The Royal's Obsession (8 page)

Augustine looked surprised.

“Trinity mentioned to me that you were active in clean water initiatives.”

“As much as someone without a degree in it can be,” she said with a small smile. “I go to rallies, I donate, I speak up when it’s called for, and I volunteer my time to do research when I can. Last year, I helped form oyster beds in Florida.”

Augustine blinked, and he looked rather cautious when he spoke. “I would not have thought that you were someone who would farm oyster beds…”

She shot him an amused look, licking at her chai ice cream.

“What, don't I look like the type to do hard labor?”

He stammered over his response, and she started to laugh.

“No, it's a fair assumption to make. That was some of the hardest work I've done in my life. Oyster beds are amazing. Just a single square foot of oysters can purify water to an impressive degree, and when you weave together plastic mats to give the beds a place to develop, they do even better. It's an amazing process, but it wasn't easy. I was out there some twelve to thirteen hours a day, and early on, I got so sunburned that I was lobster red. We were working so hard to finish by our deadline that we must have broken some kind of labor code in the process.”

“Was it worth it?” he asked curiously, and she looked at him, disbelieving.

“Of course it was! I was part of a team that helped reclaim a little bit of water for the world. Those oysters are going to make an incredible difference to the region. I got to be a part of that, and no matter what, no one can take that away from me.”

Augustine looked thoughtful for a moment.

“I do not think that I've ever been involved in anything like that. The summer I learned to sail, however. That one took me from being a rather weedy fourteen-year-old to being someone who actually had some strength. The time was not exactly pleasant, but it was something that I was passionate about. It was a time when I collapsed into my bunk exhausted and woke up still sore the next day.”

“And you wouldn't exchange it for anything, am I right?” she asked.

He nodded, smiling a little. “Sometimes, it seems that everything worth doing brings with it a measure of pain and suffering.”

“Well, I don't know if I believe that,” she said, and she didn't realize how suggestive her words were until he laughed.

“You are a singular woman, Anastasia,” he said. “You are passionate without being unwise, and I could journey a very long way before I found your like again.”

His words were oddly touching to her. He wasn't talking about her beauty or her breeding. he was talking about the very core of her.

“You see me clearly,” she said quietly. “That's a gift in and of itself.”

For a moment, they were in a timeless place where they truly could see each other. The past and the future melted away, and here they were able to know each other thoroughly.

Without quite understanding what she was doing, Anastasia reached out to bring Augustine closer for a deep kiss. This was a different kiss from what they had experienced before. Before they had kissed with a wild passion that seemed to burn everything else out of their world. This was about the two of them in the world and a part of it.

When they pulled apart, Anastasia was breathless, her eyes lidded and her breath shallow. This close, she could see how dark his eyes truly were, like pools she could fall into endlessly.

“Anastasia…” Augustine murmured.

“Yes?”

“You're going to make a mess if you're not careful.”

For a moment, she had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. Then she looked down to realize that her scoop of ice cream was slipping right out of its cone. Without thinking about what she was doing, she tried to tilt it back to true, but somehow the scoop of ice cream ended up falling out even faster. Anastasia yelped as the cold treat landed flat on her bare foot.

“Oh, oh that's cold!” she cried, trying to dab it up with a paper napkin. Her napkin was very small, however, and the ice cream was quite generous in size. She was just realizing that she was really only making the situation worse when Augustine lifted her up.

“Augustine! What are you—?”

“Helping,” he said with a grin, and he started striding for the water.

She barely had any time to prepare herself before he waded in waist-deep and dropped her. She came up with a shout, drawing laughter from the other people on the beach. After a moment, the water proved to be pleasantly warm, and she stood up, dripping and with her dark blue dress clinging to her.

“Was that really necessary?” she squawked.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said with a grin. “You still have some ice cream on you…”

He pushed her back down in the water, but this time she went with a giggle instead of a yelp. Despite being soaked, the water felt amazing, and when she came up next time, she had a plan.

She reached for him as if to steady herself, and then at the moment where he pushed her in, her hands shot out and knotted themselves in his linen shirt. Then she simply let her weight do the work as she slipped towards the water.

“Gotcha,” she whispered, right before they hit, and then there was an enormous splash.

“Demented woman,” he said with a smile, standing up out of the water. “Where in the world did you get such ideas?”

“I have no idea,” she retorted. “But now that we're completely wet and our clothes are hopeless, shall we go for a swim?”

There were changing houses on the edge of the beach, and both of them had brought swimming garments with them. In the dim privacy of the changing house, Anastasia hesitated over her choice. When she swam, she preferred the sleek looks and efficiency of a dark tank. However, when she packed this particular suit, she’d had something a bit different in mind. With a shrug, she shed her soaked dress and wriggled into her swimming suit.

“After all,” she said to herself, “you packed this with him in mind…”

When she emerged into the sun, Augustine was already waiting for her. In his black swim trunks, she could appreciate the fine muscled lines of his body with ease. He looked like an ocean god come up to see the people of the shore, and Anastasia was overcome by a desire to touch him everywhere she could.

Her doubts about her swimsuit were laid to rest when she saw his dark eyes lock onto her. Augustine's gaze roved her body as if there was nothing he could do to stop himself, his mouth slightly open. Her confidence greatly restored, she sauntered out to meet him, gently closing his mouth with her hand.

“I'm glad you like my choice of swimming attire,” she said with a mischievous grin.

“Like isn't the word I would choose,” he managed. “Stunned might be a little more appropriate…”

The suit in question was a classic bikini, but when she first tried it on, she had thought it was too small for her. The saleswoman, however, had reassured her that it was perfectly in style, and so she had ended up with a bright white bikini where the top seemed barely able to hold her breasts back.

“Shall we get into the water?” she suggested. “I want to get plenty of time in the sea before we have to come back up.”

She wasn't sure she had ever had a day like the one that she had with Augustine. The water made them both playful, and when they ventured into the deeper part, they could dive and sneak up on each other. Augustine was certainly the stronger swimmer, but it turned out that Anastasia was far sneakier, able to hold her breath long enough that he was completely unprepared when she grabbed his ankle and pulled him down.

At some point, she hid from him behind some rocks, only to yelp with surprise when he materialized behind her.

“Augustine!”

“You thought you could escape so easily?” he mocked her, pinning her against the warm stone.

“Who says I wanted to escape?” she said, her voice as warm as honey.

When he leaned in to kiss her, she could feel how aroused he was against her thigh. With their bodies covered to the chest by water, she felt no compunctions against twining her legs around him and clinging to him hard.

She felt him gasp against her mouth, and their kiss became deeper, more insistent.

Could we do this right here?
Anastasia wondered.
In the pure water, under the bright sun?

The idea awakened a deep longing in her. Suddenly she wanted nothing more than to make love with this man at right that moment. There was something elemental about it, so powerful that she moaned.

“You're irresistible,” he murmured against her throat.

“So don't resist me,” she replied.

He pulled back for a moment to assess her invitation, and she could see the same dark hunger in herself reflected in his eyes.

There was no telling what they would have done before the shouts of children at play reached their ears.

“No,” Anastasia groaned, thudding her head gently against his shoulder. “No, no, no, no…”

Augustine smiled at her protestations, looking around the rock before shaking his head.

“Sorry, darling,” he murmured. “Playtime is on for that family, and over for us for the moment.”

He led her out from behind the rock, where they waved at the family that had appeared at the edge of the water close by. The children waved at them, and for a moment, Anastasia was struck by the sturdy boy with dark hair. He stood proudly in the water as if daring the waves to knock him over, and when they did, he only got back up to challenge them again.

“I bet that's what you were like when you were a little boy,” she said.

Augustine glanced at the child, shaking his head a little. “If you mean too stubborn for my own good, that was definitely true. Apolo was my older brother, and he was always the serious one. Whenever he tried his hand at a thing, chances were good that he would succeed at it. I had to be more persistent, but if I was persistent enough, I would do just fine.”

“Is that what explains sailing?”

He sighed a little.

“Shall we grab some food? This story isn't long, but it goes over better with food…”

Anastasia was amused when they found a small stand selling oysters just a short distance above the beach. They found some shade behind a stand of rocks, and as Augustine pried each oyster open with a special knife, she applied a squirt of lemon to them.

The two of them ate a dozen oysters whole, and Anastasia, who had always enjoyed the slippery, slightly metallic taste of raw oysters, was in heaven.

“Those might have been the best oysters that I have ever had,” she said with a sigh. “But don't think that’s going to distract me from your story…”

“It won’t? Well, maybe they will keep you from realizing that I do not have a particularly exceptional story. When I was fourteen, it felt as if everything was going wrong. My brother was sent to an elite boarding school that I was too young to attend. It was the first time we had been separated, and I was furious about it. On top of that, there were some domestic problems that took up most of my parents' attention, and I was perhaps not getting the attention that I wanted.”

“So what did you do?” she asked.

His laugh was slightly self-conscious.

“Well, I suppose other children rebel by crashing cars or running away from home. Somehow I managed to combine the worst of both by crashing my father's beloved Ferrari as I tried to drive to Apolo's school.”

“Oh god,” Anastasia said, covering her eyes. She could imagine it too easily, an angry Augustine who was fed up with the way that things were and decided to change them in as decisive a way as he could.

“You're lucky you weren't killed. You said you were fourteen?”

“Yes, and my parents were horrified. They had no idea what to do with me, or what the appropriate action to take was. I don't know how they came up with the idea, but one morning a few weeks later, I was told to take a bag and to get into the car. My parents saw me to the dock, kissed me goodbye and said that they would see me in three months.”

“Were you frightened?” she asked, wide-eyed. She could only imagine how distraught she would have been if it were her.

“A little, but at that point, I was more intrigued than anything else. I was tired of being at home, and when I met Alexandros, I was fascinated.

“Alexandros?”

“Yes. An old friend of my father's, and a professional explorer and treasure hunter. He was like something out of a pulp magazine—he ran around the world discovering sunken vessels and diving for what was in them. He worked for several museums, but at the time I'm talking about, he was on hiatus and interested in exploring the islands.”

“And you became his first mate?”

“Sort of. At first, he told me all I was fit to do was to scrub down his vessel, this fast and elegant schooner called the
Siren
. I was so fascinated that I did as he said, and then I became clever enough to do things like trim the sails and to help him with the navigation.”

For some reason, Anastasia's heart swelled with pride. She could imagine the angry and frustrated boy Augustine had been finally coming out of himself long enough to discover something that would become his great passion.

“Time passed quickly, and before I knew it, I was acting as his first mate and running the ship as easily as if I had been born to it. When the three months were up, he delivered me back to Athens and told me I would always be welcome aboard his ship.”

“How was it getting back to dry land?”

Augustine's laugh was rueful.

“I was desperate to get back on the water,” he admitted. “I told my father I would do just about anything to have a craft of my own, and he told me that if I were perfect at school and at home for the next year, I could have one. He might have been surprised that I stuck with it, but at the end of the year, he was as good as his word, and I was back on the water.”

Anastasia thought for a moment, trailing the edge of one oyster shell through the sand.

“You must have been so proud stepping on board your own ship,” she said.

“I was,” he agreed. “It was my pride and joy, and when I want something a little more intimate, the
Sea Witch
is always my first choice.”