again. It was hard to believe that this world existed just steps away from the mundane, cluttered world he usually inhabited.

They watched in awe as the dolphins executed a few jumps and paired for various instinctive acrobatics. For a time, Prospero herded Ariel aside and rolled her over onto her back. For a brief time they were belly to belly, then they broke apart and Prospero shot around the cove at a remarkable speed before jumping forcefully into the air. When the disturbance cleared, the others were carrying on as usual, including Ariel and her baby, who sought her out for a feeding.

Titus pushed his air supply to the limit, each time, to be able to continue watching. He had to make for the surface, once, and Celeste went to see if he was all right. When he nodded, his grin was almost as blinding as the sunlight on the water.

They dived again, and it wasn’t long before Prospero and
one of the others came over to investigate them. Since, where one dolphin goes, others usually follow, the rest soon swarmed around the visiting humans, making clicking sounds that Titus found a bit unnerving under water. When Celeste joined him at the surface for air, Titus suggested they put a bit more bottom under their feet.

When they reached a level where he could stand with his head above the surface, Titan swam near and brushed against Titus. The little dolphin darted quickly away, but soon circled back to brush against him a second time.

“Did you see that?” Titus said with animation. “He’s investigating me.”

As little Titan continued to circle and brush against Titus, each time with a bit more familiarity and duration, they realized that the baby was indeed exploring them. After several of these passes, Titus ventured to stroke Titan’s back as he came around again. The dolphin baby slowed and seemed to enjoy the attention. Shortly, the others came to retrieve their offspring. Unlike before, however, Titus felt a sudden and overwhelming exhilaration at being in the midst of that group of powerful and fascinating animals. It was clear they were beginning to acknowledge and accept his presence, even to interact with him in a personal way.

When they headed for deeper water, Titus reseated his goggles on his face and went with them. Plunging under water and locating a rock to dig his feet under, on the bottom, he watched the adults stroke and investigate Titan and Edgar and play with them, flipping them over gently and rubbing their fins and bellies. He was so absorbed in their interactions that he almost forgot about breathing. When he returned, Titan noticed him and once again ventured close to him, poking and wriggling against him.

When Titus shot to the surface again, Celeste hurried after him. He was panting and gasping, but grinning. “Did you see? Did you feel them swimming around us? And the baby—he keeps coming back to me—did you see that?”

He dragged in a supply of air, clamped his nose, and
headed back to his observation point. But the sight of his glowing face and the compressed pleasure in his voice left Celeste dangling in the water, speechless.

He had just caught it, she realized. The enthrallment, the insatiable curiosity, the joy of the sea … he had just discovered some part of the passion she had lived with for more than a decade.

She dived under water and settled beside him, watching with him the commonplace interactions of that small group of dolphins. Seeing it through his wonder brought her a fresh appreciation of just how remarkable it was to see them like this.

It was some time later that she noticed his lips tinged with blue and his teeth beginning to chatter when they surfaced. He couldn’t stop talking about the dolphins and fish they’d seen, so it took some work to convince him that he was getting too cold and needed climb out and get warm. He didn’t seem to feel the cold of the water at all, but finally bowed to her experience. With a longing look over his shoulder, he began paddling toward the beach.

“Do you realize what we just saw?” he demanded as soon as they emerged into waist-high water. He removed his goggles, wiped his face, and seized her shoulders in a tight grip. “They swim and play with the infants like …
parents
. And they are always rubbing and touching one another. They’re familiar, almost as if they’re a family. Mother, father, children—who would have thought it?”

In his excitable but fatigued state, he couldn’t seem to talk and navigate at the same time, so she pulled him to the beach and shoved a towel into his hands with orders to dry. He obeyed mechanically, then put on his shirt, and stood motionless, staring out at the water, his eyes wide and glazed with wonder. He turned to her in the light of early evening, looking as if he might explode if he didn’t get it all out.

“Celeste, it’s magnificent—it’s all just—
magnificent!
” He impulsively grabbed her shoulders and pulled her against him, staring down into her eyes with unabashed wonder.
“This is only a small cove. Imagine”—he made a sweeping gesture across the ocean’s horizon—“the treasures waiting to be found and explored in the rest of the ocean. You’re a pioneer—a visionary—a genius!”

He was delirious, wonderfully, ecstatically so. Celeste felt his excitement stirring her emotions and understood, with a uniquely feminine intuition, that the door that had just swung open was inside him. The man who stood before her now, with his hair dripping, his shirt hanging open, and a fire in his soul, was a far cry from the starched and priggish academician who had arrived on her doorstep a week ago. With some coaxing and some prodding, he had overcome his fear of the water and his narrow-minded approach to science, and had entered a realm of possibilities that he had never imagined existed.

There, her thoughts were interrupted by her being picked up bodily and swung around and around until she was dizzy. She collapsed on her knees in the sand beside the blanket, feeling her own world spinning wildly.

“I probably shouldn’t do this.” He went down on his knees before her and leaned over her, his face dusky, his eyes shining with sensual anticipation.

“Do what?” she asked breathlessly.

“This.” Lowering to his knees, he pushed her back onto the blanket and brushed his lips against hers. “It’s probably against the ‘scientist rules.’ ”

“Well, then we’ll just have to play by ‘mermaid rules.’ ” She raised her head and ran her tongue along the generous curve of his lower lip. “Because in mermaid rules”—she pressed her parted lips fully against his, muffling the rest—“this sort of thing is definitely allowed.”

Laughing against her mouth, he pressed her down onto the blanket and lowered himself beside her, teasing and tasting her lips, exploring the various kinds of kisses that made helpless, hungry noises come from deep in her throat. After a while, he shifted his chest above hers, rubbing against her
breasts and forcing a sigh from her that sounded like an invitation to more.

More came as she wrapped her arms around his neck and abandoned herself to a seemingly endless stream of kisses—long and intense in a way that spoke to parts of her not accessed by mere words. He ran his hands up her sides, causing her body to ripple, following his touch as waves follow wind. She opened to him, responding eagerly, as if the passion they were discovering were something new and wonderful, something invented just for them.

He lowered his kisses and caresses down her throat. By the time he reached her buttons, she was aching with a new sort of curiosity, hungry for a new kind of knowledge, eager to feel his hands on her the way they had been that day in the boat. Every sensation—the gradual slide of her smock, the pressure of his body against her breasts, the hard-soft demand of his mouth on hers, the scent of him invading her head, her lungs—was a sip of pleasure that seeped through her very flesh like heated brandy. She stilled and drank them in, trying to hold and savor each.

Gradually she gave in to her growing need to explore him and learn what would pleasure him. She ran her hands up the middle of his back then out along his shoulders, learning the tactile dimension of the shapes she had long since explored in her mind. He was so lean and hard and deliciously heavy against her. She could feel the working of his muscles beneath his skin, could make him shiver by raking her nails across a certain spot on his back, and learned that his neck and ears were just as sensitive as hers. He groaned and flexed his lower body against her whenever she applied her mouth to his bare throat.

Moments later she felt the fabric sliding from her breasts, exposing them to the cooling air and his heated attentions. She closed her eyes as he traced the mounds of her breasts and lavished hot, wet strokes on their tightly budded nipples. The resulting burst of sensation stopped the breath in her throat.

As pleasure built upon pleasure, she felt a silken cord of anticipation drawing tighter in her loins, and soon discovered that the press of his body against hers had the power to relieve that peculiar tension. Seeking relief, she instinctively held him tighter, and pressed her body into his. He responded to her need by sliding more of his body over hers, bracing above her, concentrating his weight so that she parted her thighs and welcomed him closer. Every movement brought a new discovery, every discovery brought a pleasurable new movement.

“So this is what it feels like,” she said, hardly aware that she spoke aloud. “No wonder Prospero and Thunder and the others enjoy it so much.”