More Than Paradise (23 page)

“You’re beautiful,” she murmured, dragging a nipple beneath the tip of one Þ nger, back and forth, watching it extend and pull at the pale skin around it.

The soft sounds in Charlotte’s throat urged more. Ash wanted to take her time, she wanted to tease and caress her along a well-plotted course toward perfect satisfaction. But her self-control was slipping.

Holding back was torture. Her body was tight and swollen, bent on a course of its own. At this galloping rate, she would come Þ rst. Not what she was planning.

She slid a hand between Charlotte’s thighs, grinding gently into her ß esh. Charlotte opened eyes dark and heavy with languid promise.

Wordlessly, she parted her legs. Ash pressed harder. Something in Charlotte’s expression altered and she reached up and slid her hands over Ash’s shoulders, insistently drawing her down until they were rocking and sighing together in the ancient cadence of lovers.

Ash was completely undone by the thrilling shock of Charlotte’s body, opening to her, the slippery blush of ß esh sealing around her Þ ngers, the squeeze and pulse that matched her own. And she was startled when Charlotte’s hand slipped down between their bodies to embark on her own exploration.

She didn’t arrest the Þ rst tentative strokes as she would normally.

Instead, catching a ß ash of apprehension in Charlotte’s gaze, she guided her hand along the narrow ridge where her tension centered.

“Oh, baby. That’s good,” she groaned. “You’ll make me come if you don’t stop right now.”

Charlotte’s eyes glowed and she became intent about the Þ rm gliding strokes. Resigning herself to the inevitable, Ash let go of her control and watched her lover’s face ß ush with delight when she discovered how easy it was drive her straight off the edge. She was still convulsing when Charlotte whispered in awe, “Was that…?”

“Yes.” Ash lifted her small hand away from the exquisitely sensitive postorgasmic parts, explaining hoarsely, “Afterward…I Þ nd it too much.”

“Oops. I’m sorry. Normally no one lets me do that, so I’m…kind of inept.”

Ash couldn’t remember ever having a discussion like this during sex. But nothing else had gone exactly to script, either, so she expressed her opinion frankly. “Well, you’ve been sleeping with the wrong people.”

• 155 •

JENNIFER FULTON

She kissed Charlotte deeply and slowly, giving her own breathing time to settle. All the while she kept her Þ ngers poised inside, awaiting a return of focus. When Charlotte arched her back in reminder, she said,

“I should punish you for distracting me.”

Charlotte draped one of her legs over Ash’s hip and bucked a little against her hand. “Punish me some other time,” she responded throatily.

“Be careful what you wish for.” Ash eased her Þ ngers slowly free of their slippery sheath until the tips barely teased inside.

Charlotte whimpered her name.

“Want something?” As she said it, she was back on track, that familiar hunger grinding inside. Heart pounding, she slid her left arm beneath Charlotte, gathering her close. Gazing down at her, she thrust inside.

“Yes!” Charlotte bore down on her. Avid concentration stilled her face.

Ash could feel the pressure building inside her, the rippling and gathering of muscles, and the stiffening of her body. She was almost there, losing herself. Panting. Moaning. Eyes closed. Head thrown back.

One of her outß ung hands gripped an orchid. Slowly, inexorably, she crushed it as she began to spasm. And while she rocked and shuddered in release, a stain of amethyst juice trickled between her Þ ngers. Eyes the same color frantically sought Ash’s.

“Hold me,” Charlotte begged, and burst into tears.

v

Many hours later, lying in Ash’s arms in their tent, Charlotte said,

“I was thinking about that night.”

Ash shifted a little to get more comfortable. They’d joined their inß atable pads and zipped their sleeping bags together. “What night?”

“Back home. At Tamsin’s house. When you were in the bathroom listening.”

“What about it?”

“You slept with
both
those women?”

Ash sighed. “Charlotte, I haven’t lived like a nun. I’m sorry you ever had to know about it. Okay?”

Charlotte hesitated. “I just hate the thought.”

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“You have nothing to be jealous about, trust me. It was just sex.

And when that’s all it is, who cares whether it’s with one person or ten?”

Charlotte felt queasy. Britt’s excuses echoed in the corridors of her memory.
It’s just sex. It didn’t mean anything.

“Is that what today was?” she asked. “Just sex?”

Ash rolled them both onto their sides so they faced each other.

“How can you think that?” She placed a hand on Charlotte’s belly.

“What does your gut tell you?”

It was more, so much more
. At least that was true for her. If Charlotte were honest with herself, she had to accept that there was no way she could measure what she’d experienced. It was completely new.

By any standard, Ash was an exceptional lover. Charlotte knew that much from having close friends who talked about sex. Most of them had much more interesting encounters than she ever did. But until now she’d thought some of their accounts exaggerated. Obviously sex was a highly subjective experience. Those recalling it through rose-tinted spectacles could be expected to claim transcendent physical and emotional pleasure. But even with Britt, Charlotte hadn’t come close to such delusions.

Ash was another story, a tale her body insistently told even now, in the damp tenderness between her thighs and the honeyed heaviness of her limbs. The impression of Ash’s kiss, her tantalizing scent, the pledge of their joined ß esh, was written where there had only been blankness before. It could not be erased. Charlotte could not return to the way she was before Ash—numb, a stranger to the passionate self within. Everything had changed.

She only wished she could trust that the change was rooted in reality. She’d felt alive with Britt, too. She’d fallen in love and handed her common sense in at the door. Britt had been a player, too, but insisted their relationship had changed all that because they were in love. Charlotte had believed every lie she was told. She had happily fallen sucker to every self-serving promise. Incredibly, whenever her doubts began to harden, Britt would sense her withdrawal and yank an emotional rabbit out of a hat. She knew exactly what Charlotte needed to hear at those times and, like the successful trial lawyer she was, she delivered.

It had taken Charlotte far too long to realize the promises and

• 157 •

JENNIFER FULTON

declarations were nothing more than the currency it took to keep her in the relationship. They were words. Closing arguments. Britt never had any intention of following her promises up with actions. Charlotte would not be made a fool of a second time, with another woman who thought the way Britt did.

In the end, she’d understood that Britt felt entitled to have it all—

the wife who meant something and the extracurricular sex that meant nothing. Thank goodness they’d been unlucky with the turkey baster.

She’d been bitterly disappointed back then and she still wished she had a child, but she was thankful it hadn’t happened with Britt. The Fates had done her a favor.

Inhaling the scent of Ash’s skin, she nestled closer, comforted by the fading traces of her clean spicy fragrance. A strange melancholy had corroded her joy. Puzzled, she allowed herself to be cradled, parting her legs to scissor with Ash’s.

“You haven’t answered me.” Ash paused. “Or maybe you have.”

Charlotte said. “I don’t know if I can.”

She wanted to believe there was more to this than two lonely people unanchored in a world without consequences, each enjoying the other while she could. But she’d kept herself safe for the last Þ ve years by remembering the lessons of history, not repeating them.

Yes, she thought their lovemaking was far from mere physical union. And yes, she had feelings for Ash. That alone meant her judgment could not be trusted.

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MORE THAN PARADISE

When she Þ nally came face-to-face with the Þ g, Charlotte understood exactly what Eve must have gone through, seeing the apple and wondering if she could trust the snake enough to sample the forbidden fruit.

She had almost walked straight into it, busy cleaning her binoculars as she slowly moved along the route she’d been mapping out. The strangler Þ g, once an epiphyte but now a sprawling monster, blocked her path, corded thickly around a low-hanging branch of its host tree.

And there, dangling right before her eyes, was one of its succulent wares, hanging far below the upper canopy where all the fruit and seeds usually grew.

Mesmerized, Charlotte could only stare. Her heart went wild in her chest and her legs wobbled. She was tempted beyond belief to seize the plump ruby-black fruit and cram it into her mouth, knowing she would be the very Þ rst woman on earth to taste it. She fought off the urge to run back to the camp immediately and share her triumph with Ash. The last thing she needed right now was another lapse into daydreams about the woman she could not shake loose from her mind.

Forcing herself to focus, she reached for the fruit, instinctively checking behind her. Yet again, she had the odd feeling she was being watched. She’d spoken with Ash about her constant sense that she was not alone. She suspected her imagination was running away with her because she felt like a burglar in a hallowed citadel, a spy in the secret bower where Mother Nature seduced Father Time. Not that she’d phrased it that way to Ash, who could not be expected to empathize with such ß ights of fancy.

• 159 •

JENNIFER FULTON

Ash had pointed out the obvious—that the Nagle team was discreetly patrolling the area, making sure everyone was safe. It was likely someone had been nearby periodically, checking on her but trying not to disturb her. If she wanted, Ash would tell her team to make themselves known to her. Charlotte had declined, dismissively insisting that it was nothing and that she knew if she needed help all she had to do was use her cell phone, yell, or Þ re one of the ß ares everyone carried.

She turned slowly on the spot, surveying the musty, dripping forest ß oor around her. “Hello?” she called in a casual voice. “Who’s there?”

When no one answered, she took a long look behind her, then swiftly plucked the fruit and sniffed it, the Þ rst test of toxicity. Any wild plant that smelled of peaches or bitter almonds was probably poisonous.

The Þ g had a very different scent, somewhere between crushed grape skins and maple syrup.

Fascinated by her discovery, she traced the strangler branch ten feet down a steep slope to its source, a vast web of aerial roots that had encased its victim like a living cofÞ n. This specimen was huge, perhaps a thousand years old. Overwhelmed, Charlotte sank down onto the ghostly root structure and leaned back against the damp, solid trunk.

She had started to wonder if she would ever Þ nd the
Ficus
species she was looking for or if the reports of its presence in the area around Kwerba were mere speculation.

She stared up at the vast columns of wood rising some hundred feet above her.
Ficus lascellesae
. A tree named after her. She might have wished for a less macabre species; however, strangler Þ gs had always fascinated her. She examined the small reddish black fruit, looking for signs of a Þ g wasp. That, too, would be a discovery, because each
Ficus
had its own dedicated species that only pollinated those particular trees.

Another amazing thing about tropical
Ficus
was that they bore fruit all year round. This made the trees important players in the battle to regenerate rainforests that had been destroyed, as they were incredibly hardy and could provide food for birds and animals when there was a seasonal shortfall.

In addition to the wasps, most
Ficus
had vertebrate dispersers, usually small mammals like fruit bats. That was something she could look forward to, Charlotte thought with wry amusement, picking up countless samples of droppings to identify which animals were

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MORE THAN PARADISE

involved. Perhaps she would recruit one of the naturalists to help her with that grubby task. Someone was bound to want a break from the physical slog of rigging up platforms at a hundred feet to study the mammals and birds that lived in the rainforest’s upper canopy.

Or there was Simon, the entomologist. He could only hunt his giant birdwing butterß ies for about an hour each day because there was not enough sunlight the rest of the time. He was always hovering, looking for someone he could latch on to.

She let her hand glide over a cool smooth ridge of wood. In rainforests the biggest trees tended to grow straight up, not branching until they’d reached the canopy and long hours of sunlight. Below canopy level, trees didn’t need protection against water loss or plummeting temperatures and the bark was so similar in many species that they could not be told apart, except by their ß owers. The near-naked trunks and roots were satiny to the touch and ghostly silver white, making the forest seem somehow enchanted with its deep shadows and monochrome vegetation.

The crisp snap of a twig made Charlotte freeze and lift her head.

All she could see was the massive buttressed roots of the towering trees and the dense latticework of lianas and epiphytes entangling the lower canopy. She suspected the sound had been made by one of the remarkable golden-mantled tree kangaroos that followed expedition members around like dogs. It was truly astonishing to encounter animals that had no fear of humans. They had never been hunted or harmed, and innocently approached the visitors to their world, curious and willing to be touched. Even the birds were gregarious and inquisitive.

The knowledge that humans were dangerous had never been acquired.

Every creature they’d encountered here trusted that no one was going to harm them.