Withering Hope (20 page)

W
hen we enter the plane, Tristan hovers in front of the door to the cockpit.

"Sleep next to me tonight, Tristan."

Turning toward me he asks, "Are you sure?"

"Yes." I run my hand from one shoulder blade to the other, and I feel goose bumps forming on his skin. "Tonight. Every night."

I don't know if he was expecting us to sleep separately, but I wedge myself next to him. After what happened today, nothing feels close enough. I cocoon myself against him, resting my head on his shoulder. "I feel fine. Relax, Aimee."

I can't. The jaguar’s growl still rings in my ears. It brings back the paralyzing fear of losing Tristan. I inch closer to him, the warmth of his naked torso doing wonders for my stiff posture. He presses his fingers on the back of my neck, and I moan as some of the tension built up inside releases. Tristan's fingers freeze on my neck.

"Aimee…"

My name on his lips undoes me again. It awakens something dangerous inside me. He's said it before, but now it sounds different. I turn my head so I can look him in the eyes. He shifts his arm under my head, his fingers reaching to stroke my cheek. He's trapped me in his half embrace, and I don't want him to let go. Here, in the safety of his arms, I find the strength to talk about the fear of losing him.

"I was so scared, you have no idea."

"I do," he says softly. "After I came back from Afghanistan, I was certain I would never fear anything again. But now I'm afraid every time I see a new hole in the fence, terrified that something might happen to you. I never dared to hope you felt that way too."

My breath hitches, but I don't pull away. My relief is so overwhelming I don't want to separate from him even one inch. So I don't. Not even when he leans in closer. His lips feather mine with a gentle touch, and a slight shudder shakes me. He's expecting me to back out. I do no such thing. Instead, I beckon him to kiss me, and he does. His full lips coax mine, their softness filling me with warmth. And igniting something inside me I won't have the power to stop.

I don't want it to stop anymore. This tenderness surprises me. It's so different from our first kiss. Tristan moves slightly, taking his arm from underneath my head and pushing me into the chair as his kiss becomes more urgent. I cradle his head with my arms, forcing him to kiss me even deeper. I'm rewarded with a groan. With one swift move, he pulls me underneath him. His expansive chest pushes against my breasts, and a deep throb pulses low in my body. Desire takes a life of its own when he slams his hips against mine, and I feel his need for me—his hard length strained by the fabric of his pants. In a haze, he frees me of the straps on my shoulders and pushes my dress down to my hips, revealing my breasts. His lips dart to my neck, suckling their way to my collarbone and then to my breasts, leaving a trail of fire in their wake that burns away any ounce of control I still have.

"Tristan," I gasp, my fingers digging in his back, craving for more. I want him to kiss me again, yet I don't want his mouth to stop the sweet torture on my breasts. Need sears through me, and I buck my hips in an involuntary move, pressing hard against him. His hand shoots under my dress, up my thighs, and he begins to remove my underwear. I still. He must sense my hesitation, because his hand stops. His fingers brush my inner thigh so closely to my intimate spot my need turns into delirious craving.

"You want me to stop?" he asks in a low growl against my neck. I try to form words, but I’m unable to, the pulsing desire surging through every nerve ending. In response, I unzip his pants. I push them down with his underwear as he pushes down my dress and panties.

"You're so beautiful," he says in a breathy voice. In the moonlight, I see his heavy-lidded eyes raking over my naked body. I'm shaking with consuming need. His eyes meet mine, and my need is mirrored in his dark gaze. He cups my backside greedily with one hand and sinks into my core with abandon.

"Aimeeeeeeeeeee," he grits in the curve of my neck, the feral sound spearing through me.

His hands are everywhere. Grazing the skin on my thighs, cupping my breasts. His passion pushes me to the edge, until I'm brazen enough to let out without restraint the proof of my own passion. I buckle my hips with urgency, swooping my lips over his neck, digging my nails in his chest as he drives into me with more and more urgency, spurring tremors so intense, I feel like I will splinter apart. I’ve never been so desperate for release. But I’ve also never made love like this before. My inner flesh clenches around his hard length, and, as he feasts on my body, I revel in pleasure, discovering I can cause so much desire. I spiral into explosive bliss with an intense cry that wracks my body. I feel him pull out, and rest confused for a moment when he empties his own relief away from me, then remember we had no protection.

Afterward, he slumps next to me, burying his head in my neck, exhaling hot breaths over me. He puts one of his arms around me. I swallow hard and take a better look at his arm.

"Tristan, your arm is bleeding." Little red blotches have made their appearance on the stark white bandage.

"It's nothing. I strained the arm a little too much."

"Let me look at it." I try to get in a sitting position, but he holds me.

"No, please. I just want to hold you like this," he murmurs in my ear.

"I'm not going anywhere." I give in to his plea. I snuggle up with him, closing my eyes, tracing my fingers on his back, feeling at peace with myself for once. When Tristan falls asleep, I stare at the night outside the window, waiting for the guilt to overcome me.

It doesn't.

I remember the burdensome guilt I felt over having feelings for Tristan. I remember how suffocating it weighed on me after we kissed. I try to recall the intensity of it all, but I can't.

Compared to the horrible fear I experienced today, and the devastating possibility of losing Tristan, nothing feels as intense. Or as important. Not the guilt. And nothing that came before we crashed here. That's how I know I made the right decision by giving myself to him tonight, and there is no going back. Tristan slipped into my soul the way mist travels in the forest after the rain: unseen, unstoppable, and ubiquitous. Our feelings resemble the mist in a way, too. When you’re surrounded by the mist you don’t see it clearly, though you feel it in the thickness of the air. You know it’s there, but you can’t touch it or know for sure if it is real. But if you take a step back, or look at it from above, it’s as clear as if it were snow.

Mist perhaps isn’t the best comparison, because it disappears after a while, though it returns with every rain. My feelings for him are not going to disappear.

Smiling, I climb out of the chair, careful not to wake him up, and walk to the back of the plane. In the darkness, I grope the floor where I lost my ring today, until I find it. I clasp my fingers around the cold metal. The diamond scratching my palm used to embody almost everything for me. Hope, love, happiness. And lately, guilt.

But as I unzip an outer pocket of my suitcase and drop the ring inside it, an exhilarating sense of freedom overtakes me. A twinge of guilt remains, of course, because no matter how I put it, I'm betraying the man who once meant a lot to me, but whom I can now think of as nothing more than my best friend. That in itself is a betrayal. But, I won't cling to the feeling of remorse any longer.

Being on the brink of losing everything had the remarkable power of setting me free.

I’ve decided what I will tell Chris and how I will set things right if I ever see him again. After today's events, the probability of that happening seem slim. Until now, marching through the forest after the water level sunk, back to civilization, seemed like a certainty. A plan that wasn't without its faults, but a plan. We just had to wait for the right time, and we'd go home. I believed we would get there. Even lighting up the signal fire every day… I've been doing it in the hope that maybe we'd get lucky and get rescued after all. That possibly a stray plane would fly above this region and see our signal. In any case, I never doubted we would get home, eventually, either by a plane or going back on foot. Today, I had a taste of how real the possibility of not making it out of the jungle is.

The nightmares disturbing my sleep tonight are my own. In them, the jaguar isn't dead. Instead, it rips Tristan's flesh apart while all the arrows I shoot miss their target.

T
he bow vibrates in my hands as I release arrow after arrow. I don't know how long I have been shooting, and I don't care. I won't stop until every damn arrow hits the target. Judging by the pile of arrows huddled at the roots of the tree—the proof of my ineptitude—I’ll be at it a long time. My fingers don't even hurt anymore, though they felt as if they were on fire at some point. Now they're numb.

When I woke up this morning, the bloody bandage on Tristan's arm and the realization of how close the beast came to killing him overwhelmed me again.

I left him asleep and came outside, trying to clear my head. Seeing the dead jaguar's body had the opposite effect, and I ended up with the bow between my fingers. I shoot again and again, tears of desperation rolling down my cheeks. Shoot. Miss. Shoot. Miss. Shoot. Hit.

"Aimee." Tristan's voice sounds desperate, if distant. "Aimee, stop."

But I don't stop. I can't. Tristan grips both my wrists, forcing me to stop. He steps in front of me. "Aimee,
what
are you doing?"

"I don't know," I whisper. The events of yesterday afternoon play in my mind like a bad movie. The jaguar jumping forward. Tristan falling backward. My utter ineptitude to shoot the animal. The magnitude of it all hits me in one giant wave and my knees tremble. All I manage to blabber before I burst into an ugly cry is, "I don't want you to die because of my incompetency."

"I won't—Aimee, you are hurting yourself. Let the bow go." When I don't react he raises his voice, desperation piercing it. "Aimee."

He unclenches my fingers from the bow, taking it away. That's when I see my fingers. They're worse than yesterday. The skin is shredded where they touched the bow.

"I am so sorry," I say through sobs.

"Shhh, you're having a meltdown."

Tristan drops the bow, putting an arm around my waist, patting me on the back. "Calm down, Aimee. I'm all right. It barely hurts anymore."

I sob even harder. "But you could have died. I could have lost you."

"Please don't say that." His voice is soothing, and I find myself relaxing in his tender embrace. "Let's go inside the plane and take care of your fingers."

"No, I'm fine." Ashamed of my meltdown, I try to pull myself together. "We have lots to do and I—“

Tristan scoops me up in his injured arms, but I don't protest or ask him to put me down. I rest my head on his shoulder, enjoying the rhythmic beat of his heart. Somehow, it has the power to drive away any thought. When he puts me down in my seat, I draw my knees up to my chest, feeling cold without his arms on me.

"I'll be back in a sec," he says.

He brings the bottle of alcohol and a strip from my wedding dress then kneels in front of me, tending to my callused fingers. I try to be brave, like he was yesterday, but I start whimpering as soon as the cloth touches my skin.

"Aimee, what did you feel last night?" His voice has a strained quality to it, as if he's bracing himself for my answer.

I don't answer, considering my words for a long time. Too long.

He begins to turn away, but I grip his wrist and his head snaps back toward me. He caresses my cheek with the back of his fingers, sending tendrils of sparks through me. "I don't regret what happened between us, Tristan."

He kisses my forehead, murmuring, "It's the most beautiful thing that’s happened to me."

Something flutters in my chest at his words. They're so pure, so heartfelt that I almost liquefy. "Let me change the bandage on your arm," I say.

"I've looked at it this morning. It's fine, no need to change it. We have to be careful not to waste the bandages."

I run my fingers over his bandaged arm, as if that would help me find out if he's telling the truth. He doesn't wince at my touch, so he's not in pain. All of a sudden he grabs my wrist, looking down at my fingers.